ABSTRACT
Little can be said with assurance about who Cynewulf was, or where he lived, or when—or even what—he wrote, yet Daniel Calder rightly observes that “historical and ‘biographical’ studies comprise the bulk of what scholars have done with Cynewulf.” 1 So much uncertainty gathered in one place is an irresistible invitation to conjecture, and so it is really not so surprising that Cynewulf has been identified variously as abbot of Peterborough ca. 1000, a wandering minstrel, bishop of Lindisfarne in the late eighth century, and a priest of the diocese of Dunwich ca. 800. 2 Still, certain probabilities can be established. He is the author of (minimally) four poems, or at least of the runic signatures attached to them: though the spelling of his name and the nature of the runic puzzle vary, the signatures are nonetheless distinctive. He was literate, since the runic game is a visual one, though he was not profoundly learned, as shown by his accepting St. Helena as a contemporary of St. Stephen, and A.D. 233 as the sixth year of the reign of Constantine I. 3 And so unlike Caedmon, who composed verse paraphrasing Latin texts that were translated for him, Cynewulf apparently translated for himself the texts on which his compositions are based— and with only occasional errors, as when he renders Ecce principium quaestionis, properly “Take note, this is only the beginning of the torture,” as Þis is ealdordom uncres gewinnes / on fruman gefongen! “This is triumph in our struggle, seized at the outset” (Juliana 190–91a). 4 Literacy of any sort, even in the tenth century, renders him far more likely an ecclesiastic than a layman, and literacy in Latin in any part of the Anglo-Saxon period makes it a virtual certainty.
