Things in Doubt: Inventio, Dialectic, and Jewish Secrets in Cynewulf’s Elene

Cynewulf’s Old English poem Elene, which relates the story of St. Helen’s finding of the True Cross in Jerusalem, is also a story of Christian learning and the dialectical pursuit of truth. In the poem, the cross is not simply a symbol or an emblem of Christ.² Rather, it is a mode of connection that ultimately makes the intellectual and philosophical traditions of Christian learning possible. Elene represents the True Cross as an intersection through which arguments supporting Christianity are discovered, while the poem also articulates the conditions under which Christian learning can be pursued and fulfilled. The poem’s Christians are frustrated in the process of discovering truth because they are subject to the privileged knowledge of the Jews, who become the Christians’ epistemological limit in the poem. Only after the Jews are forced to reveal their secret knowledge can the Christians possess the True Cross and therefore make effective arguments for their faith to establish it in the world.

Elene has frequently been interpreted as an allegory, an approach with some limitations.³ I argue that Elene ultimately becomes an allegory not merely for the triumph of Ecclesia over Synagoga, but rather for the dialectical process of inventio, seeking truth and wisdom by discovering arguments: in this case, the ultimate argument of Christianity, the cross itself. In the poem, the True Cross becomes a figure for the crux of the argument for the truth of Christianity. The cross reconciles the contradictions of life and death, divinity and humanity, shame and glory, ignorance and knowledge, darkness and light. In this way, the True Cross establishes proof of the Incarnation and the eternal life promised to Christians. In the dialectical process of inventio, for which the True Cross becomes a narrative trope, arguments are discovered in response to a question or res dubia, a “thing in doubt.”⁴ While the cross remains hidden in Elene, Christianity itself remains a res dubia until, with the discovery of the True Cross at the poem’s end, the dialectical process of truth-seeking can proceed.

This argument postulates a parallel relationship between the process of inventio, the discovery of arguments in rhetorical and dialectical tradition, and the Inventio crucis tradition. Stories about the invention or discovery of the True Cross abound in medieval literature, particularly in the vernacular literature of Anglo-Saxon England. Old English versions of the story include anonymous homilies and homilies of Ælfric as well as Elene.⁵ In Cynewulf’s poem, the emperor Constantine dreams about the True Cross before a battle with barbarians and, following a decisive victory over his enemies beneath the standard of the cross, dispatches his mother to Jerusalem to seek the True Cross. In Jerusalem, Elene disputes with learned Jews who claim ignorance of the cross’s hiding place (ll. 280–581). Finally Judas Cyriacus, the one Jew who knows of the place, is questioned and tormented by Elene (ll. 605–98), confesses Christ (ll. 699–715), and discovers the cross miraculously through his prayers (ll. 716–845). With the inventio crucis, Christianity becomes established throughout the empire and all doubts about the truth of Christ’s death and Resurrection are laid to rest. In the hands of the newly-converted emperor Constantine, the poem’s representative of earthly authority, the True Cross further facilitates the development of wise Christian leadership founded on the example of Christ. This leadership, like the Christian learning that depends upon the safety and peace such leadership provides, relies on the discovery of the True Cross for its authority and fulfillment. However, the symbiotic relationship between worldly authority and Christian learning in the poem, while unsurprising and clearly viewed as necessary by the Anglo-Saxons, will be seen to impose limitations on scholarly methods of pursuing truth.

Within Cynewulf’s poem, Jewish conversion becomes a means through which to eradicate the threat of thousands of years of Jewish learning in order to assert the primacy of both Christian learning and a Christian empire.⁶ In doing this, however, Cynewulf reveals the power of Jewish...