It's mitten season again! When I last wrote about birds and mittens in the stories of medieval Christian saints, I mentioned that one of the things that surprised me was that Columbanus' miraculous recovery of his lost mittens from a thieving bird was not the only time such an incident occurred in early medieval Latin hagiography.
Mitten Theft in Early Medieval England
A second incident of mitten theft occurs in the biography of the early English saint Guthlac (674-714 CE), written by a monk named Felix at the request of the East Anglian king Ælfwald, sometime between 730 and 740 CE. Guthlac's life of faith made for a dramatic story. Related to the royal family of Mercia, he pursued a military career for nine years, attracting fame and following until at the age of twenty-four he experienced a dramatic religious conversion and entered the monastery of Repton in Derbyshire. After some time learning the monastic way of life and studying the examples of Christian saints, Guthlac sought a more remote and difficult way of life. He chose to move to an island in the Lincolnshire fens called Croyland (modern Crowland) where he seems to have settled from around 699.
Moving to remote places in search of spiritual challenges is a trope of the lives of the saints--and it's a trope of scholarship on those selfsame texts that these places were rarely as deserted as hagiographers made them out to be. Guthlac's fame as a holy man meant that his life as a hermit was not an entirely solitary one. Like many saints in his position, he was regularly visited by petitioners and friends seeking help and advice. Among his visitors were Wilfrid, a fellow holy man, and Æthelbald, the future king of Mercia. In the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, a Lincolnshire illuminator depicted this visit as part of the marvelous Guthlac Roll, an account of the saint's life in pictures. In one illustration, Guthlac sits indoors comforting the exiled king while a third figure--perhaps Wilfrid?--is seated behind them listening.
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| St Guthlac in conversation with Æthelbald of Mercia, Harley Roll Y 6, f. 12v. |
After they had spent some time chatting, Guthlac suddenly asked if they had left anything behind in their boat:
Now the Lord showed things that were absent to this man of blessed memory, Guthlac, filling him as with the spirit of prophecy; and so in the midst of their conversation, although he was seated in the house and could not see farther than the entrance, he suddenly began to ask them whether they had left anything in the ship. Wilfrid in reply said that he had forgetfully left his two gloves there. Guthlac declared that his jackdaws had possession of the gloves; and so it proved. Without any delay they leave the dwelling and see a black thief of the raven kind on the roof-top of a certain cottage tearing a glove with its mischievous beak. Thereupon St Guthlac restrained the bird with gentle words, and then, as if conscious of its ill-doing, it left the glove on the top of the cottage and like a fugitive fled westwards. So Wilfrid had the glove brought down from the top of the roof on the end of a stick; then, realizing that it was in the power of the great man to restore the other glove as he had done the first, Wilfrid began to be concerned about the loss of the other glove. ~trans. Bertram Colgrave, Felix's Life of Saint Guthlac (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 124-125
This was not the first time Guthlac had had trouble with mischievous birds: this chapter about mitten theft is the fourth of a set of stories about the saint's interactions with animals. In the first of these stories, a jackdaw stole an unattended manuscript, which was recovered thanks to Guthlac's help, miraculously undamaged despite being dropped in the marsh. The next chapter of the saint's life describes him living in patient and amused tolerance of the further depredations of a pair of jackdaws. It was a sign of Guthlac's holiness that fish, birds, and other animals would come to him when he called and even take food from him. A third chapter of the life describes an instance in which Wilfrid witnessed the saint help a pair of swallows build a nest in his house.
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| "Thief !" by john.purvis is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 |
Wilfrid might have been reassured that all was not lost through these prior experiences of the saint's way with animals but he still only had one of this gloves back. Guthlac, evidently seeing the humor in the situation, told him not to worry about it.
But the man of God noticed that he was greatly troubled in mind by the loss, and began to console him, uttering playful words and promising him that it was within God's power quickly to restore to them the lost article, if their faith did not falter. To be brief, while they were still speaking, three brethren sounded the signal and appeared at the landing-place of this same island. St Guthlac, quicker than words, as was his custom, turned aside towards them with joyful countenance; for always the most excellent grace of charity shone in his face and speech. As soon as he had saluted the brethren one of them immediately bent his head to him and, having thus asked permission to speak, declared that he had found by chance on the way a certain glove dropped from the curved claws of a jackdaw, and showed him the glove. Guthlac smiled for a moment and, taking the glove from his hand, marvelled at the kindness of the divine clemency, and gave thanks in the spirit. Then, bidding the brethren farewell, he returned the glove to Wilfrid as he had previously promised. ~ trans. Colgrave, pp. 124-127.
The providential arrival of three more visitors, one of whom had just so happened to just pick up a glove dropped by a jackdaw, ensured that the story of mitten theft had a happy ending.
Felix's Sources?
Was this story related to Jonas of Bobbio's story about Saint Columbanus miraculously recovering his mittens after a raven flew off with them? It's within the realm of possibility, since by the time Felix was writing, the Life of Columbanus had been in circulation for nearly a century. Felix's quotations, vocabulary, and stylistic motifs show that he was familiar with a number of Latin saint's lives, though scholars do not seem to cite the Life of Columbanus as one of his sources.
One of the ways in which historians work out the relationship between medieval texts is by looking for quotations or shared use of unusual vocabulary. One place to begin is looking at the word our authors use for mittens. Jonas calls Columbanus' gloves tegumenta manuum or wantos (a word which he specifies is local dialect and defines for the reader). Felix, by contrast, consistently uses the Classical Latin word manica--which can refer to long sleeves which cover the hands, a fur muff or gloves, a piece of armor covering the forearms, or manacles. The absence of tegumenta manuum from the Life of Guthlac is not conclusive proof that Felix never read Jonas, and the possibility of a connection between the two is something I will keep exploring. Further investigation of each author's vocabulary could also shed light on possible connections with other authors: Jonas and Felix were not alone in their interest in birds stealing mittens.
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| "Medieval mitten, National Museum of Iceland" by Lebatihem is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 |
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