Cynewulf's Elene and the Patterns of the Past

Cynthia Wittman Zollinger, Providence College

The Old English poem Elene exemplifies Anglo-Saxon efforts to recreate the legends of Christian tradition in familiar form. This work survives in the Vercelli Book, a collection of religious vernacular texts assembled in England in the latter half of the tenth century, and narrates the legend of the Inventio Crucis, the discovery of the True Cross. While different versions of the Invention legend exist, Elene reflects the hagiographic tradition popular in the Latin West that attributes the Cross's discovery to Helena, mother of Constantine the Great. The events of the narrative include Constantine's battlefield vision of the Cross and conversion to Christianity, the empress's journey to Jerusalem at her son's request to recover the physical artifact, her confrontation with the Jewish people, and the discovery and miraculous confirmation of the Cross and its nails. An epilogue to the poem contains the runic signature of Cynewulf, identifying it with the author whose name is similarly incorporated into the Old English poems Juliana, Fates of the Apostles, and Christ II.