Numerical and Geometric Patterning in Cædmon's Hymn

O’Donnell, Daniel Paul. 2004. “Numerical and Geometric Patterning in Cædmon’s Hymn.” ANQ 17 (2): 3–12. For most of the past two hundred years, scholarly interest in Cædmon’s Hymn has concentrated on the oral, folkloric, and traditional Germanic aspects of Cædmon’s story and oeuvre. The past forty years, however, also have seen the development of a body of work that attempts to explicate the Hymn’s formal structure in light of classical and medieval theories of numeric and geometric patterning. This approach has its origins in the case of Cædmon’s Hymn in the work of Bernard F. Huppé and Morton Bloomfield. Its most significant proponents in recent years have included Ute Schwab and David Howlett. It is difficult to know what to make of this approach as it applies to the Hymn. On the one hand, claims made by its proponents often are very subtle and, to modern eyes at least, occasionally strain credulity: very few interpretations depend on falsifiable observations or premises, and different scholars can end up using identical evidence to demonstrate opposing arguments or seemingly opposing evidence to arrive at identical conclusions. On the other, however, numerical and geometric patterns are undeniably part of medieval exegetical and compositional practice and, as Ernst Robert Curtius reminds us, suffer from many of the same problems associated with modern study of the phenomenon. This is true even when the authors in question explain the reasoning behind their compositions. In the case of Cædmon’s Hymn, we lack not only an explicit, nonambiguous statement of the principles of composition used by Cædmon or recognized by his contemporary audience, but also, for most claims of numerical or geometrical patterns in the poem, confirming evidence from the text itself to suggest that such structures are not the result of pure chance. Only in the case of the Hymn’s use of multiples of three and, in the broadest terms, perhaps its use of four and five as structural principles, does there seem to be compelling and for the most part consistent evidence that the patterns in question are an integral part of the poem’s design. In most other cases, the lack of consistent evidence suggests verdicts ranging from “not proven” to “not likely.” (From the Introduction and Conclusion)

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