Beowulf - Institutionen för arkeologi och antik historia

How fast does Fame fly, rising on fast wings, filling all places, having grown by
herown actions! For you are at the Rhine and I am close to the Loire and here
you are most popular, courteous Magnulfus, and much honoured. So (far) has the
herald’s trumpet sent out by Sigimund travelled that your deeds are well-known
(i.e., bona nota) in a wide area. But a letter with short words can hardly express
it, since neither can it sing of everything, nor does it want to keep anything in
silence. Your principal strength is the flow of words in executing the law; (10) and
you rule so that with the new you recall the old. During your office, with the
plough of the just cultivator, the people reap the benefit of their desires from the
seeds of justice. No one is without his property, no one steals that of others. You
see to it that the people has no opportunity to be criminal. Your care gives others
their salvation and one man’s work becomes the peace of the multitude. You are
just and mild so that by everyone you are called on one hand judge for your
cleverness in the law, on the other father for your goodness (i.e., bonitate).
Forgive me for expressing myself briefly, the letter carrier waits; (20) but about
Lupus’ brother the cause urges one to speak lengthily. May the Lord grant that
you by your merits rehabilitate him whom I, together with you, love with all my
heart!
Venantius’ point is that since Magnulfus is the defender of the good, it follows that he
should act on behalf of his brother. Reading the two last poems as one we first get an
example of the contractual aspect of goodness that was found also in Maldon and
Beowulf—Venantius has received a present and acts accordingly. When writing to
Magnulfus Venantius does not formally appeal to the love between brothers. Instead
Venantius’ appeal is motivated by the fact that Magnulfus, who has just experienced
some military success, is one of the good, in the same way as Lupus.
So, although the good Christian Venantius must think it sufficient to point out that
a brother should be helpful and good to his brother, he does not explicitly say so, and
the reason for that must be that he knows the weakness of his argument among the
Merovingians and Germans to whom a brother is not good per se. Helping each
other within the family may have been a great Merovingian and Frankish notion, but
it was not common practice, to say the least. However, even in Venantius’ own case
he felt it appropriate to point out to Lupus that his own parents, brothers and sisters,
had been found wanting in this respect and it is one of the points in the third poem
that Lupus is the kind of person who steps in to fulfil the duties of an absent family.
This in loco familiae situation is also a Beowulfian quality inasmuch as it shows the
unconditional initial goodness between the powerful man and the weak child or newcomer.
As usual Venantius, the mediator, shows himself capable of mixing Christian
and Pagan ideals.
We may expect Venantius to have written hundreds of small notes of this kind
without including them in his collected works since he was a technically gifted poet,
who was probably carried away by almost any occasion in a very similar fashion.
Considering his seemingly close relations with Lupus it is strange that he should only
once have received presents or written only once after the first years, and this cir-
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