Scott Zellner
Assignment 3: Final Draft
Hon-H 211
5/6/2014
In the Hands of an Active or Passive God:
How the Scope of Crises Shape the Way Authors Use Deities in Their Writing
The environment one lives in has a direct impact upon his or her writing. Ibn Shadda ̄ d,
Dhuoda, Abelard, Prokopios, Homer, and the Poet of Beowulf all lived in societies that used religion as a source of comfort. All of these authors also wrote in response to crises. Each author utilizes religion differently in his or her writing based on the scope of the crisis he or she faces.
The main difference in the ways these authors use religion is in the role they give their deities.
The authors who responded to personal crises give their deities passive roles by merely making reference to them throughout their work. Meanwhile, the authors who responded to societal crises use their deities actively by making them characters that impact their narratives.
Personal Crises and Passive Deities
Ibn Shaddād in
The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin , Dhuoda in her Handbook for
William , and Abelard and Heloise in the Letters of Abelard and Heloise each write in response to a personal crisis using their respective deity passively in their writing. A personal crisis is one in which the impact of the crisis is primarily felt by an individual or a small group of people. The crisis at hand may affect other people, but the author is writing in response to his or her personal reaction to the event.
Although Ibn Shadda ̄ d tells of many battles in the crusades in his book, he is really responding to the personal crisis of Saladin’s death. As Ibn Shaddād writes at the end of the text:

“I completed the collection of [the records] the day [Saladin] died. Through this I planned to win the favor of God by urging people to bless his name and remember his excellent qualities.” 1 The introduction to the text explains that “Ibn Shaddād was [Saladin's] intimate and close confidant, being seldom absent for any length of time.” 2
These two quotes communicate that Ibn Shadda ̄ d is mourning the death and honoring the life of a close friend. That death is the real personal crisis to which Ibn Shadda ̄ d is responding.
Similar to Ibn Shaddād’s concern for Saladin, the fate of her son, William, is Dhuoda’s primary concern in her Handbook for William and the source of her personal crisis. Before writing her book, Dhuoda’s son William is taken as a hostage in Charles the Bald’s court because of his father’s disobedience to the King. Dhuoda’s personal crisis is the breakup of her family. This crisis drives her to give advice to William regarding his spiritual well-being.
As told through The Letters of Abelard and Heloise , the title characters suffer the personal crisis of having to leave their previous lives because of their love affair. Heloise has to move to a convent and abandon her son. Abelard has to abandon his work at the school and joins a monastery. Although their letters occur during and discuss reformation, their major focus in writing is in response to their own personal crisis.
These personal crises lead these authors to use religion as a comfort in their writing and to give their deities a passive role in the narrative. Characters might pray to them, but the deities are not characters in the narratives. The authors do not ascribe supernatural traits and abilities to
1 Ibn Shaddād, Bahāʼ Al-Di ̄n Yūsuf Ibn Rāfiʻ. The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin. Trans. D. S. Richards.
Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2002. Print.245
2 Shaddād 2

their characters. Instead, they make constant references to their deities and discuss how one should to pray to them and how one can earn their favor.
For example, Ibn Shadda
̄ d gives Allah a passive role in his writing by referring to religion consistently. His primary goal with these references is to show that Saladin was in favor with Allah, which in turn establishes comfortable common ground with his Muslim audience and honors Saladin. To demonstrate how well Saladin practiced the Islamic faith, Ibn Shadda ̄ d starts his book by showing how Saladin followed the Five Pillars of Islam.
3 This is the second thing that the reader learns about Saladin in this book, the first being his birth. Even the two pillars that
Saladin does not quite fulfill, the Ramadan Fast and the Pilgrimage,
4
are thoroughly explained and excused. Opening the book this way stresses the importance of religious tradition to Ibn
Shaddād and, to a Muslim audience, makes Saladin instantly more admirable.
After the opening, Ibn Shadda ̄ d continues to refer to religion and Allah passively throughout the text. Whenever a significant individual is introduced, he adds a parenthetical comment like “(God have mercy on him).” 5 When referring to the King of the Frankish army,
Ibn Shaddād makes the parenthetical comment “(God curse him).” 6
These constant references throughout the book make it clear to Muslim audiences that Ibn Shaddād’s priorities are linked with theirs and make his arguments more palatable to them.
All of the references that Ibn Shadda
̄ d uses give Allah a passive role in his narrative. At no point does Ibn Shadda ̄ d say that Allah has taken action or use him as a character in his narrative. Allah’s grace is frequently asked for and sometimes is given, but Allah is not an actor
3 Shaddād 18
4 Shaddād 19
5 Shaddād 42
6 Shaddād 94

in the text. Therefore, Ibn Shadda ̄ d responds to his personal crisis by using passive religious references.
Similarly, the narrative of Dhuoda’s handbook gives God a passive role in the course of events. Instead of making God a character, she instructs William on how to please God and reach spiritual salvation. For example, Dhuoda spends the entirety of Book 8 directing William on how to pray and for whom he should pray. She urges him to “despair of no one”
7
and asks him to pray for his father, the king that is causing their family pain, the poor, for the dead, travelers, and a multitude of others. While her ultimate goal is William’s salvation, it comes off as a lesson in empathy for him. She is trying to make him think of others as if he were in their situation and to have compassion for them. This example from Book 8 is representative of how religion is treated in the rest of Dhuoda’s handbook. Instead of making God an active character, Dhuoda uses religion to guide William’s salvation.
This trend continues with Abelard and Heloise as they give God a passive role in their correspondence. Similar to how Dhuoda gave William prayer instructions, Abelard gives Heloise instructions to pray for his well-being. He asks her to “consider then the great power of prayer, if we pray as we are bidden, seeing that the prophet won by prayer what he was forbidden to pray for, and turned God from his declared intention.” 8 He even provides a specific prayer script for her to follow.
9
These quotes show that God is not an active character in this narrative. Instead,
God is an outside force whose attention Abelard and Heloise have to try to get.
7 Dhuoda, and Carol Neel. Handbook for William: A Carolingian Woman's Counsel for Her Son. Washington, D.C.:
Catholic University of America, 1999. Print. 85
8 Radice, Betty, M. T. Clanchy, Peter Abelard, and Héloi ̈se. The Letters of Abelard and Heloise. London, England:
Penguin, 2003. Print.57
9 Radice 60

Societal Crises and Active Deities
In contrast to those authors who faced personal crises and used their passive deities passively, Prokopios in The Secret History , Homer in The Iliad , and the Poet of Beowulf responded to societal crises and responded by giving their respective deities active roles in their narratives. A societal crisis is one that has a larger scope, affecting large groups of people. These authors write in response of how their respective crisis affected the society they live in.
Prokopios wrote in response to what he saw as the societal crisis of the reign of the
Roman Emperor Justinian. Prokopios’ thesis is essentially that Justinian “kept introducing into public life things… previously forbidden by law while abolishing firm and established customs all at once.” 10
This quote establishes Prokopios as a conservative who did not like the customs that Justinian was breaking. Alongside Justinian’s legal changes, events like the Nika Riots and the plague constituted major crises for Prokopios. As a result, he wrote The Secret History to try to persuade the Roman populace that Justinian posed a societal threat.
The Iliad tells the story of the societal crisis of the Trojan War. As described in the introduction, “one of the deep sources of tragic force of
The Iliad is that the city of Troy is doomed.” 11
By giving strong characterization to individuals on both sides of the conflict, Homer demonstrates how great the aggregate suffering of the war was. Homer does not favor either side and instead responds to the collective crisis of the war itself.
10 Prokopios. The Secret History: With Related Texts. Ed. Anthony Kaldellis. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 2010. Print.
50
11 Knox, Bernard. "Introduction." Introduction. The Iliad. By Homer. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York, NY: Penguin,
1991. 3-64. Print. 31

The poem Beowulf is a reaction to the societal crisis of Beowulf’s death. As J.R.R.
Tolkien argues “[ Beowulf ] is an heroic-elegiac poem; and in a sense all its first 3,126 lines are the prelude to a dirge.” 12
Although the an individual’s death seems like a personal crisis, there is no established relationship between the Poet of Beowulf and Beowulf the person the way there was one between Ibn Shaddād and Saladin. Instead, the dirge Tolkien describes focuses more on societal impact of Beowulf’s death. The poem ends with the lines “So the Geat people, his hearth companions,/sorrowed for the lord who had been laid low./ They said that of all the kings upon earth/ he was the man most gracious and fair-minded,/ kindest to his people and keenest to win fame.” 13
This quote shows that the poem responds the impact of Beowulf’s death on society.
These societal crises lead these authors to give their deities active roles in their writing.
The deities are often characters in these works that affect the outcome of narrative. They might decide the outcome of a battle or even involve themselves in it. In addition, even if the deities themselves are not made characters, supernatural events occur and godlike abilities are ascribed to the characters in the narrative. For the purposes of this argument, the idea of giving the deities an active role extends to the Gods as well as God’s supernatural enemies.
Instead of giving God an active role, Prokopios gives God’s demonic enemies an active role in his narrative by accusing the Emperor Justinian of being connected to demonic forces. In the section of The Secret History titled “The Demonic Nature of Justinian and Theodora,” he highlights the number of deaths during their reign, testimony of Justinian’s mother about his birth, Justinian’s ascetic lifestyle, and an instance in which a monk called Justinian “the Lord of
12 Tolkien, J.R.R. "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics." Criticism. Beowulf: A Verse Translation: Authoritative
Text, Contexts, Criticism. By Daniel Donoghue and Seamus Heaney. New York: Norton, 2002. 103-29. Print. 128
13 Donoghue, Daniel, and Seamus Heaney. Beowulf: A Verse Translation: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism.
New York: Norton, 2002. Print. 78

Death” as evidence for his claim that Justinian is not human.
14
Here, Prokopios is using religious tradition as a means to dehumanize Justinian. He is deliberately trying to make his audience as uncomfortable as possible with the rule of Justinian by describing him as a demon. While Ibn
Shaddād might refer to Saladin’s relationship with Allah, he would never claim that Saladin was divine or a prophet. Prokopios is willing to use beliefs regarding demons to ascribe supernatural attributes to Justinian.
Prokopios takes this use of religious beliefs further by using his established demonic description of Justinian and ending part two of The Secret History with a section titled “The
Destruction of the World by the Demon Justinian.” He attributes the Nile subsiding at the wrong time, a flood in Tarsos, earthquakes, and the plague to Justinian’s “occult power and demonic nature.”
15
Here Prokopios is using the populace’s beliefs in religious customs and traditions to accuse Justinian of crimes he could not have possibly committed so that Romans would have more reasons to dislike Justinian. It is unlikely that even Prokopios believes this argument. Had
Prokopios truly thought that Justinian was responsible for such huge disasters, he would have made Justinian’s control of the natural world the focal point of The Secret History . Instead, the argument is relegated to the end of the text. Prokopios is only able to make this argument by giving demons an active role in his argument responding to the societal crisis of Justinian’s reign.
Homer gives the Greek Gods very active roles in The Iliad . Throughout the poem, Homer talks about events occurring on Mount Olympus that affect the action in Troy. For example,
14 Prokopios 58-68
15 Prokopios 85

Athena comes down to stop Achilles from killing Agamemnon,
16
Zeus directly impacts the course of battle by stealing Glaucus’ wits during his fight against Diomedes, 17 Apollo saves
Hector’s life, 18
and when Hermes guides Priam to Achilles’ tent. While other works feature characters praying, in The Iliad the audience knows whether the gods hear those prayers and how they respond. In one instance, Athena directly refuses to hear the prayers of the Trojan woman.
19
In the poem, the human characters are perfectly aware of the gods’ involvement in the war. For example, Priam says “we’ll fight tomorrow until some fatal power decides between us both” 20 and Achilles warns Patroclus that if he goes too far with his attack, a god will get involved and kill him.
21
These instances show just how active of a role Homer gives the Gods in this poem about this societal crisis.
The Poet of Beowulf gives God an active role by giving Grendel and his mother demonic origins. During Beowulf’s fight with Grendel, the villain is described as “the demon opponent.”
22
From this quote one sees an active use of religion in the supernatural description of Grendel. In addition, Grendel and his mother are given definition as characters in being described as the offspring of Cain from the Biblical story of Abel and Cain. As Prokopios established Justinian as a danger by using religious beliefs to give the emperor negative qualities, the Poet of Beowulf gives Grendel and his mother demonic attributes.
The anonymous Poet gives God an even more active role by attributing the successes of
Beowulf to God. A major theme in this poem that trust in God leads to success where trust in
16 Homer, Robert Fagles, and Bernard MacGregor Walker. Knox. The Iliad. New York: Penguin, 1991. Print. 84
17 Homer 203
18 Homer 223
19 Homer 205
20 Homer 226
21 Homer 415
22 Donoghue 22

man-made objects fails. Beowulf’s fellow fighters learn during the battle that “no blade on earth, no blacksmith’s art could ever damage their demon opponent. [Grendel] had conjured the harm from the cutting edge of every weapon.” Beowulf does not defeat Grendel because of a sword or because of his arm-lock, but because Grendel, who “had given offense to God,/ found that his bodily opposition had failed him.”
23
Ultimately, Beowulf’s defeat of Grendel is credited to God on an active level in the following quote: “as he would have killed more, had not mindful God and one man’s daring prevented the doom.” 24
The theme of God’s power succeeding where the weapons of man fail is repeated in the fight against Grendel’s mother. During the fight, the sword Unferth gave him breaks. In a moment when the result of the battle seems uncertain, the Poet states “holy God decided the victory. It was easy for the Lord, the Ruler of Heaven to redress the balance once Beowulf got back up on his feet.” 25
Immediately after this quote, Beowulf finds the magic sword that allows him to defeat Grendel’s mother. It is clear that the sword that God allows him to find succeeds where the sword Unferth gave him breaks. This theme regarding God’s power gives deities an active role in the narrative of Beowulf .
Conclusion
In all of these texts, crisis drives authors to the comfort of religion. As shown in this paper’s schema, different types of crises lead authors to use religion in different ways. Personal crises in the form of the death of a friend, as with Ibn Shadda ̄ d, the loss of a son, as with Dhuoda, or the loss of a lover and a lifestyle, as with Abelard and Heloise, leads to deities being used as
23 Donoghue 22
24 Donoghue 27
25 Donoghue 41

points of reference to guide future behavior within the writing. In these, advice is given, blessings are asked for, and God is passive. Societal crises, in form of a tyrannical emperor, as with Prokopios, a war, as with Homer, or the death of a societal hero, as with the poet of
Beowulf , religion is used to explain what happened in chaotic times. It is not enough in times where crises affect the multitude for God to be sitting idly by: He must be involved somehow. As such, demons are used to explain Justinian’s actions in The Secret History , the Greek Gods are used to explain the chaotic events of The Iliad , and God is used to explain Beowulf’s triumphs in
Beowulf . This is how the scope of a crisis changes the way people invoke their deities and how one’s environment can impact his or her writing.
Works Cited
Dhuoda, and Carol Neel. Handbook for William: A Carolingian Woman's Counsel for Her Son .
Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1999. Print.
Donoghue, Daniel, and Seamus Heaney. Beowulf: A Verse Translation: Authoritative Text,
Contexts, Criticism . New York: Norton, 2002. Print.
Homer, Robert Fagles, and Bernard MacGregor Walker. Knox. The Iliad . New York: Penguin,
1991. Print.
Ibn Shaddād, Bahāʼ Al-Dīn Yūsuf Ibn Rāfiʻ. The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin . Trans.
D. S. Richards. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2002. Print.
Knox, Bernard. "Introduction." Introduction. The Iliad. By Homer. Trans. Robert Fagles. New
York, NY: Penguin, 1991. 3-64. Print.
Prokopios. The Secret History: With Related Texts . Ed. Anthony Kaldellis. Indianapolis: Hackett
Pub., 2010. Print.

Radice, Betty, M. T. Clanchy, Peter Abelard, and Héloïse.
The Letters of Abelard and Heloise .
London, England: Penguin, 2003. Print.
Tolkien, J.R.R. " Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics." Criticism.
Beowulf: A Verse
Translation: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism . By Daniel Donoghue and Seamus
Heaney. New York: Norton, 2002. 103-29. Print.