Heroism, Cannibalism, and the Place of Judith in the Nowell Codex by Grace Catherine Morey
The Nowell Codex
The Nowell Codex, one half of the Cotton Vitellius A. xv. manuscript, occupies a central place in the study of Old English literature. It is most renowned for preserving the only surviving copy of Beowulf, the most extensively studied vernacular poem from Anglo-Saxon England.
Despite suffering significant damage in the Cotton Library fire of 1731 and enduring centuries of mishandling, the codex has survived, and continues to provoke discussion and debate among scholars of early medieval literature. Yet, for all its fame, many aspects of the Nowell Codex’s structure and compilation remain uncertain.
One of the most persistent mysteries concerns the placement of Judith, which concludes the manuscript. The poem’s position has long raised questions, as evidence suggests that it may not have originally been located at the end, and may even have been inserted or repositioned during the manuscript’s history. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the text, Judith is an Old English poem that tells the story of a Jewish widow who saves her people by seducing and beheading the Assyrian general Holofernes. Currently, the texts in the codex are arranged in the following sequence: The Passion of Saint Christopher, The Wonders of the East, The Letter of Alexander the Great to Aristotle, Beowulf, and finally Judith. While this organization appears fixed today, it has prompted debate about the underlying principles—if any—that govern the manuscript’s structure.
The inclusion of Judith in particular has led to diverging interpretations about its thematic relationship to the surrounding texts. By considering codicological, thematic, and linguistic elements, a compelling argument emerges that the recurring motif of cannibalism—present in multiple texts within the codex—serves as a unifying thread. This idea aligns with the framework of the Liber de Monstris tradition, as proposed by Kenneth Sisam, suggesting that the texts may be connected through their shared exploration of monstrosity, moral inversion, and cultural boundaries. Within this context, Judith may be seen not as a misplaced or disconnected piece, but as an integral part of a manuscript that constructs its coherence through depictions of the monstrous and the heroic responses to it. The place of Judith in the manuscript is not merely a point of academic interest but has serious repercussions with regards to our understanding of the poetry contained within the manuscript. Linguistically, the texts of the Nowell Codex were not copied from the same source but were chosen specifically to be copied from their respective sources and bound together which suggests careful organisation and planning, and perhaps a common theme throughout the texts that would have been immediately obvious to the Anglo-Saxon reader. In order to understand why the Nowell Codex as we know it today may not necessarily be presented as it was initially intended, it is necessary to understand the manuscript’s history, as the damage done to the manuscript throughout its life has resulted in its rebinding and possibly also, reorganisation.
The two manuscripts that comprise the Cotton Vitellius A. xv were initially distinct from one another. The first is known as the Southwick Codex, referring to its provenance as it is known to have belonged to the priory of Southwick, Hants, in the late 13th century. This manuscript was initially produced in the 12th century, some 150 years after that of the Nowell Codex, which was named for a previous owner, the English antiquarian and scholar of Old English Lawrence Nowell, who signed his name along with the date on the first leaf. There is no apparent connection between the two, other than the fact that they were bound together in the early 17th century. For this reason, the 116 folios of the Nowell Codex begin with The Passion of Saint Christopher at fol. 94r.
The edges of many leaves were considerably damaged in the fire of 1731 in Ashburnham House in Westminster. Though the damage was severe, the manuscript was saved by being tossed from the window. However, the top and outer edges of each leaf were badly scorched, with many letters missing from the texts. It is estimated that some 1,000 lines are missing from Judith alone, though not information that has been lost is as a result of the fire, as Dutch scholar Franciscus Junius made a transcript between 1646-51. In 1845, further crumbling around the edges of the leaves resulted in the rebinding of the manuscript whereby the folios were slit and individual leaves mounted in heavier paper which was shaped to match the damaged folios. As a result, when considering possibilities for why the texts in this celebrated MS are organised in such a way, it is important to bear in mind the significant changes it has undergone during the course of its lifetime before we can take any thematic considerations into account.
Caravaggio's Judith Beheading Holofernes
Women and Violence in Medieval England
Dating from 1705, the first description of the manuscript by Humphrey Wanley is quite clear that Judith was the last item in the manuscript. He refers to the text as a “fragmentum”, a term which was also used by Franciscus Junius in his transcription. The deuterocanonical book of Judith held a place of high importance in early medieval English society. Though we cannot be entirely sure which Latin version of the text in particular the poet drew his information from, we can be almost certain that he used a version resembling the Vulgate. Seeing as the poet leaves out much of the detail that can be found in many of the Latin sources of Judith’s story, this seems a much more likely explanation than 1,000 lines of missing verse, when much of the general plot of the story appears to have been captured within the 338 lines that remain. This would suggest that Judith itself did not immediately follow Beowulf, and that either there was another poem in between, or that Judith initially preceded The Passion of Saint Christopher, of which approximately two thirds is also lost. Evidence to support the claim that Judith may have initially preceded The Passion of Saint Christopher includes the physical state of the manuscript. The verso of the final leaf is damaged to the extent that it could not possibly have been an interior folio. Furthermore, the last leaves of the poem, ending on the verso of the last leaf of a gathering, show a pattern of wormholes not found in the leaves of Judith. However, Judith is written in the same Anglo-Saxon square miniscule hand of Scribe B who famously took over Beowulf four lines down fol. 175v in the middle of a verse and indeed a sentence on 1939b. Understanding the intended place of Judith in the Nowell Codex is not merely a point of codicological interest but has the capability to transform our understanding of the poem. For example, if the manuscript can be read as a Liber de Monstris as posited initially by Sisam, with depictions of monstrosity gradually building to an extreme, the intended place of Judith can give us a valuable insight into perceptions of gender in early medieval English society. Though this is a convincing argument, Judith has always existed rather awkwardly within this understanding of the codex. Though Holofernes behaviour is deplorable to be sure, it feels a stretch to place him in the realm of the monstrous. Similarly, though it certainly was not the norm for women to engage in such extreme acts of violence or heroism from what we can tell in the literature that remains from the period, though Judith may be unusually active in her beheading of Holofernes, she certainly was not utterly unique. For example, Saint Margaret of Antioch, who faced both demons and dragons, played a central role in the lives of women in Anglo-Saxon England, with her story being recited aloud or even placed on the stomach of women during labour, and repressed later by the church for its content8. Iconography of Margaret from the period, which is widespread, often depicts her about to strike the demon with a hammer, or in some instances, bursting forth from the stomach of a dragon. The prevalence of Saint Margaret’s story and its close association with childbirth would suggest that violent actions by women in the face of men such as Holofernes, Olibrius, or even Satan himself were not quite so shocking or unique as to warrant a place in a Liber de Monstris containing species as rare and frightening as cynocephali, dragons, or other such monstrosities. As a result, I would argue that arguments put forward that the beheading of Holofernes is part of an act of metaphoric cannibalism are the most convincing with regards to the thematic unity of the manuscript on the basis of monstrosity.
Judith with the Head of Holophernes, by Simon Vouet
Cannibalism and Judith
In Beowulf, what makes Grendel so terrifying and so unlike any other monster in literature is the language used to describe him. If you were to ask a hundred artists to produce an image of him, no two renderings would be alike. He is both human and monster, yet neither one nor the other. We see an echo of humanity in him that makes his actions so stomach-churning, particularly in relation to the consumption of his victims upon which the poet lingers significantly, describing the way he splits his victims in two and drinks their blood in gory detail. Given that much of his behaviour (raiding and feuding) were considered perfectly acceptable in heroic society, in one sense the consumption of his victims defines his monstrosity in a world where blood-eating was strictly prohibited. His behaviour reinforces a taboo and evokes a very particular fear that was obviously at the forefront of the Anglo-Saxon consciousness. Allusions to cannibalism in Judith are of course, much more covert as they are metaphorical in nature. In contrast to Grendel who gluts himself shamelessly on the blood and bones of his victims, in Cannibalism in High Medieval English Literature, Heather Blurton argues that Judith is defined in part “by what she will not eat” in contrast to Holofernes greed. Crucially, she returns his severed head to the camp in the same “fætelse” (commonly translated as bag or sack) that she uses for her food, pointing to a connection with ingestion. This is more nuanced than initially meets the eye as it is only by extension that it comes to mean bag or pouch, and it is said to have contained her provisions. After she has cut off his head, she removes his head from the sack and displays her trophy, the freedom that the metaphorically ingested and digested head brings to the people of Bethulia severs the taboo that cannibalism usually carries. Where in Beowulf, Grendel’s consumption of his victims draws upon a cultural anxiety surrounding the extremes of heroic society and serves as a warning against the violence of such a culture taken too far, the use of cannibalistic imagery in Judith imparts the severity of the violence done unto Judith and the people of Bethulia and the only means by which they could free themselves from it. As a result, it is clear, despite the centuries of damage and misuse that the Nowell Codex has suffered, that careful thought and planning went into its creation, compilation, and organisation. From a linguistic point of view, these texts were most probably copied from a variety of sources from which it would logically follow that there is a common factor or theme through which they are all connected. Though this may not be immediately apparent to the modern reader and may take some excavation on our part, it was clearly a subject of importance to the people of early medieval England. Though many questions remain concerning the intended place of Judith, I would argue that it is the allusions to cannibalism within the text that place Judith within the realm of the unusual, supernatural, or slightly monstrous in the tradition of the Liber Monstrorum. Though we may not know exactly where the initially intended position of Judith is within the manuscript due to the large volume of missing information, it is also important to consider the place of the poem in the wider context of the manuscript as a whole, as this not only has the potential to transform our understanding of the poetry but also allows us a valuable insight into early medieval English society.
Judith and Holophernes, by Michelangelo, Sistine CHapel
About the Author
Grace Morey is a writer from Cork, Ireland, whose fiction explores themes of colonialism, gender, and the natural world. Influenced by authors such as Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood, N.K. Jemisin, and Ursula K. Le Guin, she blends rich worldbuilding with deep thematic storytelling. She has completed writing courses with Curtis Brown Creative and Martin Keaveny Creative Writing. Her fiction is forthcoming in York Literary Review (2025). Grace holds a BA in English from University College Cork, where she graduated first in her class, and an M.Phil in Medieval Languages and Literatures from Trinity College Dublin, and also enjoys writing about medieval history and mythology.
