I. The ELENE, or Helena, is a poem on the expedition of the Empress
Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, to
Palestine in search of the true cross, and its successful issue. The
mediæval legend of the Finding of the Cross is given in the _Acta
Sanctorum_ under date of May 4, assigned by the Church to the
commemoration of St. Helena's marvellous discovery. The Latin work is
the Life of St. Quiriacus, or Cyriacus, Bishop of Jerusalem, that is,
the Judas of the poem. It has been usually thought that the Old English
poet used this Life as his source; but Glöde, in a recent volume of
_Anglia_ (IX. 271 ff.), has given reasons for thinking that the poet
used some other Latin text. He rejects ten Brink's conjecture that the
legend of Elene had come to England in a Greek form. As to the author of
the poem, we know his name, but very little else about him. He has left
us his name, imbedded in runic letters as an acrostic, in the last canto
of the poem, q.v. These letters spell the word CYNEWULF; but who was
Cynewulf? The question is hard to answer, and has given rise to much
discussion, which cannot be gone into here. A good summary of it will be
found in Wülker's _Grundriss zur Geschichte der Angelsächsischen
Litteratur_ (p. 147 ff., 1885), an indispensable work for students of
Old English literature. The old view, propounded in the infancy of
Anglo-Saxon studies, and held by Kemble, Thorpe, and, doubtfully,
Wright, that he was the Abbot of Peterborough and Bishop of Winchester
(992-1008), has been abandoned by all scholars, so far as I know, except
Professor Earle of Oxford (see his "Anglo-Saxon Literature," p. 228).
The later view of Leo, Dietrich, Grein and Rieger, our chief
authorities, that he was a Northumbrian, and of Dietrich and Grein, that
he was Bishop of Lindisfarne (737-780), has more to be said for it.
Sweet and ten Brink also hold that he was a Northumbrian of the eighth
century, but not the Bishop of Lindisfarne, while Wülker regards him as
a West-Saxon. Professor Henry Morley, in the current edition of his