The Torturer's 'Art' in the Judas Episode of Benedeit's Voyage of St Brendan

Abstract

IN the first quarter of the twelfth century, the popular story of Saint Brendan sailing to Paradise was translated into Anglo-Norman. Rather than following the patterns of hagiography, as was the style of its Latin original, the Navigatio sancti Brendani abbatis, the Anglo-Norman Voyage of St Brendan was composed as a secular hagiography that contained didactic and inspirational material, as well as being entertaining. An expert editor, the composer of the Anglo-Norman Voyage, Benedeit, excised much of the material that he felt was excessively ecclesiastical. At the same time he expanded some of the scenes, filling them with dynamic imagery. The result is a fast-paced, dramatic narrative. In Brendan's penultimate encounter before he reaches Paradise he finds Judas Iscariot on a rock. In his version of the Voyage of St Brendan, Benedeit has Judas describe his tortures in extensive detail. His description of what happens to him each day is perhaps the most remarkable addition made by the author to the Navigatio in which the only specific detail mentioned is that Judas states that he ‘burns’ in the centre of a mountain ‘like a lump of molten lead in a pot, day and night’.2