The Old English "Avenging of the Saviour" ("Vindicta Salvatoris")
After Master E. S., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The Vindicta Salvatoris ('Avenging of the Saviour') is a prominent example of a popular Old English genre: biblical apocrypha. It belongs to the Pilate cycle, a cluster of apocryphal narratives that expanded upon the accounts of Christ’s trial and passion found in four canonical gospels. This prose account relates four somewhat disjointed episodes that circulated independently in earlier legends: it opens with an account of the healing of Tyrus/Titus, subking of Aquitania under Tiberius. The text tells us that he suffers from a cancerous growth that extends from his nose to his eye. He is miraculously healed when he learns of Christ’s ministry from Nathan, a travelling Jewish imperial emissary who is blown ashore by a storm. Upon hearing about Christ, he declares belief and is instantly healed. He then declares he will avenge his new lord. Thus, in the next episode, Titus and the Roman Emperor Vespasian besiege and destroy Jerusalem as vengeance for the crucifixion, the event which gives the text its name. The tale next relates, somewhat confusedly, the miracle of Veronica’s vernicle, and we learn of the imprisonment of (and eventual death of) Pilate, a second revenge.
These four narratives can be found in previously attested works, such as the Cura sanitatis Tiberii, which itself is an adaptation of the Letter of Christ to Abgar (for more, see Hall, 58–66). All of these texts involve narratives about a diseased king who, though alive during Christ’s lifetime, lived too far away to experience his ministry or learn about him. Nevertheless, they come to faith without seeing him and are healed from afar. Vindicta Salvatoris simply doubles the ailing monarchs (both Tyrus/Titus and Tiberius are diseased and healed in this Old English version) and adds a touch of romance to the narrative in the form of Nathan, the shipwrecked emissary who happens to wash up on shore at the right time and place for Titus to hear about Christ. In the Letter of Christ to Abgar, the tale ends when Christ personally pens a letter in reply to the king saying that he is healed, and the text ends with this missive, which itself became a popular apotropaic text across the Middle Ages. However, in the Cura and the Vindicta, the king feels compelled to show reciprocity, and both narratives thus portray these miracles as the impetus for the 70CE Siege of Jerusalem.
The text’s fixation upon vengeance for king-slaying plays a role in its popularity in early medieval England. Its ethos of vengeance against kin-slaying enemies would have resonated well in the same heroic feud culture that we see in Beowulf and other heroic literature. In early medieval England, vengeance (or ‘blood feud’) was an ingrained cultural and social practice. Vindicta resonated with this, as it elevated human vengeance for a wrong committed against a family member to a divine level, with God’s justice being carried out by Roman rulers against Jewish cultural and religious outsiders. All Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem are held culpable for the crucifixion of Christ, and the text revels in their destruction.
The moment after Tyrus/Titus is healed, he gives a heroic boastful speech where he swears he would have avenged Christ if he had been there (listen to a recording of this passage here):
Tirus wæs þa þæt gehyrende eall swyðe georne and hys heafod upahebbende and on Cryst gelyfende, he sylf and eall hys ynhyred, and he ða þus cwæð: “Eala, gyf ic þær wære and ic hys ansyne gesawe and ic hyne oncnawan cuðe, þære wyrrestan wrace ic hyne wrecan wolde and ealle hys fynd oflean, forþam þe hig swa ymbe urne hlaford gedydon”.
Ac ða þa Tyrus hæfde þus gespecen, hym þa of þam andwlytan nyðer afeoll se cancer, þe hyne ær swyðe amyrred hæfde, and hys flæsc wearð eall gesett and hal geworden, and he ða clypode myd hluddre stefne and þus cwæð: “Eala, hyt ys se soða dema and se mæra cyning and se ryhtwisa god, forþam ic hyne næfre ne geseah, ne on hyne ne gelyfde, buton þæt ic nu his naman gehyrde, and eom þurh þæt gehæled”. And Tyrus þa nyðer afeoll on eorðan astreht and hyne to dryhtne gebæd and þus cwæð: “La ælmyhtyga God and ealra cyninga cyning and ealra wealdendra wealdend, ic bydde þe þæt ðu geþafige me, þæt ic mote on þæt land faran, þe ðu on wære acenned, þæt ic mæge þær fynd geseon and heora naman adylegian and þynne deað gewrecan”. (ed. Cross, paragraphs 8–9)
[Tyrus heard all that very eagerly, and he lifted up his head and believed in Christ, he himself and all his household, and he spoke thus: “Alas, if I had been there and had seen his face and had been able to know him, I would have avenged him with the fiercest vengeance, and slain all his enemies, because they did such to our lord.
And when Tyrus had spoken thus, the cancer fell off of his face, which had previously marred him so greatly, and his flesh was completely restored and made healthy, and he cried out with a loud voice, saying thus: ‘Indeed, he is the true judge and the greater king and the righteous God, for though I never saw him, nor did I believe in him, except for now when I have just heard his name, and am now healed through it’. And then Tyrus fell prostrate upon the earth and prayed to the Lord and spoke thus: ‘Lo, almighty God and king of all kings and ruler of all rulers, I pray to you and ask that you grant me to travel to the land where you were born, that I might there see your enemies and obliterate their names, and avenge your death’.]
Immediately after this, Nathan baptizes Tyrus, who formally changes his name to Titus, and sets out for Jerusalem on his mission for bloody vengeance.
Notably, the narrative holds up this speech as the central virtuous act that sparks the main miracle of the text. It is the moment of conversion for Tyrus and his entire household, and, like the Apostle Paul (and King Abgar)—who also had neither seen nor heard Christ and yet believed—Tyrus is suddenly miraculously healed of his facial affliction as soon as he sees the light and confesses his new belief. Unlike Paul, he immediately prays that God grants him the grace to go to Jerusalem and execute this vengeance himself. The miracle implicitly confirms God’s approval of all this, and it is thus, narratively speaking, the first event in a chain of events that focus on avenging Christ via the atrocities of the Siege of Jerusalem and Pilate’s imprisonment and death. Arguably, this link between conversion and decisive violent retribution is the main thing it invites its early English audiences to admire.
While sojourning around the Holy Land, Titus encounters Pilate and questions him about the passion. After a lengthy summary, Pilate proffers the excuse that he had to let Christ be killed to placate the Jews. Titus then imprisons him for allowing this injustice against Christ—especially without having consulting the emperor. Perhaps owing to Titus’s exclamation that he believes despite not having seen Christ, the rest of the narrative focuses on Veronica and the image of Christ that she obtained when she ripped off the hem of his garment—a detail found only in this Old English version of the text. Most Latin versions say she was healed when she touched the hem of his garment and that she obtained the vernicle separately. In his zeal to see an image of Christ, Titus threatens her with torture if she does not give him the image, and she eventually acquiesces. They then present the vernicle to Tiberius, who is healed of his disease upon seeing it. He rewards Veronica with lavish wealth and orders a shrine be built for the relic, after which he is baptized. The incident, odd as it is, attests to the rising importance of icons in devotional practices. Dobschütz has speculated that the Latin text’s ultimate origin may be in Aquitania c. 700, where the encounter between Titus and Nathan occurs.
Unknown Bohemian Velhartice Altarpiece, 1500s, Convent of St Agnes of Bohemia,
National Gallery Prague, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The Old English text can be found in three extant manuscripts, in two of which it follows the Gospel of Nicodemus. The oldest copy is the eleventh-century Cambridge, University Library, Ii.2.1, fols 193r–202r. It can also be found in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 196, pp. 111–122 (late eleventh century) and London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian D.14, fols 100v–102r (twelfth century). Indeed, as part of the Pilate Cycle of texts, this cluster of narratives commonly traveled together in manuscripts, providing more detail than canonical accounts about Christ’s trial and passion. This suggests that the text was a well-known and accepted part of the broader body of religious literature providing more details about the Passion and Harrowing of Hell. In fact, the ubiquity of these motifs in Old English literature make it difficult to see which texts were known at specific times (see Biggs 2007, pp. 31–33). We are also in an unusual position with this Old English text, since scholars have argued compellingly that we have the very Latin manuscript from which our Old English translation was made in the ninth century manuscript Saint-Omer, Bibliothèque Municipale 202 (see Cross et al. 1996). This knowledge allows us to study the translational strategies used by the translator(s) of the Gospel of Nicodemus and Vindicta Salvatoris in minute detail, which sheds light on the state of Latinity at the time the translation was made, as well as on the relatively faithful approach to word-for-word and sense-for-sense translation they adopted.
Franks Casket (rear panel)
It is also worth mentioning that this text is one of a network of narratives and images that focuses on the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, a narrative known to the English, most likely, via Rufinus’s Latin translation of Josephus’s account of the siege. The Siege is memorably depicted on the rear panel of the Franks Casket (early eighth century Northumbria), though it is more probable that knowledge of it came through Rufinus or the Pseudo-Clementine literature rather than Vindicta directly. The notion that vengeance against the Jewish people was the appropriate response to conversion is attested as well in two early Irish texts, an eighth century poem by Blathmac and the Ulster death tale Aided Chonchobar (on these points, see Szövérffy and Hopkins).
Apocrypha are noncanonical scriptural works—that is, they look and sound like canonical scriptures, but were never universally held to be inspired or authoritative. Most participate the same genre conventions as canonical scriptures: there are apocryphal gospels, Pauline epistles, apocalypses, and so on, all of which typically include characters and events known from scripture, but including more information about them than the canonical accounts supplied. Their popularity (in England and abroad) no doubt owes much to the additional light they shed on characters and events known from biblical sources. The widespread popularity of this material in England during the Middle Ages, as evidenced by the number of surviving manuscripts in both Old English and Latin, indicates that accounts of post-Passion history, the plight of the Jews and Jerusalem, the life of figures like Veronica, and the histories of relics like her vernicle were of great interest to a wide audience.
Bibliography
Manuscripts
Cambridge, University Library, Ii.2.1, fols. 193r–202r (11th c) ~ English Manuscripts 1060–1220
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 196, pp. 111–122 (late eleventh century)
London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian D.14, fols. 100v-102r (twelfth century)
Editions
Assman, Bruno. ‘Legende von der Heligen Veronica (Vindicta saluaturis),’ in Angelsächsische Homilien und Heiligenleben, ed., Bruno Assman, Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa 3 (Kassel: Georg H. Wigand, 1889), 181–94.
Cross, J. E. Two Old English Apocrypha and their Manuscript Source (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). (text and translation of Cambridge, University Library, Ii.2.11, pp. 248–93, odd pages).
Goodwin, C.W. The Anglo-Saxon Legends of St. Andrew and St. Veronica (Cambridge: Macmillan & Co., 1851). (editio princeps of Cambridge, University Library, Ii.2.11 and London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian D.14).
Criticism
Creizenach, Wilhelm. ‘Legenden und Sagen von Pilatus’, BGDSL 1 (1874), 89–107.
Darley, Étienne. Les Acta Salvatoris: Un évangile de la passion et de la résurrection et une mission apostolique en Aquitaine (Paris: Librairie Alphonse Picard & Fils, 1913).
–––. Les actes du Sauveur, la lettre de Pilate, les missions de Volusien, de Nathan, la Vindicte: Leurs origines et leurs transformations (Paris: Librairie Alphonse Picard & Fils, 1919).
Dobschütz, Ernst von. Christusbilder: Untersuchungen zur christlichen Legende. TU 18. (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1899).
Grimm, Wilhelm. ‘Die Sage vom Ursprung der Christusbilder’, in Kleinere Schriften von Wilhelm Grimm, ed. G. Hinrichs, 4 vols. (Berlin, 1881-7), III, pp. 138–99.
Hall, Thomas N. ‘The Cross as Green Tree in the Vindicta Salvatoris and the Green Rod of Moses in Exodus’, English Studies 72 (1991), 297–307.
–––. ‘The Evangelium Nicodemi and Vindicta Salvatoris in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Two Old English Apocrypha and their Manuscript Source, ed., J. E. Cross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 36–81.
Hall, Thomas N., and Samantha Zacher. ‘Nathan the Jew in the Old English Vindicta Salvatoris’, in Imagining the Jew in Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture, ed. Samantha Zacher (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), 40–60.
Healey, Antonette di Paolo. ‘Anglo-Saxon Use of the Apocryphal Gospel’, in The Anglo-Saxons: Synthesis and Achievement, ed., J. D. Woods and D. A. E. Pelteret (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1985), pp. 93–104.
Hopkins, Stephen C. E. ‘The Vengeance of the Savior’, e-Clavis: Christian Apocrypha. https://www.nasscal.com/e-clavis-christian-apocrypha/vengeance-of-the-sa....
–––. Translating Hell: Vernacular Theology and Apocrypha in the Medieval North Sea (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2026).
Hussey, Matthew T. ‘Cambridge, University Library Ii. 2.11: Exeter documents;’ West-Saxon Gospels’: OE’ Gospel of Nicodemus’: OE’ Vindicta Salvatoris’ with 130. Exeter Cathedral 3501 (ff. 0-7).’ Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile 22 (2014), pp. 9–20.
Lipsius, R. A. Die Pilatus-Acten kritisch untersucht, 2nd edn (Kiel, 1886).
Scheil, Andrew P. The Footsteps of Israel: Understanding Jews in Anglo-Saxon England (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000).
Swan, Mary. ‘Remembering Veronica in Anglo-Saxon England’, Essays and Studies (2002), 19–40.
Szövérffy, Joseph. ‘Heroic Tales, Medieval Legends, and an Irish Story’, Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie 25 (1956), 183–210.
Criticism on the Latin source text only
Elliott, J. K. ‘Pilate Cycle’, in Early New Testament Apocrypha, ed. J. Christopher Edwards, Ancient Literature for New Testament Studies 9 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2022), pp. 135–36.
Gounelle, Rémi. ‘Les origines littéraires de la légende de Véronique et de la Sainte Face: La Cura sanitatis Tiberii et la Vindicta Salvatoris’, in Sacre impronte e oggetti « non fatti da mano d’uomo » nelle religioni, ed. Adele Monaci Castagno (Turin: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2011), pp. 231–51.
Gounelle, Rémi, and Céline Urlacher-Becht. ‘Un développement littéraire médiéval : la « légende » de la Vindicta Saluatoris (Vengeance du Sauveur)’, in Les récits de la destruction de Jérusalem (70 ap. J.-C.): contextes, représentations et enjeux, entre Antiquité et Moyen Âge, ed. Frédéric Chapot (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 293–342.
–––. ‘Veronica in the Vindicta Salvatoris’, in The European Fortunes of the Roman Veronica in the Middle Ages, eds., Amanda Murphy, Herbert L. Kessler, et al. (Convivium Supplementum 2. Brno: Université de Lausanne, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Masaryk University, 2017), pp. 50–57.
Izydorczyk, Zbigniew. Manuscripts of the “Evangelium Nicodemi,” A Census (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993).
Pollard, Richard M. ‘The De Excidio of “Hegesippus” and the Reception of Josephus in the Early Middle Ages’, Viator 46 (2015), 65–100.
Stephen Hopkins (stephen.hopkins@virginia.edu) is Assistant Professor of Old English at the University of Virginia, where he teaches courses on Old English language and literature, Old Norse language and literature, book history and the history of the English language. His first book, Translating Hell: Vernacular Theology and Apocrypha in the Medieval North Sea, is forthcoming (2026) with Manchester University Press.
