`The ballad of St Stephen and Herod': biblical history and medieval popular religious culture.(Critical Essay)

One immediate problem concerning medieval popular religious culture is how to define it. There has been extensive discussion of popular medieval religious culture; and to paraphrase Douglas Gray, most medievalists who are concerned with it are rather like the Supreme Court justice who remarked (concerning pornography), `Of course I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.' (1) I share Gray's sense that it is much easier to distinguish between popular and `learned' medieval religious culture on a case-by-case basis, intuitively, than it is to formulate clear and appropriate definitions. The late medieval ballad `St Stephen and Herod' may, however, serve as a kind of test case because it exemplifies certain aspects of `popular' medieval Christianity very clearly. The object of this paper is thus twofold. On the one hand, it will attempt to answer the puzzlement of the first editor of the ballad, Thomas Wright, who remarked, `I know not whence this strange legend of St Steven being King Herod's clerk of the kitchen is derived.' (2) At the same time, I wish to suggest that this ballad clearly displays the tendency of medieval popular religion to reshape `historical' narrative to conform to the conventions and expectations of traditional or `folk' narrative. (3) Obviously any attempt to define or even move towards a definition of a broadly based cultural phenomenon on the basis of one brief poem may seem arbitrary, yet the poem can serve as a strikingly clear example of differing concerns in conflict -- the `folk' sensibility of medieval popular religious culture reshaping the `facts' of scriptural history, a mode of history which may be defined for present purposes as a narrative of past events which can be supported from scriptural texts.

Since `St Stephen and Herod' is brief and since it is not widely known, I give a text of the ballad as a convenience to the reader: (4)

 
   Seynt Steuene was a clerk in kyng Herowdes halle, 
   And seruyd him of bred and cloth, as euery king befalle. 
 
   Steuyn out of kechone cam, wyth boris hed on honde; 
   He saw a sterre was fayr and brizt over Bedlem stonde. 
 
   He kyst adoun the boris hed and went in to pe halle: 
   `I forsak pe, kyng Herowdes, and pi werkes alle. 
 
   `I forsake pe, kyng Herowdes, and pi werkes alle; 
   Per is a child in Bedlem born is beter pan we alle.' 
 
   `Quat eylyt pe, Steuene? quat is pe befalle? 
   Lakkyt pe eyper mete or drynk in kyng Herowdes halle?' 
 
   `Lakit me neyper mete ne drynk in kyng Herowdes halle; 
   Per is a chyld in Bedlem born is beter pan we alle.' 
 
   `Quat eylyt pe, Steuyn? art lou wod, or pou gynnyst to brede? 
   [are you beginning to find fault?] 
   Lakkyt pe eyper gold or fee or ony ryche wede?' 
 
   `Lakyt me neyper gold ne fe, ne non ryche wede; 
   Per is a chyld in Bedlem born xal helpyn vs at our nede.' 
 
   `Pat is al so solo, Steuyn, al so solo, iwys, 
   As lois capoun crowe xal that lyp here in myn dysh.' 
 
   Pat word was not so sone seyd, pat word in pat halle, 
   Pe capoun crew Cristus natus est! among pe lordes alle. 
 
   `Rysyt vp, myn turmentowres, be to and al be on, 
   And ledyt Steuyn out of lois town, and stonyt hym wyth ston!' 
 
   Tokyn he Steuene and stonyd hym in the way, [they took] 
   And perfore is his euyn on Crystes owyn day. 

This is a remarkable and interesting narrative, and it is radically unhistorical in two quite different ways. The modern reader might immediately be struck by the fabulous nature of the miracle that provokes Herod to martyr Stephen, but the narrative violates history in a simpler and less debatable way. Stephen proto-martyr was a deacon early in the apostolic age of the Church; he preached the faith to a hostile audience of Jews (including Paul before his conversion) and he was martyred by stoning immediately afterwards. His history, indeed, all that is known about him, is prominently recorded in Acts vi.5-vii.59. (5) It therefore follows that he was alive after the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus. The emphasis in the ballad on the association of Stephen and Herod, and the claim that Stephen's martyrdom was the result of the manifestation of the star at Christ's birth, are radically at odds with biblical chronology. The biblical figure was a witness for the faith in the early years of the Church: the hero of the ballad narrative was martyred while Jesus was still an infant. Medieval religious writers might expect their audience to accept the truth of extra-scriptural miracles concerning some New Testament figure -- indeed the New Testament itself provides some sanction for such claims (6) -- but this…