St. Erkenwald

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St. Erkenwald is an alliterative alliterative alliterative poem from the 14th century, which was written in the years 1386 or 1390 by an anonymous author. It is about Saint Erkenwald , who was installed as Bishop of St Paul's Cathedral in London from 675 to 693 .

background

Some scholars believe that this work was by the same author who wrote the Cotton Nero Ax manuscripts (section 3), which include the poem Pearl and the romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight . The manuscript is kept in the British Library of the British Museum as MS Harley 2250 . The first modern revision was published by Israel Gollancz in 1922. The poem tells of an alleged miracle of the Bishop Erkenwald of London, who was canonized after his death. It is written in 352 long lines in the Central English Cheshire dialect, as it was spoken in the north-west Midlands in the 14th century , similar to the dialects of the nearby counties of Derbyshire , Lancashire , Shropshire and Staffordshire .

content

When St Paul's Cathedral was to be built in London at the time of Erkenwald, a stone tomb was discovered with golden writing that no one could decipher. So it was decided to open the tomb. Inside was a princely dressed body, almost intact, with the insignia of a king who looked as if he were sleeping. Thereupon Bishop Erkenwald was informed, who had the grave locked and spent the night in prayer. Since the deceased was not mentioned in the registers, the bishop approached the corpse and, trusting in the omnipotence of God, spoke to him to ask who he was.

The interviewee replied that he had been a just and honored judge under the government of the Breton King Belin in the city of "New Troy" (former name for the place where London was founded) around 482 years after it was founded by Brutus of Britain . The bishop, who was amazed that the body of the dead still looked fresh after so long, asked him where his soul was. The deceased replied that he was a pagan and ignorant of the laws of God, which is why his soul could not be saved for all his good deeds. The bystanders and the bishop began to cry at this news and Erkenwald wished he could make up for this baptism. When one of his tears fell on the dead man's face, he said that he praised God and thanked the bishop for having baptized and saved him with this tear. Shortly afterwards, his body turned to dust.

The content of the alleged event in which the bishop converts a long-dead pagan and opens the way to the kingdom of heaven for him through baptism clearly shows the procedure of the Christian church in the conversion of the pagan population, which began around the year 597. For example, at the beginning of the work, the poet reports on the transition from pagan belief to Christianity and the fact that churches were built in places where previously pagan temples were located from the time the Saxon brothers Hengest and Horsa conquered the country . These new churches were given the names of Christian saints, for example Appolyn became Saint Peter and Mahon became Saint Margerete or Saint Madelaine. For the new cathedral of St. Paul to be built in the parish of London, the narrator withholds the name of the idol formerly revered here in order to create a purely Christian background for the miracle of St. Erkenwald.

literature

expenditure
  • Israel Gollancz: St. Erkenwald (Bishop of London 675-693). (= Select early English poems. 4.) Humphrey Milford / Oxford University Press, London 1922, OCLC 173034 . ( online )
  • Henry L. Savage: St. Erkenwald, a middle English poem. (= Yale studies in English. 72. - Dissertation) Yale University Press, New Haven 1926, OCLC 699876276 (Reprint: Archon Books, Hampden / Connecticut 1972, ISBN 0-208-01136-6 ).
  • Ruth Morse: St. Erkenwald. DS Brewer Ltd, Cambridge 1975, ISBN 0-87471-686-1 .
Research literature
  • Friedrich Knigge: The language of the poet by Sir Gawain & the green knight of the so-called Early English alliterative poems & De Erkwalde. Marburg 1885, OCLC 551263700 .
  • James Root Hulbert: The Sources of "St. Erkenwald "and" The Trental of Gregory ". In: Modern Philology. 16, No. 9, 1919, ISSN  0026-8232 .
  • Theodor Wolpers: The English legend of saints of the Middle Ages. (= Book series of the Anglia. Volume 10.) Max Niemeyer, Tubingen 1964, pp. 295-97. ( online )
  • Larry D. Benson: The Authorship of St. Erkenwald. In: Journal of English and Germanic Philology. 64, 1965. pp. 393-405.
  • Clifford Peterson, Casey Finch: The Complete Works of the Pearl Poet. University of California Press, Berkeley 1995, ISBN 0-520-07871-3 .
  • Christine Chism: St. Erkenwald and the Body in Questuon. In: Alliterative revivals. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 2002, ISBN 0-8122-3655-6 . ( online )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ann Raftery Meyer: Medieval Allegory and the Building of the New Jerusalem. Woodbridge / DS Brewer, Suffolk / Rochester 2003, ISBN 0-85991-796-7 , p. 138. ( online )
  2. ↑ Life of Saint Erkenwald, Bishop of London. on quod.lib.umich.edu
  3. ↑ St. Erkenwald (Bishop of London 675-693). on ota.ahds.ac.uk
  4. ↑ a b De Erkenwalde. (S. Erkenwald baptizes a corpse). from Ms. Harl. 2250, fol. 72b. (Westnördl. Dialect.) On quod.lib.umich.edu
  5. ↑ Ruth Nisse: “A Coroun Ful Riche”: The Rule of History in St. Erkenwald. In: Project Muse: ELH: a journal of English literary history. 65.2, 1998 pp. 277-295, ISSN  0013-8304 , doi: 10.1353 / elh.1998.0012 .