¹ Thorpe, Benjamin, the first editor of the poem, noted that the pieces that make up the first 106 pages of the Exeter Book — what we would now call Christ I, II, and III — ‘are, no doubt, translations from the Latin,’ but he adds ‘their subject is not of a nature to stimulate many to search after the originals’; see his Codex Exoniensis: A Collection of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, from a Manuscript in the Library of the Dean and Chapter of Exeter (London 1842) v–vi. Early critics of the poem also noted its ‘homiletic’ tone, if only to disparage it; William Courthope, J., for example, writes: ‘in Cynewulf's Christ it is difficult to discern any conception of poetical form raising the composition above a homily in verse’ — see A History of English Poetry (New York 1895–1910) I 103. The main study on the sources of the entire poem is the edition of Cook, S. A., The Christ of Cynewulf (2nd ed. 1909; repr. with a preface by John Pope, C., Hamden, Conn. 1964). I have brought Cook's notes on the sources up to date in The Sources of Christ III: A Revision of Cook's Notes (Old English Newsletter Subsidia 12; Binghamton 1986).Google Scholar

² Recently Smetana, Cyril L. has tried to establish a sharp generic distinction between a homily, ‘a discourse that expounds or comments on a text of sacred scripture for the instruction and edification of the listeners,’ and a sermon, ‘an address on a dogmatic or moral theme’; see his article, ‘Paul the Deacon's Patristic Anthology’ in The Old English Homily and its Backgrounds, edd. Szarmach, Paul E. and Huppé, Bernard F. (Albany 1978) 78; and also Gatch, Milton McC., Preaching and Theology in Anglo-Saxon England: Ælfric and Wulfstan (Toronto 1977) 49–51. According to Henri Barré, however, ‘dans les anciens homéliaires occidentaux, omelia et sermo sont devenus pratiquement synonymes’; see his contribution to the article ‘Homéliaires’ in the Dictionnaire de spiritualité (Paris 1932ff.) VII col. 598. Barré also identifies the fundamental characteristic that separates a homiliary from any collection of homilies and sermons: ‘une collection prend le nom d'homéliaire, lorsque, en correspondance avec le sacramentaire, elle est ordonnée suivant le cycle de l'année liturgique et l'englobe en son entire’ (col. 598). While recognizing the importance of this definition, I intend to use the term ‘homiliary’ to refer to collections of homilies and sermons, which, because they are anonymous and often incomplete, may not be proven to follow the liturgical year.Google Scholar

³ For example, Franz Eduard Dietrich identified the description of the witnessing elements (1127b–98) as following Gregory's Homiliae xl in Evangelia 1.10 in its overall structure; see ‘Cynevulfs Crist,’ Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 9 (1853) 204. Similarly, Cook identified Caesarius’ Sermo 57 as the basis for Christ's extended address to the sinners (1379–1498). For improvements on Cook's discovery, see Edward Irving, B., ‘Latin Prose Sources for Old English Verse,’ Journal of English and Germanic Philology 56 (1957) 588–95.Google Scholar

⁵ All quotations are from Cook's edition, but I omit his marking of long vowels.Google Scholar

⁶ See the article by Cyril Smetana, L., ‘Ælfric and the Early Medieval Homiliary,’ Traditio 15 (1959) 163–204. Cross, J. E. offers a number of refinements in Ælfric and the Mediaeval Homiliary — Objection and Contribution (Scripta minora Regiae Societatis Humaniorum Litterarum Lundensis 1961–62 no. 4; Lund 1963). Professor Cross, however, informs me that some of the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts currently identified simply as Paul the Deacon's homiliary contain additional texts; for a list of the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, see Gneuss, Helmut, ‘A Preliminary List of Manuscripts Written or Owned in England up to 1100,’ Anglo-Saxon England 9 (1981) 1–60.Google Scholar

⁷ The major study of these homiliaries is by Réginald Grégoire, Homéliaires liturgiques médiévaux: Analyse de manuscrits (Spoleto 1980); see also his earlier Les Homéliaires du moyen ǎge: Inventaire et analyse des manuscrits (Rome 1966).Google Scholar

⁸ I am borrowing the term ‘insular’ from paleography where it describes an originally Irish script which spread to Irish monasteries in England, thus making it difficult to determine whether even the most famous manuscripts were produced in Ireland or England; see Brown, J. T., ‘Northumbria and the Book of Kells,’ Anglo-Saxon England 1 (1972) 219–46; and the response to this article by Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ Peritia 1 (1982) 352–62. I use the term to distinguish a distinctively ‘Irish’ Christianity from the more fully studied ‘continental’ Christianity emanating from Rome. On this distinction, see Bernhard Bischoff, ‘Turning-Points in the History of Latin Exegesis in the Early Middle Ages,’ trans. Colm O'Grady in Biblical Studies: The Medieval Irish Contribution, ed. Martin McNamara (Dublin 1976) 74–160.Google Scholar

⁹ The Cracow collection, Cathedral Chapter Library 140 (olim 43), was partially edited by Pierre David in ‘Un recueil de conférences monastiques irlandaises du viii^e siècle: Notes sur le manuscrit 43 de la bibliothèque du chapitre de Cracovie,’ Revue bénédictine 49 (1937) 62–89. In a note at the Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes in Paris, Raymond Etaix identifies four other manuscripts of this collection: Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 13,408, fols. 1–105; Paris, B.N. lat. 13,768, fols. 25^r–84^v; Karlsruhe, Landesbibliothek Augiensis CXCVI, fols. 34–178; and Orléans, Bibliothèque Municipale 341 pp. 380–89. Two more partial witnesses of this collection are MSS Paris, B.N. lat. 12,021, fols. 27^v–32^v; and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 129, fols. 89^v–91^v. André Wilmart has published part of the Catechesis Celtica, MS Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Reg. lat. 49, in Analecta Reginensia (Studi e Testi 59; Vatican 1933) 29–112. Paul Grosjean takes up the question of the provenance of the collection in his article ‘A propos du manuscrit 49 de la Reine Christine,’ Analecta Bollandiana 54 (1936) 113–36; see also Diarmuid Ó Laoghaire, ‘Irish Elements in the Catechesis Celtica,’ in Irland und die Christenheit, edd. Próinséas Ní Chatháin and Michael Richter (Stuttgart 1987) 146–64. In addition to these major collections, McNally, Robert E. published seven sermons from MS Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Pal. lat. 212 and 220 in ‘“In Nomine Dei Summi”: Seven Hiberno-Latin Sermons,’ Traditio 35 (1979) 121–43. In this article, McNally notes that related to these manuscripts is another collection of homilies, MS Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare LXVII (64), fols. 33^r–81^v. Most recently, Cross has linked some items in these insular collections to the Pembroke-type collection (MS Cambridge, Pembroke College 25), which he has identified as a source for a number of Old English homilies; see Cambridge Pembroke College MS. 25: A Carolingian Sermonary Used by Anglo-Saxon Preachers (King's College London Medieval Studies 1; London 1987).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Robert Atkinson has published most of the homilies from this manuscript in The Passions and the Homilies from Leabhar Breac (Todd Lecture Series 2; Dublin 1887). Others are published by Hogan, Edmund, The Irish Nennius from L. na Huidre and Homilies and Legends from Brecc, L. (Todd Lecture Series 6; Dublin 1895). Although the manuscript dates from the early fifteenth century, the homilies themselves are thought to be as old as the eleventh century: see Mac Donncha, Frederic, ‘Medieval Irish Homilies,’ in Biblical Studies: The Medieval Irish Contribution 59–71; and Rittmueller, Jean, ‘The Hiberno-Latin Background of the Leabhar Breac Homily “In Cena Domini,”’ Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 2 (1982) 1–10. The earliest example of an Irish homily is the Cambrai Homily (s. VII/VIII), published by Stokes, Whitley and Strachan, John in the Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (Cambridge 1901–3) II 244–47. Homilies are present in other manuscripts; most significant for this study are the two Middle Irish homilies in Lebor na Huidre, edd. Best, R. I. and Osborn Bergin (1929; repr. Galway 1970); and the Old Irish homily published by Strachan, John, ‘An Old Irish Homily,’ Eriu 4 (1907) 1–10.Google Scholar

¹¹ Max Förster has published the first eight Vercelli homilies, and the opening of Vercelli Homily 9 in Die Vercelli-Homilien (Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa 12; Hamburg 1932); Szarmach, Paul E. has published the remaining homilies in Vercelli Homilies IX–XXIII (Toronto 1981). The Blickling Homilies, now in the Scheide, W. H. Collection in the Princeton University Library, were edited by Richard Morris, The Blickling Homilies of the Tenth Century (EETS 58, 63, and 73; repr. London 1967). A summary of eschatological motifs in these collections can be found in Gatch, Milton McC., ‘Eschatology in the Anonymous Old English Homilies,’ Traditio 21 (1965) 117–65. Gatch specifically notes that the Blickling collection is a homiliary following the liturgical year (117–23). For a study of the relationship of one of these homilies to the insular tradition, see Wright, Charles D., ‘Blickling Homily III on the Temptations in the Desert,’ Anglia 106 (1988) 130–37.Google Scholar

¹² The distich reads: ‘Apparebit repentina dies magna Domini / fur obscura velut nocte improvisos occupans.’ Cook's text differs slightly from that printed by Walpole, A. S. in Early Latin Hymns (1922; repr. Hildesheim 1966) 381–84.Google Scholar

¹³ The Christ of Cynewulf: A Poem in Three Parts (Boston 1900) 33.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Bruce Mitchell does not specifically discuss this passage in his Old English Syntax (Oxford 1985); this use, however, would come under his paragraphs 3290–94 (II 658–60).Google Scholar

¹⁵ A more moderate suggestion would be to consider the two swas as independent, but to translate the second as referring back to the previous clause. Bradley, S. A. J. apparently understands the passage this way, since he translates the second swa ‘likewise’; see his Anglo-Saxon Poetry (London 1982) 229–30.Google Scholar

¹⁶ See also 2 Peter 3.10.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, ed. Frederick Klaeber (1922; 3rd ed. Boston 1950).Google Scholar

¹⁸ Adversus Marcionem, Books 4 and 5, ed. and trans. Ernest Evans (Oxford 1972) 428.Google Scholar

¹⁹ PL 9.1058; see also his comment on Psalm 120.15, PL 9.660.Google Scholar

²⁰ PL 106.1461. See also Radbertus, Paschasius, Expositio in Matheo libri xii, ed. Bede Paulus, CCM 56B.1204.Google Scholar

²¹ The ‘fures’ of Mt 6.19–20 are interpreted as ‘daemones’ in three Irish Matthew commentaries: the seventh-century ps.-Jerome commentary (PL 30.548); the eighth-century Würzburg commentary (ed. K. Köberlin, Eine würzburger Evangelienhandschrift [Augsburg 1891] 63); and the eighth/ninth-century commentary in MS Vienna, Nationalbibliothek 940, fol. 53^r. This same gloss also occurs in the ps.-Gregory Expositio sancti Evangelii (Ren. II): see for example MS Paris, B.N. lat. 614A, fol. 100^v. On these works, see Bischoff's ‘Turning-Points’ 108–18. The identification also appears in Rabanus Maurus, PL 107.834.Google Scholar

²² Stokes, Whitley, The Evernew Tongue,’ Eriu 2 (1905) 140–41; I have slightly modified the translation. According to Robin Flower, this odd apocryphal work, known only in Irish, may represent ‘a lost Latin apocalypse of Philip, S. the Apostle’: see the Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the British Museum (London 1926–53) II 557; and McNamara, Martin, The Apocrypha in the Irish Church (Dublin 1975) 115–18. The second recension of this work is edited by Úna Nic Énrí and G. Mac Niocaill, ‘The Second Recension of the Evernew Tongue,’ Celtic 9 (1971) 1–60.Google Scholar

²³ Wilmart 43.Google Scholar

²⁴ Wilmart 44.Google Scholar

²⁵ See the note on line 943 in his edition.Google Scholar

²⁶ Hogan 33; the translation has been slightly modified. See also the Irish Matthew commentary in MS Vienna 940, which glosses Mt 24.30, ‘in nubibus caeli: id est imago exercitus sanctorum, de his enim dicitur, qui sunt isti qui ut nubes uolant? et nunc impletur quemadmodum uidetis eum euntem in caelum’ (fol. 123^r).Google Scholar

²⁷ Souter, Alexander, Pelagius's ‘Expositions of the Thirteen Epistles of St Paul’ II: Text and Apparatus Criticus (Texts and Studies 9.2; Cambridge 1926) 433. This edition is reprinted in PLS 1, and the relevant passage appears in col. 1328. This passage was first cited by Thomas Hill, D., ‘Further Notes on the Eschatology of the Old English Christ III,’ Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 72 (1971) 692.Google Scholar

²⁸ See his notes on lines 875 and 900.Google Scholar

²⁹ See, for example, Psalms 2.6, 47.3, 83.8, 101.17, 124.1; Isaias 24.23; Abdias 17 and 21; and Hebrews 12.22.Google Scholar

³⁰ See Isidore's influential Liber interpretations hebraicorum nominum, CCL 72.108, 112, 122, 153, 157, and 161; Gregory's Moralia in Iob 33.2, CCL 143B.1670; and Augustine's De civitate Dei 17.16, CCL 48.581. For a discussion of some Old English uses of this etymology, see Frank, Roberta, ‘Some Uses of Paronomasia in Old English Scriptural Verse,’ Speculum 47 (1972) 217–18.Google Scholar

³¹ See the discussion by Metzger, M. B. in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. Charlesworth, James H. (New York 1983) I 516–24. I would like to thank Charles D. Wright for calling my attention to this passage.Google Scholar

³² The Fourth Book of Ezra, ed. Bensly, Robert L. (Texts and Studies 3.2; Cambridge 1895) 6.Google Scholar

³³ On this work, see James Kenney, F., The Sources for the Early History of Ireland: Ecclesiastical (1929; repr. New York 1966) 426–27. For the use of 4 Ezra in medieval Ireland, see McNamara, , Apocrypha 27–28.Google Scholar

³⁴ The text is edited and translated by Whitley Stokes, ‘The Bodleian Amra Coluimb Cille,’ Revue celtique 20 (1899) 30–55, 132–83, 248–89, and 400–37; and 21 (1900) 133–36. This passage appears in vol. 20, 161; I have slightly modified the translation here and elsewhere. See also the text in Lebor na Huidre 20–21.Google Scholar

³⁵ Stokes, , ‘The Bodleian’ 414–15.Google Scholar

³⁶ Stokes, , ‘The Bodleian’ 414–17.Google Scholar

³⁷ PL 30.556.Google Scholar

³⁸ B.N. lat. 11,561, fol. 214^r, col. 1. See Bischoff 97.Google Scholar

³⁹ Stokes, Whitley, ‘The Fifteen Tokens of Doomsday,’ Revue celtique 28 (1907) 314–15.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Stokes, , ‘Evernew Tongue’ 98–99, and Nic Énrí 6–7.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Stokes, , ‘Evernew Tongue’ 100–101. The temporal setting of the Evernew Tongue is also suggestive: the voice is first heard ‘suddenly … when it was the end of Easter-eve’ (101). See the discussion below.Google Scholar

⁴² In discussing the theme of a fourfold division at Judgment in the Catechesis Celtica, Grosjean writes: ‘L'expression IIII familiae quae ascribentur in iudicio nous fait pénétrer dans le domaine de l'eschatologie celtique’; see ‘A propos’ 129. Hill first suggested the relevance of this theme to Christ III: see ‘Further Notes’ 692.Google Scholar

⁴³ CCL 143B.1304. This passage is extracted in Taio's Sententiarum libri v, 5.17 (PL 80.972). Gregory's scheme also appears in De varietate librorum 3.17–18 (PL 118.942–43), a work once ascribed to Haymo of Halberstadt, but identified by Wilmart, A. as by Emmo, or Hemmo, ; see Revue bénédictine 34 (1922) 236–38.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ CCL 143B.1304.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ CCL 143B.1305–6.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ PL 83.596–97.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ ‘Duae sunt enim differentiae uel ordines hominum in iudicio collectorum, hoc est electorum et reproborum, qui tamen in quattuor diuiduntur. Perfectorum ordo est unus, qui cum Domino iudicat, de quibus Dominus ait: Sedebitis et uos super sedes duodecim. Hi non iudicantur et regnant. Alius quoque ordo est electorum, quibus dicetur: Esuriui et dedistis mihi manducare. Hi iudicantur et regnant. Item reproborum ordines duo sunt; unus eorum qui extra ecclesiam inueniendi sunt. Hi non iudicabuntur et pereunt; de quibus etiam psalmista ait: Non resurgent impii in iudicio. Alter quoque ordo reproborum est eorum, qui iudicabuntur et pereunt, quibus dicetur: Esuriui et non dedistis mihi manducare: ite, maledicti, in ignem aeternum.’ CCL 115.107–8.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ The Homilies of the Anglo Saxon Church, ed. Benjamin Thorpe (London 1844–46) I 396. Ælfric also includes the motif of the fourfold division in his excerpts from Julian preserved in MS Boulogne-sur-Mer, Bibliothèque Municipale 63; see the edition by Milton McC. Gatch in Preaching and Theology in Anglo-Saxon England 143. On the relationship of these extracts to the passage in question, see Gatch's ‘MS Boulogne-sur-Mer 63 and Ælfric's First Series of Catholic Homilies,’ Journal of English and Germanic Philology 65 (1966) 484–85.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ In addition to the motif of the fourfold division at judgment, insular vision literature also develops the motif of a fourfold division of souls at death; see Seymour, St. John D., ‘The Eschatology of the Early Irish Church,’ Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 14 (1923) 179–211, esp. 191–97; and Brian O'Dwyer Grogan, ‘The Eschatological Doctrines of the Early Irish Church’ (diss. Fordham University 1972) esp. 221–55.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Quoted from MS B.N. lat. 13,408, fol. 51^r. The homily is 15 in David's numbering, but he does not print this passage.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Wilmart 110.Google Scholar

⁵² The terminology here rests on Augustine's Enchiridion 110: ‘Cum ergo sacrificia sive altaris sive quarumcumque eleemosynarum pro baptizatis defunctis omnibus offeruntur, pro valde bonis gratiarum actiones sunt; pro non valde malis propitiationes sunt; pro valde malis etiamsi nulla sunt adjumenta mortuorum’ (PL 40.283). Jacques Le Goff asserts that this passage shows a fourfold division of souls: see The Birth of Purgatory (London 1984) 73–74. However, in his review of this book, Graham Robert Edwards notes correctly that Augustine here uses a threefold division: the valde boni, the valde mali, and the non valde mali; see ‘“Purgatory”: “Birth” or “Evolution,”’ Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36 (1985) 639. The four terms appear in the eighth-century Collectio canonum Hibernensis: ‘Valde boni non egent remedio post mortem, quia se ipsos in vita sua liberaverunt; pro valde malis non est necesse, quia de his judicatum est, non esse fructuosum, nisi tantum elemosina accipienda a vivis et pauperibus dividenda; pro non valde malis et pro non valde bonis oblatio et oratio et elemosina et jejunium danda sunt, si tamen in vita professi sunt, quod crediderunt.’ See Wasserschleben, Hermann, Die irische Kanonensammlung (Leipzig 1885) 43. They also appear in the Irish Liber de numeris (see McNally's, R. E. dissertation, Der irische Liber de numeris: Eine Quellenanalyse des pseudo-isidorischen Liber de numeris [diss. Munich 1957] 55–56, and Stokes, ‘The Fifteen Tokens’ 316–17).Google Scholar

⁵³ I quote the text from Bergin and Best (79), using readings from their apparatus and expanding some abbreviations. The translation is adapted from Whitley Stokes, ‘The Tidings of Doomsday, an Early Middle Irish Homily,’ Revue celtique 4 (1879–80) 250–51.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Bergin and Best 79; Stokes, ‘The Tidings’ 250–51.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ PL 39.2210. Charles D. Wright has argued that this sermon and the anonymous ‘Three Utterances’ sermon ‘are transmitted in environments that suggest an Insular role in their dissemination’: see ‘Apocryphal Lore and Insular Tradition in St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek MS 908,’ in Irland und die Christenheit, 124–45, esp. 127 and 134–36. It is, for example, the first item in the two Vatican manuscripts used by McNally for his ‘Seven Hiberno-Latin Homilies.’ In a recent paper delivered at Kalamazoo (1988), Cross, J. E. called attention to its presence in MS Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek G.K.S. 1595, a manuscript used by Wulfstan, and in the related MS Cambridge, St. John's College 42.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ PL 39.2210.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ See the articles by John Fleming, V., ‘The Dream of the Rood and Anglo-Saxon Monasticism,’ Traditio 22 (1966) 70; and Richard Payne, C., ‘Convention and Originality in the Vision Framework of The Dream of the Rood,’ Modern Philology 73 (1976) 333. Thomas D. Hill first noted a source for this motif in the Evernew Tongue; see ‘Notes on the Eschatology of the Old English Christ III,’ Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 70 (1969) 672–79.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ CCL 77.237. Relying on one of the passages from the Catechesis Celtica cited below, Edgar Hennecke and Wilhelm Schneemelcher consider the tradition to have been included in the apocryphal ‘Gospel of the Nazaraeans’; see New Testament Apocrypha, trans. Wilson, R. McL. (Philadelphia 1963) I 150–51.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ See my Sources of Christ III, 6–7. The motif is also used by Alcuin in explaining the canonical hours (see the edition by Dümmler, E., MGH Epistolae Karolini Aevi [Berlin 1895] II 463); and by Christian of Stavelot (PL 106.1461).Google Scholar

⁶⁰ David, , ‘Un Recueil’ 79. The passage occurs in MS B.N. lat. 13,408, fol. 50^v; see also 46^v and 61^v.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Wilmart 105. See also the anonymous homily on Christ's birth in MS Oxford, Bodleian Laud Misc. 129, fol. 87^v.Google Scholar

⁶² Fol. 20^v.Google Scholar

⁶³ Hill, Thomas D. stresses the insular character of the work in ‘Literary History and Old English Poetry: The Case of Christ I, II, and III,’ in Sources of Anglo-Saxon Culture, ed. Szarmach, Paul E. (Kalamazoo 1986) 3–22.Google Scholar