The “Secret Wound”: Homiletic Fragment I and The Vercelli Book

Studies on Homiletic Fragment I have often focused on the key metaphor of the ‘bee’ and its sources, but generally neglected to set this Vercelli Book poem within the wider literary context of the Old English religious corpus. A recent contribution by Randle (2009) has filled this gap by considering the relationship between Homiletic Fragment I and the structure of the Old English homiletic texts. The present essay aims to contribute to the studies on Homiletic Fragment I by discussing its place in the context of the Old English religious poetry, and of the Vercelli Book in particular. Firstly, I shall investigate the possible relationship between Homiletic Fragment I and the poem immediately preceding it in the Vercelli manuscript, Soul and Body I. Both these texts consider sin as a ‘wound’ and both are addressed to ‘wise men’; Soul and Body I shows the effects of the lack of meditation on the soul’s needs, while Homiletic Fragment I exhorts the audience to follow the ‘soul’s counsel’. The expression ‘sawle rædes’ of Homiletic Fragment I, v. 42 is also found in the tenth and seventeenth homily of the Vercelli Book, as well as in the late Old English poem An Exhortation to Christian Living. This poem, which shares with Homiletic Fragment I the motifs of the wisdom of speech and of the devil that works against humanity, was also known to the homilist of Vercelli XXI, who offers a prose rendering of its opening section. It is also worth noting that Vercelli homilies X, XVII, XXI, Soul and Body and Homiletic Fragment I all belong to the same block of quires, as discussed by Scragg (1973). Furthermore, Homiletic Fragment I, Soul and Body, An Exhortation to Christian Living, Vercelli X and XXI share a common background: the Doomsday imagery. The last section of my study will deal with the motif of the ‘Sins of the Tongue’ in the eschatological passages of the Vercelli collection. Recent studies, such as the contribution by Leneghan (2013), have offered new interpretations on the Vercelli Book based on recurring themes and narratives that frame both the homiletic and the poetic texts. The emphasis on the ‘Sins of the Tongue’ condemned on the Last Day, which informs Homiletic Fragment I, can conceivably be considered one of these recurring themes – as this essay aims to show.