The “secret wound”: Homiletic Fragment I and the Vercelli Book

Abstract

In this study, I discuss some textual and thematic similarities between the Old English poem Homiletic Fragment I and other Old English religious poems such as Soul and Body I, An Exhortation to Christian Living, and Judgment Day II. In addition to the emphasis on the secrecy of sins – often paralleled with “wounds” in these Old English works – and the call to be wise in life, all these texts share, more or less explicitly, the Judgment Day theme. As I intend to note, the motif of the condemnation of the “Sins of the tongue”, which is central to Homiletic Fragment I, is frequently set by Anglo-Saxon writers in an eschatological context. The relationship between “sins of the tongue” and Doomsday imagery is also featured in some eschatological homilies of the Vercelli Book. I shall suggest that the preoccupation towards the “deviant speech” can be considered a “sub-theme” of particular significance for the Vercelli collector. This recurring attention on the “sins of the tongue” can be described within the major unifying themes of the Vercelli Book, such as the Judgment Day theme itself and the call to repentance.