The Ubi Sunt Motif and the Soul-and-Body Legend in Old English Homilies: Sources and Relationships

This paper investigates the combination of the ubi sunt topos with eschatological motifs, in particular the soul-and-body legend, as attested in a distinctive group of anonymous Old English homilies. Source analysis of these vernacular texts enables to make out the literary and theological milieu underlying the Anglo-Saxon eschatology. Such source-texts make up a virtual library comprising a vast selection of writings ranging from the influential Visio Pauli to Eastern apocrypha, such as the so-called “Three Utterances” and “Seven Heavens”, to Isidore’s Synonyma and Ephraim the Syrian’s (or Ephraimic) texts. These writings seem to have enjoyed a special currency in the Insular world, and the Irish apparently facilitated their transmission to Anglo-Saxon England and the Continent. The rich and imaginative eschatology that characterizes much of the corpus of Old English anonymous homilies can therefore be pictured as the result of a syncretistic blending of a variety of influences and contributions, such as apocryphal traditions of Eastern origin and (pseudo-)Patristic literature.