‘An Unpublished _Ubi Sunt_ Piece in Wulfstan’s “Commonplace Book”: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 190, pp. 94-96’

This essay offers the first edition with English translation of a short Latin homiletic text, In nomine domini. The piece is most probably of anonymous authorship and is contained in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 190, one of the major manuscript witnesses of the so-called ‘Commonplace Book’ or ‘Handbook’ of Archbishop Wulfstan († 1023). The main feature of the text in question is an ubi sunt passage, the two major ultimate sources of which are shown to be the Synonyma by Isidore of Seville and the anonymous Latin version of Basil the Great’s homily Attende tibi ipsi; both sources were in turn probably mediated by two later florilegia, both very popular in Anglo-Saxon England, namely the Liber scintillarum by Defensor of Ligugé and the Epigrammata ex Sententiis Sancti Augustini by Prosper of Aquitaine. The Latin piece is analysed in the immediate framework of its manuscript context, showing that it shares definite echoes of and textual links with other items of the Cambridge codex, on the one hand, and in the wider context of Wulfstan’s production, where In nomine domini was drawn on at least three times, that in a Latin homily De cristianitate and in the vernacular version of the latter, Her ongynð be cristendome, and in yet another Old English homily, the Sermo ad populum. Finally, the ubi sunt passage within In nomine domini is discussed against the background of the prolific Anglo-Saxon tradition of this topos. Indeed, In nomine domini seems to exemplify some of the most distinctive characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon elaboration of the ubi sunt motif, including the tendency towards variation and expansion and the conflation of biblical and patristic sources, often by means of florilegia, as well as the combination with death-themes, such as the injunction to visit the graves. The essay is part of a volume of proceedings of an international conference published within the renown series ‘Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Études Médiévales. Textes et Études du Moyen Âge’ of the Beligian publishers Brepols.