ABSTRACT
Telling Bible stories in English was only one of the many aims of the poetry of popular instruction, and it was not the most congenial task for the writer. Putting a confession manual or a saint's life into English left the writer considerable freedom; by contrast, the Vulgate - the standard Latin text of the Bible based on that of Saint Jerome - was uniquely privileged: no text carried such a heavy burden of responsibility to previously established authoritative meaning as Scripture. However, while translations were rarely authorized and closely restricted, the church seems to have been quite relaxed about writers retelling biblical narratives in their own vernacular. Even so, demand may well have outstripped supply. The perceived appeal of this project is well seen in the passage quoted above where an anonymous poet, imagining audience reaction to an Englishing of the first two books of the Old Testament, bubbles over with lyric delight as he contemplates the novelty and excellence of what he is about to do. While the church was concerned to mediate access to - as well as understanding of - sacred Scripture, it remained true that '[f]or medieval writers, God was the supreme writer,'2 and the impulse to make parts of the
36 (Lund: Gleerup, 1968) 54. 2 M. Reeves, The Bible and literary authorship in the Middle Ages,' in Reading the
Text: biblical criticism and literary theory, ed. S. Prickett (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991) 12.
Bible more widely available to lay folk in a safe, entertaining and instructive manner grew increasingly strong in the later middle ages, manifesting itself in three out of the four thirteenth century English texts discussed in the last chapter. Common to the Ormulum, Cursor Mundi, and the South English Legendary, for instance, is an account of Herod's adulterous liaison with Herodias, itself part of the larger story of the life and death of John the Baptist. Below I subject the Herod-Herodias episode to a detailed examination.3 The broad chronological sweep which moves from Orm in the late twelfth century to the SEL and Cursor Mundi in the late thirteenth, allows me to pinpoint developments over time, as well as what is distinctive in the approach of each to the construction of narrative.4
