ABSTRACT
The Homelia Origenis de Maria Magdalena or Origenes upon the Maude-leyne was long ago identified as the source of one German religious poem and as an influence upon two others, all written towards the close of the thirteenth century. The popularity of the Homelia is also attested by the number of vernaculars into which it was translated at an early date: into German verse before the end of the thirteenth century and into French, Provencal, and Italian prose by the middle of the fourteenth century. An understanding of the problems posed by the Homelia is useful in providing a frame of reference by which one can measure the ingenuity of the few authors who were not too timid to draw upon it. This brief investigation of English imitations of the Homelia and of the problems involved in imitating it can finally serve as a frame of reference for some speculation about the nature of Chaucer’s lost work.
