(ca. 1300)
The Cursor Mundi sets out to “run round the world” by paraphrasing the historical material of the Bible in combination with other legendary and religious material to produce a history of the world from Creation to the final judgment. Composed in the north of England early in the 14th century, the Cursor survives in nine manuscripts that preserve two distinct versions of the poem. Although the poem is consistent in its overall design, it has been described by literary historians as an “open text,” one into which scribes frequently inserted new material. For instance, the four earliest manuscripts, all copied in the north, show an accretion of new material regarding the life of the Virgin Mary and more recent history. A fifth northern manuscript preserves only a fragment of the poem. Later in the 14th century, the “southern” version of the Cursor was created when a scribe translated the work into the dialect of the Midlands and eliminated some of the nonbiblical material that had been added to the later northern manuscripts. The southern version survives in the remaining four manuscripts, which were copied in the late 14th and 15th centuries.
The poet of the Cursor constructed his poem in keeping with the practice of dividing human history into seven ages. This scheme, developed fully by St. AUGUSTINE in his CITY OF GOD, was designed to clarify God’s redemptive plan for humanity as described by Christian doctrine. The first age is the period from Creation to Noah’s flood, the second from Noah to the Tower of Babel, the third from Abraham to David, the fourth from David to the Babylonian exile of the Israelites, the fifth from the exile to John the Baptist, the sixth from the baptism of Jesus to the Last Judgment, and the seventh is the eternal age of the new Heaven and Earth. The first, second, and fourth ages all end with precursors of the Last Judgment, while Noah, David, and John all prefigure the coming of the Christ.
In the Cursor the first four ages largely follow the historical books of the Hebrew Scriptures but also include legendary material regarding the life of Seth and the history of the wood of the cross. The account of the fifth age, however, utilizes different materials. Beginning with a selection of Christological prophecies from the Hebrew Scriptures, it turns to an ALLEGORY of incarnation and redemption taken from Robert GROSSETESTE’s Le Chateau d’Amour and to legends of the life of the Virgin Mary and the childhood of Jesus.More than a third of the Cursor, however, is devoted to the sixth age, which includes a life of Jesus and the acts of the apostles taken from the New Testament and apocrypha, but also a history of the cross and a description of the Last Judgment. The poem concludes with several prayers, additional material regarding the Virgin, and a guide to confession and repentance.
The Cursor Mundi is one of several paraphrases of the Bible composed in Middle English during the 13th and 14th centuries. Perhaps the most famous of these are the MYSTERY PLAY cycles of biblical drama, but anonymous poets produced Genesis and Exodus (ca. 1250) and the Metrical Paraphrase of the Old Testament (ca. 1400), and the printer William CAXTON created a comprehensive paraphrase in his GOLDEN LEGEND (1483). These works and many others appear to be the result of both the efflorescence of English poetry that produced the works of Geoffrey CHAUCER, William LANGLAND, and the PEARL poet, and a resurgence of piety in the wake of the Fourth Lateran Council.Many take as their basis the Historia Scholastica, a Latin paraphrase of the Bible composed in the 13th century by the Parisian professor Peter Comestor. Most, like the Cursor, have twin goals of explaining the divine plan of redemption in human history and of providing an engaging but morally unassailable alternative to the chivalric ROMANCES popular in late medieval society.
Bibliography
■ Fowler, David C. The Bible in Early English Literature. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976.
■ Horrall, Sarah M., ed. The Southern Version of the Cursor Mundi. 5 vols. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1978–2000.
■ Morey, James. Book and Verse: A Guide to Middle English Biblical Literature. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000.
■ Morris, Richard, ed. Cursor Mundi: A Northumbrian Poem of the XIVth Century, edited from British Museum Ms. Cotton Vespasian A.3, Bodleian Ms. Fairfax 14, Göttingen University Library Ms. Theol, 107, Trinity College Cambridge Ms. R.3.8. 7 vols. Early English Text Society, Original Series 57, 59, 62, 66, 68, 99, 101. 1874–93. London: Published for the Early English Text Society by the Oxford University Press, 1961–1966.
■ Thompson, John J. The Cursor Mundi: Poem, Texts and Contexts. Medium Aevum Monographs, New Series 19. Oxford: Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature, 1998.
Timothy S. Jones
Encyclopedia of medieval literature. 2013.