Appendix: Vercelli Homily IX and ‘The Devil's Account of the Next World’

Summary

In addition to the text in the Vercelli Book, Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare, CXVII (s. x²), 61r–65r [A], the homily occurs also in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 340 (+ 342) (?Canterbury, s. xⁱⁿ; provenance Rochester), 35v–40v [E], in an abbreviated version which, however, partly makes good a lacuna in the Vercelli Book text. Extensive passages from a lost, ‘markedly different (and probably earlier) version’ of Vercelli IX were used in another sermon in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 115, fols. 140–7 (s. xi²; provenance Worcester) [L]. Briefer extracts from the line represented by L are incorporated in the two versions of the ‘Niall’ Sunday Letter sermon, Napier XLIII [N] and XLIV [M], while Napier XXX [O] borrows passages from the A line as represented by the Vercelli Book version. The exemplum, ‘The Devil's Account of the Next World’, was one of the most popular vernacular religious tales in the tenth and eleventh centuries. In addition to the versions found in A and E (both defective) and in L, it occurs separately in London, BL, Cotton Tiberius A. iii, fols. 2–173 (s. xi^med; provenance Christ Church, Canterbury), 87r–88v [M], and in a precis headed ‘De inclusis’ in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 303 (Rochester, s. xii¹), p. 202 [H]. Finally, the badly damaged manuscript London, BL, Cotton Otho B. x, pt A (s. xi¹) [f^g] once had a sermon that used the exemplum.