St Erkenwald: Variations on a Theme

The fame of St Erkenwald (or Erconwold, Earkonwald, &c) may not, I grant, have reached very far. He was, variously, a son of King Offa, of the East Angles, Abbot of Chertsey and Bishop of London - the fourth following the Mission of St Augustine. His cult seems to have endured in London right up until the Reformation. 

This is fairly familiar territory for a regional saint. But a brief Middle English poem was written about him - possibly by the Gawain poet, which may make you perk up and take interest. 

The scene is London (once New Troy - Cf. Gawain). Erkenwald is Bishop. Augustine is apparently still in Canterbury, in the process of converting the Saxons. Temples are cleared of idols and refitted as Churches, when workmen come across something:

A sarcophagus curiously carved from Cyclopean stones
All graced in grey marble with gargoyle-like figures.

The canopy of the coffin, covering it on top,
Was finely fashioned of marble finished most smoothly,
And the border was embellished with bright gold letters:
mysterious they stood, in sentences arcane.

(I use Brian Stone's translation).

The mysterious coffin is opened. 

Gleaming and glittering in gold paint was the interior
And on the bottom lay a body of blissful appearance,

Arrayed in noble raiment, in a regal style.
In glistening gold his gown was hemmed,
With many a precious pearl placed upon it;
And a girdle of gold gripped his waist.

The corpse also has a crown and sceptre.

Neither spot nor stain sullied his garments
Which were not moulded or marked or moth-eaten,
But so bright and brilliant in their beautiful colours! - 
Yes, as if but yesterday in the Yard they'd been tailored.

And as fresh were the face and the flesh elsewhere naked - 
The ears and the hands openly showing
With rich ruddiness of the rose, and two red lips - 
As if in sound health he had suddenly slipped into sleep.

No one knows who this might be. Erkenwald is out of town, but swiftly returns. He prays through the night and in the morning says High Mass with the nobility and the Mayor of London. The sacristan describes the uncovering of the coffin. Erkenwald comments on this.

Then he turned to the tomb and talked to the corpse,
Lifting up its eyelids and letting loose these words:
'Now, corpse in this coffin, keep quiet no longer,
Since Jesus has judged that his joy shall be shown today.

'Obey therefore his bequest, I bid you on his behalf!
As he was broken on a beam when his blood was shed - 
And well you are aware of it, and we believe it too - 
Respond to what I say, and conceal nothing from us!

Lo and behold:

'Bishop,' said the body, 'your bidding is precious to me:
I would not be barred from bowing to it for both my eyes.

[...]

'How long I have lain here would be a labour to state;
No mortal mouth could make the date clear.
Almost eight hundred yeas, all but eighteen,
After Brutus in the beginning built this city -

'Three hundred and fifty-four years in fact
Before, by the Christian account, Christ was born, - 
In New Troy I was itinerant judge travelling in oyer....

So, the corpse was a judge - and a good judge too! So incorruptible, so virtuous that the people of New Troy loved him dearly and eventually buried him with the highest honours. Of course....

'No, Bishop,' said the body 'embalmed I never was,
Nor was my clothing kept immaculate by mankind's wisdom,
But by the ruler of reason who recommends justice,
And loyally loves all the laws of truth...'

But a virtuous heathen is still a heathen; ask Dante. The corpse cries out to God:

'I was missing among the many whom your misery redeemed
With the blood of your body on the black cross.
When you harrowed the pit of hell and haled them out,
All lifting you praise from Limbo, you left me there.

The Bishop promptly baptises him.

'Now may you, the high God, and your gracious mother be given praise, 
And blessed be the blissful hour she bore you.
And may you be blessed, Bishop, who banished my grief,
And relieved my soul from the loathsome gloom of her life!

[...]

With that he stopped speaking and said no more.
But suddenly, his sweet face sunk in and vanished,
And all the beauty of his body blackened like mould,
As foetid as fungus that flies up in powder.

The people of London go on their way, praising the All-Highest.

Then loftily Our Lord was praised, with uplifting of hands,
Much mourning and merriment mingled together;
Then they paced forth in procession, the people following,
And all the bells in the city bounds boomed out together.

It's tempting to picture the Corpse as some sort of gaudy Mycenaean,
but the text doesn't exactly back that. 

***

Why have I chosen to post about this? Aside from the joy of sharing a chance discovery, of course.

Well, to begin with, the tale of St Erkenwald and the corpse is, to my mind, oddly pulpy. Not in a strictly two-fisted way, but more generally. Think of the advanced morally ambiguous precursor civilisation, the talking corpse, the buried wealth....

It's devoid of either dungeons or dragons, but I think one can detect a streak of both within it. So my mind began processing variations on a theme.

Erkenwald and the Corpse as a random encounter - coming across the townsfolk discussing what to do while they await the return of the Prelate. Will Our Heroes decide to stick their oar in?

Erkenwald and the Corpse as a quest - unearthing and bringing to salvation the Holy quasi-dead of a precursor civilisation.

...as a character class or background - 'I'm not playing a paladin, I'm playing a Lawful Good Barrow-wight.'

...as a social group - what happens when hundreds of virtuous, noble and dislocated quasi-dead beings wake up and try and enter back into society?

...as a Monster - a risen warrior with enchanted weapons and armour with a burning desire for justice, and an idea several centuries old on what justice actually consists of, who can only be stopped by being Baptised.

Anyway, I hope you can see the interest in some of these scenarios.