Blickling homilies

[1] Their name derives from Blickling Hall in Norfolk, which once housed them; the manuscript is now at Princeton, Scheide Library, MS 71.

[5] The homily is not noted for being well composed,[6] but for its relationship with Anglo-Saxon pilgrimage to Italy on the one hand, and some striking similarities with the Old English poem Beowulf on the other.

The homily is a translation of a version of a Latin hagiographical text known as 'De apparitione Sancti Michaelis' (Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina 5948).

[7] This story provides a foundation myth for the Sanctuary of Monte Sant'Angelo, in Apulia, southeast Italy, the oldest Western European church dedicated to St Michael and a major pilgrimage site in the Middle Ages.

[12] The most striking difference between Blickling Homily XVI and the Latin text of which it is a translation is that Blickling Homily XVI ends with a description of Hell, derived ultimately from the Visio sancti Pauli; the closest parallels are with a ninth-century, Latin version of the Visio known as Redaction XI,[13] of Insular and probably Irish origin.