The poem's themes revolve around the complex history of Britain and England, and the possibility in fourteenth-century Christian thought of the salvation of virtuous pagans.
[6] The document was discovered in 1757 by Thomas Percy; the manuscript had been in the possession of Sir Humphrey Pitt of Balcony House, Shifnal, and Priorslee, Shropshire.
It is possible the plot of the poem is a development of an (in its time) well-known story relating to the discovery of the head of a dead judge and John de Beromyarde, a famous Dominican of the later 1300s; a source being Summa Praedicantum.
[20] St Erkenwald's story appears to come in two distinct sections, matching the division made by large initials in the surviving manuscript, noted above.
During the construction of St Paul's Cathedral in London on the site of a former pagan temple, a mysterious tomb is uncovered.
Adorned with gargoyles and made of grey marble, the tomb is inscribed with a series of golden characters, but no scholar is able to decipher them.
After Erkenwald prays, hoping to learn the identity of the body, and performs a mass, a "goste-lyfe" animates the corpse, and it begins to reply to his questions.
He was given royal attire in his burial to honour his impartial rulings throughout his time as a judge, and after his death God preserved his clothing and his body on account of his righteousness.
The story of Trajan was popular, and can, for example, be found in Langland's Piers Plowman and in an early commentary on Dante's Divine Comedy.
[24][25] In Langland's version of the Trajan story Trajan was saved simply by Gregory's desires and weeping, but in the Dante-commentary tradition the specific sacrament of baptism was necessary; by describing a specific baptism, St Erkenwald aligns itself more closely with this second view on the question of the salvation of righteous pagans.
[26] Past scholarship agrees that the language of the circa 1477 manuscript copy of St Erkenwald can be placed somewhere in the north-west Midlands.
At London in Englond noȝt full long [time] Sythen Crist suffrid on crosse and Cristendome stablyd, Ther was a byschop in þat burgh, blessyd and sacryd; Saynt Erkenwolde as I hope þat holy mon hatte.
In his time in that town the greatest temple Was drawn down, that one part of it, to dedicate a new one, For it had been heathen in Hengest's days When the Saxons hostilely had come there.
And perverted (led astray) all the people that dwelled in that place; Then was this realm renegade (i.e. pagan) many rebellious years.