Sin, Syntax, and Synonyms: Rhetorical Style and Structure in Vercelli Homily X

Samantha Zacher, Vassar College

The twenty-three homilies contained in the so-called Vercelli Book (Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare CXVII) have long been recognized as comprising one of the most important collections of Old English anonymous prose, illustrating a wide range of homiletic themes and rhetorical techniques. While much of the critical focus has been on the six poems that survive embedded within this homiletic corpus, the influence of vernacular poetic style on the rhetoric of the homilies themselves has not been systematically addressed. Vercelli Homily X is particularly suitable for this kind of study, as a number of preliminary studies have shown: it shares a concern for patterns of repetition and sound-play with many vernacular Old English poems, including, notably, several of those contained in the Vercelli Book itself. Furthermore, as this paper seeks to show, such compositional techniques and rhetorical strategies are used in Vercelli X to render a range of Latin sources into a style consistent with that found in the inherited vernacular poetic tradition.