Guida spirituale e interferenze omiletiche nei Precepts dell'Exeter Book

The short poem called Precepts by convention, preserved in the Exeter Book of Old English poetry, has long been almost ignored by critics. The modern title itself points to the poem’s ultimately negative evaluation by most scholars, referring directly to its construction as a numbered list of grouped ethical instructions given by a father to his son, in a word about how to tell good from evil behaviour. Such apparently “uninspired series of admonitions” or “platitudes” (according to Greenfield’s often quoted definition) has received new critical attention in more recent years, particularly within the wider perspective of (and scholarly debate about) wisdom poetry (see especially Hansen 1988, Larrington 1993, and Drout 2006), but also with a focus on the historical-cultural context of the Benedictine Reform in England and on the possible monastic background of its composition (see especially McEntire 1990, Ralby 2010, and again Drout 2006, 2007). All analytical readings of Precepts, up to Stanley’s recent freestanding edition (2018), agree that the poem is a Christian religious poem, rooted in bookish tradition (Neidorf 2021 being the only remarkable exception), but interpretations of single words or passages, and suggested sources or analogues may vary significantly. The purpose of the present article is to offer a number of new analytical cues, in order both to re-read some of the lexical or textual points in a different light, and to suggest that the Old English author made full use of a vast and composite vernacular prose tradition, including Christian regulatory, instructive-educational and homiletic literature. Analysis will corroborate the view that the paternal guide in Precepts is properly a spiritual father in a monastic context, endeavouring to pass over his teachings to his fictitious spiritual son, in a time when the world is believed to be hastening to its end and a true Christian behaviour proves as the only chance to be safe in the life to come.