St. Erkenwald (poem)

St. Erkenwald (poem)

St. Erkenwald is an alliterative poem of the fourteenth century, thought to have been composed in 1386. It has sometimes been attributed to the Pearl poet (or Gawain poet). It takes as its subject Erkenwald, the bishop of London between 675 and 693.

It exists in only one manuscript, MS Harley 2250 in the British Library. The first line in the manuscript begins with a rubricated letter "A" two lines high and line 176 begins with a similar letter "T". The first modern edition was published by HL Savage and Israel Gollancz in 1926. The author is unknown, but there is some evidence it may have been the Pearl Poet, who wrote the poems Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, among others.