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Revision as of 20:36, 19 September 2004 by Geogre (talk | contribs) (clarifying & new cat)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Cursor Mundi, meaning "runner of the world", is the name of a lengthy (around 30,000 lines) religious history written around 1300 CE. It was extremely popular in its time. The author was an anonymous cleric.
The poem, written in early Middle English, retells the history of the world as described in the Christian Bible, with legendary material included. It contains nearly 30,000 lines of eight-syllable couplets. The work is linguistically important as a solid record of the Midlands English dialect of the era, and it is therefore the most-often quoted single work in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Cursor Mundi interpolates material from hagiographic sources, including matter from The Golden Legend, various Latin legendary cycles, among others. For example, its description of the origins of the tree of the cross incorporates two different legendary sources.
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