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Coursor Mundi, i.e. the Runner of the World, is a poem of nearly 30.000 lines in octosyllabic couplets, only in the Passion of Christ the author selects a different pattern of metre and rhyme. As the title suggests, the poem is a sort of a universal history structured according to the concept of the seven ages of the world.

  • Creation - Noah
  • Deluge - Tower of Babel
  • Abraham - Saul
  • David - Babylonian Captivity
  • Life of Mary - Christ's Batism
  • Christ's Baptism - Finding of the Cross
  • Antichrist - Doomsday - Paradise

The author explicitly addresses a local Northern lay audience whose desire to read and listen to romances and stories of love and paramours he tries to redirect to the life of Christ and to the love of the Virgin Mary. The author must have been a well-educated man as he draws on a huge number of Latin and French sources, such as Bede, Isidor of Seville, Peter Comestor, Robert Grosseteste, and many others.

Cursor Mundi
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