John of Bridlington's Prophecy: A New Look

• Published in: Speculum Vol. 63; no. 3; pp. 596 - 613
• Main Author: Rigg, A. G.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01-07-1988; The Medieval Academy of America; Medieval Academy of America; Mediaeval Academy of America
• Subjects: Allusion; Authorship attribution; Cryptograms; Diverse points; English speaking literatures; French speaking and English speaking literatures; Friars; Great Britain. Ireland; Heirs; History and sciences of litterature; History of literature; Kings; Middle Ages; Poetry; Prophecy; Rhyme; War
• ISSN: 0038-7134; 2040-8072
• DOI: 10.2307/2852636

The political prophecy ascribed to John of Bridlington (died 1379) consists of twenty-nine poems, each about twenty to thirty lines long in rhyming hexameters; in four manuscripts it is accompanied by a prose commentary, which explains the cryptic codes and interprets the prophecies.1 The Commentary is “signed” in a cryptogram “Ergom,” that is, John Ergom (Erghom, Erghome), an Austin friar of the priory at York. Recent scholarly opinion has generally held that the attribution to (St.) John of Bridlington, John Thwenge, is a late fiction, as contemporaries would not attribute a “prophecy” to someone who had manifestly witnessed the events that he claimed to foretell; and that Ergom himself was the author of both the Prophecy and the Commentary. Only Paul Meyvaert has dissented from the second view, arguing that Ergom did not make use of the attribution to “Robert the Scribe,” which was attached to the poem in its earliest version; Meyvaert also notes that Ergom's version of the Prophecy lacked verses found in other manuscripts and that Ergom did not have the command of vocabulary shown by the original author. The most recent investigator, Michael J. Curley, has presented both sides of the argument judiciously; in favor of Ergom's authorship he draws attention to the commentator's interpretative skill, which, he argues, could only have come from an author's knowledge of the meaning of the poem.