MUSPILLI. - Title of a poetic fragment of 105 alliterative verses, in the 9th-century Bavarian dialect, from the monastery of St. Emmeram in Regensburg, and so called, following the example of J. A. Schmeller, who was its first editor in 1832, from the word muspille which occurs in the 57th verse of the fragment in the sense of "end of the world," "Last Judgment."
The brief composition, which is supposed to have been transcribed by the hand of Louis the German himself, because it was found on the blank pages of a Latin codex that belonged to him, describes, in a prophetic tone and with striking colors, the fate of souls after death, the struggle of the celestial and infernal spirits for possession of the soul, and the duel of Elijah with the Antichrist, into which are interwoven several admonitions and counsels of piety. It is certainly the work of a layman, as appears from a knowledge of the doctrine of the Church that is not always perfect, and it has little artistic merit, although at times a certain vividness of description is noticeable in it and here and there some beautiful poetic image is to be admired. It must, however, have been quite well known in its time if Otfrid of Weissenburg (v.) inserted an entire verse of it (the 14th) in his Book of the Gospels. Since in the content of the fragment certain concordances with Norse mythology are evident, as it came to be artistically developed in the books of the Edda (v.) and particularly in the description of the ragnarök ("twilight of the gods"; v. GERMANI, RELIGIONE dèi), some scholars in the past believed they could trace in it the eschatological concepts of Germanic paganism, identifying Elijah with Odin and the Antichrist with the wolf Fenrir. Today, however, all agree in holding that those elements — except perhaps the word m. — have their root solely in Christian traditions, which are also the foundation of the Eddic ekpyrosis, although in some parts freely renewed.
Bibliography3 works
Bruno Vignola