Editions of Two Legends of St Botulph and St Birinus Taken from the South English Legendary
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Editions of two Legends of St Botulph and St Birinus taken from the South English Legendary Including an explanatory introduction St Birinus St Botulph August 2006 By: Jasmijn van Huis (0241733) Student of the University of Utrecht Supervised by: Erik Kooper & Thea Summerfield of the Department of English Studies List of Contents Preface --------------------------------------------------------------------- page 1 Part One: Introduction to the Editions The South English Legendary ------------------------------------------ page 2 HISTORY Brief history of Britain before the seventh century ---------------- page3 The political structure of the seventh century----------------------- page5 Christianity in England ------------------------------------------------- page6 Early monasticism and the Benedictine rule ------------------------ page8 Saint Botulph ------------------------------------------------------------- page9 Saint Birinus -------------------------------------------------------------- page15 Part Two: About the Editions The Vernon manuscript: Bodl. 3938-42 ------------------------------ page19 Bodl. 779------------------------------------------------------------------- page20 Textual note --------------------------------------------------------------- page 21 Works cited --------------------------------------------------------------- page24 Sources for the illustrations -------------------------------------------- page26 THE EDITIONS APPENDICES Preface At the beginning of this academic year I followed a module at the University of Utrecht about how to make an edition of a late medieval text. I liked doing this so much that I decided to choose this module as a basis for my dissertation. Together with my lecturer, and later my supervisor, Erik Kooper, I finally found two short texts that had never been published before and that would make a real challenge for me. The texts came from the South English Legendary and were the lives of the relatively unknown saints Botulph and Birinus. I used two manuscripts to make the edition for St Botulph, namely Bodl. 779 and Bodl. 3938-42. For the life of St Birinus I used just Bodl. 779. After the transcriptions were made and the wordlist and the notes had been inserted it was time to make an introduction for the two stories. Since both saints are not well known and thus not well documented it took me a considerable amount of effort to find reliable information about them. Unfortunately I have not been able to acquire all the sources I wanted but, on the other hand, I also found sources which I did not use but which might be interesting for other people. Both categories will be listed at the end of this dissertation. I divided my dissertation into two parts. Firstly, there is the introduction which gives background information about almost every aspect of the two saints’ lives and which should help the reader to place the editions in part two in a wider perspective. The editions in part two are preceded by descriptions of the manuscripts and a ‘Textual Note’ which provides information on some major changes I made to the original text in an attempt to make it easier to read. Still, I must warn that, despite of the extra help and despite of the fact that the introduction is accessible to a wide audience, the editions were specifically made for an audience which is experienced in reading Middle English texts. For anyone interested in examining the original pages of the manuscripts on which the two saint’s legends are written, a photocopy of them can be found in appendices C, D and E. A note must be made here that the names of both saints can be spelled in multiple ways but that, for this dissertation, I eventually chose to use the two spellings I came across in my sources most frequently. Now it only rests on me to say that I hope you will enjoy reading this dissertation as much as I enjoyed working on it. Jasmijn van Huis 1 Part one: introduction to the editions The South English Legendary The stories of St Botulph and St Birinus which were used for the edition were both taken from the South English Legendary, which is a medieval collection of saints’ lives and homiletic writings. Early in the Middle Ages saints’ lives circulated individually in the form of a codicological unit called a libellus. Their purpose was not only to honour a particular saint but also to instruct the audience on how to lead an exemplary life. By the middle of the eight century people started to bind together these separate libelli, thus forming collections that started small but gradually grew into elaborate books. The libelli were usually arranged in calendrical order according to the feast day of the saints, but sometimes according to ecclesiastical hierarchy. 1 These collections are called passionales or legendaries and the SEL is a typical example of one. The SEL was probably one of the most popular texts in the fourteenth and fifteenth century. This conclusion can be drawn by looking at the number of manuscripts that still exist and the large area in the Midlands and southern England in which they were distributed. The date of the earliest SEL manuscript is usually set around the year 1300. What is certain is that the earliest compilations must have been made after the year 1254 because this was the year in which Peter of Verona, whose vita is part of the major SEL manuscripts, was canonised. The collection probably originated in western England because here the highest concentration of early SEL manuscripts was found. Of the SEL there are still 25 major manuscripts, 19 fragments and 18 miscellanies with SEL items in them. Another four manuscripts are believed to be lost. Apart from what is in the legends of the SEL there is hardly any information about the collection. Most studies have focussed on the individual texts in the collection but not on the collection as a whole.2 Suggestions as to the author, the sources and the purpose of the SEL are all conjectural. What makes investigation of the SEL especially difficult is that no two manuscripts are the same. The collection was open to addition, omission and reordering by scribes. If they wanted to add the story of a local saint there was no problem, which results in there being some unusual contributions to the SEL.3 Because of the many differences between the manuscripts it is also difficult to determine the sources used to compile the original SEL. Many unsatisfactory suggestions have been made. Its structure was probably inspired by earlier breviaries but the separate texts of 1 Rosalind C. Love, ed., Three Eleventh-Century Anglo-Latin Saints’ Lives, (Oxford :Clarendon Press, 1996), pp.xiii-xiv. 2 Manfred Görlach, The Textual Tradition of the South English Legendary, (Leeds :Leeds texts and monographs, 1974), pp. viii-2. 3 Burke J. Severs, ed., A Manual of Writings in Middle English, (Hamden: Archon Books, 1970), pp. 410-39. 2 early SEL compilations do not seem to come from one source. Rather it seems that the individual texts were taken from a large variety of sources. One influence on the SEL that cannot go unnoticed is Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda Aurea. However, as Görlach argues, the earliest SEL manuscripts show hardly any traces of the Legenda Aurea, which suggests that the SEL was influenced by it only at a later stage. The only thing that can be said about the author is that this person probably was in minor orders since many of the probable source materials are in Latin. The possibility of a monk has been put forward because monks had easy access to large libraries. However, the simple language and the popular treatment of the texts suggest that the SEL was directed at the still relatively unlearned laity. Why would an established monk make a text for the laity if he hardly has contact with them? If the author would have been a monk he would more likely have been a travelling and preaching friar. The popular style of the SEL suggests the work of a preacher. However, many texts are quite long and unsuitable for a preacher to work with and some texts in the SEL openly criticise priests. The single name ‘The South English Legendary’ for all these similar but different manuscripts suggest homogeneity. However, it is important to remember that this name was only given to the group quite recently by its editors and that contemporaries of the SEL would probably not have seen it as a fixed group.4 Thus the texts of the legends about St Botulph and St Birinus, the subject of this paper, were clearly added later and occur only in a few manuscripts. History Next is a historical overview to give a better idea of what the world that St Birinus and St Botulph lived and worked in was like and how it developed. Brief History of Britain before the Seventh Century Very little is known about the earliest inhabitants of the British Isles. It seems that after 800 BC, Celtic tribes settled in Britain and mixed with the original inhabitants. Then, in 55 BC, the Roman general Julius Ceasar landed in Britain on an expedition, fought and won a battle against the natives but left afterwards. Only in 43 AD did the Romans return under the 4 Anne B. Thompson, Everyday Saints and the Art of Narrative in the South English Legendary, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 189-197. These pages rely heavily on Görlach’s Textual Tradition of the SEL. 3 leadership of Emperor Claudius.5 The area that was then conquered was called Britannia and covered large parts of present-day England and Wales and was later extended northwards.6 The Romans never actually governed Britannia directly but used the Celtic aristocracy to do this, encouraging them to adopt Roman dress and speech. A road network was built and Roman landowners built villas. The Roman occupation brought a division between the Celtic tribes under Roman rule, namely the Britons in England and Wales, and the independent Celtic tribes in Scotland and Ireland.