Hagiography in Anglo-Saxon England: Adopting and Adapting Saints' Lives into Old English Prose (c. 950-1150)

Loredana Lazzari, Patrizia Lendinara, Claudia Di Sciacca (eds)

Pages: 589 p.
Size:165 x 240 mm
Illustrations:10 b/w, 3 col.

Language(s):English
Publication Year:2014

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Review(s)

"The collection as a whole is noteworthy for its breadth of scope and for the meticulous, abundantly footnoted source studies carried out by the contributors. Any scholar of Anglo-Saxon hagiography might benefit as much from the footnotes as from the essays themselves. (...) the volume will be useful to scholars and students of Anglo-Saxon hagiography, literature, history, religious culture, and manuscript studies." (Rhonda L. McDaniel, in Peritia 26, 2015, p. 267-269)

"Anglo-Saxon prose hagiography, especially anonymous and Anglo-Latin texts, has been understudied and undervalued for too long. Fortunately, the tide is beginning to turn, as evidenced by this new collection, and the further research that this work will no doubt enable." (Robin Norris, in Speculum, 91/3, 2016, p. 812)

" (...) resulta un trabajo unitario y coherente, cuya amplitud de perspectivas redunda en la riqueza de sus conclusiones y en la comprensión total de los textos estudiados. (...) En suma, estamos ante una obra valiosa, donde la erudición y la profundidad de los artículos dan lugar a innovadoras aportaciones en el campo tratado." (Gloria Torres Asensio, in: Anuario de Estudios Medievales, 46/2, julio-diciembre 2016, p. 1053-1056)

Summary

This volume gathers fourteen new essays devoted to Old English prose saints’ lives from the late Anglo-Saxon period. Moving from diverse methodological approaches and building on the most recent developments in primary and secondary scholarship, the contributions comprehensively consider the texts and contexts of the vernacular hagiographic output both by Ælfric, the major hagiographer of his day, and by anonymous authors. By means of a comprehensive scrutiny of the Latin source-texts, including the often neglected Vitas Patrum, as well as of both the historical and manuscript context, this collection contributes to outline the late Anglo-Saxon sanctorale and to advance our knowledge of the literary culture and intellectual history of pre-Conquest England and beyond.

Contributors:
Roberta Bassi, Rolf H. Bremmer Jr., Claudio Cataldi, Catherine Cubitt, Giuseppe D. De Bonis, Maria Caterina De Bonis, Claudia Di Sciacca, Concetta Giliberto, Joyce Hill, Susan Irvine, Loredana Lazzari, Patrizia Lendinara, Rosalind Love, Winfried Rudolf.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

HAGIOGRAPHY IN LATE ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND: ÆLFRIC OF EYNSHAM AND THE LIVES OF SAINTS

Joyce HILL (University of Leeds), The Context of Ælfric’s Saints’ Lives
Loredana LAZZARI (LUMSA, Roma), Kingship and Sainthood in Ælfric: Oswald and Edmund
Susan IRVINE (University College London), Hanging by a Thread: Ælfric’s Saints’ Lives and the hengen
Rolf Bremmer (University of Leiden), Honour and Shame in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints

BACK TO THE ROOTS OF CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM: ADOPTING AND ADAPTING THE VITAS PATRUM

Claudia DI SCIACCA (University of Udine), «concupita, quaesita, ac petita solitudinis secreta»: The Desert Ideal in Bede’s Vita S. Cuthberti and Ælfric’s Life of St Cuthbert
Winfried Rudolf (University of Göttingen), The Selection and Revision of Verba Seniorum in Worcester, Cathedral Library, F.48

ANGLO-SAXON HAGIOGRAPHY: TEXTS AND CONTEXTS

Concetta Giliberto (University of Palermo), The Descensus ad inferos in the Old English Prose Life of St Guthlac and Vercelli Homily xxiii
Giuseppe D. De Bonis (University of Neaples ‘L’Orientale’), The Birth of Saint John the Baptist: a Source Comparison between Blickling homily xiv and Ælfric’s Catholic Homily I.25
Claudio Cataldi (University of Palermo), St Andrew in the Old English Homiletic Tradition
Patrizia Lendinara (University of Palermo), Forgotten Missionaries
Maria Caterina De Bonis (University of Potenza), An Unfinished Drawing of St Benedict in a Neglected Manuscript of the Regula Sancti Benedicti (Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.2.30)
Catherine Cubitt (University of York), Reading 10-11th Century Benedictine Hagiography against the Politics of the Reign of Æthelred

THE POST-CONQUEST LEGACY OF ANGLO-SAXON HAGIOGRAPHY

Rosalind Love (University of Cambridge), Folcard of Saint-Bertin and the Anglo-Saxon Saints at Thorney
Roberta Bassi (Université Stendhal - Grenoble 3), St Oswald in Early English Chronicles and Narratives