Between Fragment and Compilation: A Virgin’s Vision of the Afterlife

Abstract

Vita cuiusdam uirginis, the tale of an unnamed virgin who is granted a vision of heaven and hell, offers a case study of the processes of textual fragmentation and recombination characteristic of late ancient and early medieval literary practice. At the same time, it allows exploration of the challenges and opportunities that compilational reading presents. Subtly different interpretations are evoked by the different compilational or macrotextual contexts in which the textual fragment is found, from the Apophthegmata Patrum (where our text appears in Greek, Latin, and Coptic versions of the systematic collection), to an early tenth-century Spanish anthology of late ancient female hagiographies, to the corpus of early medieval afterlife vision literature as represented by works of Valerius of Bierzo. At the same time, the Vita cuisdam uirginis itself takes on a compilational character, as fragments from the late ancient Breviarium in Psalmos as well as Isidore’s Synonyma are incorporated into the text. A Latin critical edition and English translation of the text are appended. The Latin edition is based on two tenth-century Spanish manuscripts, Escorial a.II.9 and Paris B.N. n.a.lat. 2178.