Abstract
The Latin poem Vita sancti AEdwardi uersifice (BHL 2425), extant in Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, ms. 153/203 and Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, ms. Reg. 489, is the only unpublished biography of St. Edward the Confessor. Written in elegiac couplets (4102 lines) and dedicated to Laurence, abbot of Westminster, the poem is mainly based on Aelred of Rievaulx’s Vita sancti AEdwardi regis et Confessoris, a prose biography written in 1163 and dedicated to King Henry II.This paper presents the manuscript tradition, suggests a dating and discusses the main original elements in the narration. It also analyzes some aspects of the modus operandi of the anonymous author in order to illustrate the literary and historical value of this text.
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