L’Histoire évangélique du Leabhar Breac : à propos des sections 10‑13

Abstract

The Gospel History from Leabhar Breac : About sections 10 to 13. The Leabhar Breac manuscript, dated 1430, is the best witness for a compiled Middle Irish Biblical History, made of a prose version of Saltair na Rann (for the Old Testament) and of a gathering of fourteen tracts (for the New Testament), most of them derived from apocryphal texts, and forming what is now labelled the Gospel History. This contribution proposes an analysis of four of the last five, still unedited, tracts. Number 10 and 13 focus on dated events which are milestones in chronologies : “Jesus’ Baptism” and “Jesus’ First Sermon”. The other tracts deal with the Twelve Apostles (their origin, history and death) and the Seventy-Two Disciples. This study aims at discerning the main sources, and the Hiberno-Latin treatises written on the same subjects. Though relying mainly on apocryphal sources, the compilation maintains several times it has observed a ban : some apocrypha such as the Infancy Gospels (the Pseudo-Thomas Gospel) have been excluded, and the compilator forbids himself to translate the Gospel text. An appendix gives the text of tracts 10 and 11 with a French translation.