St Samson of Dol and the Earliest History of Brittany, Cornwall and Wales, ed. Lynette Olson

Abstract

This collection of essays arises from a symposium on the First Life of St Samson of Dol held at the University of Sydney in 2013. As the editor, Lynette Olson, explains in her introductory chapter, the symposium was prompted by two developments: the publication of Pierre Flobert’s critical edition and translation of the text in 1997, and the appearance of an important article on the subject by Richard Sowerby in the journal Francia in 2011. The First Life of St Samson, written at the saint’s foundation of Dol in the north of Brittany, is the most substantial written source for Brittany, Cornwall and Wales surviving from the period between Gildas’s sixth-century De excidio Britonum and ninth-century works such as the Historia Brittonum and Wrdisten’s Life of St Winwoloe. However, fundamental questions surrounding the work’s purpose, date and relationship with its oral and written sources remain hotly disputed. The present volume consists of eight chapters, including the editor’s introduction. The rationale behind the ordering of the chapters is not entirely clear. Essential discussion of the background of the saint and his contemporaries in the sixth century may be found in Chapters Five (Ian Wood) and Seven (Jonathan Wooding). Wood investigates the only contemporary historical source for St Samson, the record of the Council of Paris (which Wood would date specifically to 561), and he places Samson’s continental career in context by comparing him with Columbanus and the latter’s various British followers. Wooding skilfully employs the exiguous records for early British monasticism to show that the First Life of St Samson’s treatment of monastic practice can be understood within the context of early debates about asceticism, deference towards authority, and pastoral responsibility. The posthumous cult of St Samson in Wales and Cornwall comes into view in Chapters Two (Richard Sowerby) and Eight (Karen Jankulak). Sowerby, in what is probably the most original study in the volume, draws attention to the Life’s considerable interest in the activities of Samson’s near relations. It is suggested that Samson’s relatives may have encouraged an early cult of Samson in order to defend their own continuing positions of authority in monasteries associated with Samson, and that this same impulse may have resulted in the production of the First Life’s primary written source (called the Vita primigenia throughout the volume), which Sowerby maintains was written in Cornwall. Jankulak addresses the question of Samson’s cult in Wales using place-names and dedications, but finds the evidence wanting. Nonetheless, by examining the implications of this, she makes important observations about the processes that initiated and prolonged the commemoration of saints in the early Middle Ages. Chapters Three (Joseph-Claude Poulin), Four (Caroline Brett) and Six (Constant Mews) address the textual questions surrounding the Life more directly. Poulin reviews the debate about the text’s date and its relationship with the Vita primigenia, and eventually decides that the text belongs to the late eighth century on account of its apparent use of two texts that cannot be shown to have circulated widely before the middle of the eighth century. Brett revisits the observation that many of the episodes in the First Life of St Samson seem to be modelled on Venantius Fortunatus’ Life of St Paternus of Avranches, and she points out that this complicates Sowerby’s view about the existence of an earlier Cornish Life of St Samson. She then proceeds to trace the intertwined fortunes of the cults of SS Samson and Paternus as far as the twelfth century. Finally, Mews compares the Life’s stance on liturgical practice with the views espoused in the tract Ratio de cursus, which sought to justify existing Irish and Gallican liturgical practices in the face of reforming pressure from Rome. The differences in standpoint detected by Mews are explained in terms of chronology, the Life reflecting more closely the views of the late seventh century and the Ratio those of the mid-eighth.