Synonyms and Lexical Substitutions in Texts of the Old English Life of Saint Mary of Egypt

Abstract

ABSTRACT Among the unusually high number of variants in the three surviving texts of the Old English Life of Saint Mary of Egypt are many instances in which a scribe has changed an inherited reading by substituting one word for another. Many of the substitutions are the result of error or unconscious scribal preference but this article demonstrates that all three texts of the Old English Life, which is of likely Anglian origin, also reveal a pattern of deliberate rewording. This rewording arises from a desire to regularise and “improve” the language of the Life, bringing it more into line with the norms of Late West Saxon, the literary language generally in use in the period when our scribes were at work. No such pattern of substitution is evident in other hagiographical texts in the same manuscripts. The Life of Saint Mary of Egypt was clearly viewed by compilers of late Anglo-Saxon hagiographical manuscripts as a work worthy of inclusion but, unlike other lives, as one in need of some linguistic revision to make it fit in with accepted literary standards.