The Life of Anthony of Padua in Cambridge, Pembroke MS 277

Abstract

Cambridge, Pembroke College, MS 277, one of the earliest English manuscripts of the Legenda Aurea, contains an addendum of Latin saints' lives, which with only one exception are unique to the main textual traditions of the Legenda Aurea. Although most of these lives deal with figures of importance to Anglo-Saxon England, the longest life and, incidentally that which is placed in the centre of the addendum, is that of the Franciscan saint, Anthony of Padua. This life is composed of three main sources, which have been skillfully interwoven and abridged: the so-called Legenda Raymundina (BHL 594), Legenda secunda (BHL 592), and an account of the martyrdom of five Franciscans in Morocco (BHL 1169a). A close version of the account of the Franciscan martyrs is also found in London, British Library, Cotton MS Nero A.IX, where a rubric indicates that it has been excerpted from a life of Anthony of Padua. While it is very unlikely that the Pembroke life is a version of this original life of Anthony, it does exhibit a second witness to the account of the Franciscan martyrs and provides an example of a unique life of Anthony composed in fourteenth-century England. The Pembroke life of Anthony of Padua is edited here for the first time.