The Manuscript Remains of the Abbess-Saints of Barking Abbey

Abstract

In the late eleventh century, the itinerant Flemish Benedictine monk, Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, assembled a dossier of Latin saints’ Lives, liturgical texts, and chronicled events for the community of Benedictine nuns at Barking Abbey in Essex, England, at the behest of the reigning abbess, Ælfgifu. This dossier is the most significant and extensive collection of original texts written for a community of religious women in England during the Middle Ages. It definitely included a Life of Æthelburh, Barking’s late seventh-century founder and first abbess; a set of Matins Lessons for her successor, Hildelith; a Life of Wulfhild, the late tenth-century abbess; a set of Matins Lessons and a longer account of Ælfgifu’s first Translation of the three saints’ relics; and a report of a vision that Ælfgifu received seven years after the first Translation, authorizing a second Translation of the saints’ relics into the new abbey church. Only three manuscripts-Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS 176 (E.5.28); Cardiff, Public Library, MS 1.381; and Gotha, Forschungs- und Landesbibliothek, MS Memb. I.81-still preserve Goscelin’s dossier of texts for Barking. Through paleographical, codicological, and textual analysis of these manuscripts, this article addresses questions concerning the (re)productions and uses of Goscelin’s dossier, giving special consideration to the following features: the four concluding chapters of the Life of St. Æthelburh missing from all three manuscripts, the identification of the scribal hands in TCD 176 and Cardiff 1.381, the booklet structure of these two manuscripts, and their textual variants. Studying these features of the manuscripts in detail has significant implications for tracing the provenances of TCD 176 and Cardiff 1.381 back to Barking, establishing their textual relationship, recovering their communal and liturgical uses in and outside of the abbey, and possibly even identifying Goscelin’s own scribal hand at work in TCD 176.