Women of the Gilte Legende: A Selection of Middle English Saints Lives (review)

Abstract

226 Reviews Parergon 21.1 (2004) of Anglo-Norse cultural diffusion. Chapter Five examines the evidence presented in sagas and Anglo-Saxon writers on mutual intelligibility. The significant observation is made that although saga authors often explain how their heroes were able to communicate with other groups, like the Irish and Wends, no such explanations are to be found with English. The obvious, but questionable, argument from silence here is that communication presented little difficulty. In Chapter Six, Townend, reviewing his arguments on intelligibility and English integration of ON loans, presents his conclusion that Late Anglo-Saxon England was a bilingual society. While this is perhaps going too far, Townend’s book in many respects offers the best explanation of some of the existing evidence, though the discussion of Anglo-Norse intelligibility throughout remains, perhaps necessarily, simplistic; some engagement with the complexities of mutual intelligibility, like cross-linguistic intelligibility not always being equal, would have been welcome. Nevertheless, the book is a thought-provoking study of use to anyone with an interest in Anglo-Norse contact in the Viking Age. Shane Spiteri and Antoinette Schapper School of Humanities (History) The University of Western Australia Tracy, Larissa, Women of the Gilte Legende: A Selection of Middle English Saints Lives (Library of Medieval Women), Cambridge, D.S. Brewer, 2003; cloth; pp. 149; RRP £35/US$60; ISBN 0859917711. This handy volume, part of the Library of Medieval Women series, includes a modern English translation of 11 of the female saints’ lives from the Middle English collection known as the Gilte Legende, as well as a contextualising introduction, notes, annotated bibliography, and an interpretative essay on the social function of these hagiographic texts. This book is particularly welcome in presenting to students and nonspecialists a sample of hagiography from this late-14th or early-15th century adapted translation of the highly influential Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine (late-13th century), with some material sourced elsewhere. Tracy’s Introduction provides information on both these texts, as well as a broader consideration of the composition of female saints’ lives, and the types into which they may be sorted. Tracy’s collection goes beyond the most common of these types, the ‘holy virgin’ (represented here by the vitae of St Christina, St Dorothy Reviews 227 Parergon 21.1 (2004) and St Margaret of Antioch), to include the ‘holy mother’ (St Paula and St Elizabeth of Hungary); the ‘repentant sinner’ (Mary Magdalene and St Thais); and the ‘holy transvestites’ (St Theodora, St Pelagia, St Margaret Pelagia, and St Marina). Each vita is preceded by a short discussion of the historicity and immediate source/s of the translated text and the development of the saint’s cult. Brief footnotes on textual and contextual matters accompany the vitae. The translations are accessible and fluent, usefully explicated by the judicious notes. Less transparent are Tracy’s selection criteria for the vitae (eleven out of thirty female vitae in the Gilte Legende), beyond providing a ‘diverse selection of legends’ (p. 3). Ideally, she would have indicated what other vitae (especially those treating male saints) appear in the full collection. Given the agenda of the series in which this book appears, as well as its own interest in models of female independence, it is understandable that male hagiography is not the focus of the collection. The latter might have been mentioned briefly, though, to provide balance and context for those vitae that are included, especially given Tracy’s interest in the holy transvestites (four of the five such vitae of the Gilte Legende have been included in this selection). In order to validate her arguments about gendered modelling in the vitae and how this might have influenced those women who read them, Tracy ought to have at least acknowledged those features of her texts not determined by gender and not exclusive to this collection, but common to a wider range of hagiography: e.g. the over-representation of high social status among subjects; the almost universal presence of miracles; and most importantly, saints’ characteristic mastery of verbal rhetoric and the importance of direct speech and argument in vitae. The interpretive essay which follows the eleven vitae is entitled ‘Silence and Speech...