Middle English Translation Research Articles

Middle English Versions of “Criste qui lux es et dies”

Judged by its survival in manuscripts, the most popular Latin hymn in Middle English translations was “Criste qui lux es et dies.” Challenged only by “Ave Maris stella” in six versions, and trailed by three hymns extant in three MSS. each (“Alma redemptoris mater,” “Hostis Herodes impie,” and “Vexilla regis prodeunt”), this piece is found in eight different versions, all except one of the fifteenth century:

"A Ladder of Foure Ronges by the Whiche Men mowe wele clyme to Heven." A Study of the Prose Style of a Middle English Translation

"A Ladder of Foure Ronges by the Whiche Men mowe wele clyme to Heven." A Study of the Prose Style of a Middle English Translation

Five New Gretham Sermons and the Middle English Mirrur

Among the treasures in the Henry E. Huntington Library is a copy of Robert de Gretham's Le miroir, ou les évangiles des domnées, which has some importance for the Anglo-Norman original, and more for the relationship of the Miroir to the Middle English translation, known as the Mirrur. The manuscript (now HM 903) has been known for some time, but it was not listed by Vising or Russell nor employed by Miss Aitken in her extracts from the Miroir. It is bound with a copy of the Manuel des Pechiez, so that it occupies folios 68-205 of the present manuscript book. The copy is fragmentary at the beginning and accordingly was misbound, with a rubric and an illumination at the top of what appeared to be the first folio; the proper sequence of folios is 140-205, 68-139.