Vita Sancti Research Articles

Bridel’s Vita Sancti Ivani and broadsheet on St. Ivan: report on what is almost a new finding

Bridel’s Vita Sancti Ivani and broadsheet on St. Ivan: report on what is almost a new finding

Un vir nobilissimus genere hispano en la Vita del obispo Orencio de Auch

ABSTRACT In the following pages I analyse the fifth passage of The Life of Saint Orientius, bishop of Auch in Novempopulania –Vita sancti Orientius, episcopo Ausciorum in Novempopulania–, of unknown authorship, from a Late Antique diplomatic approach. The text, initially written around the sixth or seventh century, addresses the journey of Orentius, who mediated the release of a Hispanic aristocrat (vir nobilissimus genere, ex Hispaniis) imprisoned in the court of a king, most probably Visigothic, circa 439. The Vita Orientii has attracted relatively modest attention due to its apocryphal character, yet it allows the analysis of Late Antique diplomatic practices. In addition, the imprisonment of a Hispanic nobleman by the Visigoths highlights the increasing Visigothic influence beyond the borders settled in the foedus of 418–419, mostly in the southern Pyrenees area, before the annexation of the Tarraconensis province by Euric's troops after July 472.

CALCULUS IN INSULAR ARTISTIC DESIGN

This essay considers a mode of thought and a tradition of composition inculcated by four Latin writers, the translator of Anatolius of Laodicea’s De ratione paschali (post ad 283, ante ad 402), Evagrius of Antioch’s translation of Athanasius’s Life of Saint Antony (cad 360–74), Jerome’s Biblia Vulgata (ad 382) and Sulpicius Severus’s Vita Sancti Martini (ad 397), based upon the Life of Antony, and his latercus (ad 410), based upon the work of Anatolius, all texts known in these islands during the period from ad 410–25 to the seventh century. A simple calculus of literary composition in the anonymous Lindisfarne Life of Saint Cuthbert, dedicated to Eadfrith bishop of Lindisfarne in ad 698, is exhibited in the iconographic elements of the Evangelists’ portraits in the Lindisfarne Gospels, written and illuminated by Eadfrith. The same calculus is displayed both in the iconographic designs and in the inscriptions in Northumbrian Old English and Latin on the Franks Casket of cad 700 and on the Ruthwell Cross of cad 730–5.

Translating Felix’s Vita sancti Guthlaci into Old English

Based on some of the most recent studies on aesthetic emotions, the purpose of this paper is to examine how aesthetic concepts and aesthetic experience are translated and adapted from Felix’s Vita sancti Guthlaci into Old English prose. Looking into the Old English terms from the lexical domains of beauty and aesthetic pleasure, this paper highlights very specific translation practices on the part of, especially, an Old English author, who implements an additional aesthetic dimension that is not generally found in the Latin source. This paper highlights an apparent hybridity between the cognitive and the sensory in these literary texts, and it also stresses how one of these authors in particular frequently uses sensory evaluations to describe the complex and abstract ideas that are typical of the hagiographical genre.

Analogical Perspectives on the Comparison between Vǫlundr and Daedalus

Analogical Perspectives on the Comparison between Vǫlundr and Daedalus

Saint King Oswald of Northumbria: Overlord or Imperator? A Very Peculiar Ancestor

In the documentation produced by the English monarchy during the tenth century the Latin title imperator surprisingly appears, but it is not the first time that this title has been associated with an insular king. In Adomnán of Iona's Vita sancti Columbae (c.700), St. Oswald king of Northumbria appears as totius Britanniae imperator. Oswald, one of seven kings—successively called bretwaldas in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle—who would have enjoyed a certain overlordship above other kingdoms of the island, could be the missing link connecting the use of the title imperator in the eighth and in the tenth centuries. Nevertheless, a closer view on the Oswald figure points out how he was remembered and worshipped more as a saint-overlord than as an emperor. Indeed, we can distinguish two different types of representation of the Northumbrian king’s authority: the first one proposed by Adomnán (emperor of Britain) and the second proposed by Bede (saintoverlord). In this article I show how the Bedian model had a greater diffusion than the Adomnán model in England in the following centuries, thanks to the cult of Oswald as a saint. This suggests that there was no direct link between the use of imperator in Adomnán and that in the tenth-century charters; they were two different manifestations of “imperiality.”

A landscape of words. Ireland, Britain and the poetics of space, 700–1250 by Amy Mulligan

Reviewed by: A landscape of words. Ireland, Britain and the poetics of space, 700–1250 by Amy Mulligan A. Joseph McMullen (bio) Amy Mulligan, A landscape of words. Ireland, Britain and the poetics of space, 700–1250. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019. ISBN 978-1-5261-4110-1. xii + 251 pages. $120 (hardcover), $36.95 (paperback). The field of Celtic Studies has had to wait a long time for the next word on the medieval Irish ‘environmental imagination.’ With A landscape of words, however, Amy Mulligan has made that wait more than worth it. This scintillating book persuasively argues for an Irish poetics of space—a deep interconnection between landscape and words at the very core of place-making in the literature from and about medieval Ireland. It is this attention to ‘verbal topographies,’ as well as the various readers and audiences of these works, that separates A landscape of words from other studies. Mulligan digs deeply into a wide range of texts—from immrama to the dindshenchas, from vitae to ethnographies—to tell a new story about a well-known feature of early Irish literature. A landscape of words not only further excavates ‘one of the richest and most complex bodies of medieval topographical writing’ (3), it reveals how central the writing of these literary landscapes was to the poets, authors, and redactors of medieval Ireland. The first two chapters are connected by an interest in journeying and pathfinding. In Chapter 1, Mulligan puts Adomnán’s De locis sanctis and Vita Sancti Columbae in conversation with the Navigatio Sancti Brendani and Immram curaig Maíle Dúin. She explains how Adomnán ‘transmits an embodied, sense-based engagement with the Holy Land’ (26) that allows his audience to inhabit holy sites through their imaginations. This spatial practice is expanded in his Life of Columba, where closer (but potentially dangerous) places can be visited by the Iona community. Mulligan then argues for the presence of similar literary conventions at work in Irish voyage tales. Developing the concept of ‘boat as book’ (42), she examines how the audiences of the Navigatio and immrama might themselves ‘row-about’ in the narratives. Much like how the voyagers [End Page 255] must undertake spiritual journeys before reaching the promised land, readers of these texts can also undergo transformative experiences through contemplation. Chapter 2 moves inland to the Ulster Cycle and the figure of Cú Chulainn, ‘heroic Ireland’s most productive and conscientious place-maker’ (67). Rather than focusing solely on Táin bó Cúailnge, Mulligan considers how Ireland’s most famous hero is entwined with the natural world throughout his heroic biography. She examines, first, his ‘spatial precocity’ (69) in Compert Con Culainn and the Macgnímrada (from the Táin), especially in terms of wayfinding and border crossing/guarding, before considering topographical language and eroticism in Tochmarc Emire. The Táin itself suggests that Cú Chulainn is a successful warrior in large part because of his mastery of placelore. Through and because of this knowledge, Cú Chulainn becomes enmeshed in the landscape: the natural world, in turn, supports him (especially in the form of rivers) and he frequently uses inscriptions on stone and trees to communicate (this focus on textuality returns later in an analysis of Siaburcharpat Con Culaind). Furthermore, in the Táin and Mesca Ulad, the destruction of the landscape asks readers to consider the violence of war. The third chapter offers an important new study on the Dindshenchas Érenn collections of stories dedicated to how places got their names. Though the dindshenchas tales have begun to receive more attention recently, they remain still vastly underappreciated. Mulligan takes great strides in this chapter to rectify that, paying particular attention to the poets of the verse compositions and their audiences. It is also not a surprise that this chapter is at the core of her book, given its focus of the poetics of space via the construction of literary landscapes. Reading these poems as ‘verbalized topographies’ and ‘extensive virtual landscapes’ (110) which encourage a view of ‘landscape as literature and text as territory’ (114), Mulligan argues that the dindshenchas ‘became the national landscape as created, preserved and performed by the...

Angles on a Kingdom: East Anglian Identities from Bede to Ælfric by Joseph Grossi

Reviewed by: Angles on a Kingdom: East Anglian Identities from Bede to Ælfric by Joseph Grossi Timothy Graham Angles on a Kingdom: East Anglian Identities from Bede to Ælfric. By Joseph Grossi. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021. East Anglia—on a map of Britain, the prominent bulge to the northeast of London—has often defined itself as geographically and culturally distinct from the rest of England. Largely flat, it is in part cut off from the Midland region to its west by fenland. Bounded on the north and east by the Wash and the North Sea, it naturally looks to the European Continent, whence many influences have flowed into it. A kingdom of the East Angles, with its capital at Rendlesham (Suffolk), emerged in the course of the sixth century. In the late ninth, the kingdom was overthrown and the region settled and ruled by Danish Vikings. In the tenth, East Anglia was incorporated, though not without resistance, into the single kingdom of England that resulted from aggressive West Saxon political and military initiatives. Joseph Grossi's book examines the treatment of the region in texts produced between the 730s and the late tenth century by authors who, for the most part, did not hail from East Anglia. The book is formidably researched, engaging, and thoughtprovoking, though, in the end, some of its arguments fail to convince. The core of the book comprises five chapters that offer in-depth critical evaluations of key passages in some half-dozen texts. Chapters 1 and 2 ("Rædwald's Unhappy Realm: Bede's Mixed Views of East Anglian Imperium" and "Æthelthryth in a Virgin Wilderness") discuss the presentation of specific episodes of East Anglia's early history in the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Grossi argues that the kingdom was an outlier to Bede's largely triumphal narrative of England's Christian conversion: notoriously, East Anglia experimented with syncretism after its ruler Rædwald (d. ca. 625; the likely occupant of the Sutton Hoo ship burial) received baptism in Kent. Grossi's analysis focuses on Ecclesiastical History II.5, II.12, and II.15, where Rædwald is first named by Bede within the list of those rulers who held imperium over other English kings, then shamed by his wife into lending military support to King Edwin of Northumbria, and then persuaded by her to maintain Christian and pagan altars side by side in a shrine probably located at Rendlesham. Grossi argues persuasively that Rædwald's religious ambivalence reflects tensions between the new and the old religions that were ongoing under his Christian son and [End Page 224] successor Eorpwald (d. 627/8), Eorpwald's killer the pagan Ricberht (r. 627/8–630/1), and the Christian Sigeberht (acc. 630/1), who was forced out of monastic retirement to die defending his kingdom against the pagan Penda of Mercia. For Bede, Grossi contends, East Anglia's flirtation with syncretism was finally redeemed only several decades later, when Æthelthryth, herself the daughter of the East Anglian King Anna (d. 654), founded a house of nuns at Ely and, sixteen years after her death in 679, was discovered to be incorrupt when translated to a new tomb. Æthelthryth had maintained her chastity through two marriages, of which the second was to the Northumbrian King Ecgfrith, the founding patron of Bede's own monastery. In Grossi's interpretation, Bede's underlying goal in the two chapters that he dedicates to Ætheltryth (Ecclesiastical History IV. 19–20)—of which the second includes his remarkable abecedarian poem in her honor—is to make the case that only through her virginal and royal sanctity could East Anglia rescue itself from the religious equivocation into which Rædwald had plunged it. This is an arresting literary interpretation, though it risks underplaying Bede's dependence upon sources and his incorporation of Æthelthryth's story within the broader narrative of his fourth book, which seeks to highlight Christian accomplishment throughout England during the archiepiscopate of Theodore (669–90). Chapter 3, "Solace for a Client-King: Felix's Vita sancti Guthlaci," addresses the seeming anomaly that circa 740, an East Anglian king, Ælfwald, commissioned from an otherwise...

A Landscape of Words: Ireland, Britain and the Poetics of Space, 700–1250

A Landscape of Words: Ireland, Britain and the Poetics of Space, 700–1250

Gerald of Wales and the Rewriting of Saints’ Lives: The Hagiographical Fragments in London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius E.vii

This paper examines the three hagiographical fragments preserved in London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius E.vii, fols. 3-12. Two of them, parts of Vita Ethelberti and Vita Sancti Dauid, were composed by Gerald of Wales by rewriting earlier versions of those lives. The third is part of a Life of St. Patrick. The first two are considered in the light of how Gerald rewrites hagiography (as discussed by Robert Bartlett in 1983), and then the fragment of the Life of St. Patrick, which was edited by Ludwig Bieler, is considered in its manuscript context. It is suggested, on stylistic grounds and working practices, that it represents Gerald’s working notes for a Life of Patrick which never came to fruition, and that that some of those notes were subsumed into the much longer Life of Patrick by Jocelin of Furness.

Restoring Creation: The Natural World in the Anglo-Saxon Saints' Lives of Cuthbert and Guthlac by Britton Elliott Brooks

Reviewed by: Restoring Creation: The Natural World in the Anglo-Saxon Saints' Lives of Cuthbert and Guthlac by Britton Elliott Brooks Matthew Firth Brooks, Britton Elliott, Restoring Creation: The Natural World in the Anglo-Saxon Saints' Lives of Cuthbert and Guthlac (Nature and Environment in the Middle Ages), Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2019; hardback; pp. 323; R.R.P. £70.00; ISBN 9781843845300. In Restoring Creation, Britton Elliott Brooks brings the environmental humanities into dialogue with early English hagiography. Specifically, Brooks seeks to present 'the sophisticated and considered engagement with the non-human world' (p. 3) that may be revealed through a close reading of early English hagiography. This [End Page 197] he intends to serve as a corrective to the oversimplifications he perceives in much previous environmental humanities scholarship, which has tended to posit nature as having a negative alterity in the medieval worldview. Central to Brooks's thesis is the idea that it is possible to reconstruct how the English themselves understood the natural world. Representations of nature in early English hagiography, he argues, were defined by 'contemporary theological and philosophical views' (p. 3) and tied to the physical landscape through the regionalism of their narratives. Of those contemporary theological and philosophical views, Brooks focuses on the concept of the restoration of Creation: a breaching of the postlapsarian division between humanity and nature, effected by the achievement of holiness and sanctity. Given the wealth of hagiography from pre-Conquest England, Brooks necessarily limits his focus subjects, choosing to structure his study around the vitae of the eremitic saints Cuthbert and Guthlac. The nature of their eremitism provides the two English saints what Brooks terms a 'direct and transformative interaction with Creation' (p. 15). This is well demonstrated in his case studies; each of Brook's five chapters examines a single hagiography, ordered by chronology of authorship. This structure allows Brooks to demonstrate how the vitae built upon one another, adopting and adapting Augustinian and Bedan exegesis of Creation. Chapter 1 focuses on the anonymous Vita Sancti Cuthberti (698 × 705), examining those passages of the text in which Cuthbert's sanctity restores Creation, albeit temporarily. It is a sanctity that stems from obedience; Cuthbert's obedience restores Creation just as Adam and Eve's disobedience brought about its Fall. Brooks argues that this obedience is specifically framed in monastic terms and suggests that the hagiographer perceived the 'divine order of the universe' (as it relates to the natural world) to parallel monastic order (p. 28). Chapters 2 and 3 turn to Bede, first his metrical Vita Sancti Cuthberti (705 × 716) and then his prose Vita Sancti Cuthberti (c. 721). Brooks's examination of the metrical vita is Restoring Creation's most compelling chapter. It is a work that he at once perceives as personal—'a ruminative and poetic exercise for Bede himself' (p. 67)—and as foundational not only to the Cuthbertine tradition, but to the entry of Augustinian exegeses of Creation into English hagiography. The restoration of Creation here is again tied to monastic obedience, Cuthbert portrayed as what Brooks terms 'an idealized Gregorian monk-pastor' (p. 16). It is a characterization of Cuthbert that comes into full focus in Bede's prose vita. In this text, Brooks identifies an authorial interest in Cuthbert's evolving spiritual maturity—miracles of restoration provide both impetus for and evidence of Cuthbert's achievement of 'spiritual majority' (p. 171). Bede draws on Augustinian interpretations of the Fall and Creation to portray Cuthbert as an exemplar of saintliness and obedience, Creation's own obedience to the saint being predicated on his perfect sanctity. Brooks turns to Guthlac in Chapters 4 and 5, first discussing the Vita Sancti Guthlaci (730 × 740) of Felix before going on to examine the terminological nuances of the Old English Prose Life of Guthlac and Guthlac A (both texts that [End Page 198] have proved difficult to date). What is possibly most interesting in these chapters is the explicit tying of Guthlac's vitae to the landscape of the East Anglian fens. In the Vita Sancti Guthlaci, Brooks sees Guthlac's story, like Cuthbert's, as being one of spiritual progression toward saintliness, but here to some degree...

Sources, Controversies and Silences: Bede, Muirchú, Patrick and Acgilbert

This essay explores the role of intertextuality in the commemoration of Patrick, Cuthbert and Acgilbert in three texts that share an identical phrase. These texts are: Muirchú’s Vita sancti Patricii, and Bede’s Vita sancti Cuthberti and Historia ecclesiastica. The rhythmic phrase relates to themes of mission, grace, and conversion across the three texts.

History and Hagiography: The Vita Sancti Servani and the Foundation of Culross Abbey

The Cistercian abbey of Culross was founded in 1217 on the site of an earlier church known locally to have been established by St Serf. This heritage was successfully appropriated by the new abbey through the adoption of the cult. As successors to the saint and his church, the monks were entitled to inherit their patron’s landed territories, but much of this property seems to have been in other hands. A comparison of the earliest landed endowment of Culross Abbey with the cult landscape presented by the Vita Sancti Servani reveals that certain alienated properties appear to have been reclaimed on this basis. For this reason, the Vita must be understood as a piece of history writing: it recorded past events as they were known locally to have occurred. The Vita is our window into what that version of history was.

Maximilian I. oder Friedrich III.? Überlegungen zur sogenannten Heinrichstafel in Münster

The so-called “Heinrichstafel”, which has been attributed to the “Master of the legend of St. Barbara” (last quarter of the 15th century) and is now in the Westfälisches Landesmuseum (LWL-Museum of Arts and Culture) in Münster, is a triptych depicting some events reported in the biography of Emperor Henry II. Some research studies concerning the scenes represented on the board which are not mentioned in the source, the Vita Sancti Heinrici, and which clearly aim at describing the real political events, have considered these to be a clear reference to the age of Emperor Maximilian I. This study raises the question of whether this second level of interpretation should not rather be referred to Maximilian’s father, Emperor Frederick II. In fact, the coronation scene – that has been so prominently portrayed on the triptych and has no equivalent in the Vita Sancti Heinrici – can hardly be associated with the imperial coronation of Maximilian, which occurred only in 1508 and was not performed by the pope. Moreover, the scene probably contains some crypto portraits of Frederick III and Nicholas V. If this interpretation applies, and even if far from any realistic representation of the scene, the “Heinrichstafel” would in this case contain additional pictorial evidence of the imperial coronation of 1452.

What Is North? Imagining and Representing the North from Ancient Times to the Present Day ed. by Oisĺn Plumb et al.

Reviewed by: What Is North? Imagining and Representing the North from Ancient Times to the Present Day ed. by Oisĺn Plumb et al. John Kennedy Plumb, Oisĺn, Alexandra Sanmark, Donna Heddle, eds, What Is North? Imagining and Representing the North from Ancient Times to the Present Day (The North Atlantic World: Land and Sea as Cultural Space, ad 400–1900, 1), Brepols, Turnhout, 2020; hardback; pp. 408; 18 b/w illustrations, 11 b/w tables; RRP €110.00; ISBN 9782503585024. Though how Australians and New Zealanders historically have perceived 'the North' is certainly something worth studying, the focus of this book, as its series title indicates, is on northern Europe and the higher latitudes of North America. It contains a brief introduction and twenty very diverse essays, covering a time span from classical antiquity (and arguably prehistory, in the case of two essays focusing on perceptions of Maeshowe, Orkney—one by Jay Johnston of The University of Sydney) to the twenty-first century. The institutional affiliations of the authors extend to ten countries, with British and Scandinavian institutions predominating. Essay lengths vary considerably: those by Anna Heiða Pálsdóttir and Henning Howlid Wærp have approximately ten pages of text, while those by Jim Clarke and John W. Dyce extend to about twenty-five pages, excluding the 'Works Cited'. The use of a small (though fully legible) font size means, however, that all essays are relatively substantial studies. A major theme of the book, fully reflected in its varied essays, is that what 'North' means can, and does, vary enormously. It can be geographically quite specific or be a more or less amorphous concept used to express remoteness, hostility, danger, opportunities for adventure, and so on. In a very readable essay that considers the idealized presentation of the Viking Age in the books for boys written by Shetland author Jessie Saxby (1842–1940), who set her novels in her own times, Lynn Powell observes: 'In fiction, the North is far more than a specific geographical place; it is also an imagined or emotional space, a direction rather than a location, a reflection of identity' (p. 276). Her fellow contributors would probably all be in broad agreement. [End Page 248] It seems appropriate here to focus on the essays most likely to relate to the scholarly interests of Parergon readers. Two have medieval Celtic subjects. In a somewhat densely written piece Oisĺn Plumb considers the significance of the voyages of Cormac Uĺ Liatháin in Adomnán's Vita Sancti Columbae. In the following essay Marged Haycock explores in some detail the 'Old North' as it appears in medieval Welsh literature, considering geographical location and political aspects. At least five essays are likely to interest students of Old Norse. John Moffatt examines the Vĺnland sagas not from the usual historical or anthropological perspectives, but using modern rhetorical theory to argue, interestingly but somewhat tendentiously, that 'while Karlsefni and Guðrĺðr were unquestionably brave in venturing first to Greenland and later to Vinland, the wisdom they displayed in ultimately returning to Iceland is the greatest virtue' (p. 77). Eduardo Ramos perceptively explores the relationship between the eponymous central figure and the Icelandic landscape in Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar. Vittorio Mattioli examines Grímnismál in arguing for a modification to what has become the standard view of the Old Norse cosmos, and Agneta Ney looks at landscape terms and their use in Old Norse poetry. The runic inscriptions in Maeshowe and the mound's mentioned as 'Orkahaugr' in Orkneyinga saga are one of the major concerns of Ragnhild Ljosland's article. There is not a great deal particularly relevant to the early modern period. Donna Heddle's study of maps and early literature relating to Orkney surveys both the medieval and the early modern periods. In discussing Sámi magic and rituals, Ellen Alm and Rune Blix Hagen consider the twelfth-century Latin Historia Norwegie as well as the early modern writers Olaus Magnus and Johannes Schefferus. The essays in the second half of the book, broadly arranged in chronological order of the periods and works discussed, are, as an examination of the table of contents...

Venantius Fortunatus, Vita Sancti Martini. Prologue and Books I–II. Edited with Introduc-tion and Commentary by N. M. Kay.

Der GNOMON pflegt als kritische Zeitschrift für die gesamte Altertumswissenschaft die Verbindung zwischen den verschiedenen Disziplinen der Altertumswissenschaft. Er nimmt dadurch eine Sonderstellung unter den Rezensionsorganen ein und bietet die Möglichkeit, sich über wichtige Forschungen und Publikationen auch in den Nachbarbereichen des eigenen Faches zu orientieren. Die Rezensionen im GNOMON wenden sich an ein internationales Publikum, das aus allen Teilgebieten der Altertumswissenschaft kommt. Die Publikationssprachen im GNOMON sind: Deutsch, Englisch, Französisch, Italienisch und Lateinisch.

Berliner Handschriftenfragment der Vita Sancti Columbae Adamnani

A hitherto unknown fragment of an early eleventh-century manuscript of the Vita sancti Columbae Adamnani has been discovered in the Secret State Archives, Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin. Written in late-Carolingian minuscule (“schrägovaler Stil”), it contains chapters 37, 38, 40 and 41 of the second book of the Vita and reveals references to a different redaction of the text.

The Early Texts of the Cult of Saint Guthlac

ABSTRACTThis article reads the early texts of the cult of the Mercian saint, Guthlac, in light of succession to the Mercian throne in the eighth and ninth centuries, considering evidence for the patronage of Guthlac’s cult by the Mercian kings Æthelbald (r. 716-57) and Wiglaf (r. 827-9; 830-9). First it provides an overview of materials of the Guthlac cult produced in Anglo-Saxon England, and then it examines the perspectives of the two earliest works, Felix’s Vita sancti Guthlaci and the Old English poem, Guthlac A. It then argues for a connection between King Wiglaf and Guthlac, and analyzes the later Old English Guthlac texts within the narrative proposed. This argument offers a new interpretation of ninth-century Anglo-Saxon succession politics as well as a fresh discussion of the composition of Old English literature before Alfred, inviting further enquiry into the origins of Old English prose and verse.

A Revelation of Purgatory

A Revelation of Purgatory

Sulpicio Severo contro Girolamo. Per una nuova interpretazione della lettera prefatoria e del primo capitolo dellaVita Martini

This article offers an analysis of the beginning of Sulpicius Severus’s Vita Sancti Martini, giving particular consideration to what Severus says at the end of his prefatory letter: “suppresso … nomine libellus edatur … titulum frontis erade…” These words cannot be explained in terms of rhetorical necessity, nor are they inspired by passages from classical authors, like Ovid, Horace, or Martial. Rather, they should be seen as a polemical declaration by Severus in particular in reaction to the publication of Jerome’s De viris inlustribus. This reading of Severus’s preface also carries over into, and makes sense of, the work’s first chapter.