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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2016
The Middle English verse “Life of St. Egwine” is one of the many hagiographic poems affiliated with the so-called South English Legendary or Legendaries (SEL), a widely copied collection of vernacular devotional texts whose earliest compilation has been dated to the thirteenth century, and whose latest manuscripts date to the first half of the fifteenth. A minor saint, Ecgwine was the third bishop of Worcester and the founder of the monastic community at Evesham Abbey. One of the most striking features of his early hagiography is that the earliest version of his vita contains the only surviving account of a dispute between a monastery and a tenant to be dated to the Anglo-Saxon period. This is indicative of his cult's close association with the endowed properties of Evesham, an aspect of his hagiographic tradition that is also discernible in the SEL legend.
1 On the South English Legendary (SEL) as a whole see Pickering, O. S., “The South English Legendary: Teaching or Preaching?” Poetica 45 (1996): 1–14 and Thompson, Anne B., Everyday Saints and the Art of Narrative in the South English Legendary (Aldershot, 2003). A recent survey of Middle English hagiography is Sarah Salih's introduction to a collection of essays: Salih, Sarah, “Introduction,” in A Companion to Middle English Hagiography, ed. eadem (Woodbridge, 2006).Google Scholar
2 I have followed J's spelling of the name “Egwine” when referring to the SEL text or its protagonist, but follow the Old English “Ecgwine” in reference to the historical figure or the character in the SEL's possible sources.Google Scholar
3 Wormald, Patrick, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1999), 158–61.Google Scholar
4 Görlach, Manfred, The Textual Tradition of the South English Legendary (Leeds, 1974), viii–ix.Google Scholar
5 Lizska, Thomas, “The South English Legendaries,” in The North Sea World in the Middle Ages: Studies in the Cultural History of North-Western Europe , ed. idem and Walker, Lorna E. M. (Dublin, 2001), 243–80.Google Scholar
6 D'Evelyn, Charlotte and Mill, Anna J., eds., The South English Legendary , 3 vols. (London, 1956–59), 1:x.Google Scholar
7 The most important edition previous to this is The Early South-English Legendary , ed. Horstmann, Carl, EETS, o.s., 87 (London, 1887), which is based instead on the earliest surviving manuscript, Oxford, Bodleian Laud 108.Google Scholar
8 D'Evelyn, and Mill, , South English Legendary , 1:8–9.Google Scholar
9 Saint Egwin and His Abbey of Evesham (London, 1904), 167–75. The MS transcribed is London, BL Stowe 949.Google Scholar
10 Descriptions can be found in Görlach, , Textual Tradition , 80; Horstmann, , Early South-English Legendary, xviii; Braswell, Laurel, “Saint Edburga of Winchester: A Study of Her Cult, A.D. 950–1500, with an Edition of the Fourteenth-Century Middle English and Latin Lives,” Mediaeval Studies 33 (1970): 292–333; Nagy, Michael S., “Saint Æelberht of East Anglia in the South English Legendary,” Chaucer Review 37 (2002): 165; and Lapidge, Michael, Crook, John, et al., eds., The Cult of St Swithun (Oxford, 2003), 718.Google Scholar
11 Horstmann says ca. 1320 (Early South-English Legendary, xviii), but the consensus is rather later; see Görlach, , Textual Tradition , 245 n. 40.Google Scholar
12 Descriptions include Görlach, , Textual Tradition , 6, 86–87; D'Evelyn, and Mill, , South English Legendary, 1:8–9.Google Scholar
13 Görlach, , Textual Tradition , 87, 248 n. 79.Google Scholar
14 Bliss, A. J., “The Spelling of Sir Launfal,” Anglia 75 (1957): 276–87. See also the introduction to Bliss's edition of Thomas Chestre, Sir Launfal (London, 1960).Google Scholar
15 Görlach argues that this is likely to be a feature of the text inherited from J's source ( Textual Tradition , 248 n. 74).Google Scholar
16 Some examples found in Keynes's facsimile edition of charters include his 25 (Sawyer number 794, s. xi); 33 (S 553, s. xi); 35 (S 1026, s. xi-xii); 36 (S 1450, s. xii); 38 (S 1043, s. xii); 41 (S 349, s. xiii); and 42 (S 1033, AD 1227) (Keynes, Simon, Facsimiles of Anglo-Saxon Charters [Oxford, 1991]). On the charters of Evesham Abbey (founded by Ecgwine), see also Sayers, Jane, “‘Original,’ Cartulary and Chronicle: The Case of the Abbey of Evesham,” in Fälschungen im Mittelalter: Internationaler Kongreß der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, München, 16–19 September 1986, MGH 33 (Hanover, 1988), 371–95, esp. 377.Google Scholar
17 Descriptions include: Görlach, Textual Tradition, 95–96; Horstmann, Carl, Altenglische Legenden, Neue Folge (Heilbronn, 1881), xxviii–xxx; Lapidge, et al., Cult of St. Swithun, 719. See also Thomas R. Liszka, “The Dragon in the South English Legendary: Judas, Pilate, and the ‘A(1)’ Redaction,” Modern Philology 100 (2002): 51.Google Scholar
18 Görlach, , Textual Tradition , 96.Google Scholar
19 Descriptions include Görlach, Textual Tradition, 98–99 and Catalogue of the Stowe Manuscripts in the British Museum , 2 vols. (Hildesheim, 1973), 1:632–34.Google Scholar
20 Görlach, , Textual Tradition , 99.Google Scholar
21 Descriptions include: ibid., 100–102; Lapidge, et al., Cult of St Swithun , 720–21; Braswell, , “Saint Edburga” (n. 10 above), 320–21; Blake, Norman, “Vernon Manuscript: Contents and Organisation,” in Studies in the Vernon Manuscript , ed. Pearsall, Derek (Cambridge, 1990), 45–89; and the introduction to the facsimile edition: Doyle, A. I., The Vernon Manuscript: A Facsimile of Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Eng. Poet A.1 (Cambridge, 1987). A digital edition of the manuscript from the Bodleian Digital Texts series is forthcoming.Google Scholar
22 There is a large body of criticism touching on this famous manuscript; see, for example: Boffey, Julia, “Forms of Standardization in Terms for Middle English Lyrics in the Fourteenth Century,” in The Beginnings of Standardization: Language and Culture in Fourteenth-Century England , ed. Schaefer, Ursula (Frankfurt am Main, 2006), 61–70; Hilmo, Maidie, Medieval Images, Icons, and Illustrated English Literary Texts: From Ruthwell Cross to the Ellesmere Chaucer (London, 2004), 97–138; Edwards, A. S. G., “The Middle English Manuscripts and Early Readers of Ancrene Wisse,” in A Companion to Ancrene Wisse , ed. Wada, Yoko (Cambridge, 2003), 103–22; Hardman, Phillipa, “Windows into the Text: Unfilled Spaces in Some Fifteenth-Century English Manuscripts,” in Texts and their Contexts: Papers from the Early Book Society , ed. Scattergood, John and Boffey, Julia (Dublin, 1996), 44–70; and Doyle, A. I., “The Shaping of the Vernon and Simeon Manuscripts,” Studies in the Vernon Manuscript , ed. Pearsall, Derek (Cambridge, 1990), 1–13.Google Scholar
23 The Piers Plowman section is described by Kane and Donaldson (Langland, William, Piers Plowman: The A Version; Will's Visions of Piers Plowman and Do-Well , ed. Kane, George [London, 1960], 17). Kane and Donaldson place the date “closer to 1400 than 1380,” deviating from Skeat's 1370–80 (Langland, William, The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman in Three Parallel Texts; Together with Richard the Redeless , ed. Skeat, W. W., 2 vols. [Oxford, 1886], 1:xv). Görlach identifies the “accepted” date of the manuscript as 1390 (Textual Tradition, 102–3).Google Scholar
24 Robinson, P. R., “The Vernon Manuscript as a ‘Coucher Book,’” in Studies in the Vernon Manuscript , ed. Pearsall, Derek (Cambridge, 1990), 15–28. Görlach claims that “scribal corruptions” prove that this revising was not done by the V scribe, but this argument is inherently conjectural and cannot be applied to every alteration. Complaints about the inaccuracies of ornate manuscripts date back at least to St. Jerome's Vulgate preface to Job (Biblia sacra: iuxta vulgatam versionem , ed. Weber, Robert, 5th ed. [Stuttgart, 2007], 732).Google Scholar
25 For a description of this manuscript see Byrhtferth of Ramsey, The Lives of St. Oswald and St. Ecgwine , ed. Lapidge, Michael (Oxford, 2009), xciii–xcix.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
26 Lapidge dates the text after the millennium because of Byrhtferth's phrase at Vita S. Ecgwini 4.6, “nos vero, qui in ultima millenarii sumus parte et ultra progressi” (Byrhtferth, Lives, lxxxiii). The only other edition is that of Giles, J. A., Vita Quorundum [sic] Anglo-Saxonum: Original Lives of Anglo-Saxons and Others Who Lived before the Conquest (London, 1854), 349–96.Google Scholar
27 Edited by Lapidge, Michael in “Dominic of Evesham: Vita S. Ecgwini episcopi et confessoris,” Analecta Bollandiana 96 (1978): 65–104.Google Scholar
28 Dominic, , “Vita S. Ecgwini,” 70.Google Scholar
29 Lapidge, Michael, “The Medieval Hagiography of St. Ecgwine,” Vale of Evesham Historical Society Research Papers 6 (1977): 72–73. Again, the vita is anonymous in the manuscripts, and the attribution is Lapidge's.Google Scholar
30 Lapidge, , “Medieval Hagiography,” 85–89; “The Digby-Gotha Recension of the Life of St. Egwine,” ed. Lapidge, Michael, Vale of Evesham Historical Society Research Papers 7 (1979): 39–55. See also Love, Rosalind C., ed. and trans., Three Eleventh-Century Anglo-Latin Saints' Lives: Vita S. Birini, Vita et Miracula S. Kenelmi and Vita S. Rumwoldi (Oxford, 1996), lxxvi-lxxvii.Google Scholar
31 Lapidge, , “Medieval Hagiography,” 86.Google Scholar
32 Ibid., 87, 147–50.Google Scholar
33 Ibid., 88.Google Scholar
34 Thomas of Marlborough, History of the Abbey of Evesham , ed. and trans. Sayers, Jane E. and Watkiss, Leslie (Oxford, 2003), 6–40. See also Byrhtferth, , Lives, xci-xcii.Google Scholar
35 Dominic, “Vita S. Ecgwini,” 75. On Thomas's political motivations as a historiographer, see Boureau, Alain, “How Law Came to the Monks: The Use of Law in English Society at the Beginning of the Thirteenth Century,” Past and Present 167 (2000): 29–74.Google Scholar
36 Nova Legenda Anglie , ed. Horstmann, Carl (Oxford, 1901), 370–78; Lapidge, , “The Medieval Hagiography,” 90.Google Scholar
37 Görlach, , Textual Tradition (n. 4 above), 216 Google Scholar
38 Quoting Gal. 6:17.Google Scholar
39 Nova Legenda Anglie , ed. Horstmann, , 374, 8–14.Google Scholar
40 I discuss the relationship between the SEL “Life of St. Egwine” and its sources and manuscripts, both hagiographical and legal-documentary, in my forthcoming article “Documentary Poetic and Editorial Practice: The Case of ‘St. Egwine,’” in Rethinking the South English Legendaries , ed. Blurton, Heather and Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn, forthcoming from Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
