Introductory Comments

On Jocelin of Furness, hagiographer in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, see above, pp. 98–9.

This two-part, long prose text of over 11,000 words, including vita and translatio, is extant in three manuscripts:

1. (C) Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 252, fols 166v–183v;

2. (Go) Gotha, Forschungs- und Landesbibliothek, MS Memb. I 81, fols 203r–213v; and

3. (B) Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 240, pp. 801a–804b and 808a–808b.

The first two are complete, but B contains a highly abbreviated version of the first half of the text only. B follows the main text in summary form to line 502, then adds two brief sections which do not advance the narrative but reiterate some earlier material. The first addition, provided below in full in the note to line 502, is unsourced and recounts the circumstances of Constantine's birth in Britain and later elevation there as caesar. The second addition is not provided below, as it is a very close rendering of the paragraph of the Legenda aurea from which it is explicitly sourced; this extract recounts Constantine's vision, conversion, and baptism. Between this material and the translatio, B includes some unrelated extracts from the sermons of Haymo of Faversham and other similar items. B rejoins the text contained in C and Go for the translation of Helena's remains, but in a very brief fashion.