The miracles

The Evesham abbey miracle book (1–197). London, British Library, Cotton MS Vespasian A VI, fols 162r–183r. The present copy of the miracle book survives within a booklet of six texts (fols 134–83). The booklet was copied by a single scribe in the last quarter of the fourteenth century or the first quarter of the fifteenth. It is not luxurious but neither is it careless, and it is of a size suitable for private reading. All six of its items concern conversations between living people and inhabitants of the other-world: Spiritus Guidonis (The Ghost of Gui) by Jean Gobi the younger; H[enry] of Sawtry's Purgatorium sancti Patricii (St Patrick's Purgatory); Pene inferni (The Pains of Hell); Passio sancte Iuliane (The Passion of St Julian); Vita sancti Alexii (The Life of St Alexius); and finally the Evesham abbey miracle book. It was evidently included because it was relevant to the theme of the collection, not from a special regard for Earl Simon. Each entry in the miracle book has a red display initial. After the last miracle entry the scribe has copied two short liturgical items from Evesham abbey (214–15). They may have descended to his exemplar from additions made in the original book. There are sixteenth-century pen-trials on the last page of the booklet (fol. 183v), which is also the last page of the parent volume; they mention a John Kempt of ‘Cliffton’, a Roger Causefeylde esquire and a Robert Smyth.

A prologue (1) was added to the miracle book at some time before the present copy was made. It is an account of events immediately before and after the battle of Evesham, and seems to descend from a separate narrative composed at Evesham (and used again in a chronicle compiled there in or after 1392); that narrative in turn was derived from one composed at Evesham in French within months of the battle. The prologue was probably not part of the original miracle book; it lacks effusions of praise for Simon de Montfort or of horror at his death, and it makes no mention of miracles. In the present manuscript the beginning and greater part of the prologue fills an unattached leaf inserted between two gatherings.