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XXII: The South English Legendary in its Relation to the Legenda Aurea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Minnie E. Wells
Minnie E. Wells*
Affiliation:
Southeastern Teachers College, Durant, Oklahoma
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Extract

The similarity in structure and content between the South English Legendary and the Legenda Aurea was recognized more than fifty years ago by Horstmann, although he ruled out as wholly impossible the idea that the English author could have made use of the Latin collection.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , June 1936 , pp. 337 - 360
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1936

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References

1 Horstmann, Altenglische Legenden, Neue Folge (1881), p. xlv: “Die grosse Uebereinstimmung beider Sammlungen erklärt sich aus den gemeinsam Quellen, welche in beiden wörtlich wiedergegeben sind; an eine Benutzung der L. A. ist nicht zu denken.”

2 The Early South English Legendary, EETS, Or. Ser. 87, p. viii.

3 Pierce Butler, Legenda Aurea—Légende Dorée—Golden Legend (Baltimore, 1899), p. 5.

4 E. C. Richardson, “Jacobus de Voragine and the Golden Legend,” Princeton Theological Review, i (1903), 273.

5 Teodore de Wyzewa, Légende Dorée (Paris, 1917), p. xiii.

6 “Anno domini mcclix in civitate Compostella fuit quidam vir nomine Benedictus” (ed. Th. Graesse, p. 291). Graesse's edition reads Apostella, but this is obviously a typographical error; all other editions and translations read Compostella.

7 Wyzewa declares that these appended miracles cannot be used to date the collection as a whole, “car la plupart de miracles de saint Pierre Martyr paraissent avoir été interpolés par des copistes de l'ordre des Frères Prêcheurs” (op. cit., p. 248).

8 E. C. Richardson, loc. cit.

9 Arrigo Levasti, Leggenda Aurea (Firenze, 1924), p. 22.

10 Beatrice Brown, “Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle and the Life of St. Kenelm,” MLN, xli, 13.

11 EETS, Or. Ser. 169, p. xi.

12 South Eng. Leg., EETS, Or. Ser. 87, p. x.

13 In an earlier study Horstmann stated his opinion of the arrangement in the Laud collection as follows: “Die Anordnung der Legenden ist willkürlich und planlos; es scheint als habe der Bearbeiter die Vorlage, wenn diese nicht selbst dieselbe Unordnung hatte, mehrmals von Anfang bis zu Ende durchgegangen und einzelne Gruppen dabei nach Belieben ausgewählt und aneinandergereiht.” See Alteng. Legenden (Paderborn, 1875), p. x.

14 South Eng. Leg., EETS, pp. 177–178, ll. 1–26.

15 South Eng. Leg., EETS, p. 462, note.

16 Ed. from MSS. Royal 17. A. xxvii and Bodley 34 by O. Cockayne, EETS, Or. Ser. 51.

—Note that the English Legendary keeps the O.E. word raketeie (l. 112); cf. rakethe in the Liflade (pp. 46 and 47).

17 Text of Harley 2277 printed by Cockayne, EETS, Or. Ser. 13, pp. 24–33.

18 Printed by Cockayne, op. cit., pp. 34–43 and by Horstmann, Alteng. Leg. Neue Folge, pp. 489–498.

19 The substitution of two friars as central figures in this miracle in place of the “vir religiosus et sanctus” of the Latin text has a significant bearing upon the general question of the authorship of the English Legendary.

20 PMLA, xxxviii, 310.

21 Text printed by G. W. Dasent, Theophilus (London, 1845), pp. 67–71.

22 South Eng. Leg., p. 278, ll. 1–16.

23 Leg. Aur., ed. Graesse, p. 466.

24 Egerton 1993, f. 119a. See Rose J. Peebles, The Legend of Longinus (1911), 96: “The story as given here follows closely the Golden Legend type, though I do not mean to imply that it was taken from Voragine. The questions of the judge and Aphrodisius are omitted, and the whole account is more popular in tone.”

25 Leg. Aur., ed. Graesse, p. 202.

26 The South English Legendary, EETS, 87, 240, ll. 1–16.

27 Leg. Aur., ed. cit., p. 22.

28 Early Eng. Poems and Lives of Saints, London Philol. Soc. (Berlin, 1862).

29 Ed. Graesse, p. 312.

30 Edward Kennard Rand, “Mediæval Lives of Judas Iscariot,” Kittredge Anniversary Papers (1913), pp. 305 ff.—For more general discussion of these legends see W. Creizenach, “Legenden und Sagen von Pilatus” (Paul u. Braune Beiträge i, 89–107) and Du Méril, “Légendes de Pilate et de Judas Ischariote,” Poésies populaires latines du moyen âge, pp. 326 and 355.

31 Paull Franklin Baum, PMLA, xxxi (1916), 481 ff.

32 Baum, op. cit., p. 531.

33 Baum, op. cit., p. 498.

34 Baum, op. cit., p. 497, n. 15.

35 See above, pp. 337–339.

36 Baum, op. cit., p. 499, note.

37 Baum, op. cit., p. 531.

38 Early Eng. Poems, pp. 107–111.

39 Horstmann, South Eng. Leg., EETS 87, p. viii.

40 Professor Baum has unconsciously supplied a valuable bit of evidence on this point by calling attention to the existence in the Cambridge MS (dated by James between 1260 and 1280) of the lives of Judas and Pilate which, as I endeavored to prove, must have been copied from the Legenda A urea.

41 Southern Passion, Introd., Chap. v.

42 South Eng. Leg., EETS, p. 53, note.

43 Bonaventura was commissioned in 1260 to prepare a Life of St. Francis; and his work was presented and approved in 1263.

44 Laud 108, Bodley 779, Vernon, Trinity Camb. 605, Egerton 1993, Lambeth 223.

45 Laud 108, Ashmole 43, Vernon, Bodley 779, Camb. Un. Add. 3039, Pepys 2344, Trinity Camb. 605, Cotton Jul. D. ix, Egerton 1993, Egerton 2891, Stowe 949, Lambeth 223.

46 Fourteen MSS contain the Life of St. Peter the Martyr: Laud 108, Bodley 779, Ashmole 43, Tanner 17, Vernon, Trinity Oxf. 57, Corp Chr. Camb. 145, Pepys 2344, Trin. Camb. 605, Harley 2277, Cott. Jul. D. ix, Egerton 1993, Egerton 2891, B. M. Addit. 10301.