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XXIII. A New Text of the, Passio s. Margaritæ with Some Account of its Latin and English Relations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Gordon Hall Gerould
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Extract

There came to my attention, in 1921, through the kindness of my colleague, Professor Frank Jewett Mather Jr., a manuscript of a Latin Life of St. Margaret, which he had recently purchased. Through his further kindness, I was permitted to examine and to transcribe the text of the manuscript, which was formerly in the possession of Sir Thomas Brooke, Bart., of Armitage Bridge. The manuscript is of vellum and measures × inches, being what we should now call a pocket volume. Indeed, the condition of the last leaf indicates that the book may have been some devout reader's constant companion before it was put into its present comparatively modern binding. It contains twenty-two leaves, of which nineteen are in a hand of the later fourteenth century, and the last three in a hand of the fifteenth century. Unless I am mistaken, both scribes were Englishmen. One may conjecture—though this is no more than a guess—that the second scribe was employed to complete the text because of some accident that had befallen the book. His work was crude in comparison with that of the first scribe, who wrote neatly, while he or a co-worker embellished the book with no less than nineteen boldly drawn and very interesting miniatures. The four pictures on the appended leaves are as rough as the script.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , September 1924 , pp. 525 - 556
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1924

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References

1 I have used the new edition, Paris, 1910, II, 190–196. See the Bollandists' Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina, no. 5303, and no. 5303a of the Supplement.

2 In Wiilker's Bibliothek der angelsächsisclien Prosa, III, 208–220. From MS. Harley 5327.

3 Pp. 334–346. From MS. 69 in the library of the Abbey of Muri-Gries, near Bozen.

4 See F. Vogt, “Uber die Margaretenlegende,” Beiträge zur d. Phil., I, 281287; E. Krahl, Untersuchungen iïber vier Versionen der mittelengl. Margaretenlegende, 1889; Gerould, Saints' Legends, 1916, pp. 210–211.

5 In the Supplement of Bibl. Hag. Lat., sub Margarita, this note appears: “In exemplaribus Passionis, quae multa supersunt, magna est lectionum varie-tas.” The differences, in point of fact, are not simply variant readings, but are more deep-seated.

6 For the state of things with reference to Legenda Aurea, see Saints' Legends, p. 287.

7 Cited above, note 4.

8 MS. qui et.

9 MS. inuenieniebat.

10 MS. repeats sola.

11 In margin, same hand: Alia signa debent esse hie qualiter draco erepuit et sancta Margarita exiuit de uentre eius illesa.

12 Later hand here begins.

13 ïäci or ūïci.

14 f. 21a contains only picture of saint in tomb.

15 A third, or perhaps a second text of one of the pair, formerly existed in MS. Cott. Otho B x.

16 Ed. O. Cockayne, Narratiunculae anglice Conscriptae, 1861, pp. 39–49.

17 Ed. B. Assmann, Angelsächische Homilien uni Heiligenleben {Bibliothek der angelsachischen Prosa III), pp. 170–180.

18 Work cited above, note 4.

19 MSS. Royal 17. A. xxvii and Bodley 34, ed. O. Cockayne, Seinte Marherctc, 1862 (reissued 1866 as E. E. T. S. 13, and later revised by O. Glauning). To the opinion that this work, like the co-œval Catharine and Juliana, is in prose (see my Saints' Legends, p. 209) I still cling, but I wish some qualified scholar would investigate their rhetoric and rhythm more adequately than I have been able to do.

20 MS. Trin. Coll., Camb., B. 14. 39, ed. Hickes, Thesaurus I, 224 ff., and thence Cockayne, work cited, pp. 34–43, and Horstmann, Altengl. Leg. N.F., pp. 488–498.

21 The versions of MS. Auchinleck (ed. Turnbull, Legendae Catholicae, 1840, and Horstmann, Altengl. Leg. N. F., pp, 225–235), and of MS. Bodley 779 (ed. Horstmann, Herrig's Arch. LXXIX, 411–419) are simply variants of Meidan Margerete. The poem in short couplets found in MS. Ashmole 61 (ed. Horstmann, Altengl. Leg. N. F. pp. 236–241) and MS. Brome Hall, Suffolk, (ed. L. T. Smith, A. Common-place Book of the 15th Century, 1886) derives from the same source and adds nothing to our knowledge of the matters before us.

22 See Krahl, work cited, who settled the relationships of these poems for all time.

23 Saints' Legends, pp. 210–212.