medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
According to his earlier eighth-century Vita by a learned East Anglian monk named Felix (BHL 3723; ca. 740), Guthlac was a Mercian warrior who underwent a religious conversion, spent two years at the monastery at Repton in today's Derbyshire, and then became an hermit in the East Anglian fens before establishing himself at Croyland, now spelled as Crowland, in Lincolnshire. Like the eremitically paradigmatic St. Anthony of Egypt, Guthlac is said to have been visited by angels and to have emerged victorious from repeated contests with demons. His death in 714 is recorded in the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_; in his entry s.v. "Guthlac" for the Oxford DNB Henry Mayr-Harting places it in the year 715. Still according to Felix, Ęthelbald king of the Mercians while in exile spent time with the saint at Croyland before the latter's death and, returning to his oratory, received a vision of him; a year after Guthlac's death his sister St. Pega opened his grave, found his body to be incorrupt, and placed it in a memorial chapel; his relics operated miracles. Croyland Abbey (not shown to have existed before the tenth century) grew up at the site.
Today is Guthlac's feast day as recorded in the _Old English Martyrology_. It is also his feast day in the Church of England and his day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology.
A view of the opening of Felix' _Vita sancti Guthlaci_ in an eighth- or ninth-century copy formerly at St Augustine's, Canterbury (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 389, fol. 18r):
http://tinyurl.com/jpgmrgx
Two Old English poems preserved in the later tenth-century _Exeter Book_ (Exeter Cathedral Library, MS 3501), "Guthlac A" and "Guthlac B", respectively recount aspects of the saint's heroic life and of his holy death. Aaron K. Hostetter's modern English-language translations of them are here ("Guthlac A"):
https://anglosaxonpoetry.camden.rutgers.edu/guthlac-a/
and here ("Guthlac B"):
http://anglosaxonpoetry.camden.rutgers.edu/guthlac-b/
An expandable view of the opening of an early twelfth-century copy of Felix' _Vita sancti Guthlaci_ (1110; London, BL, Cotton MS Nero C VII, fol. 29v):
http://tinyurl.com/dkdche
London, BL, Harley Roll Y6 (probably ca. 1210), consists of eighteen roundels with engaging pen-and-ink drawings illustrating Guthlac's life and early cult. A brief, illustrated description is here:
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2014/04/on-a-roll.html
and a complete digitisation starts here:
http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=harley_roll_y_6_fs001r
Best,
John Dillon
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