medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Dear All
First, thankyou all again for your help with my previous question about
ritual murder. May I impose on your good will once more? I am preparing an
edition of the Life of St. Brigit from the A ms of the South English
Legendary. In doing so I have become interested in the issue of why the SEL
poet chose to use this long, wart-laden version and where he got it from.
This version follows closely the 8th c. Vita Prima Sanctae Brigidae that
incluldes the story of her illegitimate birth and her close, congenial
relations with druids. The earlier SEL, and the appendix to the Legenda
Aurea, contain a short and eminently respectable Life of B. It is not
impossible that the SEL poet had access to a rescension of the Vita Prima and
he may have used it for shock value. I have been toying with the idea that
would have been permissable to tell such scurrilous stories about a woman of
God because she was 1. Irish (a "colonial" attitude) and 2. a woman (the
version of St. Patrick only involves Patrick himself minimally and the
version of Brendan is of the famous journey that many would have been
familiar with). I have two questions for the list:
Does anyone know of any collections or anything that might have served as
a precedent for the use of this particular Life of St. B.?
Does anyone know of any secondary literature on relations between Ireland
and
England at this time - relations regarding religion or literature or
politics? Earlier this month Maeve Callan responded to a list query on
Giraldus Cambrensis with a list of sources that I found very useful in
this endeavor, so
I am indebted to the list already.
Thank you
Diane Auslander
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