Herman the Archdeacon and Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, Miracles of St Edmund
- Submitting institution
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The University of East Anglia
- Unit of assessment
- 28 - History
- Output identifier
- 182635549
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
-
-
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- ISBN
- 978-0-19-968919-4
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- April
- Year of publication
- 2014
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- By 1100, St Edmund was England’s patron saint, and two substantial Latin works had been written about him. Licence is the first to provide an edition and translation of these works for the Oxford Medieval Texts series and was supported by study leave from UEA. By study of the style and content, he identifies the authors of both works for the first time and sets them in their historical and literary context. The 130-page introduction draws on Licence’s knowledge of classical and patristic writing, theology, history, and the metrics of Latin poetry to illuminate every aspect of England’s principal cult.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- By 1100, St Edmund was England’s patron saint, and at his abbey, two major Latin miracle collections were compiled: one in the 1090s by Herman the Archdeacon, an historian trained in the schools of Lorraine; the other c. 1100 by an anonymous hagiographer who rewrote and expanded Herman's work. Herman's Miracles, an important text for the history of the realm and East Anglia in particular, is edited and translated here in its full fifty chapters for the first time, along with a shorter version intended for wider circulation. The second miracle collection, never before in print, is also presented for the first time and attributed to the Flemish hagiographer Goscelin of Saint-Bertin. Together the collections illustrate a rapid turnover of hagiography connected to a change of leadership at the abbey of Bury St Edmunds. These works illustrate the evolution of historical writing, applied to the affairs of an exceptional international cult. A poem attacking Bishop Herbert Losinga (1091-1119) for simony is also included, edited from previously undiscovered textual witnesses, and linked to Herman and the factional divisions behind the two miracle collections. This volume makes the subject accessible to the full range of scholars interested in Edmund and Anglo-Norman England by providing editions and translations for the first time. Its arguments clear up much of the confusion surrounding the history of the cult and the abbey.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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