SUPP LIVES MS GILTE LEG EETSO: C 315 C (Early English Text Society Original Series) - Hardcover

This welcome edition makes available and 'reader-friendly' some intriguing texts useful for enquiries of all sorts into English hagiography. (English Studies)

Through this edition of several hard-to-find saints' lives, the cultural topography of fiteenth-century England becomes easier for other scholars to chart. (English Studies)

Scholars now have a useful edition mentioning such sources as have been identified, which should stimulate further research. (Notes and Queries)

The accessibility of the edition is greatly aided by the inclusion of a glossary of obsolete words, and indexes of proper names and biblical quotations. Particularly helpful is the editors' decision to preface each text with a brief digest of the unelaborated saint's life (allowing the reader to weed out the embellishments and solecisms of the Gilte Legende renderning). (Medium Ævum)

Gilte Legende is mostly a close translation `drawen out of Frensshe into Englisshe' in 1438, of Jean de Vignay's Légende Dorée of about 1333-40, itself a close translation of Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda Aurea, completed about 1267. Of its eight surviving manuscripts, three contain additions, mostly of Lives of saints from or related to Britain, many of them deversified from the South English Legendary, but with some use of other sources.

The twenty-six lives include Thomas Becket, Edmund of Abingdon, Frideswide, Edward the Confessor, Erkenwald, Augustine of Canterbury, Brendan, and Winifred, and from further afield Faith, Barbara, and Jerome. Almost all the texts were previously unpublished.

Also edited are an incomplete tract on `What the church betokenith', explaining some of the symbolism of the church and its services; and another detailing what indulgences were available to pilgrims in each of the churches in Rome.