Osbern Bokenham’s Life of Seynt Poule the First Heremyte: Authority, Community and Location
Abstract
The present paper will represent the first extended study of the verse Life of St. Paul the First Hermit included in the Abbotsford Legenda Aurea. The Abbotsford Legenda Aurea is an as yet unpublished manuscript containing the only surviving copy of the translation of the Legenda Aurea by the fifteenth-century East Anglian Austin friar, Osbern Bokenham. The Life of Saint Paul the First Hermit is of particular interest since it is one of only three extant verse lives of male saints by Bokenham, who, prior to the discovery of the Abbotsford MS, was considered primarily as an author of lives of female saints. Rather than basing his text of Paul’s life on that in Voragine’s Legenda, Bokenham translates directly from Voragine’s source, the significantly longer vita by Jerome. The descriptions of Paul’s cave, of the monsters who Anthony meets in the desert and of the warm relationship which develops between Anthony and Paul had all been significantly cut back in Voragine’s text and Bokenham’s choice of source is indicative of the crucial thematic importance of these episodes to his retelling, which has a Preface in Chaucerian rime royal and is replete with stylistic and verbal echoes of his more secular vernacular forebears. In emphasising the familial ties binding the monastic brotherhood through his depiction of Paul, Anthony and Anthony’s disciples, Bokenham affiliates his own hagiographic output to an ancient transhistorical community (Sanok 2007) which legitimizes his poetic voice without severing it outright from the secular vernacular traditions in which his style is rooted.
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References
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