Virginia Blanton

Saints' Lives for Medieval English Nuns Virginia Blanton

Saints' Lives for Medieval English Nuns provides a study and critical edition of a unique late fifteenth-century manuscript, Cambridge University Library Additional MS 2604. Catalogued only in 2009 and virtually unknown to scholars, this manuscript contains a collection of prose saints' lives translated from Latin into Middle English. The focus on female saints associated with the Benedictine order appears to indicate an audience of Benedictine or Augustinian nuns. The content, dialectal, and decorative features suggest an East Anglian convent and information about later provenance points to an identification of the convent. This manuscript contains nineteen lives of female saints--all of whom were virgins, martyrs, or nuns--and three male saints--John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, and Leonard. The codex has some post-medieval additions, including hagiographical and liturgical material. The book features an edition of all twenty-two saints' lives, hitherto unpublished. It concludes with two appendices, a select glossary, an index of manuscripts/archives, and a bibliography of primary and secondary scholarship.