Anybody who works with the texts known as the “Lives” of the saints will encounter a volume called the Nova Legenda Angliae (NLA), the “New Legends of England”. First printed in 1516, it consists of a mass of abbreviated “lives” of various saints, in alphabetical order by saint name.
Very often, the author of the NLA is said to be a writer named John Capgrave. This claim is not true, and has been known to be false since 1970. The real author was a man named John of Tynemouth. Yet the false attribution persists, especially online. It seems worth a post to debunk it.
Let’s take this step by step.
In 1516 an English printer in London named Wynkyn de Worde produced a printed volume containing a collection of the lives of the saints. This edition may be found online here. The book had no title page, but the colophon says “Explicit nova legenda anglie” (“here ends the New Legends of England”), which title it has had ever since. The colophon gives no author, and states frankly that it reprints existing material, but “emended and corrected”. It is best known in a 2 volume “reprint” by Horstmann in 1901, which unfortunately also interleaved material from elsewhere between the “lives.”
From the 16th century onwards, this Nova Legenda Anglie (NLA) was attributed to the prolific 15th century author John Capgrave (1393-1464).
But already in 1970 Peter J. Lucas demonstrated concisely and conclusively that Capgrave could not have any connection to the work. Unfortunately his article in The Library (5th series, vol. 25, pp.1-10: “John Capgrave and the ‘Nova legenda Anglie’: a survey”) is not easily accessed online.
The actual author of the material in the NLA is John, Vicar of Tynemouth, who flourished around 1366.[1] He composed a “Sanctilogium Angliae, Walliae, Scotiae et Hiberniae”, composed of abbreviated lives of the saints. In this work, the “lives” appeared in calendar order, the order of the anniversaries of their date of death or commemoration. This is the same order as we find in the Acta Sanctorum, and for the same reason: liturgical use.
A single manuscript of this work survives, containing 157 “lives.” This is MS British Library Cotton Tiberius E.1, of the 14th century, from St Albans, which was damaged badly in the fire of 1731 and is today in two volumes, (E.1/1, and E.1/2).
At some unknown point the contents of the work were rearranged by some unknown person into alphabetical order, into the order of the names of the saints. This makes it less useful for liturgical purposes, but more useful as a reference volume Three manuscripts of the alphabetical order have survived, containing 148, 151, and 153 lives respectively, and others may have existed. None of these copies indicate any connection to Capgrave.
The NLA is also in alphabetical order. It contains 168 lives. Most early printed books were made by taking some manuscript – usually a late manuscript – and printing it. Most likely this is the source for the NLA: a manuscript of the alphabetical order of John of Tynemouth’s Sanctilogium. Unfortunately the manuscript has not survived.
The NLA also contains a prologue and a colophon. But this prologue cannot be by Capgrave. It refers to the book as “newly printed”; and it also refers to the Fasciculus temporum of Werner Rolevinck, published 1474. Capgrave died in 1464, before printing arrived in England, or the publication of Rolevinck. Yet the writer of the prologue and colophon is claims that the text is his own work, even though he accepts that he makes use of earlier, widely available (“apud plures”) material. In the absence of any other indication, this suggests that the writer was a contemporary of De Worde, perhaps a hack employed by him.
So how did all of this material get attributed to John Capgrave? The answer seems to be the obscurity of John of Tynemouth, the multiple names used for him in the manuscripts of his various works, and simply confusion by 16th century bibliographers – John Leland and John Bale – between two authors both called “John.” Dr Lucas goes through this material concisely but conclusively.
I imagine that the Nova Legenda Angliae will continue to cause confusion. But this is what it is; an early printed edition, from a now lost manuscript, of a work by John of Tynemouth.
- [1]Henry of Kirkstede, in his “Catalogus scriptorum Ecclesiae”, formerly attributed to “Bostonus Buriensis” – See Horstmann, vol. 1, p.xxxiv↩