Yesterday I finally located an image online of the page of the Botolph legend from a manuscript in Norway, in Bergen University Library, to be precise. Today I collated that with Folcard’s “Life of St Botolph” and found that it was word for word identical with the full text, despite being labelled a “breviary” in the catalogue entry. It only had the end of chapter 5 to the start of chapter 9, but no matter.
But the (unpublished!) catalogue for Bergen, of which an extract was on the webpage, referred to a breviary in Nidaros – modern Trondheim – with a section on Botolph. This was printed in 1519. I hunted around, and eventually found a copy online. It contains the usual breviary stuff, and 6 lections. I’ve not yet compared it against the Schleswig breviary, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the same text.
A bit more reading revealed that there is a breviary for York, printed in Venice (!) by Johannes Hammam in 1493, which also has readings for Botolph, and a Hereford Breviary that does. Apparently the Sarum usage did not, which is something.
The York Breviary does not seem to be online, but an edition of it in two volumes is. This was produced by the Surtees society, and finding the second volume is not easy! I located it in Hathi, which had a link to the source in Google Books. Here they are:
- Breviarium ad usum insignis ecclesie Eboracensis I 1880 (Surtees 71)
- Breviarium ad usum insignis ecclesie Eboracensis 2 1883 (Surtees 75)
Volume 2 does indeed have a “life” of Botolph, on p.182 of the PDF, section 320, in three readings. Oh well. In it goes.
I’ve found a three volume edition of the Hereford Breviary, vols 1 and 3 in Archive.org, but no luck finding a “life” in it, although the entry in the list of saints days in vol. 2, p.194 (PDF p.235) says “tres lectiones fiant”. Hum. I imagine it’s probably the same set of readings as in the York breviary.
So that’s two – or three – more breviaries when I am trying to finish things up. Oh well.
Have you looked at John Toy, English saints in the medieval liturgies of the Scandinavian churches, 2009? It has a section on Botolph with more spurters for you 🙂
Sources I mean!
Also by Toy: ‘St Botulph: an English saint in Scandinavia’, in Carver (ed.), The Cross goes North: processes of conversion in northern Europe, AD 300–1300 (2003), 565–70
I had not known of the “English Saints” book – thank you!
The Carver article I have, and this was what led me into Scandinavian breviaries. Thank you all the same.