Tag: Botulf

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I posted yesterday about a number of breviaries containing the “Life” of St Botolph in abbreviated form. A kind commenter drew my attention to a publication unknown to me – English saints in the medieval liturgies of Scandinavian churches. Edited by John Toy. (Subsidia, 6.) Pp. xviii+232 incl. 2 plates. Woodbridge: Boydell (for the Henry Bradshaw Society), 2009. £50. ISBN 978-1-870252-46-1; 1352-047, which apparently contains a section on the St Botolph material.  The reviews suggest that it is a very dry volume, but that is nothing to me.

It was indeed an article by John Toy, included in a 2003 book, that drew my attention to all these Scandinavian brevaries in the first place.

But could I get hold of a PDF of the the “English Saints” volume?  No.

Could I perhaps borrow a copy through  my local library?  I had a quick look at JISC Hub, and I found that only 9 libraries had copies.  Not even all of the copyright libraries – to which every publisher is obliged by law to send a copy – held it.  That suggests great carelessness by the publisher.  It might be possible to use the interlibrary loan process to access one of these, but the price to do so these days is great, and the service horribly slow.  I want to get rid of Botolph now, so a long delay is not welcome.

However a look at Amazon and AbeBooks tells me that four copies are for sale secondhand.  Doubtless these are the review copies (which suggests that very few copies ever sold – pity.)  Better still these copies are available at prices not greater than I have just spent this lunchtime on a disappointing, indeed inedible, jacket potato meal for two in a cafe.  So I have done what I never do, and ordered one of them.  It should arrive in a day or two.

The only problem is what to do with the physical book once I have finished with it.  I have no storage space, and when I die all my books will no doubt go to Oxfam anyway.  So I might just post it back to the vendor with a note that he is free to sell it again.  It would put it back in circulation, anyway.

I was interested to see that the book was published on behalf of the Henry Bradshaw Society.  I have seen this name attached to 19th century liturgical publications, but I had no idea that it was still in business.  Indeed there is a website!

But I am starting to feel that the breviaries are becoming a classic case of “scope creep”, dragging my project into a world of material with which I am not qualified to engage. I know nothing about liturgy, and I am not sure that I wish to learn.  The original purpose here was to produce an English translation of the “Life of St Botolph” by Folcard.  We’re starting to vanish down the rabbit hole.  But I will see what the book says, and make a decision where to draw the line.

How’s your paleography? Two pages from a medieval breviary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve had a go at transcribing the “Life” of St Botolph from this medieval breviary, but frankly my paleography is not great.  Would anyone else like to have a go, or a bit of one?  I’ll upload i mages of the two pages in .jpg form.  If you click on the picture, you’ll get the full size image (about 300k in size, so not enormous).

Alternatively you can use this PDF and this .docx word file of what follows:

The first page (folio 14r) starts with two prayers, which I have found elsewhere.  Then the “Life” begins with “lco = lectio”.  Ignore the hole in the page, and the stuff peeking through it from below!

Here’s my go at this:

De sancto Botholpho ad ??

Iste sanctus digne in memoria  vertitur hominum
qui ad gaudia tu@sset (=transiit) an-
gelorum quia in hac peregri-
natione solo corpore consti-
tutus cogitatione & avi-
ditate in illa aeterna patria
conversatus a@ (= est?).  a@ gt   Coll.  (Coll. =Collecta, the collect:)

Deus, omnium regnorum
gubernator et rector,
qui famulis tuis annuum     (the tilted c above the q indicating abbreviation of some sort)
beati Botholphi abbatis
largiaris sollemnitur cele-        (mu with macron = m)
brare festa nostrorum dele
clementius pec-
camini vulne-
ra ut a te
mereamur
percipere ga-
udia reprom-
issa.   Per dom.

The “per dom. is short for the “Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum Filium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum” which appears at the end of a collect in a breviary.  The “Tu autem” that follows each reading = lection is another standard prayer.

Lectio.
Beatus Botolphus
natus est de saxoni-
ae gente qui Brytaneam bel-
lica acquisierat virtute
ubi puer bone indolis nu-
t@ebatur.  Qui cum adole-
uiss; ad antiquam stirpis
sue asit@rem transsiu sax-
oniae per diu@sos (=diversos) doctores
in fide christiane religionis
ioboiatam.  Tu autem… Lectio Scda.

De@ ibi levius adisce[re]t     (not sure have abbrev right above adisc…)
& sce@ fidei gratias & sce@
@u@statoi@s in ap@loris isti
tutonibus disciplin@et Lau-
dem attonsus coma capitis
exuit hitum mundi & ind-
uit armaturam dei et
grados ascendit sar@ et
divis.  Tu autem… lectio tria.

Beatus ias p[at]er Botolp-
hus divina est fretus
pictare ut natic@ pri@e (=proprie?)
tue prodessus doctrina & sca@
@u@saroe@.  Postquam vo@ di@
gr[ati]a & diutino perfic@et
sce@ feruore religionis
disposuit iam ad anglie     (n often written u)
pio ravitatis studio re-
pedare.   Tu autem…  lco quad.

Erant autem in eodem mo-
nasterio quo moraba-
tur sorores due ethel-
mundi regis qui tunc
australibus praeerat angl-
is. Diligebant praecipue  (the mu symbol = p.  prem = patrem)
p[at]rem Botholphum sicut
doctorem sanctitatis & casti[m]o-
nie & pl[uri]mum ob studium
gentis sue.     Tu autem...  Lco ??    [This sentence straight from Folcard.]

Ad huc siquidem soro-
res dicte tenellule

fuerant misse ultra mare      (iu = m)
ad discendam scilz (= scilicet) in
monasteriali gymnasio
disciplinam celestis
sophie. Audientes btui (=beatum)
& dilaum (= dilectum) doctorem velle
repaatriare merentes m-
andata imponunt.  lco vi.

R@usius tandem btus (=beatus)
Botholphus in nati@-
am (= nativam)  priam (=patriam) suam imperitis
eatenus vite regula-
ris (= regularis) attulit normam & @@
guacui@ amicos & pri@
avi serveti@ fide oer ao@
re dei de@liquid terre-
na contempsit ut celes-
tia acq@rerus.    Tu autem…

[I think possibly prayers from here on??]
& wan@ vigilate q@
super by@ a@ @utt@essio do@
beati Botolphus confessoris
tui mos ebu@ @etific;
ut @@ memoriam recoliq
eius prioribus aduuiemet

??? Gre bo-
tolphe iccede per nob@
ut co@@ites glorai sanctorum
tecum effici mereamus.    [Intercede for us?]

Deus qui scam ub  De sco
u@ diei sollepita
te@ in honore sci@ Kanu-
ti regis & viris tui@
consecrasti ad esto @@@

The next column starts with De Sancto Kanuto Rege, Concerning Saint King Canute.

All thoughts, even the smallest, gratefully received!

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I had a tooth out on Monday so had to convalesce.  That, together with some very dull grey weather, has been perfect for working at the PC.  It’s been a productive week.

I finished translating the text giving an account of the transfer of the relics of Saint Botolph and other saints to Thorney Abbey under King Edgar, at the direction of St Ethelwold.  The latter hired a dubious low-born “monk” named Ulfkitel to do the grave-robbing, and the text is basically a description of how he went about it.  Extraordinary.

In fact the Botolph material is getting close to done.  I combined almost all the materials into a single file this week, English and Latin, ready to release, including whatever introductory material I had written.  This feels like huge progress, and so it is.  We’re very close.

One loose end with the Botolph stuff is that I was never able to transcribe the Lincoping Breviary entry on St Botolph.  This was for a prosaic reason: it’s a manuscript, not a printed edition, and I couldn’t read the script!  It’s in a horrible cheap Gothic hand, heavily abbreviated, where I can’t tell the difference between “u” and “n”, or between “ui” and “m”.  But I can read more each time I have a go at it.  I might post the two pages here, with what I have done, and see if anyone else can read more.  That might be fun!

Another loose end is that there is a manuscript of the abbreviated “Life” of St Botolph in York, in York Minster Library, and I had forgotten all about it.  Aargh!  I’ve collated all the other manuscripts that I know about, but I have no photographs of it.  So on Friday I wrote to the library asking if they could photograph it for me with a smartphone – it can only be 3-4 pages – or let me do so.

I wouldn’t mind a quick trip to York, if they’d let me photograph.  I wouldn’t mind visiting the Minster library.  The weather isn’t great, but I do have history with the city.

I first visited York back in 1981, when my sister applied to do a degree there.  It was the time of the Yorkshire Ripper, and my parents sent me along with her as bodyguard when she went to interview.  While she was being interviewed, I popped round to Vanburgh College on the campus.  A girl from my class at school was studying there, and I had had a huge crush on her.  Sadly, when I appeared at her room unexpectedly, I found that my reception was much less warm than I had hoped.  She passed out of my life in 1983, and died young, poor girl, nearly twenty years ago.

Very many years later I stopped in York for a couple of days, when I did a trip up to visit Hadrian’s Wall one summer.  I stayed in the Hilton Hotel, which was small but very smart.  For some reason I stumped up for a “Queen” room with a view of Clifford’s Tower – one of the best rooms in the hotel.

Years later again, before Covid, I went there for a few days with my girlfriend, and we got two Queen rooms in the same hotel, and explored the city together.  A few years later again, after Covid; we stayed again, in what we found had become a very run-down hotel where the air-conditioning had failed and the furnishings were barely above Premier Inn standard.  This was in the summer, and the lack of aircon was burdensome.  I remember talking to a businessman in the corridor, and commiserating about the standard.  Yet the room rates and cost for breakfast were as luxury as ever.  I ended up getting breakfast by walking to the nearby Marks and Spencer cafe, at a fraction of the price.  So I’d have to stay somewhere else if I go to York.  But it wouldn’t matter.  I could even visit their Christmas market.

All the same, I do have hopes that the “staff” will help me.  I received an automated email response, that they would get back to me in “less than eight weeks.”  But I don’t expect that means anything sinister.  Most cathedrals rely on a handful of volunteers to do everything, with a tiny number of permanent staff, so can make no guarantees.  Generally I have found the libraries and archives very helpful indeed.

I’m also working on an article about the origins of All Saints Day.  But not until I can kill off Botolph, once and for all.  We’re so close!

How to locate the “Life” of a specific saint (Botolph) in random early modern breviaries

Posted on by Roger Pearse

While trying to finish up the St. Botolph material, I came across a sentence in a fascinating article about St Botolph in Scandinavia. This referred to Scandinavian breviaries which might contain a “Life” of St. Botolph.  I already knew that a very abbreviated “Life” of St Botolph was to be found in the Schleswig Breviary of 1512.  But now…

The other printed breviaries that have this Vita are Aarhus, Uppsala and Linköping. This means that although the theory that this Vita was  composed in Scandinavia still holds, there is no longer evidence to fix it to Denmark.1

No reference is given.

Where to start?

Luckily there is a splendid website on early printed breviaries in Hungary: Usuarium, A Digital Library and Database for the Study of Latin Liturgical History in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period.  You can search for each town, and it will give you a list of early printed liturgical texts.  It even has online copies, and detailed lists of contents.

I started with the Uppsala breviary (Breviarium Upsalense), which can be found here.  This was printed in Stockholm in 1496.  The site also gives a  broad list of contents, which is incredibly handy.  This tells me that the “sanctoral offices” are on pages 453-741.

Looking for Botolph in this vast sea of saints, in no obvious order, in a terrible font, was a nightmare.  I completely failed the first time, retiring hurt, to think and guess again. I had thought initially that it might be in alphabetical order of saint name – it begins with Andrew – but not so.  Then I thought perhaps Saint’s day order, but I couldn’t see it.  Paging through hundreds of pages of hard-to-read text, hoping to spot one small word… was futile.

But I did succeed, so I will share how I did this.  I was able to download a PDF of the whole volume, thankfully, and used my elderly copy of Adobe Acrobat Pro 9 to add bookmarks when I located stuff.

I could see from the website contents that it began with “St Andreas”, i.e. St Andrew.  I googled, and found that St Andrew’s day was Nov. 30.

The orginal volume is unhelpfully without any page or folio numbers.  But the Usuarium site helpfully says that the Sanctoral offices start on p.453 of the PDF/online copy.  So there I went.  Sure enough, St Andrew was there.  I bookmarked this, “Andrew (Nov 30) – 453”.

Next I went to page 741, the end of the sanctoral offices.  Or so Usuarium told me – I could not have determined this myself.  I bookmarked this as “end”.  I then paged back a bit, and found St Katherine.  Back to Google, search “St Catherine Day”. It tells me Nov 25, so I add a third bookmark, “Katherine (Nov 25).

I went back to Andrew, paged down and found… St Barbara (Dec. 4).  Bookmarked that too.  That’s a good start.

So… it looks like the offices are in order of saints’s days.  And the name of the saint is in the fat red text, the rubric.

Botolph is June 17.  So he should be somewhere in the middle.  I picked page 600, and jumped.  Luckily on this page I discovered St Margaret.  Another Google gave me July 20.  Added a bookmark for that, and started paging back, looking up saints as I went.

And… eventually… I found St Botolph, on page 558.

I then located the Aarhus breviary, which had defeated me last night.  It was harder to read, which had not helped.  But the same method worked:

  • Mark the start and end of the sanctoral offices.
  • Add bookmarks for the saints as you find them, with saint’s day, so you can see how far you are through the liturgical year.
  • Do a bit of simple arithmetic to guess which pages are halfway between where you are and what you’re looking for.  Then see if you are too early or too late.
  • Repeat and rinse.

Here it is, on p.548:

I do wish there was someway to feed back my book marks to Usuarium.  One area that the web has NOT solved is collaboration with random strangers.

Some may ask why I didn’t simply use a modern calendar of saints.  The answer is that I couldn’t find one that looked useful!  Probably one exists… somewhere!

Just to round up the search, I found that the Linköping breviary was not at Usuarium.  But google revealed that there was a “Breviarium Lincopense” in 1493.  Indeed it led me to a website Alvin here, which had it online and in PDF, and with a link to the manuscript catalogue with detailed description (on p.125) of the contents.  The breviarium is folios 1v-23r.  The last line of the catalogue informs us that Botolph is on folio 14r.  And the folios are indicated in the download of the PDF!

This is a manuscript, tho.  I’m not looking forward to collating this text *at all*!

All the same, this is simply fabulous.  The raw material of scholarship is just a click or four away… *if* you can find the right search query!

  1. John Toy, “St Botulph: an English saint in Scandinavia”, in M.O.H.Carver (ed.), The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, AD 300-1300, York (2003), pp.565-570.[↩]

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve had no luck in getting away for a break.  The prices for hotels are simply ridiculous, and somehow other things creep in.

But I’m making good progress with Botolph.  After my last post, a very kind gentleman, who was visiting the Bodleian Library in Oxford on his own account, kindly offered to photograph the two manuscripts that they hold.  And so he did. (Update: I now have permission to say that this was Peter Kidd of manuscripts.org.uk, to whom I am very grateful indeed!)

These two are manuscripts of the epitome of the “Life of Botolph”, BHL 1429.  The shelfmarks are Bodleian MS Bodl. 240, and Bodleian MS Tanner 15, both manuscripts of the “Sanctilogium” of John of Tynemouth.  The same text appears in the printed “Nova Legenda Angliae” of 1516, and was reprinted with amendments by Horstmann in 1901.

Since these appeared, I have been collating the text.  Starting with Horstmann as a base – because I could OCR this – I compared it to the 1516 edition, to the two Bodleian manuscripts, and to British Library MS Cotton Tiberius E. 1, which I photographed myself.  This latter was damaged by fire, but it doesn’t seem to have much in the way of original readings.  All three manuscripts are 15th century, and much of a muchness.  Horstmann’s edition – based on the 1516 and the BL manuscript – is perfectly sound.  All I will contribute is a larger apparatus, I think.

All the same you really do learn a lot about a text and about the manuscripts by comparing them, word by word.  You get a definite feeling that one of the scribes was in a hurry, copying a not-very-important text, happy to stick a word a bit later if his eye skipped it, and occasionally putting down the wrong word of identical meaning during the process of reading a sentence into his head and writing it out again.  You get a feel for the scribe, and a feel for the language of the author.

Lots of fun!

The full “Life”, BHL 1428, was done, except that I have located the missing Cologne manuscript in Berlin, and need to collate that and establish its relationship to the other manuscripts, especially to the Rooklooster manuscript which is probably its twin. It may mean a change to the family tree (stemma) of the manuscripts.  It will mean changes to the apparatus.  I doubt that it will affect the text or translation.

As of today, I have a text of the epitome, BHL 1429, and a draft translation of it which I will now revise.

The very brief Life in the Breviarium Slesvicense (BHL 1430) was done a while back.

The “Translatio” of the relics of St Botolph (BHL 1431) has been transcribed and a translation made, but I need to do more on this.

So it’s coming along very nicely.  But I still need some summer holiday!

Update: Dr Kidd also advised me about the rather confusing shelfmark for MS 240:

The ‘Bodleian’ is a library but ‘MS. Bodley’ is a shelfmark, which should be abbreviated as ‘MS. Bodl.’. So the shelfmark of one of the MSS I sent is Bodleian, MS. Bodl. 240, not Bodleian, MS 240.

Thank you!

Lives of St. Thancred, St Torhtred, and the Virgin Tova

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The “Life of St Botolph” begins with a preface, and ends with an account of the movement of the relics of various saints to Thorney Island during the period of the Danish raids.  But in MS British Library Harley 3097 (12th c.), folios 64v-65v (online here), in between the “Life” of Botolph, and the “Translatio” of the relics, there is another text, about three hermits of Thorney Abbey.  These were Thancred (or Tancred), his brother Torhtred, and their sister Tova.  I don’t know of any other manuscript that contains it.

The text is headed, “De Sanctis Thancredo et Torhtredo”, “Concerning Sts Thancred and Torhtred”, and ends with the explicit: “Explicit De Sanctis Thancredo et Torhtredo et eorum sorore Christi virgine Sancta Tova.”

The Latin text was published long ago in W. Birch, Liber Vitae: Register and Martyrology of New Minster and Hyde Abbey, Winchester, London (1892), appendix F, pp.284-286.  This is online at Archive.org here.

Unfortunately these saints are not listed in the Bollandists’ Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina.  Not much seems to be known about these three, except that their relics were preserved at Thorney Abbey, and venerated there before 1000 AD, as I learn from the Oxford Dictionary of Saints:

Tancred, Torthred, and Tova (870). Hermits of Thorney (Cambs.), killed by the Danes in 870.

The first two were men, the third a woman, but nothing is known of them. The story of their martyrdom rests on the chronicle of Pseudo-Ingulph, which may include sources older than the 12th century. They were, however, venerated in their Thorney shrine by the year 1000, witnessed by R. P. S. and were among the many saints whose bodies were translated by Ethelwold, but whose names William of Malmesbury was unwilling to write because they sounded so barbarous. Their feast was on 30 September at Thorney and Deeping.

R.P.S. and C.S.P.; William of Malmesbury, G.P., pp. 327–9; E.B.K. after 1100, i. 129–44.

It does not seem that the author of these couple of pages in BL Harley 3097 knew much more. All he can tell us is material from the notes of Aethelwold, founder of Thorney Abbey, and all the latter knew was that they were hermits killed by the Danes.

Here is a draft translation of the text as given by Birch, slightly corrected against the manuscript.

The saints and elect of God, rejecting the world in its fragility through inward contemplation of the soul, with single intent fixed the gaze of their hearts upon earning that joy of future blessedness.  But if anything contrary to this holy purpose appeared, they cast it aside with firm deliberation, and with the clearer sight of the mind they freely conceded renunciations, lest the ancient enemy should imagine that he could triumph over them with his usual trickery.

Hence it happened, by the blessing of God, that the holy confessors of the Lord, Thancred and Torhtred, who are venerated in today’s celebration, after despising the world, having been divinely raised to such a height of virtue, were strengthened in godly contemplation, that in the wilderness of Thorney they sought out the enemy of the human race in single combat, and at the same time, while supported by the grace of God, that they triumphed with a wonderful cry (of victory) over the one shamelessly deceiving, although no history recommends to us and no page of ancient narrative reveals the birth of these flowers of sanctity, or the manner of living of their lives.  But seeing the almighty grace of God, justifying those who fear him in every nation, we will not allow the little which we have learned about them to remain hidden from our descendants.

They lived in the aforementioned wilderness in dwellings not far separate from each other, brother from brother, likewise priest from priest, having a remote cell in which they spent their entire bodily life in meditation on the heavenly commandments. Who can measure, who can relate their labours in such a great solitude, their vigils, fastings, patience of soul, discomfort of body, the glorious tears and pious longings of a soul sighing constantly for God?

During the holy praise of these two holy brothers, a transparent pearl of the splendour of God cannot lie hidden, namely their sister and glorious partner in Christ, the virgin Tova.  She, as the blessed bishop of Christ, both the first builder of the same place, and its most holy abbot, Ethelwold, attests in his writings, was not only the sister of so many saints by blood, but also by diligent imitation of their virtues. And so she had chosen for herself with a manly spirit a solitary cottage in the woods, further away and about a mile more distant, in order to obtain divine aid more closely, having left earthly comfort and society far away. Triumphing over the tyrant of the world in that struggle, she, having become a member of Christ, deserved to have Christ as her head, to whom she was united in the framework of the body of the Church, that is, in that heavenly communion of the saints.

Fittingly do we proclaim the saints, in their contempt for the world yet exalted in the world, and nothing prevents us from proclaiming those who, despising such things for the love of God , sought the peace of solitude, in order to pour out all their attention in the single-minded pursuit of divine things. For, exiled from the doings of this world, they stood as if in a constant line of battle against the assault of the devil, and they won the right to be honoured by the Lord, not with the martyrdom of a single day, month, or even a long year, but rather with the triumph of their whole lives.

Nor did their temporal gladiator lack a crown, because the same piratical plague, which is said to have depopulated England in the time of the blessed Edmund, king and martyr, troubling many locations in many places, also came to the same wilderness, and there made the blessed bishop of Christ Thancred into a martyr, having found him in his cell, and after some time adorned the struggle of a longer wrestling-match with a glorious end.

But his brother Torhtred, equally a bishop of the Lord, as the aforementioned pontiff of God Ethelwold teaches in his writings, conquering the foe and the world in the glory of confession,1 departed to Christ in his sleep, and was buried in the same wilderness with his brother the martyr and his sister the virgin.

There, to this day, resting in their tombs, to the honour of the Holy Trinity, they are venerated by faithful Christians, who, with the support of their assistance, are freed from the burden of oppressive sins, and as the strength of their faith grows, they rejoice, to the honour and praise of the same God and our almighty Lord, who lives and reigns for ever and ever, Amen.

It sounds as if the Danes found Thancred in his cell in the woods, tortured him, no doubt in hopes of money, and then killed him.  They also tortured his brother Torhtred, but did not kill him.  The virgin Tova was a mile deeper in the woods, and perhaps went unnoticed.

 

  1. I.e. he was a “confessor”; presumably captured by the Danes and tortured, but not killed.[↩]

Happy St Botolph’s Day! English Translation of the Epitome in the Schleswig Breviary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

June 17 is the day on which St Botolph is commemorated in the Roman calendar, so Happy St Botolph’s day to you all.

In honour of the day, I thought that I would post an English translation of the abbreviated “Life”, found in the printed Schleswig Breviary of 1512 (Breviarium Slesvicense).  It’s the latest of the late-medieval abbreviations of the “Life”.  I’ve put a Word .docx version at the end.

    *    *    *    *

Epitome of the Life of St Botolph, from the Schleswig Breviary[1]

1.     After the faith of Our Lord Jesus Christ became well-known throughout the world, there was a man worthy in God, named Botolph, descended from the noble lineage of the kings of Scotland, who, when he was pressed to accept the throne after the death of his father,[2] for the love of God not only relinquished the throne, but also his homeland, and journeyed to England. There, he was received with reverence by Edmund, King of England, and not long after, by the command of the same king,[3] he was raised to holy orders.

2.     But when he had stayed with the same king for seven years, he petitioned him to grant him a place where he might more freely serve the Lord.[4] The king assigned him a most beautiful place, surrounded on all sides by the streams of a certain river.  There he built a church to the honour of God, and began through divine grace to become well-known for many miracles.  Now while the man of God was staying there with his disciple, one day a poor man knocked at the door, begging for alms in the name of God.

3.    When the holy Father ordered the disciple to give him something, he replied that he had nothing for all their[5] food, except a single loaf of bread: which he ordered to be divided into four parts, and one of them to be given to the poor man.  Then what?  When three other poor men came, he distributed the three remaining pieces.  When the disciple therefore murmured about this, the holy man said, “Do not be troubled, my son, for God is able to give it all back to us again.”  Hardly had he finished his words, and behold: four little boats loaded with food and drink were being drawn along the aforementioned river, which Almighty God, through His faithful ones, provided for the holy man.

4.    But one day, when he was visited by the aforementioned king, he petitioned for another place to live, because in the first site he was exceedingly pestered by unclean spirits. The king, granting his request, gave him a more suitable place on the River Thames;[6] in which place the man of God built a church in honour of St. Martin.  Then, staying in the same place, he began to raise hens, which an eagle from a nearby forest used to come and carry off. But one day, when it had carried off a cockerel, the man of God rebuked[7] it, and it immediately came and placed the cockerel alive at his feet, and then fell down dead.

5.    After thirteen years had passed in that place, the ancient enemy[8] came in the form of a snake and inflicted a nasty bite on the man of God. Because of this, he again approached the king to give him another place; who led him far from the sea, into a vast wilderness: where, as he proceeded through thorny places, he came to a certain valley, which had a small stream of water; and the man of God said, “This is the place.”[9]  And so in that place given to him by the king, he built two churches, in honour of the apostles Peter and Paul. When these were completed, he went abroad[10] to Rome for the purpose of prayer, to visit the shrines[11] of those same most blessed apostles.

6.    Returning from there and bringing with him many relics of the saints, before entering his own cell, he restored sight to a blind girl through his prayers. King Edmund, hearing of the return of the holy man, met him with great joy, and stayed with him for three days.  After these things, Botolph, the man of God, passed over to the Lord. His disciples honorably committed his body for burial.  Many miracles happen at his tomb, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be honour and glory forever. Amen.

[1] The Schleswig Breviary is a service book printed in Paris in 1512 at the order of Gotteschalk von Ahlefldt, the last Catholic bishop.  Two copies are held in the Danish Royal Library in Copenhagen.  This text was reprinted in the Acta Sanctorum, with notes by D. Papebroch, which are translated below, prefixed by a, b, c etc.  This translation and other notes by Roger Pearse, 2025, and improved by comparison with the unpublished translation of D. G. Dalziel, kindly made available to me by Denis Pepper of the the Society of St Botolph.

[2] a. It seems that this was Eugenius IV, who died in the year 620; nor was the kingdom offered immediately to Botulph, but only after the princes and people were no longer able to tolerate the crimes of his successor Ferquard: so great that it was decided to throw him into prison, in which he later died, say around the year 624. But when Botulph fled, the administration passed to another of the brothers, Donald, who then reigned after Ferquard’s death until the year 646. (See Wikipedia article on Legendary Kings of Scotland – RP)

[3] b. Or rather, the Christian mother of the still pagan king, who took him as her chaplain, and as an instructor in the pious education of her daughters.

[4] c. In order to obtain this more conveniently, I believe he had first persuaded the Queen to send her daughters to one of the Frankish monasteries.

[5] SB actually has “eorum”; but strangely the AASS copy has “corporis,” which would make this “he had nothing for all the food of the body.”

[6] d. This confirms what I have said, that Edmund ruled in Surrey on the right bank of the Thames, and that it was a part of Southern England. Perhaps also the saint was moved to leave the court because he saw that he was wasting his time in trying to lead the king to faith.

[7] Cf. Mark 4:39.

[8] Satan.

[9] [e] Thus far, that is, up to around the year 644, Botulph had lived as a hermit, when it seemed divinely inspired to him to cross over into Gaul, there to be trained in monastic discipline (though this is here omitted) and to visit various monasteries, especially staying at the one where his spiritual daughters, the sisters of the King, resided, who had taken monastic vows. And so he will first have returned around the year 654, advanced in age and now fitted to establish and promote monastic discipline among the South Angles; and from this point begins that opening part of the earlier “Life,” which alone we approve, as written by a near-contemporary.

[10] [f] I would think that this happened after the year 660, suppposing that the saint returned while Edmund was still alive; who (unless the South Angles had different kings from the East Saxons, for which there is no evidence) received as his successor about that year Edelwalch, baptized in 661 (as Alford believes). At that time St. Vitalianus was the Pope of the Roman Church. (This refers to Fr. Michael Alford S.J. (1587-1652), Fides Regia Britannica, sive Annales Ecclesiae Britannicae, Liege (1663).  – RP)

[11] “limina”, lit. “thresholds”, but indicating the tombs and basilicas – Niemeyer, “Mediae Latinitas Lexicon Minus.”

Downloads:  (Update: I have added in the Latin)

Hey! Teacher! Leave them texts alone! Some critical thoughts on the text of the Life of St Botulf

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The “Life” of St Botulf by Folcard of St Bertin was first printed in 1668 by the librarian of the Maurist fathers, Luc D’Achery, whose sole source was a manuscript from “Utica” – i.e. St Evroul in Normandy, plus his imagination.  It was then printed again in 1701 as part of the Bollandist Acta Sanctorum.  As sources, the unknown editor of the AASS text had only D’Achery’s edition, and his own imagination; but also two further manuscripts – notable because the first few chapters were missing – one from Rooklooster, the other from Cologne.  The text has not been edited since.

For the last week or so, I have been comparing manually those manuscripts in my possession with the texts printed by D’Achery and the Bollandists.  As part of this, I am compiling a collation in a word document.  Going through this repeatedly is beginning to reveal the truth about the editions, and indeed about the text.

For the last couple of days, I have been collating the Lincoln Cathedral manuscript.  This, unlike the others, is also lacking the first few chapters.

The shortened Lincoln manuscript has a great number of minor changes, when compared to the near unanimity of three other manuscripts of the full text.  This leads inexorably to a conclusion: the text in the Lincoln manuscript is not just shortened at the front.  It is actually a separate recension, a separate version of the text, with its own particular readings.

One fingerprint is that the creator of the shortened text had a habit of reversing words in the text, for no obvious reason.  So the full text reads “pascua ducendo”, but our boy writes “ducendo pascua”.

The same trait appears in the Bollandist’s edition, when compared with D’Achery.  I have yet to check the Rooklooster manuscript, but I suspect that it will show the same trait.

All these little changes mess up the otherwise impressive unanimity of the witnesses of the full text.  I have decided to show them in light blue, because they really have nothing to do with the text.  These are changes, not errors.

This means that the Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina needs an amendment; in addition to the full text, which is BHL 1428, there needs to be a BHL 1428b, which denotes the text where the first few chapters are missing.

As originally written, the “Life” began with a nervous-sounding letter of dedication to Wakelin, the tough new Norman bishop of Winchester, who was busy kicking the stuffing out of the cult of St Botulf there, and promoting the cult of St Swithun.  But none of the manuscripts in my hands contain this.  It was printed by Hardy a couple of centuries ago from an English manuscript that does, and I gave a translation of his text a while back.

It is no mystery why this would be omitted.  The manuscripts are divided into chunks, but without consistency.  What they often contain is “lectio i” or something like that.  These are texts being used for liturgical purposes.  A political letter from Folcard to Wakelin has no place in a liturgical compendium of Lives.

Nor is it a mystery why someone would choose to omit the opening chapters either.  These are about St Adulf, the brother of St Botulf, who doesn’t even appear until chapter 4.  It is unfortunate, but perhaps inevitable, that the creator of the new version felt able to mess with the text in small yet annoying ways.

The process of collation is also revealing D’Achery’s editorial changes, limited as these are.  None of them are worth retaining, I suspect.

Once I collate the Rooklooster manuscript, now in Vienna, I imagine that the changes in the Bollandist edition will also pop out.  Most likely these will all be dross, because they come from the shortened version.

To my great surprise, a PDF of the St John’s College Cambridge manuscript arrived today.  This appears to be a copy of the full text, and should therefore confirm much of what I already suppose.  Better yet, it even includes the dedicatory letter.  On the face of it, since nobody has got editorial with it, this ought to have a very pure text.  But we will see.

The lesson of today is to editors: please leave the text alone!  Transmit to us what you have.  Don’t “fix” it.