Tag: Mabillon

Editing the Latin text of the “Life” of St Botolph? Do I want to?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A couple of days ago, I completed a draft translation into English of the “Life” of St Botolph by Folcard of St Bertin.  So far, so good.  I made the translation from the 1701 text in the Acta Sanctorum (=AASS) for June 17th (in “June”, vol. 3), which is “annotated by Daniel Papebroch” – some careful phrasing there, which implies that he did not edit the text.

Since then I have started to look at the Latin text, and compare it with the 1672 text in the Acta Sanctorum Ordinis S. Benedicti,(=AASSOSB) by D’Achery and  Mabillon.  This is supposed to be a copy of the MS. Paris BNF lat. 13092, originally from S. Evroul in Normandy (S. Ebrulfi Uticensis).  I have a PDF of a rotten b/w microfilm of this.

Also at my disposal is another manuscript, acquired when I was looking at St Nicholas: MS British Library Harley 3097.  This is a modern colour reproduction, also in PDF, and a pleasure to use.

In fact, as I was writing this, I went to look at the list of manuscripts and saw that MS Cambridge Corpus Christi College, Parker Library, MS. 161, was listed – and I happen to know that the Parker Library are all online.  It took little time to locate that either, so I have just acquired another witness to the text.

Ms. Cambridge CCC Parker 161, ff. 61v-62r (excerpt)

Four more manuscripts are listed in my notes, all in England:

  • another MS in Cambridge, this time MS St John’s College 209;
  • MS Lincoln Cathedral Library 7, which won’t be online, but might be possible to visit and photograph, and where I might conceivably have a connection through a relative;
  • MS London, Gray’s Inn Library 3, owned by the legal profession.
  • MS British Library Cotton Tiberius E. 1, which was a copy of John of Tynemouth’s collection of saints’ lives, but partly destroyed by fire.

Finally there is a manuscript in Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, fonds principale, ser. no. 12814, a very late 15th century.

The Bollandists used two more manuscripts, one from the “red valley” near Brussels, wherever that might be; and the other from Cologne.  These started at chapter 4, omitting the opening material which was mainly about St Adulph, Botolph’s cousin.  Where they might be now I do not know.  The Bollandist “Legendiers Latins” site, which replaces the BHLms, does not list them.

The English bias of the manuscripts is obvious, and unsurprising since the author, Folcard, was the abbot of Thorney Abbey in Cambridgeshire.

I have begun to collate the witnesses available to me.  This went reasonably well for the first three chapters, where the Bollandist editors only had Mabillon’s edition.

So in chapter 1, we had a single word attested differently, but only in the Harley MS.  In chapter 2 we had half a sentence missing from the Bollandist text, but found in all the others.  That looks bad: it can only be a copying mistake by the unknown Bollandist editor, who lost most of a line from the edition of d’Achery that he was copying.  Chapter 3 has one word different in the Bollandist text from all the other witnesses: presumably an emendation.

But chapter four, where the Bollandists have these MSS from the “red valley” and from Cologne… oh my!  There are slight word-order differences in various places, all of which make the text harder to understand.  Extra words are found, or not found.  The text is clearly somewhat different, although not enough to affect the meaning.  Exactly the same happens in chapter five.

The impression that I am getting is that these are not copyist variants on a common text.  This is a somewhat different recension of the text.

There are different recensions around.  There are two separate epitomes listed in the Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina.  The two Bollandist manuscripts certainly differ, in that they omit chapters 1-3.  It is, I think, defensible that they represent an edition, made on the continent, and somewhat altered by the editor.  If so, the English text will be more authentic.  Unfortunately, without access to either of the Bollandist manuscripts, it is hard to tell whether some of this is just the carelessness of the Bollandist editor, or whether this hypothesis is correct.

It is hard work, making a collation.  Do I want to do this?  Do I want to simply leave these textual issues alone, and issue a translation of the AASS text?  After all, I set out to make a translation, not grapple with the textual history.

Decisions, decisions.

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Mabillon, the “Acta Sanctorum OSB”, and St Botolph

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Dom Jean Mabillon OSB (d. 1707) is remembered today mainly as the inventor of paleography.  But he had a wider career, which is described very nicely at this link here.  An excerpt relating to the Acta Sanctorum Ordinis S. Benedicti:

In Saint-Germain, he was at last among congenial company, and results followed quickly. D’Achéry was the custodian of the Abbey’s well-stocked library. Every week, on Sundays after Vespers, there met in his room a group of men who were already scholars of reputation – Charles du Fresne, Sieur du Cange, Etienne Baluze, d’Herbelot, Cotelier, Renaudot, Fleury, Lamy, Pagi, and Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont. Mabillon soon took a prominent place among them.

D’Achéry had asked for him to help him in his projected “Lives of the Benedictine Saints,” but the first task he undertook was editing the works of St. Bernard. This was published within three years, in 1667, and was recognized as a masterly accomplishment.

Meanwhile Mabillon had been arranging the materials already brought together by D’Achéry. The first volume of the “Acta Sanctorum OSB” was published in 1668, a second volume in 1669, and the third in 1672.

The Acta being thus completed, Mabillon made a “literary journey” to Flanders, in search of documents and materials for his work, and in 1675 he published the first of four volumes of “Vetera Analecta” in which he collected the fruit of his travels and some shorter works of historical importance. Mabillon had now joined the ranks of Renaissance philology, and was soldiering in its front lines; its lines of discovery.

He had however not left the Acta behind him. Faith and reason do not comfortably mix at any time, and the unquestionably devout Mabillon had been using Reason as a broom to tidy in the House of Faith. The very scholarly conscientiousness of his work on the Benedictine Saints had scandalized some of the other monks, and in 1677 a petition violently attacking it was presented to the general chapter of the congregation, demanding its suppression and an apology from its author. Mabillon defended himself with such humility, and such learning, that the opposition was silenced, and he was encouraged to continue.

There is room for confusion here.  The Bollandist Acta Sanctorum (abbreviated AASS) must be distinguished from this earlier work, the Acta Sanctorum OSB (abbreviated ASS OSB), the Acts of the Saints of the Order of St Benedict.

The volumes of the AS OSB can be found on Archive.org here.  The work is divided into “saecula” (“centuries”) but in fact each “saeculum” may cover a number of centuries.

“Saeculum III” covers 700-800 AD.[1]  This is the volume of interest to us, for St Botolph, and is online here.

The section on Botolph is on p.3, after the interminable preface, p117 of the PDF.  The Life is followed on p.7 (PDF p.121) by the very short “Translatio”, or account of the transfer of the saint’s bones elsewhere after his death.

The prefatory remarks begin with:

Scripta ab auctore subpari, ut videtur ex num 10. Ex MS Cod. Monasterii Uticensis.

Written by an inferior author, as appears from number 10. From the MS Cod. of the Monastery of Utica.

We are quickly told that this manuscript:

ex membranis Coenobii Uticensis seu S. Ebrulfi in Neustria hodierna: quibus in membranis haec Vita in novem lectiones, Responsoriis totidem adhibitus, pro more officii Ecclestiastici distributa legitur.

from a parchment manuscript of the Utica Monastery or Monastery of St. Ebrulsus in modern Neustria: in which ms this Life is read in nine lessons, with the same number of responses, distributed according to the custom of the ecclesiastical office.

I found incredible difficulty in working out which monastery this was, as I read “Ebrulsi” with the long-S, rather than Ebrulfi.  But it seems to be St. Evroul in Normandy, since a certain “Ebrulsi abbas Robertus le Tellier,” i.e. Robert le Tellier, is attested as abbot in this link, who was abbot of St Evroul.  The Wikipedia link gives the Latin name as “Ebrulphus Uticensis,” rather than the “Ebrulsus Uticensis” that I had presumed – drat the long-s!  Likewise it took some effort to find that references to “St. Ebrulf at Utica in Normandy”, such as this link.

Likewise I could find no reference to an “Utica” in Normandy, until I find this link,[2], which on p.72 has this entry:

Uticum, Utica: Ouche, abbaye en Normandie, dans le pays d’Hyesmois, voyez le titre S. Evroul, 1 partie.

The “pays d’Ouche” is a region of Normandy, with S. Evroult in one corner.

It is a reasonable first guess that a manuscript in a French abbey would likely end up in the French National Library, especially if it was being used in 1700 by the Maurist monk Jean Mabillon, based at their headquarters at St Germain-des-Prés in Paris. Indeed, according to Wikipedia, the abbey of S. Evroul attached itself to the congregation of St Maur.

I find that the French national library does indeed contain a manuscript, Paris BNF lat. 13092, 2, ff.110r-113v, 12th century.  This manuscript is online here, in a not-very-good microfilm scan.  Interestingly two letters in French, one dated 1712, are bound into the manuscript, just before the text of St Botolph.  Sadly I cannot quite read these.

And the first page of the text has written over the top, “ex mon(aste)rio S. Ebrulsi in Normannia” (not quite sure of every letter).

So this indeed our manuscript, the MS. Ebrulphus Uticensis, from which Mabillon printed the text.  Rather a pity that the online image is so low-resolution, tho.

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  1. [1]d’Achery, Luc, and Jean Mabillon, Acta sanctorum Ordinis S. Benedicti, vol. 3: Saeculum III: quod est ab anno Christi DCC ad DCCC, Paris: Lutetiae Parisiorum, apud Carolum Savreux, 1672.↩
  2. [2]Adrien Baillet, Les vies des saints … avec l’histoire de leur culte, vol. 10 (1739)↩