GENERAL AUTHORITIES

Acta Sanctorum.

Acta Sanctorum Ordinis S. Benedicti (Mabillon).

Annales Ord. S. Benedicti (Mabillon).

Cave, Wm. Script. Eccles. Hist. Lit. 1688, 1698.

Dictionary of Christian Biography.

Patrologiae Cursus Completus (Migne).

Adamnan (625?–704), abbot of Iona.

[His Life of St. Columbia is of great importance in the history of the churchi in Scotland. The best edition is that of Reeves, W., Dublin, 1857. new ed. Fowler, Oxford, 1894. See also ed. Forbes, A. P. and Skene, W. F., 1874, Edinburgh. For Adamnan’s Travels of Arculfus, a very early narrative of travel in Palestine, see Acts of the Benedictine Saints and Wright, T., Early Travels in Palestine, 1848, which also contains accounts of the travels of Willibald, Bernard, Saewulf, Sigurd, Benjamin of Tudela, Sir John Maundeville, De la Brocquiére and Maundrell. The “Vision” that goes by the name of Adamnan may be compared with other visions referred to by Bede and similar medieval records.]

Alcuin. Ed. Frobenius. Ratisbon, 1877. Also in Migne’s Patrologia, C-CI. Letters, ed. Schütze, H. 1879.

Ebert’s Allgem. Gesch. d. Litt. des Mittelalters in Abendlande, II.

Gaskoin, C. J. B. Alcuin: his life and work. 1904.

Jaffé’s Monumenta Alcuiniana. Berlin, 1873.

Lorenz, F. Alcuin’s Leben. Halle, 1829. Trans. by Slee, J. M. 1837.

Mullinger, J. B. The Schools of Charles the Great. 1877.

Raine, J. Historians of the Church of York. Rolls Series. 1879 ff.

Sandys, J. E. A History of Classical Scholarship. 2nd ed. Cambridge, 1907.

West, A. F. Alcuin. 1892.

Aldhelm. Ed. Giles, J. A. Patres Eccles. Angl. Oxford, 1844. Also in Migne, Patrologia, LXXXIX. For Faricus’s life of Aldhelm see Giles, Migne, and Acta Sanctorum 6 May. See also Capgrave’s Nova Legenda Angliae, 1516.

Baehrens, A. Poetae Latini Minores. Leipzig, 1879-83 (for Riddles).

Bucheler, F. and Riese, A. Anthologia Latina. Leipzig, 1894 (for Riddles).

Manitius, M. Aldhelm und Baeda. Sitzungsb. d. Wien. Akad. 1886.

Norden, E. Die antike Kunstprosa vom VI Jahrhundert v. Chr. bis in die Zeit der Renaissance. Leipzig, 1898.

Bede. In Migne’s Patrologia, XC-XCV. Early folio editions were published at Paris (1544-5), Basel (1563), etc. Ed.Giles, J.A. 12 vols. 1843-4. See Wright’s Biogr. Brit. Lit. and Notes and Queries, 4th Ser. IX, X and XII. The MS. containing Cuthbert’s letter and the 11. of O. E. verse quoted as Bede’s is at St. Gall.

Bede. Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum. MSS., Cambridge University Library (Moore) Kk. 5. 16 and Brit. Mus. First published? Strassburg, c. 1473, Eggesteyn, H.; 1550, Antwerp, Gravius, etc.; in England edd. Wheloc, A., Cambridge, 1643-4; Smith, J., Cambridge, 1722; Moberley, G. H., Oxford, 1881; Bks. III and IV Mayor, J. E. B. and Lumby, J. R., Cambridge, 1878. Trans. by Stapleton, T., Antwerp, 1565; Giles, J. A., 1840. See also bibliography to Chapter VI for the Old English version. [Bede’s account of the visit of Drythelm to the underworld gives a vivid picture of the medieval conception of hell and purgatory and holds a substantial place in the “vision literature” of Old and Middle English.]

—— Opera Historica. Ed. Stevenson, J., Eng. Hist. Soc., 1838-41; ed.

Plummer, C., Oxford, 1896. See also Fuller’s Worthies, and Ozanam, A. F., La Civ. Chrêt. chez les Francs, Paris, 1849.

Book of Cerne. Ed. Kuypers, A. B. Cambridge, 1902.

Dicuil (fl. 825). Author of an early geography, Liber de Mensura orbisterrae, printed by Walckenaer, C. A., Paris, 1807; Letronne, A., Paris, 1814 and Parthey, G., Berlin, 1870.

Eddi or Eddius Stephanus (fl. 669). For the Life of St. Wildrid, see Mabillon’s Acta Sanctorum Ord. S. Benedicti, Gale’s Historiae britannicae saxonicae, anglo-danicae Scriptores, Oxford, 1691 and Raine’s Historians of the Church of York, Rolls Series. There is a tenth Century metrical version of the life by Frithegode (fl. 950) a monk of Canterbury.

Erigena, Joannes Scotus or (fl. 850). A Consideration of the philosophical writings of Erigena is outside the scope of the present volume. The reader may be referred to William of Malmesbury, to Ebert’s Allgem. Gesch. d. Litt. des Mittelalters im Abendlande, to Pole’s Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought (1884), to the professed histories of philosophy and to later volumes of the present work wherein philosophical writings are discussed. Erigena has been held to be a precursor of scholasticism, and “in some respects he may be accounted the herald of the movement of the eleventh century, but in more he is the last prophet of a philosophy belonging to earlier ages” (Poole, D. of N. B.). “His great work on The Division of Nature has been appreciated as the one purely philosophical argument of the Middle Ages. He was called in by Hincmar of Reheims to strengthen the right cause against Gottscale. They wanted a skilled apologist; they found one whose help, like that of the magic sword in certain fairy tales, might be dangerous for the side that used it. They asked him to oppose the excessive cruelties of predestination, as maintained by Gottscalc. But he would not be limited to the requisite amount of controversy, and before the Irish philosopher could be checked, he had refuted Sin and Hell. Neo-Platonist he is called, but in his case the name does not stand for eclectic oriental work; his mind is as clear as Berkeley’s, with a vastly greater and more articulate system to explain and develop. For literature, the merit of his writing is that it expresses his meaning without hurry or confusion, and that his meaning, whatever its philosophical value, is certainly no weak repetition of commonplaces” (Ker, The Dark Ages, p. 162). For Erigena’s works, see Migne’s Patrologia and L. Traube’s edition of the poems in Poetae Latini aevi Carolini, Mon. Germ. Hist., 1896.

Ethelwulf’s Latin poem on Crayke (?). See Mabillon, Acts of Benedictine Saints.

Felix of Croyland’s Life of St. Guthlac. See Acta Sanctorum, 11 April, etc. For the Old English lives, see Chapter IV. In addition to the Exeter Book Guthlac, there are prose Old English lives of the saint in the Vercelli Book and in Brit. Mus. Cott. Vesp. D. XXI. See ed. Goodwin, C. W., 1848.

Gildas. “The copies which remain are few. A partially burnt manuscript (Cott. Vitellius A. VI) of the eleventh century is the primary authority. It is fairly well represented by the early printed editions: better by that of John Joscelin (1568) than by that of Polydore Vergil (1525). Of two in the Cambridge University Library, one, which belonged to Glastonbury, is not independent of the Cottonian: the other, from Salley Abbey, contains only the first part. Thomas Gale, who edited Gildas in 1691, followed this copy so far as it goes; and to his edition we owe the common but erroneous division of the work into two parts, Epistle (chapters 1-26) and History (27-110). The next oldest manuscript to the Cottonian is one formerly at Mont St. Michel and now at A vranches: it is of the twelfth century and very probably had some Breton ancestor” (M. R. James). Edd. Stevenson, J., Eng. Hist. Soc., 1838 (together with the Life, ascribed to Caradog of Llancarvan); Hardy, T., Mon. Hist. Brit., 1848; Williams, H., Cymmrodorion Records, 1899-1901; Mommsen, Mon. Germ., 1894; trans. Habington, T., 1638 and Giles, J. A., in Six Old English Chronicles, 1848 (Asser’s Alfred, Ethelwerd’s Chronicles, Gildas, Nennius, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Richard of Cirencester). See also Skene, Four Ancient Books of Wales, de la Borderie, A., in Revue Celtique VI and Wright’s Biogr. Brit. Lit.

Hisperica Famina. Ed. Stowasser, Vienna, 1887; ed. Jenkinson, Cambridge (in preparation). See also Bradshaw, H., Collected papers, Cambridge, 1889, Ker, W. P., The Dark Ages and Zimmer, H., in Göttingische Nachrichted, 1895.

Nennius. “The oldest copy of the Historia Britonum (incomplete, and not offering the best text) is one of the ninth or tenth century at Chartres. The best are a Harleian manuscript (No. 3859) of the eleventh and twelfth century and a Cottonian (Vespasian D. XXI) of the twelfth. A Durham copy, one at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (No. 139) and another in the University Library at Cambridge (Ff. 1. 27), which contains two copies of the bulk, under the names of Nennius and Gildas respectively, are also important. The first printed edition was that of Thomas Gale in 1691” (M. R. James). Edd. Stevenson, J., Eng. Hist. Soc., 1838; Hardy, T., Mon. Hist. Brit.; Mommsen, T., Mon. Germ., 1894; trans. Giles, J.A. (see above). See also de la Borderie, A., L’Hist. Brit. attrib. à N., Paris, 1883; Zimmer, H., Nennius Vindicatus, Berlin, 1893; and Mommsen in Neues Archiv. d. Gesell. XIX.

St. Noniface. Opera Omnia. Ed. Giles, J. A. 1844.

Düummler. Poetae Latini aevi Carolini. Mon. Germ. Hist. 1880 ff.

Jaffé. Mon. Moguntina. Bibl. Rerum Germ. 1866.

St. Columba. In addition to Adamnan’s Life (see above), see also Manus O’Donnell’s MS. concerning Columba, Bodl. Rawl. B. 514.

St. Columban (543-615). See Patrick Fleming’s Collectanea Sacra, Augsburg, 1621.

St. Cuthbert. For the life by the Lindisfarne monk, etc., see Acta Sanctorum, 20 March.

St. Patrick (373-463). See the Tripartite Life, Rolls Series, ed. Whitley Stokes; Lives of the Saints from the Book of Lismore, ed. Whitley Stokes, Oxford, 1889; lives by Todd, J. H., 1863 and Bury, J. B., 1905.

Tatwin. Riddles, MS. Brit. Mus. Reg. 12, CXXIII. See Giles, J. A., Anecdotae Bedae, Lanfranci et aliorum, Caxton Soc., 1851 and Wright, T., Anglo-Norman Poets, Rolls Series.

Willibald (700?-786), nephew of St. Boniface, bishop and pilgrim to Palestine. For the record of his travels, see Mabillon, Acta SS. O. Benedicti; Wright, T., Early Travels in Palestine (see above); and Beazley, C. R., Dawn of Modern Geography, 1897. See also Giles, J. A., Vita Quorundam Anglo-Saxonum, Caxton Soc., 1854.

The writings of Isidore of Seville, referred to on pp. 71, 75, 80, etc. can be most easily consulted in Migne’s Patrologia, LXXXI-LXXXVI. See also Sandys’ Classical Scholarship, 1, for brief particulars of the Origines, “which gathered up for the Middle Ages much of the learning of the ancient world.”