Saints’ Lives Volume I, and: Saints’ Lives Volume II by Henry of Avranches (review)

Henry of Avranches was one of the first real professional Latin poets of the medieval period, and has been acclaimed as the foremost Anglo-Latin poet of the thirteenth century. His career extended from before 1215 until after 1260, and from 1243 until 1260 he was paid generously from the Exchequer of Henry III. In addition, he received patronage from several English prelates, the French king, Lewis IX, and from Pope Gregory IX.

In these volumes, David Townsend continues a thirty-year programme of editing and researching Henry’s oeuvre. Several of the Liveshave appeared previously in his PhD dissertation, and (without translations) in the Toronto-based journals Medieval Studiesand The Journal of Medieval Latin. Substantial new contributions in the Dumbarton volumes are the Life of Francis(of Assisi) – Henry’s masterwork in fourteen books dedicated to Gregory IX – and the 1666-line Life of Guthlac.

Townsend takes his texts from a manuscript crucial in establishing the canon of Henry’s works, Cambridge University Library, MS Dd.11.78, an anthology compiled by Matthew of Paris at Saint Alban’s, and noted as ‘Verses of Master H.’ in Matthew’s hand. This manuscript contains nearly a hundred items in a variety of genres, although some are not Henry’s. Drawing on the detailed codicological study of the manuscript and its contents which he undertook with George Rigg (published in Medieval Studiesin 1987), Townsend lays out his criteria for the inclusion of the saints’ lives now edited, in descending order of certainty of attribution: Francis, Oswald, Birinus, Guthlac, Fremund, Edmund, and Thomas Becket. The last ( c. 1222) is a puzzle, as it is stylistically quite inconsistent with the other Lives, and only the first 769 lines, based upon John of Salisbury’s prose life, are included in the edition. A Life of Hugh of Lincoln, which has been plausibly attributed to Henry, does not appear in the Cambridge manuscript, and is omitted from this edition.

In a departure from the classicising norms adopted in many volumes in the Dumbarton series, Townsend retains the medieval orthographical conventions of the manuscript (e.g., setfor sed, preciosusfor pretiosus). These do not distract unduly, and indeed are to be preferred in the opinion of this reader.

Henry’s modus operandiwas to take an existing prose saint’s life and expand it, sometimes incorporating material from other sources, but principally drawing upon his broad literary training and his work in other genres (he wrote versified grammars, and put Aristotle’s treatise on Generation and Corruptioninto poetry, for example), and employing exuberant use of complex sound patterns, wordplay, rhetoric, and vivid conceits, including features drawn from classical Latin poetry. The predominance of English saints in his corpus reflects his pursuit of patronage by English churchmen, such as Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester, for whom the Life of Birinus, first bishop of the West Saxons, was written. The life of the obscure and legendary saint, Fremund, was perhaps commissioned by Richard de Morins for the Priory of Dunstable where Fremund’s cult was of economic importance, or possibly written in hope of patronage. One might surmise that Henry was struck by the rich potential for literary play in the sparse prose life, with episodes such as Fremund’s eremitical sojourn on ‘Fantasy Island’ (‘Insula Fantastica’). Townsend’s notes usefully highlight those features of the Livesthat Henry adds to his sources, as here for example, where the island is made all the more fantastic in its deception of passing sailors: ‘nam se postrema priorem, | se prior exhibuit postremam, seque sinistra | mentiri dextram solet, et se dextra sinistram’ (lines...