Ælfric's Lives of the virgin spouses : with modern English parallel-text translations : Julian and Basilissa, Cecilia and Valerian and Chrysanthus and Daria / edited by Robert K. Upchurch.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Aelfric, Abbot of Eynsham

Contributor:

Upchurch, Robert K.

Series:

Exeter medieval texts and studies

Language:

Multiple languages

Subjects (All):

Christian literature, English (Old).

Christian hagiography--History--To 1500.

Christian hagiography.

History.

Marriage.

Physical Description:

xii, 297 pages ; 24 p.

Other Title:

Lives of the virgin spouses

Place of Publication:

Exeter : University of Exeter, 2007.

Language Note:

Old English and Latin texts with parallel English translation on facing page. Introduction and commentary in English.

Summary:

This scholarly parallel-text edition is the first to bring together the stories of the little-known virgin spouses: Julian and Basilissa, Cecilia and Valerian, and Chrysanthus and Daria, all drawn from the Lives of Saints written by the Anglo-Saxon monk Aelfric. Alongside Aelfric's original Old English texts, Robert Upchurch provides the reader with modern English parallel-text translations, and, as a useful comparison, the closest Latin source texts-again with parallel-text translations.

The introduction places the Lives of the Virgin Spouses in literary-historical and social contexts and explores Aelfric's interest in the hagiographical genre of chaste marriage. As a leading churchman writing at the time of the Viking raids at the end of the first millennium, Aelfric wrote his Lives to bolster the faith of English Christians. These three stories of couples who marry but do not consummate their unions point to the ideal of marital celibacy in Aelfric's programme of pastoral care. Taken together, the group provides an opportunity to emphasise different but related points about the literal and figurative types of chastity and purity appropriate to the laity in the closing decade of the tenth century.

Contents:

The Latin Legends of the Virgin Spouses 3

Treatments of the Latin Legends by Anglo-Saxon Authors other than Aelfric 9

Aelfric's Treatment of the Latin Legends in the Lives of Saints 19

The Language of the Old English Texts 26

Aelfric's Latin Sources 29

Notes to the Introduction 32

Old English Texts and Translations

Editorial Procedure 52

I Julian and Basilissa 54

II Cecilia and Valerian 72

III Chrysanthus and Daria 86

Latin Texts and Translations

Editorial Procedure 110

I Julian and Basilissa 114

II Cecilia and Valerian 172

III Chrysanthus and Daria 218.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9780859897792

0859897796

9780859897808

085989780X

OCLC:

148354773