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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
In the late eleventh century, Goscelin of Saint-Bertin (ca. 1040–d. after 1099) composed the most extensive collection of hagiographical writings known to have been assembled for a community of religious women in medieval England. At the behest of Abbess Ælfgifu (ca. 1037–ca. 1114) of Barking Abbey, he definitely wrote the following texts to honor the community’s three principal saints: a uita of its founder and first abbess, Æthelburh (d. after 686); Matins lessons for her immediate successor, Hildelith (d. after 716); a uita and an account of the first translation of their later tenth-century successor Wulfhild (d. after 996); Matins lessons and a longer account of the three abbess-saints’ translation on Laetare Sunday, 7 March 1092; and a report of a vision Ælfgifu received seven years after the event. This article makes the case for Goscelin’s authorship of the Matins lessons for Sts. Æthelburh and Wulfhild as well, and for their preservation in London, British Library, Cotton MS Otho A XII (Part 6). Paleographical analysis of these lessons further indicates that the scribe responsible for copying them also copied the lives of Sts. Æthelburh and Wulfhild in Dublin, Trinity College, MS 176 (E.5.28), a late eleventh-century book of Barking origin. This hand exhibits features peculiar to scribes trained in northeastern France or the Low Countries, raising the possibility that Goscelin made these copies himself. But even if he did not make them, the appearance of the same hand in texts related to Barking’s abbess-saints suggests that this scribe’s work in Otho A XII (Part 6) should be located at Barking, too, thus increasing the total number of books the community once owned to twenty-two and further proving one of the instrumental roles that religious women played during the Middle Ages to orchestrate their communities’ liturgies: commissioning writers and scribes to compose saints’ lives, Matins lessons, and other texts and music to celebrate their principal feast days with due solemnity and distinctiveness.
I wish to thank Alison Altstatt, Cara Aspesi, Margot Fassler, David Gura, Tova Leigh-Choate, and Kate Steiner for their support and feedback throughout the writing of this article. I am also grateful for the unfailing encouragement of Eric and Joseph Bugyis. My study of Otho A XII at the British Library was made possible through the generous financial support of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
1 Colker, Marvin L., “Texts of Jocelyn of Canterbury which Relate to the History of Barking Abbey,” Studia Monastica 7 (1965): 383–460 Google Scholar; Thomas Hamilton, “Goscelin of Canterbury: A Critical Study of his Life, Works, and Accomplishments” (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1974), 106–22 and 180–83; Lapidge, Michael and Love, Rosalind, “The Latin Hagiography of England and Wales (600–1550),” in Hagiographies: Histoire international de la littérature hagiographique latine et vernaculaire, en Occident, des origins à 1500, ed. Philippart, G., 9 vols. (Turnhout, 1994–2024), 3:203–325, at 229Google Scholar; the essays by Hollis, Stephanie, Slocum, Kay, and O’Donnell, Thomas in Barking Abbey and Medieval Literary Culture: Authorship and Authority in a Female Community, ed. Brown, Jennifer N. and Bussell, Donna Alfano (Woodbridge, 2012)Google Scholar; Beaumont, Casey, “Monastic Autonomy, Episcopal Authority, and the Norman Conquest: The Records of Barking Abbey,” Anglo-Norman Studies 38 (2016): 35–49 Google Scholar; Love, Rosalind, “Goscelinus Sancti Bertini monachus,” in Testi e Trasmissioni (Te. Tra.) 6, ed. Chiesa, Paolo and Castaldi, Lucia (Florence, 2020), 228–64Google Scholar; Bugyis, Katie Ann-Marie, “The Manuscript Remains of the Abbess-Saints of Barking Abbey,” Manuscripta 65 (2021): 1–53 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and eadem, “Dating the Translations of Barking’s Abbess-Saints by Goscelin of Saint-Bertin and Abbess Ælfgifu,” Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies 11 (2022): 97–130. Throughout this article, all references to the works Goscelin of Saint-Bertin composed for Barking Abbey are cited from the edition by Marvin L. Colker referenced at the beginning of this note.
2 See, too, Colker, Marvin L., “A Gotha Codex Dealing with the Saints of Barking Abbey,” Studia Monastica 10 (1968): 321–24Google Scholar.
3 Bugyis, “Manuscript Remains of the Abbess-Saints of Barking Abbey.” See, too, Love, “Goscelinus Sancti Bertini monachus,” 237–39.
4 Sharpe, Richard, “Words and Music by Goscelin of Canterbury,” Early Music 19 (1991): 94–97 Google Scholar. Sharpe dated Harley 3908 to the late eleventh or early twelfth century. Michael Gullick, however, has recently challenged Sharpe’s dating of the manuscript with the suggestion that it was created around 1120 (personal communication with Susan Rankin).
5 Barking’s early fifteenth-century ordinal provides the following incipits to the first lesson for Matins on the feasts of St. Wulfhild’s translation, her dies natalis, and St. Æthelburh’s dies natalis: “Amabilis deo,” “Virgo sacratissima,” and “Temporibus nascentis,” respectively. See The Ordinale and Customary of the Benedictine Nuns of Barking Abbey (University College, Oxford, ms. 169), ed. J. B. L. Tolhurst and Laurentia MacLachlan, HBS 65–66, 2 vols. (London, 1927–28), 2:292, 297, and 319. These incipits closely correspond with the following passages in Goscelin’s translatio of St. Wulfhild, uita of St. Wulfhild, and uita of St. Æthelburh: “Amabilis deo Wlfilda,” “Vita sacratissimae uirginis Vulfildae,” and “His igitur primis temporibus nascentis,” respectively. See Goscelin, De translatione sanctae Wlfildae 12, ed. Colker, 431; Goscelin, Vita et uirtutes sanctae Wlfildae uirginis, ed. Colker, 418; and Goscelin, Vita et uirtutes sanctae Ethelburgae uirginis 1, ed. Colker, 400, respectively.
6 Gneuss, Helmut, “Die Handschrift Cotton Otho A. XII,” Anglia 94 (1976): 289–318 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 Helmut Gneuss stressed that it is difficult to know when, where, and how the different parts of Otho A XII were put together in the absence of codicological criteria. See Gneuss, “Die Handschrift Cotton Otho A. XII,” 294. It is by no means certain that Robert Cotton was the first to compile the texts that now constitute the manuscript.
8 Smith, Thomas, Catalogus librorum manuscriptorum bibliothecae Cottonianae (Oxford, 1696), 67 Google Scholar; and Report from the Committee Appointed to View the Cottonian Library (London, 1732), 50–51. Joseph Planta declared Otho A XII to be lost in A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Cottonian Library Deposited in the British Museum (London, 1802), 365.
9 See n. 8, above. Some of the items in Smith’s catalogue entry and in the 1732 report’s entry were identified imprecisely or incorrectly. These entries also overlooked the Matins lessons for St. Hildelith in Part 6, which are discussed in what follows. Helmut Gneuss corrected these errors in “Die Handschrift Cotton Otho A. XII,” 295–317.
10 Gneuss, “Die Handschrift Cotton Otho A. XII,” 294. Helmut Gneuss’s accounting of the parts constituting Otho A XII differs from that provided in the British Library’s short online description of the manuscript. Without any justification, this description claims that the manuscript contains “5 items.” I am persuaded by Gneuss’s account of the manuscript’s composition and follow his numeration of its constituent parts in what follows.
11 Helmut Gneuss noted that he could not completely rule out the possibility that Part 5 of Otho A XII had been gathered with Part 6 before they came into Robert Cotton’s possession. See Gneuss, “Die Handschrift Cotton Otho A. XII,” 294. This possibility cannot be proven or disproven given the fragmentary nature of the manuscript. I maintain a distinction between the two parts because they were copied by different scribes, as Gneuss himself acknowledged in “Die Handschrift Cotton Otho A. XII,” 293.
12 Gneuss, “Die Handschrift Cotton Otho A. XII,” 292.
13 I greatly appreciate the updates about the state of Otho A XII that I received from Julian Harrison, Lead Curator of Medieval Historical Manuscripts at the British Library, in response to my imaging requests. He informed me that the highly reflective Melinex sleeves in which the surviving folios of Otho A XII were placed make it extremely difficult to undertake imaging of the manuscript. Conservators at the British Library have yet to find a way to remove the fragments from their sleeves without causing further damage to them.
14 Dunning, Andrew, Hudson, Alison, and Duffy, Christina, “Reconstructing Burnt Anglo-Saxon Fragments in the Cotton Collection at the British Library,” Fragmentology 1 (2018): 7–37 Google Scholar.
15 Gneuss, “Die Handschrift Cotton Otho A. XII” (n. 6 above), 314–17.
16 Gneuss, “Die Handschrift Cotton Otho A. XII” (n. 6 above), 317. Gneuss also noted that the antiquarian John Bale (1495–1563) had credited Goscelin of Saint-Bertin with writing miracula of St. Eorcenwald, beginning “Veterum uestigiis herentes.” See Gneuss, “Die Handschrift Cotton Otho A. XII” (n. 6 above), 316–17. See, too, John Bale, Index Britanniae Scriptorum, ed. R. L. Poole and M. Bateson (Oxford, 1902), 498.
17 Gneuss, “Die Handschrift Cotton Otho A. XII” (n. 6 above), 314.
18 Gneuss, “Die Handschrift Cotton Otho A. XII” (n. 6 above), 313–14.
19 The Ordinale and Customary of the Benedictine Nuns of Barking Abbey (n. 5 above), 2:213.
20 Gneuss, “Die Handschrift Cotton Otho A. XII” (n. 6 above), 314–15: “Im Hinblick auf die Fassungen der Viten der Aethelburga, Hildelitha und Erkenwalds in der Otho-Hs. scheint es nicht ausgeschlossen, daß der ganze letzte Teil der Hs. (Smith Nr. 9–13) Heiligenlegenden in der für das Stundenoffizium vorgesehenen Form enthielt.”
21 For arguments in favor of assigning a Barking origin to TCD 176, see Bugyis, “The Manuscript Remains of the Abbess-Saints of Barking Abbey” (n. 1 above), 7–30. Three scribes were responsible for copying the five texts now bound in TCD 176 (Table 1). The first scribe, who is of interest to this article, copied nearly all the uita of St. Æthelburh and the uita and translatio of St. Wulfhild (fols. 1r–13v, 15r–25v, and 36r–v) sometime in the last two decades of the eleventh century in a proficient, but oftentimes untidy Caroline minuscule. The second scribe, writing in a competent Caroline minuscule, copied the very end of the uita of St. Æthelburh on an inserted leaf (fol. 14r). The third scribe worked in the early twelfth century and copied the lessons for the feast of the abbess-saints’ first translation, the longer account of this event, and the vision of Abbess Ælfgifu (fols. 26r–29v, 31v–35v, 37r–41r, and 29v–31v, respectively) in a Protogothic script. This scribe’s style closely matches that found in an early twelfth-century addition made to the verso of the final folio of an early eleventh-century gospel book from Barking, now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 155, fol. 196v.
22 On the books with certain and possible Barking origin or provenance, see James, M. R., “Manuscripts from Essex Monastic Libraries,” Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society 21 (1933): 34–46, at 23Google Scholar; Ker, N. R., “More Manuscripts from Essex Monastic Libraries,” Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society 23 (1942–45): 298–331, at 301–302, 305, and 310Google Scholar; Doyle, A. I., “Books Connected with the Vere Family and Barking Abbey,” Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society 25 (1958): 222–43Google Scholar; Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, ed. N. R. Ker, 2nd ed. (London, 1964), 6; Howson, James, “Books and Barking Abbey,” Essex Journal 1 (1966): 197–208 Google Scholar; Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: Supplement to the Second Edition, ed. Andrew G. Watson (London, 1987), 2; Bell, David N., What Nuns Read: Books and Libraries in Medieval English Nunneries (Kalamazoo, 1995), 107–20Google Scholar; Anne M. Dutton, “Women’s Use of Religious Literature in Late Medieval England” (Ph.D. diss., University of York, 1995), 287; Carter, Patrick, “Barking Abbey and the Library of William Pownsett: A Bibliographical Conundrum,” Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 11 (1998): 263–71Google Scholar; and Erler, Mary C., Women, Reading, and Piety in Late Medieval England (Cambridge, 2002), 4, 31–32, 34–36, 108, 127, 145, and 147–48Google Scholar.
23 The significance of the agency medieval women exercised as patrons of cultural productions has been brilliantly demonstrated in the following studies: Bell, Susan Groag, “Medieval Women Book Owners: Arbiters of Lay Piety and Ambassadors of Culture,” Signs 7 (1982): 742–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women, ed. June Hall McCash (Athens, GA, 1996); Ferrante, Joan, To the Glory of Her Sex: Women’s Roles in the Composition of Medieval Texts (Bloomington, 1997)Google Scholar; Gee, Loveday Lewes, Women, Art and Patronage from Henry III to Edward III: 1216–1377 (Woodbridge, 2002)Google Scholar; Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Erler, Mary C. and Kowaleski, Maryanne (Ithaca, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jordan, Erin L., Women, Power, and Religious Patronage in the Middle Ages (New York, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Negotiating Community and Difference in Medieval Europe: Gender, Power, Patronage and the Authority of Religion in Latin Christendom, ed. Smith, Katherine Allen and Wells, Scott (Leiden, 2009)Google Scholar; Reassessing the Role of Women as ‘Makers’ of Medieval Art and Architecture, ed. Martin, Therese (Leiden, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tyler, Elizabeth M., England in Europe: English Royal Women and Literary Patronage, c. 1000–1150 (Toronto, 2017)Google Scholar; Harris, Barbara J., English Aristocratic Women and the Fabric of Piety, 1450–1550 (Amsterdam, 2018)Google Scholar; Renck, Anneliese Pollock, Female Authorship, Patronage, and Translation in Late Medieval France: From Christine de Pizan to Louise Labé (Turnhout, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moving Women, Moving Objects (400–1500), ed. Hamilton, Tracy Chapman and Proctor-Tiffany, Mariah (Leiden, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Women and Medieval Literary Culture from the Early Middle Ages to the Fifteenth Century, ed. Saunders, Corinne and Watt, Diane (Cambridge, 2023)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
24 On the value of multispectral imaging of medieval manuscript fragments, see Dunning, Hudson, and Duffy, “Reconstructing Burnt Anglo-Saxon Fragments” (n. 14 above), 14.
25 Gneuss, “Die Handschrift Cotton Otho A. XII” (n. 6 above), 293.
26 Gneuss, “Die Handschrift Cotton Otho A. XII” (n. 6 above), 293.
27 The extent of the second scribe’s stint is difficult to determine given the possibility of missing folios from Otho A XII (Part 6) and the severely damaged condition of the folios on which the Matins lessons for St. Eorcenwald were copied.
28 Colker, Marvin, Trinity College Library Dublin: Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval and Renaissance Latin Manuscripts, 2 vols. (Aldershot, 1991), 2:338 Google Scholar. For Goscelin’s dedications to Bishop Maurice, see Goscelin, Vita et uirtutes sanctae Ethelburgae uirginis, ed. Colker, 398; and Goscelin, Vita et uirtutes sanctae Wlfildae uirginis, ed. Colker, 419.
29 Trinity College Library Dublin’s online catalogue entry for TCD 176 includes key observations made by Michael Gullick in his letter to Bernard Meehan, the former Keeper for Manuscripts at the library, dated January 1995.
30 I am grateful to Tessa Webber for pointing this out to me. On the exchange of manuscripts and scribes between England and Flanders during the tenth and eleventh centuries, see Webber, Teresa, “The Diffusion of St. Augustine’s Confessions in England during the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries,” in The Cloister and the World: Essays in Medieval History in Honour of Barbara Harvey, ed. Blair, John and Golding, Brian (Oxford, 1996), 29–45 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gameson, Richard, “L’Angleterre et la Flandre aux Xe et XIe siècles: Le témoignage des manuscrits,” in Les échanges culturels au Moyen Âge (Paris, 2002), 165–206 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
31 Bugyis, “Manuscript Remains of the Abbess-Saints of Barking Abbey” (n. 1 above), 8–13.
33 See, too, Bugyis, “Manuscript Remains of the Abbess-Saints of Barking Abbey” (n. 1 above), 161, for a full-page reproduction of this scribe’s work in TCD 176.
34 TCD 176, fols. 5v, 11r, 11v, 24r, and 26v; and Otho A XII (Part 6), fols. 37r, 41v, and 42r.
35 Compare Goscelin, De translatione sanctae Wlfildae 12–13, ed. Colker, 431–32.
36 It is unlikely that the first scribe of the collection of Matins lessons in Otho A XII (Part 6) included the lessons for the abbess-saints’ translation (7 March) because the second scribe added the lessons for St. Eorcenwald (30 April) immediately after the first scribe’s copy of the lessons for St. Hildelith (24 March) on fol. 45v. If the first scribe had included the lessons for the translation, the scribe would have copied them there, after those for St. Hildelith, given the arrangement of the texts according to the liturgical year. Instead, this scribe stopped writing after the lessons for St. Hildelith, leaving the rest of the folio blank. It is also significant that the scribe who copied the lessons for the abbess-saints’ translation and the longer account of the event in TCD 176 was not the same scribe who copied the uita of St. Æthelburh and the uita and translatio of St. Wulfhild in the manuscript. The change of hands probably indicates an interval of time between the composition and copying of the two sets of texts. See Bugyis, “Manuscript Remains of the Abbess-Saints of Barking Abbey” (n. 1 above), 160–76.
37 Bugyis, “Dating the Translations of Barking’s Abbess-Saints” (n. 1 above).
38 The absence of a uita of St. Hildelith remains a mystery for scholars of Goscelin’s corpus of hagiographical writings and Barking’s abbess-saints. Study of the saint’s lessons suggests that the hagiographer struggled to find enough material to compose this short text. He was nearly entirely dependent on what Bede (d. 735) had to say about St. Hildelith’s abbacy in his Historia ecclesiastica, and it is wanting. Bede was primarily interested in St. Æthelburh’s life, death, and post-mortem miracles; he recounted only St. Hildelith’s translation of the bones of the community’s saints after she had been made abbess. See Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum 4.10, ed. and trans. Colgrave, Bertram and Roger, A. B. Mynors, in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford, 1969), 363–65Google Scholar.
39 Bugyis, “Manuscript Remains of the Abbess-Saints of Barking Abbey” (n. 1 above), 7–30.
40 See n. 22, above.
41 See the directives for the feast of Corpus Christi and its octave and for the octave of the feast of the Assumption in The Ordinale and Customary of the Benedictine Nuns of Barking Abbey (n. 5 above), 1:143, 145, 146, and 2:284.
42 In the absence of a unique set of readings for a saint’s feast requiring Matins lessons, the community used lessons from the commons of an apostle, martyr, confessor, or virgin, depending on the type of saint being celebrated. See, for example, the directions in Barking’s ordinal for Matins for the octave of the feast of St. Edmund, king and martyr (d. 869), which was to be held with twelve lessons by the community: “[Ad matutinas.] Inuitatorium, ympni, psalmi, uersiculi, responsoria, cantica, lecciones, euangelium unius martiris,” in The Ordinale and Customary of the Benedictine Nuns of Barking Abbey (n. 5 above), 2:345.
43 Gneuss, “Die Handschrift Cotton Otho A. XII” (n. 6 above), 313–14.
44 Gneuss, “Die Handschrift Cotton Otho A. XII” (n. 6 above), 314.
45 Gneuss, “Die Handschrift Cotton Otho A. XII” (n. 6 above), 314: “…wegen der im Hildelitha-Leben häufigen Erwähnung der Aethelburga, daren Vita in der Hs. voranging.”
46 Gneuss, “Die Handschrift Cotton Otho A. XII” (n. 6 above), 315.
47 Goscelin, Lecciones de sancta Hildelitha, ed. Colker, 455–58.
48 Table 4 displays the correct numeration of the Matins lessons for St. Hildelith.
49 Gneuss, “Die Handschrift Cotton Otho A. XII” (n. 6 above), 315.
50 The Ordinale and Customary of the Benedictine Nuns of Barking Abbey (n. 5 above), 1:4, 2:221–24, and 2:336–37.
51 The Ordinale and Customary of the Benedictine Nuns of Barking Abbey (n. 5 above), 2:222.
52 See especially Goscelin, Vita et uirtutes sanctae Ethelburgae uirginis 1–2, ed. Colker, 400–402.
53 See, for example, the late eleventh-century uita of St. Eorcenwald composed at St. Paul’s, probably just before Goscelin wrote his uita of St. Æthelburh: The Saint of London: The Life and Miracles of St. Erkenwald, ed. and trans. E. Gordon Whatley (Binghamton, 1989), 90–96. See, too, Bugyis, “Dating the Translations of Barking’s Abbess-Saints” (n. 1 above), 114.
54 The Ordinale and Customary of the Benedictine Nuns of Barking Abbey (n. 5 above), 2:222 and 336, respectively.
55 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Lat. liturg. e. 39, fols. 44v–45v. See Gneuss, “Die Handschrift Cotton Otho A. XII” (n. 6 above), 315–16.
56 Gneuss, “Die Handschrift Cotton Otho A. XII” (n. 6 above), 315–16.
57 See n. 16, above.
58 Bugyis, “Manuscript Remains of the Abbess-Saints of Barking Abbey” (n. 1 above), 24–30 and 32–33. On the popularity of copying hagiographical texts in self-contained booklets from early in the medieval period, see Dumville, David N., Liturgy and the Ecclesiastical History of Late Anglo-Saxon England: Four Studies (Woodbridge, 1992), 108 Google Scholar; and Love, Rosalind, Three Eleventh-Century Anglo-Saxon Saints’ Lives (Oxford, 1996), xiii–xiv Google Scholar.
59 Gneuss, “Die Handschrift Cotton Otho A. XII” (n. 6 above), 292.
60 Bugyis, “Manuscript Remains of the Abbess-Saints of Barking Abbey” (n. 1 above), 8 and 32. See, too, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 155, Barking’s early eleventh-century gospel book. This manuscript’s collation is 1–68, 78 (wants 8), 8–248, 256 (wants 6). See Bugyis, Katie Ann-Marie, The Care of Nuns: The Ministries of Benedictine Women in England during the Central Middle Ages (New York, 2019), 148–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar. And see also Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud lat. 19, Barking’s twelfth-century copy of the Song of Songs with a gloss and Lamentations with Gilbert the Universal’s gloss. This manuscript’s collation is 16+1(addition of last leaf), 2–108, 11–1210.
61 Gneuss, “Die Handschrift Cotton Otho A. XII” (n. 6 above), 317.
62 Goscelin, Vita et uirtutes sanctae Ethelburgae uirginis 4, ed. Colker, 405.
63 Goscelin, Vita et uirtutes sanctae Ethelburgae uirginis 9, ed. Colker, 409: “Sola anima inofficiosa in suo spirabat cadauere. Lingua oculi aures et si poterant auxilium poscere, non poterant prestare.”
64 Goscelin, De translatione sanctae Wlfildae 13, ed. Colker, 431–32.
65 Goscelin, De translatione sanctae Wlfildae 13, ed. Colker, 432.
66 Goscelin, De translatione sanctae Wlfildae 15, ed. Colker, 433.
67 Goscelin, De translatione sanctae Wlfildae 13, ed. Colker, 432.
68 Goscelin, De translatione sanctae Wlfildae 15, ed. Colker, 433: “Ecce, dedi tibi, mater, pannum qualem habebam. Da ergo mihi tunicam necessariam.”
69 Goscelin, De translatione sanctae Wlfildae 15, ed. Colker, 433.
70 Goscelin, Vita et uirtutes sanctae Ethelburgae uirginis 13, ed. Colker, 413.
71 Goscelin, Vita et uirtutes sanctae Ethelburgae uirginis 16, ed. Colker, 414–15. It should be noted that the lessons’ account of the miracle of the brilliant light begins differently than Chapter 16 of Goscelin’s uita of St. Æthelburh does, and the final sentence of this chapter does not appear in it.
72 Goscelin, Vita et uirtutes sanctae Ethelburgae uirginis 14–15, ed. Colker, 413–14.
73 Goscelin, Vita et uirtutes sanctae Ethelburgae uirginis 17 and 20, ed. Colker, 415 and 416–17.
74 Goscelin, Vita et uirtutes sanctae Ethelburgae uirginis 18–19, ed. Colker, 415–16.
75 Goscelin, De translatione sanctae Wlfildae 15, ed. Colker, 433.
76 Goscelin, De translatione sanctae Wlfildae 16–17, ed. Colker, 433–34.
77 Goscelin, Vita et uirtutes sanctae Wlfildae uirginis 1, ed. Colker, 419–20.
78 Goscelin, Vita et uirtutes sanctae Ethelburgae uirginis 20, ed. Colker, 416–17. These words include: “abstulit secumque trans,” “rediit librum secum,” “possideret,” and “iactatus et ab omni.” There is a greater correspondence between the first part of the final lection of Goscelin’s lessons for St. Æthelburh’s feast and Chapter 17 of his uita of the saint. All the visible words and letters in this part of the lection—“ad s[---,” “singulae,” “<sus>cepere q<uatenus>,” and “una creditur”—match the chapter exactly as it was copied in TCD 176. See Table 4.
79 Goscelin, Vita et uirtutes sanctae Ethelburgae uirginis 7, ed. Colker, 407.
80 Goscelin, Vita et uirtutes sanctae Ethelburgae uirginis 7, ed. Colker, 407.
81 Goscelin, Vita et uirtutes sanctae Ethelburgae uirginis 10, ed. Colker, 409.
82 Goscelin, Vita et uirtutes sanctae Ethelburgae uirginis 10, ed. Colker, 409.
83 Goscelin, Vita et uirtutes sanctae Ethelburgae uirginis 17, ed. Colker, 415.
84 Goscelin, Vita et uirtutes sanctae Ethelburgae uirginis 17, ed. Colker, 415: “Vt etiam trina illustratio Domini in tribus lampadibus uirginalium presidum appareret huius ecclesiae.”
85 See n. 38, above.
86 The scribe of the Matins lessons for St. Hildelith in Cardiff 1.381 also copied the lives of Sts. Æthelburh and Edith in the manuscript. See Bugyis, “Manuscript Remains of the Abbess-Saints of Barking Abbey” (n. 1 above), 32.
87 Scholars of Goscelin’s dossier for Barking have all agreed that he composed both the Matins lessons for the abbess-saints’ translation and the longer account of this event. Marvin Colker stated the reason for accepting this claim well: “it need not be assumed that one of the two texts is a revision prepared by someone other than Jocelyn, who was himself inclined toward epistomising or expanding his own material, as in the case of his two biographies of St. Augustine of Canterbury, the Vita maior and the Vita minor.” See Colker, “Texts of Jocelyn of Canterbury” (n. 1 above), 392. The discussion in the introduction to this article of Richard Sharpe’s hypothesis about Goscelin’s composition of both the hagiographical and the liturgical materials for the cult of St. Mildreth at St. Augustine’s, now found in London, British Library, Harley MS 3908, is relevant here, too. See n. 4, above. The issue that has yet to be settled among scholars of Goscelin’s dossier for Barking is whether he wrote the longer version of the translatio before the lessons, or vice versa. In what follows, I make a case for the former scenario.
88 Goscelin, Textus translationis sanctarum uirginum Aethelburgae Hildelithae ac Wlfildae and De translatione uel eleuatione sanctarum uirginum Ethelburgae Hildelithae ac Wlfildae, ed. Colker, 435–52.
89 Goscelin, Textus translationis sanctarum uirginum Aethelburgae Hildelithae ac Wlfildae 3, ed. Colker, 439.
90 Goscelin, De translatione uel eleuatione sanctarum uirginum Ethelburgae Hildelithae ac Wlfildae 12, ed. Colker, 451–52.
91 On TCD 176, fol. 32v, the second textual unit of the longer account is marked with a large rubricated initial.
92 Goscelin, Textus translationis sanctarum uirginum Aethelburgae Hildelithae ac Wlfildae 1 and De translatione uel eleuatione sanctarum uirginum Ethelburgae Hildelithae ac Wlfildae 2, ed. Colker, 436.
93 Goscelin, Textus translationis sanctarum uirginum Aethelburgae Hildelithae ac Wlfildae 2 and De translatione uel eleuatione sanctarum uirginum Ethelburgae Hildelithae ac Wlfildae 3, ed. Colker, 437–38.
94 Goscelin, Textus translationis sanctarum uirginum Aethelburgae Hildelithae ac Wlfildae 2, ed. Colker, 438.
95 Goscelin, De translatione uel eleuatione sanctarum uirginum Ethelburgae Hildelithae ac Wlfildae 3, ed. Colker, 438.
96 Goscelin, De translatione uel eleuatione sanctarum uirginum Ethelburgae Hildelithae ac Wlfildae 3, ed. Colker, 438.
97 Bugyis, “Dating the Translations of Barking’s Abbess-Saints” (n. 1 above), 109–11.
98 The Ordinale and Customary of the Benedictine Nuns of Barking Abbey (n. 5 above), 2:201 and 206.
99 Bugyis, The Care of Nuns (n. 60 above), 148–71.