Although the lessons on Silvester in Sarum breviary manuscripts are more unpredictable than those on the other saints in my sample, they all seem to descend from the same ultimate source: a version of the legend like the one in the late medieval collection by Mombritius. The Mombritius text, which comes from branch A of the Gesta Silvestris (BHL 7726–31), provided these English traditions with biographical information plus three long, dramatic stories from Silvester’s life: (1) In a time of persecution the young Silvester champions an outspoken preacher named Timothy, sheltering him until his arrest and boldly confronting the persecutor Tarquinius after Timothy’s execution. (2) Silvester converts and heals the emperor Constantine. (3) Silvester liberates the city of Rome from a dragon that has been terrorizing the people and converts the priests of the old religion in the process.

Most of the sixty-five Sarum versions I have examined seem to be following one – or, remarkably often, one and then another – of five differently abridged recensions of the Mombritius text. (The frequency of breviaries that switch from one recension of Silvester’s legend to another, most often after the third lesson, can be explained when one recalls that early Sarum ordinals prescribed only three proper lessons for this saint. After the number was increased, sometime early in the fourteenth century, there must have been a considerable period during which most of the existing breviaries had too few lessons and needed to be supplemented from additional sources when they were copied or updated.) Instead of starting as usual with the version published in PW, I will list and discuss the recensions in the order suggested by their earliest manifestations in English breviaries.

Detailed Census of the Manuscripts

Recension A* appears first. Excerpts from it survive in a number of thirteenth-century English breviaries, including the monastic ones from Chertsey and Hyde Abbey and the earliest copy of the Hereford breviary, and subsequently in four Sarum manuscripts, the 1505 printed edition of the Hereford breviary (hereafter Hereford P), and some York ones. The Sarum books that use it are these:

Bodl Auct. E. 1. 1 (lectionary with the fullest version, c.1400)

Liverpool (mid to late fourteenth cent.), lecc. 1–3 only; remainder mostly from B*

Bodley 976 (c. 1400), lecc. 1–3 only; remainder from B*

CUL Dd. x. 66 (1435), lecc. 1–3 only; remainder from D