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The Book of the Nativity of St. Cuthbert
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The close relations existing at times between two great types of medieval fiction, the romance and the saint's legend, have been pointed out by a number of scholars. Studies have been made of the development of individual saints' legends into romances or near romances, of the borrowing by legends of romantic material. One peculiar type of legend has romantic embellishments attached only to the origin or childhood of the saint, leaving to the rest of the narrative the character of sober history with probably some contamination from non-romantic folk-beliefs. Of this one of the most interesting and conspicuous examples is the story of the Syrian princess who was said to have become the mother of St. Thomas of Canterbury. Less well known, indeed largely ignored, is the confused tale of the romantic origin of St. Cuthbert as found in the Libellus de ortu (vel nativitate) Sancii Cuthberti, which is the acknowledged source of the first part of the Northern English Metrical Life of St. Cuthbert. It is the purpose of the present paper to examine the contents of this little book, to point out some of its resemblances to the Horn-Saga and other romances, and to throw some light on the methods of composition of the medieval hagiographer.
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References
1 J. E. Matzke, “The Legend of St. George; Its Development into a Roman d'Aventure,” PMLA, xix, 449 ff.—See also by the present author, “St. Edmund of East Anglia: The Development of a Romantic Legend,” Univ. of Colorado Studies, xv (1925), No. 1.
2 Cf. Paul A. Brown, The Development of the Legend of Thomas Becket, Univ. of Pennsylvania dissertation, (Phila., 1930).
3 Miscellanea Biographica, Surtees Soc. Pub., viii (1838), 63 ff.
4 Surtees Soc. Pub., 87 (1891).
5 March, iii, 20th day, 93 ff.
6 Ibid., 97 ff.—Cf. Plummer, Baedae opera historica, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1896), i, Intro., xlvi: “The prose life of Cuthbert was written probably about 720.”
7 Acta Sanctorum, tom. cit., 117 ff.
8 Ibid., p. 118, note d.
9 Dict. of Nat. Biog., xiii, 359.
10 William Hunt in Dict. of Nat. Biog., loc. cit.
11 A.S., tom. cit., 96.
12 Misc. Biog., Preface, pp. ix, xi.
13 Metrical Life of St. Cuthbert, Surtees Soc. Pub., 87 (1891), Preface, p. vi.
14 The Early South English Legendary, ed. by C. Horstmann, EETS, O.S., 87 (1887), p. 350, no. 51, v. 1.
15 Nova Legenda Anglie, ed. by Carl Horstmann, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1901), i, 216 ff.
16 Cf. Fowler, op. cit., Intro., p. vi.
17 Ibid., p. vii.
18 Eogan(?), Bishop of Ardmore; cf. Fowler, ibid., p. 2, note 2.
19 Misc. Biog., p. 64.
20 Dict. of Nat. Biog., xxxv, 392.
21 P. 64.
22 See such phrases as “pater Cuthbertus,” “de Cuthberto nostro” in the Praefatio, p. 63, and elsewhere.
23 Libellus, pp. 86, 87: “Haec de Scottorum paginis et scriptis exscripsimus, se quia seriatim exponente interprete verba singula liquidius transferre nequivimus, sensibus explicandis operam dedimus et in linguam istam transtulimus,” etc. The sentence quoted is of particular interest, as its obvious implication is that the author's “little document” was in Gaelic and that he understood Gaelic.
24 Quotations are from the M.E. metrical version previously referred to. The phrases quoted are very close to the Latin unless otherwise noted.
25 The general absence of names in this account is a suspicious circumstance. In the Preface to the Libellus, Cuthbert's father and mother are called Muriadach and Sabina on the authority of Eugenius, but neither is named in the story itself. In a Latin MS. of the early fourteenth century is told a Welsh version of the Havelok saga, in which the hero's name is Meriadoc; cf. Ward, Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 3 vols. (London 1883–1910), i, 428, and J. D. Bruce, Vita Meriadoci, PMLA, xv (1900), 326 ff. This resemblance in names is worth noting in view of the affinities of the Cuthbert legend with the Horn and the Havelok sagas; see infra.
26 Libellus, Cap. xii, p. 72.
27 Fowler, op. cit., p. 14, n. 3, identifies this with Kells, County Westmeath.
28 Compare with the description of Horn in King Horn, ed. by J. Hall (Oxford, 1901), C-text, vv. 9 ff.
29 The fear of the jealous stepmother is in the Metrical Life, vv. 550–552. It is not in the Latin version. The translator ordinarily keeps close to his original and notifies the reader when he makes additions, e.g., vv. 751 ff. As the latter passage is also about the stepmother and contains the only other mention of her enmity, the whole motif may have been inserted by the translator.
30 Metrical Life, v. 743; Libellus, cap. xix, p. 77, “traditiones et opiniones vulgares.”
31 None of this is in the Latin, as the opening lines indicate.
32 The Latin says “cum matre et sociis” (cap. xix, pp. 77); the English, “he and his moder dere, with othir' twa” (vv. 786, 787), which may mean that a word has dropped out of the Latin; but a little later both texts speak of three men as companions.
33 Here is confusion indeed. No Columba of Dunkeld is known; St. Columba of Iona died in 597, Cuthbert in 687. As St. Brigida of Kildare died in 525, she is still farther out of range; in legend, however, she became a ubiquitous and perennial kind of person (A.S., Feb., i, 99 ff.). Any attempt to discover historical truth in this tale is futile. We have here a good instance of the tendency for folk-lore to connect the names of famous figures.
34 The Latin text has merula (cap. xxi, p. 78), the natural translation of which is blackbird, but the English has the line, “A conyx (cornyx=raven) men it kall'.” (v. 848). This looks as if the Latin text before the translator called the bird “cornyx.”
35 Book i, 588 ff.; ii, 417 ff.
36 Libius Desconius, Percy Folio MS., ed. by Hales and Furnivall, 3 vols. (London, 1867–8), ii, 404 ff., vv. 7, 8.
37 E. V. Utterson, Select Pieces of Early Popular Poetry, 2 vols. (London, 1817), i, 117 ff., vv. 53 ff.
38 Lai de Tydorel, Romania, viii, 66 ff., ed. by Gaston Paris.
39 Utterson, op. cit., i, 161 ff.
40 Elton's Saxo, Book ii, 63.
41 A. Nutt, “The Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth,” in The Voyage of Bran, 2 vols. (London, 1895), i, 43.
42 G. Paris, Histoire poétique de Charlemagne (Paris, 1865), pp. 378 ff.
43 Die Lais der Marie de France, ed. by K. Warnke (Halle, 1885), pp. 123 ff.
44 Sir Generydes, ed. by W. A. Wright, EETS, O.S., lv (1878), vv. 64 ff.
45 Malory, Book xi, Chap. iii.
46 Sir Tristrem, S.T.S., viii (1886), vv. 100 ff.
47 Kyng Alisaunder, Chap. iii, vv. 15 ff., in H. Weber, Metrical Romances, 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1810), i, 3 ff.
48 Dunlop, History of Prose Fiction, rev. ed., 2 vols. (London, 1888), i, 353 ff.
49 In “Welsh Saints,” Transactions of the Hon. Soc. of the Cymmrodorion (1893–94), p. 41.
50 Ed. by C. Horstmann, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1901). See list of saints, Intro., i, xxiv, xxv.
51 Ibid., i, 267 ff.; i, 254 ff.; ii, 105 ff.
52 Ibid., i, 311 ff.
53 C. Plummer (ed.), Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1910), i, 46 ff.
54 A.S., Feb., i, 119 ff.
55 A.S., Apr., i, 400 ff.
56 A.S., Aug., ii, 560 ff.
57 N.L.A., ii, 114 ff.
58 A.S., Jan., ii, 458 ff.
59 V.S.H., ii, 32 ff.; i, 65 ff.
60 Cf. A.S., Mar., i, 41 ff.; N.L.A., i, 254 ff.; Rees, Cambro-British Saints, Latin life, pp. 117 ff., English translation, pp. 418 ff.
61 Rees, op. cit., pp. 119, 120.
62 Ibid., pp. 117, 118.
63 William of Palerne, ed. by W. W. Skeat, EETS, E.S., i.
64 Edited by Edmund Brock in Originals and Analogues of some of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, pp. 1 ff., cf. p. 30.
65 vv. 799 2. and vv. 1051 ff.
66 H. Suchier (ed.), Œuvres poétiques de Beaumanoir, Soc. des anc. textes français (Paris, 1884), i, 3 ff., vv. 3729 ff.; summaries of La Belle Hélène and Mai und Beaflor are found in Intro., pp. xxviii ff., and pp. xxxii ff.
67 Ed. by Edith Rickert (1907), vv. 637 ff.
68 Thornton Romances, ed. by J. O. Halliwell-Phillips, Camden Soc. Pub. (1844), pp. 121 ff., vv. 799 ff.
69 Ed. by E. Adam, EETS, E.S., li, vv. 1813 ff.
70 Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, Lib. ii, Cap. iv.
71 Alexander P. Forbes, Lives of St. Ninian and St. Kentigern, Compiled in the 12th Century, vol. v of Historians of Scotland (Edin., 1874), pp. 27 ff. (English translation), pp. 154 ff. (Latin texts).
72 Ibid., pp. 33 ff.; cf. p. lxiv.
73 Ibid., p. lxiii.
74 Does the phrase “gestis historiarum” refer merely to mentions in chronicles, or does this monk, writing before 1164 in the diocese of Glasgow, know some stories about “Ewen”?
75 H. L. D. Ward, Romania, xxii, 506, in Introductory. Notes to Lailoken (or Merlin Silvester), pp. 504 ff. See also Wm. Stevenson, The Legends and Commemorative Celebrations of St. Kentigern, etc. (Edinburgh, 1874), Appendix, pp. 33 ff. According to the Aberdeen Breviary (ca 1510), Kentigern's mother was the daughter of King Loth of Lothian, and thus, according to other sources, especially Geoffrey of Monmouth, the sister of Gawayne.
76 Ovid, Metamorphoses, ii, 409 ff.
77 Elton's Saxo, Book ix, p. 371.
78 Der grosse Wolfdielerich, hrsg. von Adolf Holtzmann (Heidelberg, 1875), stanzas 24 ff., 84 ff.
79 For texts and discussion of sources, cf. A.S., Aug., ii, 560.
80 It will be noted how many of these little boats ply between Ireland and Scotland or the northwest coast of England. This fact may throw some light on the local origins of the Horn and Havelok stories.
81 William of Palerne, vv. 109 ff.
82 King Horn, C-text, vv. 223 ff.
83 William of Palerne, vv. 401 ff.
84 Flore and Blanceflor (French text), hrsg. von Immanuel Bekker (Berlin, 1844), vv. 219 ff.
85 Dunlop, op. cit., i, 358.
86 Ibid., i, 47.
87 Guy of Warwick, EETS, E.S., xxv, xxvi, vv. 793 ff.
88 W. H. Schofield, English Literature from the Norman Conquest to Chaucer (New York, 1906), p. 258.
89 Hall, op. cit., pp. 179 ff.; dated conjecturally 1300–1325.
90 Horn Childe, vv. 247 ff. At this point in the story we are not told that the boys accompanied Arlaund and Horn, but later on this fact becomes evident.
91 Hall, op. cit., pp. 1 ff., gives the texts of the three extant MSS. This, the earliest English metrical romance, c. 1225, is probably somewhat later than the Libellus.
92 C-text, vv. 111 ff.; similar in the other MSS.
93 A.S., Mar., i, 396, St. Kieran; Mar., i, 448, St. Baldred; Mar., iii, 21st day, 370, St. Endeus; Apr., ii, 544, St. Mochoemoc; Aug., vi, 490, Sts. Flannan and Bracan; V.S.H., ii, 137, St. Lasrian; N.L.A., ii, 275, St. Paternus.
94 The Oxford MS. has “Cuberd,” v. 796, “Cubert,” vv. 808, 849, etc. The South English Legendary gives the name of the saint as “Cudbert,” p. 359, no. 51, vi, etc. In Bede's prose life the name is “Cudberctus.” See Venerabilis Bedae opera historica minora, ed. by J. Stevenson (London, 1841), pp. 45 ff. But the same author's metrical life gives “Cutberhtus.” It is tempting to regard this similarity of names as a connecting link between the legend and the romance, because of which incidents may have been transferred from one to the other. Extant versions of the romance are later than the legend, but earlier versions of the former undoubtedly existed; cf. Deutschbein, Studien zur Sagengeschichte Englands (Cöthen, 1906), pp. 1 ff., where also the connections of the Horn Saga with Ireland are discussed.
95 Rolls Series edition of Gaimar, Lai d'Havelok, vv. 83–120; Lestorie des Engles, vv. 418–436.
96 Op. cit., i, cxxxvii, cxxxviii.
97 V.S.H., ii, 36; A.S., Jan., ii, 694, Feb., ii, 834, Jan., iii, 727; Historians of the Church of York and its Archbishops, ed. by J. Raine, 2 vols., Rolls Series (1879–86), i, 2.
98 Havelok, ed. by W. W. Skeat, EETS, E.S., iv, 1868, vv. 1262, 1263.
99 J. E. Wells, Manual of the Writings in Middle English (Yale Univ. Press, 1916), p. 15.
100 Op. cit., p. 150.
101 Op. cit., i, 428.
102 Boeve-Amlethus (Berlin und Leipzig, 1905); cf. Deutschbein, p. 168.
103 Cf. also Aeneid, vii, 71 ff.—Here Lavinia's hair and head seem to be on fire. The sign is said to portend glory for her, but war for her people.
104 Ed. by H. F. Guessard (Paris, 1866), vv. 1404 ff. Cf. also Prose Merlin, p. 213: When Gonnore the daughter of King Leodogan, was born, “ther was founde vpon the childes reynes a litill crosse like a crowne for a kynge.”
105 This conclusion will be confirmed by a consultation of the French texts, Lai d'Havelok le Danois, vv. 71 ff., 436 ff., 838 ff., and Gaimar's Lestorie des Engles, vv. 243 ff., both in the Rolls edition of the latter. In the last citation from the Lai the flame convinces the observer that Havelok is the rightful king, but only because he knew beforehand that his prince had this peculiarity.
106 Loc. cit.
107 One or both of these explanations are given when the phenomenon is explained at all; see citations below. A similar explanation is given to a similar phenomenon in Robert Manning of Brunne's Handlyng Synne, ca 1303 (ed. by F. J. Furnivall, EETS, O.S., 119, 1901), vv. 5915 ff.; the flame of fire that comes out of the mouth of the reformed Pers the Usurer heals a deaf-mute and is regarded as a sign that Pers ‘is privy with Jesus Christ.‘
108 A.S., Apr., ii, 868; May, ii, 580; Feb., i, 121.
109 Adamnan's Vita Sancii Columbae, iii, Cap. n; A.S., May, ii, 579; A.S., Mar., ii, 13th day, 277.
110 V.S.H., i, 88; A.S., Aug., i, 344, Aug., iii, 659, Mar., i, 769, Feb., i, 120; N.L.A., i, 41.
111 Irish saints' lives are likely to be closer to folk-lore than others. See Intro. to V.S. H. by C. Plummer.
112 V.S.H., ii, 253.
113 A.S., Apr., i, 400, 401.
114 Cf. the fire that proceeds from Dietrich of Bern.