The Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow

ISBN-13: 9780198207610 / Angielski / Twarda / 2013 / 352 str.

Christopher Grocock; I. N. Wood

Opis

This volume contains Latin texts, facing translations, and full commentary on four texts which are key to an understanding of the development of monasticism in early medieval Northumbria: Bede's History of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, his Homily on Benedict Biscop, and his Letter to Ecgbert, Archbishop of York, together with the anonymous Life of Ceolfrith. The texts are based on a fresh collation of all available manuscripts, and a complete apparatus criticus is included. The translation is as close to the original as possible while communicating its sense clearly. A series of essays in the introduction examines the importance of the texts, the picture they paint both of Bede and his monastic milieu, and the Latinity of the texts included in the volume.
As the major texts on the monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow, these works are vital for our understanding both of the context in which Bede was writing and also of the nature of monasticism in Northumbria in the pre-Viking period.

Recenzje

This is an important and long-awaited book ... an important contribution to the ongoing debate concerning our understanding of these texts and their contexts, with an introduction that provides a synthesis of innovative and exciting recent research.

O autorze

Christopher Grocock studied Latin and French, then specialized in medieval Latin for a Ph. D at Bedford College, University of London where he also taught part-time. He was Project Director of the Bede's World Museum from 1993-1966. He has also been a Museums Consultant, Fund-Raiser, and is now a teacher of Classics (currently at Bedales School). Ian Wood has taught at the University of Leeds since 1976. His research interests are in the history of seventh- and eighth-century England, Merovingian Francia, Mission in the Early Middle Ages, and the modern historiography of the end of the Roman Empire. Fragments of History: Rethinking the Ruthwell and Bewcastle Monuments, published jointly with Fred Orton and Clare Lees in 2007, won the Historians of British Art Prize. In 2012 he gave the O'Donnell lectures in Oxford.