Columba is one of the best-known saints of the early Celtic church; through his foundation of the abbey of Iona he had a far-reaching influence on medieval Christianity. In about 700, a century after his death, the Life of Columba was written by Adomna'n, ninth abbot of Iona. It has long been valued as the major primary source on the subject, for the light it throws on early medieval Scotland and Ireland, and as an important work of literature. For some time unavailable, Anderson has now revised the Latin text and the English translation, provided new historical notes, and rewritten the...

Thomas Walsingham, a monk of St Albans, has been described as the last of the great medieval chroniclers. His major work, the Chronica maiora, covers the years 1376 to 1420, and is arguably the most important account of English history to be written in England at this time. Walsingham's text has never been published as a continuous whole. It is found in no fewer than three separate publications in the Rolls Series, and was printed from manuscripts whose exact identity was not then clearly understood. The nature of the Rolls Series publications, and the different versions of the chronicle,...

The Abbey of Evesham in Worcestershire was founded in the eighth century. This history, written by an Evesham monk in the thirteenth century, tells the story from the beginning. It describes in detail a great lawsuit in Rome where the writer was present. The story then returns to England and to the monks' attempts to depose their scandalous abbot. This Oxford Medieval Text edition provides a Latin text with a facing page English translation, a detailed historical introduction, and notes.

Henry Knighton, a canon of St Mary's Abbey, Leicester, wrote his Chronicle between 1378 and 1396. Leicester was a fief of the duchy of Lancaster, and the abbey was closely in touch with the households of Henry of Grosmont and John of Gaunt. The Chronicle contains exceptionally vivid accounts of the campaigns in France, in which Duke Henry was one of Edward III's leading generals, of the onset and effects of the Black Death, and of the crises of Richard II's reign. Knighton, whose fellow canon Philip Repingdon was a pupil and early disciple of John Wyclif, was a horrified witness of the rise...

The Gesta Normannorum Ducum is one of the most important sources for the history of Normandy and England in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and contains the earliest prose account of the Norman Conquest. It was written by a succession of authors, the first of whom was William of Jumieges, who wrote for William the Conqueror. Later historians, such as Orderic Vitalis (d. c. 1142) and Robert of Torigni (d. 1186), interpolated and extended the chronicle as far as King Henry I (1100-1135). The later accretions reveal much not only about changing attitudes towards the Norman invasion of...

This volume contains comprehensive and scholarly editions of three Anglo-Saxon saints' lives: Birinus of Dorchester-on-Thames, Kenelm of Winchcombe, and Rumwold of Buckingham. Rosalind Love provides the Latin texts, based on all known manuscript versions, with a facing-page English translation, together with full annotation and a historical introduction which sets these works in the context of the development of hagiographical literature. Love traces the growth and changes in hagiograhical writing, one of the most important genres of medieval literature and essential to the understanding of...

William of Poitiers became a chaplain in the household of William the Conqueror, and was able to give a first-hand account of the events of 1066-7. The Gesta Guillelmi, his unfinished biography of the king, is particularly important for its detailed description of William's campaigns in Normandy, the careful preparations he made for the invasion of England, the battle of Hastings, and the establishment of Norman power after the Conquest. It is a mine of information of military tactics and the conduct of war in the eleventh century. Though written from the point of view of the Norman court, it...

Peter Abelard (1079-1142) was one of the most influential writers and thinkers of the twelfth century, famous for his skill in logic as well as his romance with Heloise. His Collationes--or Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher, and a Jew--is remarkable for the boldness of its conception and thought.
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Geoffrey of Burton's Life and Miracles of St Modwenna (BHL 2097) is among the most substantial pieces of twelfth-century English hagiographic writing not previously to have appeared in print. It was produced by the abbot of Burton, where Modwenna's bones supposedly lay, in the period 1118-50, and consists of two parts of unequal length: the vita or Life proper, and the collection of miracle stories. The first part, forming about four-fifths of the total text, was based on an earlier Life by the Irish author Conchubranus, which Geoffrey revised and modified in style and substance. His creative...

Presents a narrative on the English Church, its bishoprics and monasteries, from c 600 to William's contemporary era. This edition also features the original Latin text of the manuscript with the English translation alongside.