6 The Nun introduces it by saying Edward had heard of many wonders that took place ‘in the good old days that were now passed away’, and she wants to digress from her main narrative so that we can enjoy this favourite of hers. It complements the passage chosen from the Roman de Rou, above, because Wace does not give us this story as part of his account of Edward. He carries out the latter, instead of the pilgrimage, because his people are afraid to let him go to Rome in case he never comes back.
4 La Vie d’Edouard le Confesseur, by a Nun of Barking 5 A creative attitude to historical truth is to be expected and even celebrated in medieval saints’lives see for example Bouchard’s Rewriting Saints and Ancestors: Memory and Forgetting in France, 500–1200. There is not space here to give a summary of each, but ODS may be consulted, as well as introductions to the edited texts. The three saints in this chapter are extremely different from one another, representing a variety of saintly ‘types’ as well as authorial styles, as will be seen. From the first, I have chosen a miracle that is not one of the saint’s own for the second, I have focused on the writer’s historical passages from the third I extract passages illustrating the protagonist’s rhetorical brilliance. 3 Instead, I am taking passages from each that differ widely in genre within the life and miracles of the saint in question.
1 They are all by women, making a neat set, 2 but I have not attempted to compare them as specifically women’s writing, which I feel would be reductive. 4 Grange, ‘Review: Bouchard, Rewriting Saints’: rather than think about forgery or authenticity, we (.)ġPassages from three saints’ lives have been chosen to represent this important corpus.3 See, inter al., Legge, Cloisters, pp.2 They appear together with other Lives in the Campsey manuscript (see notes below), but not exclusi (.).
1 Prologues from another three are included in the preceding ‘Miscellany’ section.