Table Of ContentNAUTICAL NARRATIVES IN ANGLO-LATIN HAGIOGRAPHIES, CA. 700-1100
Annette Rebecca Pomeroy Shores
A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and
Comparative Literature
Chapel Hill
2017
Approved by:
Patrick P. O’Neill
Taylor Cowdery
Connie Eble
Theodore Leinbaugh
Marcus Bull
© 2017
Annette Rebecca Pomeroy Shores
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ii
ABSTRACT
Rebecca Shores: Nautical Narratives in Anglo-Latin Hagiographies, c 700-1100
(Under the direction of Patrick P. O’Neill)
The four studies presented here uncover the various ways in which Anglo-Latin
hagiographers, from the eighth century until the early twelfth, used nautical narratives in their
stories of saints. Each chapter is organized around one type of navigable space: archipelago, the
North Sea, rivers, and the eastern Mediterranean. And while they all provide distinct arguments
about how hagiographers describe travel by water, the four chapters are unified by the common
claim that the authors of these texts—Bede, Felix, Stephen, Willibald, Alcuin, and two
anonymous hagiographers in the eleventh century—were not as “sea blind” as scholars once
assumed.
Significant findings are made in the final chapter, about five “Nicholas poems” that were
copied into Cotton Tiberius B.v.i. around the year 1100. This unique set of poems offers the
earliest English evidence for St Nicholas as an explicitly nautical saint, complicating the
commonly held belief that he was revered as the patron saint of sailors before the twelfth
century. Scribal and textual analysis identifies the source of Poem 5 as Nicephorus’s prose
translatio Sancti Nicholai, and provides enough evidence to argue that Poem 5 is the first
versification of the translatio in England.
The appendices provide transcriptions of St Nicholas’s “substituted cup” miracle in
Tiberius Poem 2 and its prose corollary in CCCC9 (part of the Cotton-Corpus Legendary), as
well as an edition and translation of Tiberius Poem 5.
iii
Dedicated to all of my parents, and
in gloriam Dei.
iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am a medievalist because of Annabel Wharton, whose undergraduate art history classes
were the most formative courses of my adult life, and Holly Crocker and Scott Gwara, who
prepared me to pursue a doctoral degree in the field. Thank you all for setting me off on this
adventure.
Thanks are also due to Fiona Somerset and Robert Babcock, who helped me during my
early coursework, and to my committee members, who helped me bring years of work together. I
am grateful for Ted Leinbaugh’s unflinching support throughout my time at UNC, and especially
during my most doubtful moments in the program. My director, Patrick O’Neill, has shown as
much grace and patience as any of the saints studied here. Our frequent meetings have been the
greatest gift of the dissertation process, and are already missed.
This project might well have been abandoned without the expertise of Dr Jennie Byrne,
the professionalism of my son’s many carers, and the friendship of so many fellow graduate
students (especially Doreen and Meredith). I am grateful for the Kirby / McLaurin Dissertation
Fellowship from the English Department, especially because it gave me the opportunity to find
my new work home at the Mothership—the vessel that carried me through the roughest waters of
the writing process.
To my husband Drew, who took on virtually all of my responsibilities over the past few
months: thank you for making this a team effort. To my son John Henry, whose dazzling joy got
me through the dreariest days: please note the example I have set by dedicating this work to my
parents.
v
PREFACE
My analysis, edition, and translation of the fifth Nicholas poem has been published, with
a few slight differeneces, as “An Examination of the Fifth ‘Nicholas Poem’ in Cotton Tiberius
B.v (i) and Its Source” in Studia Neophilologica, Vol. 89, 2, 2017, pp. 238-249.
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................................... ix
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ......................................................................................................... x
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION: BRINGING SAINTS TO THE SEA ....................................... 1
1. Scope ............................................................................................................................... 1
2. Organization .................................................................................................................... 4
3. Methodologies................................................................................................................. 5
CHAPTER 2: CUTHBERT AND GUTHLAC IN THE ENGLISH
ARCHIPELAGO .......................................................................................................................... 11
1. Bede’s Vita Cuthberti ................................................................................................... 16
2. Felix’s Vita Guthlaci ..................................................................................................... 40
CHAPTER 3: MARITIME MIRACLES ON THE ALMOST-OPEN SEAS .............................. 53
1. Bede and Stephen .......................................................................................................... 55
2. Alcuin ............................................................................................................................ 77
3. The Anonymous Author of the Vita Birini ................................................................... 83
CHAPTER 4: MEMORY AND LITURGY AT THE RIVERBANK.......................................... 95
1. Rivers at Home ............................................................................................................. 95
2. Rivers Abroad ............................................................................................................. 109
CHAPTER 5: ANGLO-NORMAN NICHOLAS FROM THE ADRIATIC SEA ..................... 128
1. Battle Abbey, and the Cult of Nicholas ...................................................................... 129
2. Poems 1-4.................................................................................................................... 140
Poem 1 ..................................................................................................................... 141
Poem 2 ..................................................................................................................... 143
vii
The text common to all prose versions .......................................................... 149
What the Tiberius poem shares with all three prose versions ........................ 151
What the poem [almost] shares with Harley and Namur against
CCCC9 ........................................................................................................... 154
What the poem shares with CCCC9 against Harley and Namur ................... 155
Distinct elements to the poem against all three prose .................................... 158
Poem 3 ..................................................................................................................... 162
Poem 4 ..................................................................................................................... 165
3. Poem 5: The account of Nicholas’s translation .......................................................... 177
APPENDIX 1: POEM 2 TIBERIUS BV, POEM 2. [73V] ........................................................ 193
APPENDIX 2: CCCC9: ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPTION (FF. 23V– 24R) .............................. 200
APPENDIX 3: TRANSLATIO TRANSCRIPTION, TRANSLATION .................................... 204
REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 210
viii
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Verbal Similarities between Shared Prose and Tiberius............................................... 153
Table 2: Overboard Passages ...................................................................................................... 157
ix
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Primary Sources
AVC Anonymous Vita Cuthberti
Bonif. Willibald, Vita sancti Bonifati
HA Bede, Historia Abbatum
HE Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica
VBir Anonymous Vita sancti Birini
VC Bede, Vita sancti Cuthberti
VCeol Anonymous Vita Ceolfridi
VG Felix, Vita sancti Guthlaci
VW Stephen, Vita Wilfridi
Tertiary Sources
BHL Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina
DACL Dictionnaire d’Archéologie Chrétienne et de Liturgie
DMLBS Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources
MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historiae
PASE Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England
x
Description:The four studies presented here uncover the various ways in which Anglo-Latin hagiographers, from the eighth century until the early twelfth, used
