Texts
Vita sancti Abbani (abbatis de Magh Arnaide)‘Life of St Abbán (abbot of Mag Arnaide)’
- Latin, Hiberno-Latin
- prose
- Irish hagiography
Latin Life of St Abbán of Mag Arnaide (Moyarney, now Adamstown in Co. Wexford)
Context(s)The (textual) context(s) to which the present text belongs or in which it is cited in part or in whole.
Manuscripts
- Kilkenniensis collection:
- Salamancensis collection:
- For the version in Irish, see Betha Abáin
Language
- Latin Hiberno-Latin
Form
prose (primary)
Textual relationships
Related: Betha AbáinBetha AbáinVernacular Irish recension of the Life of St Abbán of Mag Arnaide (Moyarney, now Adamstown in Co. Wexford) and Cell Abbáin (Killabban, Co. Laois)Betha AbáinBetha AbáinVernacular Irish recension of the Life of St Abbán of Mag Arnaide (Moyarney, now Adamstown in Co. Wexford) and Cell Abbáin (Killabban, Co. Laois)
Sources
Primary sources Text editions and/or modern translations – in whole or in part – along with publications containing additions and corrections, if known. Diplomatic editions, facsimiles and digital image reproductions of the manuscripts are not always listed here but may be found in entries for the relevant manuscripts. For historical purposes, early editions, transcriptions and translations are not excluded, even if their reliability does not meet modern standards.
[ed.] Plummer, Charles, Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae, partim hactenus ineditae, 2 vols, vol. 1, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910.
Internet Archive: <link>
3–33 Edition based on the Marsh MS, collated with twelve surviving sections of TCD MS 175. direct link
[ed.] Heist, W. W. [ed.], Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae: ex codice olim Salmanticensi, nunc Bruxellensi. Lives of the saints of Ireland, from the Salamanca manuscript now of Brussels, Subsidia Hagiographica 28, Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1965.
256–274 Text from the Brussels MS
Acta sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur, vel a catholicis scriptoribus celebrantur, 68 vols, vol. 60: Octobris XII (26–29), Antwerp: Ioannes Meursius, 1867.
276 ff Based on Colgan's text
Secondary sources (select)
Ó Riain, Pádraig, “St. Abbán: the genesis of an Irish saint’s life”, in: Evans, D. Ellis, John G. Griffith, and E. M. Jope (eds), Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Celtic studies, held at Oxford, from 10th to 15th July, 1983, Proceedings of the International Congress of Celtic Studies, Oxford: D. E. Evans, 1986. 159–170.
Howlett, David, “The prologue to the Vita sancti Abbani”, Peritia 15 (2001): 27–30.
abstract:
From two Dublin manuscripts, one of the fourteenth century and another of the fifteenth, an edition, translation, and analysis of the thirteenth-century prologue to the ‘Vita sancti Abbani’ in the Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae reveals an array of compositional techniques—prose rhythm, parallel and chiastic statement and restatement, infixed numerical values of names, and recurrence of words at points fixed by arithmetic ratios—that demonstrate eloquently the survival of a tradition of thought and composition from the beginnings of Hiberno-Latin literature beyond the Norman conquest of Ireland.
Plummer, Charles, Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae, partim hactenus ineditae, 2 vols, vol. 1, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910.
Internet Archive: <link>
xxiii–xxvi direct link
web page identifiers
page name: Vita sancti Abbani
page url: https://codecs.vanhamel.nl/Vita_sancti_Abbani
redirect: https://codecs.vanhamel.nl/Special:Redirect/page/17603
numerical alternative: https://codecs.vanhamel.nl/index.php?curid=17603
page ID: 17603
page ID tracker: https://codecs.vanhamel.nl/index.php?title=Show:ID&id=17603
Contributors
C. A., Dennis Groenewegen
Page created
June 2013, last updated: August 2021