Texts
Vita sancti Abbani
Incoming data
Latin Life of St Abbán of Mag Arnaide (Moyarney, now Adamstown in Co. Wexford)
Manuscript witnesses
MS
Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, MS 7672-7674
Life of Abbán of Killabban and Adamstown.
f. 140va– f. 147rb
Text
Dublin, Trinity College, MS 175/2
Part of the text is missing here.
MS
Dublin, Trinity College, MS 175/2
Life of St Abbán. Incomplete: first twelve sections only.
f. 135b– f. 136d
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 [‘Vita S. Abbani abbatis de Mag Arnaide et Cell Abbain’] Text from the Brussels MS
Secondary sources (select)
Ó Riain, Pádraig, “St. Abbán: the genesis of an Irish saint’s life”, in: D. Ellis Evans, 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, 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