Texts

Vita sancti Gregorii Magni (Whitby version)

Incoming data

The catalogue entry for this text has not been published as yet. Until then, a selection of data is made available below.

Anonymous Life of St Gregory the Great, written by a monk or nun of Streoneshealh (Whitby abbey, modern Yorkshire) before 714. It is the first known Life of the saint and highlights the role of the Gregorian mission in the conversion of Anglo-Saxon England. BHL 3637.

Manuscript witnesses

Text

St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 567

rubric: Incipit Liber beati et laudabilis viri Gregorii papae urbis Romae de vita atque eius virtutibus

ff. 75–110

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.] Mosford, S. E., “A critical edition of the Vita Gregorii Magni by an anonymous member of the community of Whitby”, D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1988.

[ed.] [tr.] Colgrave, Bertram, The earliest Life of Gregory the Great, Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 1968.

Secondary sources (select)

Ireland, Colin, “Some Irish characteristics of the Whitby life of Gregory the Great”, in: Pádraic Moran, and Immo Warntjes (eds), Early medieval Ireland and Europe: chronology, contacts, scholarship. A Festschrift for Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, 14, Turnhout: Brepols, 2015. 139–178.

abstract:

The anonymous Vita Gregorii produced at Whitby is among the earliest of the hagiographical works to come from Anglo-Saxon England. It is the first vita written of Pope Gregory the Great. The traditional dates for its production are between AD 704 and 714. It relates Gregory’s works and emphasizes his role as originator of the Christian mission to the Anglo-Saxons centred at Canterbury. In terms of Anglo-Saxon matters it highlights the conversion of King Edwin of Northumbria by Bishop Paulinus. In so doing it avoids mention of the successful Irish mission in Northumbria from Iona, the famous ‘synod’ that was held in AD 664 at Whitby and, by extension, Bishop Wilfrid and his ‘Roman’ legacy. It has been described as one of the most ‘idiosyncratic’ of the Anglo-Saxon vitae with ‘numerous (and spurious) miracles involving the great pope’. Despite its emphasis on the contribution of Rome and Pope Gregory to the conversion of Anglo-Saxons generally, and Northumbria specifically, many of the vita’s episodes and their topoi are more typical of Irish hagiography and reveal the Whitby hagiographer’s debt to Irish learning and teaching. This paper will examine some of those Irish narrative features.

Colgrave, Bertram, “The earliest Life of St Gregory the Great, written by a Whitby monk”, in: Nora K. Chadwick (ed.), Celt and Saxon: studies in the early British border, 3, Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1963. 119–137.