Vita sancti Winwaloei (Wrdisten)
The catalogue entry for this text has not been published as yet. Until then, a selection of data is made available below.
Manuscript witnesses
Book I. The text proper of chapter 1 begins on f. 9r with a large, ornate initial B, followed by ...ritannia insula.
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.
Secondary sources (select)
[FR] La grande Vie de saint Guénolé composée vers 870 par Gurdisten de Landévennec (BHL 8957-58) est à la fois prosimètre et opus geminum ; elle compte un nombre considérable de citations, imitations et échos d’une grande variété d’auteurs profanes et chrétiens, en prose et en vers. Un nouveau bilan de ce régime d’emprunts formels est établi et élargi ; l’influence de la langue biblique et les échos de la Règle bénédictine y apparaissent encore plus nettement que dans les récapitulations effectuées antérieurement. Ce nouvel état des lieux permet de mieux comprendre le processus d’élaboration de l’oeuvre (probablement en plusieurs étapes, ensuite amalgamées) et les intentions de l’auteur en tant qu’abbé. En effet, ce dernier vise avant tout un public monastique ; il entrecoupe son récit biographique d’hymnes et de méditations à l’allure de sermons qui pourraient avoir été composées et utilisées séparément. Cette enquête permet enfin de revisiter la question des rapports entre influences insulaires et influences continentales à Landévennec au troisième quart du IXe siècle ; les emprunts au monde romano-franc l’emportent de beaucoup sur le monde insulaire. L’influence d’auteurs carolingiens, comme Alcuin ou Smaragde de Saint-Mihiel, avait été sous-estimée jusqu’à présent.
[EN] Intertextuality in the longer Life of St. Winwaloeus of Landévennec. The Vita longior s. Winwaloei composed ca. 870 by Gurdisten of Landévennec (BHL 8957-58) is at the same time a prosimetrum and an opus geminum ; this opus is remarkable for its high frequency of quotations, imitations, and echoes borrowed from a variety of former authors, profane and christian, in prose and in verse. The inventory of those borrowings is revised and expanded, showing an influence of the biblical language and of the Benedictine Rule stronger than previously observed. This new status quaestionis opens perspectives on the process of elaboration of the vita – probably in several steps, finally amalgamated ; it also secures a better understanding of the intentions of the hagiographer, as the head of a monastic community. The intended audience is indeed essentially monastic ; the biography of Guénolé is interrupted several times by hymns and homilies that could have been composed and used separately. This research finally shows how insular and continental influences meet and mix at Landévennec (Finistère) in the third quarter of the IXth century : borrowings from the Franco-Roman world are much more intensive than the Insular ones. The influence of Carolingian authors, like Alcuin or Smaragdus of St. Mihiel, had been underestimated until now.
A shorter version of the VSW, generally thought to be Wrdisten's source, is actually an abridgement of his text, probably written at Montreuil-sur-Mer in Normandy. This text, which contains an episode borrowed from the Life of St. Ethbin, has been reduced to a string of miracles for the edification of a less sophisticated audience than the readers of the longer VSW. Condensed even further by John of Tynemouth, the short version has been incorporated into the Nova Legenda Angliae.
Wrdisten also wrote a verse life of Gwénolé as a companion piece to his long prose life, a sermon for the feast of St. Gwénolé designed to instruct those who could not read the VSW, and a letter, based primarily on the sermon, to enclose with a gift of relics sent to Bishop John of Arezzo.
Closely related to Wrdisten's works are three hymns, one by Clement of Landévennec, Wrdisten's contemporary, the others anonymous, recalling Gwénolé's miracles and asking his protection, and a number of charters composed in the eleventh century to document Landévennec's earliest acquisitions of land. Apart from one which makes Gwénolé contemporary with Charlemagne rather than with the Breton migration, these charters agree with Wrdisten's official biography.
