The Lives of St Samson: rewriting the ambitions of an early medieval cult
In the middle of the ninth century, at the monastery of Dol in Brittany, the Life of the sixth-century saint Samson was rewritten. The rewriter evidently perceived a defi- ciency in the existing Life of St Samson, and one that many modern historians would come to share: the fact that it had very little to say about Brittany.
The Librarius and Libraire as Witnesses to the Evolving Book Trade in Ducal Brittany
In monasteries and cathedrals of the medieval West, the « custos librariae » functioned primarily as a custodian or keeper of bound codices, and we see a similar role emerge from extant medieval registers from Breton cathedral chapters.
Hidden Manna and the Holy Grail: The Psychedelic Sacrament in Arthurian Romance
Scholars are generally agreed that Arthurian wonder tales like “Cullhwch and Olwen” must have been widely distributed in Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany in advance of the Norman conquest of England in 1066. Belief in a living Arthur was then in the air.
THE VIKINGS IN BRITTANY
THE VIKINGS IN BRITTANY Price, Neil S. (University College London) The Viking Society for Northern Research, Vol. 22 (1989) Abstract When a selection…
Saint Gildas and the Pestilent Dragon: A Meander through the Sixth-Century Landscape With a Most Notable Guru
The historical value of the pilgrimage episode in the Life of Gildas by the Monk of Ruys is defended by advancing solutions to the problems of composition-dating, integrity of tradition, motivation, and the appearance of a dragon. An approach is taken to delimiting the date of the pilgrimage in light of the Yellow Death pandemic and the geopolitics of the contemporary Mediterranean world.