This new edition and translation of Reginald of Durham’s twelfth-century The Life and Miracles of Saint Godric, Hermit of Finchale by Margaret Coombe for the venerable Oxford Medieval Texts series represents a monumental effort. It replaces the only previous edition of the vita, that of Joseph Stevenson for the Surtees Society in 1847, and it offers the first complete translation of this important saint’s life. The sheer size of the book itself is monumental (it would make a handy doorstop), as is the rather eye-watering price. Indeed, Reginald’s Life of Godric was recognized even in its own time as somewhat prodigious, with one contemporary redactor describing it as too long and boring (“operis tediosa et prolixitas”) (xxv). Coombe herself describes Reginald’s Latin prose as “opaque, verbose, and imprecise” (v), which makes the task of the translator here all the more impressive. This edition includes an introduction; the text and translation; a series of appendices, which usefully track the correspondences between this and other manuscript versions of Godric’s vita; indices of Biblical allusions and personal names; as well as a general bibliography and index. [1] The edition uses the same base text as the previous edition by Stevenson, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc 413, a late twelfth-century manuscript that is the only surviving full version of Reginald’s Life. It is carefully tracked to Stevenson’s edition (even where Coombe clearly feels he has made some bad editorial decisions), which will usefully provide ease of reference to that edition as well as to existing scholarship on the Life. Where possible, persons and places mentioned in the text are identified in the footnotes. This all amounts to a monumental intellectual effort, and Coombe should be thanked for increasing the accessibility of this fascinating text.
Godric himself is a captivating character. Seemingly born into humble origins, the Life describes his successful career as a merchant, moving into the import/export business, and finally returning home to act as the steward for a local nobleman. Along the way, Godric became more and more interested in the religious life, and he made several pilgrimages before settling on the anchoritic lifestyle. He lived at first with a hermit called Aelric before, called by St Cuthbert, he established his own hermitage near Durham. This hermitage at Finchale grew over the years to a church and several outbuildings, and he was joined there by servants and family members and tended to by the monks of Durham. His life at Finchale is characterized by extreme asceticism and by a seemingly endless influx of demonic tormentors. About the author of the Life, Reginald of Durham, less is known, and indeed one suggestion Coombe makes is that there may be more than one authorial hand in this text (lvii). Reginald was a monk at Durham and a fairly prolific author: five saints’ lives are attributed to him (although Coombe accepts only the three in which he is named as authentically his). She further suggests that there may have been a familial relationship between Reginald and Godric (xxxviii). Certainly Reginald was a companion, or at least a frequent visitor, to Godric at Finchale, and he won the hermit’s approval for this, therefore authorized, biography.
The Life and Miracles of Saint Godric, Hermit of Finchale itself consists of the story of Godric’s long and interesting life as described above. During the discussion of his time at Finchale, the description of the hermit’s life morphs into a series of miracles he performs while still living. These miracles equally treat demonic visitors, visions of the Virgin Mary and Christ Child, and the miraculous production of particularly delicious salmon dinners for his visitors. After his death, 240 posthumous miracles are recorded. These are mostly traditional healing cures, sometimes performed alone, but sometimes alongside Saints Cuthbert, John the Baptist, and, most often, Thomas Becket. Indeed, Godric’s collection of miracles is second only to Becket’s in length, and it is an interesting case study in how contemporary hagiographers reacted to the popularity of the cult of St Thomas at Canterbury.
Although the introduction and notes to this edition focus largely on the historical aspects of the Life, there are significant implications here for literary studies as well, and especially for consideration of hagiography as a genre. In the Introduction, Coombe describes how Reginald’s The Life and Miracles of Saint Godric, Hermit of Finchale inspired a series of imitators and redactors (xxv), and, as I have suggested elsewhere, there is still interesting comparative work to do on the differing investments of these vitae and how they might help us understand the hagiographical impulse in the Middle Ages. [2] Moreover, The Life and Miracles of Saint Godric, Hermit of Finchale participates in the innovative multilingual literary production of Durham, and England, in the twelfth century. Godric has long been renowned as the composer of the earliest English-language songs for which musical notation survives. Although the musical notation is absent in the manuscript edited here, two of the three short songs attributed to Godric are present in English, and an active engagement with multilingualism is evident throughout. Indeed, this interest might be attributed to Reginald as much as to Godric: Reginald sometimes gives Latin translations of English personal and place names (he suggests, for example, that Wolsingham, where Godric lived for a time with the hermit Aelric, might be translated as “the dwelling place of Wolsi” or “the dwelling of the wolf,” or “the howling of the wolf” [86-87]). He describes Godric singing in English, speaking in French, and eavesdropping in Latin. He walks a fine line between insisting that Godric is illiteratus while showing him to be actively engaged with literary culture--so devoted to clutching his book of psalms, for example, that his pinky develops a permanent crook. I was particularly struck by Coombe’s calling our attention to the artistry, and indeed the aurality, of Reginald’s prose, with its deeply liturgical influences and its careful attention to rhythm and alliteration (xlvi-l). With this, she offers a salutary reminder to the reader to look across the page at Reginald’s Latin text, even while reading the Life primarily in translation, which we are now, thanks to her, able to do. In addition to its long-recognized importance to historical and devotional culture, Margaret Coombe’s edition and translation of Reginald of Durham’s The Life and Miracles of Saint Godric, Hermit of Finchale will allow this text to more fully inform our understanding of twelfth-century literary culture.
--------
Notes:
1. There is one small error in the description of the manuscripts that contain versions of Godric’s vita: on page lxiii the third text in Cambridge University Library, MS ADD 3037 is identified as an extract from Isaac of Stella. It is in fact an excerpt from Haimo of Auxerre’s popular Commentary on the Apocalypse of John.
2. Heather Blurton, “The Songs of Godric of Finchale: Vernacular Liturgy and Literary History,” New Medieval Literatures 18 (2018): 82 n. 17.