The seventh in CEU’s series of medieval texts in English translation and the third to focus on saints, this volume contains the Latin vitae of seven holy men: King Stephen of Hungary (d. 1038); his son, Emeric (d. 1031); Gerard, martyred bishop of Csanád (d. 1046); Prokop, abbot of Sázava (d. 1053); King Ladislaus of Hungary (d. 1095); Bishop John of Trogir (d. post 1111); and Stanisław of Kraków, bishop and martyr (d. 1079). The volume provides one, two, or three texts for each of these eleventh-century figures, with Latin and English on facing pages, preceded by a preface.
Cristian Gaspar serves as translator for nearly all of the vitae in the volume: namely, those of Stephen, Emeric, Ladislaus, Prokop, and Stanisław, as well as the Legenda minor of Gerard. However, Gerard’s Legenda maior is the work of János M. Bak, who also provides the notes. Marina Miladinov [Schumann] translates John of Trogir’s vita. The life of Saint Stephen by Hartvic was originally translated by Nora Berend and published in Thomas Head’s Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology (2000); she is credited here, although Gaspar has made minor emendations to ensure consistency between it and the two earlier Lives from which it copies large sections of text, in addition to expanding the annotations. The entire volume is introduced by Gábor Klaniczay and concludes with a collective bibliography. Nevertheless, it is best understood as a compendium, a reference volume that makes these texts individually accessible to scholars. Each of the prefaces has a distinct approach and authorship--and, except for a portion of a preface contributed by Gaspar, there is no overlap between the translators of the vitae and the authors of the prefaces.
Scholars will benefit greatly from ready access to these medieval texts. The translations are, without exception, clear, correct, and reflective of the variations in the original authors’ styles. They are eminently readable and the Latin at the left is a boon. The annotations are also very helpful, supplying factual information, Biblical allusions and other textual borrowings, and, from Gaspar, explanations about his choices as a translator.
That said, readers not already familiar with medieval East Central Europe, the region’s saints, or the development of their cults will find much about this volume frustrating. It is useful but not user-friendly. None of the prefaces follow a standardized format, converge on a means to convey the most basic information, or make much of an effort to situate the holy man or his veneration historically. As might be expected, the majority of these medieval texts were penned by anonymous authors, are difficult to date securely, and survive in manuscripts that may long postdate the saint’s lifetime--raising a variety of contentious issues. To their credit, the authors of the prefaces have kept their summaries of scholarly debates on dating and interpretation neutral and concise. But they seem not to have considered that the very audience who would benefit from English translations of these materials would also likely need fundamental, non-specialized orientation. The most glaring omission in all but the two prefaces authored by Klaniczay is a brief description of the holy individuals themselves: when they lived, what they accomplished in their lives, what justified their holy reputation, when the cult was established, how much we can know about it all and from what kinds of sources, and what the relationship is between these texts and the broader historical phenomenon of veneration. If the reader has never before heard of Saint Emeric, there is little profit in beginning the preface with a list of manuscripts and incunabula--as Gábor Bradács and Dorottya Uhrin do here (though it is also unfortunate that some prefaces do not describe the manuscript tradition at all). If the other prefaces are less extreme, they all tend to plunge readers into scholarly debates about the text per se, rather than probing the relationship between them and the holy man. Some are more upfront than others about the gap between the lifetime of the saint and the approximate time of the vita’s writing. For the three lives of Saint Stephen, there is a clear pattern of borrowing and a dedication that dates the last text in the series to the end of the eleventh century. But the lag is greater for Ladislaus and especially Stanisław, whose cult seems not to exist before the thirteenth century. (As far as I can tell, this latter point justifies the volume’s subtitle [“saec. XI-XIII”]; otherwise, it constitutes a collection of vitae of eleventh-century saints penned in the twelfth century.) To varying degrees, most of the prefaces provide much of the information semi-specialized readers need and expect, but a more interventionist editorial effort would have made it easier to find and assured a degree of consistency across all the prefaces that is frustratingly absent here.
At the end of the volume, after the bibliography, is a section labelled “Select Historiography of the Saints in this Volume,” which is a sort of handlist, organized by saint, for which the main categories for each vita are first edition, critical edition, and published translations (into a variety of languages). At the start of each entry appear a few sentences about the probable date of composition, the form in which the text survives (e.g., as part of a breviary), and the manuscript tradition. Frustratingly, the manuscripts themselves are not listed for any of them; we are told only that there are “ten copies,” “two manuscripts from the thirteenth and the fifteenth century,” and so forth. As an exception, however, a list of manuscripts of the Vita Minor of St. Stanisław is provided as an appendix to his entry in the handlist. More frustratingly, vitae appear in the handlist that are not translated in this volume--and for one of the texts related to Gerard, again exceptionally, we are provided an appendix with detailed manuscript information. It is hard to find an explanation for these extra texts, including in the relevant prefaces. Let me also add that abbreviations appear in this handlist that I simply could not parse and found nowhere spelled out.
The sense that one is getting both too much and too little information, a great deal of it difficult to locate, creates unnecessary confusion and will surely be off-putting to potential researchers. Without question, the core of the volume--i.e., the translations themselves--is sound and stands as an important contribution. I emphasize these critiques of presentation and accessibility because volumes like this one do the important work of outreach--insofar as the medieval history of Hungary, Poland, and Czechia remain too little known among anglophone scholars. More vigorous editorial vision and coherence would have enabled this volume to achieve more toward that end.