Byrhtferth of Ramsey: The Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine

Abstract

Thanks in large part to Michael Lapidge, scholars now recognise Byrhtferth of Ramsey as an important author. He has reconstructed Byrhtferth's prose style and thereby secured his authorship of previously anonymous works. Among Byrhtferth's credits are the Glossae in Bedam (980s–990s), a Computus (988–996), the Passio SS Æthelberhti et Æthelredi (after c.991), the Vita Oswaldi (997x1002), the Enchiridion (1004x1016, writing in 1011), the Vita Ecgwini (after 1000, perhaps 1016x1020) and a Historia Regum. From the texts it seems that Byrhtferth lived in the monastery at Ramsey from at least the 980s until perhaps 1016, but he may have moved to the monastery at Evesham from 1016 to 1020. This biography makes him a vital witness to, and barometer of, the later stages of the tenth-century monastic reforms. Frustratingly, as Lapidge observes, ‘Byrhtferth was ill served by medieval scribes’ (p. ci). His works survive in later copies, which sometimes fail to signal his authorship and feature scribal errors and omissions. Byrhtferth's vitae of Oswald and Ecgwine are typical. They survive together in a single manuscript: London, British Library, Cotton Nero E. i, pt. 1. Originally this seems to have been part of a two-volume legendary written at Worcester in the third quarter of the eleventh century. In the late eleventh century an unnamed scribe ‘N’ made additions, including the vitae of Oswald and Ecgwine. Unfortunately ‘N’ was a lazy Latinist and a careless copier. He altered words: St Swithin's soul (animula) became animals (animalia). He omitted words and whole phrases. More generally Lapidge notes ‘the abiding impression that the text he has copied deteriorates all too frequently into nonsense’ (p. xcviii).