NOTES

1. For a detailed account of the origins of Sophronius's Greek uita and of the Anglo-Latin versions of Paul the Deacon's Latin vita, see Stevenson, 19-50.

2. BL Cotton Julius E. vii, Gloucester Cathedral Library 35, and BL Cotton Otho B. x. Discussion of these manuscripts follows in Part One.

3. Walter W. Skeat, Ælfric's Lives of Saints, EETS 76, 82, 94, 14 (London, 1881-1900). Reprinted in 2 volumes, 1966.

4. See Prescott 1997b and Smith.

5. At least one scholar has overlooked Otho B. x altogether. Veronica Ortenberg states that Mary of Egypt's "success in England is well attested by the existence of at least two Lives of the saint in the vernacular, one of the ninth century, and one of the late tenth-century, ascribed to Aelfric." In her footnote, Ortenberg cites John Earle's edition of the Gloucester fragments and Skeat's Ælfric's Lives of Saints, apparently basing her appraisal of Anglo-Saxon appreciation of Mary's story solely on the existence of late nineteenth-century editions (115, 115n94).

6. For a detailed description of the process used to inlay the Cotton manuscript folios in paper frames as part of a nineteenth-century restoration effort, see Kiernan 1996, 68-70.

7. Ker lists the surviving leaves of Mary of Egypt as ff. 27, 56; 16, 17; 15 (226). Kiernan notes that Ker misidentifies the first extant folio of Mary of Egypt as f. 27 instead of f. 26, and that he does not indicate that f. 26 is reversed or that both ff. 26 and 27 are upside down (Kiernan 1999). These two leaves are quite legible and Ker rarely made such a blatant error, so it is possible that f. 26 was reversed and ff. 26 and 27 were placed upside down when the manuscript was rebound in 1963, after Ker had examined the manuscript and published his description (Kiernan 2000). Although Ker accurately lists f. 59 between f. 15 (Mary of Egypt) and f. 53 (The Seven Sleepers), he does not otherwise identify it. In addition, while Ker normally gives in brackets "the probable number of each leaf of the manuscript in Wanley's time and according to his foliation" (224), he does not provide Wanley's folio number for f. 59. In the upper right corner of the ultraviolet image of f. 59 recto, Wanley's number 91 is clearly legible [Fig. N-1]; examination of the text of the leaf identifies it as the last extant folio of

Fig N.1: f. 30(59)r: Wanley's folio number 91

Mary of Egypt (Cantara). For other examples of the misplacement of folios in Otho B. x, see Kiernan, Seales, and Griffioen.

8. Kiernan et al. 2000.

9. See Kiernan 1991, 1994a, 1994b; and Prescott 1997a.

10. For use in writing this thesis, Kiernan has given me privileged access to his digital facsimiles of the Otho B. x fragments of Mary of Egypt. The images will be included in his electronic edition in-progress of BL Cotton Otho B. x.

11. For nearly thirty years, the Dictionary of Old English Project (DOE) has been compiling a comprehensive dictionary based on all the words from all editions of manuscripts containing Old English. As new editions are published they are added to the Dictionary of Old English Corpus in Electronic Form, (Healey et al. 2000), an electronic version of every edited Old English text, available on CD-ROM or via the World Wide Web by institutional license. Although originally created to facilitate collection of words for the DOE, the Old English Corpus (OEC) has become an indispensable aid to research and scholarship in Old English language and literature. Fascicle F of the DOE is to be published in 2001.

12. To facilitate correcting the order of the folios, Kiernan has devised an "electronic foliation" that incorporates the British Library folio numbers within a corrected numbering of the leaves. By this foliation, the folios of Mary of Egypt are: 25(26v)r, 25(26r)v, 26(56)r, 26(56)v, 27(16)r, 27(16)v, 28(17)r, 28(17)v, 29(15)r, 29(15)v, 30(59)r, and 30(59)v. Readings are cited by electronic folio name and folio line number, followed by a colon and Skeat's edition line number. Unless otherwise indicated, translations of Julius E. vii are from Skeat's edition, while translations of Otho B. x are my own.

13. For more on the Anglo-Latin versions of the story, see note 21 below.

14. See, for example, April 10, Oxford, Bodleian Library Digby MS 63, in Wormald 5.

15. See Ker nos. 117 (154), 158 (201), and 177 (224).

16. John Earle, Gloucester Fragments: Legends of Saint Swidhun and Sancta Maria Ægyptiaca with Photozincographic Facsimiles (London: Longman: 1861).

17. Full citation at note 3 above. Mary of Egypt is found in vol 2, 2-53.

18. According to Helmut Gneuss, "[b]y the turn of the century more than 200 volumes had been printed (in 1995 there are 444 volumes, of which 42 contain Old English texts)." (1996 48). The EETS continues to publish new editions of Old English texts; nevertheless, the majority of the Old English editions date from the nineteenth century.

19. For commentary on the inaccuracies of Skeat's Ælfric's Lives of Saints, see search results for "lives of saints" at the ANSAXNET Listserv Database.

20. The Dictionary of Old English, however, does pick up lexical variants as they are found reported in the editions (Healey 2001), but see the discussion on the word cwucuwe in Part Three.

21. The Cotton-Corpus Legendary is a name assigned by Patrick Zettel to "a compilation of hagiographic texts representing 160 feasts of the church year, and forming what in Ker's words, 'appears to be the earliest large collection of lives of saints in use in England'" (Zettel 18). The Cotton-Corpus texts of Mary of Egypt are found in MS Cotton Nero E. ii, Part I, ff. 179r-184v and Salisbury, Cathedral Library 221 (formerly Bodleian Library, MS Fell 4), ff. 195v-205v. For more on the Cotton-Corpus Legendary, see Zettel; Jackson and Lapidge; and Stevenson.

22. Cotton Claudius A. i, ff. 76v-84r (10th c.) and British Library MS Addit. 33518, ff. 155r-164v (12th c.).

23. H. Rosweydus, Vitae Patrum, Patriologia Latina 73, 571-90; and A. Lipomanus, Sanctorum Priscorum Patrum Vitae (Venice, 1553), ii. ff. 38v-91v. For a collated edition of the primary Latin sources, see Stevenson 51-79.

24. For a detailed discussion of the variant reading in Otho B. x of Sk 49-50, see Part Three below.

25. Magennis states "the interjection hwæt, which appears so regularly in Ælfric, does not occur in St. Mary of Egypt" (1986 334), but this is not correct: the word hwæt ("what") occurs in both manuscripts at 29(15)v12:517. For an explanation of citation numbers, see note 12 above.

26. For a detailed discussion of the variant reading in Otho B. x of Sk 523 see Part Three below.

28. Most likely, the fact that Zosimus, a monk widely known as a great teacher, is advised by an angel to abandon the intellectual sphere for the contemplative life so he might learn hu miccle synd hælo wegas ("how many are the ways to salvation") would also have met with Ælfric's disapproval.

29. Elsewhere, Clayton notes that Mary of Egypt was also important in the Anglo-Saxon cult of devotion to the Virgin Mary because it provided examples of prayer to the Virgin: "As models, these prayers were enormously influential and, although the main point of the homily is to celebrate Mary of Egypt, the text also obviously glorifies the Virgin" (1990 257-258).

30. Lees's theories are further supported by the variant vocabulary in the Otho B. x version. See, in particular, the discussions of yrmðe and myrcðe, and flæslican and færlican in Part Three below.

31. See also Nicholls 52; Scragg 1979, 257-258, and 1996, 217.

32. See Gneuss 1972, 63-83; and Hofstetter 139-161.

33. Although I found many variants in the usage of the letters i and y, and þ and ð, because Skeat was particularly unfaithful about documenting such variants, even in the base manuscript, I have not included these variant readings in the following discussion unless included as part of a multiple-word variant. I have, however, documented these discrepancies in my comprehensive record of all the variant readings.

34. The Julius text also includes examples of hn words such as hnappode (Sk 666) and hnescan (Sk 684, 723), lines lost to Otho B. x.

35. HomU 7, B3.4.7, 0098(167).

36. Skeat does not include this variant in his apparatus.

37. HomS 49, B3.2.49, 0019(61).

38. JnHeadGl (Li), C21.9, 0039(38).

39. Concerning the use of weak declension without a demonstrative pronoun, Bruce Mitchell notes there are "spasmodic examples of this combination in the prose of all periods" (§115).

40. Skeat notes: "369. O. hi gegaderade geseah" (2:25).

41. This variant is not noted by Skeat.

42. In the "Preliminary Notice" of Ælfric's Lives of Saints, Skeat credits the modern English translations in his edition to "Miss Gunning, of Cambridge, and Miss Wilkinson, formerly of Dorking" (1:vii). Clare Lees observes, "[t]here is no study of the women who worked with the editors of the Early English Texts Society, who are otherwise acknowledged in the prefaces to various editions" (1997 168n9).

43. But þeowtscypes can also mean "rule, regulation, custom, mode of conduct."

44. This variant is not noted by Skeat.

45. Skeat translates: "It must now indeed be told briefly."

46. Skeat stopped reading Otho B. x f. 15v at line 27, so did not notice this variant.

47. This part of the story, Sk lines 530-581, is missing from Otho B. x.

48. Mary's admission in the Otho version that her life of promiscuity was a source of pleasure to her supports Lees's argument that "the transformation of sexuality into the gift of chastity is the prime component of the female saint's life" (1999 147).

49. Gordon Whatley notes that "[t]he prose lives of Mary of Egypt and of Guthlac...begin, not with a translator's apology, but with literal renderings of the Latin prefaces, even where these are in the first person, creating the illusion that one is reading the original itself, rather than the work of an intermediary" (450).

50. Bosworth-Toller cites les as an Old Saxon variant (612).

51. LawIIAtr, B14.21, [0034 (9.1)].

52. Anglia 90 (1972) 1-42; Prov 1 (Cox), B7.1, [0066 (1.61)].

53. Anglia 83 (1965), 1-34; Conf 4 (Fowler), B11.4.2, [0041 (21.148)].

54. Skeat translates as "may it never be that I should falsify the holy narratives or keep silence from speech."

55. In his note for line 365, Skeat documents: "For and þus cwæð O. has beo þa togeycte þære ærran cyðnysse (i.e. let those be added to the former exposition)" (2:25). The word he reads as beo is actually heo, written with a rubricated h [Figure N.2]:

Figure N.2: f. 28(17)r Heo þa

56. The scribe, probably through dittography, here writes his nama his [Figure N.3] instead of his nama wæs:

Figure N.3: f. 25(26v)r 7 his nama his

57. Skeat translates hæbbende wæs as "he kept all these customs in himself."

58. Skeat translates as "I spake with weeping...and saying."

59. Skeat translates as "Thinking these [things], and others like to these within himself."

60. Skeat translates as "Very often also, according to what they said..."

61. Twice in King Alfred's Pastoral Care (CP B9.1.3, 32.209.23 and 35.239.8), once in Bede's Ecclesiastical History (Bede 5, B9.6.7, 17.460.25), once in the Laws of Alfred (LawAfEl, B14.4.3, 15), and once in the Laws of Æthelstan (LawVAs, B14.10.2, 1.1).

62. According to E. G. Stanley, "we in our subject have to remember with constant humility that though perhaps, not certainly, most scribes may not have been the equals in Old English of the best Old English poets, every one of them sleepy and careless as he may have been at times, knew his living Old English better than the best modern editor of Old English verse" (257). However, according to Lapidge, a knowledgeable editor has an obligation to freely emend the flawed work of the scribes who wrote the manuscripts (1993 and 1994).

63. See note 62 above.