INTRODUCTION

After Christianity became the official religion of the Holy Roman Empire in the fourth century, "the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, Arabia and Persia were peopled by...the first Christian hermits, who abandoned the cities of the pagan world to live in solitude" (Merton 3). Collectively known as the Desert Fathers, these desert ascetics included "Desert Mothers" too. In the sixth century, Sophronius, Bishop of Jersusalem, documented in Greek the life of one of these Desert Mothers, a repentant prostitute known as Mary of Egypt. Sophronius's account was translated into Latin in the eighth century by Paul the Deacon, a monk at Monte Casino near Naples. This version was known widely throughout Europe as well as in Anglo-Saxon England.[1] Although translated into nearly every western language, the anonymous Old English version is the oldest vernacular translation (Magennis 1996, 99).

Three incomplete copies of the Old English version survive,[2] yet scholarship of the story, ranging from source studies and linguistic analyses to comparisons to saints' lives translated by the monk Ælfric and explorations of Anglo-Saxon female sexuality, is based exclusively on either the most complete version found in BL MS Cotton Julius E. vii or on Walter W. Skeat's late nineteenth-century edition of this manuscript, Ælfric's Lives of Saints.[3] There is, however, an as yet unedited fragmentary copy of the Old English Mary of Egypt in BL MS Cotton Otho B. x, a manuscript severely damaged in the famous Cotton Library fire in 1731.[4] Although Otho B. x is routinely cited as a source of the text (Scragg 1979, 263; Nicholls 55), few scholars have examined it.[5]

That Cotton Otho B. x has been almost totally overlooked by Anglo-Saxon textual scholars is not surprising. In normal light, the text of many of the fragmentary leaves is illegible as a result of heat and water damage and distortion, fissures and cracks in the vellum, and applications of conservation materials such as gauze, glue, and paper tape that mask extant text, or paper frames that preserve brittle edges but cover surviving letters or parts of letters.[6] To complicate matters further, when the fragments of Otho B. x were rediscovered in a garret of the British Museum in the mid-nineteenth-century and were subsequently restored and reassembled, the leaves were frequently rebound in the wrong order and in some instances, even placed upside down and backwards (Prescott 1997b, 408, 429, 453n315). Mary of Egypt, for example, comprises folios 26vr (upside down and back-to-front), 56rv, 16rv, 17rv, 15rv, and 59rv.[7] Based on Hugh Magennis's count of about 8,185 words in the Julius E. vii version (Magennis 1986, 327), the text surviving in Otho B. x comprises approximately one-third of the complete story.

Kevin Kiernan's application of computer technology to the Beowulf manuscript, BL MS Vitellius A. xv,[8] illustrates that digital imaging of damaged manuscripts in concert with ultraviolet fluorescence and other special lighting techniques is effective for restoring the legibility of previously inaccessible texts.[9] Based on the exemplary results achieved with the Beowulf manuscript, Kiernan is now applying advanced digital technology to the restoration of other British Library manuscripts particularly devastated by the Cotton Library fire, including Otho B. x.[10]

Working first with images scanned from grayscale microfilm, then with digital images captured under both normal light and ultraviolet fluorescence, I have transcribed the text of Mary of Egypt in Otho B. x. By collating this text with Skeat's edition, I have discovered in the Otho B. x version many readings that differ from the version in Cotton Julius E. vii. In addition to orthographic variants, the Otho B. x version includes differences in vocabulary, including totally alternate phrases, as well as differences in syntax. Although Skeat collated three of the surviving six leaves, I have discovered his collation is sometimes inaccurate and incomplete. I have found words neither documented in the Dictionary of Old English nor accessible through a search of the online Old English Corpus.[11] I have also experienced the frustration of not being able to decipher text too damaged to be identified with certainty.

Following a brief textual history (Part One) and a review of current scholarship of the Old English Life of St. Mary of Egypt (Part Two), I discuss a selection of my findings, comparing and contrasting readings from Otho B. x to Skeat's edition of the version in Cotton Julius E. vii (Part Three). I conclude by suggesting potential directions for future research this new textual evidence might inspire.