Apocryphal Gospels
Many books on biblical subjects designated as apocryphal on the grounds of their dubious origins or authenticity remained in circulation throughout the Middle Ages.
1 Notably, the Gelasian decree, attributed to Pope Gelasius I (492–96) but now assigned to the sixth century, listed the canonical books of the Bible and condemned a number of other works as apocryphal. See van Liere, Introduction to the Medieval Bible, pp. 53–79. See further Apocryphal Texts and Traditions in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Kathryn Powell and Donald Scragg, Publications of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies 2 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003); Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture: The Apocrypha, Instrumenta Anglistica Medievalia 1, ed. Frederick M. Biggs (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007); Brandon Hawk, Preaching Apocrypha in Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018). Notably, the influence of the Book of Enoch (or I Enoch), with its dramatic retelling of the Fall of the Angels, has been detected in a range of early medieval English sources,
2 See Elizabeth Coatsworth, ‘The Book of Enoch and Anglo-Saxon Art’, in Apocryphal Texts and Traditions, ed. Powell and Scragg, pp. 135–50; Robert E. Kaske, ‘Beowulf and the Book of Enoch’, Speculum 46 (1971), 421–31; Francis Leneghan, ‘Beowulf, the Wrath of God and the Fall of the Angels’, English Studies 105 (2024), 383–403. while the
Visio Sancti Pauli, though rejected by Aldhelm and Ælfric, was nevertheless translated into anonymous Old English prose and influenced various Old English homilies and poetic works.
3 Antonette diPaolo Healey, ed. The Old English Vision of St. Paul (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1978), pp. 41–57. See further Charles D. Wright, The Irish Tradition in Old English Literature, CSASE 6 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 106–74. Ælfric’s own writings embody the ambivalent attitude of contemporary commentators towards such apocryphal material: in his
Treatise on the Old and New Testaments, he restricted the contents of the English
bibliotheca (‘Bible’) to those works approved by Jerome, yet he still produced translations of apocryphal works such as the
Letter of Christ to Agbar.
4 Ælfric’s translation of the Letter of Christ to Agbar is included in his Lives of the Saints following the account of the martyrdom of Abdon and Sennes. See Christopher M. Cain, ‘The Apocryphal Legend of Abgar in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints’, PQ 89 (2010), 383–402; Stephen C. E. Hopkins, ‘An Old English Fragment of the Letter of Christ to Agbar’, N&Q 66 (2019), 173–6. On Ælfric’s restriction of the biblical canon to those books translated by Jerome, see Chapter Five, pp. 235–38. Given this chapter’s focus on the translation of the Gospels, I will restrict this brief discussion of apocrypha to two major works: the extended narratives of Christ’s Passion in the Old English
Gospel of Nicodemus and its companion piece
The Avenging of the Saviour; and the account of the Virgin Mary’s nativity in the
Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew.
‘The Gospel of Nicodemus’ and ‘The Avenging of the Saviour’
Appended to the text of the
Wessex Gospels in one of its principal manuscripts, Cambridge University Library Ii.2.11, are Old English prose translations of two closely related apocryphal works: the Gospel of Nicodemus and the Avenging of the Saviour.
5 For details of this manuscript, see above, p. 91 n. 38. See further the entries by Frederick M. Biggs and James H. Morey (‘Gospel of Nicodemus’) and Thomas N. Hall (‘Vindicta Salvatoris’) in Biggs, ed., Apocrypha, pp. 29–33. Originally composed in Greek, the Gospel of Nicodemus was translated into Latin by the fifth century and subsequently into many Eastern and Western vernaculars.
6 For discussion of the origins of both traditions and their medieval transmission, see Zbigniew Izydorczyk, ‘Introduction’, in The Medieval Gospel of Nicodemus: Texts, Intertexts, and Contexts, ed. Zbigniew Izydorczyk (Tempe, AZ: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1997), pp. 1–19; and Thomas N. Hall, ‘The Euangelium Nichodemi and Vindicta Saluatoris in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Two Old English Apocrypha and Their Manuscript Source: ‘The Gospel of Nichodemus’ and ‘The Avenging of the Saviour’, ed. J. E. Cross, CSASE 19 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 36–81. The Latin version (
Euangelium Nichodemi) from which the Old English translation is derived combines two originally separate narratives: the
Acta Pilati (Acts of Pilate) and the
Descensus ad infernos (Descent into Hell). The
Acta Pilati considerably expands on the narratives of the trial of Christ in John 18 and Luke 23. New episodes include: the dream of Pilate’s wife, Procula, which convinces them both of Christ’s innocence; the defence of Christ by Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea and the woman who had touched the hem of Christ’s garment against the Jewish accusations of witchcraft and sorcery; Joseph’s burial of Christ’s body and miraculous escape from the Jews; and the subsequent conversion of the Jews. The
Descensus ad infernos contains an account of the Harrowing of Hell which was related to the Jews after Christ’s Resurrection by the two sons of Simeon, Leucius and Carinus. In addition to its incorporation into the Apostles’ Creed (
descendit ad infernos) in the fourth century, the Harrowing would prove immensely popular in medieval preaching and its associated literature, and Old English poems such as
The Descent into Hell and
The Dream of the Rood and prose works such as Blickling Homily VII all betray traces of its influence, direct or indirect.
7 It is unclear to what extent any of these works were directly indebted to the Gospel of Nicodemus itself, as opposed to the various traditions contained within it that circulated in the early Church in the form of sermons and other writing. See Jackson J. Campbell, ‘To Hell and Back: Latin Tradition and Literary Use of the Descensus ad Infernos in Old English’, Viator 13 (1982), 107–58. The
Vindicta Salvatoris, composed in Latin
c. 700 in southern Gaul,
is the longest and most complex of a series of subsidiary narratives that expand on various parts of the
Euangelium Nichodemi,
and the two works often therefore travel together in manuscripts. The
Vindicta relates the stories of Veronica’s veil, the healing of the Emperor Titus and his destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., the healing of the Emperor Tiberius, and the condemnation, exile and death of Pilate.
The influence of these apocryphal works in the early Old English period was probably indirect, and it appears that they were not translated until the eleventh century. Remarkably, the Latin source for both the Old English
Gospel of Nicodemus and the
Avenging of the Saviour has been traced to a single ninth-century continental manuscript, Saint-Omer, Bibliothèque Municipale, 202. This manuscript appears to have been brought to Exeter in the early eleventh century, perhaps by Bishop Leofric.
8 On this discovery, see J. E. Cross, ‘Introduction’, in Two Old English Apocrypha, ed. Cross, pp. 3–9. It was probably at Exeter, then, that the
Euangelium Nichodemi and
Vindicta Salvatoris were translated into Old English from this manuscript in the early eleventh century by a single author whose work in turn served as the exemplar for the late eleventh-century manuscript copy which preserves both vernacular apocrypha.
Because both the Old English texts were written out by the same hand responsible for the four preceding, canonical gospels (i.e. the
Wessex Gospels) in Cambridge University Library Ii.2.11, it has been suggested that the combined
Gospel of Nicodemus and the
Avenging of the Saviour were regarded at the time as almost a ‘fifth gospel’.
9 Antonette di Paolo Healey, ‘Anglo-Saxon Use of the Apocryphal Gospel’, in The Anglo-Saxons: Synthesis and Achievement, ed. J. Douglas Woods and David A. E. Pelteret (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1986), pp. 93–104, at 98. However, Thomas N. Hall cautions that it was not uncommon to juxtapose canonical and apocryphal works in medieval Latin Bible manuscripts.
10 Hall, ‘Euangelium Nichodemi and Vindicta Saluatoris in Anglo-Saxon England’, p. 50. Moreover, C. W. Marx notes that while each of the four canonical gospels starts on a new recto page in Cambridge University Library Ii.2.11, the
Gospel of Nicodemus begins uniquely on a verso (fol. 173
v), while the opening of the
Avenging of the Saviour on fol. 193
r is not presented as a new text but as a new chapter which follows on immediately from the end of
Nicodemus. Marx concludes that both apocrypha were included in this manuscript not because the compilers regarded them as of equal status to the canonical gospels but rather ‘to supplement and extend the account of the life of Christ up to and including the destruction of Jerusalem’.
11 C. W. Marx, ‘The Gospel of Nicodemus in Old English and Middle English’, in Medieval Gospel of Nicodemus, ed. Izydorczyk, pp. 207–59, at 207–8. As we shall see in the next chapter, a similar anthologising tendency may explain the addition of Ælfric’s paraphrases of the first two historical books of the Old Testament, Joshua and Judges, to the translation of the Pentateuch in another eleventh-century manuscript, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 509.
12 See below, pp. 149–50, 198–214.As Andy Orchard has shown, the author responsible for translating
Nicodemus and
Avenging renders most verses of the Latin sources faithfully and accurately, though at times they were forced to supply material missing in the Saint-Omer manuscript, which is often defective and features unusual Latin orthography.
13 See Andy Orchard, ‘The Style of the Texts and the Translation Strategy’, in Two Old English Apocrypha, ed. Cross, pp. 105–30. Passages which repeat material from the four canonical gospels are often omitted, while an unobtrusive sense of literary style is evident in the translator’s use of doublets and frequent insertion of intensifying adverbs, such as
swiðe (‘very, greatly’) and
sona (‘suddenly’). For example, the translation of
Nicodemus XXII.2 expands substantially on the comparatively terse account of Christ’s binding of Satan in the Latin source:
Tunc Rex Gloriae, Dominus, maiestate sua conculcans mortem, conprehendens Satan Principem, tradidit Inferi potestae et adtraxit Adam ad suam claritatem.
[Then the King of Glory, the Lord, trampling down death in his majesty, grabbing hold of Prince Satan gave him the power of Hell and drew Adam to his own brightness.]
Ac se Wuldorfæsta Cyning and ure Heofenlica Hlaford þa nolde þæra deofla gemæðeles mare habban ac he þone deoflican deað feor nyðer atræd and he Satan gegrap and hyne fæste geband and hyne þær helle sealde on angeweald. Ac heo hyne þa underfeng eall swa hyre fram ure Heofonlican Hlaforde gehaten wæs.
[But then the Glorious King and our Heavenly Lord would have no more talk from the devils, but he trod down devilish death far below; and he seized Satan and bound him fast and delivered him to the power of Hell. And it received him, just as it was ordered by our Heavenly Lord.]
14 Latin and Old English texts and translations from Two Old English Apocrypha, ed. Cross, pp. 222–3, with modifications.A number of large- and small-scale expansions make the Old English version of Satan’s binding considerably more vivid than the Latin account on which it is based. For example, the insertion of the idiomatic English verb phrase þa nolde […] mare habban (‘[he] did not wish to have any more’) lends a more personal dimension to God’s actions, while Hell itself is now granted agency in receiving Satan (heo hyne þa underfeng), echoing the account of Grendel’s death in Beowulf (him hel onfeng, l. 852b). Parallel phrasing lends structure and rhythm (and he Satan gegrap and hyne fæste geband and hyne þær helle sealde), while the addition of adjectives (Heofenlica, deoflican) creates alliterative two-stress phrases reminiscent of Ælfric’s late, rhythmical style (e.g. Heofenlica Hlaford, deofla gemæðeles mare habban ac he þone deoflican deað); further sound-patterning is produced by internal rhyme (helle sealde on angeweald). Additional details not present in the Latin source, such as the statement that God hyne fæste geband (‘bound him fast’) and placed him feor nyðer (‘far below’), lend further intensity to this highly stylised vernacular account of Satan’s punishment. The final sentence of the Old English extract quoted above replaces the reference to Adam’s salvation in the Latin source with a second mention of the heavenly Lord, thus emphasising God’s supreme power over Satan: eall swa hyre fram ure Heofonlican Hlaforde gehaten wæs (‘just as it was ordered by our Heavenly Lord’). In passages such as this, we observe an Old English prose author confidently adapting a Latin source. Such relatively free handling of the source may reflect the translator’s awareness of the work’s apocryphal status, or it may simply be a product of an individual author’s personal translation style.
The Vindicta Salvatoris is translated in much the same manner, with otiose sections omitted and others expanded for the sake of clarity, as in the opening passage:
In diebus illis Tyberii caesaris tethrarcha sub Puntio Pilato traditus fuit a Iudeis, celatus a Tyberio. In diebus illis erat quidam homo nomine Tyrus, regulus Tyberii in regnum Aquitanie in ciuitatem Libiae, que dicitur Burdigala, et erat insanus in narem dextram habens cancrum faciem delaceratam usque ad oculum.
[In the days of the emperor Tiberius, tetrarch under Pontius Pilate, he was betrayed by the Jews, and it was kept secret from Tiberius. In those days there was a certain man, Tyrus by name, an underking of Tiberius in the kingdom of Aquitainia in a city of Libia which is called Burdigala, and he was ill, having a cancer on the right nostril, his face being destroyed up to the eye.]
On Tiberius dagum ðæs miclan caseres hyt gelamp bynnan lytlum fyrste æfterþam þe ure Heofenlica Hlaford ahangen wæs, hyt wæs, þæt sum æðele man wæs, þæs nama wæs Tyrus. And he wæs on Equitania rice cyning under Tyberie þam casere, and he wæs oftost wunigende on þære ceastre, þe wæs genemned Lybie. And he wæs, se ylca Tyrus, þæs ðe bec secgað, swa unhal on hys andwlitan, þæt ðæt adl, þe we hatað ‘cancer’, hym wæs on þam nebbe fram þam swyðran næsþryle oð hyt com to þam eage.
[In the days of Tiberius the great emperor, it happened within a short time after our Heavenly Lord was crucified, that there was a certain noble man, whose name was Tyrus. And he was king in the kingdom of Aquitania under the emperor Tiberius and he usually dwelt in the city called Libya. And, according to books, he, this same Tyrus, was so afflicted in his face, that the disease, which we call cancer, affected his nose from the right nostril until it reached his eye.]
15 Latin and Old English texts and translations (with modifications) from Two Old English Apocrypha, ed. Cross, pp. 248–9.The Latin text’s fulsome description of Tiberius’ rank (caesaris tethrarcha sub Puntio Pilato) is reduced to ðæs miclan caseres, while the description of Tyrus as an underking (regulus) is periphrastically expanded with the statement that he was cyning under Tyberie þam casere, and the detail that Christ’s betrayal by the Jews celatus a Tyberio (‘was kept secret from Tiberius’) is cut entirely. Some alterations of the source may be the result of misunderstanding on the part of the translator: where the Latin states that Tyrus dwelt in ciuitatem Libiae, que dicitur Burdigala (‘in a city of Libia, which is called Burdigala’), the Old English conflates the nation with the city, thereby presenting him as living on þære ceastre, þe wæs genemned Lybie (‘in the city called Libya’). Other elements of the narrative which the translator considered obscure are either expanded or altered: hence, where the Latin simply states traditus fuit a Iudeis (‘He was betrayed by the Jews’), the Old English version supplies the identity of the referent and explains the circumstances of his death and its doctrinal significance, employing the same alliterating collocation that we observed in the Nicodemus translation: ure Heofenlica Hlaford ahangen wæs (‘our Heavenly Lord was crucified’). Cumulatively these alterations result in a more streamlined and succinct narrative, making the story more accessible to readers relatively unfamiliar with Roman and early Church history and clarifying its spiritual meaning.
The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew
The mystery of the Virgin Birth inspired a series of apocryphal narratives in the early Church concerning Mary’s own birth, childhood, nativity, death and assumption into heaven. The most important of these was the Protoevangelium of James, composed in Greek in the second century. Although it was rejected by Jerome and then condemned, first by Pope Innocent I in 405 and then by the Gelasian decree (519–553), the tradition of Mary’s infancy remained current in the medieval West thanks to the circulation of a Latin translation of the Protoevangelium of James, the
Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium.
16 On the Gelasian Decree, see above, pp. 109–10 n. 66 By the eighth century, if not earlier, the feast of Mary’s nativity had entered into the English liturgy.
17 The tenth-century Old English calendar poem, The Menologium, includes Mary’s nativity among the list of feasts celebrated in the English Church (ll. 167b–69a). See further Mary Clayton, ‘Ælfric and the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary’, Anglia 104 (1986), 286–315. The common theme in these apocryphal accounts of Mary’s life is her sinlessness, which marks her out from the other virgins in the temple where she lives.
18 For a succinct summary of the tradition and its reception in early medieval England, see Mary Clayton, ed., The Apocryphal Gospels of Mary in Anglo-Saxon England, CSASE 26 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 1–5.Among the various Old English versions of this narrative are three anonymous homilies for the nativity of Mary, all of which are derived from the
Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium.
19 See Mary Clayton, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England, CSASE 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) esp. pp. 244–53; and the entry by Thomas N. Hall (‘Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew’) in Biggs, ed., Apocrypha, pp. 23–5. The earliest manuscript witness to the Old English
Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew,
Oxford Bodleian Library MS Hatton 114, contains a translation of Chs I–XII and dates from the late eleventh century.
20 The text is copied on fols 201–12; Ker §331. The date of the composition of the Old English
Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew is unknown: Donald G. Scragg has argued that the work is pre-Ælfrician, but Mary Clayton, the work’s most recent editor, places it much nearer to the date of its manuscript, in the early eleventh century.
21 Clayton, Apocryphal Gospels of Mary, p. 139; Donald G. Scragg, ‘The Corpus of Anonymous Lives and Their Manuscript Context’, in Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints’ Lives and Their Contexts, ed. Paul E. Szarmach (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996), pp. 209–30, at 214–15. See further Donald G. Scragg, ‘The Corpus of Vernacular Homilies and Prose Saints’ Lives before Ælfric’, ASE 8 (1979), 223–77, at 253–5. The Old English Pseudo-Matthew is preserved in two further manuscripts, both from the twelfth century: Cambridge Corpus Christi College 367, Part II (Ker §63), and Oxford Bodleian Library MS Bodley 343 (Ker §310). An independent translation of a section of Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium is preserved in Vercelli Homily VI (for Christmas Day). Clayton notes that the translator faithfully renders the first twelve of the thirty-five chapters of the
Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium, save for Ch. XII in which Joseph and Mary prove their purity to the bishops and high priests by undergoing a test of the water of the Lord. The translator appears to have judged this detail too obscure for the work’s intended readers, and has therefore abbreviated this chapter. While there are some minor expansions which clarify or explain features of the narrative left implicit in the Latin, other small details are omitted or downplayed, including references to sacrifices made to God.
22 As we shall see in the next chapter, the translators of the Heptateuch took a similar approach to references to sacrifices to God in the Old Testament: see p. 195.The generally close translation style of the Old English Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew is illustrated by the careful treatment of Ch. X.1, in which the sinless nature of Joseph and Mary’s relationship is revealed. The Pseudo-Matthaei Evangelium relates how the five virgins with whom she lived defended her purity to Joseph after he had returned home to find her pregnant:
Cum haec agerentur, Ioseph in fabricandis tabernaculis regionum maritimarum erat opere praeoccupatus, erat enim ligni faber. Post vero menses novem, reversus est in domum suam et invenit Mariam praegnantem. Unde totus in angustia positus contremuit et exclamavit, dicens: ‘Domine Deus, accipe spiritum meum, quoniam melius est mihi mori quam amplius vivere!’ Cui dixerunt virgines, quae cum Maria erant: ‘Quid ais, domine Ioseph? Nos scimus quoniam vir non tetigit eam. Nos sumus testes quoniam virginitas et integritas perseverat in ea. Nos custodivimus super eam. Semper in oratione nobiscum permansit, quotidie angeli Dei cum ea loquuntur, quotidie de manu Domini escam accepit. Nescimus quomodo fieri possit, ut sit peccatum aliquod in ea! Nam si suspicionem nostram tibi vis, ut pandamus, istam gravidam nemo fecit, nisi angelus Domini.
23 Latin text of Pseudo-Matthaie Evangelium cited with modifications from Constantin von Tischendorf, ed., Evangelia Apocrypha (Leipzig: Hermann Mendelsohn, 1853; 2nd edn, 1876), pp. 52–112, at 69–70.[While these things were happening, Joseph was occupied with his work, building houses in the districts by the seashore, for he was a carpenter. After nine months, he came back to his house and found Mary pregnant, as a result of which, being in the utmost distress, he trembled and cried out, saying: ‘O Lord God, receive my spirit, for I would prefer to die than to live any longer!’ The virgins who were with Mary said to him: ‘Joseph, what are you saying? We know that no man has touched her. We are witnesses that she is still a virgin and untouched. We have watched over her. She has always remained with us in prayer, the angels of God speak with her daily, she receives food from the hand of the Lord daily. We do not know how it might be that there can be any sin in her! But if you wish us to tell you what we suspect, nobody but the angel of the Lord has made her pregnant.’]
24 Translation adapted with modifications from Apocryphal Gospels, Acts, and Revelations, trans. Alexander Walker (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1870), p. 28.The translator generally follows the wording of the Latin source while adapting the grammar and syntax to produce idiomatic Old English prose, only occasionally adding clarifying details, such as the fact that Joseph was ‘a skilful worker’ (mænigtweawa wyrhta):
On þa tid þe þis gelamp wæs Iosep on þam lande, þe Carfanaum hatte, ymbe his cræft. He wæs smið and mænigtweawa wyrhta. Ða þa he þanon gecyrde to his agenum hame þa gemette he hi bearn hæbbende on hire gehrife. Ða wæs he sona swyðe forht and sorhfull and ðus cwæð: ‘Drihten, Drihten min, onfoh minum gaste; me is deað selre þonne lif.’ Ða cwædon þa fæmnan him to, þe mid hyre wæron, þæt he geare wiston þæt hyre nan wer ne onhran, ac heo wære onwelges mægðhades and unwemme: ‘And we witon þæt heo wæs dæges and nihtes on halgum gebedum wuniende and Godes encgel wið hyre spræc and heo dæghwamlice of ðæs engles handum mete þigde. Hu mæg þæt gewurðan, þæt þæt sy swa, forðan þe we witon þæt hit man ne dyde ac Godes encgel?’
[At the time when this happened Joseph was in the country which is called Capharnaum, at his trade. He was a carpenter and
a skilful worker. When he returned to his own home from there, he found her with a child in her womb. Then he was immediately very frightened and sorrowful and spoke as follows: ‘Lord, my Lord, receive my spirit; death is preferable to me than life.’ Then the virgins who were with her said to him that they knew well that no man had touched her, but that she was of perfect and unblemished virginity. ‘And we know that she persevered day and night at holy prayers and God’s angel spoke with her and she received food daily from the hands of the angel. How can that happen, that it should be so, for we know that a man did not do it but the angel of God?’]
25 Old English text and translation from Clayton, ed., Apocryphal Gospels of Mary, pp. 186–7. (Emphases added).
Further small additions lend immediacy to the Old English narrative: for instance, Joseph’s distress at hearing the news of Mary’s pregnancy is intensified through the doublet
forht and sorhfull, while his despairing prayer opens with the repeated, psalm-like invocation of
Drihten, Drihten min where the Latin has simply
Domine deus (‘O Lord God’).
26 The same construction appears several times in the Alfredian Prose Psalms (e.g. Ps. 21.1: Drihten, Drihten, min God, beseoh to me; Ps. 34.23: Drihten, Drihten, min God, dem me æfter þinre mildheortnesse; Ps. 37.8: Drihten, Drihten, þu wast nu eall hwæs ic wilnie). The first part of the virgins’ speech is related by the narrator before the text shifts into reported speech. Alliteration is used lightly to lend rhythm and emphasis (e.g.
On þa tid þe þis gelamp wæs Iosep on þam lande, þe Carfanaum hatte, ymbe his cræft;
bearn hæbbende on hire gehrife;
Ða wæs he sona swyðe forht and sorhfull;
onwelges mægðhades and unwemme). Again, it is clear that we are dealing with a confident prose stylist freely adapting a biblical – or rather apocryphal – source.
As is the case with the two other manuscripts containing Marian nativity homilies, MS Hatton 114 is a collection of mainly Ælfrician homilies, supplemented by anonymous homilies such as this one, which is headed with the rubric ‘DE NATIUITATE SANCTAE MARIAE’ (‘For the Nativity of St Mary’). As Clayton observes, Ælfric explained in a short note entitled ‘De Sancta Maria’ (‘On St Mary’) at the end of his homily for the sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost that he has not composed a homily on the nativity of Mary despite his evident familiarity with this apocryphal tradition.
27 Clayton, ed., Apocryphal Gospels of Mary, p. 139. See also Clayton, Cult of Virgin Mary, pp. 244–8, 286–94. In place of the detailed narrative of Mary’s birth, childhood and nativity found in the
Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, Ælfric restricts himself in this note to the simple facts that she was conceived (
gestryned) through a father and a mother like other people, and was born on the sixth ide of September (i.e. September 8
th), and her father was named Joachim and her mother Anna, righteous people under the Old Law, before concluding:
ac we nellað be ðam na swiððor awritan þy læs ðe we on ænigum gedwylde befeallon (‘but we do not wish to write any more about that, lest we should fall into any heresy’).
28 CH II.31, p. 271. Despite this statement, Ælfric would in fact go on to compose a homily for Mary’s nativity (Assmann 3); cf. Bruno Assmann, ed., Angelsaechsische Homilien und Heiligenleben. Bibliothek der Angelsaechsischen Prosa, 3 vols (Kassel: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1889). Ælfric’s reluctance to be drawn on this apocryphal tradition in his
Catholic Homilies was doubtless influenced by the fact that the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew had been banned at the Gelasian decree. It is to Ælfric’s
Catholic Homilies, which actively sought to weed out any such heresy (
gewyld) among English biblical writings and preaching, that we now turn.