A Legend of Holy Women

by Osbern Bokenham, Sheila Delany (Translator)

Sheila Delany's spirited translation of Osbern Bokenham's Legendys of Hooly Wummen (1443–1447) makes available in modern English the first all-female hagiography. Closely translated from elaborate, Latinate Middle English verse into fluent prose, A Legend of Holy Women contains the Augustinian friar’s version of the stories of 13 women saints from gospel, apocrypha, martyrology, and high-medieval history. As Delany writes in her comprehensive introduction, “Bokenham gives us not only an all-female hagiography―an authorial decision significant in its own right―but a gallery of powerful, articulate women who are indubitably worthy to do God’s work. Some of them are well-educated, some give sound political advice to a monarch, some preach, converting hundreds and thousands to Christianity, some walk on water or perform resurrection. Nor are they pacifists; on the contrary, they call for divinely inflicted vengeance and approve violence in their cause.” Delany argues that Geoffrey Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women provided a principle of selection and of arrangement for Bokenham’s array of saints. She suggests further that the friar’s choice of all-female hagiography, and his poetic representation of holy women, are closely linked to patronage and politics in fifteenth-century England. The translation is accompanied by full notes which, along with the introduction, make the book accessible to a wide audience. It will appeal to all readers interested in the representation of women in late-medieval culture as well as to scholars and students in medieval, renaissance, religious, and women’s studies.

Genres: Religion, History

256 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1969

Reviews

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Translator Sheila Delany puts forth the hypothesis that Bokenham may have read and perhaps even modeled the organization of his Legends of Holy Women on Geoffrey Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, and while I think occasionally her evidence is stretching the point a little, in general there are some very good reasons for the comparison. Although this text is a prose translation, in the original ms. Bokenham makes use of a variety of verse forms, including Chaucer's invention, the rhyme royal. Like Chaucer, Bokenham inserts himself into the text, embodying himself as a character at various intervals, but Bokenham gives us a little more personal information about himself, including his fears about dying before his work is done, his state of health and illness, his mood, his plans, and similar. Bokenham's work is variously dedicated (St. Katherine, for instance, dedicated to Katherine Howard and Katherine Denston) and writes about other authors, including Capgrave (Katherine's other "biographer"), Gower, Lydgate, and Chaucer. The focus throughout the individual Saints' Lives (there are 13) is on the women's constancy and faith in the face of all forms of adversity, just as is Chaucer's LOGW. In some ways, then, Bokenham's work likely can be read as a religious legendary in comparison to Chaucer's secular legendary with some profit.