As a young woman from a wealthy family, Eufrosine was expected to marry a nobleman. Instead, she wanted to serve God. So she cut her hair, dressed as a man, and traveled to a monastery, becoming a monk named Emerald. Adapted from a Latin source, this saint's life dates to about 1200 CE. Devout yet erotic, lyrical yet didactic, it blends hagiography with romance and epic in order to engage and inspire a broad audience. The tale invites readers to rethink preconceived notions of the Middle Ages, the relation between spiritual and secular values, and ideas about the history of sexuality, identity, and family. Only fragments of the poem have been previously translated. This edition includes the first full translation alongside the Old French original as well as a glossary and other supporting material.

Best known for his two chronicles, the Roman de Brut and the Roman de Rou, Wace, one of the great pioneers of twelfth-century French writing, is also the author of three hagiographical works: the Conception Nostre Dame and the Lives of St Margaret and St Nicholas. The Conception is the first vernacular work to focus on the life of the Virgin Mary. Emphasising Margaret's concern for women in labour, the Margaret seemingly contributed to the saint's broad popularity. The Nicholas, with its many miracles involving children, equally played a key role in popularising its protagonist's cult. The present volume brings these works together for the first time and provides the original texts, the first translations into English, notes and substantial introductions.

Hagiography and the History of Latin Christendom, 500–1500 shows the historical value of texts celebrating saints—both the most abundant medieval source material and among the most difficult to use. Hagiographical sources present many challenges: they are usually anonymous, often hard to date, full of topoi, and unstable. Moreover, they are generally not what we would consider factually accurate. The volume’s twenty-one contributions draw on a range of disciplines and employ a variety of innovative methods to address these challenges and reach new discoveries about the medieval world that extend well beyond the study of sanctity. They show the rich potential of hagiography to enhance our knowledge of that world, and some of the ways to unlock it. Contributors are Ellen Arnold, Helen Birkett, Edina Bozoky, Emma Campbell, Adrian Cornell du Houx, David Defries, Albrecht Diem, Cynthia Hahn, Samantha Kahn Herrick, J.K. Kitchen, Jamie Kreiner, Klaus Krönert, Mathew Kuefler, Katherine J. Lewis, Giovanni Paolo Maggioni, Charles Mériaux, Paul Oldfield, Sara Ritchey, Catherine Saucier, Laura Ackerman Smoller, and Ineke van ‘t Spijker. See inside the book.

Humour in Old English Literature deploys modern theories of humour to explore the style and content of surviving writing from early medieval England. The book analyses Old English riddles, wisdom literature, runic writing, the deployment of rhymes, and humour in heroic poetry, hagiography, and romance. Drawing on a fine-tuned understanding of literary technique, the book presents a revisionist view of Old English literature, partly by reclaiming often-neglected texts and partly by uncovering ironies and embarrassments within well-established works, including Beowulf. Most surprisingly, Jonathan Wilcox engages the large body of didactic literature, pinpointing humour in two anonymous homilies along with extensive use in saints’ lives. Each chapter ends by revealing a different audience that would have shared in the laughter. Wilcox suggests that the humour of Old English literature has been scantily covered in past scholarship because modern readers expect a dour and serious corpus. Humour in Old English Literature aims to break that cycle by highlighting works and moments that are as entertaining now as they were then.