St Patrick's Purgatory

Containing four texts, this volume collates all the major Middle English accounts of otherworld visions seen at St Patrick's Purgatory, including one not previously printed, apart from the 'St Patrick' in the South English Legendary. It presents the first edition for over a century of Owayne Miles from the Auchinleck manuscript, National Library of Scotland, MS Advocates' 19.2.1., and the couplet version from BL Ms Cotton Caligula A ii and Yale University Library, MS 365 'The Book of Brome'. It also includes the first parallel-text edition of the two extant manuscripts of the early fifteenth-century prose Vision of William of Stranton, from BL MSS Royal 17 B xliii and Additional 34193; the latter has not previously been printed. The long version of the late twelfth-century Latin prose Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii is edited in full for the first time, from three of the earliest manuscripts: Lambeth Palace Library MS 51, BL MS Royal 13 B viii, and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, MS 50. It includes an introduction, commentary on all the texts, and a full Middle English glossary.