Geoffrey of Wells (Galfridius Fontibus) was a mid-12th-century English hagiographer and a canon of Wells Cathedral, whose De Infantia Sancti Edmundi ("The infancy of Saint Edmund"), part of the burgeoning library of 12th-century legendaries concerning Saint Edmund, accounted the royal saint's childhood to have been full of adventure. He dedicated his "largely spurious account" to Ording, eighth abbot of Bury St. Edmunds, and spoke of the encouragement of another well-placed Anglo-Saxon, Prior Sihtric. The manuscript of Geoffrey's pious embroidery was among the manuscripts collected by the early 17th-century antiquary Robert Bruce Cotton, now conserved in the British Library in London.
References
- Geoffrey of Wells, Liber de infantia Sancti Eadmundi, R.M. Thomson, editor, Analecta Bollandiana 95 (1977:34-42).
- Gábor Klaniczay, (Eva Pálmai, translator), Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (Cambridge University Press) 2002:162; "The history of the legend of Saint Edmund" Archived June 2, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
- Hugh M. Thomas, The English and the Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation, and Identity (Oxford University Press) 2000:132.
- Abbots of Bury St. Edmunds
- British Library, Cotton Titus A. viii, part II, BL2393
Notes
- Another Galfridus Fontibus was Geoffrey of Fontaines-les-Blanches: see Giles Constable, "Religious communities, 1024-1215", in David Luscombe (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History (Cambridge University Press) 2004:364.
- For parallel apocryphal literature, see Infancy gospels.
Further reading
- Victoria B Jordan, Boston College, Monastic hagiography in Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman England: The cases of Edward the Confessor and St. Edmund, King and Martyr Archived 13 August 2007 at the Wayback Machine dissertation, 1995.