Una vida latina de Santa Osith poco estudiada Edición crítica y traducción al español
Keywords:
Santa Osith, hagiografía, literatura latina medieval, edición crítica, transmisión textual, legendariosAbstract
This study presents a critical edition and the first Spanish translation of the Latin Life of Saint Osith preserved in the codex London, British Library, Lansdowne 436, commonly known as the “Romsey Legendary.” This Vita sanctae Osithae constitutes an abridged version of the text transmitted in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 285 (“Ramsey Legendary”). The introductory essay examines the place of this redaction within the Latin tradition dedicated to the Anglo-Saxon virgin and martyr, as well as its relationship to other reworkings—from the textus deperditus attributed to William de Vere to the versions preserved in the Hereford and Worcester breviaries. A comparative analysis of the two principal witnesses reveals that the Romsey text considerably condenses its model through omissions, simplifications, and lexical reformulations, reflecting a deliberate process of hagiographic abbreviatio. Such procedures correspond to a coherent strategy of compilation consistent with the nature of the codex and the female monastic milieu in which it was produced. The study sheds light on how practices of abbreviation and rewriting contributed to the transmission and adaptation of hagiographic material in post-Conquest England, and how certain models of female sanctity were reinterpreted in fourteenth-century monastic legendaries. The accompanying edition and translation provide, for the first time, a philologically grounded access to this version of the Vita sanctae Osithae and broaden our understanding of Latin hagiography and its mechanisms of textual transmission in the medieval West.
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