Identifier: Fragmenta Manuscripta 178

Date: 1450-1499

Contents: John Lydgate, Life of our Lady

Language: Middle English

Location: England

John Lydgate (c. 1370-1450) was a Benedictine monk and poet.[1] The Fragmenta Manuscripta collection contains a manuscript leaf with part of his work Life of our Lady written around 1420-1422. The poem contains nearly 6,000 lines of Middle English and is separated into six books. As the title suggests, this is a poem about the Virgin Mary. The work could also be classified as a hagiography, or a saint’s life, but defies such categorization because Lydgate breaks away from the narrative of the Virgin’s life to add personal reflections regarding the tasks of writing such a poem, prayers, and praise for the Virgin. The poem is also interesting as a story about the Virgin since it concludes before the Passion of Christ and the Assumption of Mary, leading some to speculate that the poem was unfinished. The poem survives in 50 manuscripts that range in date from the early fifteenth century to the seventeenth century.[2] For more on religious poetry see Poetry. 

NOTES
[1] Douglas Gray, “Lydgate, John (c. 1370-1449/50?), ODNB, 2004.

[2] Mary Wellesley, “John Lydgate’s Life of Our Lady: Form and Transmission,” (PhD dissertation, University College, London, 2018), 11-21 , see 25-26, 68, 260 for discussion of Fragmenta Manuscripta f.178; Phillipa Hardman, “Lydgate’s ‘Life of Our Lady’ : A Text in Transition,” Medium Aevum 65, no. 2 (1996): 248-268.