Identifier: Fragmenta Manuscripta 135

Date: 1250-1299

Contents: Robert de Gretham,Miroiror Evangiles des Domnees

Language: Latin

Location: England

Robert de Gretham was a thirteenth-century English poet. Little is known about his life, but his legacy survives in the Miroir or Evangiles des Domnees in which Robert turned sermons into verse.[1] The poem offered the reader a template of best moral practices to emulate or reflect—in other words, the text was a “spiritual mirror.” [2]  Robert was commissioned to write it for the lady Aline as alternative reading material to the extremely popular genre of romances. There are seven complete manuscripts of the Anglo-Norman French text and four extant manuscripts of its English translation.[3] Look at the poetry section for more on medieval poems.

NOTES
[1] For a modern edition, see. K. M. Blumreich, The Middle English "Mirror" : An Edition based on Bodleian Library, MS Holkham misc. 40 (Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance 9, 2003).

[2] Thomas G. Duncan, “The Middle English Translator of Robert de Gretham’s Anglo-Norman Miroir,” The Medieval Translator. Traduire au Moyen Age: Proceedings of the International Conference of Göttingen (22-25 July 1996). Actes du Colloque International de Göttingen (22-25 juillet 1996), ed. by Roger Ellis, Rene Tixier, Bernd Witemeier, 211-231 (Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 1998).

[3] Elizabeth Salter, English and International: Studies in the Literature, Art and Patronage of Medieval England, ed. by Derek Albert Pearsall and Nicolette Zeeman (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 33; “Robert of Gretham, ‘Mirur’ (WLC/LM/3),” Manuscripts and Special Collections, University of Nottingham, https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/collectionsindepth/medievalliterarymanuscripts/wollatonlibrarycollection/wlclm3.aspx.