Legend of Holy Women

<p>Sheila Delany's spirited translation of Osbern Bokenham's <i>Legendys of Hooly Wummen</i> (1443-1447) makes available in modern English the first all-female hagiography. Closely translated from elaborate Latinate Middle English verse into fluent prose <i>A Legend of Holy Women</i> contains the Augustinian friar's version of the stories of 13 women saints from gospel apocrypha martyrology and high-medieval history. As Delany writes in her comprehensive introduction Bokenham gives us not only an all-female hagiography--an authorial decision significant in its own right--but a gallery of powerful articulate women who are indubitably worthy to do God's work. Some of them are well-educated some give sound political advice to a monarch some preach converting hundreds and thousands to Christianity some walk on water or perform resurrection. Nor are they pacifists; on the contrary they call for divinely inflicted vengeance and approve violence in their cause. Delany argues that Geoffrey Chaucer's <i>Legend of Good Women</i> provided a principle of selection and of arrangement for Bokenham's array of saints. She suggests further that the friar's choice of all-female hagiography and his poetic representation of holy women are closely linked to patronage and politics in fifteenth-century England. The translation is accompanied by full notes which along with the introduction make the book accessible to a wide audience. It will appeal to all readers interested in the representation of women in late-medieval culture as well as to scholars and students in medieval renaissance religious and women's studies.</p>