The Cult of Saints in Wales: medieval Welsh-language sources and their transmission

这个项目涉及中世纪的威尔士语文学，致力于对圣人的崇拜。圣人是为信徒提供天地之间直接联系的圣人，他们是宗教改革前欧洲和其他地区基督教社会文化的核心，对圣徒邪教的起源、性质和发展的研究在国际上蓬勃发展。然而，威尔士语的来源充其量也只是部分为人所知：一些文本从未被编辑过，另一些文本在无法访问的出版物中萎靡不振，许多文本只有讲威尔士语的人才能获得。通过制作一个免费的在线数字资源，以及组成语料库的大约100篇文本的版本和英语翻译，我们的目标是描绘一个重要的传统，并将其广泛用于比较研究。威尔士传统是一个特别有趣的传统。任何到过这个国家的游客都知道，这是一片“圣地”--帕达恩、德维、伊尔图德和其他人挤在地图上，这与欧洲大多数地区完全不同。威尔士本土圣徒不计其数，他们的故事往往丰富多彩，引人入胜：博诺，擅长替换被砍下的人头；科伦，他在冥界之王的城堡里举行会谈；辛哈法尔，他因杀害著名的巨人本利·高尔而闻名，并因帮助缓解风湿病而受到称赞。此外，与其他地方一样，国际圣徒被接受，有时还被赋予当地的环境：例如，根据一位15世纪诗人的说法，安提阿的玛格丽特在蒙莫斯郡殉难。这样的故事让我们深入了解那些写、读或听它们的人的品味、信仰、担忧和恐惧。它们还赋予了一幅详细的中世纪风景，因为圣徒的事迹往往与特定的教堂、景观特征和地名有关，其中许多仍然可以被识别。威尔士语材料的主体由三种主要体裁组成，其中两种从国际角度来看是非常不寻常的。这首写给圣人的大约60首诗显然是对根深蒂固的威尔士赞美诗歌制度中的邪教现象的独特回应。同样，圣人血统的收藏--通常按地区排列的名单，给出家庭关系和偶尔的进一步联系--在西欧只有在爱尔兰是平行的：它们的发展必须再次与威尔士和爱尔兰先前存在的世俗家谱收藏传统联系起来。第三种文本类型更加国际化：圣人的散文生活，其中约34种保存在威尔士，许多，如果不是所有的话，都是从拉丁文原著翻译或改编的，尽管在相当多的情况下，原著要么不存在，要么没有被识别。这是一个详细研究威尔士传统如何吸收来自其他地方的众所周知的体裁，甚至是个别文本的机会。因此，这个项目的目标是首先呈现所有这些文本的版本，带有广泛的双语注释和完整的英语翻译(在诗歌的情况下，也翻译成现代威尔士语)。每个文本的导言将讨论它的日期、作者、手稿背景(S)，以及它与威尔士和其他地方的其他文本和传统的关系。将有许多手稿的数字图像和更重要的准则的单独讨论。更大的目的是提高人们对威尔士国内外这些威尔士来源的兴趣和重要性的认识。该网站将主办数字版，还将保存一系列相关材料(如中世纪和现代的圣徒图像，以及显示奉献和地名图案的地图)，旨在吸引广泛的受众。这项工作将通过会议计划、全国开放日和威尔士国家图书馆的展览进一步宣传。

This project is concerned with medieval Welsh-language literature devoted to the veneration of saints. Saints, holy men and women who offered believers a direct link between heaven and earth, were central to the culture of Christian societies in pre-Reformation Europe and beyond, and study of the origins, nature and development of saints' cults is flourishing internationally. The Welsh sources, however, are at best partially known: some texts have never been edited, others languish in inaccessible publications, and many are available only to Welsh-speakers. By producing a freely available online digital resource, with editions and English translations of the 100 or so texts which make up the corpus, we aim to delineate a significant tradition, and to make it widely available for comparative study.The Welsh tradition is a particularly interesting one. Any visitor to the country knows that it is a 'land of saints' - Padarn, Dewi, Illtud and the rest crowd onto the map in a way quite unlike most parts of Europe. Native Welsh saints are numerous and their stories often colourful and compelling: Beuno, skilled in replacing severed heads; Collen, who holds talks in the castle of the King of the Underworld; Cynhafal, renowned for the slaying of the famous giant Benlli Gawr and praised for his help in soothing rheumatism. Moreover, as elsewhere, international saints are accepted and sometimes given a local setting: Margaret of Antioch suffered martyrdom in Monmouthshire according to one fifteenth-century poet, for instance. Such tales give an insight into the tastes, beliefs, concerns and fears of those who wrote and read or heard them. They also bring to life a detailed medieval landscape because the deeds of the saints tend to be tied to particular churches, landscape features and place-names, many of which can still be recognised.The body of Welsh-language material consists of three main genres, two of which are highly unusual from an international perspective. The 60 or so poems addressed to saints are apparently a unique response to the phenomenon of cults from within the strongly rooted Welsh institution of praise poetry. Similarly the collections of saints' pedigrees - lists, usually regionally arranged, giving family relationships and occasional further associations - are paralleled in western Europe only in Ireland: again their development must be linked to a pre-existing tradition of secular genealogical collections in both Wales and Ireland. The third text-type is much more international: prose lives of saints, some 34 of which survive in Welsh, many, if not all of them translated or adapted from Latin originals, though in a good number of cases the originals either do not survive, or have not been identified. Here is an opportunity to study in detail how the Welsh tradition assimilated a genre, and indeed individual texts, well-known from elsewhere.This project, then, aims in the first place to present editions of all of these texts, with extensive bilingual notes and full translations into English (and also, in the case of the verse, into modern Welsh). The introduction to each text will discuss its date, authorship, manuscript context(s), and its relationship to other texts and traditions both in Wales and elsewhere. There will be digital images of many of the manuscripts and separate discussions of the more important codices.The greater aim is to raise awareness of the interest and importance of these Welsh sources both inside and outside Wales. The website, which will host the digital edition, will also hold a range of related material (such as medieval and modern images of the saints and maps that show dedications and place-name patterns) designed to be of interest to a wide range of audiences. The work will be further advertised by a programme of conferences, open days around the country and an exhibition at the National Library of Wales.