Memorials of St Edmund's Abbey

This three-volume collection (1890–6) of medieval documents relating to Bury St Edmunds is valuable for ecclesiastical and civic history.

Thomas Arnold (Edited by)

9781108053310, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 15 November 2012

496 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.8 cm, 0.72 kg

Bury St Edmunds possessed one of the wealthiest abbeys in England. This three-volume collection of Latin documents relating to the abbey was edited by Thomas Arnold (1823–1900) and published between 1890 and 1896. Volume 2 contains a chronicle terminating in 1212, accounts of building works, narratives of abbatial elections in 1215, 1257 and 1302, and an early thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman metrical biography of St Edmund by Denis Pyramus, a monk of the abbey. There is also an account of the expulsion of the Franciscans from Bury by the Benedictines in 1257 and 1263. More serious were the ongoing disputes between the abbey and town that led to the Great Riot of 1327, in which the abbey was sacked, the abbot deported, and monks and civilians killed in a succession of attacks throughout the year. The settlement of 1331 is included in the appendix, and English side-notes are provided throughout.

Annales sancti Edmundi
Election Hugonis abbatis
Epistola Roberti abbatis de Thorneye
La vie seint Edmund, by Denis Piramus
Election Symonis abbatis
Processus contra fratres minores, qualiter expulsi erant de villa sancti Edmundi
Gesta sacristarum
Electio Thomae abbatis
Depraedatio abbatiae sancti Edmundi
Appendix A
Appendix B
Glossary to 'La vie seint Edmund'
Glossarial notes.

Subject Areas: British & Irish history [HBJD1]