Description: This book provides an edition, with a facing translation and detailed commentary, of the three apocryphal gospels of Mary written in Old English. The gospels, which deal with Mary's birth, childhood, death and assumption, are found in manuscripts in Oxford and Cambridge, but have never been treated as a group before, and have been almost totally neglected by English scholars. An extensive introduction covers the origins and development of the apocrypha and their influence in Anglo-Saxon England.
Review Quotes: "This book is an edition, and yet, in keeping with the title and character of the series it appears in, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, it is also a great deal more...Clayton's work here quietly makes its own unique contribution to an ongoing feminist reappraisal of all the literature and culture of Anglo-Saxon England." Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies