The Old English Life of Machutus

The present volume contains the first reliable edition of an Old English translation of Bili’s ninth-century 'Vita Sancti Machutis'. Little is known for certain about this saint, whose name - commemorated in the French port of Saint-Malo on the English Channel — is a household word from Manitoba (in Saint Malo on the Rat River) to the Falklands (les Iles Malouines). According to one witness, Machutus was able to kindle dead cinders by the warmth of his zeal; in a comparable way, David Yerkes has breathed new life into the charred remains of the Old English text, twenty-eight folios of which survived the Ashburnham House conflagration of 1731.