A Ramsey Witness to Aimo’s <i>Life of Abbo of Fleury</i> (BHL 3–4)

Abstract The significance of Abbo of Fleury’s time in England to the intellectual life of tenth- and eleventh-century Ramsey is widely appreciated. Less well understood is what English monks knew of Fleury’s claims of Abbo’s sanctity. The present article explores knowledge of Abbo’s cult in England through a close study of Oxford, Bodleian MS Lat. misc. c. 75, a twelfth-century witness to Aimo’s Vita et miracula s. Abbonis of which the Life’s editors were unaware. The manuscript is introduced, its textual relationship to the Vita ’s other witnesses is examined and a stemma for the Vita ’s textual transmission is proposed. Textual interpolations made at Ramsey are then analysed for the additional information which they provide about Abbo’s legacy there before a possible context for the Vita ’s transmission to Ramsey is proposed. An appendix of variants between the Ramsey witness and the Vita ’s printed edition is also provided.