St Samson of Dol and the Earliest History of Brittany, Cornwall and Wales

Studies in Celtic History

by Lynette Olson (Contributor), Caroline Brett (Contributor), Constant J. Mews (Contributor)

The First Life of St Samson of Dol (Vita Prima Samsonis) is a key text for the study of early Welsh, Cornish, Breton and indeed west Frankish history. In the twentieth century it was the subject of unresolved scholarly controversy that tended to limit its usefulness. However, more recent research has firmly re-established its significance as a historical source. This volume presents the results of new, multi-disciplinary, assessment of the text and its context. What emerges from the studies collected here is a context of greater plausibility for the First Life of St Samson of Dol as an early and essentially historical text, potentially at the centre of early British Christianity and its influence on the Continent. The landscape of that Christianity is gradually emerging from the shadows and it is a landscape in which the career of St Samson, the first Insular peregrinus, is shown to be of considerable importance. Lynette Olson is an Honorary Associate of the Department of History, University of Sydney. Contributors: Caroline Brett, Karen Jankulak, Constant J. Mews, Lynette Olson, Joseph-Claude Poulin, Richard Sowerby, Ian N. Wood, Jonathan M. Wooding.

230 pages, Hardcover

Published June 16, 2017

Reviews

[Patrick Easter · Rating 5 out of 5]

An essential piece of history. The prose is structured a lot more highly than any modern genre, but this book not only gives us the life of a great man, written in his own day, but gives us a window into the lives of the people of that day.