From these haggadic sources a Syriac narrative was compiled in the sixth century, which, expanded and Christianized by the interpolation of the legend of the bloody honeycomb and the bees of paradise, began to appear as a self-contained life in Byzantine hagiology. From the Greek text, Armenian, Ethiopic, Slavic, and Latin versions were made. All of these versions are discussed by Pierre Batiffol in his edition of the Greek original to which he appended M. R. James's transcription of the Latin text from two Cambridge manuscripts.³

Although Batiffol and James conjectured that the Latin translation was a thirteenth-century product of the English school of Robert Grosseteste, the discovery of an Oxford copy of the text (MS. Rawl. G 38) that must be dated before 1200 makes that ascription impossible.⁴ This Latin version was abbreviated by the encyclopedist, Vincent of Beauvais, for inclusion in his Speculum historiale , (1253), and this in turn was translated into French by Jean de Vignay in the decade after 1317. The story was excerpted from Jean's translation and circulated as a prose novella in the fourteenth century.⁵The legend was also translated into German and Icelandic, and, unknown to Batiffol and James, into Middle English.

In 1910, H. N. MacCracken printed--from an Ellesmere manuscript now in the possession of the Huntington Library--an 884-line, fifteenth-century English version having the rime-royal stanza and a scansion like Gamelyn's.⁶ While MacCracken did not know of Batiffol's work, or of any European version other than Vincent's, he correctly posited a single Latin source for both Vincent's abbreviation and the independent English translation. Had he known of the other vernacular versions he might have had unnecessary second thoughts about doing this, inasmuch as he favours Old French etymologies for the obscure words in the English version. As I hope to show, however, the Latin text discovered by M. R. James is, indeed, the source for the English Chaucerian's attractive translation, and a comparison of the two permits us to assess his art and to clarify a few of MacCracken's readings.

That the Latin text is patently the immediate source of the English version can be seen from a comparison of the two texts of Asenath's prayer. This prayer, heartfully uttered to the God of Israel after Asenath had spent seven days in penance and mortification, is the centre of the story. Inasmuch as it is omitted completely from Vincent's version, the English translator must have relied entirely on the fuller Latin original, and his occasional slips show the effects of this:

Beyond the evident similarities between these texts, there are several striking readings in the English version which call for comment. In l. 37I-- Conseruyng kindly thi priaptis'--MacCracken derives the italicized word from Latin praeapto, but the original text reveals it to be a faulty transcription or a scribal error for preceptis. MacCracken's reading of l. 388 needs explanation: 'For the dwell, that wod lyoun, will rauesshe me with errour', is given for the original, 'Ecce enim sicut leo silvestris diabolus rapit me.' Dwell is a rare variant of diuel if not merely a confusion of minims. Note also that the Middle English homophones of the adjective wod (i.e. 'wooden' and 'mad') neatly embrace the metaphorical extension of silvestris. In verb-form this latter word also appears in the poem MacCracken prints as an epilogue to the story, but which most recently has been considered to be an independent poem.⁷ Line 900 reads, 'Thi solas of sonerainges thu dost siluestrise.' Finally, from the text of the prayer we may note the translator's free rendering of the Latin in his ll. 396-7, reaching for the aureate term conculacioun⁸ and still thinking of ab hominibus when he added abhominacioun.

Our possession of the Latin original of the translation also allows us to correct, or at least explain, other of its readings and so possibly save the translator from a charge of incompetence. In l. 129, for example, the translator gives, 'Here hed was couered with terestre', and MacCracken lets it stand. But in l. 444, the same word, theristrum ('light summer garment, veil', e.g. Sept. Gen. xxiv 65), is again 'translated' as, 'A lynen newe theustre vail with riche ornamentis.' Here MacCracken derives it from theostre, 'dark' but it should be recognized as a direct borrowing. The italicized words in l. 237, in which Putiphare says of Asenath, she 'Ys non alien but of her Inne', must be read as herein to accord with, 'non est mulier alienigena sed filia nostra virgo'. Again, as part of her penance, Asenath 'did an heue upon her bodi' (l. 235) which MacCracken footnotes as 'Hive?' But the word must be here, 'hair', translating cilicium, 'hairshirt', as it does in 1.433, 'Do of thi blak haire, & thi garnement of drede.' We may also conjecture that the word MacCracken was unable to read in l. 474-'& purchaseth' (?) ham ioye -and blisse in wordlis withoute endyng'--and which he said looked like numraceth, is probably ministreth, translating 'et ministrat eis in eterna secula.'

A more accurate assessment of what the translator omitted and added is also possible. In the passage quoted above, we see that he was unwilling or unable to handle the image of the rocks above the abyss like oak leaves floating upon water (Latin, II. 6-7). More importantly, at l. 265, MacCracken notes that material must be missing although there is no break in the manuscript. The omission corresponds to 28 printed lines of Latin prose which treats of Asenath's contrite reaction to Joseph's moralistic refusal to kiss her, his pitying prayer for her, and her consequent joy. The translator makes no extensive additions. He does, however, add alliterative tags to accommodate his curious metrical scheme, and they are often felicitous: 'Her cors was ful comely of hue, hed & nekke. Cumfortable, of cuntenance, hit becam here wel' (ll. 56-7). The flat line, 'Et audivit Putifar et dixit', becomes, 'And putifar, plesed plesantly, sayd with woise ioiyng' (II. 110-11). Now and then a psychological point is made more forcefully than in the original; as when Joseph's reaction on first seeing Asenath--'Que est mulier illa que erat in cenaculo ad fenestram? Ab eat nunc de domo ista'--is nicely expanded into, 'What womman was sche that, that in the wyndow stod of the cenacle, as I cam in? sche ys ageyns my herte, Remeveth here sone out of this hous) for marryng of my mod' (ll .215-17).

Finally, we may glance at the question of the authorship of the English version. MacCracken, at the time he discovered the poem in a Lydgate manuscript, had just completed his first survey of the Lydgate canon.⁹ Presumably because his metrical tests excluded works not written in four-beat couplets or pentameter lines arranged in Chaucerian patterns, MacCracken never later considered the poem as possibly Lydgate's. He does note, however, that the only English author of the period to recognize the existence of Asenath is John Lydgate in his poem, 'To Mary the Queene of Heaven' (BR 2791), where he compares the Virgin to 'Assenek of Egypt, of beute pereles'. Tantalizing as this is, the discovery of the manuscripts of the Latin original forces us to make the possibility of Lydgate's authorship more remote than before. One of the Latin manuscripts (C.C.C.C. 424) consistently calls the heroine Asenech and belongs to the same stemma which provided Vincent of Beauvais with the name Assenech. MS. Trinity Coll. Camb. 1440, on the other hand, refers to her as Aseneth, and this tradition apparently supplies our translator with the form Asneth. Lydgate, who used the Speculum historiale as a source for The Serpent of Division, seems also to have received from it his knowledge of Asenath of Egypt.'¹⁰

R. A. DWYER.

Gainesville, Florida

NOTES

1 Jewish Encyclopedia s.v. 'Asenath'.

2 Pierre Batiffol Studia patristica, Fasc. I La Livre de la priere d'Aseneth (Paris 1889).