Dans le cadre du 8e colloque australien d'études celtiques organisé par l'université de Sydney du 11 au 14 juin prochain, saint Samson et son dossier littéraire médiéval, en particulier sa vita ancienne, feront l'objet d'une série d'interventions, dont nous donnons ci-après la liste et les résumés (en anglais) d'après le programme téléchargeable en ligne ici, qui nous a été aimablement signalé par le Professeur Joseph-Claude Poulin (Université de Montréal).
OVER
THE SOUTHERN SEA ... S. SAMSON À SYDNEY
St
Samson of Dol and St Paternus of Avranches
CAROLINE
BRETT (Girton College, Cambridge)
The see of Avranches is a
close ecclesiastical neighbour to Dol. St Paternus, bishop of Avranches, attended the Council of Paris of
556 x 573, as did St Samson of Dol. It seems clear that the First Life of St
Samson borrows from the Life of St Paternus by Venantius Fortunatus, written
perhaps a century earlier; and, in the
920s, Prior Radbod of Dol sent relics of St Paternus as a gift to King
Aethelstan of England. This paper will investigate whether the links between
Dol and Avranches can be fleshed out with any more evidence: whether the
textual transmission of the hagiography of Venantius Fortunatus can shed any
light on the use of his work in Brittany, and how the First Life of St Samson
stands within the Merovingian and Carolingian traditions of hagiography and
hagiographical collection, especially those of the north coast of France where
the cults of some Breton saints became established. Finally, it must be asked
how the structural similarity of the First Life of St Samson to the Life of St
Paternus fits with the supposedly largely insular origin of the former text.
The Cult of St Samson in Wales
KAREN JANKULAK (University of
Wales, Lampeter)
The evidence that Samson’s
hagiographer collected substantial traditions of the saint in Wales contrasts
with the limited evidence for the cult of Samson as a saint in Britain. Samson
is not the only saint with a cult in Britain and Brittany to evince this
pattern, though the case of Samson is made significant on account of the
substantial historical evidence of his travels. This paper will examine in
detail the dedications and other evidence for the cult of St Samson in Wales in
particular, noting their various causes of potential invention, survival and
non-survival.
The Authority for Celtic
Liturgy: from the Vita Samsonis to the Ratio de cursus
CONSTANT J. MEWS (Monash University)
The Vita Samsonis attaches
great value to Samson’s observance of liturgical ritual as a way of sharing in
apostolic tradition. While we know little about Celtic liturgical tradition,
whether in early Britain or Ireland, the account in the Vita of how Samson took
a cart laden with books and liturgical vessels from Ireland to Cornwall and
then to Brittany provides valuable insight about its importance in the sixth
century. This study explores what we know about this liturgy not just through
the Vita Samsonis but through the writings of Columbanus and of a treatise
about the apostolic authority of both Gallican and Irish liturgies from the mid
eighth century, edited under the title Ratio de cursus qui fuerunt eius
auctores, edited within Initia Consuetudinis Benedictinae. Consuetudines
saeculi octavi et noni, ed. K. Hallinger (Siegburg 1963), pp. 83–91. It argues
that the Vita Samsonis and the Ratio de cursus share a common intellectual
culture that looked back to the example of Cassian, the monks of Lerins and the
desert fathers. The Ratio de cursus may be written in the mid eighth century,
in response to the implementation of a Roman liturgy, definitely later than the
Vita Samsonis. Both texts are concerned to validate the authority of Celtic
liturgical tradition, as practiced both in Brittany and in Irish communities on
the continent. Both texts offer a sense of spiritual lineage, in the face of
contested claims for spiritual authority.
‘Getting Somewhere’ with the
First Life of St Samson of Dol
LYNETTE OLSON (The University
of Sydney)
We have come a ways in the
study of this text — and the study of history — since its first editor Robert
Fawtier deplored its lack of ‘faits proprement historiques’ a century ago. In
particular, what it can tell us about Dol as a cultural centre from the contacts
of the author who wrote there is of great historical value. Yet problems which
exercised Fawtier and his contemporaries Abbé Duine, Joseph Loth and F. C.
Burkitt persist and it was the desire to see if we could get
somewhere toward solving these and grasping the considerable opportunities that
the First Life of St Samson of Dol provides that led me to convene the
colloquium. In doing so, however, we do not want to arrive at a fantasy land
based on conjecture rather than on evidence. My paper will provide something of
a survey of what to tackle and what to avoid. It will include a critique of the
recent article by Richard Sowerby in Francia,
which really gets to grips with the structure of the work, but in discussing
the emphasis on Samson’s episcopal orders therein does not allow sufficiently
for the motives of the intrusive see of Dol and the wider anomaly of Samson’s
position prior to his arrival there: what was he bishop of ? Here my
alternative model of British and Irish colonial churches presented at a previous
Australian Conference of Celtic Studies will be referred to. Finally, I will
not be able to refrain from clarifying a few details of the Cornish content of
the Life.
La
Circulation de l’information sur s. Samson de Dol et la question de la datation
de sa Vie ancienne
JOSEPH-CLAUDE
POULIN (Université de Montréal)
La Vie
ancienne de s. Samson de Dol contient de nombreuses indications sur la
circulation des informations relatives au saint. Sont-elles toutes crédibles ?
Sont-elles conciliables ? Faut-il y voir l’action d’un hagiographe unique, ou
de deux auteurs successifs ? Deux approches seront utilisées pour répondre à
ces questions. D’une part, comment s’articulent dans la durée les apports des
principaux acteurs impliqués dans la transmission des traditions sur s. Samson
? Parmi ces acteurs, il faut compter — au moins à titre d’hypothèse — les deux hagiographes
qui auraient contribué, à tour de rôle, à mettre en forme la Vie ancienne telle
que nous la connaissons. D’autre part, comment chacun de ces écrivains a-t-il
agencé les traditions — orales et écrites — qui lui sont parvenues, afin de réaliser
son projet hagiographique ? Le croisement de ces deux approches permettra un réexamen
de la question de la datation de l’œuvre : à quoi peuvent correspondre le ou les moments de son
élaboration ? Dans quel contexte et à quelle époque ? La rencontre de Sydney
permettra de « mettre à l’épreuve ce que l’on croyait déjà savoir » (Ruedi
IMBACH) à propos de la Vie ancienne de s. Samson.
The Representation of Early
British Monasticism and Peregrinatio in Vita Prima S. Samsonis
JONATHAN WOODING (University
of Wales, Lampeter)
Recent research on early
British monastic culture has tended to emphasise the links of the monastic
culture represented in the writings of Gildas and Rhygyfarch with that of the Vita
Prima S. Samsonis. Gildas’s correspondence with Finnian (Fragmenta)
explores a tension between ‘secular’ and eremitical monasticism, emphasising
the primary importance of humility, service and obedience over personal desire;
the Vita S. Samsonis, as Richard Sharpe has observed, ‘could be seen as
illustrating the trend advocated by Gildas’. Samson’s progressive retreats and
subsequent exile to Brittany are moreover probably our earliest examples of
insular peregrination and arguably fundamental to our understanding of this
leitmotiv of early insular monasticism. The more recent approaches to the
narratives of St Samson emphasise the historicity of the earliest sources and
their monastic theology. Such approaches stand in contrast to the studies of
the early to mid-twentieth century, which took a less contextual approach to
the documentary sources, reading them often in the light of determinist models
and the wider — often anachronistic — evidence of cult. This paper will survey
this changing historiography as well as examining the specifically monastic
ideas and causes that are central to understanding the narrative of the Vita
Prima.
Ce programme s'avère fort alléchant et nous attendrons avec impatience la publication des actes de ce colloque, en regrettant vivement qu'aucun chercheur européen continental — nous pensons en particulier à ceux qui oeuvrent au sein du CIRDoMoC — ne figure au nombre des intervenants.
André-Yves Bourgès
