Saint Samson à Sydney

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