ABSTRACT
The South English Legendary is the name given by modern scholars to collection of saints' lives and associated material which was probably compiled in Worcester in the last quarter of the thirteenth century. It was extremely popular from the beginning, flourished in the fourteenth century, and continued to copy throughout the medieval period. It is anonymous, and its history illustrates graphically the general truth that medieval English texts ceased to the property of their author, becoming a common heritage adaptable to the purposes of any literate person. The earliest manuscripts contained about seventy lives, but this count had doubled by the end of the fifteenth century. The author acknowledges no sources for his eclectic account, and modern scholarship has discovered none; but there are some parallels with the Secretum Secretorum, and compare Ælfric's De Temporibus Anni. A southern origin indicated by the spelling of the reflex of old English.
