'Teaching the Devil’s Tricks: Anchorites’ _Exempla_ in Anglo-Saxon England’

This paper consists of several sections. Firstly, it contains the first survey so far attempted of manuscripts written or circulating in Anglo-Saxon England which feature exempla traceable to the vast and heterogeneous corpus of the Vitas Patrum. Secondly, the analysis focuses on the influential, albeit elusive figure of St Macarius, showing that to the Anglo-Saxons St Macarius was a syncretistic character conflating two celebrated saints of the early Eastern Church, namely Macarius the Elder or the Great and Macarius of Alexandria or the Young. There follow a discussion of both Anglo-Latin and Old English texts which can be associated with St Macarius and the first edition with English translation of an exemplum featuring Macarius the Great in ms. London, British Library, Cotton Vespasion D.vi, ff. 67r1-68v10. Finally, it is argued that the eschatological exempla with Macarius as protagonist significantly contributed to the abudant and imaginative vision literature from Anglo-Saxon England, as is especially the case with the so-called ‘Devil’s Account of the Next World’, namely ‘one of the most popular religious tales in late Anglo-Saxon England’. The essay is part of a miscellaneous volume containing contributions by an international group of scholars published within the series ‘Mediaevalia Groningana’ of the Beligian publishers Peeters.