Spreading the Light

The Elucidarium is a text of basic Christianity, written in about 1090 at Canterbury Cathedral in Kent, England, by a cleric known as Honorius Augustodunensis. It rapidly became very popular, being translated into many different European languages, and it was still being copied and adapted well over four hundred years later.

Aims of the project

This two-year AHRC-funded project explored the production and dissemination of the Elucidarium in medieval England through a close examination of extant manucripts of the text in medieval English and French, in order to address our key research questions:

• How was the vernacular Elucidarium produced and disseminated between the 12th and 15th centuries in England?
• What was the place of the vernacular Elucidarium in the broader context of medieval pastoral care?

In order to address these questions, we have focused on specific areas of enquiry, including details of manuscript production and transmission, patterns of textual change and adaptation, and patrons and readers of the text.