St Cuthman, the wheelbarrow saint – Life now online in English

I have today completed my translation of the medieval “Life” of St Cuthman.  Unlike most anglosaxon saints, Cuthman was a peasant.  He founded the church of Steyning in Sussex.  He is noted for carrying his mother about with him in a wheelbarrow!

Here is the translation, together with the text that I translated and some introductory material:

The files may also be found at Archive.org here.

As usual, these files are public domain.  Do whatever you like with them, whether personal, educational or commercial.

A 14th century manuscript, the Luttrell Psalter, preserves a depiction of a cart almost identical to St Cuthman’s wheelbarrow:

Luttrell psalter (BL add ms 42130), f.186r – medieval invalid carriage like St Cuthman’s wheelbarrow

It does not look very comfortable to me!

It has taken almost a year to complete the translation of this short piece, with a six month break for work in the middle.  I have worked on it fairly carefully, as a vehicle to add syntactical information to my Latin tool, QuickLatin.  No doubt it still contains errors, but it is the first complete English translation known to me.

Share