This Life of St. Edmund is by far the most complete extant. It is described as "Vita et passio cum miraculis sancti Edmundi regis et martiris, excerpta de cronicis et diuersis historiis seu legendis, de eodem breuiter et sub compendio compilata." It is doubtless the "Prolixa vita" from which was compiled the "abbreviata vita" included in Abbot Curteys' Register (now at the British Museum), and printed in Archdeacon Battely's book of 1745 (pp. 25, 149). In the margins are given the authorities from which it is compiled, and amongst these are, in addition to the chronicles of Blythburgh, Ely, Hoveden, Hulme, Huntingdon, Malmesbury, Marianus, Norwich, Sarum, Waringford, and Westminster, the writers specially identified with Bury Abbey:—Abbo of Fleury, Herman the Archdeacon, Galfridus de Fontibus, Osbert of Clare, Jocelin of Brakelond (from whom are taken the incidents described in chapters viii. and xiv. of this book), and—Samson.
There are in all eighteen sections of the Life for which Samson is quoted as the authority. On eight occasions the word "Sampson" appears in the margin; "Sampson abbas," eight times; "Sampson abbas sancti Edmundi," once; "Ex libro de miraculis eius Sampson," once (the first occasion when the name appears); and "Ex libro primo miraculorum Sampson abb." once (the seventh occasion).
Before considering Samson's share in the collection of materials relative to the history of St. Edmund, a few words must be said about the earlier writers on the subject.
The first contributor to the tangle of legends and miracles connected with St. Edmund and his shrine was Abbo, of Fleury, a great monastery on the Loire above Orleans, founded in the 7th century. A native of Orleans, Abbo was sent early to the monastic school at Fleury, where he mastered five of the seven arts, viz., grammar, arithmetic, dialectic, astronomy and music. (Migne's Patrologia, vol. 139.) A deputation coming to Fleury from the monks of Ramsey Abbey, asking that a man of learning might be sent to them, Abbo was selected for the office, and he remained two years in England, when he was recalled. He died from a spear-thrust in November, 1004. Whilst in England (circa 985) he heard from Archbishop Dunstan the story of St. Edmund's death, as related to Dunstan when a youth by an old man who said he was armour-bearer to St. Edmund on the day of his death (20th November, 870). At the entreaty of the monks of Ramsey, Abbo put this story into writing, prefacing it with a dedicatory epistle to Dunstan in which he says that the work is sent to the Archbishop because every part of it, except the last miracle, is related on his authority.
Abbo being "composition master" to the student monks at Ramsey, he wrote, as Mr. Arnold says (I. xiv.), "with that freedom with which men whose information is scanty, and their imagination strong, are not sorry to enjoy." Lord Francis Hervey, in a masterly analysis of the facts and fictions of St. Edmund's life in his Notes to Robert Reyce's Breviary of Suffolk (1902), thus sums the matter with great truth: "Abbo's treatise, with its declamatory flourishes and classical tags, is for historical purposes all but worthless."
The copies extant of Abbo's Passio are numerous. (For List, see Hardy's Catalogue, vol. i, p. 526.) At least four of them (two in the Cottonian collection, one at the Bodleian, and one at Lambeth) belonged to Bury Abbey, the earliest being Tiberius B. ii., which has on fol. 1a the words "Liber feretrariorum S. Edmundi in quo continentur uita passio et miracula S. Edmundi." It is a beautiful MS. of the end of the eleventh or beginning of the twelfth century; "and the gold enrichment is sometimes splendid" (Arnold I. lxv.), though the illumination is unfinished. The other Cottonian MS. (Titus A. viii.) is of the thirteenth century, and has on fol. 65 the words "Liber monachorum S. Edmundi." (Both these books will be referred to later.)
The next writer on the subject was Herman the Archdeacon, who, at the end of the eleventh century, wrote a treatise De Miraculis Sancti Eadmundi.
Herman was Archdeacon to Bishop Arfast of Thetford, at the time when the latter first endeavoured to establish his see at Bury; but later he must have become a monk of St. Edmund, and he manifests in his narrative enthusiastic devotion to the monastery. In the prologue he explains that he compiled his work at the request of Abbot Baldwin "felicis memoriæ" (died 1097), partly from oral tradition, partly from an old and almost undecipherable manuscript "exarata calamo cujusdam difficillimo, et, ut ita dicam, adamantino." Mr. Arnold has printed the text of Herman on pp. 26-92 of his vol. I. from the Cottonian volume Tiberius B. ii. above referred to, which is composed of Abbo's Passio and Herman's Miracula.
A third writer was Galfridus de Fontibus, who wrote in the days of Abbot Ording (1146-1156) a short tract, De Infantia Sancti Eadmundi, of which only one MS. is known (in the Cambridge University Library). Further additions to the legends and miracles were made by Osbert of Clare, prior of Westminster, who flourished between 1108 and 1140, but whose writings are not now separately extant, though extracts from them appear in the manuscripts of other authors.
It would seem that working upon all these records, and doubtless others which have not descended to us, Samson, at the period of his life when he was still a subordinate officer of Bury Abbey, set about compiling a treatise of his own. His prologue indicates that he was moved to narrate the glorious miracles of the glorious king and martyr St. Edmund by the orders of his superiors and the exhortations of his fellow monks. His work seems, however, to have been mainly that of a compiler and editor, though the prologue, described by Mr. Arnold (I., liii.) as "written in a massive and manly style," was doubtless of his own composition. The work appears after Abbo's Passio in the Cottonian MS. Titus A. viii., and consists of two books, Liber I. containing sixteen chapters, and Liber II. twenty-one chapters. All but four of the chapters in the first book refer to narratives that had been told before by Herman, and Samson "has merely re-written them, adding no new facts, but greatly improving the style." The second book contains another prologue, followed by a prefatory letter; and a hand of the fourteenth or early fifteenth century has written in the Cottonian MS. "Osberti de Clara prioris Westmonasterii" in the margin of the prologue, and "Incipit epistola Osberti prioris Westmonasterii missa con. S. Edmundi de miraculis ejusdem" in the margin at the beginning of the letter.