Pepysian Meditations on the Passion of Christ

The Middle English prose ‘Pepysian Meditations on the Passion of Christ’ (PMPC) survives uniquely in Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 2125 and has not previously been published. It is one of several Middle English translations of the Passion sequence of the pseudo-Bonaventuran Latin ‘Meditationes Vitae Christi’ (MVC). This part of the MVC circulated independently and in this form is known in modern scholarship as the ‘Meditationes de Passione Christi’ (MPC). The editors argue that although the Middle English version in Pepys 2125 followed the model of the MPC, it is probable that the translation derives directly from a recension of the MPC. Although the translator handles the original with a degree of freedom, the text is not indebted to other sources. The Introduction includes an extensive description of the manuscript which is a late medieval devotional miscellany, and a detailed account of the language of the PMPC. It also addresses the textual tradition out of which the PMPC grew and the work of the translator. The edited text is followed by a commentary, glossary and bibliography.