Preface and Acknowledgements

Summary

The forbidden miracle cult of Simon de Montfort earl of Leicester, who died in 1265, produced a remarkable body of literature before expiring from natural causes after some fifteen years. The writings included laments, prayers and hymns, and a book of some two hundred miracles. The products of that creative surge reveal how some people tried to cope with political events that they could feel and describe but could not influence.

In 1840 James Orchard Halliwell published an edition of the miracle book and, whatever the shortcomings of the sole manuscript and however slight his contribution to our understanding of it, Halliwell's edition has been consulted with profit by generations of historians. A century and a half later Iris Pinkstone, founder of the Simon de Montfort Society, was aware that an English translation would be needed if the full potential of the miracle book were to be appreciated, especially as proficiency in Latin ought no longer to be assumed. A further consideration was that many of the names mentioned in the manuscript were unrecognizable after medieval recopying; Halliwell could not overcome that obstacle, but in the present century it can be breached with tools that he never had. Iris therefore tried to find a competent translator. I understood her aspiration at the time and might have offered to help, but I was busy with other publications and sadly, just as I found myself able to make a start, we received the news of Iris's death.

Nevertheless, my belated readiness to carry out her project coincided happily with the re-emergence of another scheme, which I had imagined some decades earlier but had not been qualified to begin at the time: a collected edition and translation of the Montfortian verses and prayers. It became obvious that such an edition would complement that of the miracle book, and the present volume therefore assembles all the known texts that Simon de Montfort's cult produced. Most of them have been printed at least once since 1800, but in scattered places and in various editorial styles. It will be a modest step forward to have them brought together, freshly edited and translated.

The Simon de Montfort Society has of course encouraged the project from the beginning. I record my thanks to all the repositories that have provided images of manuscripts in their possession.