(i.) The Adgar’s collection.  Most of these were translated from William of Malmesbury ([+] 1143?) by Adgar in the 12th century ("Adgar’s Marien-Legenden,” Altfr.  Biblioth. ix.; J.A.  Herbert, Rom. xxxii. 394).

(ii.) The collection of Everard of Gateley, a monk of St. Edmund at Bury, who wrote c. 1250 three Mary Legends (Rom. xxix. 27).

(iii.) An anonymous collection of sixty Mary Legends composed c. 1250 (Brit.  Museum Old Roy. 20 B, xiv.), some of which have been published in Suchier’s Bibliotheca Normannica; in the Altf.  Bibl.  See also Mussafia, “Studien zu den mittelalterlichen Marien-legenden” in Sitzungsh. der Wien.  Akademie (t. cxiii., cxv., cxix., cxxiii., cxxix.).

[v.02 p.0033]

Another set of religious and moralizing tales is to be found in Chardri’s Set dormans and Josaphat, c. 1216 (Koch, Altfr.  Bibl., 1880; G. Paris, Poemes et legendes du moyen age).

(c) History.—­Of far greater importance, however, are the works which constitute Anglo-Norman historiography.  The first Anglo-Norman historiographer is Geoffrey Gaimar, who wrote his Estorie des Angles (between 1147 and 1151) for Dame Constance, wife of Robert Fitz-Gislebert (The Anglo-Norman Metrical Chronicle, Hardy and Martin, i. ii., London, 1888).  This history comprised a first part (now lost), which was merely a translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae, preceded by a history of the Trojan War, and a second part which carries us as far as the death of William Rufus.  For this second part he has consulted historical documents, but he stops at the year 1087, just when he has reached the period about which he might have been able to give us some first-hand information.  Similarly, Wace in his Roman de Rou et des dues de Normandie (ed.  Andresen, Heilbronn, 1877-1879, 2 vols.), written 1160-1174, stops at the battle of Tinchebray in 1107 just before the period for which he would have been so useful.  His Brut or Geste des Bretons (Le Roux de Lincy, 1836-1838, 2 vols.), written in 1155, is merely a translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth.  “Wace,” says Gaston Paris, speaking of the Roman de Rou, “traduit en les abregeant des historiens latins que nous possedons; mais ca et la il ajoute soit des contes populaires, par exemple sur Richard 1’er, sur Robert 1’er, soit des particularites qu’il savait par tradition (sur ce meme Robert le magnifique, sur l’expedition de Guillaume, &c.) et qui donnent a son oeuvre un reel interet historique.  Sa langue est excellente; son style clair, serre, simple, d’ordinaire assez monotone, vous plait par sa saveur archaique et quelquefois par une certaine grace et une certaine malice.”