Taurin (Saint, of Évreux, d. c. 410) [Miracles of St Taurin of Evreux], manuscript in Latin, on vellum, bifolium, 32 lines, in Carolingian miniscule, 4 one-line initials in red, trimmed at tail slightly affecting last lines of text, still legible, tears in left hand side of text, browned, 180 x 143mm., [France], [c. 1150-1200].

⁂ This bifolium represents a considerable portion of the Acta Sanctorum text, corresponding to: (a) p. 641 col. b, §10, line -9 to 642a, §11, line -1; (b) p. 642a, §12, line 3 to 642a, §13, line 4; (c) p. 642a, §13, line 8 to 642b, §14, line -14; (d) p. 642b, §14, line -11 to 643a, §15, line 8.

St Taurin (or Taurinus), who reputedly died in c. 410, was the first bishop of Evreux in Normandy. His Life, by Ps-Deodatus, was edited by Pierre Van den Bossche in the Bollandists' Acta Sanctorum, Mensis Augusti, II (Antwerp, 1735), pp. 639-43 (followed by his Miracles and two Translations, pp. 643-56). His cult was taken up, as that of a combatant for Christianity, by the dukes of Normandy, especially in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. Duke Richard I (d. 996) founded the abbey of St-Taurin at Évreux. It seems likely that the Life was composed in the 1020s or 1030s; Ps-Deodatus alludes to his own authorship in e.g. chapter II, §13 ('Ego autem deodatus filiolus eius ...'; present here). A secondary translation of Taurin's remains took place in 1158, and it is possible that the present MS was written in the aftermath of that. See further S. Herrick, 'Heirs to the Apostles: Saintly Power and Ducal Authority in the Hagiography of Early Normandy', in The Experience of Power in Medieval Europe, 950-1350, ed. R.F. Berkhofer et al. (Aldershot etc., 2005), pp. 11-24, and the same author's Imagining the Sacred Past: Hagiography and Power in Early Normandy (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 2007), esp. ch. 3, 'Imagining the Past of the Évrecin: The Vita Taurini' (pp. 51-73). In the latter, Herrick has listed the 23 MSS known to her: most are of the twelfth century, especially late twelfth century, and all are in libraries in France, Italy and Belgium (p. 212(-13), n. 1).