Legends of Holy Women

Legends of Holy Women is a collection of approximately 10,000 lines of poetry written in Middle English by Osbern Bokenam, an English poet and friar. The work, completed around 1447, details the lives of 12 female saints: Agatha, Agnes, Anne, Cecilia, Christina, Dorothy, Elizabeth of Hungary, Faith, Katherine of Alexandria, Lucy, Margaret, and Mary Magdalene, as well as the legend of Saint Ursula and the 11,000 virgins.1

Bokenam's poem utilizes three distinct stanza forms: a 10-syllable rhymed couplet, ottava rima, and a seven-line alternately rhymed stanza. While the legends themselves are closely translated from Latin originals, the prologues are noted for their liveliness. Bokenam was influenced by Geoffrey Chaucer's Legend of Good Women and Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend. The only surviving manuscript of this work is housed in the British Library.1