A short 12th-century Latin biography that describes the virtues, ministry, miracles, death, and early veneration of Saint Lambert in a conventional medieval hagiographical style.
Sometimes referred to as a “vita” (“life story”), this text is known in scholarly catalogues as “Vita Sancti Lamberti Ventienensis Episcopi” (Life of Saint Lambert, Bishop of Vence). It is a 12th-century Latin biography of Saint Lambert said to have been written by a either a member of the clergy in Vence or someone at the Abbey of Lérins (where Lambert spent much of his early years).
This vita offers a straightforward account of his life, presenting him as a model bishop known for his humility, charity, pastoral care, defense of the poor, firmness against local abuses, and devotion to prayer; it recounts several miracles associated with him, describes the circumstances of his death, and explains how his memory was honored in Vence after his burial, all in the simple, traditional style of medieval hagiography (a biography of a saint or holy person, usually written to inspire devotion rather than to provide strict historical detail).
The original manuscript has been dated, based on the handwriting, to the 12th century, and scholars view the text as a local biography of the bishop written in Vence during or shortly after his lifetime (he served as Bishop of Vence from 1114 to 1154). The work is anonymous, no author’s name appears in any surviving copy. It consists of seven pages of beautiful, handwritten Latin text. These original pages have been bound together with a cover (created from another old document), some blank pages and a page with information on Saint Hilary and Saint Véran.
In the standard hagiographic index BHL (Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina) it is recorded as BHL 4695. Several modern bibliographies list it under that number and title. A printed version was included by the Lérins monk Vincent (Dom) Barralis in his big compilation Chronologia sanctorum et aliorum virorum illustrium, ac abbatum sacrae insulae Lerinensis (Lyon, 1613). Barralis printed the Vita on pp. 180–183 and explicitly identified it as BHL 4695. The Bollandists (a scholarly group of Jesuits who study and publish critical editions of saints’ lives) later reprinted the Vita in Acta Sanctorum (Antwerp, 1688). This version is found in Volume VI, May on pages 458-460.
I have translated both the Chronologia Sanctorum and Acta Sanctorum versions into French and English. I found a scanned PDF of both versions online. I then used OCR (optical character recognition) to convert the scanned images into actual text. I then went through the text line by line and word by word, comparing it with the original Latin, and fixed any errors. I used ChatGPT to translate the text from Latin to English, then read it again carefully and made any necessary corrections. I also used ChatGPT to translate the Latin to French. Though the original Latin text is almost exactly the same for both versions, the translations are slightly different in wording, but not in meaning. Using the links below, you can download copies of all the various versions.
You can read a more in-depth account of this manuscript in this article: Uncovering The Life of A Beloved Saint – The 12th Century Manuscript Behind The Legacy Of Saint Lambert
Download a high-quality PDF reproduction of the original 12th century manuscript in Latin (7.6mb)
Download a high-quality PDF reproduction of the original Chronologia Sanctorum publication in Latin (3mb)
Download a high-quality PDF translation of the Chronologia Sanctorum publication in modern French (7.3mb)
Download a high-quality PDF translation of the Chronologia Sanctorum publication in English (7.3mb)
Download a high-quality PDF reproduction of the original Acta Sanctorum publication in Latin (7mb)
Download a high-quality PDF translation of the Acta Sanctorum publication in modern French (3.4mb)
Download a high-quality PDF translation of the Acta Sanctorum publication in English (3.4mb)
Download a zip file of all seven versions (21mb)
[click on any image to see sample pages of the original, English and French versions]
