The apocryphal Acts of the Apostles in the Latin Middle Ages: Contexts of transmission and use

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The lives of the apostles after Pentecost are described in the books of the New Testament only in part. Details of their missionary wanderings to the remote corners of the world are found in writings not included in the biblical canon, known as the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. In the early Middle Ages these originally Greek writings were translated and rewritten in Latin and circulated under the title Virtutes apostolorum. These texts became immensely popular. They were copied in numerous manuscripts, both as a comprehensive collection with a chapter for each apostle and as individual texts, echoing the needs of monastic and other religious communities that used these texts to celebrate the apostles as saints.

The First International Summer School on Christian Apocryphal Literature (Strasbourg, 2012) concentrated on the transmission of the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles in the Latin world. This volume also highlights the use of the Bible in the apocryphal Acts, the imagination of the apostles in early Christian art and poetry, and the apocryphal Acts in early medieval print. Other contributions concern the study of Christian apocryphal literature in general and in the context of the Strasbourg Summer School in particular.

The Latin transmission of the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles has for a long time been considered a coherent unity. Early modern scholars presented the printed editions of these texts as a stable collection which they pseudepigraphically contributed to one compiler or even (re‑)writer, Abdias. The “Collection of Pseudo-Abdias” was born. A manuscript survey demonstrates that neither the attribution to Abdias nor the presupposed coherence within the collection can be accounted for. In addition, the manuscripts display considerable variety as far as the contexts of both transmission and use are concerned. Once the need was felt to collect the stories about acts and martyrdoms of all twelve apostles, an ambition to which a number of prologues added to the texts themselves attest, this endeavour was realized in various ways. The Latin Acts of the apostles, under the name of, among others, Virtutes apostolorum, are combined with hagiographic texts or parts from the canonical Bible. Glosses and later additions to the texts point to liturgical use of these narratives. At the same time, liturgical texts composed to celebrate the apostles on their individual feast-days show a profound influence by the narrative traditions. In the course of the late antique and early medieval period, the importance of apostolic martyrdom increases, which is paralleled by a growing interest in the stories about these prime witnesses of Christ, both in a narrative and a liturgical presentation.