The prologue to the Vita sancti Abbani

From two Dublin manuscripts, one of the fourteenth century and another of the fifteenth, an edition, translation, and analysis of the thirteenth-century prologue to the ‘Vita sancti Abbani’ in the Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae reveals an array of compositional techniques—prose rhythm, parallel and chiastic statement and restatement, infixed numerical values of names, and recurrence of words at points fixed by arithmetic ratios—that demonstrate eloquently the survival of a tradition of thought and composition from the beginnings of Hiberno-Latin literature beyond the Norman conquest of Ireland.