Troubled Relations: Parallels Between the Vita Bonifatii prima and Bonifatian Epistolary

This article examines the relationship between the Bonifatii et Lulli Epistolae (BLE) and the Vita Bonifatii auctore Willibaldo, adopting a literary perspective in order to consider how the differing agendas of the BLE and the Vita Bonifatii complicate modern scholarship’s understanding of that relationship. In the attempt to deepen such knowledge, this paper concerns itself primarily with the life’s hagiographic use of the BLE, rather than, as has been more usual, the philological and historical dynamics of its preservation. The ultimate aim is to lay out a more rigorous and systematic framework for considering these parallels which takes into account the often radically different functions of epistolary records and hagiography.