A new revelation. The Middle Welsh Erythraean Sibyl

Abstract

abstract:This article presents an edition of a hitherto overlooked Middle Welsh text, a prose translation of a popular medieval apocryphon, the Erythraean Sibyl. This apocryphal prophecy, first translated from a Greek acrostic poem into a Latin one by Augustine (ca. 400), presents a brief overview of the cataclysmic events that are supposed to occur leading up to the Final Judgement. The Welsh translation can be found interpolated into several copies of another prose apocryphon, Ystoria Adda (Legend of the holy rood). In this text, the prophecy is placed in the mouth of Sibylla, Queen of Sheba, who utters it while she visits King Solomon after encountering the wood of the (future) cross. In this article, I present an edition and a translation of the text and compare the Welsh text to a possible Latin source. I argue that the text represents a crucial element in a network of Welsh religious prose texts which present prophecy in royal presences and that its manuscript milieux give evidence for a network of apocrypha which seem to have travelled together in Welsh manuscripts, both in Latin and in the vernacular.