Salome and the Kin of Jesus

In the twelfth century, a widely circulated hypothesis about the descendants of St Anne, mother of the Virgin, included the idea that Salome, the mother of the disciples James and John, was in fact a man and St Anne’s third husband. Two scholars mounted a challenge: Maurice of Kirkham, prior of the Augustinian abbey of Kirkham in Yorkshire; and Herbert of Bosham, a former student of Peter Lombard and a companion of Thomas Becket. Both men employed scholastic methods of enquiry and knowledge of Hebrew; both decried the acceptance of a flawed hypothesis about the genealogy of the Virgin as symbolic of an uncritical acceptance of scholastic authorities with the potential to distort comprehension of the Gospels. This volume provides the first edition and translation of Maurice’s Contra Salomitas, in both its short and long versions. It also provides an edition and translation of Herbert’s letter to Henry, count of Champagne. A substantial introduction outlines the long evolution of the debate about the kin of Jesus, and situates Maurice and Herbert in the context of their twelfth-century scholastic milieu.