Reginald of Canterbury

Who is Reginald of Canterbury?

Reginald of Canterbury was a medieval French writer and Benedictine monk who lived and wrote in England in the very early part of the 12th century. He was the author of a number of Latin poems, including an epic entitled Malchus.

Reginald, a native of France, was born roughly about 1050 in a place usually called Fagia, which may be the modern Faye-la-Vineuse in Poitou. The local lord for Fagia was named Aimericus, and it is possible that this lord served as an early patron for Reginald. At some point he formed some sort of connection with Noyers Abbey, near Tours, but its nature is unclear. By 1100, he was a monk at St Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury, England, and may have been there for quite a number of years before 1100. It is unclear why he traveled to England, although most of his poetical works were composed in England while he was at St Augustine's.

Reginald's major work was an epic poem in six books on the life of Malchus, a late antique Syrian saint whose first biographer was Jerome. Reginald's work, entitled Malchus, or Vita Sancti Malchi, exists in two versions, the first of which consists of 1706 lines and survives at Oxford University as Merton College manuscript 241. The second is expanded from the first and three times its length.