In the twelfth century a matter was debated that still confronts readers of the New Testament, namely, just who constituted the kin of Jesus? The question held considerable significance, politically as well as theologically. It was popularly held that St Anne, mother of the Virgin, had had three husbands, and that James the Less, James the Great and John the Evangelist were all descended from her. However, this story, proposed by the Carolingian commentator Haimo of Auxerre, included the belief that Salome, the mother of the disciples James and John, was in fact a man and St Anne's third husband. This hypothesis was widely circulated both in verses and in a prose summary; falsely attributed to Jerome, by the twelfth century it had been empanelled within Peter Lombard's great commentary on the Pauline Epistles. Two scholars saw fit to mount a challenge: Maurice of Kirkham (d. after 1174), prior of the Augustinian abbey of Kirkham in Yorkshire; and Herbert of Bosham (d. after 1189), a former student of Peter Lombard and Thomas Becket's chief companion during the time of his exile in France. Both men employed not only scholastic methods of enquiry but also their own knowledge of Hebrew, and both decried the general 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, as well as his letter summarizing its argument addressed to Roger of Pont l'Eveque, archbishop of York. It also provides an edition and translation of Herbert's letter to Henry, count of Champagne, and a revised version that he included within his edition of Peter Lombard's glosses on St Paul. 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.