Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hermann (fl.1070)
HERMANN (fl. 1070), hagiographer, probably a native of Lorraine, was the archdeacon of Herfast [q. v.], bishop of Thetford, and helped him in his attempt to assert the jurisdiction of his see over St. Edmund's Abbey, both dictating and writing letters for him [see under Baldwin (d. 1098)]. Being with the bishop when Herfast was injured in the eye, he persuaded him to go to the abbey and seek medical help from Abbot Baldwin. He repented of his part in the bishop's quarrel, became a monk of Bury, and at Baldwin's request wrote a book ‘De Miraculis Sancti Eadmundi,’ which contains, along with the miracles, an account of Herfast's quarrel with the abbey, and ends abruptly, soon after a notice of the translation of the saint's relics in 1095. It exists in manuscript in Cotton. MS. Tib. B. 11, in the Bodleian Library in Digby MS. 39, and in part in Bodl. MS. 240 and in Paris Bibl. Nat. MS. 2621; a seventeenth-century transcript is in the library of Jesus College, Oxford. It has been printed in part by Martene in ‘Amplissima Collectio,’ vi. 822, has been made the text of valuable comments by Dr. Liebermann, who, in his ‘Ungedruckte anglonormannische Geschichtsquellen’ (Strassburg, 1879), supplies the parts omitted by Martene, and it has been printed in its entirety in ‘Memorials of St. Edmund's Abbey,’ vol. i. (Rolls Ser. 1890), edited by Mr. T. Arnold. It forms the basis of the work ‘De Miraculis S. Ædmundi,’ attributed to Abbot Samson, and printed in the same volume by Mr. Arnold.
[Liebermann's Heremanni archidiaconi Mir. S. Edmundi as above; Memorials of St. Edmund's Abbey, i. Introd. and pp. 26–92.]