Quid enim «tabula» cum «Historia Apollonii»?: Abridging and translating a lay novel in late Old English Christian prose

The Old English translation of the secular Latin novel Historia Apollonii in CCCC 201 shows some Christian-oriented interpretative interventions. In chapters 11 to 12, the prince of Tyre runs into a sea storm that leads him to shipwreck. In the Latin text in CCCC 318, which is outlined as its likely source, one reads of the destruction of Apollonius’s boat and how he is saved ‘by means of a plank’ (tabulae beneficio). In the Old English rendering, the detail of the tabula is omitted: the shipwrecked prince reaches the shore by swimming. The abridgments and omissions in this episode are thus the result of the eschatological reflection of two monks who - in different times and distinct scriptoria – came up with the decisions to amend the passage. They based their interpretation on the exegesis of the Fathers to avoid either anachronisms or faulty doctrinal references to Christ and the Church.