JOCELYN DE

BRAKELOND (fl. 1200)  , English monk, and author of a chronicle narrating the fortunes of the monastery of Bury St Edmunds between 1173 and 1202 . He is only known to us through his own work . He was a native of Bury St Edmunds; he served his novitiate under Samson of Tottington, who was at that time master of the novices, but afterwards sub-sacrist, and, from 1182, abbot of the house . Jocelyn took the habit of religion in 1173, during the time of Abbot Hugo (1157-1180), through whose improvidence and laxity the abbey had become impoverished and the inmates dead to all respect for discipline . The fortunes of the abbey changed for the better with the election of Samson as Hugo's successor . Jocelyn, who became abbot's chaplain within four months of the election, describes the administration of Samson at consider-able length . He tells us that he was with Samson night and day for six years; the picture which he gives of his master, although coloured by enthusiastic admiration, is singularly frank and intimate . It is all the more convincing since Jocelyn is no stylist . His Latin is familiar and easy, but the reverse of classical., He thinks and writes as one whose interests are wrapped up in his house; and the unique interest of his work lies in the minuteness with which it describes the policy of a monastic administrator who was in his own day considered as a model . Jocelyn has also been credited with an extant but unprinted tract on the election of Abbot Hugo (Harleian MS . 1005, fo . 165); from internal evidence this appears to be an error .

He mentions a (non-extant) work which he wrote, before the Cronica, on the miracles of St

Robert, a boy whom the Jews of Bury St Edmunds were alleged to have murdered (1181) . See the editions of the Cronica Jocelini de Brakelonda by T . Arnold (in Memorials of St Edmund's Abbey, vol. i . Rolls series', 1890), and by J . G . Rokewood (Camden Society, 184.0) ; also Carlyle's Past and Present, book ii . A translation and notes are given in T . E . Tomlin's Monastic and Social Life in the Twelfth Century in the Chronicle of Jocelyn de Brakelond (1844) . There is also a translation of Jocelyn by Sir E . Clarke (1907) .