Writing
William of Malmesbury praises his industry in the highestworks at terms. He was at Ely about 1082, where he wrote a life of St Æthelthryth. Between 1087 and 1091 he was at Ramsey, and compiled there a life of St Ivo, or Ives. In the 1090s, he went to Canterbury, where he wrote his account of the translation of the relics of St Augustine and his companions, which had taken place in 1091. He wrote it in the octave year after that event, i.e. in 1098-99, and dedicated the work to St Anselm. A Canterbury Obituary, quoted by Wharton, gives 15 May as the day of death of a certain Goscelin, who may have been him, but does not name the year. He was still alive in 1106, when he wrote an account of the translation of St Wihtburh, of Ely
His works consist of the lives of many English saints, chiefly of those connected with Canterbury, where he spent his last years. Some of them have been printed by the Bollandists, by Jean Mabillon, and by Jacques-Paul Migne. Others are contained in manuscripts in the British Museum (London) and at Cambridge. His chief work was a life of St Augustine of Canterbury, professing to be based on older records and divided into two parts, -- an "Historia major" (Mabillon, Acta SS. O.S.B., I) and an "Historia minor" (in Wharton, Anglia Sacra, I). His method seems to have been usually to take some older writer as his basis and to reproduce his work, in his own style.
The Liber Confortatorius dedicated to Eve of Wilton, a former pupil who went to Angers to live as a recluse, is a "letter of consolation", offering spiritual advice to Eve in her new vocation and conveying Goscelin's feelings about her sudden departure.
According to William of Malmesbury, Goscelin was also a skilled musician.
Read more about this topic: Goscelin
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