SOME of Britain’s top academics are launching a quest to resurrect the literary reputation of a remarkable 13th century Cumbrian monk.

Researchers from Cambridge and Liverpool have joined forces to find out more about the life of Jocelin of Furness, who they described as ‘one of the most significant, but shadowy figures in Cumbria’s medieval past’.

They are holding a conference about the mysterious figure at Furness Abbey on Friday as part of a wider project to uncover more about his life and works.

Jocelin of Furness, who spent most of his life at Furness Abbey, was a hagiographer – a writer of saints’ lives.

He is known to have produced four great works, including a life of Ireland’s patron saint, Patrick.

A spokesman for the research team said: “For historians, Jocelin’s life and writings promise a tantalising insight into what life was like during the turbulent years when Richard I and King John ruled the land.

“Cumbria was at the fringes of their Anglo-Norman kingdom, and while Jocelin belonged to an abbey rooted in Norman tradition, his writings looked beyond its borders, to the Celtic peoples of Ireland and Scotland.

“This raises questions not just about him, but about Cumbria itself – its politics, its connections and how far people saw themselves as English, Norman, Celtic, or something distinctive from all three.”

In spite of this significance, Jocelin – who was known to be alive between 1175 and 1214 – remains little-studied and poorly understood. No published edition of his Life of Patrick, arguably his most important work, even exists.

By next summer, the team of Dr Clare Downham, Dr Ingrid Sperber (both from Liverpool) and Dr Fiona Edmonds (Cambridge) hope to have produced new editions of two of Jocelin's ‘Lives’.

They also hope to explain more about the Cumbrian context in which he worked.

Friday’s conference will bring together some of the latest research on Jocelin's life and literature, the abbey, its connections, its enemies and other subjects.

Dr Edmonds, from the University of Cambridge's Department for Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, said: “We hope to provide a broad introduction to one of the most important, but under-studied figures to emerge from this part of England during the Middle Ages.

“Furness Abbey was emblematic of the region's incorporation into the Anglo-Norman realm, but it also had daughter houses in Ireland and on Man.

"The situation in which Jocelin lived was culturally complex.

"That makes it interesting to wonder why he devoted so much of his career to writing about Scottish and Irish saints.”