Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T06:29:13.581Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Relic-cults as an instrument of royal policy c. 900–c. 1050

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

D. W. Rollason
D. W. Rollason
Affiliation:
The University of Durham
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

A considerable body of evidence shows that the kings of later Anglo-Saxon England concerned themselves very seriously with the cult of relics. No doubt this involvement arose in part from their piety; but as I hope to show there are grounds for thinking that it also derived from the importance of relics and relic-cults as instruments of royal policy, expressing and reinforcing the kings' power and position. I shall consider in turn three aspects of royal activity with regard to relics: firstly the collection and donation of relics by the kings in order to increase their prestige and to symbolize their political status; secondly the use of relics in the processes of government; and thirdly royal patronage of particular relic-cults as an expedient to political influence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 15 , December 1986 , pp. 91 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 This paper was first read to the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists' conference held in Cambridge in 1985. I am grateful to the society for the opportunity of presenting my work and of benefiting from the ensuing criticisms and suggestions. My chief debts have been to Förster, Max, Zur Geschichte des Reliquienkultus in Altengland (Munich, 1943)Google Scholar; Fichtenau, Heinrich, ‘Zum Reliquienwesen in früheren Mittelalter’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Osterreichische Geschichtsforschung 60 (1952), 60–89Google Scholar; and Thomas, Islwyn Geoffrey, ‘The Cult of Saints' Relics in Medieval England’ (unpubl. Ph.D. dissertation, London Univ., 1974).Google Scholar To the last of these I owe a continuing debt for permission to use his immensely valuable thesis. I should also like to thank George Garnett and Dr Alan Thacker for their helpful comments on the draft of this article.

2 On Athelstan, see Robinson, Joseph Armitage, The Times of Saint Dunstan (Oxford, 1923), pp. 71–80Google Scholar; Brooke, Christopher N. L., The Saxon and Norman Kings (London, 1967), pp. 120–4Google Scholar; and Keynes, Simon, ‘King Athelstan's Books’, Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies presented to Peter Clemoes on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Lapidge, Michael and Gneuss, Helmut (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 143–201, at 143–4.Google Scholar

3 Asser's Life of King Alfred, ed. Stevenson, W. H. (Oxford, 1904), p. 90Google Scholar, and Select English Historical Documents of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries, ed. Harmer, Florence Elizabeth (Cambridge, 1914), p. 35Google Scholar. See also Harbert, Bruce, ‘King Alfred's “æstel”’, ASE 3 (1974), 103–10.Google Scholar

4 Liber Vitae: Register and Martyrology of New Minster and Hyde Abbey Winchester, ed. Birch, Walter de Gray, Hampshire Record Society 5 (London and Winchester, 1892), 288Google Scholar, and below, pp. 98–9.

5 Förster, , Reliquienkultus, pp. 63–5.Google Scholar

6 Geary, Patrick J., Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton, 1978), pp. 59–63.Google Scholar

7 The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. Stubbs, William, Rolls Ser. (London, 1879–1880) II, 56Google Scholar, and Willelmi Malmesbiriensis Monachi, De Gestis Pontificum Anglorum, Libri Quinque, ed. Hamilton, N. E. S. A., RS (London, 1870), p. 419.Google Scholar

8 Förster, , Reliquienkultus, pp. 65–7Google Scholar, and, for discussion, pp. 35–40. See also Thomas, ‘Cult of Saints' Relics’, pp. 94–103, where all the surviving Exeter relic-lists are discussed.

9 Förster, , Reliquienkultus, pp.; 57–9Google Scholar, and Rose-Troup, Frances, ‘The Ancient Monastery of St Mary and St Peter at Exeter (680–1050)’, Trans, of the Devonshire Assoc. for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art 63 (1931), 179–220, at 213–15.Google Scholar

10 Liber Vitae, ed. Birch, p. 162, and Förster, Reliquienkultus, p. 11.

11 Willelmi Malmesbiriensis Monachi, De Gestis Kegum Anglorum, Libri Quinque, ed. Stubbs, William, RS (1887–1889) 1, 149–51.Google Scholar On this passage see Loomis, Laura Hibbard, ‘The Holy Relics of Charlemagne and King Athelstan: the Lances of Longinus and St Mauricius’, Speculum 25 (1950), 437–56, and Michael Lapidge, ‘Some Latin Poems as Evidence for the Reign of Athelstan’, ASE 9 (1981), 61–98, at 62–71.Google Scholar Although Lapidge has convincingly disproved the theory that William based his account on a now lost tenth-century poem, Loomis's other arguments for the veracity of that account remain strong and it would be rash to reject it as merely a twelfth-century invention. See also Wood, Michael, ‘The Making of King Athelstan's Empire’, Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies Presented to J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, ed. Wormald, Patrick with Bullough, Donald and Collins, Roger (Oxford, 1983), pp. 250–72, at 265–6Google Scholar, and Keynes, ‘Athelstan's Books’, pp. 144–5, n. 15.

12 Frolow, A., La relique de la Vraie Croix, Archives d'Orient Chrétien 7 (Paris, 1961), 86Google Scholar, and Widukindi Kerum Gestarum Saxonicarum Libri Tres, ed. Waitz, G., Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum in Usum Scholarum ex Monumentis Germaniae Historicis Recusi, 3rd ed. (Hanover, 1882), p. 26.Google Scholar

13 Förster, , Reliquienkultus, p. 60Google Scholar, and Stenton, F. M., Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1971). PP. 343–7.Google Scholar

14 De Gestis Pontificum, ed. Hamilton, pp. 399–400, on which see Robinson, , Times of Dunstan, pp. 73–5Google Scholar, and Lot, Ferdinand, ‘Date de l'exode des corps saints hors de Bretagne’, Annales de Bretagne 15 (1899–1900), 60–76Google Scholar, esp. 64.

15 ibid. Lot's belief that the relics were never actually sent (p. 64, n. 2) seems to have been groundless.

16 Stenton, , Anglo-Saxon England, p. 348.Google Scholar

17 Förster, , Reliquienkultus, p. 61Google Scholar; Robinson, , Times of Dunstan, pp. 73–4Google Scholar; Liebermann, Felix, Die Heiligen Englands (Hanover, 1889), pp. 19–20Google Scholar; and De Gestis Pontificum, ed. Hamilton, pp. 186 and 398–400.

18 ibid. p. 400: ‘Et modo reliquias, quas omni terrena substantia vobis scimus esse cariores, transmitto vobis.’

19 Thacker, A. T., ‘Chester and Gloucester: Early Ecclesiastical Organization in Two Mercian Burhs’, NH 18 (1982), 199–211, at 203–4 and 209–11.Google Scholar

20 De Gestis Pontificum, ed. Hamilton, p. 198. Although in De Gestis Regum, ed. Stubbs 1, 56 and 60, William regarded the translations of these northern relics to Glastonbury as having occurred ‘tempore Danicae vastationis’, which would seem to exclude Edmund's reign (ibid. pp. 157–60), he was there writing in general and rather vague terms, so the De Gestis Pontificum version is probably to be preferred. The story in the De Antiquitate Glastonie Ecclesie of how an abbot called Tyccea brought the relics to Glastonbury in 754 is anachronistic and certainly a later interpolation into the text; see Scott, John, The Early History of Glastonbury. An Edition, Translation and Study of William of Malmesbury's De Antiquitate Glastonie Ecclesie (Woodbridge, 1981), pp. 58Google Scholar and 194 and Thomas, ‘Cult of Saints' Relics’, pp. 172–3.

21 Brooks, Nicholas, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury: Christ Church from 597 to 1066 (Leicester, 1984), pp. 227–8.Google Scholar

22 Thomas, ‘Cult of Saints' Relics’, pp. 171–2.

23 Rollason, D. W., ‘The Shrines of Saints in Later Anglo-Saxon England: Distribution and Significance’, The Anglo-Saxon Church: Papers on History, Architecture and Archaeology in Honour of Dr H. M. Taylor, ed. Morris, Richard, Council for British Archaeology Research Report 60 (London, 1986), 32–43Google Scholar, and Fichtenau, ‘Reliquienwesen’, pp. 88–9.

24 Important studies include: Fichtenau, ‘Reliquienwesen’; Töpfer, B., ‘Reliquienkult and Pilgerbewegung zur Zeit der Klosterreform im Burgundisch-Aquitanischen Gebiet’, Vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit. Zum 6;. Geburtstag Heinrich Sproemberg, ed. Kretzschmar, H. (Berlin, 1956), pp. 420–39Google Scholar; Herrmann-Mascard, Nicole, Les reliques des saints. Formation coutumière d' un droit (Paris, 1975)Google Scholar; and Geary, Furta Sacra.

25 See the thought-provoking remarks of Brown, Peter, ‘Society and the Supernatural: a Medieval Change’, Daedalus 104 no. 2 (1975), 133–51Google Scholar, esp. 140 (repr. with additions in Brown, Peter, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (London and New York, 1982), pp. 302–32Google Scholar, esp. 316–18).

26 Töpfer, B., Volk und Kirche zur Zeit der beginnenden Gottesfriedensbewegung im Frankreich (Berlin, 1957)Google Scholar

27 Fichtenau, ‘Reliquienwesen’, p. 70.

28 Förster, , Reliquienkultus, pp. 15–23.Google Scholar

29 Liebermann, Felix, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (Halle, 1898–1916) 1, 190 (III Edmund 1).Google Scholar

30 ibid. 1, 396 (Swerian 1).

31 ibid. 1, 228 (III Æthelred 2.1 and 3.1).

32 Asser's Life of King Alfred, ed. Stevenson, p. 37, on which see Keynes, Simon and Lapidge, Michael, Alfred the Great (Harmondsworth, 1983), pp. 245–6Google Scholar, n. 90. For the coronation, see Robinson, , Times of Dunstan, pp. 72–3Google Scholar, and Liebermann, , Gesetze 1, 636Google Scholar (Leges Anglorum s.XIII in Londinio collecta 11.1A9); the latter must of course be used with great caution.

33 Stenton, Frank et al. , The Bayeux Tapestry: a Comprehensive Survey (London, 1957), pl. 29 and p. 167.Google Scholar

34 Liebermann, , Gesetze 1, 401Google Scholar (Iudicia Dei 1.2, 1).

35 ibid. 412 (Iudicia Dei VI. 1).

36 For Bodmin, see Förster, Max, ‘Die Freilassungsurkunden des Bodmin-Evangeliars’, A Grammatical Miscellany Offered to Otto Jespersen on his Seventieth Birthday (Copenhagen, 1930), pp. 77–99Google Scholar; for Athelstan, see Robinson, , Times of Dunstan, pp. 72–3Google Scholar; Harmer, , Select Documents, pp. 32–3 and 116Google Scholar; and Keynes, ‘King Athelstan's Books’, pp. 185–9.

37 Förster, , Reliquienkultus, pp. 12–14.Google Scholar

38 Förster, ‘Freilassungsurkunden’, p. 91.

39 The following documents are cited from Sawyer, P. H., Anglo-Saxon Charters: an Annotated List and Bibliography, R. Hist. Soc. Guides and Handbooks 8 (London, 1968)Google Scholar, abbreviated S with number of document: S 939, S 981, S 1478 and S 1521. Their most recent editors translated the phrase ‘mid þæs kynges haligdome’ and its variants as ‘in the king's sanctuary’: see Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. Robertson, A. J., 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 170–1, 216–17Google Scholar and Anglo-Saxon Wills, ed. Whitelock, Dorothy (Cambridge, 1930), pp. 46–7 and 78–9Google Scholar. But the word haligdom does clearly mean relics (as in the passages cited above, p. 97), and Förster, , Reliquienkultus, p. 14Google Scholar n. 4, argued cogently for translating the phrase in question ‘with the king's relics’. The distinction may be unreal, since what made a sanctuary sacred was precisely the presence of the relics. An unambiguous Latin phrase is to be found in a similar context in Chronicon Abbatiae Rameseiensis, ed. Macray, W. Dunn, RS (London, 1886), p. 172Google Scholar. See also Keynes, Simon, The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’ 978–1016: a Study in their Use as Historical Evidence (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 148–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 ibid. pp. 145–9. Keynes's discussion of the evidence furnished by the Abingdon glossary supersedes those of previous commentators, e.g. Barlow, Frank, The English Church 1000–1066: a History of the Later Anglo-Saxon Church, 2nd ed. (London, 1979), pp. 121–4Google Scholar; but cf. Chaplais, Pierre, ‘The Royal Anglo-Saxon “Chancery” of the Tenth Century Revisited’, Studies in Medieval History presented to R. H. C. Davis, ed. Mayr-Harting, Henry and Moore, R. I. (London, 1985), pp. 41–51, at 42.Google Scholar

41 Cf. Clanchy, M. T., From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307 (London, 1979).Google Scholar

42 Herrmann-Mascard, , Les reliques, pp. 217–21.Google Scholar

43 Liber Eliensis, ed. Blake, E. O., Camden Third Series 92 (London, 1962), 148.Google Scholar

44 Förster, , Reliquienkultus, pp. 3–8.Google Scholar

45 Liebermann, , Gesetze 1, 262Google Scholar (VIIa Æthelred 2.1).

46 Compare Töpfer, Volk und Kirche, with the suggestive comments of Campbell, James, ‘England, France, Flanders and Germany: some Comparisons and Connections’, Ethelred the Unready: Papers from the Millenary Conference, ed. Hill, David, BAR British Series 59 (Oxford, 1978). 255–70, at 256–7.Google Scholar

47 Fell, Christine E., ‘Edward King and Martyr and the Anglo-Saxon Hagiographic Tradition’, Ethelred the Unready, ed. Hill, , pp. 1–15.Google Scholar

48 Töpfer, , ‘Reliquienkult’, and D. W. Rollason, ‘The Miracles of St. Benedict: a Window on Early Medieval France’, Studies in Medieval History, ed. Mayr-Harting, and Moore, , pp. 73–90.Google Scholar

49 Mikoletzky, Harms Leo, ‘Sinn und Art der Heiligung im frühen Mittelalter’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichischen Geschichtsforschung 57 (1949), 83–122, at 85–7.Google Scholar

50 G. R., and Stephens, W. D., ‘Cuthman: a Neglected Saint’, Speculum 13 (1938), 448–53Google Scholar, and Hudson, T. P., ‘The Origins of Steyning and Bramber, Sussex’, Southern Hist. 2 (1980), 11–16.Google Scholar

51 Kemp, Eric Waldram, Canonization and Authority in the Western Church (Oxford, 1948), pp. 36–52Google Scholar, and Geary, , Furta Sacra, pp. 40–50.Google Scholar See also Herrmann-Mascard, , Les reliques, pp. 84–7.Google Scholar

52 Liebermann, , Gesetze 1, 240Google Scholar (V Æthelred 16), and in, 298–9 (I Cnut 17.1). The first reference, which is to Edward's canonization alone, is probably an interpolation into Æthelred's laws made by Archbishop Wulfstan c. 1018: see Wormald, Patrick, ‘Æthelred the Law-Maker’, Ethelred the Unready, ed. Hill, pp. 47–80, at 53–4.Google Scholar

53 Harmer, Florence Elizabeth, Anglo-Saxon Writs (Manchester, 1952), p. 191Google Scholar, citing, Chronicon Abbatiae de Evesham ad Annum 1418, ed. Macray, William Dunn, RS (London, 1863), p. 83Google Scholar, and Memorials of St Edmund's Abbey, ed. Arnold, Thomas, RS (London, 1896) 1, 361Google Scholar. See also Thomas, ‘Cult of Saints' Relics’, pp. 294–317.

54 Rollason, D. W., ‘Goscelin of Canterbury's Account of the Translation and Miracles of St Mildrith (BHL 5961/4). An Edition with Notes’, MS 48 (1986), forthcoming.Google Scholar

55 Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. Plummer, Charles (Oxford, 1892–1899) 1, 156Google Scholar (text), and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: a Revised Translation, ed. Whitelock, Dorothy et al. (London, 1961; rev. 1965), pp. 99–100Google Scholar (translation).

56 Scott, , Early History of Glastonbury, pp. 193–4Google Scholar, and Finberg, H. P. R., ‘St Patrick at Glastonbury’, in his West Country Historical Studies (Newton Abbot, 1969), pp. 70–88Google Scholar. See also Lapidge, Michael, ‘The Cult of St Indract at Glastonbury’, Ireland in Early Medieval Europe: Studies in Memory of Kathleen Hughes, ed. Whitelock, Dorothy, McKitterick, Rosamond and Dumville, David (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 179–212Google Scholar, esp. 182–4.

57 Finberg, ‘St Patrick’, pp. 79–80; Doble, G. H., ‘St Indract and St Dominic’, Somerset Records Soc. 57 (1942), 1–24Google Scholar; and Finberg, H. P. R., ‘Sherborne, Glastonbury, and the Expansion of Wessex’, Lucerna (London, 1964), pp. 95–115, at 102.Google Scholar

58 Doble, G. H., ‘Four Saints of the Fal: St Gluvias, St Kea, St Fili and St Rumon’, Downside Rev. 47 (1929), 1–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59 De Gestis Regum, ed. Stubbs 1, 160, 180–1 and 217; and Scott, , Early History of Glastonbury, pp. 84 and 112–34.Google Scholar

60 ibid. p. 134; De Gestis Regum, ed. Stubbs 1, 180–1; and Thomas, ‘Cult of Saints' Relics’, p. 488.

61 Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, ed. Thomas Arnold, RS (1882–5) 1, 3–135 and 196–214. See Craster, E., ‘The Patrimony of St Cuthbert’, EHR 69 (1954), 177–99, at 177–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Gransden, Antonia, Historical Writing in England c. 550 to c. 1307 (London, 1974), pp. 76–7 and 114–16Google Scholar. See also Offler, H. S., Medieval Historians of Durham (Durham, 1958), pp. 6–8.Google Scholar

62 See, for example, The Relics of Saint Cuthbert, ed. Battiscombe, C. F. (Oxford, 1956), pp. 21–40.Google Scholar

63 Symeonis Opera, ed. Arnold 1, 65 and 79–80.

64 ibid. pp. 99–100, 201–2, 209 and 213–14.

65 Lapsley, G. T., The County Palatine of Durham: a Study in Constitutional History (London, 1900), pp. 22–4Google Scholar, esp. 22, n. 6.

66 Craster, ‘Patrimony’, pp. 177–99, and Hall, David, ‘The Community of St Cuthbert. Its Properties, Rights and Claims from the Ninth Century to the Twelfth’ (unpubl. D.Phil, dissertation, Oxford Univ., 1984)Google Scholar. I am grateful to Dr Hall for permission to use his work.

67 Symeonis Opera, ed. Arnold 1, 204–7, 210–13 and, on Cnut's pilgrimage, 90.

68 For detailed criticisms of the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, see Craster, ‘Patrimony’, pp. 177–8; Robinson, , Times of Dunstan, pp. 52–4Google Scholar; and Keynes, ‘Athelstan's Books’, pp. 172–3 and 177–8. On Wessex, see Hohler, C. E., ‘Some Service Books of the Later Saxon Church’, Tenth-Century Studies, ed. Parsons, David (London and Chichester, 1975), pp. 60–83, at 70.Google Scholar

69 See, e.g., Spiegel, Gabrielle M., ‘The Cult of St Denis and Capetian Kingship’, Saints and their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore and History, ed. Stephen, Wilson (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 41–68.Google Scholar