2
Tom Lynch
So far we have explored the process of recording miracles, the position of the hagiographer and their motivations for writing. When it came to miracles, a major source of information for the hagiographer was the shrine of the saint. The shrines of the saints were the primary location for their cults.1 That saints, who were believed to be present in Heaven and on Earth, were particularly responsive to supplication in proximity to their relics was central to people’s engagement with them.2 Shrines, then, acted as a ‘symbolic physical point’ where people met their saint.3 The saints themselves were an active presence in these places, as described by Eadmer in his Miracula S. Dunstani:
Then the abbot, who had raised his eyes to the heavens, saw a great light shine down from there upon that church and penetrate it from above. When he saw this and pointed it out to his companions, who merited to see it with him, sighing with devout feeling he said: ‘Truly our loving father Dunstan comes now to his own festival, wishing to be present at the show of reverence which his sons are about to perform for God and him on this night.’ The brothers, who deserved to be present on this festive occasion, were witnesses that this occurred just as he had said. For they sensed his sacred presence amongst them from the sweet and holy feeling there, which made them delight in God and in his servant.4
Most shrines were within churches and sacred both through the holiness of the saint and the consecration of the church.5 God and the saints were participants in the actions performed at a shrine, and they helped to construct this sacred space with the communities of the saints.6 The vast majority of supplicants ‘were neither theologians nor hagiographers’,7 and it is impossible to know how the average religious understood the ideas behind miracles, let alone the laity. What is evident is the popularity of saints’ cults and the expectation that such saints could perform miracles, especially at their shrines.8
Such sentiments are borne out by the hagiographical evidence. In Lantfred’s miracles of Swithun there are two hundred and forty-nine individual beneficent miracles successfully petitioned. Of these some two hundred and sixteen miracle stories were no more than lists of cures with little detail, leaving thirty-three longer form descriptions of miracle petitions. All of the short-form miracles and twenty-one of the thirty-three long-form miracles occurred at Swithun’s resting place, at first his tomb outside the Old Minster and then his shrine inside the church. Goscelin’s Historia maior de miraculis S. Augustini and his Historia translationis S. Augustini et aliorum sanctorum contain fifty-eight detailed accounts of successful miracle petitions, of which twenty-eight occurred at one of the saints’ shrines at St Augustine’s. From the end of our period, there is no collection to rival Lantfred’s or Goscelin’s in terms of size, but there are many shorter ones. Arcoid’s miracles of Erkenwald include fifteen successful miracle petitions, of which twelve were at Erkenwald’s shrine. William Ketell’s miracles of John of Beverley contain nine successful miracle petitions, of which six occurred at his shrine. Finally the anonymous miracles of Oswine include fifteen successful miracle petitions, of which eight occurred at the shrine. Taken together from this sample, excluding Lantfred’s short-form entries, 57.7% of successful petitions occurred at shrines. Shrines were not only a centre for miracles but also a centre for miracle stories. People who had experienced miracles elsewhere came to shrines to give thanks and tell the custodians and other supplicants what had happened to them.9
Shrines were important from the beginning of the cult of the saints. The early martyrs were first venerated wherever they had been buried, with an altar built without disturbing the grave. By the fourth century, this association between a saint and an altar had led to the inclusion of relics in new altars and the demand for relics as a part of the consecration of churches.10 The altars at tombs began to be elaborated into substantial monuments usually built over an undisturbed grave, what Crook calls a ‘tomb-shrine’.11 The prime example of a tomb-shrine in pre-Conquest England is that of Swithun in the Old Minster at Winchester. Lantfred describes the tomb as the site of the first post-mortem miracles prior to the 971 translation of the saint.12 This tomb-shrine appears to have developed into a chapel, which was combined into the western end of the Old Minster, perhaps as a part of the westwork itself.13 Certainly Swithun’s original tomb attracted attention long after the saint was translated. Burials were made around the tomb from the thirteenth century onwards, and a modest chapel was built at the site, which lasted until the Reformation.14 An empty tomb could provide a secondary focus for pilgrims attending Winchester in hope of intercession from Swithun. Whilst we lack archaeological evidence of other alternative sites, they can be found described in the textual sources.
Lantfred also describes how Swithun performed a miracle at St Swithun’s church on the Isle of Wight.15 Some of Wulfhild’s miracles were effected in her old oratory at Horton, where she spent some time as abbess.16 In Constantinople a church was built to Augustine and Nicholas. There a miraculous icon of Augustine was kept, candles were lit and the saint was memorialised by English exiles.17 Miracles occurred at Augustine’s church in Exeter and an unspecified ruined church which had an altar dedicated to Augustine in it too.18 A statue of Swithun, donated by the monks of Winchester and erected in Sherborne Cathedral, was a site of pilgrimage and miracles as well.19 Erkenwald granted cures beyond St Paul’s too, and he healed a crippled nun at Barking Abbey, which was founded by the Bishop for his sister, Æthelburh.20 Other saints’ previous resting places were likewise thought to be sites of healing. Like Swithun, Erkenwald’s old tomb was the source of miracles at the time of his translation.21 The church at Thanet where Mildrith was buried remained a place of miracles even after the translation of the saint’s remains to Canterbury.22 So, too, the old tombs of the Archbishops at St Augustine’s, Canterbury, remained sites of intercession,23 and a blind man was cured by spending a night with his guide in the chapel where Edmund was originally buried.24
Alternative sites of intercession did not have to be within a religious house, however, and the saintly presence could change the landscape itself. In England, Kenelm’s death site near Clent remained associated with the saint because of the holy spring which erupted from the old grave. The Vita Brevior, a short passion in the form of eight lections roughly contemporary with Goscelin’s life and miracles, adds that a chapel was built at the site of the spring where miracles occurred. Love points out that a twelfth-century chapel survives at a spot north-west of Romsley which once housed the holy spring.25 A healing spring was also associated with Wihtburh’s original burial place at Dereham.26 The surviving Wihtburh’s well is found to the west of St Nicholas’ in East Dereham. The church contains some Norman sections and the well architecture itself is dated to the fourteenth century.27 Ivo’s remains, and those of his companions, were discovered at Slepe and translated to Ramsey. A daughter house was constructed at Slepe on the site of the old burial, where a miraculous spring flowed. Several of the miracles recorded by Goscelin involve this spring at Slepe, and it must have drawn as many people to the church there as to Ivo’s remains at Ramsey. As a sign of the importance of Slepe, even without Ivo’s remains, two of his companions were translated back there from Ramsey.28
The building of churches and chapels at these sites announced the Church’s authority over the sacred landscape and the incorporation of that particular saint into the official local observance.29 Here we can consider Gregory the Great’s decree to Christianise the pagan holy sites of England with altars, relics and holy water.30 The Church sought a monopoly over the cult of the saints, and architecture was one way this could be expressed. I do not suggest that this was the case for every site associated with the saints, merely that it was the case for the major miracle centres of medieval England. The saintly presence appears to have had a sacralising effect, which could be seen as a part of the dangerous potential of saints to circumvent the liturgical and pastoral work of the Church.31 This danger was contained by a physical incorporation of those most special sites of the cult of the saints, the sites where miracles were petitioned and performed. The relics of a saint could be moved into a church, but the landscape required that architecture be brought to it. Whilst these alternative sites are found throughout the evidence, the shrine of the saint was the most commonly recorded location for pilgrimage and miracles.
In general shrines were above-ground structures upon which a reliquary was placed. Depending on the state of the saint’s remains, these reliquaries could range from full coffins to small chests which could fit onto an altar.32 The shrine itself varied but was usually some form of table or an arrangement of pillars. These shrines were built in the vicinity of the high altar, sometimes to the south but most often behind, to the east.33 From the early eleventh century onwards, these shrines developed in height, and some allowed access below them for pilgrims, with an altar incorporated into the structure or found nearby and dedicated to the saint. During the twelfth century, these shrines became more elaborate, but it is difficult to chart an evolution of the form.34 A feature which may have been quite common is a beam over the shrine from which votives and reliquaries could hang. Crook has identified such beams at Bury and Worcester,35 and they could have provided a means to display the votives recorded in the miracle collections.36 Shrines also seem to have been lavishly decorated with silver, gold and gems. Unfortunately we have no complete English shrines surviving from this time, but there are descriptions in the hagiography.37 The cult of the saints impacted church architecture beyond the shrine itself. The key elements were apses, which were sometimes used to house shrines and/or altars, and ambulatories, which increased access to the shrine without having to pass through the choir. In England these elements were employed in a ‘haphazard’ manner. For example, important cult sites like Christ Church, Canterbury, St Albans Abbey and Durham Cathedral lacked ambulatories after their initial Anglo-Norman remodelling, whilst Bury and Winchester Cathedral included them.38
The only surviving elaboration of a shrine from our period is the ‘holy hole’ at Winchester Cathedral. The shrine of Swithun was raised in the 1150s as part of rebuilding work, which made the shrine inaccessible to lay pilgrims. The holy hole was a solution to these access problems, allowing a supplicant to crawl under the large elevated shrine and get as close as possible to the relics. Today the holy hole is visible as a small passage through the thirteenth-century retrochoir.39 It is possible that foramina shrines, with their series of small openings in the supporting structure, came into use in England in the late twelfth century. Foramina shrines were first attested in the report of Abbot Daniel’s visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, between 1106 and 1112. Perhaps such a shrine was used for Edward the Confessor following his translation of 1163, as depicted in the thirteenth-century manuscript of the life of Edward.40 The idea of a foramina shrine also brings to mind Bede’s description of Chad’s tomb at Lichfield, which had holes from which people collected dust used for miraculous cures.41 With or without elaboration, the most common place for a saint’s shrine was in the vicinity of the high altar, usually to the east, and it at least consisted of a structure to support a saint’s coffin or reliquary. Such a position kept the holy remains in a reverent and secure location close to the working heart of the church.42 Before continuing, it is useful to consider the implications of such a location for the most important site of an apparently popular cult.
In larger churches, a saint’s shrine could be made more accessible through the use of apses and ambulatories, but as we have seen, the use of these elements was inconsistent in our period. Without these features, a supplicant had to walk through or very close to the choir in order to access a shrine. Regular traffic through the choir would have been disruptive to the observance of the liturgy. In theory, the choir of a church, particularly in Benedictine foundations, was closed to the laity, but this practice would have been in tension with the desire of supplicants to get closer than the nave in order to interact with a saint.43 The very crowds emphasised by the hagiographers could also be problematic. Arcoid states that the doors of St Paul’s were torn off their hinges by the great crowd who assembled for Erkenwald’s translation.44 When the crowd that gathered for the translation of the saints of Barking was deemed too large by the Archdeacon of London, he limited access by stating that only those who had confessed could approach.45 During the procession performed on the feast of the Purification at Sherborne, people were pushed around by the crowd, including five disabled people who were cured when they came into accidental contact with Wulfsige’s feretory.46 If we follow Lantfred’s calculations, as many as twenty-five people could be cured in one day by Swithun in the Old Minster, with other high points including fifteen in a day, thirty-six in three days and one hundred and twenty-four in two weeks.47 Wulfstan confirms these observations, stating that he witnessed over two hundred cures in ten days at Swithun’s shrine and that countless cures occurred in the year 971–972.48 Bearing in mind the probability that not every pilgrim sought a miracle, not every petition was successful, that supplicants did not always come alone and many spent more than a day at a shrine, we are presented with serious potential disruption to the liturgical workings of a church with a popular shrine.49 At least in the case of the Old Minster – and probably more generally – each recognised miracle would come with the additional burden of corporate thanksgiving, which itself interrupted the daily lives of the custodians.50 It is unsurprising, therefore, that there is also hagio-graphical evidence of individuals being barred from shrines.
Goscelin includes the story of a lame girl who was often brought by her family to Æthelburh at Barking in the hopes of help. This girl asked if she could spend the eve of Æthelburh’s feast in vigil, but the sacristan Judith would not allow it and told the girl to pray outside. The girl did so, and during her vigil at the monastery doors, she was cured despite her separation from the saint. Presumably Judith had her reasons for this denial, and she stated that Æthelburh would heal the girl from outside if the saint willed it.51 Perhaps the girl would have gotten in the way of the preparations for the saint’s feast, perhaps the shrine area was already full or perhaps Judith just felt that a lay presence on this special night would have been inappropriate.52 The next entry in Goscelin’s account is the healing of a blind man at Æthelburh’s shrine whilst the nuns were singing psalms, and the miracle before records the healing of three blind women, one at each of the shrines of Æthelburh, Hildelith and Wulfhild.53 In Osbern’s life and miracles of Dunstan, a girl asked for permission to keep vigil on the eve of the feasts of Ouen and Bartholomew (both at this time celebrated on 24 August). This was granted, and Osbern himself witnessed the miracle.54 Evidently access to the saints’ shrines was possible at Barking, and requests to engage in vigils were granted elsewhere. Goscelin frames this event in terms of the power of Æthelburh whilst maintaining the authority of Barking and the custodians. The miracle is changed in character if one interprets Judith’s statement not as reconciliatory but as a quick termination to an annoying and persistent distraction. In that case, by healing the girl, Æthelburh may have subverted the authority of her sacristan slightly. The custodians could be seen as having washed their hands of the problem and to have continued the preparations for the feast day regardless. The onus would then have been on the girl to effectively petition the saint even though she was left exposed to the elements on an October night. The cure of the girl demonstrates the power of Æthelburh, but it undermines the primacy of the shrine. It shows, too, that the shrine was not open all the time to everyone.55 Custodians were not alone in exerting control over who could visit a saint. The saints themselves could also intercede.
Cuthbert took a more active part in moderating who had access to his shrine. In Bede’s Life, Cuthbert asked to be buried in his oratory rather than the monastery on Lindisfarne, in hopes that he would spare his community the bother of dealing with sanctuary seekers and the authorities pursuing them. In the end, Cuthbert consented to being buried at the monastery with the stipulation that he be interred in the church so that the monks could control access to his tomb.56 Symeon of Durham also reports that access was denied to women wishing to visit Cuth-bert’s shrine or any of the churches where he previously lay.57 This practice was traced by Symeon to Cuthbert himself, who declared, after he was made Bishop of Lindisfarne, that his followers should not mix with women and that women would not be admitted to the church on Lindisfarne. Symeon then brings in the fire which destroyed the double foundation at Coldingham on account of the inappropriate behaviour of the monks and nuns.58
In later times, Cuthbert even took miraculous vengeance against certain women who ignored his ban. Judith, wife of Earl Tostig of Northumbria (1055–1065), was devoted to Cuthbert but unable to pray at his shrine. She sent a maid to test the extent of the ban, and when the maid entered the graveyard of the church in Durham, she was pushed back by an unseen force and died of her injuries. Judith then sought to propitiate Cuthbert with gifts, including a decorated crucifix.59 Another woman, Sungeoua, was killed for cutting through the same cemetery, and an unnamed woman killed herself after being driven insane for trying to enter the church.60 It seems that the goal of the saint was to keep his monks chaste, and his misogyny was focused on those who would violate his shrine.61 Here the will of the saint is interpreted by Symeon in a manner consistent with the will of the custodians. Deadly repercussions were to be expected for defying such a long-term interdiction. Yet women still tried to gain access to the nexus of the cult of Cuthbert. They contested not only the custodians but also their interpretation of the will of the saint. This leaves two obvious options for their behaviour – either they were ignorant of the interdiction, or they doubted it was truly the will of the saint in their particular case. Whilst ignorance is a possible cause in the case of Sungeoua and the unnamed woman, Judith sent her maid to probe the ban and showed remorse towards the saint when it proved deadly to her maid. For Judith another arrangement seemed possible, although it did not prove to be the case.
Even those who gained access to a shrine did not necessarily behave correctly. A woman named Mazelina struck her child in St Augustine’s for interrupting her at prayer. For this inappropriate action, she was partially paralysed by Augustine. Upon realising what she had done, she cried out in anguish, plucked at her hair and appeared insane to the monks. The brothers took pity on her, and by common consent, they went to the church and tearfully sung the seven penitential psalms before Augustine’s shrine on behalf of Mazelina. She shortly stood up cured and rejoiced.62 Goscelin shows that unbecoming behaviour at a shrine would be punished by the saints but also that such punishment need not be the end. People could learn from their mistakes and be corrected into a more acceptable relationship with the saints. But even devout people did not behave correctly all the time.
Mazelina’s case is also a rare example of a person praying at a shrine without a life crisis going on around them, until she brought one upon herself through her behaviour. Maybe she was praying for the remission of previous sins, as the family of Abbot Guthlac of Glastonbury did at Indract’s shrine. Like Mazelina’s case, this was only recorded within the context of a miracle. Whilst the family slept at the tomb, Guthlac had a vision of Indract in which the Abbot, then a child, was miraculously taught to read.63 It is probable that many visitors to the saints were likewise simply praying or following up on the promise of an indulgence or performing a penitential pilgrimage with no miraculous content. People sought alms from those gathered at Swithun’s statue at Sherborne, and a beggar at Winchester was diverted to the saint’s shrine, where he was cured.64 And then there would be sanctuary seekers not mentioned in the miracle collections as their cases were handled less dramatically.
The idea that criminals could claim sanctuary in a church was established in pre-Conquest England. The laws of Ine are the first to endorse sanctuary, with later references to the practice in the laws of Alfred, Æthelstan, Æthelred and Cnut. The practice of sanctuary is also recorded in the Anglo-Norman law code and was maintained after the Conquest.65 Ordinarily sanctuary could be claimed at any church and relied on the holiness of a consecrated space and the authority of the local bishop.66 In these cases, the saint and their resting place must have been conflated into a single authority, with the miraculous ability to punish transgressors with more than a mere fine. Indeed, the ‘mobile charisma’ of the saints could extend sanctuary beyond the confines of the church; in the province of York in the early twelfth century, a person wearing or in possession of relics could claim sanctuary.67 Generally sanctuary was employed not as an end to legal proceedings but as a temporary period of immunity from prosecution, during which the crime and proposed punishment could be assessed. A sanctuary seeker would be expected to confess, disarm and surrender to the clerics of the church.68 In the hagiographical accounts, criminals dominate, but any people in real need could claim sanctuary at a shrine and reasonably expect the local saint and their community to intervene if anybody tried to violate this understanding.
All of these people, with their various concerns and reasons for attending, were set against the daily liturgical backdrop of a working church. The nuns, monks, canons and other religious custodians may not have always been focused on their saints, but if their saints had any degree of fame, they would have noticed their presence daily. The exact nature of the attendees of the saints’ shrines is difficult to determine. Kings, archbishops, nobles, bishops and abbots all visited shrines in search of aid or to give thanks for aid received.69 These were relatively uncommon events, however, and the majority of supplicants seem to have been commoners and low-ranking religious. In Finucane’s analysis of saints’ cults in England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, he found that 61% of supplicants were male and 39% were female. Of the women. some 86% were of the ‘lowest class’, and 56% of men were of the ‘lowest class’.70 Sigal found that some 61.7% of recipients of post-mortem miracles in French saints’ cults in the eleventh and twelfth centuries were of the ‘classes populaires’. The next largest group was monks and clerics at 16.8% and then the aristocracy at 12.7%. The gender split for the ‘classes populaires’ was 66.6% male and 33.3% female.71 Bailey has performed a statistical study using sixteen miracle collections from the long twelfth century and finding 1027 pilgrims in total. Of these 52% were female and 48% were male. Where possible Bailey also examined the age of pilgrims using the six ages of man and four familial categories. Focusing on female pilgrims, she found that children, mothers and wives dominated the narratives, although many stories lacked basic social information about supplicants.72 Using the same data, Bailey has found that 319 pilgrims could be identified along social-functional lines, using the classes of bellatores (warriors), oratores (preachers) and laboratores (workers). Amongst male pilgrims, there was a roughly even distribution between each class. For female pilgrims, the majority were to be found in the bellatores, with slightly fewer in the laboratores and nine in the oratores.73 In both studies, Bailey is keen to point out the limits to such analysis for representing reality.74
The notion of the shrine as a place for the poor is borne out by a story found in both versions of the miracles of Dunstan. A certain Ceolwulf, provost of Folkestone, was paralysed in his whole body. The provost was persuaded to go to Dunstan although he was concerned about mixing with commoners, and he was healed at the saint’s tomb. Ceolwulf praised God and Dunstan for his healing and held a feast in celebration, where he was asked if he had been cured like the poor were. The provost replied that he would have been healed even without Dunstan, and he was stricken again with paralysis and died. People feared such miraculous vengeance and venerated Dunstan, and many gathered at the saint’s shrine for healing and the remission of sins.75 Ceolwulf’s concern over mixing with the poor cannot have been unique. There was a presumption that a saint’s shrine was a place for the poor masses, and Ceolwulf was pleased that God, through his saints, cured the powerful as well as the meek.76 All kinds of people with all kinds of problems visited shrines. To be cured by Dunstan was fine – Ceolwulf thanked God and the saint for it – but to be cured like the poor was too much. Ceolwulf denied not only the saint but also his commonality with all those who went to Dunstan as supplicants. Such commonality has been framed by Victor Turner as communitas.
Turner’s conception of communitas was indebted to the work of van Gennep on rites of passage. Van Gennep recognised that the stages of life, usually linked to age or social groups, are marked with ‘ceremonies whose essential purpose is to enable the individual to pass from one defined position to another which is equally well defined’.77 Each rite of passage can be understood to have an integral three-part structure – preliminal or separation, liminal or transition and postliminal or incorporation.78 Van Gennep did not claim that all ceremonies are only rites of passage or that all societies elaborate each stage to the same degree, but he saw the pattern of rites of passage underlying many different forms.79 Van Gennep noted that liminal periods regularly become extended and elaborated.80 This state of extended liminality can be seen as being ‘betwixt and between’ social groups or situations.81 Following Turner, transitional beings are seen as dangerous and polluting and are often physically separated off or exiled to the margins of society.82 Within these ambiguous conditions, people will bond with each other regardless of previous status or grouping, in a state that Turner refers to as communitas.83
Turner saw this anti-structural moment in contrast to the structure behind everyday life, but both phases were required in the correct balance to maintain a functioning society.84 These liminal periods are integral to Turner’s understanding of cultural reproduction. The Turners recognised the act of pilgrimage as a ‘liminoid’ process, an extended period which took people out of structured society and into a state of equality and united purpose.85 Pilgrims had essentially left ‘a domain where relations are complex, for one where they are simple’.86 This notion was explicitly applied by the Turners not only to contemporary practice but also to medieval pilgrimage. The medieval experience was pseudo-liminal focusing on relics, rituals and miracles at places associated with the saints.87 The special dead mediated on behalf of supplicants, who were in a liminal condition of coping with illness or other life crises.88 With them being united by their devotion and suffering and marginalised by their afflictions, it seems possible that the amorphous liminal period of supplication at saints’ shrines, often extended over several days, could have resulted in a bond of communitas. Certainly this theory influenced Brown and Mayr-Harting in their conceptions of the saint’s shrine as a place of social cohesion and reincorporation.89 Turner’s vision of the communitas of pilgrims has been challenged, however.
Sallnow has labelled pilgrimage as a ‘polymorphic phenomenon’ which denies the deterministic view of Turner’s communitas. For Sallnow, who studied Andean penitential pilgrimage in the 1970s, pilgrimage did move people out of existing power structures but did not replace them with communitas. Instead pilgrims created new social relationships at shrines. These holy places had their own ‘rudimentary structures of authority and control for keeping order amongst the assembled pilgrims’.90 The shrine is presented as ‘a ritual space capable of accommodating diverse meanings and practices’ for a ‘variety of clients’.91 Eade emphasised the place of ‘official discourse’ at shrines, with behaviour and interpretation dominated by shrine keepers at Lourdes.92 Bailey has linked this ‘official discourse’ to the evidence we rely on for medieval shrines, with both hagiography and the built environment, controlling access to relics for medieval pilgrims and guiding our interpretations of them.93 This official discourse is a synthesis of the ‘shared cultural mentality’ of the cult of the saints and the ‘individual historical circumstances’ of a particular shrine.94 Through this prism, Bailey sees a twotiered system of positive anti-structural ‘paradise’ for the devout and negative structural ‘hell’ for those who behaved inappropriately.95 I believe the hagiographers looked to portray a kind of communitas at their shrines, a utopian social order coalesced around the remains of their saint and under the control of their custodians. Ceolwulf disrupted this portrayal and was shown to have been punished. The story of Ceolwulf, like the misogyny of Cuthbert and the restrictions of the sacristan Judith, also shows how different members of a community could interpret a saint’s shrine differently and act upon these interpretations. There were real communities focused on the saints and their shrines, but it did not level social differences or apply equally to everyone. Saints’ cults were contested, and so were their shrines.
Shrines were not fixed in the landscape, and many burials had to be moved into churches before they became shrines proper. This was achieved through a translation, a formal ceremony which drew on liturgical trappings to sanctify the exhumation, transportation and reburial of a saint. The earliest recorded example of a translation is that of St Babylas, who was translated from his grave to a new church opposite a temple to Apollo at Daphne, a suburb of Antioch.96 Following developments in the Eastern Empire, translations began to be performed in the Western capital, Milan, which suffered from a lack of local saints. This project was begun by Bishop Ambrose’s translation of the martyrs Gervase and Protase to the Ambrosian Basilica in 386. Paulinus’s account of the translation included the healing of many people triggered by the placing of the holy bodies on the biers and the cure of the blind man Severus when he touched the martyrs’ clothes.97 Ambrose took part in another translation at Bologna in 393 with the local Bishop Eusebius, removing the bodies of Vitalis and Agricola from their original burial site among Jewish people.98 This translation was occasioned by miraculous cures. Ambrose’s 395 translation of Nazarius and Celsus into the Basilica of the Apostles in Milan is noteworthy for the state in which Nazarius was found. In the martyr’s grave, there was blood which appeared to be fresh, and Nazarius’ severed head was found to be intact and incorrupt, with his beard and hair washed.99 The translation of Nazarius and Celsus was also marked by a sweet odour, which became linked with the opening of saints’ shrines, especially when they were found incorrupt.100
In Rome the reluctance to disturb the physical remains of the dead appears to have held out until the seventh century. The majority of Rome’s saints were entombed in the catacombs of the city, and the popes of the sixth and early seventh centuries built and renovated churches in order to incorporate the resting places without disturbing them.101 Amongst these careful popes was Gregory the Great, who describes the process of creating brandea in a response to Empress Constan-tina’s request for the head of St Paul and his handkerchief. A brandeum was made by putting a piece of cloth into a special box which was placed near to the body of a saint. According to Gregory, after this procedure was followed, the brandea were potent enough to be used in the dedication of churches and were as good as bodily relics.102 The holiness of the brandea is also picked up on in the Life of Gregory the Great by the anonymous Whitby monk, who records that Gregory cut open a brandeum, which bled, in front of some doubters, saying, ‘When the relics are placed on His holy altar as an offering to sanctify them, the blood of the saints to whom each relic belongs always enters into the cloth just as if it had been soaked in blood.’103 This story is related in Gregory’s letters as well, although Gregory states that the Pope involved was not himself but his predecessor, Leo I (440–461).104
Translation at Rome was still rare in the seventh century and only became common in the 750s due to the incursions of the Lombards on Papal territory.105 Translation was firmly established by Pope Paul I (757–767), who, in 756, prior to becoming pope, moved the remains of many saints from extra-mural cemeteries by procession accompanied by hymns and chants.106 Despite the well-documented influence of Rome on the development of Christianity in early medieval England, within a hundred years of the conversion, the English were translating their native saints without any qualms. Thacker traces the development of translation as practised by the English to fifth-century Francia, with the translations of Saturninus at Toulouse and Martin at Tours.107 Bede notes several translations of the saints, including those of Augustine, Cedd, Chad, Aidan and Æthelthryth.108 Other saints who were translated during this period include Cuthbert and Guthlac.109 Whilst elevation and translation never became a necessity for all saints, before papal legislation, they acted as formal recognition of status, particularly suitable to a new foundation or expansion of a church.110 Indeed, all of the saints whose cults I have referenced in this book received a translation either before or during the two centuries between 970 and 1170. The first translation recorded in England for our period was that of Swithun in 971.
Lantfred’s account of the translation itself is fairly short. Following a series of visions and miracles at Swithun’s original burial site, the remains of the saint were moved into the Old Minster, under the instruction of King Edgar (959–975), by Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester, the Abbots Ælfstan of the Old Minster and Æthelgar (964–980) of the New Minster and the monks of both houses.111 Here we have the oversight of secular and religious authority figures and due reverence, but the brevity of the description makes it doubtful that Lantfred was present at the translation itself.112 More instructive for our purposes here is the translation as recorded by Wulfstan from the later tenth century. Wulfstan may well have been an eyewitness to Swithun’s translation, and his description of the event certainly contains more detail than Lantfred’s version.113 According to Wulfstan, crowds were summoned by the ringing of bells, filling the Old Minster. Æthelwold celebrated Mass, during which he admonished those gathered to observe a three-day fast and to beg God to be worthy to translate Swithun and benefit from his holy presence. The people assembled agreed and began their fast on the following Wednesday with prayers and psalms and broke it on the Friday. At this time, a blind woman approached Swithun’s tomb and, following prayers and petitions, was cured of her condition. Bells were rung, and the people again assembled to give thanks, including Æthelwold, who then ordered the translation to begin.
The shrine was removed, and tents were set up around the tomb to prevent the crowd rushing the remains, but the process was halted to mark vespers. Following this, a procession of monks – with candles, incense and scripture books and led by a cross – chanted praises to Swithun and approached the saint’s tomb with Æthelwold. When they had completed their hymns and prayers at the tomb, they continued into the Old Minster as dusk fell. The crowd approached the tomb, and lights were lit. Prayerful vigil was kept through the night, which the monks interrupted to perform the office. In the morning, Æthelwold, Abbot Ælfstan and the priests were vested, and they were accompanied by Abbot Æthelgar of the New Minster and the communities of both monasteries. All went in procession with candles and incense led by the Gospel-book and cross whilst they sung the chant Iustum deduxit Dominus. They approached the tomb with some trepidation, and after the crowd had been removed, the procession entered the tented area, which had been erected around the tomb.
As the communities chanted the psalms in order, Æthelwold ceremonially broke ground and then left the remainder of the digging to his attendants. The coffin was uncovered and opened, and all of Winchester was filled with the odour of sanctity. The remains were carefully washed and wrapped in a new shroud and then put into a shrine which was placed on a bier. Once the psalms were finished, the two abbots bore Swithun aloft to the rejoicing of the crowd. Æthelwold led the procession in the hymn, Te Deum Laudamus, and the doors to the Old Minster were opened. After this it seems the gathered crowd were permitted to enter the Old Minster following the procession, and they rejoiced with bells ringing. Æthelwold placed Swithun down, presumably near the high altar as he then celebrated Mass near to the saint and gave a sermon on God’s deigning to allow such ceremonies and wonders to take place through his saint.114
Wulfstan shows how a major translation was performed and how Æthelwold aligned such an event with the observance of the divine office. The reform programme of Æthelwold and his allies was not suspended even for such an occasion. There is a tone of awe and a great deal of spiritual preparation before the grave is even approached. The presence of a great many laypeople and their participation in the ceremony is central to Wulfstan’s narrative. Not only is the translation prefaced by the healing of a woman, but the people take part in the preparatory fast, the vigil and the singing of psalms and hymns. After the translation proper but on the same day, a miracle was petitioned by another woman, whose son was cured of a deformity of his hands. Word spread quickly, and many people returned to see the marvel with bells ringing and praises being given to God and Swithun.115 Æthelwold’s place as master of ceremonies is emphasised in his leading of the Masses before and after the translation, his beginning the Te Deum and his ground breaking at the saint’s tomb. There is an obvious processional element to the translation, and the monks of the Old Minster were joined by their neighbours from the New Minster, uniting the neighbouring foundations in honouring Swithun. This was not the end for the relics of Swithun as there was a second translation, also recorded by Wulfstan.
King Edgar had vowed to have a fitting shrine made for Swithun, although it was evidently not complete by the first translation. Wulfstan notes that it was made from three hundred pounds of gold, silver and gems and that the work was carried out at a royal estate to the west of Winchester. Either a part of Swithun’s body was taken inconspicuously to this estate, or perhaps the relics were moved with some formality which Wulfstan was not party to. However the relics got there, they then became the focus of a kind of second translation. Æthelwold placed a part of Swithun’s body in the new shrine and announced the completion of King Edgar’s request. Edgar inspected the finished work and was so pleased that he dispatched members of his retinue to Winchester. These messengers were to instruct all the people of Winchester, from slave to noble, to proceed to meet the new shrine, walking barefoot so that Swithun could arrive in the city with appropriate acclaim. The people, including Wulfstan himself, did as they were instructed, chanting the psalms on the way. The great crowd went slowly, and the people rejoiced on reaching the saint. The monks prostrated themselves before the new shrine and then rose and sang a hymn, following the feretory in procession towards Winchester. They made their way to the west gate of the city, where a blind girl was healed by praying before the relics. The monks sang thanks and praises, and the shrine was taken to the Old Minster and deposited on the altar by Æthelwold. The whole day was spent singing, and King Edgar gave thanks that his gift was deemed acceptable.116
Again Wulfstan emphasises popular involvement and excitement at the occasion of the translation, apparently including all of Winchester’s population. The dual procession is important, as such a treasure could not pass by unheralded and without the appropriate reverence. This time the processional element was over a much longer distance and lacked the clerical vanguard with their cross, scriptures and incense. However, there was a more active royal involvement in the second translation. The main markers of reverence here were the prostration of the monks, the barefoot condition of the people and the singing of hymns and psalms performed as part of the movement of the feretory. Wulfstan’s description has the feeling of a parade or an Imperial triumph, with less formality than the first translation. If we are to believe Wulfstan, much labour must have ceased as all the people of Winchester, no matter their social position or wealth, are reported as engaging in the translation. In this respect, it would have been much like a feast day, with the people given over to the work of God. Exactly how this day was regarded is difficult to say; the first translation is the date that is marked liturgically, and the relics were not moved to a new place so much as moved to a new shrine. Once the relics had been removed, it would have been impossible to return them quietly in their new feretory of sparkling metalwork and gems. It would also have been undesirable as this was an opportunity for all those involved to gain in prestige and to honour Swithun, and the event had to be carried out and stage managed appropriately.
Our latest datable translation was that of Edward the Confessor in 1163, which is recorded rather tersely by the monks of Winchester.117 Most of the translations from the period between these events were documented similarly with little to no detail appended. The latest full account is that of Aelred of Rievaulx describing the translation of the saints at Hexham in 1154. It was decided by the canons at Hexham that their saints, who had been enshrined together at a previous translation in a wooden casket, were due higher honour. Prior, Richard was consulted and gave his permission, and the date was set as 3 March. The canons prepared with psalms and prayers, and on the day itself, they assembled in the church at the third hour after dawn. They prostrated themselves barefoot before the altar and then prayed and chanted the seven penitential psalms and the responsory used to honour confessors by the canons at Hexham. When they had finished, they carried the relics in procession to the altar, still barefoot and dressed in albs, and reverently emptied the relics onto a cloth next to the altar. The bones of four individuals were found. Three of them were identified by the labels found with their bundles as Acca, Alchmund and Frithuberht. The fourth was deduced to be Tilberht, and the separate shrine of Eata was also opened at this time so that the saint could be translated as well. All of these saints were Bishops of Hexham, a see which disappeared with the last Bishop, Tidfrith, in the early ninth century.118 When the tombs were opened, the odour of sanctity poured forth from both of them.
Once the relics had been properly identified, the canons gave thanks and began to redeposit them. They had had three new shrines constructed, one large one coated with silver and gold and adorned with gems of the highest quality and two smaller ones which were less expensive but of the same beauty. Into the larger one they placed the remains of Acca, Alchmund, Frithuberht and Tilberht. In one of the smaller shrines, they placed Eata, and into the other, they placed some fragments of the local saints and some relics of Babylas, the same third-century Bishop of Antioch and martyr who was subject to the first recorded translation. These relics of Babylas may have been part of the relics of the apostles and martyrs that Bede claims were collected at Hexham by Acca.119 The three shrines were arranged on three columns near the altar, the largest in the middle with the one containing Eata to the south and the one containing the loose relics to the north. This new table or shelf was decorated with images and statues. A Mass was then sung after which the people of Hexham were sent away, and the canons resumed their daily observances.120
The 1154 translation of the saints of Hexham shares a lot in common with the 971 translation of Swithun at Winchester. In both cases, saints were moved with great care in a short procession with various liturgical trappings. The ceremonies were overseen and approved by the local religious hierarchy, and both translations culminated in the deposition of the saints close to the high altar. The major points of difference were the practicalities of the locations, the motivations for the translations and the degree of lay participation. Swithun was translated from his original burial place following a series of miracles which revealed the power of Swithun and his presence in the graveyard of the Old Minster. The saints of Hexham were moved due to the requests of the prior and canons rather than a miraculous revelation. Miracles are much more important to Wulfstan’s narrative in general, with the two cures before and after the translation as well as in the prelude to the translation. The only miracle common to both narratives was the dispersal of the odour of sanctity once the remains were uncovered.
More generally, motivations for translation seem to have been linked to concerns over appropriate reverence. This could be a vague notion as with the translation of Birinus from Dorchester to Winchester and the translation of Guthlac at Crowland under Abbot Waltheof (1124–1138).121 Such concerns would be more focused following rebuilding schemes, which were common in the Anglo-Norman period. For example, Erkenwald, Ithamar and the saints of Bury, St Augustine’s, the New Minster and Barking were all translated into new or renovated homes in the century following 1066.122 Of course the saints could spur on the actions of their custodians with visions and miracles, as was the case with Æthelburh at Barking as well as with Æthelwold, Edith, Kenelm, Wulfsige, Ithamar and Wenefred.123 Even where there were miracles leading up to a translation, the hagiographers often portray a translation as a turning point resulting in more miracles. Goscelin describes crowds coming to Wulfsige’s shrine after the translation and states that the majority of them went away healed.124 Lantfred and Wulfstan describe the large number of miracles which followed Swithun’s translation.125 Miracles also flowed after the translations of Rumwold, Modwenna, Erkenwald, Æthelwold, Birinus, Wulfsige and the companions of Ivo.126
In terms of lay participation, Wulfstan shows the deep involvement of the crowd in the whole process, whereas in Aelred’s narrative, the crowd seems to have been witness to some of the proceedings and the concluding Mass but was then sent away. Crowds seem to have been quite common at translations. Wulfstan also describes a great gathering of monks and minor clerics at the translation of Æthelwold.127 Goscelin claimed a great crowd assembled for the translation of the saints at Barking Abbey, Æthelburh, Hildelith and Wulfhild.128 Eadmer notes the presence of many people, including bishops, abbots, nobles, religious and common folk, at the translation of Oswald of Worcester. In fact, Archbishop Ealdwulf of York (995–1002) seems to have sought the assent of the people of Worcester before the translation was undertaken.129 The new silver shrine for Erkenwald’s translation under Bishop Gilbert of London was paid for by a collection taken amongst the people of London. Arcoid goes on to describe a great crowd on the day of Erkenwald’s translation. All of this was apparently carried out under hurried conditions with no prior announcement of the translation made.130 Crowds also gathered for the translations of Edith, Edmund, Guthlac, Osyth and the saints of St Augustine’s.131
As with the motivation of custodians to translate their saints, the motivation of the crowds in attendance is difficult to assess. Eadmer states that the people present for Oswald’s translation were gathered to witness a great event and for the sake of their souls and bodies. The people are described as having differing expectations as well as differing levels of belief. An unnamed abbot in particular was unconvinced of Oswald’s power until a man was cured of leprosy during the translation.132 Miracles certainly played a part in many translations and acted as a means of interaction between the saint and the faithful. As a coda to Edmund’s translation, his relics were carried out to end a drought, whilst Wenefred kept the attendees of her translation dry despite the heavy rain clouds.133 Wenefred cured a crippled man on her translation route as well, whilst Edward the Martyr cured two people during his translation procession.134 People were also healed during the translations of Æthelburh, Edmund, Mellitus, Laurence and Hadrian.135 Thus, the draw of a miracle-inducing spectacle could account for the attendance of many people. The translation of Edmund, with Jurmin and Botulf, contains an element which is worth discussing further. Bishop Walkelin of Winchester (1070–1098) granted an indulgence for the people in attendance at the translation.136
We are not given the details of Bishop Walkelin’s indulgence beyond the fact that it began on the translation, lasted for some time afterwards and applied to all pilgrims within a fixed time. This is the only reference to an indulgence I have found in the hagiographical material composed between 970 and 1170. This is not to say that Walkelin’s indulgence was unique. Indulgences emerged in the mid eleventh century as grants pardoning a portion of penance, assigned by bishops or the Pope.137 Indulgences developed in response to a system of penance based on days of fasting or other abstention, which could easily accumulate to exceed the remaining life of a sinner.138 The most famous early example of this reduction in ‘earthly mortification’ is the 1095 declaration by Pope Urban II (1088–1099) of an indulgence for those travelling to the Holy Land for the First Crusade.139 That the Bury translation was roughly contemporary with Pope Urban’s pronouncement shows that the principle had been well established by the end of the eleventh century.
The chanceries of English bishops show that indulgences were granted across the country for a variety of reasons. For our purposes, the indulgences related to translations, relics and feast days are most relevant. Richard, Bishop of London (1108–1127), granted an indulgence of twenty days for those present at St Paul’s for the translation of the arm of Osyth and of seven days for those who attended the anniversary feast.140 Bishop Richard of Hereford (1131–1148) granted an indulgence to benefactors of Leominster Priory in relation to the establishment of a feast day in honour of the church’s relics.141 Between 1158 and 1165, Bishop Josceline of Salisbury (1142–1184) granted an indulgence of forty days to attendees of the vigil and feast of Mary Magdalene at a church dedicated to the saint in Bucklebury.142 Under the auspices of Thomas Beckett, an indulgence of forty days was granted for pilgrims visiting Chichester on the feast or in the octave of Denis.143 Bishop Gilbert of London (1163–1187) granted an indulgence of twenty days for visitors to St Martin-le-Grand who attended within twenty days of the anniversary of the reception of fragmentary relics of Cuthbert at the collegiate church.144 Two high-profile saints attracted indulgences from more than one see. Reading Abbey had received the hand of St James from King Henry I (1100–1135) at the request of his daughter Matilda, who had brought the relic back with her on her return to England in 1126. The relic was removed by Henry of Blois in 1136, but it was eventually returned to Reading in 1155.145 It is probable that the great proliferation of indulgences for visiting the hand of James at Reading in the mid twelfth century were linked to this return, including grants from the bishops of Bath, Canterbury, Durham, Lincoln, London, Norwich and Salisbury.146 Visits to the tomb of Edward the Confessor at Westminster Abbey to commemorate his deposition and translation were also encouraged with indulgences from multiple bishops.147
Therefore, the laity came to see their saints translated for the sake of their souls and their bodies, as well as to witness such elaborate religious performances. They could join in with elements of the ceremony, but as we have seen, their great numbers could be disruptive. This could take the form of damaging the fabric of the church, injuring one another or just getting in the way of the procession.148 Some people asked for and were granted preferential access to the saint and their tomb during a translation. A noble woman was allowed to approach Oswald’s old tomb as it was being excavated at Worcester.149 Likewise Alwold, an architect of Crow-land Abbey, was given permission by Bishop Alexander of Lincoln (1124–1148) to have the head reliquary of Guthlac placed on him to cure a brain lesion.150 High-ranking clerics and religious could gain close access to the saints by taking on a role within the translation. If a saint was thought to be incorrupt, an inspection might take place, which happened for Cuthbert, Wihtburh and Edmund.151 If not, the remains would be elevated, often washed and placed in a new shrine, and then carried to their new resting place. All of these actions allowed custodians and their proxies to get close to the saints in a way that the crowd could not. These close encounters could also lead to miracles.152 Miracles drew in people of all kinds to translations, and proximity to the body of a saint was highly prized. The custodians ran the show, screened off excavations and tried to moderate participation, but it was a contest. Occasionally this contest was between potential custodians rather than between the custodians and the crowd.
Ælfheah, Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered at the hands of the Danes in 1012. He was buried at St Paul’s and soon proved to be a miracle worker. In 1023 King Cnut gave permission for the remains of Ælfheah to be translated to Christ Church, Canterbury. This event was recorded both in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and in a translation account written by Osbern in the late eleventh century. According to Osbern, Cnut sent for Archbishop Æthelnoth (1020–38) in London and told him of his plan to fulfil a vow to translate Ælfheah’s remains to Canterbury. Miraculously the stone sealing the saint’s tomb was moved by two monks and they found Ælfheah incorrupt. The King, the Archbishop and the monks then took the body to a boat on the Thames. They crossed the river and could hear the distraction being laid on by Cnut’s troops and see the armed men holding the nearby bridge and riverbank. The body was dispatched south with an armed escort as an attack by the citizens of London was predicted. The Archbishop joined the monks whilst the King remained in London, and as he still feared an attack, the body was sent on ahead with a small group and was eventually met by a large crowd of people from Kent. There appears to have been little ceremonial to this smuggling operation, besides the prayers of Archbishop Æthelnoth, until they reached the outskirts of Canterbury several days later. Here they were met by the monks of Christ Church, who formed a procession dressed in the vestments of priests and deacons and led by brothers carrying candles, Gospel-books and jewelled crosses accompanied by the crashing of cymbals and chanting.153
Such tales of relic theft were incorporated into English hagiography from the eleventh century onwards. When Felix’s body was stolen away from Soham to Ramsey by boat, the pursuing competitors from nearby Ely became lost in the fog.154 The three-way struggle over Erkenwald’s body between Barking, Chertsey and London was solved when the saint parted a river allowing the canons of St Paul’s to carry the saint into the City.155 The party sent to translate Kenelm to Winchcombe were intercepted on their return journey by an armed band from Worcester. After an altercation, it was decided that whichever group awoke first should take the martyr’s remains with them. The Winchcombe party awoke and carried off Kenelm, pursued by the Worcester band, and eventually made it home by leaving the road.156 When Abbot Byrhtnoth (c. 970–996/99) translated Wihtburh from Dereham to Ely under the cover of darkness, he had time to observe some of the expected ceremonial forms. Whilst the people of Dereham feasted, Byrhtnoth prayed to the virgin, approached the tomb with incense and greeted the holy body with awe. They carefully placed her coffin onto their vehicle and sang psalms as they made their way out. They were then met by soldiers and were harried by the people of Dereham, when they discovered the ruse. A miraculous star followed their progress to Ely, and this and the fear of Wihtburh put off the crowds. This whole episode seems to have been triggered by the acquisition of the monastery at Dereham by Ely and the refoundation under Byrhtnoth.157 Before her death, Wærburh had foreseen that she would come to rest at Hanbury despite her love for all of her communities and the fact that she died at Threekingham. Her body was kept locked up at Threekingham, but when the people of Hanbury came to claim Wærburh, the locks and bars fell to the ground, and the doors were opened. The people of Hanbury entered whilst the guards slept and they carried the saint away without open conflict.158 Finally, as noted previously, the competition over Mildrith’s body resulted in a war of words between St Gregory’s and St Augustine’s. In Goscelin’s description of the translation to St Augustine’s, the people of Thanet also put up resistance to the removal of their patron.159
As these examples show, the theft motif was used when relics were travelling over a relatively long distance and were being transferred between communities. Tactics generally revolved around either subterfuge or armed force, though these two methods could be combined as in Ælfheah’s translation. What is paramount in all these descriptions is that the will of the saint could not be denied. Where it was not initially clear who or where a saint favoured, their will would be made manifest through miraculous aid for their chosen community. There were obvious benefits to stealing the relics of a known thaumaturge. It showed not only the saint’s approval but also dominance over the community from which the saint was taken. Saints brought with them the potential for financial rewards, miracles and attention from people of every social position. Theft of relics was in a sense a ‘kidnapping and a seduction’, as people interpreted how and why relics had moved over large distances and had been allowed to escape from their erstwhile custodians.160 If a saint did not wish to be moved, they would make it known. Goscelin describes several saints weighing down their coffins, including Æthelburh, Wulfhild and Ywi.161 In Herman’s account of the 1095 translation of Edmund, the saint makes his body easy for the six brothers to carry despite the fact that in the past, he would make himself very heavy when leaving the old church.162
When a saint ‘moved home’ in medieval England, they did so with a translation. Taking on liturgical trappings and being imbued with Church authority meant that in many ways, translations made ‘official’ cults.163 This did not mean a translation was required for an individual to be recognised as a saint, but those saints who did receive them were physically and symbolically incorporated into a church. Taking their rightful place, generally in proximity to the high altar, saints’ bodies could be afforded devotion in an environment controlled by their custodians. These consolidating rites did not bind a saint, however, and if the saint willed it, they could be moved again and again.164 The care taken in translating the saints shows how keen custodians were to not upset them. But this same power was a large part of the attraction of the saints and their relics. To be seen at the head of a translation or handling relics or saying Mass after a successful ceremony would create deep associations between leading clerics and local saints.165 Precedence and preference could be played out through the ordering of processions, the choosing of the bearers of the saint and granting of special access to the relics. A grand translation brought out the local populace and engaged them in the cult of the saints. This attendance appears to have been motivated largely by the likelihood of miracles on such an occasion and the attendant benefits for the locality going forward. It was probably also due to the festive atmosphere and relative rarity of such an occasion, with its powerful attendees, new shrines of precious metal and the chance of curing one’s soul as well as one’s body.
One did not have to move the main shrine of a saint in order to forge a connection to a new location. A direct link to a saint could be established by moving a portion of their relics. On a trip to Rome, Abbot Baldwin took relics of Edmund from Bury with him and distributed them to various churches. Amongst them was St Martin’s Cathedral at Lucca, where an altar was dedicated to Edmund. A young boy was beyond the help of physicians and had been taken to numerous saints. In their travels they heard of Edmund and were directed to St Martin’s. There the family held vigil before Edmund’s altar, and the boy was cured by morning. The family praised God and Edmund, and news of this miracle reached Bury via travellers to Rome. Every year people went to St Martin’s to thank Edmund s for the miracle.166 As well as removing a portion of relics permanently, the remains of the saints could be taken away from their homes for a number of reasons. Even whilst they were separated from their home, the saints remained potent intercessors. Edmund’s relics were taken from Bury to London by the sacristan Aelwine in order to escape the Danish incursions of 1010–1013. The saint and his guardian spent some three years based in St Paul’s churchyard, and miracles were effected in proximity to Edmund’s feretory.167 The relics of Ecgwine were taken from Evesham, not for protection but on a fund-raising tour. The saint travelled through London, Rochester and Winchester amongst other places, and Ecgwine was effective as an intercessor wherever his body happened to be.168 A more common reason for removing the body of a saint from their shrine was to take it out as a part of a procession.
Processions with relics were integral to the occasional ceremonies of translation and the dedication of a church,169 as well as being an important part of the yearly cycle of feasts. The oldest English processional, from St Albans and dating to the third quarter of the twelfth century, does not cover the whole year, but it gives an indication as to when processions were staged.170 The St Albans processional contains provision for processions for the feasts of Alban, John the Baptist, Peter and Paul, the translation of Benedict, Peter ad vincula, the invention of Alban, the Assumption, the decollation of John the Baptist, the nativity of Mary, the exaltation of the Cross, Matthew, Michael, Simon and Jude, All Saints and Martin of Tours.171 Processions were also common for Candlemas, Ash Wednesday and Palm Sunday.172 The Regularis Concordia states that processions should be carried out on Wednesdays and Fridays in Lent and from the Octave of Pentecost to the calends of October.173 In his Monastic Constitutions, Lanfranc records that processions should be carried out on the election of an abbot, Ascension Day, Maundy Thursday, Easter Day, Palm Sunday, Holy Saturday, the Octave of Easter, Christmas, Pentecost, the Assumption of Mary, the feast of the house, Rogation Days, Ash Wednesday, Fridays and Wednesdays in Lent, when receiving a dignitary, as a part of the burial service, Candlemas and as part of the office for the sick.174 Of these occasions, only the processions on Ascension Day, the Rogation Days and saints’ feasts can firmly be linked to the cult of the saints.
In Lanfranc’s Monastic Constitutions, there is a brief ordo for the procession to be carried out on Ascension Day. A procession was to be carried out in albs and could either proceed outside the cloister with banners and relics and ‘all else pertaining to a festal procession’ or go through the cloister without the banners.175 That relics were paraded on Ascension Day is confirmed by William of Malmesbury, who recorded that the arm of Aldhelm was carried in procession with other relics at Salisbury on Ascension Day. In carrying the arm reliquary, Archdeacon Hubald of Sarum was healed of a recurring shoulder and neck complaint.176 Ascension Day was also an occasion for recognition processions, when the congregation and clergy of a chapel or daughter foundation would process to their mother church. In fact, Ascension Day was only one of several occasions when these recognition processions were held, with Pentecost, Palm Sunday, Candlemas, the dedication of the mother church and local saints’ days being common.177 These recognition processions appear later in our period, after about 1100, and may have been an attempt to keep old ties between minster churches and smaller local foundations alive.178 The season of Ascension must have been full of processions as it was customary for them to be performed on the three Rogation Days beforehand.
As early as the death of Bede in 735, there is evidence for the processions on the Rogation Days. In Abbot Cuthbert’s Letter on the Death of Bede, he states that on the Wednesday before Ascension at nine o’clock, the monks left Bede’s deathbed to take part in a ‘procession with relics, as the custom of that day required’.179 It seems that the Frankish practice of marking the three days before Ascension with processions, penance and fasting was taken up by the English church.180 Another early reference to relic carrying on Rogation Days comes from the 747 Council of Clofesho, which exhorts that these days be kept with due reverence, including the carrying of relics amongst the people.181 The observance of the Rogation processions appears to have been maintained throughout our period, and they are included in the St Albans processional.182 There are six Old English homilies from the tenth-century Vercelli Book for the pre-Ascension Rogation Days. In the second of these, homily XII, the homilist emphasises the role of relics in the procession, that they must be carried around the land and that these relics could be remains of holy men, parts of their body, their hair or their clothes.183
Lanfranc records extensive instructions for the Rogation processions in his Monastic Constitutions, including the carrying of banners, holy water, a cross and a Gospel-book and going barefoot with staves to another church where an antiphon for the patron saint would be sung. Following this a lesson and a collect for this same saint was read. They then made ready to celebrate Mass in this church, including a prayer for the patron saint. After Mass a litany of the saints was begun, which included a double invocation of the patron saint after the choir of the prophets. Whilst chanting this litany, they returned, with the litany being shortened or lengthened based on the distance of the walk. Interestingly, no mention is made of the carrying of relics in Lanfranc’s ordo.184 There is also evidence from hagiographical sources of the processing with relics on Rogation Days. Byrhtferth documents the practice at Ramsey of walking barefoot to a church of the Virgin Mary on Rogation Days, with relics in tow. On this occasion, Oswald of Worcester was present and stopped a boat containing the relics from sinking on the way back to Ramsey.185 In Goscelin’s account of the translation and miracles of Liudhard, a Rogation procession was carried out, with the relics of Liudhard brought forth in a golden shrine, in order to bless the people and the produce of the land.186
Processions also helped to mark the feast of a saint or to otherwise honour them. As noted previously, on the feast of Seaxburh, the laity and members of the monastery at Ely went in procession in festive clothes to the sound of music and hymns.187 The people of Dereham and the surroundings performed a recognition procession on the sixth day after Ascension, with banners, crosses, candles and offerings, dedicated to Wihtburh and ending in the church where she was buried before being translated to Ely.188 Aldhelm’s feast at Malmesbury was marked with a procession, after which the shrine was fixed above the door and the faithful passed underneath and made offerings in order to receive intercession. This was the occasion of Hubald’s first cure of his shoulder and neck complaint, when he brushed the shrine when passing below it.189 A similar practice was maintained at Beverley, where the feretory of John was held aloft on Ascension Day so that supplicants could pass under it. A crippled Irishman had come in search of a cure, and after praying to God and John and being prayed for by those who saw him, he was carried under the feretory and cured. The Irishman was taken to the altar, where he gave thanks for the miracle, which William claims became well known locally and in Ireland.190 The shrine of Liudhard was carried out on his feast day by clerics dressed in white. On this occasion, there had been a drought, and on returning to the Church, the prior led the choir in the antiphon Nonne vides quanta sit siccitas et tribulatio in toto mundo, et tu negligenter agis.191 This is usually sung on the invention of Stephen, but its content was deemed fit as a torrent of rain fell that drowned out the singing.192 Thus, a procession of relics could be marshalled against a specific threat or problem.
The shrine of Edmund was also carried outside following his translation in order to end a drought.193 So, too, John of Beverley’s relics were carried out to alleviate a drought effecting the whole of Yorkshire on his feast day. The saint’s relics were carried around the outside of the church, and the clerics were drenched by a sudden storm but their vestments were unharmed.194 Ecgwine’s relics were carried against fire on several occasions.195 Modwenna’s shrine was similarly carried out to stop a fire in its tracks and to end a great gale.196 Oswald of Worcester’s relics were taken to stop fire in Worcester twice in short succession.197 Oswald was also mobilised against a plague in Worcester and the surrounding area:
Wishing most fervently to remedy this evil, the brothers of the church of the Holy Mother of God and Perpetual Virgin Mary at Worcester carried the shrine of the blessed Oswald in a circuit about the city, processing and chanting litanies, and begging with loving affection for this bishop to offer his prayers to God on their behalf and for the health of the people. How wonderful is the love of God and how wondrous his awesome power! At once the plague was not only eliminated entirely in Worcester, but also in the surrounding hamlets, whose inhabitants had come to seek the help of the saint. The plague was not, however, eliminated in the same way in those hamlets whose inhabitants considered these litanies to be of little value and who refrained from taking part in them, but an equal or even more savage fate overwhelmed these people.198
This passage demonstrates the benefits of engaging in such a communal petition. Oswald was clearly capable of eliminating the plague from the whole area, but he only saw fit to help those who asked for help appropriately. The hint in the final sentence, that the fate of those who did not take part in the procession was perhaps worse than other victims of plague, shows that rejecting a saint could be worse than being ignorant of them.
A procession with relics could be proof against almost any harm, from the sin expiated on the Rogation Days to the suffering of a disaster. Processions allowed a saint to go beyond the confines of the church and allowed people to relate to the saint by participating in the procession. The corporate identity of the people involved could coalesce around their holy burden, and this saint could be welcomed by the surrounding community.199 The procession of relics was also a regular opportunity to demonstrate and naturalise the powerful position of the custodians as leaders of a consensus building ceremony with an obvious end point. All participants had to go in the same direction and pass through the same places at the correct time.200 This did not mean that consensus was necessarily achieved, however, especially as processions often went beyond the confines of the church grounds. Going out into public would have required a degree of flexibility and invited unpredictable situations.201 This is demonstrated to a degree in the hagiography. During a Rogation procession of Liudhard’s relics, a woman was struck with a fit of insanity and danced around the feretory, causing the brothers to slap her to bring her to her senses. She was healed when the relics were deposited and Mass was sung, and in thanks the woman brought a silver necklace to Liudhard.202 As with translations, people saw processions as an opportunity to interact directly with a saint at a time of openness and vulnerability, and they were evidently not always appropriate in their behaviour.
Shrines, translations and processions were all important because they marked the location of a saint’s relics. Whilst saints could work miracles anywhere, people were drawn to the saint’s earthly remains to ask for help and give thanks for it. Visiting a shrine implicated you in the community of a saint in a way that distant and/or private prayer did not. The mediating relationship between the human and divine seems to have been helped by a personal visit to the saint. Although people evidently visited for indulgences, sanctuary, penance and prayer, the main draw was always the potential for miracles. Grand occasions like translations and processions focused people’s attention on the saints, gave them an excuse to attend and an opportunity to take part. This taking part may not always have been what the custodians had in mind, however. People jostled for position, ran in front of processions and asked for preferential access. Crowds surged, and custodians took preventative measures to protect themselves and their saintly charges. Whole towns came out for their saints, and they also fought for possession of their saints. Ultimately the saint decided where to go, who to cure and when to intervene. But it was the hagiographers, the voices of the custodians, who interpreted and recorded the saint’s will and the behaviour of the people. In their compositions, hagiographers focused on shrines as the controlled centre of a saint’s cult. They made note of the miracles witnessed there and the stories which circulated there and could investigate further if they thought it necessary. There was likely a genuine focus on the shrine, but this was certainly magnified by the work of the hagiographers. The shrine was the home of the official discourse of a cult, and its main stock in trade was miracles. The following two chapters explore how the miraculous was fostered by the people who interacted with the saints.
Notes
· 1 Thacker, ‘Loca Sanctorum’, p. 2.
· 2 Finucane, p. 39.
· 3 John Howe, ‘Creating Symbolic Landscapes: Medieval Development of Sacred Space’, in Inventing Medieval Landscapes: Senses of Place in Western Europe, ed. by John Howe and Michael Wolfe (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002), pp. 208–23 (p. 214).
· 4 ‘Tunc abbas, erectis ad caelum oculis, uidit ingentem splendorem inde super aeccle-siam ipsam descendere, eamque de superioribus penetrare. Quo uiso, et suis qui hoc secum uidere merebantur ostenso, pio affectu suspirans ait: ‘Vere pius pater Dunstanus iam ad suam festiuitatem uadit, interesse uolens obsequio quod sui filii hac in nocte Deo et sibi exhibituri sunt.’ Quod ita, sicut dixerat, actum esse, experti sunt fratres qui ipsi festo meruerunt interesse. Nam ex dulci sanctoque affectu quo in Deum et famulum eius iocundati sunt, sanctam praesentiam eius sibi adesse persenserunt.’ Eadmer, Miracula S. Dunstani, pp. 180–1.
· 5 Sarah Hamilton and Andrew Spicer, ‘Defining the Holy: The Delineation of Sacred Space’, in Defining the Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. by Sarah Hamilton and Andrew Spicer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 1–23 (p. 1).
· 6 Adrian Ivakhiv, ‘Orchestrating Sacred Space: Beyond the “Social Construction” of Nature’, Ecotheology, 8 (2003), 11–29 (pp. 24–26).
· 7 Finucane, p. 55.
· 8 Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record and Event 1000–1215 (Aldershot: Scolar, 1987), pp. 31–2.
· 9 See chapter V.
· 10 John Crook, The Architectural Setting of the Cult of the Saints in the Early Christian West c. 300 – c. 1200 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), pp. 12–13.
· 11 Ibid., p. 5.
· 12 Lantfred, Miracula S. Swithuni, pp. 270–87.
· 13 Crook, Setting, pp. 163–4.
· 14 Biddle, p. 25.
· 15 Lantfred, Miracula S. Swithuni, pp. 324–7.
· 16 Goscelin, Vita S. Vulfhilde, pp. 430–1.
· 17 Goscelin, Miraculis S. Augustini, p. 410.
· 18 Goscelin, Translationis S. Augustini, pp. 427–9.
· 19 Miracula S. Swithuni, pp. 680–1.
· 20 Arcoid, Miracula S. Erkenwaldi, pp. 160–3.
· 21 Ibid., pp. 150–5.
· 22 Goscelin, Miracula S. Mildrethe, pp. 144–5.
· 23 Goscelin, Translationis S. Augustini, pp. 430–7.
· 24 Herman, Miracula S. Edmundi, pp. 134–7.
· 25 Love, Eleventh-Century, pp. cii–cvi, 68.
· 26 Goscelin, Vita S. Wihtburge, pp. 64–7.
· 27 Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, The Hagiography of the Female Saints of Ely, ed. and trans. by Rosalind C. Love (Oxford: Clarendon, 2004), pp. xliii, 66–7.
· 28 Goscelin, Miracula S. Yuonis, pp. lix–lx, Miracula S. Yuonis, p. lxxvi.
· 29 William R. Caraher, ‘Abandonment, Authority, and Religious Continuity in Post-Classical Greece’, International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 14 (2010), 241–54 (p. 244).
· 30 Bede, HE, I.30, p. 107.
· 31 Alan Thacker, ‘Monks, Preaching and Pastoral Care in Early Anglo-Saxon England’, in Pastoral Care Before the Parish, ed. by John Blair and Richard Sharpe (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1992), pp. 137–70 (p. 167).
· 32 John Crook, English Medieval Shrines (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011), p. 104.
· 33 Crook, Setting, pp. 76–9.
· 34 Ibid., pp. 243–4.
· 35 Ibid., pp. 192–3, 236–7.
· 36 See Goscelin, Vita S. Edithe, p. 293; Goscelin, Translationis S. Augustini, p. 437; Goscelin, Virtutibus S. Adriani, Vespasian B.xx, fols 234v-235r, Harley 105, fol. 206v; Herman, Miracula S. Edmundi, pp. 104–5, 340–1; Miracula S. Ithamari, pp. 433–6; Miracula S. Bege, pp. 516–19; Geoffrey, Miracula S. Modwenne, pp. 186–9, 198–201; Dominic, Miracula S. Ecgwini, pp. 92–3; Miracula S. Mylburge, pp. 567–8; Arcoid, Miracula S. Erkenwaldi, pp. 128–33, 135–41.
· 37 Aelred, De sanctis Hagustaldensis, p. 194; Wulfstan, Narratio de S. Swithuno, pp. 494–5; Miracula S. Guthlaci, pp. 55–7; Arcoid, Miracula S. Erkenwaldi, pp. 142–5; Goscelin, Translationis S. Augustini, p. 443.
· 38 Crook, Setting, p. 185.
· 39 Ibid., pp. 218–33.
· 40 Crook, Shrines, pp. 192–5.
· 41 Bede, HE, IV.3, pp. 346–7.
· 42 Crook, Setting, p. 281.
· 43 Ben Nilson, ‘The Medieval Experience at the Shrine’, in Pilgrimage Explored, ed. by J. Stopford (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 1999), pp. 95–122 (pp. 97–8).
· 44 Arcoid, Miracula S. Erkenwaldi, pp. 152–3.
· 45 Goscelin, Translatione S. Ethelburge, pp. 435–52.
· 46 Goscelin, Vita S. Wlsini, pp. 79–80.
· 47 Lantfred, Miracula S. Swithuni, pp. 296–307.
· 48 Wulfstan, Narratio de S. Swithuno, pp. 568–9.
· 49 Nilson, ‘Medieval Experience’, p. 108.
· 50 Lantfred, Miracula S. Swithuni, pp. 292–7; Wulfstan, Narratio de S. Swithuno, pp. 504–7. See also the case of Abbot Scotland, whose convalescence was disturbed by the noise of the monks of St Augustine’s performing the office and of the supplicants keeping vigil, Goscelin, Miracula S. Mildrethe, p. 207.
· 51 Goscelin, Vita S. Ethelburge, p. 415.
· 52 On the liturgical celebration of a feast see Appendix I.
· 53 Goscelin, Vita S. Ethelburge, pp. 415–16.
· 54 Osbern, Miracula S. Dunstani, pp. 136–9.
· 55 A contrast with Judith’s restriction on the shrines at Barking is the case of the painter Teodwin at St Paul’s. Teodwin was renovating the area around Erkenwald’s tomb. Instead of celebrating the saint’s feast, Teodwin continued to paint and blocked access for the many pilgrims who wished to visit Erkenwald. As he painted, Teodwin lost strength, was gripped by pain and fell to the ground from his scaffold. He drifted into sleep and was visited by Erkenwald, who beat him with his crozier to impress Teodwin’s disrespect upon him. See Arcoid, Miracula S. Erkenwaldi, pp. 158–61. This demonstrates the difference between the authority of the custodians and that of a lay contractor.
· 56 Colgrave, Two Lives, pp. 278–81.
· 57 Symeon, Libellus, pp. 104–5.
· 58 Ibid., pp. 106–7.
· 59 Ibid., pp. 176–7.
· 60 Ibid., pp. 108–11.
· 61 Victoria Tudor, ‘The Misogyny of Saint Cuthbert’, Archaeologia Aeliana, Fifth Series, 12 (1984), 157–67 (p. 165).
· 62 Goscelin, Miraculis S. Augustini, pp. 407–8. The penitential psalms were numbered 6, 31, 37, 50, 101, 129 and 142 in the Vulgate. They were first listed as a group by Cassiodorus in the sixth century and were used to beg for God’s forgiveness and aid. See Clare Costley King’oo, Miserere Mei: The Penitential Psalms in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), pp. 1–14.
· 63 Passio S. Indracti, in Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature, 900–1066 (London: Hambledon, 1993), pp. 442–4.
· 64 Miracula S. Swithuni, pp. 676–95; Lantfred, Miracula S. Swithuni, pp. 330–1.
· 65 J. Charles Cox, The Sanctuaries and Sanctuary Seekers of Mediaeval England (London: Allen, 1911), pp. 2–11.
· 66 John P. Sexton, ‘Saint’s Law: Anglo-Saxon Sanctuary Protection in the Translatio et Miracula S. Swithuni’, Florilegium, 23.2 (2006), 61–80 (p. 62).
· 67 Gervase Rosser, ‘Sanctuary and Social Negotiation’, in The Cloister and the World: Essays in Medieval History in Honour of Barbara Harvey, ed. by John Blair and Brian Golding (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), pp. 57–79 (p. 62).
· 68 Candace Gregory-Abbott, ‘Sacred Outlaws: Outlawry and the Medieval Church’, in Outlaws in Medieval and Early Modern England: Crime, Government and Society, c.1066-c.1600, ed. by John C. Appleby and Paul Dalton (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 75–90 (pp. 86–7).
· 69 For example, see Goscelin, Miraculis S. Augustini, pp. 400–6; Goscelin, Vita S. Edithe, pp. 278–80; Goscelin, Vita S. Wlsini, p. 78; Miracula S. Ithamari, pp. 431–2; Passio S. Edwardi, pp. 14–15; Herman, Miracula S. Edmundi, pp. 58–9; Miracula S. Yuonis, pp. lxxvii–lxxviii; Miracula S. Guthlaci, pp. 57–8.
· 70 Finucane’s evidence comes from the cults of Thomas Becket, Frideswide, Thomas Cantilupe, Wulfstan of Worcester, Simon de Montfort, William of Norwich and Godric. His designation of ‘lowest class’ seems to be all non-nobles and non-religious supplicants. See Finucane, pp. 143–6.
· 71 Sigal also includes numbers for merchants and the bourgeois, who come in at 0.86% and 0.78% respectively. The gender balance of the aristocracy was 86% male to 14% female, and the gender balance for the religious was 97.4% male to 2.6% female. See Sigal, L’homme et le Miracle, pp. 289–301.
· 72 Bailey, ‘Wives’, pp. 199–201, 217–19.
· 73 Bailey, ‘Rich and Poor’, pp. 12–15.
· 74 Bailey, ‘Rich and Poor’, pp. 23–4; Bailey ‘Wives’, pp. 218–19.
· 75 Osbern, Miracula S. Dunstani, pp. 131–3; Eadmer, Miracula S. Dunstani, pp. 162–3.
· 76 Eadmer, Miracula S. Dunstani, pp. 162–3.
· 77 Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 3.
· 78 Ibid., p. 11.
· 79 Ibid., p. 191.
· 80 Ibid., p. 11.
· 81 Turner, ‘Betwixt and Between’, pp. 234–43.
· 82 Ibid., p. 236.
· 83 Turner, Ritual Process, p. 96.
· 84 Ibid., p. 129.
· 85 Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage, pp. 34–5.
· 86 Turner, Ritual Process, p. 122.
· 87 Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage, p. 232.
· 88 Turner, Ritual Process, p. 142.
· 89 Bailey, ‘Modern and Medieval’, pp. 495–6.
· 90 Michael J. Sallnow, ‘Communitas Reconsidered: The Sociology of Andean Pilgrimage’, Man, New Series, 16 (1981), 163–82 (pp. 163, 179–80).
· 91 John Eade and Michael J. Sallnow, ‘Introduction’, in Contesting the Sacred, ed. by John Eade and Michael J. Sallnow (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 1–29 (p. 15).
· 92 Eade, pp. 73–5.
· 93 Bailey, ‘Modern and Medieval’, pp. 497–9.
· 94 Bailey, ‘Peter Brown’, p. 39.
· 95 Bailey, ‘Modern and Medieval’, p. 508.
· 96 The Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen, trans. by Edward Walford (London: Bohn, 1855), pp. 234–6.
· 97 Vita Sancti Ambrosii, Mediolanensis Episcopi, a Paulino eius Notario ad Beatum Augustinum Conscripta, ed. and trans. by Mary Simplicia Kaniecka, Catholic University of America Patristic Studies, 16 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1928), pp. 52–5.
· 98 Ibid., pp. 70–1, 393.
· 99 Ibid., p. 74.
· 100 Ibid., pp. 74–5.
· 101 Alan Thacker, ‘The Making of a Local Saint’, in Local Saints and Local Churches, ed. by Alan Thacker and Richard Sharpe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 45–73 (pp. 50–1).
· 102 Gregorii I Papae Registrum Epistolorum, ed. by Paul Ewald and Ludovic M. Hart-mann, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae 1–2, 2 vols (Berlin: Weidmann, 1891–1899), I (1891), pp. 263–6.
· 103 ‘cum supra sancta eius altaria ei in libamen ob sanctificationem illorum offerebantur reliquiarum, sanguis sanctorum quibus adsignata est semper illos intravit pannos utique tinctos’. Bertram Colgrave, ed. and trans., The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great, by an Anonymous Monk of Whitby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 108–11.
· 104 Gregorii I Epistolorum, I, pp. 263–6.
· 105 Ibid., p. 52.
· 106 Lapidge, Swithun, p. 10.
· 107 Thacker, ‘Making a Saint’, pp. 54–5.
· 108 Bede, HE, II.3, pp. 142–5; III.23, pp. 288–9; IV.3, pp. 344–5; III.17, pp. 264–5; III.26, pp. 308–9; IV.19, pp. 390–7.
· 109 Colgrave, Two Lives, pp. 130–3, 290–7; Bedas Metrische Vita Sancti Cuthberti, ed. by Werner Jaager, Palaestra, 198 (Leipzig: Mayer & Müller, 1935), pp. 120–2; Colgrave, Guthlac, pp. 160–3.
· 110 Thacker, ‘Making a Saint’, pp. 71–2.
· 111 Lantfred, Miracula S. Swithuni, pp. 284–5.
· 112 Lapidge, Swithun, p. 16.
· 113 Ibid., p. 335.
· 114 Wulfstan, Narratio de S. Swithuno, pp. 452–61.
· 115 Ibid., pp. 462–63.
· 116 Ibid., pp. 492–7.
· 117 Henry Richards Luard, ed., Annales Monastici, Rolls Series, 36, 5 vols (London: Longman, 1864–1869), II, p. 57.
· 118 David Rollason, Northumbria, 500–1100: Creation and Destruction of a Kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 247.
· 119 Bede, HE, V.20, pp. 530–1.
· 120 Aelred, De sanctis Hagustaldensis, pp. 193–200.
· 121 Vita S. Birini, pp. 46–7; Miracula S. Guthlaci, pp. 55–7.
· 122 Arcoid, Miracula S. Erkenwaldi, pp. 152–5; Miracula S. Ithamari, pp. 429–30; Herman, Miracula S. Edmundi, pp. 112–23; Goscelin, Translationis S. Augustini, pp. 413–17; Luard, II, 43; Goscelin, Translatione S. Ethelburge, pp. 435–52.
· 123 Translatione S. Ethelburge, pp. 435–52; Wulfstan, Vita S. Æthelwoldi, pp. 64–7; Goscelin, Vita S. Edithe, pp. 270–1; Goscelin, Miracula S. Kenelmi, pp. 60–9; Goscelin, Vita S. Wlsini, pp. 79–80; Miracula S. Ithamari, pp. 429–30; Robert, Translatio S. Wenefrede, p. 727.
· 124 Goscelin, Vita S. Wlsini, p. 80.
· 125 Lantfred, Miracula S. Swithuni, pp. 296–307; Wulfstan, Narratio de S. Swithuno, pp. 568–9.
· 126 Vita S. Rumwoldi, pp. 114–15; Geoffrey, Miracula S. Modwenne, pp. 180–1; Arcoid, Miracula S. Erkenwaldi, pp. 154–5; Wulfstan, Vita S. Æthelwoldi, pp. 64–7; Vita S. Birini, pp. 46–7; Goscelin, Vita S. Wlsini, pp. 80–1; Miracula S. Yuonis, p. lxxvi.
· 127 Wulfstan, Vita S. Æthelwoldi, pp. 64–7.
· 128 Goscelin, Translatione S. Ethelburge, pp. 435–52.
· 129 Eadmer, Miracula S. Oswaldi, pp. 300–5.
· 130 Arcoid, Miracula S. Erkenwaldi, pp. 132–5, 152–3.
· 131 Goscelin, Vita S. Edithe, pp. 270–1; Herman, Miracula S. Edmundi, pp. 112–23; Miracula S. Guthlaci, pp. 55–7; D. Bethell, ed., ‘The Lives of St Osyth of Essex and St Osyth of Aylesbury’, Analecta Bollandiana, 88 (1970), 75–127 (p. 116); Goscelin, Translationis S. Augustini, pp. 413–17.
· 132 Eadmer, Miracula S. Oswaldi, pp. 300–5.
· 133 Herman, Miracula S. Edmundi, pp. 120–1; Robert, Translatio S. Wenefrede, p. 731.
· 134 Robert, Translatio S. Wenefrede, p. 731; Passio S. Edwardi, pp. 9–10.
· 135 Goscelin, Translatione S. Ethelburge, pp. 435–52; Herman, Miracula S. Edmundi, pp. 118–21; Goscelin, Translationis S. Augustini, pp. 417, 435–6.
· 136 Herman, Miracula S. Edmundi, pp. 118–19.
· 137 Robert W. Shaffern, ‘The Medieval Theology of Indulgences’, in R. N. Swanson, ed., Promissory Notes on the Treasury of Merits: Indulgences in Late Medieval Europe, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 5 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 11–36 (p. 11).
· 138 R. N. Swanson, Indulgences in Late Medieval England: Passports to Paradise? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 11.
· 139 Nicholas Vincent, ‘Some Pardoners’ Tales: The Earliest English Indulgences’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 12 (2002), 23–58 (pp. 27–8).
· 140 Falko Neininger, ed., English Episcopal Acta: London 1076–1187, English Episcopal Acta, 15 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 16.
· 141 Julia Barrow, ed., English Episcopal Acta: Hereford 1079–1234, English Episcopal Acta, 7 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 30–1.
· 142 Brian Kemp, ed., English Episcopal Acta: Salisbury 1078–1217, English Episcopal Acta, 18 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 80–1.
· 143 C. R. Cheney and Bridgett E. A. Jones, eds, English Episcopal Acta: Canterbury 1162–1190, English Episcopal Acta, 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 81.
· 144 EEA London 1076–1187, p. 93.
· 145 Brian Kemp, trans., ‘The Miracles of the Hand of St James: Translated with an Introduction’, Berkshire Archaeological Journal, 65 (1970), 1–19 (pp. 2–3).
· 146 Vincent, pp. 39, 43 and see Francis M. R. Ramsey, ed., English Episcopal Acta: Bath and Wells 1061–1205, English Episcopal Acta, 10 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 30; EEA Canterbury 1162–1190, p. 21; M. G. Snape, ed., English Episcopal Acta: Durham 1153–1195, English Episcopal Acta, 24 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 101–2; David M. Smith, ed., English Episcopal Acta: Lincoln 1067–1185, English Episcopal Acta, 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 145; EEA London 1076–1187, p. 109; Christopher Harper-Bill, ed., English Episcopal Acta: Norwich 1070–1214, English Episcopal Acta, 6 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 113; EEA Salisbury 1078–1217, p. 80.
· 147 Vincent, pp. 39, 43; David M. Smith, ed., English Episcopal Acta: Lincoln 1186–1206, English Episcopal Acta, 4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 199; EEA London 1076–1187, pp. 56–7.
· 148 Arcoid, Miracula S. Erkenwaldi, pp. 152–3; Herman, Miracula S. Edmundi, pp. 118–21; Goscelin, Translatione S. Ethelburge, pp. 435–52; Passio S. Edwardi, pp. 9–10.
· 149 Eadmer, Miracula S. Oswaldi, pp. 300–4.
· 150 Miracula S. Guthlaci, p. 56.
· 151 Symeon of Durham, Historia Regum, in Symeonis Opera, I, 247–61; Goscelin, Vita S. Wihtburge, pp. 74–83; Herman, Miracula S. Edmundi, pp. 112–17; Goscelin, Miracula S. Edmundi, pp. 246–8, 278–86.
· 152 Goscelin, Vita S. Wlsini, pp. 84–5; Miracula S. Mylburge, pp. 567–8; Goscelin, Translationis S. Augustini, pp. 414–17, 435–6; Arcoid, Miracula S. Erkenwaldi, pp. 153–5; Robert, Translatio S. Wenefrede, pp. 730–1.
· 153 Osbern, ‘Translatio Sancti Ælfegi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi et Martiris’, ed. and trans. by Alexander R. Rumble and Rosemary Morris, in The Reign of Cnut: King of England, Denmark and Norway, ed. by Alexander R. Rumble (London: Leicester University Press, 1994), pp. 283–315.
· 154 W. D. Macray, ed., Chronicon Abbatiae Rameseiensis, Rolls Series, 83 (London: Longman, 1886), pp. 127–8.
· 155 Vita S. Erkenwaldi, in E. Gordon Whatley, ed. and trans., The Saint of London: The Life and Miracles of St Erkenwald, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 58 (Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1989), pp. 91–5.
· 156 Goscelin, Miracula S. Kenelmi, pp. 68–73.
· 157 Goscelin, Vita S. Wihtburge, pp. 68–75.
· 158 Ibid., pp. 44–7.
· 159 Goscelin, Miracula S. Mildrethe, pp. 170–6.
· 160 Patrick J. Geary, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages, rev. edn (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 132–4.
· 161 Kay Slocum, ‘Goscelin of Saint-Bertin and the Translation Ceremony for Saints Ethelburg, Hildelith and Wulfhild’, in Barking Abbey and Medieval Literary Culture, ed. by Brown and Bussell, pp. 73–93 (p. 85).
· 162 Herman, Miracula S. Edmundi, pp. 118–19.
· 163 Thacker, ‘Making a Saint’, pp. 65–73.
· 164 As was the case with Rumwold, who predicted he would rest for a year at his place of birth and death, then move on to Brackley for two years and finally remain at Buck-ingham. Vita S. Rumwoldi, pp. 114–15.
· 165 Much the same could be said about clerics leading a Mass for a saint on their feast day. See Appendix I.
· 166 Herman, Miracula S. Edmundi, pp. 80–5.
· 167 Herman, Miracula S. Edmundi, pp. 28–39.
· 168 Dominic, Miracula S. Ecgwini, pp. 104–17.
· 169 On the consecration of a church, see Helen Gittos, Liturgy, Architecture, and Sacred Spaces in Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 228–56.
· 170 Pfaff, Liturgy, p. 167.
· 171 K. D. Hartzell, Catalogue of Manuscripts Written or Owned in England up to 1200 Containing Music (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), p. 471.
· 172 Gittos, pp. 103–5.
· 173 Thomas Symons, ed. and trans., Regularis Concordia Anglicae Nationis Monachorum Sanctimonialiumque (London: Nelson, 1953), pp. 32–3.
· 174 David Knowles and Christopher L. Brooke, eds and trans, The Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002), p. 251.
· 175 Ibid., pp. 94–5.
· 176 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, I, pp. 642–5 (V.270).
· 177 Gittos, pp. 138–9.
· 178 John Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 454–6.
· 179 ‘ambulauimus cum reliquiis sanctorum, ut consuetudo illius diei poscebat.’ Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, eds and trans, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 584–5.
· 180 Joyce Hill, ‘The Litaniae Maiores and Minores in Rome, Francia and Anglo-Saxon England: Terminology, Texts and Traditions’, Early Medieval Europe, 9 (2000), 211–46 (pp. 245–6).
· 181 Arthur West Haddan and William Stubbs, eds, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 1869–78), III, p. 368.
· 182 Hartzell, p. 470.
· 183 D. G. Scragg, ed., The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts, Early English Text Society, 300 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 228–9.
· 184 Knowles and Brooke, pp. 74–9. On litanies see Appendix I.
· 185 Byrhtferth, Vita S. Oswaldi, pp. 132–5.
· 186 Goscelin, Translationis S. Augustini, p. 443.
· 187 Vita Sexburge, pp. 184–5.
· 188 Goscelin, Vita S. Wihtburge, pp. 60–5.
· 189 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, I, pp. 642–3 (V.270).
· 190 William Ketell, Miracula S. Johannis, pp. 278–80.
· 191 ‘Surely you see the great drought and distress in the whole world, and yet you do nothing.’
· 192 Goscelin, Translationis S. Augustini, p. 443.
· 193 Herman, Miracula S. Edmundi, pp. 120–1.
· 194 William Ketell, Miracula S. Johannis, pp. 269–71.
· 195 Dominic, Miracula S. Ecgwini, pp. 120–5.
· 196 Geoffrey, Miracula S. Modwenne, pp. 210–11.
· 197 Eadmer, Miracula S. Oswaldi, pp. 315–19.
· 198 ‘Cui malo fratres aecclesiae sanctae Dei genetricis ac perpetuae uirginis Mariae Wigornensis mederi summopere desiderantes, scrinium beati Osuualdi per circumitum urbis cum laetaniis procedentes deferunt, ipsum pontificem suas preces Deo pro sua populique salute offere pio affectu postulantes. Mira Dei pietas, mira et tremenda potestas! Extemplo pestilentia tota non solum Wigornam reliquit, sed et uillas circumiacentes de quibus incolae sui aduenerant, opem sancti uiri implorantes. Villas autem, quarum cultores letanias ipsas paruipendentes eis interesse supersederunt, non ita deseruit, sed aut par aut saeuitia maior super eos efferbuit.’ Eadmer, Miracula S. Oswaldi, pp. 318–19.
· 199 Sabine MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), pp. 18–22.
· 200 C. Clifford Flanigan, ‘The Moving Subject: Medieval Liturgical Processions in Semi-otic and Cultural Perspective’, in Moving Subjects: Processional Performance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. by Kathleen Ashley and Wim Hüsken, Ludus, 5 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001), pp. 35–51 (pp. 39–45).
· 201 Kathleen Ashley, ‘Introduction: The Moving Subjects of Processional Performance’, in Moving Subjects, ed. by Ashley and Hüsken, pp. 7–34 (pp. 22–3).
· 202 Goscelin, Translationis S. Augustini, p. 443.