Osbert of Clare and the reforging of Westminster Abbey’s past

Abstract

AbstractTwelfth-century Westminster Abbey was a centre of forgery production: its scriptorium not only produced charters claiming rights and privileges for its own house but also contributed to the production of spurious documents for other English monasteries. Among these forgeries, the distinctive draftsmanship of one monk—Osbert of Clare—has been traced in some of Westminster’s longer and more elaborate creations. But Osbert was more than a forger, he also wrote hagiographical Lives of saints, including that of Edward the Confessor, whose cult he fiercely championed. Osbert’s different identities have long been recognised, but never reconciled. This essay investigates both Osbert’s forgeries and hagiography, and in doing so reveals that it is only by considering these different genres of writing together that Osbert’s (and his abbey’s) ambitions can be fully recognised. In particular, it appears that Osbert’s forgeries sought to claim prestige for Westminster not only through their contents, but also through the memories they invoked and invented.