Early Medieval England Research Articles

:Bishop Æthelwold, His Followers, and Saints’ Cults in Early Medieval England: Power, Belief, and Religious Reform

:<i>Bishop Æthelwold, His Followers, and Saints’ Cults in Early Medieval England: Power, Belief, and Religious Reform</i>

Where is everybody? The unburied dead in late Roman and early medieval England

Substantial debate surrounds the relative lack of formal burials in Britain during the fifth century AD, which was a key period of social and economic transition following the withdrawal of the Roman army. Here, the authors argue that the ‘missing fifth century’ may be explained, in part, by the continuation of archaeologically invisible mortuary treatments practised in the preceding Iron Age and Roman period. Compilation of published radiocarbon dates from human remains found in cave and riverine contexts demonstrates that a variety of methods for the disposal of the dead—outside of formal cemeteries—existed in the first millennium AD.

Зарубежная историография о положении женщины в англосаксонском обществе VII–XI веков

The article focuses on foreign historiography devoted to the place and role of women in Anglo-Saxonsociety of the 7th – 11thcenturies. Based on a review of the main academic publications, three successive periods are identified: the end of the 19th – 1st half of the 20th cc. – the beginning of the study of early medieval English women as subjects of history; 1950–1980s – the beginning of systematic research in this area; the turn of the 1980–1990s to our days – a significant increase in the number of publications due to the wide use of gender methodology. While in the second period medievalists demonstrated the importance of women in Anglo-Saxon society, historians of subsequent generations sought to emphasize their suppression. It is shown that despite the extensive number of special works, in modern medieval studies there is no holistic understanding of the position of women in early medieval England.

Control of Desire and Resistance to Torture: Masculinities and Virginity within Marriage in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints

ABSTRACT A commitment to virginity within marriage is far from normative in early medieval England. Yet three of the twenty-six saints' lives curated in one volume by Ælfric have virgin spouses as protagonists. Saints' lives provide an insight into behaviour that is, by definition, extraordinary, they also act as exempla. Thus, married virginity is not easily achievable, but it is of clear interest to Ælfric and his audience. In this article, I will examine the implications of this unusual identity for masculinity through an analysis of the legends of the married virgins Julian and Basilissa, Cecilia and Valerian and Chrysanthus and Daria in Ælfric's Lives of Saints (from this point, I will be collectively refer to them as The Lives of the Virgin Spouses). A virgin marriage can destabilise the process of gender performance through heterosexual desire. The virgin spouses, therefore, have the potential to subvert gender conventions by revealing the possibilities for alternative masculinities or a third gender, by troubling the more established masculinities present in hagiography such as martial or regal identities. Yet my analysis of these texts, through the lens of Douglas Schrock and Michael Schwalbe's theory of manhood acts, demonstrates that this potential is not realised as masculinity remains tied to concepts of dominance and female virginity is subordinated by its links to vulnerability. Schrock and Schwalbe describe how manhood acts can construct a more esteemed masculinity, compensating for perceived deficiencies in non-hegemonic masculinities. I explore how, in The Lives of the Virgin Spouses, manhood reinforces a contrast between masculinity and femininity, such as through alternative depictions of torture and sexual desire. Male virginity becomes centred around autonomy, self-discipline and commitment, producing a venerable identity in opposition to female virginity, which is focused on bodily enclosure. My discussion thus contributes to the understanding of manhood acts, as well as the functioning of masculinity within Old English literature. Virginity within marriage is more than an early-medieval Christian ideal unobtainable to most. Male virginity in hagiography provides new ways of understanding masculinity.

Capturing the fusion of two ancestries and kinship structures in Merovingian Flanders

The Merovingian period (5th to 8th cc AD) was a time of demographic, socioeconomic, cultural, and political realignment in Western Europe. Here, we report the whole-genome shotgun sequence data of 30 human skeletal remains from a coastal Late Merovingian site of Koksijde (675 to 750 AD), alongside 18 remains from two Early to Late Medieval sites in present-day Flanders, Belgium. We find two distinct ancestries, one shared with Early Medieval England and the Netherlands, while the other, minor component, reflecting likely continental Gaulish ancestry. Kinship analyses identified no large pedigrees characteristic to elite burials revealing instead a high modularity of distant relationships among individuals of the main ancestry group. In contrast, individuals with >90% Gaulish ancestry had no kinship links among sampled individuals. Evidence for population structure and major differences in the extent of Gaulish ancestry in the main group, including in a mother-daughter pair, suggests ongoing admixture in the community at the time of their burial. The isotopic and genetic evidence combined supports a model by which the burials, representing an established coastal nonelite community, had incorporated migrants from inland populations. The main group of burials at Koksijde shows an abundance of >5 cM long shared allelic intervals with the High Medieval site nearby, implying long-term continuity and suggesting that similarly to Britain, the Early Medieval ancestry shifts left a significant and long-lasting impact on the genetic makeup of the Flemish population. We find substantial allele frequency differences between the two ancestry groups in pigmentation and diet-associated variants, including those linked with lactase persistence, likely reflecting ancestry change rather than local adaptation.

Penance, Murder, and the Sanctity of Close Kinship in Early Medieval England and Francia

ABSTRACT Many secular and ecclesiastical texts from early medieval England and Francia between the ninth and eleventh centuries show that in these societies, the killing of kin was treated as a distinct, and far more severe, offence than the killing of non-relatives. This article explores the differences in the treatment of these offences, demonstrating that there was a substantial social aversion to the killing of relatives among contemporaries, and considers some of the reasons for this reaction. It is also argued that the example of killing one’s kin reveals important details about the conceptualisation of kinship in English and Frankish societies more widely: notably that bonds of close kinship were considered to possess a distinctly sacred element to them, and that this marked ties of close kinship out as different from other kinds of social bonds.

The Origin Legends of Early Medieval Britain and Ireland, by Lindy Brady

<i>The Origin Legends of Early Medieval Britain and Ireland</i>, by Lindy Brady

:Law, Literature, and Social Regulation in Early Medieval England

:<i>Law, Literature, and Social Regulation in Early Medieval England</i>

:Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England

:<i>Art and the Formation of Early Medieval England</i>

The Ruined Landscapes of Beowulf : Apocalypse and Hope

Abstract: A wide variety of scholars have examined the settings of the Old English epic Beowulf , interpreting the text in a myriad of ways and providing valuable information on sources and analogues. This article seeks to build upon and add to this body of scholarship by applying landscape history and a variety of archaeological evidence to the poem in order to develop a further understanding of the landscape settings of Beowulf as literary representations of real topographical features of early medieval England. Attention is paid to the mere and lair of the Grendle-kin, the barrow of the dragon, and Beowulf’s own final resting place. Analysis of these landscapes, grounded in the historical topography of England, enhances an interpretation of the text as a statement on humanity’s relationship with the past and hope for the future.

Women of the Conversion Period: a biomolecular investigation of mobility in early medieval England

ABSTRACTExogamous marriage alliances involving royal women played a prominent role in the conversion of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to Christianity in the seventh century AD. Yet the large number of well-furnished female burials from this period suggests a broader change in the role of women. The authors present the results of isotopic analysis of seventh-century burials, comparing male and female mobility and the mobility of females from well-furnished versus poorly/unfurnished burials. Results suggest increased mobility during the Conversion Period that is, paradoxically, most noticeable among women buried in poorly furnished graves; their well-furnished contemporaries were more likely to have grown up near to their place of burial.

Se ðe oðran naman wæs geciged: the Naming of Bishops and Clerics in Late Anglo-Saxon England

ABSTRACT In studying medieval societies, etymology can help us to understand words and their uses. Names, too, can be interpreted as having their own meanings. Moreover, between the Carolingian era and the Gregorian reform, clerics and monks belonged to increasingly distinct categories of society. As these assertions were often true in early medieval England, it is legitimate to ask whether the names of ecclesiastics were affected. Implicit norms affect the choice of their names, which seem less varied than those of the aristocrats. Their names, although belonging to the same culture as the ecclesiastics themselves, were often Latinised or accompanied by specific titles. Sometimes the name was changed when someone became a cleric (cloister name); sometimes double names were adopted; sometimes a child’s name reflected his parents’ intention for him to be an ecclesiastic (clerical name). The aim of this article is to assess the role of these practices in ninth- to eleventh-century England.

‘Exeter Riddle 4’ and Two Other Bell Riddles

ABSTRACT In early medieval England, the ringing of bells served a wide range of functions. This article argues that a detailed understanding of bells and their everyday use can help to explain the intricate narratives and elaborate language of three Latin and Old English riddles. The first, the late antique ‘Riddle 80’ by Symphosius, describes a dinner bell and the idle chatter of a drunken party. The second, Tatwine of Canterbury’s ‘Riddle 7’, presents a funeral bell hanging in a tower as a deposed emperor who is hung and beaten. The third, the well-known ‘Exeter Riddle 4’, presents an everyday monastic bell as if it were an obedient monk, and it casts their relationship as interdependent and symbiotic. The bell solution has been heavily disputed. However, when the riddle is read alongside the rich context of monastic culture, and with careful attention to linguistic detail, this solution is confirmed.

Tiffany Beechy, Aesthetics and the Incarnation in Early Medieval Britain: Materiality and the Flesh of the Word

<scp>Tiffany Beechy</scp>, <i>Aesthetics and the Incarnation in Early Medieval Britain: Materiality and the Flesh of the Word</i>

St. Beowulf: Hagiography and Heroic Identity in Beowulf

Abstract: Debates over the role of Christianity in Beowulf have not fully taken into account hagiographic models. Although saints' lives were among the first written materials to flourish in early medieval England, relatively little has been done to examine the influence of hagiography on Beowulf . After considering some of the reasons for the lack of such approaches, this essay examines Beowulf in light of hagiographic conventions and concepts, arguing that the Beowulf -poet invests the traditional warrior identity of the hero Beowulf with conceptions of sanctity found in saints' lives composed by Bede, Felix, and others. In the process, this essay challenges the prevailing "dramatic irony" view of the poem that divorces the religious understanding of the narrator from that of the characters. A thorough analysis reveals that characters and narrator speak a shared theological language and that the religious perspectives of narrator and dramatis personae are indistinguishable.

Humor in Old English Literature: Communities of Laughter in Early Medieval England by Jonathan Wilcox (review)

Humor in Old English Literature: Communities of Laughter in Early Medieval England by Jonathan Wilcox (review)

Global Perspectives on Early Medieval England ed. by Karen Louise Jolly and Britton Elliott Brooks (review)

Global Perspectives on Early Medieval England ed. by Karen Louise Jolly and Britton Elliott Brooks (review)

(Un)staþolfæstnes and its Problems: Grounding Minds in Early Medieval England

The Old English text Solomon and Saturn includes a list of materials from which Adam, the first man, is made. A pound of cloud constitutes his modes unstaðelfæstnes [mind’s unsteadfastness / instability]. Various other texts from early medieval England also refer to the mod, or mind, as an intrinsically unstable and changeable entity, using key terms such as staðelfæst [grounded / stable] and staðolian [to ground / stabilise]. In many of these texts, this instability is mentioned as an inherent quality of mind. Instability, contingency and change are regarded as integral and typical features of the mind but equally, there are warnings for the waywardness of the mind. The literature frequently encourages readers to ground and maintain control over their minds. Sources recommend restraining and training the mind to ‘govern’ and ‘steer’ it, and they even refer to the possibility of finding mental stability in another foundation. This article considers these seemingly contradictory portrayals of minds and instructions for grounding them, and delivers a more nuanced conception of what (physical) freedom early medieval people would imagine their minds to have, and what foundations they considered helpful for grounding them.

:Meanings of Water in Early Medieval England

:<i>Meanings of Water in Early Medieval England</i>

The consul vanishes? On using and not using Gregory the Great's Register in early medieval England

This article builds upon recent scholarship emphasizing the importance of Gregory the Great's Register as a key text of the Carolingian and post‐Carolingian library, exploring by contrast its peculiarly limited reception in England. It first surveys what little evidence we have for its citation by English ecclesiastics (post‐c.1000, mostly via Wulfstan); it then examines the single text in a pre‐Conquest manuscript usually catalogued as a letter from the Register, showing that this has been reworked as an anonymous admonitio to judges (probably bishops). It concludes by reflecting on the implications of this limited reception for our understanding of the later Anglo‐Saxon church – a community otherwise well‐invested in Gregory's memory.