English Saints Research Articles

St. George's Chapel Windsor in the Fourteenth Century ed. by Nigel Saul (review)

NIGEL SAUL, ed., St. George's Chapel Windsor in the Fourteenth Century. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 7005. Pp. xvii, 241. ISBN: 1-84383-117-1. $90. In 1348, King Edward III of England rededicated the chapel at Windsor Castle to St. George, founded a college of priests there, and made the chapel the headquarters of his prestigious confraternal Order of the Garter. Windsor thenceforth became the grandest of England's royal residences and a focal point of English court life. The twelve essays in the present volume grew out of a conference held at Windsor in 2002 and fall roughly into three groups: discussing the political and cultural place of St. George's in fourteenth-century England, the people involved with it, and the archaeology of its fabric. Readers of ARTHURIANA are likely to prefer the first of these groups on account of its Arthurian and chivalric themes, but all the papers are of a nigh quality and offer original insights into the early history of St. George's. Contributions by W.M. Ormrod and Juliet Vale discuss the genesis of the Garter, which did not come from nothing. In 1344, after a weeklong tournament at Windsor, Edward III swore a solemn oath that he would found a Round Table 'of the same manner and standing as that which the Lord Arthur, formerly King of England, had relinquished.' Edward ordered a great hall and a round table to be built to accommodate the 300 member-knights who were to meet at Pentecost every year thereafter. This project never came to fruition, but its relationship with the Garter has long interested historians, who have perceived the shade of the chivalric King Arthur hanging over a society devoted to the chivalric St. George. Although Ormrod proposes that the specific form of the Garter occurred to Edward quickly, in the first six months of 1348, he does see chivalry as the cornerstone of the Garter's purpose. The Order may later have become integral to the public presentation of the monarchy and an effective tool of royal patronage, but its small membership, French motto, and liturgical focus all point to something initially more private, a product of Edward's 'profound enthusiasm for chivalric culture and his strong desire to honour and dignify the castle of his birth.' The Order's motto, Honi soit qui mal y feme ('shame be to him who thinks ill of it'), asserts that the king not only had a just claim to the throne of France but also had the fundamental ability and right to distinguish between honor and shame, 'those two great and polarised concerns of chivalric culture.' (King Arthur, of course, does exactly the same thing in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, whose last line is, famously, the Garter motto.) Vale, for her part, proposes that Edward may have abandoned the Round Table project on account of the limitations of Arthurian mythology: the original Arthur had shared equal status with many other knights and was ultimately betrayed and defeated in battle, which was not the role Edward envisioned for himself with his wars in France. Nonetheless, earlier tournaments and 'hastiludes' had produced a bank of images or a symbolic vocabulary that could be drawn on as occasion demanded, and the establishment of the Garter was one of those occasions. The use of tournament teams, costumes, and crests were some of the phenomena that the Garter shared with earlier events; the crests, indeed, were memorialized forever in the heraldic plates affixed to the back of a deceased member's stall in St. George's chapel. Perhaps most important, Garter jousts, in common with earlier ones, produced 'a winner but no losers'-that is, their chief function was to define more sharply the participants' collective identity and sense of superiority to others. Why Edward III should have chosen St. George as the patron of the Garter rather than his own namesake St. Edward the Confessor or some other native English saint is investigated by D.A.L. Morgan. English monarchs had venerated St. …

Middle English Saints' Legends (review)

Middle English Saints' Legends (review)

Larissa Tracy, ed. and trans., Women of the Gilte Legende: A Selection of Middle English Saint Lives. (Library of Medieval Women.) D. S. Brewer, 2003

Larissa Tracy, ed. and trans., Women of the Gilte Legende: A Selection of Middle English Saint Lives. (Library of Medieval Women.) D. S. Brewer, 2003

Women of the "Gilte Legende": A Selection of Middle English Saints Lives. Larissa Tracy

<i>Women of the "Gilte Legende": A Selection of Middle English Saints Lives</i>. Larissa Tracy

Houses of the interpreter: reading scripture, reading culture

Preface How Firm a Foundation...? Masterplot & Meaning in Biblical Narrative Self-Examination & the Examination of Texts Charity & Cupidity in Biblical Tradition The Gospel according to Isaiah Authority & Interpretation in the House of Fame Chaucer's Friar's (Unpaid) Rent Conversion in the English Saints' Plays Parody & Piety in Bosch's Haywain Sir Orfeo's Harp: Music for the End of Time Reading Wisely, Reading Well Reading the Bible with C S Lewis Scripture, Gender & Our Language of Worship The Teaching Authority of Jesus & the Fatherhood of God Postmodern Theology & Perennial Truth Index.

Sources and Analogues of the 'Canterbury Tales', Vol. I by Robert M. Correale The Chaucerian Apocrypha: A Counterfeit Canon by Kathleen Forni (review)

454 Reviews last medieval English saint, St Thomas de Cantilupe. It is this breadth of interest and information that makes Textual Situations as entertaining as it is provocative. University College Dublin/Universitat Freiburg Neil Cartlidge Sources and Analogues ofthe 'Canterbury Tales', vol. i. General Ed. Robert M. Correale ; Ass. General Ed. Mary Hamel. (Chaucer Studies) Cambridge: Brewer. 2002. xii + 623pp. ?55; $85. ISBN 0-85991-628-6. The ChaucerianApocrypha: A CounterfeitCanon. By Kathleen Forni. Gainesville, Tallahassee, and Tampa: University Press of Florida. 2001. xviii +260 pp. $55. ISBN 0-8130-2427-7. These two books approach Chaucer from opposite ends, as it were, forone deals with the sources and analogues which he may have used in working on the Canterbury Tales, whereas the other deals with the way his work and reputation were exploited after his death. Both are welcome contributions to Chaucer scholarship. In 1941 Bryan and Dempster's Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales'was published (Chicago: Chicago University Press), and the firstbook reviewed here is the firstof two volumes to replace that work. Since 1941 a large amount of scholarship has been devoted to this area, and scholars throughout the world have publishednew sources or more accurate editions ofthe known sources. In this firstvol? ume there are chapters on the frame and on the tales ofthe Reeve, Cook, Friar, Clerk, Squire, Franklin, Pardoner, Melibee, Monk, Nun's Priest, Second Nun, and Parson. The order followed is that of the Riverside Chaucer, though as the tales are taken from the whole poem rather than just its firstpart the sequence appears somewhat arbitrary. Two of the chapters can hardly be said to reproduce sources or analogues. The firstis the chapter on the frame (pp. 1-22), which reproduces Helen Cooper's article published in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 19 (1997), 183-210, in which she discusses the four main literary genres exploited by Chaucer: story collections, in which she pays special attention to Boccaccio's Decameron, debate, poetic contests, and pilgrimages involving storytelling. A chapter on the General Prologue will appear in the second volume. The second is the chapter on the Cook (pp. 75-86), whose tale is incomplete. John Scattergood has to speculate what sort of tale the Cook might have told and what sources and analogues there may have been for these speculative suggestions. He offerssome comments on the Tale of Gamelyn without going into it in depth or referringto the work done on it and its analogues by Stephen Knight. Two of the chapters, the Friar's Tale by Peter Nicholson (pp. 87-99) and the Second Nun's Tale by Sherry L. Reames (pp. 491-527), contain much new material. For the first,recent scholarship has revealed what represents 'a distinct English tradi? tion of the tale' (p. 87). This version is found in a group of Latin exempla, the earliest of which dates from the firsthalf of the fourteenth century, while the other two date from about 1400. It is these three versions which appear in this volume, so that close analogues?of which there are many, especially in the German-speaking world?are simply mentioned in the introductory comments. For the second, study of the tale itselfhas benefited enormously from work done on saints' lives and their abbreviated versions. Chaucer's version is shown to be close to abridged forms of the Life of St Cecilia found in copies otLegenda Aurea and individual accounts of the saint. The sources and analogues are printed in their original language with a facing English translation, into which the lineation of the original text is inserted so that comparison between the two is facilitated. Each chapter is by a differentscholar and each has had a free hand in deciding whether to reproduce a published text or edit the text afresh, and the same freedom applies to the translation. Similarly, the way MLR, 99.2, 2004 455 in which they present the text and the number of footnotes or explanatory notes included have been left to the individual editors. Each chapter, other than those for the frame and the Cook, contains introductory material reviewing the research done on the sources of the tale...

Women of the Gilte Legende: A Selection of Middle English Saints Lives (review)

226 Reviews Parergon 21.1 (2004) of Anglo-Norse cultural diffusion. Chapter Five examines the evidence presented in sagas and Anglo-Saxon writers on mutual intelligibility. The significant observation is made that although saga authors often explain how their heroes were able to communicate with other groups, like the Irish and Wends, no such explanations are to be found with English. The obvious, but questionable, argument from silence here is that communication presented little difficulty. In Chapter Six, Townend, reviewing his arguments on intelligibility and English integration of ON loans, presents his conclusion that Late Anglo-Saxon England was a bilingual society. While this is perhaps going too far, Townend’s book in many respects offers the best explanation of some of the existing evidence, though the discussion of Anglo-Norse intelligibility throughout remains, perhaps necessarily, simplistic; some engagement with the complexities of mutual intelligibility, like cross-linguistic intelligibility not always being equal, would have been welcome. Nevertheless, the book is a thought-provoking study of use to anyone with an interest in Anglo-Norse contact in the Viking Age. Shane Spiteri and Antoinette Schapper School of Humanities (History) The University of Western Australia Tracy, Larissa, Women of the Gilte Legende: A Selection of Middle English Saints Lives (Library of Medieval Women), Cambridge, D.S. Brewer, 2003; cloth; pp. 149; RRP £35/US$60; ISBN 0859917711. This handy volume, part of the Library of Medieval Women series, includes a modern English translation of 11 of the female saints’ lives from the Middle English collection known as the Gilte Legende, as well as a contextualising introduction, notes, annotated bibliography, and an interpretative essay on the social function of these hagiographic texts. This book is particularly welcome in presenting to students and nonspecialists a sample of hagiography from this late-14th or early-15th century adapted translation of the highly influential Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine (late-13th century), with some material sourced elsewhere. Tracy’s Introduction provides information on both these texts, as well as a broader consideration of the composition of female saints’ lives, and the types into which they may be sorted. Tracy’s collection goes beyond the most common of these types, the ‘holy virgin’ (represented here by the vitae of St Christina, St Dorothy Reviews 227 Parergon 21.1 (2004) and St Margaret of Antioch), to include the ‘holy mother’ (St Paula and St Elizabeth of Hungary); the ‘repentant sinner’ (Mary Magdalene and St Thais); and the ‘holy transvestites’ (St Theodora, St Pelagia, St Margaret Pelagia, and St Marina). Each vita is preceded by a short discussion of the historicity and immediate source/s of the translated text and the development of the saint’s cult. Brief footnotes on textual and contextual matters accompany the vitae. The translations are accessible and fluent, usefully explicated by the judicious notes. Less transparent are Tracy’s selection criteria for the vitae (eleven out of thirty female vitae in the Gilte Legende), beyond providing a ‘diverse selection of legends’ (p. 3). Ideally, she would have indicated what other vitae (especially those treating male saints) appear in the full collection. Given the agenda of the series in which this book appears, as well as its own interest in models of female independence, it is understandable that male hagiography is not the focus of the collection. The latter might have been mentioned briefly, though, to provide balance and context for those vitae that are included, especially given Tracy’s interest in the holy transvestites (four of the five such vitae of the Gilte Legende have been included in this selection). In order to validate her arguments about gendered modelling in the vitae and how this might have influenced those women who read them, Tracy ought to have at least acknowledged those features of her texts not determined by gender and not exclusive to this collection, but common to a wider range of hagiography: e.g. the over-representation of high social status among subjects; the almost universal presence of miracles; and most importantly, saints’ characteristic mastery of verbal rhetoric and the importance of direct speech and argument in vitae. The interpretive essay which follows the eleven vitae is entitled ‘Silence and Speech...

Humour in Anglo-Saxon Literature by Jonathan Wilcox (review)

946 Reviews he argues that straight sexuality is often more radically diverse than its supposedly more dissident counterparts. 'To be alive is to desire', afnrms Dollimore, and 'to desire is to be deeply and maybe destructively confused, sooner or later' (p. 36). That Dollimore makes sense out ofthe confusion, while never losing sight ofthe provisional and elusive nature of his critical efforts,makes this book required reading foranyone with an interest in how literature can reflectupon what it truly is to be human. Ruskin College, Oxford Nick Kneale Humour in Anglo-Saxon Literature. Ed. by Jonathan Wilcox. Cambridge: Brewer. 2000. vii+162 pp. ?40; $75. ISBN 0-85991-576-x. Who can resist a collection of essays that indexes Dream of the Rood next to 'double entendre' and 'dildo'? 'Grinning' and Genesis B} Hdvamdl and 'hall, merriment in'? While Humour in Anglo-Saxon England, edited by Jonathan Wilcox, displays some of the usual shortcomings of the contemporary academic essay collection, it makes up for these with a better-than-average unity of purpose and a lively execution. This slim collection (162 pages, including index) gives us essays on humour and heroic poetry (John Niles on Byrhtnoth'slaughterin The Battle ofMaldon, Raymond P. Tripp, Jrand E. L. Risden on Beowulf), studies of the humour in the 'dirty riddles ' of the Exeter Book by D. K. Smith and Nina Rulon-Miller, and essays on the laughter produced in the context of Old English saints' lives by Shari Horner and Hugh Magennis. T. A. Shippey contributes an excellent wide-ranging essay defining and exploring Anglo-Saxon humour across a number of texts, and Wilcox prefaces it all with a deft and informative introduction. The usual caveat about essay collections applies here: the studies, while uniformly rewarding to some degree, can be uneven. Shippey's essay seems particularly useful as an introduction and thought-provoking examination of the whole subject; Niles's essay, while perhaps a bit prolix, also strikes me as opening out usefully onto wider issues of literary and cultural criticism. The essays by Tripp and Risden might make one pause: Risden's for the fact that it seems to rehearse the usual arguments about grim humour in the poem and not to advance the question much; Tripp's by basing his analysis on his idiosyncratic views of the poem. (This is not the place to go into Tripp's arguments in depth; one can perhaps get a sense ofthe hermetically enclosed world in which he works by noting that in a 20-page article he cites a number of his own studies ofthe poem no fewer than seventeen separate times. While Tripp brings a welcome wide, humane learning to the poem, his array of assumptions about Beowulf makes his analysis of the work's humour difficultto accept.) The essays on the sexual riddles and humour in the saints' lives are by turns ingenious and over-ingenious; one has the sense sometimes with both pairs of essays (Smith/Rulon-Miller and Horner/ Magennis) that the texts under examination are being squeezed for every last bit of jocularity they might conceivably generate. Wilcox well expresses the book's value in his introduction: 'The present volume is the firstbook-length treatment of Anglo-Saxon humor. Not many scholars have touched on the topic in any way: general surveys are rare and slight, while specialist studies of humor in individual works are surprisingly scarce' (pp. 5-6). Seen from this standpoint, this is an important volume?as a whole the various essays collect the relevant secondary sources and provide sensitive readings of the most obvious primary materials. There is certainly a sense here that the volume opens the door to a field that could be usefully pursued to some degree, especially when Old English texts are put in dialogue with Old Norse and Latin materials, as most of these essays do in one way or another. MLR, 98.4, 2003 947 The literary criticism of Old English texts needs some direction at the moment, some profitable avenues that might lead Old English texts and traditions into wider arenas accessible to general readers in other periods, both later medieval and beyond. Laughter, a universal human experience...

Book and Verse: A Guide to Middle English Biblical Literature by James H. Morley

4i 8 Reviews in the twelfth century, although j^Elfricwas never named as author. Rather, homilies or extracts appear to have been copied for the perceived usefulness of their material; so much so that either whole homilies or key passages from them were memorized. The other fivepapers are more varied in their subject matter. Joana Proud's study of Old English saints' Lives suggests that these were considerably less popular in the twelfth century, being found in only nine surviving manuscripts, and incorporating very few new Lives, while even recent or high-status Lives were being replaced by Latin versions. Priority was given to universal cults and 'demand for English saints' Lives had become concentrated upon saints with first-grade status' (p. 131). To this observation Susan Rosser's study of the twelfth-century fate of ^Elfric's Life of St Martin adds variation. The 'editor' of the version found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodl. 343, heavily abbreviated it, reducing the text to the same length as its companions and concentrating on Martin's miracles, excluding both the 'historical' sections and the accounts of Martin's suppression of heathenism, as well as rendering the text anonymous. Of all the 'rewritten' texts discussed here, perhaps most bafflingis the Old English gloss to the Romanum version of the psalms, copied into the 'Eadwine Psalter' (now Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R. 17. 1) when it was put together at Christchurch, Canterbury, in the 1160s. This gloss has been dismissed with something approaching derision, but Phillip Pulsiano here argues that, while it shows clear signs of haste, being copied and corrected by multiple hands using a number of differentmodels, the sheer co-ordination of their complex effortsis impressive. His detailed analysis of the gloss and its relation to its various putative models is not always easy to follow, especially given the omission of notes on editions and so on. Nevertheless, Pulsiano demonstrates that at points the scribes had to work hard to understand their own material. His conclusion suggests that a real attempt was made to balance antiquarianism with what aimed at being a genuine, revised gloss. The result may not have had 'much, if any, function in the twelfth century' but, 'how fittingto gloss a dated Romanum text, one that has elsewhere been supplanted by the Gallicanum, with an equally dated gloss' (p. 194). This sense of texts slowly slipping out of intelligibility is both completed and, in a way, contradicted by the last piece in this collection, Wendy Collier's study of the well-known 'Tremulous Hand' of Worcester. This valuably summarizes a good deal of recent work. Most interesting is the insight into the Tremulous Hand's tripartite translating activities. He seems to have been familiar with the local, very conservative, form of Middle English and thus able to follow the grammatical structure of the Old English texts he found at Worcester. Nevertheless, both insular script and much of the vocabulary posed problems for him, and he found it necessary to use the Latin 'originals' beside their Old English translations, in order to build up his desired body of material in Middle English. It is thus fascinating to see that, even as the long continuity of Old English as a language finally broke, the value of the translations made some three centuries earlier forthose who could not read Latin still continued. University of Reading Anne Lawrence Book and Verse: A Guide to Middle English Biblical Literature. By James H. Morley. (Illinois Medieval Studies) Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 2000. xix + 428pp. $34.95. ISBN 0-252-02507-5. This book has developed out of a worthy Ph.D. thesis and is better written and organized than many such, especially given the leviathan nature of its subject matter. However, it fails between two stools. It is offered as an introduction to the subject MLR, 98.2, 2003 419 of biblical material in Middle English, but in content and layout it asks to be treated as a reference book: it is divided into sections covering a wide range of scriptural, liturgical, and related material; it provides detailed synopses of the contents of most of this material; it cross-refers to...

The Old English Bede and the construction of Anglo-Saxon authority

The translator of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica faced a daunting task. His source text had behind it the authority of a well-known, learned English saint, and a translation of the work would inevitably be a step removed from that saint. How could the translator convince the audience that his translation possessed authority? Alfred's prefaces to his translations and Wærferth's preface to the Dialogues gain the confidence of the readers or hearers through their explicit discussion of motives and methods of translation. By contrast, the Old English Bede authorizes itself not through any overt claims in an original preface but through strategic translations of the Latin preface and of the text itself. The Alfredian prefaces thus provide valuable points of comparison and contrast for the Old English Bede. All the translations assert continuity between source text and translation while replacing the source text in different ways. Alfred and Wærferth reveal their identities as translators and make claims for their own authority while the translator of the Old English Bede relies on the authority of Bede himself; Alfred and Wærferth argue for the ability of Old English to render Latin, while the translator of the Old English Bede simply provides a text in Old English.

"lc augt ƥolye more": Models of Sanctity in two legends of Saints Chrysanthus and Daria

Among the didactic and devotional genres of the Middle Ages, vitæ and passiones of the saints offer particular advantages to the study of medieval holy pedagogy. Collections such as the Old English Ælfric's Lives of Saints and the Middle English South English Legendary reflect contemporary didactic concerns in a focused, even intimate, pedagogical genre. Throughout the Middle Ages proliferating redactions of the legends of saints attest to the evolving role of the saints in Christian pedagogy and devotion. If we compare the redactions of a particular vita or passio, we find one group of pedagogical concerns stands out in relief against another version's specific, historically-contingent concerns. This is precisely the case when the late tenth-century Old English Passio Chrisanti et Darie sponse eius, found in Ælfric's Lives of Saints, is compared to its fifteenth-century counterpart Seint Crissaunt and Darige, found in only one of the late manuscripts of the South English Legendary. From the earlier to the later English version, the shape of sanctity foregrounded for readers undergoes a considerable shift. While suffering, quite predictably, plays a crucial role in each passio's representation of sanctity, the versions reflect very different attitudes towards suffering, consequently offering different pedagogical models for the saints' sufferings. The Middle English version concentrates upon a desire for suffering that wholly differs from the fundamental feature of the Old English saints' faith and sanctity, their married chastity.

A Paston Letter of 1461 and ‘Coroumbr’, Yorkshire

as St John's feast-day, the original ninth-century text includes the phrase 'Sanete Johannes on Beuerlie'.6 This must be near-conclusive evidence that the place-name Beverley, and the cult of St John in the minster there, existed by the era of the Viking invasions. The re-Iocation of English local saints' relics was an essentially tenthand eleventh-century phenomenon, and was mainly for the benefit of churches of major political importance:? the possibility that by the 880s St John's relics had already been transferred from Jnderauuda to the relatively obscure Beverley is so slight that it can virtually be discounted. Jnderauuda and Beverley, then, were almost certainly the same place. It is more likely that the two names existed simultaneously, expressing different levels of topographical precision, than that one replaced the other. Bede, writing a hundred miles away, may have known simply that the minster ruled by Abbot Berhthun, who provided his information, lay somewhere 'in the Deirans' wood';8 the Deirans themselves would have located it more precisely, on the 'beaver-stream' (beofor-*kee). That this cult could survive in a minster on the Humber estuary, so exposed to Viking raids, encourages the view that Anglo-Saxon religious institutions, even in the Danelaw, were marked more by continuity than by total disruption.

The music of prose offices in honour of English saints

Some basic stylistic features of ten prose offices for English saints are considered. The oldest is that for St Cuthbert (probably c. 930). Others are for Dunstan of Canterbury, Edmund of East Anglia, Ethelwold of Winchester, Kyneburga, Kyneswytha and Tybba of Peterborough, Mildred of Thanet, Oswald of Northumbria, Oswald of Worcester, Swithun of Winchester, and Wulfstan of Worcester. All were probably composed earlier than the office for Thomas of Canterbury (soon after 1170), which with its rhymed, accentual verse text marks a new type of office. Important musical features of these offices include the deployment of chants in modal order, tonality that relies on a framework of finalis and fifth (also the upper octave and lower fourth), cadences approached from the note below, the use of responsory verse tones, and formulaic melodies.

Editors' Introduction

Three of the articles in this issue of Plainsong &amp; Medieval Music were presented at a session devoted to medieval saints' offices sponsored by the Plainsong and Mediaeval Music Society at the 1999 International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds. Two of the papers (Caldwell, Hiley) are devoted to English saints, while a third (Hankeln) surveys offices, monastic and secular, of the sainted royal patrons of the diocese of Bamberg, Henry and Kunigunde. Elizabeth Leach's article on the four-voice balades of Guillaume de Machaut brings together considerations of transmission, fourteenth-century contrapuntal theory, and performance practice.Beginning with this issue of Plainsong &amp; Medieval Music every article will be preceded by a short abstract. Brief identifications of the authors, who will most likely be already known to readers in the relatively small field of medieval music research, will include their e-mail addresses.

The Unmaking of a Saint: Thomas Becket and the English Reformation

long and complex relationship between Church and State in Western Christendom-both creative and destructive-is particularly well illustrated by examining history of England, especially relations between various English monarchs and Church. More specifically, by focusing on rise, importance, and, especially, fall of cult of St. Thomas Becket from twelfth century through sixteenth century, we can gain some valuable insights into complex series of events known as English Reformation.1 From late eleventh century onward, a process of centralization was underway in both Church and State. Norman Conquest (1066) greatly accelerated this process of state building by Anglo-Norman kings, and this same era witnessed rising power and influence of Papacy. In fact, it has been argued that papal influence in England was generally at its peak in century and a half from Conquest to death of King John (1216).2 Yet, it was during reign of John's father, Henry II,3 that some of most dramatic Church-State conflicts occurred. Ironically, Henry assumed English crown in same year11 54-as Nicholas Breakspear ascended papal throne as Hadrian IV, only English pope in history. It was, arguably, more than just a desire to extend church reforms throughout Europe that induced Hadrian to bestow upon Henry II overlordship of Ireland.4 In same period, Henry appointed his good friend, Thomas Becket, as Chancellor of England. Becket, in general, proved to be a staunch royalist, and it was during this period that cause for canonization of Edward Confessor was brought to a successful completion.5 new pope, Alexander III (1159-1181), desired to regularize canonization process and bring it under papal control. Thus, in 1161 pious English king, Edward Confessor, was declared to be a saint, first English saint to be formally canonized by a pope.6 In that same year Archbishop of Canterbury, Theobald, died and way was open for Henry to appoint his own man, Thomas Becket, as primate of English Church. For his part, Thomas, evidently perceiving not just opportunities but potential perils of such a step, was somewhat reluctant to accept this exalted position. But in end he accepted and was consecrated at Canterbury Cathedral in June, 1162.7 After assuming office of Archbishop of Canterbury, Becket began to change; prelate's devotion to God and Church became even more consuming than chancellor's devotion to king and State.8 Becket decided that he could no longer serve two masters and, therefore, he resigned chancellorship, to king's great regret. conflict heated up considerably in 1164 when Henry issued The Constitutions of Clarendon, which were said to contain recognized customs and rights of kingdom.9 Among sixteen articles were stipulations which: prevented clerics accused of crimes from circumventing royal courts; prohibited clergy from leaving England king's permission; and banned ecclesiastical appeals to papal court without assent of lord king.10 Although Henry was within his rights on strictly historical grounds, Becket argued that custom had to give way when it conflicted with canon law and Holy Scripture. Although Becket had given way in short run, he could not ultimately support royal decrees because they, in effect, viewed king as the real head and master of English church.12 Relations between king and archbishop continued to deteriorate and in November, 1164, Becket fled England and spent six years in exile. Although Alexander III supported Becket with regard to rights and independence of Church, pope was somewhat embarrassed by archbishop's undiplomatic zeal and danger of a schism in Church.13 Henry and Thomas finally achieved a partial reconciliation in 1170, but deeply rooted personal and ideological differences remained. …

Studies in Middle English Saints' Legends

Studies in Middle English Saints' Legends

The words of war

DESPITE THE POPULAR FASCINATION WITH THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT TRIALS, King Philip's War (1675-76) was actually the crucial historical event in seventeenth-century New England. Led by the Wampanoag sachem Metacom (or Philip as he was named by the Puritan authorities), an alliance of Wampanoag, Narragansett and Nipmuck Indians engaged in a war against the New English Saints (and their own Native American allies) that wreaked havoc on Puritan towns and Algonquian settlements alike, caused almost unimaginable bloodshed and suffering, and jeopardized the very existence of the New England colonies. In light of its scope and political consequences, historiography about the war has of course scrutinized its causes. Revisionists today challenge traditional accounts of the inevitability of racial and national conflict, calling attention instead to the patterns of colonial expansion that precipitated Algonquian resistance.' Who was to blame for the conflict? And how did the war inform

New Foes and Old Faces: Fiction, Interpretation, and Integrity in Newman and Kingsley

Maria Poggi Johnson New Foes and Old Faces Fiction, Interpretation, and Integrity in Newman and Kingsley1 In i 864 the anglican clergyman and novelist Charles Kingsley , reviewing Froude's History ofEngland for Macmillan's Magazine, described in strong terms the disastrous effects of the Roman Catholic system on public and private morality in English history. In the process he directed a personaljab at John Henry Newman, erstwhile leader of the Anglican High Church Oxford movement, and England's most famous convert to Rome. "Truth, for its own sake," Kingsley wrote, "had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy." Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not to be; that cunning is the weapon which Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the brute male force of the wicked world which marries and is given in marriage . Whether his notion be doctrinally correct or not, it is at least historically so. The insult lead to an exchange ofletters between the two men, icily polite at first, and growing increasingly testy until Newman published the entire correspondence with a satirical commentary, and logos 2:3 summer 1999 LOGOS Kingsley retorted with a ferocious pamphlet, "What does Mr. Newman then mean?" in which he elaborated the grounds of his accusation . He claimed first that Newman had on a number of occasions as good as said that dissimulation and craft were the least ofall sins, or no sins at all, when committed with the intention of defending or promoting the interests of the Church. Newman's practice, moreover , had consistently borne out his fheory by twisting historical documents and facts to suit his argumentative purpose. Kingsley cited Newman's notorious Tract 90 as an example, but saved most of his venom for the Lives ofthe English Saints that Newman had overseen during his final years at Oxford. "He might have made those 'Lives of Saints' what they ought to have been," Kingsley writes, books to turn the hearts of the children to the Fathers, and to make the present generation acknowledge and respect the true sanctity which there was, in spite ofall mistakes, in those great men of old—a sanctity founded on true virtue and true piety, which required no tawdry super-structure of lying and ridiculous wonders. Instead Newman not only tolerated, but also gave explicit sanction to, the most extravagant and fanciful accounts ofmiracles which tradition ascribes to the saints. Kingsley accuses Newman at once of cynical cunning unworthy of a Christian, and of naive credulity unworthy of aVictorian. This would have been no more than an amusing minor chapter in literary history, had Kingsley's attack not prompted Newman to respond at an altogether different level, producing in six weeks a defense ofhis own integrity that has become a classic not only ofreligious autobiography, but also ofthe English language. The history of Newman's "religious opinions" is now indelibly part of the intellectual and religious history of the nineteenth century, and correspondingly the debate that provoked it has assumed greater significance than that of a private squabble between two men. FICTION IN NEWMAN AND KINGSLEY But die squabble between Kingsley and Newman about the interpretation of church history has a history of its own, in an earlier chapter of which Newman had been considerably worsted. In the i8^os both men wrote novels set in the Church's first centuries. Kingsley's Hypatia, or New Foes with an Old Face was published in 1 8£ ? , and Newman's Callista in 1 8j6. The eponymous character of each is a beautiful, idealistic young pagan woman who converts to Christianity shortly before meeting a violent death. Each novel also features a well-intentioned but weak and naive young Christian man, who loves the heroine, matures, and lives to a wise and holy old age. Each includes cameo appearances by prominent historical characters : Cyril of Alexandria and Augustine in Hypatia, Cyprian of Carthage in Callista. These novels cast a fresh light on the more venomous exchange of the 1 860s.4 Kingsley's novel invents the background to an historical incident —the murder ofthe mathematician and philosopher Hypatia by a Christian mob in the...

Lost in translation: omission of episodes in some Old English prose saints' legends

The following article explores one way of using Latin sources to increase our understanding and appreciation of the surviving corpus of vernacular prose hagiography in Anglo-Saxon England. Although the saints' legends in prose make up a significant portion of the Old English literary remains, they have been relatively neglected in comparison with the saints' legends in Old English verse, such asAndreas, Guthlac AandGuthlac B, and Cynewulf'sElene. As the standard bibliographies reveal well enough, the prose texts have been studied mainly from the perspectives of language, stylistics, codicology and basicQuellenforschung, and much less than the verse texts for their literary, historical or broadly cultural interest. This is particularly true of the twenty-nine anonymous legends, some of which are not readily accessible in printed versions, and most of which need re-editing. But even the hagiographic writings of Ælfric, which are better known, have been read only occasionally for their narrative contentperse. Primary emphasis has fallen instead on Ælfric's considerable stylistic and prosodic achievements. Moreover, the two most recent monographs on Ælfric's intellectual and doctrinal concerns hardly touch on his saints' legends.

Paul E. Szarmach, ed., Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints' Lives and Their Contexts. (SUNY Series in Medieval Studies.) Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1996. Paper. Pp. xvii, 390; black-and-white figures, tables, and 1 diagram. $24.95.

Paul E. Szarmach, ed., Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints' Lives and Their Contexts. (SUNY Series in Medieval Studies.) Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1996. Paper. Pp. xvii, 390; black-and-white figures, tables, and 1 diagram. $24.95.