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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

D. W. Rollason
Affiliation:
The University of Durham

Extract

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

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

1 This paper was first read to the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists' conference held in Cambridge in 1985. I am grateful to the society for the opportunity of presenting my work and of benefiting from the ensuing criticisms and suggestions. My chief debts have been to Förster, Max, Zur Geschichte des Reliquienkultus in Altengland (Munich, 1943)Google Scholar; Fichtenau, Heinrich, ‘Zum Reliquienwesen in früheren Mittelalter’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Osterreichische Geschichtsforschung 60 (1952), 6089Google Scholar; and Thomas, Islwyn Geoffrey, ‘The Cult of Saints' Relics in Medieval England’ (unpubl. Ph.D. dissertation, London Univ., 1974).Google Scholar To the last of these I owe a continuing debt for permission to use his immensely valuable thesis. I should also like to thank George Garnett and Dr Alan Thacker for their helpful comments on the draft of this article.

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11 Willelmi Malmesbiriensis Monachi, De Gestis Kegum Anglorum, Libri Quinque, ed. Stubbs, William, RS (18871889) 1, 149–51.Google Scholar On this passage see Loomis, Laura Hibbard, ‘The Holy Relics of Charlemagne and King Athelstan: the Lances of Longinus and St Mauricius’, Speculum 25 (1950), 437–56, and Michael Lapidge, ‘Some Latin Poems as Evidence for the Reign of Athelstan’, ASE 9 (1981), 6198, at 6271.Google Scholar Although Lapidge has convincingly disproved the theory that William based his account on a now lost tenth-century poem, Loomis's other arguments for the veracity of that account remain strong and it would be rash to reject it as merely a twelfth-century invention. See also Wood, Michael, ‘The Making of King Athelstan's Empire’, Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies Presented to J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, ed. Wormald, Patrick with Bullough, Donald and Collins, Roger (Oxford, 1983), pp. 250–72, at 265–6Google Scholar, and Keynes, ‘Athelstan's Books’, pp. 144–5, n. 15.

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

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56 Scott, , Early History of Glastonbury, pp. 193–4Google Scholar, and Finberg, H. P. R., ‘St Patrick at Glastonbury’, in his West Country Historical Studies (Newton Abbot, 1969), pp. 7088Google Scholar. See also Lapidge, Michael, ‘The Cult of St Indract at Glastonbury’, Ireland in Early Medieval Europe: Studies in Memory of Kathleen Hughes, ed. Whitelock, Dorothy, McKitterick, Rosamond and Dumville, David (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 179212Google Scholar, esp. 182–4.

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

61 Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, ed. Thomas Arnold, RS (1882–5) 1, 3–135 and 196–214. See Craster, E., ‘The Patrimony of St Cuthbert’, EHR 69 (1954), 177–99, at 177–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Gransden, Antonia, Historical Writing in England c. 550 to c. 1307 (London, 1974), pp. 76–7 and 114–16Google Scholar. See also Offler, H. S., Medieval Historians of Durham (Durham, 1958), pp. 68.Google Scholar

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

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

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