ANGLES ON A KINGDOM

East Anglian Identities from Bede to Ælfric

Map of East Anglia.
Angles on a Kingdom
East Anglian Identities
from Bede to Ælfric

JOSEPH GROSSI

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS

Toronto Buffalo London
 © University of Toronto Press 2021
Toronto Buffalo London
utorontopress.com
Printed in the U.S.A.

ISBN 978-1-4875-0573-8 (cloth)

ISBN 978-1-4875-3257-4 (EPUB)
ISBN 978-1-4875-3256-7 (PDF)

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Angles on a kingdom : East Anglian identities from Bede to Ælfric /

Joseph Grossi.
Names: Grossi, Joseph L., 1968– author.
Description: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210145897 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210146052
| ISBN 9781487505738 (cloth) | ISBN 9781487532574 (EPUB) | ISBN
9781487532567 (PDF)
Subjects: LCSH: English literature – Old English, ca. 450–1100 – History
and criticism. | LCSH: East Anglia (England) – In literature.
Classification: LCC PR173 .G78 2021 | DDC 829/.09 – dc23

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Federation
for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly
Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its

publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts
Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.
To my family: Marina Bettaglio, Anna Grossi, and Thomas Grossi,
and in memory of my parents, Joseph Grossi (1932–2003) and
Norma Quirk Grossi (1936–2019)
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 Contents

Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations xiii

Introduction 3
1 Rædwald’s Unhappy Realm: Bede’s Mixed Views
of East Anglian Imperium 35
2 Æthelthryth in a Virgin Wilderness 69
3 Solace for a Client-King: Felix’s Vita sancti Guthlaci 102
4 Made in Wessex: Danish East Anglia and the Alfredian Court 127
5 Edmund, East Anglia, and England 171
Conclusion 210

Notes 219
Bibliography 325
Index 375
This page intentionally left blank
 Acknowledgments

In an ideal world, the path from first idea to published monograph

would be as straight and as straightforward as one of the ancient Roman
roads that neatly slice their way through eastern England. In reality, the
path is often tortuous, and the present book’s journey has seemed to me
like a slog through the labyrinthine Fens of the eighth-century monk
Felix’s Vita sancti Guthlaci: the project has by turns dragged, stumbled,
slipped, lurched, staggered, and finally waded (if not waddled) its way
towards a clearing, now losing itself in false methodological turns,
now struggling in the mire of grant applications, now sinking neck-
deep after the collapse of ill-conceived and ramshackle causeways of
argumentation. I am grateful for the frequent encouragement I have
received, whether in the form of tips about conferences (or articles or
books, sometimes gifted), patient and generous readings, astute ques-
tions posed at key moments, or wishes of good luck or at least “good
luck with that.”
With a view to capaciousness, then, I warmly thank, in alphabetical
order, the following persons: John Archibald, Meredith Bacola, Nina
Belmonte, John Black, Virginia Blanton, Adrienne Williams Boyarin,
Shamma Boyarin, Andrew Breeze, Tom Bredehoft, Julio Burgo, Christa
Canitz, Hélène Cazes, Alison Chapman, Catherine A.R. Clarke, Fran
Cudlipp and Trevor Hancock, Misao Dean, Siân Echard, Gordon Fulton,
Jay Paul Gates, Jeanne and Ted St. Michel, Alison Gulley, Joel Hawkes,
Melanie Hibi, Iain McLeod Higgins, Lloyd Howard, Matt Huculak,
Giovanni Iamartino, Henry Ansgar Kelly, Erik Kwakkel, Stephanie La-
hey, Rodrigo Pérez Lorido, Kathryn Lowe, Robert Miles, Marcus Mil-
wright and Evanthia Baboula, J. Allan Mitchell, Ruben Valdés Miyares,
Lynnea Ness, Michael Nowlin, Emma Nuding, Brian O’Camb, Rich-
ard van Oort, Merridy Peters, Kevin Rea and Jennifer Rhoads, Michael
Reed, Jane Roberts, Robert Rouse, Stephen Ross, Connie Rousseau, Bob
x Acknowledgments

Shepherd and Lori Mathis, Matt Simeone, Monica Rydygier Smith, Ken
Streutker, Alan Thacker, John Tucker, Christine Voth, Andrew Ware-
ham, Carl Watson, Sarah and Scott White, and Gernot Wieland. They
have my sincere thanks, and I apologize to anyone whose name I may
have forgotten. Any errors, oversights, or absurdities are mine alone.
I also express my profound gratitude to Suzanne Rancourt, Terry
Teskey, Leah Connor, Stephanie Mazza, Breanna Muir, and their col-
leagues at the University of Toronto Press, and to a number of anony-
mous readers who have guided this project along at various stages over
the years and signalled the many reasons it was not yet sea-worthy.
Although I have delved relatively little into palaeography and codicol-
ogy, I would have learned a great deal less about the manuscript envi-
ronments of literary texts if not for the generous assistance of librarians
at the University of Victoria, the British Library, the Bodleian Library of
the University of Oxford, Cambridge University Library, the University
of Glasgow Library, and the Widener Library of Harvard University; I
am grateful to them all, and to the University of Victoria again for pro-
viding funding in the form of travel and research grants. I also thank
Eva Oledzka, Chris Fletcher, and Colin Walker for permission to quote
from manuscripts held in the Bodleian, and Sandra Powlette for per-
mission to quote from manuscripts held in the British Library.
Special acknowledgment is reserved for the medievalists who pa-
tiently taught and mentored me: the late Rodney Delasanta, of Prov-
idence College; Lisa Kiser, of Ohio State University; and the late
Christian Zacher and Nicholas Howe, also of Ohio State. My efforts to
reinvent myself as a student of pre-Conquest English literature began
too late for me to seek Nick’s advice about sense of place, regional iden-
tities, and much else, but I continue to learn much from his writings. Fi-
nally, my deepest thanks go to my wife, friend, soulmate, and colleague
Marina Bettaglio, Italo-Hispanist scholar straordinaria, who remains
for me a model of erudition whose regional sensibilities have deeply
informed my own; and to our two children, apprentice culture critics
Anna Grossi and Thomas Grossi, who may yet glimpse the connection
between their love of British cult comedies and the anecdotes they’ve
heard far too many times about the exploits of Rædwald, Æthelthryth,
Guthlac, Edmund, and many another glorious champion of early East
Anglian lore.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Fed-
eration for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to
Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. An early ver-
sion of chapter 1 was published as “A Place of ‘Long-Lasting Evil and
 Acknowledgments xi

Unhappiness’: Rædwald’s East Anglia in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History,”

in New Medieval Literatures 15 (2013). A version of chapter 3 appears
in Guthlac: Crowland’s Saint, edited by Jane Roberts and Alan Thacker
(Donington, UK: Shaun Tyas, 2020), a book that gathers together the
contributions to the co-editors’ conference “Guthlac of Crowland: Cel-
ebrating 1300 Years,” held at the University of London on 10–11 April
2014. I happily express my gratitude to Drs. Roberts and Thacker and
to Mr. Tyas, as well as to Ms. Elisabeth Walczuk of Brepols Publishers
for permission to use revised forms of those essays here. Some ideas
in chapter 3 were also adumbrated in “Barrow Exegesis: Quotation,
Chorography and Felix’s Life of St. Guthlac,” in Florilegium 30 (2013); I
thank Christa Canitz for her permission to revisit and build upon those
ideas, and Gernot Wieland for his original invitation to submit that ar-
ticle for inclusion in his guest-edited issue of that journal. I am also
grateful to Boydell and Brewer and to Sam Newton for permission to
reproduce the map of East Anglia in Dr. Newton’s book The Origins
of Beowulf and the Pre-Viking Kingdom of East Anglia (Cambridge: D.S.
Brewer, 1993). Bits and pieces of other chapters of the present study
have been presented in conference panels at Leeds, Glasgow, Kalama-
zoo, Victoria, and Vancouver, and I thank the organizers of those panels
and venues as well.
This page intentionally left blank
 Abbreviations

AGT Alfred-Guthrum Treaty

ASC Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
ASC Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. M. Swanton
ASE Anglo-Saxon England (journal)
ASSAH Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History
BAR British Archaeological Reports
Bosworth-Toller Joseph Bosworth, with supplement by Thomas
Northcote Toller, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online
DOE Dictionary of Old English
DMLBS Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources
EETS Early English Text Society
EHR English Historical Review
Electronic Sawyer The Electronic Sawyer Online Catalogue of Anglo-
Saxon Charters, Centre for Computing in the
Humanities, King’s College, University of London;
and KEMBLE website, University of Cambridge,
https://esawyer.lib.cam.ac.uk/about/index.html
HE Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ed. and
trans. Colgrave and Mynors as Ecclesiastical History
of the English People
JEGP Journal of English and Germanic Philology
LE Liber Eliensis
LSE Abbo of Fleury, Passio sancti Eadmundi, ed. M.
Winterbottom as Life of St. Edmund
MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica
N.S. New Series
OE Old English
O.S. Original Series
xiv Abbreviations

PASE Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England (database;

http://www.pase.ac.uk)
SEKM Ælfric of Eynsham, Life of St. Edmund, ed. G.I.
Needham as St. Edmund, King and Martyr
S.S. Supplementary Series
SS rer. Germ. Scriptores rerum Germanicarum
SS rer. Mero. Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum
TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
VSG Felix, Vita sancti Guthlaci, ed. Bertram Colgrave as
Felix’s Life of Saint Guthlac
 ANGLES ON A KINGDOM

East Anglian Identities from Bede to Ælfric

This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction

Comprising chiefly the English counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, the re-
gion of East Anglia usually conjures up scenes of flat landscapes at the
mercy of a coastline-hungry North Sea, or perhaps images of a rapidly
vanishing agrarian way of life whose stolid practitioners have been as
much scarred as shaped by its demands.1 The district’s perceived iso-
lation from the rest of England may come to mind; although this di-
minishes as London’s commuter belt expands, East Anglia’s reputation
for being out of the way has persisted well into modernity. Malcolm
Bradbury remarked that his adoptive Norfolk was

defined by its geography (cut off on three sides by the sea and the fourth
by British Rail, is what they always used to say when we still had a Brit-
ish Rail), and shaped by its very distinctive history. Before the fens were
drained, and routes to the Midlands opened (still only to a point), it felt
truly islanded: open by land only to the south, but by water everywhere.2

Even the county of Suffolk, the “fourth” side of Norfolk to which Brad-
bury alludes, was once considered well off the beaten track despite be-
ing nearer to the metropolis.3 Suffolk forester and Labour activist David
Collyer, a semi-fictional character in Ronald Blythe’s beloved Akenfield
(1969), reflects that “London can remain a foreign country, although it is
only ninety miles away,” because “East Anglia is a nation, which makes
it different”4 – different, that is, from “The Shires.”5 One wonders how
long this sense of difference has induced the East Anglian “nation” to
judge itself, and to be judged, an odd fit within England.
Modern maps encourage such curiosity by showing the region as
a prominent bulge in eastern England that is seemingly being pulled
across the North Sea by some irresistible gravitational force emanating
from mainland Europe (Brexit notwithstanding). To assert that early
4 Introduction

East Anglia was torn between two worlds, between the British Isles
on one hand and the Continent and Scandinavia on the other, would
be to overdramatize matters; but it is fair to say that it was shared by
those worlds, each highly complex and subject to frequent interaction
with the other in what has come to be called the larger North Sea Zone
or North Sea Province. Much scholarship over the past two decades
has illuminated the early medieval societies composing that maritime
milieu; archaeological evidence in particular has blurred the lines be-
tween a variety of categories – e.g. Insular and Continental, pagan
and Christian – that once were held to be clear-cut.6 Eighth- to early
eleventh-century authors were responsible for establishing such rigidly
demarcated concepts in the first place: where they saw intermingling,
be it of cultural groups or of religious practices, they often reacted with
disdain if not with horror, declaiming against heathenism in favour of
Christian orthodoxy (the latter itself an ideological not merely religious
position), and preferring visions of unity to the spectacle of diversity.
The focus of this book is early medieval East Anglia, from time to
time the source of various threats to a cohesive “Englishness” that was
imagined to exist by some early medieval writers as a feature either
of an evolving Insular Christian Church or of a developing society of
kings, queens, and courts. “Anglo-Saxon” is the phrase convention-
ally used by modern scholars to describe the nation as it was before
the Norman Conquest in 1066, but the phrase is generally avoided in
these pages because of its increasingly frequent use by nationalists
and white supremacists. Academics often employ it as a convenient,
strictly taxonomic shorthand within certain well-established fields
such as art history and numismatics; nevertheless, the controversy
surrounding its use is relevant throughout the English-speaking world
and has persuaded me to forgo it.7 Another reason I avoid the term
“Anglo-Saxon,” albeit a far less urgent one, is that it implies a steady,
organized process of late ninth- and tenth-century political amalgama-
tion that is likely to have been slower, more fitful, indeed more con-
tested than what is suggested by writings produced during the reigns
of King Alfred, his sons, and his grandsons. The textual representation
of East Anglia from the eighth century to the turn of the millennium
highlights the unique love-hate relationship that the region enjoyed
with centralizing powers in the early English nation. My fastidious ap-
proach to terminology also leads me to distinguish between the “East
Angles” of Bede’s day and the “East Anglians” of Alfred’s, because
after 869 the latter people comprised significant numbers of Danes and
others from Continental Europe as well as the descendants of the orig-
inal “East Angles” known to Bede.
 Introduction 5

As noted above, the place of East Anglia was and is regarded chiefly
as the union of Norfolk and Suffolk, for centuries considered to be the
district’s heartlands. In the twelfth century Geoffrey of Wells believed,
or at least wished his readers to believe, that the district’s dual compo-
sition was well established: “regio uero illa que estengle dicitur … con-
tinens in se duas prouincias famosas Norfulchiam atque sudfulchiam”
(“[n]ow that region which is called East Anglia … contains within its
limits two famous provinces, Norfolk and Suffolk”).8 Internal differ-
ences between the region’s halves nevertheless existed and will be
considered below. Some but not all modern writers would widen the
geographical scope of discussion by including the county of Essex and
the Fens of north-eastern Cambridgeshire and southern Lincolnshire.9
Care is needed, however, to prevent a too-expansive idea of the his-
torical East Anglia from encroaching on Middle Anglia, which, though
smaller than its eastern neighbour, was once a kingdom in its own right.
It will receive further comment in chapter 3.
Blurred and contested boundaries, geographical as well as ideologi-
cal, form one of East Anglia’s principal historical traits; the question of
“fit” alluded to above – specifically, how the region troubled larger lit-
erary programs of national or ecclesiastical identity or of international
harmony – was what prompted me to write this book in the first place.
Early East Anglia disturbed some writers by displaying too much cul-
tural or political hybridity; in response to this unsettled state, those
writers then promoted or fabricated the region’s full integration with
an imagined English whole. The texts that disclose the vexed problem
of assimilation most intriguingly are the Venerable Bede’s Historia ec-
clesiastica gentis Anglorum (HE), the monk Felix’s Vita sancti Guthlaci
(VSG), the peace treaty between King Alfred and the Anglo-Danish
ruler Guthrum (the so-called “Alfred-Guthrum Treaty” [AGT]), entries
from various recensions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC), Abbo of
Fleury’s Passio sancti Eadmundi (LSE, abbreviating the edition as titled
by Michael Winterbottom), and Ælfric of Eynsham’s Life of St. Edmund,
King and Martyr (SEKM). These texts, though penned mostly by outsid-
ers to the region, occupy the foreground of this study not only because
they refer frequently to East Anglia but also, and more importantly, be-
cause they treat it as a distinct place, on one hand integral and desirable
to a unified England because of its strategic location and its contribu-
tions to ecclesiastical culture, on the other hand dangerous to England
because of its vulnerability to Scandinavian and Continental influences,
chiefly “pagan” raiders and “paganism” in general (as the texts in ques-
tion construct those categories). Scholars who see precocious early Eng-
lish “national” identity going back to at least King Alfred’s time, if not
6 Introduction

the Venerable Bede’s, have tended to privilege product over process,

often playing down the persistence of regional identities and the strain
they placed on the unifying agendas of larger political programs and
of literary visions aligned with those programs. This book accepts the
existence of those pan-English agendas but seeks to gauge the pressure
on them exerted by an occasionally wayward region.
East Anglia’s distinctness within England can, I admit, be difficult to
pinpoint. Touted often by archaeologists, historians, and travel writ-
ers,10 that distinctness fascinates like a will-o’-the-wisp; it inspires so
much confidence in its own tangibility that many an authority navi-
gates by it.11 To seize upon what East Anglia’s identities might have
conjured up in the minds of early medieval writers, I have found it
necessary to think about very disparate fragments of a long-vanished
culture: annals in conjunction with lyres (if only briefly); saints’ lives in
tandem with earthen ramparts; treaties alongside tumuli. The present
study has been informed by the findings of landscape historians and ar-
chaeologists even as it primarily deals with textual perceptions of East
Anglia as a simultaneously vital and volatile part of England.
The vitality is not in question, especially as regards the region’s im-
portance within the early English church. In the middle of the seventh
century the East Anglian king Sigeberht encouraged the local mission-
ary activity of Felix, the first bishop of the East Anglian diocese, and
of the Irish hermit Fursey (or Fursa); their efforts helped to consoli-
date Christianity in the early kingdom. The royal abbess Æthelthryth,
leader of a religious community for women and for men at Ely in the
last quarter of the seventh century, added further lustre to the church
both in and out of East Anglia. Shortly thereafter, the Mercian aristo-
crat Guthlac established a hermitage at Crowland and, between the
720s and the 740s, was claimed in effect as an honorary East Anglian
by King Ælfwald. The region’s most illustrious saint was, of course,
King Edmund, killed by “vikings”12 in 869 and subsequently culted as
a virgin martyr in yet another triumph for English no less than regional
hagiography. These several regional saints contributed much to what
a turn-of-the-millennium scholar like Ælfric of Eynsham regarded as
England’s national culture.
Yet East Anglia had also been judged a volatile threat to broader cul-
tural and political stability, both in the south-east and beyond. In the
early seventh century, King Rædwald, though a converted Christian,
refused to renounce the paganism of his forebears; whatever his con-
temporaries in East Anglia might have thought about his intransigence
in this regard, Bede in Northumbria in the 730s deemed it dangerous to
the overall health of Christianity in England. In the late ninth century,
 Introduction 7

the former viking leader Guthrum, who had renounced paganism at

least outwardly before becoming de facto king of East Anglia, never-
theless aided pagan Scandinavian plunderers, much to the chagrin of
the West Saxon king Alfred and his court. Early East Anglia was, then, a
hybrid land, now adapting to “heathen” Continental and Scandinavian
influences, now asserting its pre-eminence as a bulwark of Christianity
and sometimes even over-extending itself in this latter regard at the
expense of its neighbours, as hinted at in Felix’s VSG and in Ælfric’s
SEKM. Between the late ninth and middle tenth century the region fell
under Danish rule, though idiosyncratically; afterwards, it elicited yet
partly resisted West Saxon military takeover.13 By the time Wulfstan
of Winchester wrote his Vita sancti Æthelwoldi in ca. 996, East Anglia
had known sufficient vicissitudes and cultural estrangement to seem
alien to a West Saxon perspective; Wulfstan could identify the Ely of St.
Æthelthryth only by saying that it lay “in remotis Britanniae partibus”
(“in remote parts of Britain”).14 The hybridities the region assumes in
early English texts endangered but also stimulated contemporary ide-
als of what a unified England and its church should be, and motivated
writers north of the Humber and west of the Fens to try to compensate
for a perceived lack in the gens Orientalium Anglorum, whose territory
was sometimes suspected of being insufficiently “English” and “Chris-
tian” and indeed of lying on the front lines of the foreign.

Towards a Methodology

In exploring textual representations of the place and people of early

East Anglia, I have been guided by several interrelated critical formu-
lations. “Ethnic identity,” John Hines writes, “is a certain form of at-
tributed membership of a group of people. As attributed, it is distinctly
a product of ideology, although this may be an ideological response
to social and economic factors.”15 In a similar vein, and in defence of
his own treatment of literary texts as meaningful sources of history in
their own right, Ian Wood explains in his Merovingian North Sea that
“[t]he tribal geography envisaged here is that demanded by the Mer-
ovingian sources, reflecting the Franks’ view of their neighbours, even
if it does not reflect reality.”16 More recently, and with a view to blur-
ring the boundaries between “historical” and “literary” analysis, Paul
Strohm has defended what he calls “an extratextual and material his-
tory measurable in its textual effects”;17 his critical practice, like those
of Hines and Wood, simultaneously respects agents, events, and the
written words used to narrate the former’s actuation of the latter. My
focus, then, is on the chiefly textual attributions of ethnic, ethical, and
8 Introduction

aesthetic identities; but I also attend to those features of “extratextual

and material” reality that would have conditioned those attributions
qua “textual effects.” Recovering early verbal depictions of East Anglia
requires a dual perspective.
Angles on a Kingdom analyses what might be called the developing
literary “chorography” of East Anglia, that is, Old English and Anglo-
Latin descriptions or figurations of a region, the root choro- deriving from
the Greek word for “place,” “space,” “region,” or “district.” Chorography,
as a branch of Greco-Roman geography, pertained specifically to the
representation of territorial parts, that is, of regions or localities. The
science was exemplified in the works of Strabo and Ptolemy in par-
ticular, as Alfred Hiatt and Darrell Rohl have shown with regard to the
spatial sensitivities of Beowulf and of Enlightenment-era Scottish anti-
quaries.18 Where the classical tradition had presupposed a link between
chorography and cartography, between verbal and visual representa-
tions of regions, the early English approach to conjuring up space relied
chiefly on words, as has been demonstrated by Hiatt, Nicholas Howe,
Fabienne Michelet, Kathy Lavezzo, and Nicole Guenther Discenza,
who in different and fascinating ways have examined the cultural work
performed by rhetorical as opposed to pictorial evocations of place and
space in pre-Conquest texts.19 Writings projected a mental map of the
environments in which contests for regional pre-eminence unfolded;
for this reason, phrases like “mental map” and “social map” are not
inapposite to this context.20
Precisely because this book traces the textualization of a single re-
gion, it bears in mind the larger national context, more specifically
what Kathleen Davis has called “the ideological production of Eng-
land” between the early eighth and the late tenth century.21 “Regional”
and “national” (or, better, “regnal”)22 sensibilities developed in tandem
with one another, sometimes overlapping, at times overstepping; at-
tending to their interrelatedness can helpfully disabuse one of the as-
sumption that nations and national feeling arise unproblematically, as
if guided along by some benevolent destiny that conveniently erases
antagonisms between regions, provinces, or city-states. Hugh Thomas
has pointed out that “[b]efore and after 1066 local identities could eas-
ily coexist with broader ones,” and that “far from competing with or
detracting from the strength of attachment to England, and thereby
undermining Englishness, local feeling may well have fed into and
strengthened the constructs of England and Englishness.”23 Thorlac
Turville-Petre has discerned an acrimonious form of this dynamic in
late thirteenth- to mid-fourteenth-century literary representations of
Norfolk’s relationship to the rest of the country;24 but interregional
 Introduction 9

tensions ran especially high in pre-Conquest England, which had not

yet acquired the same national status or national aspirations that would
be articulated in the Angevin and Plantagenet periods. The Mercians in
the seventh and eighth centuries, the Danes in the ninth,25 and the West
Saxons in the tenth needed to confront the persistent problem of what to
do with pre- and post-Scandinavian East Anglia, how to absorb it into
larger political configurations that were as yet only groping their way
towards cohesion, let alone achieving hegemony. “The history of the
East Anglians,” it is safe to say with Alice Sheppard, “is particularly as-
sociated with the question of kingship in Anglo-Saxon England”26 and
indeed with the question of what it meant to be English. The very ideas
of “England” and “the English” were works in progress throughout the
pre-Conquest centuries;27 those ideas stimulated and were stimulated
by robust regionalism in East Anglia, and examining this dialectical
relationship will, I hope, serve as a useful corrective to any lingering
belief that the early English “nation” was a uniquely productive source
of identity for the people who lived in it. In considering the interplay
between region and nation, between part and whole, I follow the lead
of David Rollason, Jacqueline Stodnick, Michelle Brown and Carol Farr,
Robert Barrett, Virginia Blanton, and Rebecca Pinner, all of whom have
written eloquently about the cultural meanings of specific regions, dis-
tricts, or localities within their larger geopolitical Insular contexts.28
Northumbrians, Mercians, Danes, and West Saxons variously had po-
litical designs on East Anglia, and individual authors put literary con-
structions upon those designs. If at times those authors’ textual portraits
bear only a dubious resemblance to reality, it’s in part because many of
them were composed far from the land and people they describe. Even
the name “East Anglia,” Bede’s provincia Anglorum Orientalium (“king-
dom of the East Angles”), likely originated elsewhere, probably in Can-
terbury where the earliest archbishops would have found it convenient
to organize their several English dioceses according to cardinal taxon-
omy.29 From Bede to Ælfric, writers who commented on East Anglia
from outside such rarefied bureaucratic climes had their own didactic,
moralizing, and sometimes propagandistic agendas, which inhibited a
strictly disinterested chorography and instead made possible a variety
of highly partisan angles on a kingdom.
Such textual dynamism enhanced what was doubtless an already
charged cultural and political landscape, and recent work by social sci-
entists yields insights that can be adapted, with caution and in a general
vein, to account for the textual formation of early medieval East Anglia.
Fredrik Söderbaum and Björn Hettne, for example, have observed that
regions are “processes … in the making (or un-making)” that owe their
10 Introduction

form to discourse itself insofar as they “come to life as we talk and think
about them.”30 This insight felicitously complements studies by Steven
Bassett, John Hines, Barbara Yorke, William O. Frazer, John Moreland,
Stephen Harris, Sarah Foot, and David Dumville, all of whom see similar
fluidity in early Insular kingdoms.31 In general, the ethical imperative to
discern the constructed nature of identities – sometimes self-generated,
at other times attributed or even fabricated by outsiders – has been un-
derscored by writers as varied as David Newman, Chris Rumford, David
Rollason, Gloria Anzaldúa, Walter Mignolo, Thomas King, Daniel
Boyarin, Tim Ingold, Walter Pohl, Elaine Treharne, Lindy Brady, and
Kelley Wickham-Crowley, all of whom have explored the complexities
inherent in understanding borders between regions, between countries,
and even between mentalities. Their contributions allow us to perceive
boundaries for what they really are: imposed physical lines of demarca-
tion as well as processual zones of interaction and mutual influence.32
Some of the chorography surveyed in this book takes the form of
“mere” observations about place seemingly made in passing. Bede
notes that the Isle of Ely is surrounded by water; the monk Felix ob-
serves that the Fens are vast; Abbo of Fleury tells us that East Anglia’s
soil is fertile.33 Rather than remarks about territory for its own sake,
however, these asides are embedded in texts imbued with ideological
concerns that obviate “realism” as we understand it; far from obscuring
the place of East Anglia, those concerns made it possible for East Anglia
to be spoken of in the first place. From the very beginning of the literary
record, the region’s character was shaped largely by a specifically Chris-
tian and often monastic didacticism; this was the ideological angle that
allowed the region to come into view. Bede’s HE, for example, promotes
a unified Catholic Church and occasionally employs hagiography for
this purpose; Felix’s VSG and Abbo’s LSE are entirely hagiographic
in nature, their descriptions of place composing a sacred chorography
concerned at least as much with literary tropes and pastoral exhortation
as with actual fens, rivers, and pastures. The present book necessarily
adopts a flexible approach to place description that remains attuned to
the pedagogical agendas that inform attitudes towards landscapes.
A further, related methodological caveat – again regarding the ethical
concerns surrounding regional study – has to do with early English au-
thors’ interest in illustrious individual personages as the human foci of
chorography. In the texts analysed in the following chapters, East An-
glian kings, queens, monks, and bishops embody their land as agents
of wide-ranging spiritual reform or stagnation, or as bearers of political
stability or upheaval. Prosopography comes with the territory and of-
ten characterizes it. Although the term “prosopo-chorography” is too
 Introduction 11

rebarbative to warrant its use beyond this one coinage, it would (if it
existed) describe what I am up to in this book, for the authors consid-
ered here often describe places by identifying their rulers, courts, and
prelates; by accounting for the processes of governance and evangeliza-
tion; and by attending to elite networks of power. As Nicole Guenther
Discenza observes,

[e]xploring the geography of the Anglo-Saxons reminds us that space

is always constructed and situated, in place and in time. They regarded
it pragmatically, creating word-pictures of places populated and full of
history. Geography conveys psychological meaning more than a sense of
physical reality.34

The various characterizations of East Anglia surveyed in this book all

point to similarly pragmatic constructions of regional space, the under-
lying concern of their authors having been to promote a social order that
could be implemented only by the figures occupying the highest eche-
lons of society. Today we would probably not describe a place by first
considering the social networks of its leading inhabitants, but the writers
considered here did so because they believed that countries and their con-
stituent districts were made primarily by those who governed them and
secondarily by those who lived in them as subjects.35 The preoccupation
with social elites will be discussed further in the following section, while
the conflation of geographical territory with personal and social loyalties
will be considered in the section entitled “Vocabulary of Governance.”

The Problem of Social Class

There is no way to avoid the “classism” of early representations of East

Anglia. A seventh-century cowherd from the region may well have
composed songs like the Trinklieder shunned by his or her famous coun-
terpart at Hild’s monastery of Whitby; but if such songs ever existed,
and if they contained colourful references to local life, they have not
survived. Even if they had done, we might have gleaned no more of
their content than what we can learn about secular folk music from
Bede’s story of Cædmon. Nor – to pose another hypothetical scenario –
are we likely to know how a Cambridgeshire peasant family in the 890s
might have gauged the personal relevance to them of labels like “Dan-
ish” and “English,” governed as their lives were by the more abiding
realities of food rents, harvests, and droughts.36 One could speculate at
length about the many lost perspectives on East Anglia once held by,
say, eighth-century precursors to the nineteenth-century Suffolk poets
12 Introduction

Robert Bloomfield and George Crabbe, or by the distant ancestors of

Mary Chamberlain’s Fenwomen.
Some of those perspectives may have been entertained by the people
named in one of the earliest extant East Anglian charters, a deed of 962
in which King Edgar grants Ceorleswyrðe (Chelsworth in Suffolk), valued
at seven hides, to his stepmother Æthelflæd of Damerham.37 The deed
warrants consideration here because of its dual spatial sensibility: it is
local in that it concerns a Suffolk estate, yet foreign insofar as it was pro-
duced in a West Saxon milieu and records a grant of land by a West Saxon
king. In general, early English diplomas have piqued the curiosity both
of the landscape historian and of the student of early English mentali-
ties, for as bilingual records of transactions that comprise Latin proems
and Old English boundary clauses, they allow us to ask certain limited
questions about their writers’ complex sense of geography.38 The Latin
prefaces contain formulaic wording; the vernacular boundary clauses
trace the perimeters of the estates concerned. “Although the diploma
was produced in some sense centrally,” as Kathryn Lowe observes, “the
boundary details were necessarily local affairs, undertaken by those with
knowledge of the area to be surveyed.”39 A charter presupposed collab-
oration between those who owned and those who toiled, between the
powerful and the powerless living in overlapping spaces of activity. It
also envisioned a role for the divine: its “boundary clause spoke not only
to the legal ownership of a parcel of land but also to its ultimate place
within God’s creation.”40 The part of the text that delimited the estate
may have evoked the back of beyond to almost everyone except the peo-
ple who lived in the immediate area; by contrast, the charter’s bombas-
tic, rhetorically convoluted Latin portions appealed to the Great Beyond
itself, turf claimed by king and cleric to enforce obedience to the deed.
This dual perspective and the diverse but complementary social at-
titudes it implies inform the Chelsworth charter. Its fourteen witnesses
include four ealdormen and both archbishops; together with the two
principal parties involved, the witness list reads almost like a Who’s
Who of mid-tenth-century England. Other people associated with the
land come into view through the boundary markers, the landgemæro,
which contain their names. These include the Manna and Asa referred
to in the phrase “on mannan mearce and on asan” (“to Manna’s bound-
ary and Asa’s boundary”), as well as the Oswyth and Eadwold who
gave their names to “oswiðes mearce 7 eadwoldes” (“Oswyth’s bound-
ary and Eadwold’s boundary”), and just perhaps a Cula associated
with culan fenne (“Cula’s Fen”?).41 The estate’s very name spurred the
curial writers of the document, probably at Abingdon (Oxon), to ac-
knowledge the non-elite community living in the area, for the Latin
 Introduction 13

explains that the place “a ruricolis uulgariter CEORLESWYRĐE prola-

tum est” (“is commonly known by the country folk as Chelsworth”).42
It is thanks to their naming practices that the dwellers of the country-
side come into royal view; they are credited with just enough agency to
confer a form of identity upon an estate, a toponym that half-recalls a
specific individual’s ownership at some earlier time.
The Old English compound of ceorles and wyrþ/worþ means, at its
most general, “a man’s homestead,” though it may be possible to clas-
sify the “man” in question as “a member of the lowest class of free
men,” “a tenant or proprietor of less than five hides of land,” or “a
layman” (as opposed to a clergyman).43 Cyril Hart acknowledges the
difficulty of ascertaining when the place-name might have arisen:

Since the first element of the place-name Chelsworth is in the genitive

singular, its origin may be manorial. … The OE personal name Ceorl is
found commonly from the seventh to the eleventh centuries. Ceorl’s worth
(homestead, enclosure) was probably so named before the Danish occupa-
tion of Suffolk in 879. The village settlement is most likely to have origi-
nated in the seventh century or earlier.44

Although the place-name resists easy dating, it is not therefore timeless.

Intimating “society’s unconscious,”45 the name Ceorleswyrð binds to-
gether the ceorl who had first obtained the enclosed land and made his
home thereupon; his local contemporaries, who recognized the act of
acquisition and passed the place-name down to posterity; and the vil-
lagers who, in the year 962, supplied a peculiarly local way of referring
to the estate that was picked up by the charter’s authors and witnesses.
Moreover, as Nicholas Howe reflects, “stylistic differences suggest
that a place is, at least in part, defined by the style one uses to write
it.”46 The Chelsworth diploma “writes” its subject into being by means
of two media, the everyday speech of the OE vernacular and the tex-
tual idiom of curial administrative Latin. Where the former associates
landscape features with specific members of local communities (the ce-
orl, Asa, Manna, etc.), the latter suggests the distance between those
communities and the West Saxon royal court, which asserted the power
to dispose of properties from afar. The distance between locality and
royal power is not necessarily unbridgeable, despite the geographical
divide between East Anglia and Wessex; by referring (if only briefly)
to the area’s ruricolae, literally “those who till the earth,”47 the diploma
recognizes the unnamed denizens as the custodians of the vill’s name.
Though excluded from the transaction, they are nevertheless accorded
a place in the transaction’s wider life.
14 Introduction

Provincial milieus are not always obliterated, then, by centralizing

bureaucracies. As late as the 1930s Julian Tennyson, the poet laureate
Alfred’s great-grandson, could pronounce the modern village of Chels-
worth to be “perfect … because it [was] unmarred by discovery.”48 Per-
haps the impact of discovery by outsiders depends on one’s point of
view; Chelsworth had, after all, been discovered by, and integrated into,
a West Saxon economy of land-granting almost a millennium earlier. But
the fact that it looked so pristine to an astute observer of Suffolk culture
like Tennyson implies that something of the town’s local character could
still be defined as “unmarred” – that is, untouched by excessive out-
side influence – in a way not unworthy of the persistence of the names
Manna, Cula, Asa, Eadwold, and Oswyth in the vill’s tenth-century hu-
man geography. Edgar’s grant to Æthelflæd typifies the oscillation be-
tween local culture and regnal authority characteristic of estate charters
in general, but it also exemplifies textual images of East Anglia in that
it permits Chelsworth’s seven hides to stand out from their surround-
ings even as it documents their participation in a larger network of ex-
change. Æthelflæd was, as mentioned above, stepmother to a Cerdicing
potentate;49 but she was also “a representative of a wealthy East Anglian
family whose extant wills record their religious patronage of Bury St.
Edmunds and their own foundation at Stoke-by-Nayland in Suffolk.”50
Her receipt of Chelsworth from King Edgar suggests regnal intervention
in the region but also a distinctly local influence on that intervention.

The Question of Distinctness

It is necessary to return to a point made earlier in this introduction, that

East Anglia’s distinctness is often attested by historians and archaeolo-
gists. Although the present study is chiefly about human perceptions of
distinctness, it is important to acknowledge that such perceptions are
grounded in landscapes that predate humanity. As Tim Pestell observes,

East Anglia’s cultural identity was in no small part a consequence of its

topographical definition. Bounded by the sea to the north and east, the
Fen basin formed a barrier to the west. To the south-west and south lay the
less tractable and more densely wooded claylands, with the deep estuar-
ies and river valleys of the Stour forming a final barrier to the south-east,
dividing off Suffolk from Essex.51

As described by Pestell, its topography dictates that East Anglia proper

will have enjoyed a degree of isolation from its English neighbours
that fostered internal homogeneity. Roy Rainbird Clarke made an even
 Introduction 15

bolder version of this claim when, adducing the region’s relative near-
ness to the European mainland, he wrote that “East Anglia … looks out
across the narrow seas to the continent, with which it is more intimately
linked than with the rest of Britain.”52 This assertion, as extravagant as
it may sound, is not wholly unfounded. Accessibility by sea had made
the district attractive to outsiders at least as far back as the fifth cen-
tury, when European migrants possibly made it their first destination
in Britain.53 Trade enabled links between East Anglia and the world
beyond the Channel, from Scandinavia to Byzantium to North Africa,
as evidenced by the myriad of grave goods excavated from the famous
Sutton Hoo ship-burial, itself a foreign practice in its apparent associ-
ation with what is today Sweden.54 Furthermore, pottery unearthed at
the extensive fifth- to sixth-century cremation cemetery at Spong Hill
in North Elmham (Norfolk) resembles finds from an area around Stade
on the Elbe River in modern-day Lower Saxony; from this evidence
scholars infer “ongoing contact between communities on both sides of
the North Sea, and the repeated sharing of material culture and depo-
sitional behaviours, rather than a single migration event at the start of
the fifth century.”55 Even a less well-known East Anglian site like the
assemblage of graves at Harford Farm near Caistor St. Edmund (Nor-
folk), some twenty-five miles south-east of Spong Hill, opens up broad
vistas of cultural exchange thanks to the Kentish disc brooch, Byzantine
pin-set, and Roman intaglio thereat unearthed.56
Early East Anglia, then, was defined in part by its involvement in
far-flung trade networks. But by what else? Jack Ravensdale and Rich-
ard Muir, though ardent believers in its uniqueness, caution that “ge-
ographical regions, unlike counties and countries, do not have sharp
boundaries but gradually merge into their neighbours.”57 Norman
Scarfe highlights the same problem of definition when discussing the
interior of East Anglia’s southern half:

Suffolk men have had to depend for the perpetuation of their boundaries
on the few obvious natural features – rivers and streams, or prominent,
long-living oak trees – and on existing man-made features such as earlier
metalled roads, field-ditches and hedgerows. The rest they have created
for themselves, usually from earth banks.58

On the other hand, the early East Angles sometimes moulded their land-
scape to enhance already discernible frontier zones. As Oliver Rackham
points out, “[e]ven where there is a natural explanation for two regions,
the boundary is often unexpectedly sharp; we suspect that human en-
deavour has removed what would naturally have been a transition
16 Introduction

zone.”59 Border areas between East Anglia and its neighbours are often
more pronounced in texts than on the landscape, usually because the
former testify to various forms of “human endeavour,” specifically the
carving out of zones of governance. A written place-name or demonym
could reinforce relations or aggravate tensions between neighbours; the
very naming of “East Anglia,” “Mercia,” “Wessex,” “Northumbria,” and
other regna by Bede and subsequent writers likely strengthened existing
perceptions of political difference and heightened sensitivities to transi-
tion zones. There was, however, only so much cultural work that even
the most artful of literary productions could perform, because in the po-
litical context “borders appear to have been as fluid as the power exerted
by rival kingdoms, which ebbed and flowed.”60 The close ties to Europe
that Rainbird Clarke perceives in East Anglia’s history and pre-history
did not preclude other English polities from trying to impose their own
will upon the region. When the East Angles eventually entered the larger
English political community, they did so because of pressures brought
to bear upon them, not because of any essential kinship they might have
felt with the Mercians, East Saxons, West Saxons, or Northumbrians.61
Those pressures are discernible in early texts and in the landscape
itself, where signs of cultural contact and conflict antedate even Bede’s
time. Recently, Robert W. Barrett Jr. has located the beginnings of the
medieval and early modern chorography of Cheshire in the monk Lu-
cian’s De laude Cestrie (ca. 1195), in which “[t]ext and context explic-
itly fuse in Cheshire’s medieval monastic writing: the foundation of
the county’s literary tradition is simultaneously the foundation of its
local identity.”62 Unearthing East Anglia’s literary character requires
expanding the search for context to include the material remains of the
kingdom’s past, a task that necessitates bringing the work of landscape
historians and archaeologists into dialogue with philological study.63
For example, in the late tenth century, Abbo of Fleury conceded that the
East Angles had needed to construct earthworks because their western
frontier area had always been pervia; enemies had always managed to
find “a way through” it.64 Abbo’s remark, however fleeting, anticipates
Scarfe’s insight into Suffolk’s scarce natural boundaries and the local
need to compensate for them by means of dykes.
Martin Carver has pointed to the combination of texts and artefacts
in early East Anglia’s multimedia campaign to proclaim and protect the
very distinctness we now take for granted:

The territory of the East Angles, with its estuaries, fens and long coastline,
is geographically distinct, then as now. Provoked by the anxieties of the
age, leaders emerged, from prominent families, who were to protect the
 Introduction 17

people’s perceived interests. These leaders soon found it necessary to ac-

quire the conceits of kingship: genealogies, regalia and monumental bur-
ial mounds. This defining moment took place within the political context
of the communities of the North Sea.65

The “defining moment” to which Carver refers might be thought of

as a series of self-definitions over time, in essence performances of dis-
tinctness.66 The “monumental burial mounds” that still exist at Sutton
Hoo in Suffolk announced the importance of their occupants; the rega-
lia once deposited in those mounds (surviving in the British Museum)
testified to the singularity of East Anglian monarchical power;67 the dy-
nastic genealogies – preserved, in different versions, in Bede’s HE and
in London, British Library, MS. Cotton Vespasian B.vi – asserted the
bond between land, people, and royal lineage.68 All of these cultural
artefacts were used to supplement porous frontier districts and provi-
sional loyalties. In their own ways Bede, Felix, Abbo, Ælfric, and the
court annalists of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle shaped the performance
of East Anglian identities; they created what might be called “conceits
of regionalism” with their accounts of kings, queens, hermits, mission-
aries, and (from the late ninth century onwards) marauders and settlers.
Surviving material evidence suggests that the performance of dis-
tinctness could be dramatic even if it enjoyed only limited success in
maintaining regnal autonomy. The burial complex at Sutton Hoo and
the various prehistoric dykes of Cambridgeshire (about which more
later) are cases in point and contrast with the famous Offa’s Dyke on
the old Mercian-Welsh border. D.J. Tyler has argued that the latter
expressed not “ineffectuality or wishful thinking” on the part of the
Mercian king Offa but instead “strong, centralising kingship asserting
its power in a newly integrated region”;69 in other words, it may have
celebrated ascent rather than concealing decline. Things seem to have
been different in the Fens. In the late seventh and eighth century East
Anglia was much weaker than Mercia, so the former’s affirmations of
identity – its saints’ works no less than its earthworks – may well have
signalled aspirations to authority that lacked the means to back them
up. In the seventh century in particular, the “fluid … power exerted by
rival kingdoms” to which Pestell alludes spilled over frequently from
Mercia into East Anglia, usually to the great inconvenience of the latter.
It was an indirect commentary on that realm’s proneness that authors
from Bede onwards should have enriched East Anglia’s “cultural capi-
tal” as they did by playing up its illustrious rulers and saints.70
Of course, other kingdoms – the Mercians, the Northumbrians, the
West Saxons – boasted their own important personages, their own
18 Introduction

“conceits of kingship.” No evidence proves that the early East Angles

and the later East Anglians were radically different from their neigh-
bours. The term “Anglian” itself is used by archaeologists to cover a
wide area of habitation that extended well beyond Norfolk and Suffolk
and was characterized by certain kinds of grave goods.71 East Anglia
may be said to have been distinctive in embodying broader cultural
traits in its own ways: for example, as John Hines has pointed out,
“[i]n terms of the quality, quantity and diversity of known Early An-
glo-Saxon archaeological sites, the region of East Anglia is second to
none in England.”72 With regard to specifics, Graeme Lawson observes
that five of the seven known finds of early English musical instruments,
specifically traces of lyres, are associated with this region, in particular
with north-eastern Suffolk and south-eastern Norfolk. Two similar sites
have been found elsewhere in England, but the presence of five in East
Anglia suggests “[s]ome degree of local specialization” and may even
“provide … direct archaeological links … if not with the very creators of
Beowulf itself, then at least with those directly responsible for the pres-
ervation and communication of the body of ancient traditions within
which it was composed.”73 It would be otiose to till ground already
worked so diligently by Sam Newton, who has situated Beowulf within
an East Anglian royal milieu;74 but it bears emphasizing that if the great
Old English epic was produced therein, then East Anglia is to be asso-
ciated with a specific textual culture – an author or authors as well as
their audiences, real or imagined – that deemed centuries-old tales of
Scandinavian heroes and battles especially relevant to its own commu-
nal self-perception.75 Personally I find Newton’s arguments plausible
and have nothing to add to them; but even if we hold that Beowulf was
produced elsewhere, for example in Mercia, as proposed recently by
Richard North and Leonard Neidorf and conceded in passing by New-
ton himself,76 then the imagined culture of the poem still gestures to-
wards East Anglia because the latter offers the closest known parallels
to the text’s description of Scyld Scefing’s ship-burial at sea. According
to Frederick Klaeber, “[t]his custom was subsequently replaced by the
ship-burial on land”;77 the only known English examples of Scandina-
vian-style boat inhumation lie on or near to the East Anglian coast: at
Sutton Hoo, Burrow Hill (Butley, Suffolk), Snape (Suffolk), and Caister-
on-Sea (Norfolk).78
What all of this means in the present context is that the prolifera-
tion of musical instruments and of ship-burials characterizes sixth- and
early seventh-century East Anglia significantly even if not uniquely.
Such artefacts reflected conscious strategies of cultural self-definition.
Although the “body of ancient traditions” behind the genesis of Beowulf
 Introduction 19

may well have conditioned aristocratic sensibilities throughout Eng-

land, that body seems to have been very much at home among the East
Angles. The gens of that land may even have perceived something of its
own fragile independence in the poem’s grim reminders of the even-
tual loss of Geatish autonomy.79
Deliberate cultural self-definition and collective performance in East
Anglia may be inferred from the position of the mounds that originally
contained the ship-burials obliquely recalled in Beowulf. These, and per-
haps even the tumulus at the now-inland village of Snape, may have
been intended to be seen from the North Sea or at least from the local
rivers – the Deben in the case of Sutton Hoo, the Alde in the case of
Snape.80 As Howard Williams states, “while there is no categorical ev-
idence for ‘monument reuse’ at Sutton Hoo, in scale, location and ap-
pearance the mounds may have been deliberately evoking associations
with prehistoric barrow cemeteries in the environs.”81 The intended
spectators of such evocations may have been visitors from far away. In
response to Williams, Tom Williamson wonders just how visible Sutton
Hoo would have been from the sea, and instead proposes the early uti-
lization of different kinds of perspective;82 he suggests that “[t]he view
of the Sutton Hoo cemetery from the river was … less important than
the view of the river from the cemetery.”83 Williamson affirms the stra-
tegic and symbolic importance of the River Deben as the route taken by
northern European migrants in the fifth and sixth centuries:

It was a highway which linked those living near its banks together, but
which at the same time provided a gateway to places more distant. …
[T]he location of the Sutton Hoo and Tranmer House cemeteries, together
with the presence within some of the Sutton Hoo mounds of ships, may
thus have referenced a lost origin-myth, describing how the people living
in this area had first arrived here. In short, in innumerable ways the river
would have been the centre of the imaginative and experienced world of
those who dwelt beside it.84

It is as if the East Angles, or at least the peoples of the Deben, had wished
to flaunt to would-be visitors a peculiar style of funeral commemoration
and the world view informing it, or to keep at the forefront of their own
collective imagination a remembered bond with the sea and with the Eu-
ropean mainland.85 Williamson’s discussion of Sutton Hoo in its Deben
Valley context builds upon Williams’s insights into the conscious stag-
ing of funeral rites; the total picture is one in which mourners prepared
or cremated bodies, arranged grave goods, and constructed tombs in de-
liberate ways, both to formalize death and to enact and perpetuate their
20 Introduction

society’s values.86 Although the siting of cemeteries within view of rivers

was not unique to the East Angles, the prevalence of the practice in Nor-
folk and Suffolk suggests its importance in the cultural self-fashioning
of the peoples who adopted that form of inhumation.87 If Sutton Hoo’s
ship-burial, for example, reflects “the artificial contrivance of a creative
mind; not so much an assemblage of finds, as a statement or text, com-
posed of carefully selected symbols,”88 then much the same thing can be
said about the mound that housed it, along with the other tumuli in the
complex. The emphasis on visibility suggests a performative dimension
to the East Angles’ elite burial customs, a display of ancestor veneration
as itself a defining cultural trait, meant perhaps to broadcast enduring
affinity between the Angles of England and the Angles of the Continen-
tal homelands within the larger “North Sea Province.”
Cultural signalling of a different sort may have informed the earth-
works dug into the western side of the region. Bran (or Heydon) Ditch,
Brent Ditch, Fleam Dyke, High Ditch, and Devil’s Dyke, all in south-
ern Cambridgeshire, seem to have been defensive measures undertaken
to protect the early East Angles from the Mercians, though the system
is likely to have been built in several phases from late Roman times
to the seventh century.89 Advances from the west were not regarded
in the east as a foregone, let alone wished-for, conclusion, despite the
eighth-century monk Felix’s sanguine depiction of Mercian overlord-
ship in the VSG. East Anglians have long resisted encroachment on their
borders, whether by Mercians in the 650s or by MPs in the 1970s; amal-
gamation can appear inevitable especially to those who stand to gain
from it. Such gain seems not to have been immediately apparent to the
peoples who lived to the east of the ancient Cambridgeshire dykes in the
sixth and seventh centuries, for they relied on those earthen structures to
assert the territorial integrity they believed it was their right to defend.

Before the East Angles

So much has been said up to this point about the East Angles and their
defensiveness that it would be easy to overlook the peoples in eastern
Britannia whose territory they had seized before becoming East Angles
in the first place. If we are to take borders seriously in both their cul-
tural and temporal dimensions, we should acknowledge East Anglia’s
Romanized substrate. This earlier layer of the region’s identity was at
least noted in passing by Bede and Felix, both of whom mentioned a
small ruined fort or castrum in the western Fens that eventually became
Cambridge. Before there were Insular “Angles” living in the areas cor-
responding to modern Norfolk and Suffolk, there were respectively the
 Introduction 21

Iceni and the Trinovantes, British tribes that had come under Roman
control in the middle of the first century CE.90 In the year 61 those peo-
ples were inspired by Boadicea, or Boudicca, queen of the Iceni, to revolt
against the ham-fisted administrators whom the Romans had placed
over them. Her forces devastated London, Camulodunum (Colchester,
Essex), and Verulamium (St. Albans, Herts) before Roman pacification
eventually ensued. Subsequent centuries witnessed the prosperous Ro-
manization of East Anglia, as evidenced by the famous Hoxne Hoard
and Mildenhall Treasure, both preserved in the British Museum.91
This prosperity did not go unnoticed. Longstanding piratical “Saxon”
raids necessitated the building of a system of coastal defences in the
late third or fourth century; the task was said to have been entrusted to
a “comes litoris Saxonici” (“Count of the Saxon Shore”), a title used in
the perhaps fifth-century document known as the Notitia dignitatum.92
This document gives us an early example of the longstanding use of
misleading terminology to describe the new transmarine arrivals to
Britain, for the word Saxonici was used to cover widely varying groups
of people. By pausing at the slippage between ethnic names and ethnic
realities in this context, we can see how, even before eastern Britannia
became the land of the Eastængle, textual labelling had served to sim-
plify complex migrations of peoples.
It was formerly held that Germanic mercenaries, “allied” (foederati)
with the Roman legions but serving alongside them only as irregulars,
had settled in Britain in the mid-fourth century. This assumption has
been often questioned,93 but Scandinavians were certainly present long
before the first, ninth-century “Viking Age,” as John Hines has shown.94
At any rate, the heterogeneity of peoples already living in Britain would
have been evident to those Continental newcomers – themselves highly
heterogeneous – who arrived in the fifth century.95 Bede, in HE I, fa-
mously categorized the latter as Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, and iden-
tified discrete European places of origin for all three peoples. In doing
so he displayed only a general accuracy and seems to have oversimpli-
fied matters. In Book V he gives an alternative list that includes, among
others, Danai or “Danes”; while still limited, this second list is more
specific, more heterogeneous, and probably closer to the truth than the
first.96 Ian Wood has reminded us of “the amount of social and political
diversity within these peoples,”97 and his research leads one to suspect
that Bede used the term “Anglian” not just to connect the Germanic im-
migrants to Angeln in present-day Germany98 but also to homogenize
and bring under control a potentially dizzying panoply of tribes who
had been less unified than a manageable history of the church of the
English peoples could easily deal with.99
22 Introduction

The well-known phrase adventus Saxonum or “coming of the Saxons”

similarly conceals ethnic and political complexity by reducing a long
period of migration to a single event.100 Bede, working from the De
excidio et conquestu Britanniae by the British author Gildas (ca. 500–70),
dated the adventus to the period 449–56, the reign of the co-emperors
Marcian and Valentinian. During that time, Bede claims, a British chief-
tain named Vortigern invited Hengest and Horsa from overseas to fight
on behalf of the Britons against the Picts from the north (HE I.15, pp.
48–51). The ASC follows Bede but narrows the time frame to the pre-
cise year 449.101 Scholars today prefer a more general time frame in the
early to middle fifth century, when the proto-East Angles are thought
to have supplanted the ancient territories of the Romano-Celtic Iceni
and Trinovantes. The adventus ushered in near-universal slaughter and
genocide, or so it was long believed; influential in this regard were
Gildas’s De excidio and an anonymous early ninth-century compiler
of the Historia Brittonum, formerly held to be the work of “Nennius,”
a Welsh monk.102 According to Della Hooke, in some parts of Britain
early Germanic migrants simply imposed their culture on native pop-
ulations;103 she and other scholars regard then-new territorial divisions
in the Fens and elsewhere as having been layered atop pre-existing
Romano-British units.104 Susan Oosthuizen, however, has recently re-
vived older views that Germanic newcomers to the Fenland assimi-
lated to existing Romano-British culture, that the native Britons did
not vanish from the scene, and that the Fens maintained continuity of
resource management throughout the sub-Roman and early English
periods rather than having been abruptly and largely depopulated af-
ter the fifth century.105 On the basis of place-names, intercommoning,
and agriculture in the Fenland, Oosthuizen argues that “[t]here is … no
evidence to suggest a political takeover by ‘Anglo-Saxons’ of existing
communities, or their foundation of new, different ‘Germanic’ king-
doms. Nor does the vividly apparent change in the material culture of
the region indicate demographic, cultural or social upheaval.”106 More
persuasive to my way of thinking, however, is the line of argument
represented by Hooke, Williamson, Wood, Härke, and others; Wood,
for example, believes that “some places saw rapid takeover with mini-
mum disruption, others saw instances of carnage, and yet others saw a
slow, destructive infiltration.”107 In any event, the texts examined in the
present book will not be treated as realistic accounts of how the new-
comers displaced, destroyed, or intermarried with the Romano-Brit-
ons; their thoroughgoing suppression of all, or almost all, references to
East Anglia’s pre-“Anglian” past indicates ignorance of or indifference
to that past.
 Introduction 23

The Romans (as opposed to the Romanized Iceni and Trinovantes)

were a different matter; their cultural legacy remained valuable to the
newcomers, whatever the latter may have thought about the British
bearers of that legacy. An eighth-century genealogy in London, Brit-
ish Library, MS. Cotton Vespasian B.vi traces King Ælfwald’s pedigree
back through his Wuffing forebears to Julius Caesar himself, an asso-
ciation thought to be unique to the East Anglian kings’ sense of their
own familial history. Furthermore, the Roman she-wolf who nurtured
Romulus and Remus is paralleled in, and perhaps was deliberately ap-
propriated by, the Wuffing dynasty’s own totemic lupine figure; this
appears on a variety of seventh- to tenth-century treasures unearthed
in East Anglia and is associated with that land’s gens and church.108
Royal East Anglian identity possessed a Roman dimension, in its own
way a culturally productive “conceit of kingship.” Francis Young ar-
gues that Rædwald’s adoption of the wolf symbol “was the means by
which the dynasty could boldly assert its barbarian [i.e. Scandinavian]
heritage while simultaneously claiming to be Romans, descendants of
‘Caser,’” and that “[s]uch symbols and claims enabled East Anglia to
project its ‘soft power’ as one of the cradles of Anglo-Roman Christi-
anity even when it was politically at its weakest,” between the times
of Rædwald’s and Edmund’s deaths.109 It is tempting to see, as Young
does, the “‘Englishness’ of the Wuffing dynasty” as an early step in
a process that eventually would lead to “English national unity.”110 It
seems more prudent, however, to regard East Anglian royal identity –
whether claimed by the area’s kings or attributed to them by outsid-
ers – as an attempt to proclaim the singularity of the gens Orientalium
Anglorum, the “people/nation of the East Angles,” for that people did
not yet think of itself as “English” in our expanded sense of the word,
let alone in the Mercians’ or the West Saxons’ expansionist sense of the
word. The Wuffings first and foremost regarded their identities as local;
only secondarily did they regard themselves as akin to other “English”
peoples on the grounds of linguistic or cultural similarity.

Internal Diversity

So far, I have been talking about “conceits of kingship” (Carver) or

“conceits of regionalism” in terms of East Anglia’s relations with other
districts or with its Romano-British predecessor tribal units. But the
cultural work of homogenization in the textual record also vied with
internal heterogeneity, a tension disguised by the very names “East
Anglia” and “the East Angles.” As Carl Sauer asserted long ago, “ge-
ography is based on the reality of the union of physical and cultural
24 Introduction

elements of the landscape”;111 both sets of elements compose East An-

glian geography and point to its internal divisions, “a political homo-
geneity but a series of distinct regions.”112 The historical overview that
follows is necessary to show just how much synthesis – not necessarily
all of it peaceful, though some of it may have been – needed to occur
to enable Bede, Felix, Abbo, Ælfric, and the anonymous contributors to
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to make a discrete East Anglian kingdom
knowable to early medieval textual audiences.
Although they will have effaced some ancient divisions in the
Romano-British territory in which they settled, the Germanic migrants
also created new ones. Just as internal diversity has been discerned in
early Northumbria, Mercia, and the various “Saxon” kingdoms of the
south,113 so too has it been found in early East Anglia, if perhaps not to
the same extent as in the polities to the north and west. The iconic Sut-
ton Hoo offers a good starting point. Some scholars have argued for its
link to the ancient East Saxons,114 though the mound complex is usually
understood to express the power of the early kingdom of the East An-
gles. (This, by the way, is the view adopted in the present book, as is the
conventional, often reasserted, but still unproven claim that the person
interred in Mound 1 was King Rædwald before the acidic soil dissolved
his body.)115 It is possible, however, that Sutton Hoo was the work of
a much smaller society, restricted to that part of south-eastern Suffolk
which overlooks the River Deben; early on, the villa regia of Rend-
lesham mentioned by Bede may have commanded only a very limited
portion of East Anglia’s political geography,116 beyond which lived peo-
ples who may not have welcomed expansionism emanating from the
royal vill. One such people may have created the cemetery at Snape,
also in south-eastern Suffolk.117 A “mixed” elite and lower-status bur-
ial ground used between the fifth and seventh century, Snape lies only
about ten miles from Sutton Hoo yet is now thought to have belonged
to a social group distinct from and older than the creators of that more
famous burial complex who eventually drew them into their orbit.118
Complicating matters is the possibility that both tribes, and the East
Saxons to boot, were related through common origins in the Sandlings
district of south-eastern Suffolk.119
Further to the north but still in the eastern part of the county is Bly-
thburgh, whose name may have originated with a tribe called the Bly-
thingas.120 This group likewise may have been presented with an offer
it couldn’t refuse. Its absorption into the East Anglian royal house is
implied by a tradition recorded in the twelfth-century Liber Eliensis (LE)
that identifies the ruins of Blythburgh Priory, near Holy Trinity Church,
as the final resting place of King Anna, the pious Christian ruler killed
 Introduction 25

by the pagan Mercian king Penda nearby at the Battle of Bulcamp in

654.121 Bede claims that all of the East Anglian kings were known as
Wuffingas from their descent from Wuffa (HE II.15, pp. 190–1), but he
notes that Anna had been the son of Eni and was “de regio genere, uir
optimus” (“an excellent man of royal descent”; HE III.18, pp. 268–9).
One assumes that Anna was understood by Bede to have belonged to
the line of East Anglian kings and therefore to have been a Wuffing; yet
his father Eni appears nowhere else in the HE’s accounts of the East
Angles, and his “royal descent” praised by Bede is not explicitly con-
nected to the Wuffing line (though the connection is made plain in the
genealogy preserved in London, British Library, MS. Cotton Vespasian
B.vi).122 The mother of Eni or of Anna himself may have married into
the family from a smaller folk-group; perhaps on the maternal side the
slain king’s family had been Blythings before they became Wuffings.
Although the present book treats East Anglia as a cohesive kingdom,
then, the question of discrete identities at the local level must be kept
open. Even in its early heyday under Rædwald, the East Anglian pro-
vincia may have been as fractious and factitious as the most contrived
of what Benedict Anderson would call “imagined communities.”123
As Tom Williamson has observed, the nascent kingdom may have
amounted to little more than “a constellation of semi-autonomous ter-
ritories which recognised [Rædwald] as overlord, and rendered him
tribute, but which still retained their own ruling families and a measure
of political independence.”124
Post-Conquest differences of speech between Norfolk and Suffolk
may reflect ancient cultural as well as linguistic disparities between
East Anglia’s two halves.125 From the early seventh century East Anglia
boasted not one but two bishoprics, at North Elmham in Norfolk and
at Domnoc (present-day Walton Castle) in Suffolk, a fact that suggests to
Barbara Yorke “a political division of much older origin” and supports
Dorothy Whitelock’s supposition of tribal heterogeneity.126 Even if the
two bishoprics’ origins had nothing to do with existing folk divisions
within East Anglia (a possibility put forward recently by Lucy Mar-
ten),127 it is hard to believe that the eventually large seventh-century
kingdom had always been socially homogeneous.128 Such co-existence
as eventually arose between Norfolk and Suffolk may have come about
after a period of strife at a very early period, given that the document
known as the Tribal Hidage, which distinguishes a considerable number
of Middle Anglian subgroups living on the periphery of East Anglia,
neglects to differentiate between what became the region’s two major
divisions.129 The southerners may have moved outwards from their
Deben stronghold at the expense of other Anglians dwelling near the
26 Introduction

River Ouse.130 On the other hand, consolidation may have happened

peacefully, with the more northerly groups participating actively and
early in a political fusion experiment initiated to the south.131
West Suffolk has long been recognized to be geographically unlike
the east.132 On the basis of archaeological finds, Tom Williamson has
recently argued that Essex and the southern and south-western parts
of Suffolk were different from the rest of Suffolk along with Norfolk:
the former territorial grouping was aligned with London, the larger
south-eastern quadrant of England, northern France, and what today
corresponds to Belgium; by contrast, Norfolk and the northern and
eastern parts of Suffolk were more decisively orientated towards “the
North Sea World” and its Germanic and especially Scandinavian influ-
ences.133 The Roman-Scandinavian synthesis that Francis Young sees in
East Anglia’s adoption of the wolf symbol may be the visible remnant
of a more complex policy of cultural reconciliation. Williamson’s image
of a Janus-faced East Anglia, “always a divided world, looking both
ways,”134 accords with Ravensdale and Muir’s claim that “there is a
schizophrenic quality to East Anglian culture,” a condition attributable
to “the historical role of the region as a reception area for settlers, ref-
ugees and all manner of new ideas from the Continent” on one hand,
and to the well-known tendency of East Anglia to be “introspective and
characterised by a deep conservatism” on the other.135 Given this dual
quality, the region’s character seems defined by a peculiar mix of op-
posing tendencies, but one that need not obviate synthesis. Again Tom
Williamson: “East Anglia has always been a land divided between the
North Sea World and the Channel-focused south-east of England. Yet
this, paradoxically, in large part explains the fact that it is a recognizable
entity: it owes its very existence to the peculiar advantages which its
first rulers gained from living close to the junction of both.”136 The very
trait of fissiparity that threatens to defy categorization is what makes
the chorography of this region possible.
Writers from Bede onwards depicted a heterogeneous if not “schiz-
ophrenic” society, and did so by strategically representing its inter-
nally conflicting interests in relation to an overarching goal that they
themselves imposed on East Anglia’s relationship with the rest of
England. One thinks, for example, of the tension said to have existed
between King Rædwald, a convert to Christianity, and his queen and
courtiers, defenders of traditional pagan worship: Bede’s retrospective
eighth-century account, written from a Northumbrian, pro-Roman,
and monastic perspective, presupposes a clear-cut divide between two
ideologies when the actual state of affairs in early seventh-century East
Anglia may have been far less tidy (see below, chapter 1). Multiple and
 Introduction 27

indeed conflicting “identities” can be detected beneath the synthesiz-

ing strokes of the scholar of Wearmouth-Jarrow. It is because of these
complexities, and in keeping with the findings of scholars from across
the disciplinary spectrum, that I often use the plural noun “identities”
to treat the region’s representation.137 For economy’s sake the singular
noun “identity” sometimes slips in, and I plead guilty to the simplifi-
cation that choice entails;138 context occasionally requires me to zoom
outwards to glimpse East Anglia’s similarities to, or differences from,
other regions or from England as an imagined whole.

Vocabulary of Governance

Before I conclude this introduction with summaries of the book’s chap-

ters, a final word needs to be said about the specific terminology avail-
able to writers of Anglo-Latin and OE texts when they contemplated
individual kingdoms; and though not an East Anglian production, the
OE translation of Bede’s HE will be among those texts discussed in this
section because it implies some change in the use of that terminology
in the late ninth to early tenth century. Within Bede’s Latin vocabu-
lary of governance, the word gens is of great importance, denoting as
it does the social elite of a realm rather than the “people” broadly.139 A
discrete gens was thought to inhabit and to rule a particular provincia,
a noun that in the eighth century connoted political identity and sep-
arateness from other polities. As James Campbell points out, “[Bede’s]
normal word for what we think of as a kingdom is provincia: provincia
Merciorum etc.; but he also uses it, if rarely, for lesser divisions: provincia
Gyruiorum.”140 Such correspondences can be only approximate, how-
ever, because as David Sturdy reminds us,

[w]e should not imagine, as tidy-minded historians tend to, that any of
these [Anglo-Saxon] kingdoms were cohesive areas with people of a sin-
gle distinctive racial origin and culture within a trim and obvious bound-
ary. They were casual agglomerations of territories brought together by
conquest, inheritance, marriage and purchase. People at the nucleus of a
kingdom probably considered most of the outlying provinces as having
different customs from their own and being rather alien, as if all those
parts of the kingdom were frontier lands, conquered territories, which in
most cases they were.141

At any given time, the word provincia may have betokened a cohe-
sion that was even more fragile than the government it was used to
identify. Over the centuries the term’s meaning changed with political
28 Introduction

circumstances. Bede in the 730s used it to refer to the East Angles’ coun-
try as an independent kingdom, militarily weaker than Mercia but still
boasting a royal dynasty of its own. When roughly 250 years later Abbo
of Fleury used the same word to describe East Anglia, he had in mind
an administrative district within a country rather than a proto-state in
its own right – a province, or rather an “ealdormanry,” one of several
large divisions of tenth-century England ruled by royal appointees.142
After Edward the Elder broke the Danes’ military hold over East Anglia
in 917, this is what the district became (though whether it fully em-
braced and accommodated West Saxon political imperatives is a ques-
tion that will be taken up later). Abbo spent two years at the Fenland
abbey of Ramsey, so he knew that the land on which the house stood
had been given to Oswald, bishop of Worcester and later archbishop of
York, by Æthelwine “Dei amicus” (“friend of God”), ealdorman of East
Anglia.143 When in the LSE Abbo excoriated the vikings for murdering
Edmund, he did so with an eye to defending the integrity of an English
“nation” that was exemplified but not obscured by the East Anglian
“region.” He was not seeking to promote a resurgent East Anglia as a
rival to Cerdicing England, even if – as we shall see in chapter 5 – his
English translator Ælfric may have suspected him of doing otherwise.
Old English had its own, evolving vocabulary of governance. Some
debate exists over whether it referred to physical territory or to per-
sonal loyalty. It has to be conceded that Insular tribal identities always
had to do less with geography, with being able to say “I am the product
of that place,” than with lordship, with being able to claim “I am the
subject of that ruler.”144 Even as late as King Alfred’s time, the demo-
nym Angelcynn or Ongolþeode was the preferred term for “England,” the
toponym Englalonde or Englaland appearing only “by the late tenth or
early eleventh centuries.”145 Yet geography was not therefore wholly ir-
relevant to perceptions of place. As Kathleen Davis, Janet Nelson, Scott
Smith, and Ryan Lavelle have shown, early English rulers and subjects
did recognize territory as a projection of authority, as the tangible space
in which interpersonal relations developed over time.146 Susan Oosthu-
izen has argued that the many smaller Fenland folk-units recorded in
the Tribal Hidage reveal attachment to land – specifically intercommon-
ing rights – as the basis of those folk-units’ identities.147 These findings
confirm the wider applicability of Peter Hunter Blair’s insight about the
“political and geographical boundary, not … tribal or racial boundary”
that had lain behind Bede’s differentiation of the East Angles from the
East Saxons.148
The ASC, AGT, and the OE translation of Bede’s HE (to select only
three examples) concentrate especially on peoples rather than on lands,
 Introduction 29

in keeping with the general practice described above. When the “A”
recension of the Chronicle mentions East Anglia in the annal for 823, it
speaks of the “Eastengla cyning 7 seo þeod” (“king and … nation of the
East Angles”),149 where þeod literally signifies “people,” not “nation” in
the abstract sense that word has for us; and the genitive plural ending
of Eastengla suggests “of the East Angles.” We may find a slight redun-
dancy in the construction “the people of the East Angles,” but ninth- or
tenth-century audiences likely did not, especially if they were familiar
with the same structure in Latin, e.g. Bede’s phrase gentis Anglorum (lit.
“of the people of the English”). The same annal goes on to note that the
East Anglian king Beornulf slew the Miercna cyning, which here means
“king of the Mercians,” not “king of Mercia.”
There is room for variation. A slight shift of perspective away from
people towards territory appears in the annal for 870 (recte 869), the
topic of which is the Scandinavian invasion of eastern England: “Her
rad se here ofer Mierce innan Eastengle 7 wintersetl namon æt Þeod-
forda. 7 þy wintra Eadmund cyning him wiþ feaht, 7 þa Deniscan sige
namon 7 þone cyning ofslogon 7 þæt lond all geeodon” (“Here [i.e. in
this year] the raiding-army rode across Mercia into East Anglia, and
took winter-quarters at Thetford; and that winter King Edmund fought
against them, and the Danish took the victory, and killed the king and
conquered all that land”).150 Mierce means “Mercia” in the geographi-
cal sense; the word Eastengle sometimes means “East Angles,” but the
lack of the dative plural ending –um indicates that it is not a people
being encroached upon but a place, “East Anglia.” This impression is
reinforced by the annalist’s subsequent reference to the “land” that was
overrun.
Even when a text clearly requires us to understand political areas
in terms of peoples rather than geography, as in the case of the AGT,
its wording need not preclude all concern with the latter.151 The text
emphasizes ðēoda (“peoples”) in a way that indirectly speaks to the im-
portance of the places they occupy: “Đis is ðæt frið, ðæt Ælfred cyninc
7 Gyðrum cyning 7 ealles Angelcynnes witan 7 eal seo ðeod ðe on
Eastænglum beoð ealle gecweden habbað 7 mid aðum gefeostnod for
hy sylfe 7 for heora gingran[.]” Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge
translate this as follows: “This is the peace which King Alfred and King
Guthrum and the councillors of all the English race and all the people
who are in East Anglia have all agreed on and confirmed with oaths,
for themselves and for their subjects[.]”152 The phrase on Eastænglum is
idiomatically rendered by Keynes and Lapidge as “in East Anglia,” but
literally “eal seo ðeod ðe on Eastænglum beoð” may mean “all the peo-
ple who are among the East Anglians,” the “people” being Guthrum’s
30 Introduction

followers, who were involved in the oath-taking. Either way, Alfred

stops short of identifying the Scandinavian newcomers to East Anglia
with all the inhabitants of that district.153 If Edward the Elder encour-
aged his subjects to purchase property in Guthrum’s domains, to use
legal transactions as the thin edge of the wedge of eventual West Saxon
conquest,154 he would not have been deterred by the AGT, which seems
not to apply explicitly to the native East Angles. This subject is consid-
ered further in chapter 4.
Tim Pestell’s remark about the fluidity of borders resulting from the
ebb and flow of power has already been noted. In literary texts, the
terminology used to denote nations can appear unstable both because
of hegemonic mutability and because of the varying aims of individual
writers. Alfred, for example, deployed terms like Angelcynn, Eastæn-
glum, and ðēod with a view to shaping rather than merely accepting
their significance. Authors who lacked a king’s power to alter political
realities could influence semantics, but they were more often obliged
to use language that reacted to and accurately reflected those realities.
Unlike Alfredian texts, the OE version of Bede’s Historia, whose ear-
liest manuscript has been dated by Sharon Rowley to ca. 883–930,155
illuminated political change without apparently effecting it in its own
time.156 We read, for example, that Æthelberht, cyning of Kent, “hæfde
rice oð gemæro Humbre streames” (“ruled a kingdom extending to the
boundary of the river Humber”).157 In this passage, rīce corresponds
to Bede’s idea of provincia and signals both far-flung territorial power
and widespread personal allegiance. But a somewhat different seman-
tic scope is implied when the text notes the death of the East Anglian
king Eorpwald, following which event Eorpwald’s successor Sigeberht
“Eastengla rice … fore wæs” (“ruled over the kingdom of the East An-
gles”).158 Eastengla is the genitive plural noun meaning “of the East
Angles,” so the emphasis here is indeed on people, rīce in this context
referring to political subjects not landscape features.
The OE Bede is not absolutely consistent in this regard, though.
The text perhaps suggests a certain diminishment of the East Anglian
kingdom when it presents Bede’s recollection of an old Northumbrian
monk who knew a man who had seen the Irish missionary Fursey
face-to-face; that encounter with Fursey is said to have taken place “in
Eastengla mægðe.” Thomas Miller took this phrase to mean “in the
province of the East Angles”;159 unlike rīce, the noun mǣgð (“a tribe,
subdivision of a people”; “a people, nation”; “province, country”) may
imply reduced political status, a lessening of autonomy not connoted
by Bede’s original phrase “in provincia Orientalium Anglorum” (HE
III.19).160 The choice of mǣgð indicates that the Old English translator
 Introduction 31

either judged it necessary to depart from Bede’s equation of provincia

with “kingdom” or thought the Latin noun could denote regions as
well as wholly autonomous polities.
In concluding this short digression on political terminology in the
OE Bede, I concede that the vernacular translator may simply have re-
garded mǣgð and rīce as synonyms, a possibility implied in the OE ren-
dering of Bede’s well-known list of English kings who at one time or
another wielded wide authority:

Þa wæs ymb syx hund wintra 7 syxteno winter from Drihtnes mennisc-
nesse … Æðelberht Contwara cyning æfter þæm willendlecan rice, þæt
he syx 7 fiftig wintra wuldorlice hæfde, ond þa to þam heofonlican rice
mid gefean astag. Wæs he se ðridda cyning in Ongolþeode cyningum þæt
allum suðmægþum weold 7 rice hæfde oð Humbre stream.

(Then about six hundred and sixteen years after the incarnation of our
Lord … Æthelberht, king of Kent, after gloriously ruling the temporal
kingdom for fifty-six years, now ascended with joy to the kingdom of
heaven. He was the third among the kings of England who ruled over all
the southern provinces and held sway as far as the river Humber.)161

Here rīce seems to mean the same thing as the element mǣgþ embedded
in the word sūðmǣgþum, but it should be noted that in the first clause
the word rīce is used twice for chiefly rhetorical effect. Although the
noun is repeated, the adjectives willendlecan and heofonlican differentiate
its use so as to dramatize the contrast Bede wished to draw between
this world and the next. Within the second clause, sūðmǣgþum appears
in a different, strictly temporal context; absent the need for rhetorical
effect to exalt heaven over earth, the preference of mǣgþ over rīce may
suggest the translator’s awareness of an altered political map in the late
ninth or early tenth century, when the East Angles and other Southum-
brian peoples had lost their original autonomy. In sum, Anglo-Latin
and OE political terminology changed in meaning from century to
century, varied with the purposes of individual authors, and, perhaps
because it was evolving rapidly, sometimes defies consistency within
individual texts.
The topic of social and territorial understandings of space will be
taken up again later, especially in chapter 4, but in general this study
concurs with Fabienne Michelet that England emerges from OE texts
as both a “place and [a] people” in its relationships with other nations,
and that furthermore “[p]ossession and control of space are crucial is-
sues in a mental outlook in which land grounds not only claims to
32 Introduction

power but also lays the foundations of a sense of identity.”162 The prin-
ciple obtains on a smaller scale, too. East Anglia possessed territorial
as well as social reality because its textual depiction projects yearn-
ings and anxieties not only about lords and subjects but also about the
places that both called home.

Summary of Chapters

Angles on a Kingdom proceeds roughly in chronological order, begin-

ning with Bede’s HE and ending with Ælfric’s SEKM. This approach
raises to high relief the ways in which later authors borrowed or de-
parted from earlier authors’ representations of East Anglia, but it does
not presuppose that the region itself was destined to become part of a
unified England. No uncomplicated trajectory of East Anglia’s literary
image can be plotted through eighth- to late-tenth-century texts like a
line connecting points on the x-y axis of a school geometry assignment.
When examined closely, East Anglian textual identities show intermit-
tent bursts of centrifugal energy that stimulate commentators to try to
harness the provincia and redirect it centripetally towards the whole it
was thought to have been endangering. This capturing process differed
from author to author and from century to century.
Chapter 1 centres on Bede’s references to Rædwald, specifically on
his place in the famous imperium-list in the HE, on his role in helping
Edwin secure the leadership of the Northumbrians, on his behaviour
after being chastised by his own queen, and on his unique status as a
baptized ruler who mingled pagan with Christian religious practices.
The chapter argues that Rædwald, though probably not unique, was
so portrayed by Bede, who differentiates him from several East Saxon,
Kentish, and Northumbrian kings represented either as having delayed
before fully embracing the new faith or as having remained hostile to
it without ever undergoing baptism. This idiosyncrasy establishes the
foundational literary image of East Anglia as a land beset by an ideo-
logical ambivalence embodied by its most powerful ruler.
Chapter 2 focuses on Bede’s representation of Æthelthryth in light of
other holy women and men in the HE and argues that her uniqueness
as virgin queen and former Northumbrian royal spouse lies behind
her exemplification of East Anglian Christianity in Bede’s history. The
Historia plays down her secular authority as Northumbrian queen and
so departs from Stephen of Ripon’s Life of Wilfrid; yet although Bede
sought to exalt Æthelthryth as a champion of the Church Universal, he
also emphasizes her own self-identification as an East Angle. Without,
therefore, labouring her connection to the Wuffing royal house, and
 Introduction 33

despite her activities in Ely far from the known centres of East Anglian
royal authority, Bede implicitly shows her redeeming the whole king-
dom’s reputation, her Vita an edifying distraction from the reprehensi-
ble transitional period Bede associated with Rædwald and his queen.
The political foundations of conversion had been laid by Eorpwald,
Sigeberht, and Anna; but their violent deaths at the hands of pagan
Mercian aggression are merely noted in the HE, which derives from
their killings surprisingly little in the way of Christian exemplification.
It is rather Æthelthryth, Bishop Felix, and St. Fursey who, in Bede’s tell-
ing, reincorporate East Anglia into the full community of the English
church, with Æthelthryth receiving the most fervent accolades.
Chapter 3 considers the monk Felix’s VSG as an attempt by the East
Anglian royal house to claim the Mercian hermit Guthlac for itself as,
in effect, the continuator of Æthelthryth’s earlier success in spiritually
reclaiming the Fens. By the 740s, when Felix wrote his work on com-
mission from King Ælfwald, the East Angles could boast a formida-
ble number of sainted personages.163 The VSG seems poised to recruit
Guthlac to that group. Yet the content of the text nearly undermines the
cultural orientation of the commission, because Felix has included far
more frequent and fulsome flattery of the Mercians than of the East An-
gles; indeed, he celebrates the then-reigning Mercian king Æthelbald as
the cult’s main sponsor. The chapter suggests that Felix was something
of a double agent, trying to fulfil his royal commission while minding
the proximity and power of the Mercians. It furthermore argues that
the closeness to the East Anglian king made possible by his commission
would have emboldened Felix to remind his patron of Æthelbald’s po-
litical supremacy in eastern England and to propose Guthlac – a Mer-
cian nobleman who had chosen the eremitic over the kingly life – as a
model of saintly conduct for Ælfwald himself. On this reading, the VSG
delimits East Anglian self-assertion by confronting its royal patron with
the realities of Mercian cultural supremacy in the Fens.
Because this book explores the dynamics of East Anglia’s early tex-
tual representation, it considers a variety of genres rather than survey-
ing pre-Conquest East Anglian saints’ Lives exclusively. The work of
researching individual saints and their cults has already been done far
better than I could hope to do by Alexandra Hennessey Olsen, Anto-
nia Gransden, Susan Ridyard, Virginia Blanton, Anthony Bale, Rebecca
Pinner, Rosalind Love, Tom Licence, Francis Young, and others.164
Chapter 4 deliberately turns away from hagiography, then, to analyse
the shape East Anglia’s identities assume when framed by other gen-
res’ textual conventions. Such evidence as survives for East Anglian
kingship after Ælfwald’s death in 749 is relatively scant until the death
34 Introduction

of Edmund at viking hands in 869 and permits only a tentative regnal

chronology.165 By contrast, the rise of Scandinavian East Anglia, which
formed a key part of the wider so-called Danelaw,166 prompted a fair
amount of written comment. Chapter 4 considers the Alfred-Guthrum
Treaty and excerpts from different recensions of the ASC that pertain
to East Anglia. It explores the implications of Cerdicing annalistic his-
toriography as the framework within which King Edmund’s death
is contextualized and upon which the later Vitae of Abbo and Ælfric
elaborate. The chapter then highlights the instability attributed to East
Anglia after the erstwhile kingdom’s takeover by a foreign people, and
finally turns to the ASC to follow its struggle to make sense of a land
that alternated between English and Scandinavian mastery.
Chapter 5 returns to saints’ Lives. Though accorded only a brief men-
tion in the ASC s.a. 870, Edmund’s death became, at the hands of his
late tenth-century hagiographers, a pivotal moment in the growth alike
of the English church and of East Anglia’s prestige. In telling Edmund’s
story, Abbo and Ælfric manifested different approaches to East Anglian
regional identities. The former promoted the provincia as a virtual par-
adise with its centre at Bury St. Edmunds, which he judged uniquely
holy in England even though his hosts at the much newer house of
Ramsey had commissioned his work on the Passio. In translating his
Latin source, Ælfric suppressed East Anglia’s singularity and, to this
end, derided and demonized the Jews as outsiders to distract his read-
ers from persistent English interregional tensions. In Edmund’s hagiog-
raphy as well as in earlier writings, East Anglia appears as a source of
centrifugal instability that only a factitious English oneness can contain.
 1
Rædwald’s Unhappy Realm: Bede’s
Mixed Views of East Anglian Imperium

In the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (HE) Bede took up East An-
glian themes on several occasions.1 His larger purpose in recounting
England’s ecclesiastical history, of course, was to promote Christian
orthodoxy; to that ideological end, he envisaged religious cohesion
among all the various English kingdoms, the East Anglian provincia
included.2 An idealized whole will therefore have mattered far more
to Bede than any one of its parts. Even so, his book, as A.H. Merrills
has discerned, “is simultaneously a local and a universal history: the
viewing of regional events through a wide-angled lens and the pres-
entation of broad historical themes on a truncated geographical stage.”3
The “broad historical themes,” of course, were constructed by Bede; by
imposing them upon his accounts of events in specific kingdoms, he
created histories and identities for those kingdoms that did not always
correspond to local perceptions.
This is not to say that Bede objected to all forms of diversity within
Britannia’s 4,785 miles of coastline (HE I.1, pp. 14–15) but rather that
he preferred to highlight and indeed emphasize commonalities in spite
of it. For example, although the English, British, Irish, and Picts speak
their own languages, they are all said to read the Bible in Latin (HE I.1,
pp. 16–17). The English, for their part, compose one gens yet also com-
prise individual gentes (HE I.15, pp. 50–1).4 Merrills sees “the geograph-
ical emphases of the Historia Ecclesiastica … not as an adjunct to Bede’s
historical programme, but as a central element within it”;5 the various
English provinciae exist in spatial and political relationships with one
another and, ultimately, with God.6 Taking further the point about
geographical specificity, Georges Tugène observes that it is precisely
because “les nations se trouvent impliquées comme telles dans le pro-
cessus de la conversion … que l’on peut dégager, d’un texte essentiel-
lement centré sur la conversion, quelques idées sur la nation” (“nations
36 Angles on a Kingdom

find themselves involved as such in the process of conversion … that

some ideas about the nation can be derived from a text essentially
centred on conversion”).7 In Bede, a country’s distinctness is defined
partly by the extent and speed of its Christianization; “[f]or him, every
physical place matters – whether a province accepting conversion,
a newly founded monastery, or a bishopric receiving a new leader –
because they all add to the spiritual achievements of the English church,
demonstrating the work of divine providence.”8 In his view, East An-
glia had impeded that work. Rædwald, though baptized, was irresolute
in his Christianity; having kept pagan and Christian altars in the royal
temple, he made religious dualism the defining trait of his reign and
thus posed a grave spiritual danger to the entire East Anglian provincia,
which for a time became a land of what Bede calls infelicitas (“unhappi-
ness”). Because of its author’s rigid notions of paganism, Christianity,
syncretism, backsliding, and apostasy,9 the HE proposes a moralized
chorography, one that renders early seventh-century East Anglia as am-
biguous territory, an object lesson in half-hearted conversion and thus a
territorial threat to the church’s overall coherence.
It should be admitted that the bias informing this chorography was
of a piece with Bede’s subjective and at times partisan stance on a range
of issues.10 Nor was this bias his uniquely. His information about East
Anglia had come from influential figures in the church of his time: Al-
binus, abbot of St. Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury; Nothhelm, a future
archbishop of Canterbury; the obscure East Anglian abbot Esi; and an
early hagiographic account of St. Fursey.11 To their shaping perspec-
tives Bede added his own desire to impart ideological form to the sto-
ries that reached him.12 Anthony D. Smith has reminded us that the
“region” can be exploited by the “nation” and indeed “has often pro-
vided a powerful base for collective sentiments and for social and po-
litical action.”13 Though not quite a “region” in Smith’s sense of the
word, the East Anglia of the HE forms an important part of the whole
that Bede imagined the English church to have been. Accordingly, it is
characterized in such a way as to galvanize his readers’ will to envisage
unity and orthodoxy as that church’s defining traits.
The fault line of Bede’s East Anglia is Rædwald, the most prominent
of the early Wuffingas. Bede, the first writer to speak of him at any
length,14 regarded him as at best a half-hearted convert to the “true”
faith whose tolerance of pagan idols and practices was only gradually
eliminated by his successors.15 The East Anglian king becomes a scape-
goat in the Historia for what in reality had been a complex and prob-
ably common intermingling of the Continental cultural heritage with
newer Christian religious practices throughout England.16 Bede does
 Rædwald’s Unhappy Realm 37

acknowledge this complexity elsewhere,17 yet he aims to persuade his

readers that Rædwald’s effort to synthesize paganism with Christianity
had been uniquely misguided among the English and all the more dan-
gerous because of the expansive rule, or imperium, ascribed to Rædwald
in Bede’s well-known list of major kings in the HE’s first book.

The East Angles on Bede’s Lists

However unprepossessing they may look to us, lists provided precious

information to Bede and furnished him with foundational material for
the East Anglian identities that can be pieced together from his work.18
His own imperium-list names especially powerful rulers who had ac-
quired military leadership over other peoples. Much debate has arisen
over exactly what imperium meant to Bede and how he thought kings
wielded it,19 but it must suffice here to echo Simon Keynes’s prudent
conclusion that “all of the kings [in the list] may have been important
figures in their different ways, and they were certainly important to
Bede.”20 Rædwald stands out from this select group, but to fully under-
stand why, we should turn first to an earlier list, which provides Conti-
nental origins for Rædwald’s and all the other early English kingdoms.
Famous for its (suspiciously) tidy organization of the main peoples of
the England familiar to Bede, that list is as follows:

Aduenerant autem de tribus Germaniae populis fortioribus, id est Saxoni-

bus, Anglis, Iutis. De Iutarum origine sunt Cantuari et Uictuarii, hoc est
ea gens quae Uectam tenet insulam, et ea quae usque hodie in prouincia
Occidentalium Saxonum Iutarum natio nominatur, posita contra ipsam
insulam Uectam. De Saxonibus, id est ea regione quae nunc Antiquorum
Saxonum cognominatur, uenere Orientales Saxones, Meridiani Saxones,
Occidui Saxones. Porro de Anglis, hoc est de illa patria quae Angulus
dicitur, et ab eo tempore usque hodie manere desertus inter prouincias
Iutarum et Saxonum perhibetur, Orientales Angli, Mediterranei Angli,
Merci, tota Nordanhymbrorum progenies, id est illarum gentium quae ad
boream Humbri fluminis inhabitant, ceterique Anglorum populi sunt orti.

(They came from three very powerful Germanic tribes, the Saxons, Angles,
and Jutes. The people of Kent and the inhabitants of the Isle of Wight are
of Jutish origin and also those opposite the Isle of Wight, that part of the
kingdom of Wessex which is still today called the nation of the Jutes. From
the Saxon country, that is, the district now known as Old Saxony, came the
East Saxons, the South Saxons, and the West Saxons. Besides this, from the
country of the Angles, that is, the land between the kingdoms of the Jutes
38 Angles on a Kingdom

and the Saxons, which is called Angulus, came the East Angles, the Mid-
dle Angles, the Mercians, and all the Northumbrian race (that is[,] those
people who dwell north of the river Humber) as well as the other Anglian
tribes. Angulus is said to have remained deserted from that day to this. [HE
I.15, pp. 50–1])

This brief gazetteer places the East Angles within a broader mytho-
historical narrative of Continental migration, that adventus Saxonum
which, as we have seen already, simplified a complex reality of mul-
tiple groups arriving over a long period of time. As Walter Pohl ob-
serves, Bede’s gentes-list is “a rather opaque piece of ethnic rhetoric”
in comparison with the HE’s earlier enumeration of the five languages
used in Britain (I.1, pp. 16–17). That is, it is “opaque” because it blurs
the distinction between ethnicities and territories. Even as it does so,
however, the gentes-list creates a verbal sociopolitical map that served
Bede’s purposes. As Pohl goes on to explain, “[e]thnic divisions among
the newcomers, according to him, were territorial and on the whole
corresponded to political entities. … Although the boundaries between
the kingdoms shifted quite frequently and sometimes radically, these
kingdoms were [to Bede] certainly the foci of politically meaningful
ethnic identities.”21 The gentes-list in HE I.15 proved highly influential
among later generations of pre-Conquest English writers and readers;
it was more often noticed than the alternative origins-list that appears
much later in the HE, when Bede reports that the missionary Ecgberct
intended to convert the still-pagan nationes in Germania from whom
he knew the Insular Angles and Saxons to have been descended: “Sunt
autem Fresones, Rugini, Danai, Hunni, Antiqui Saxones, Boructuari”
(“Now these people are the Frisians, Rugians, Danes, Huns, Old Saxons,
and Boruhtware [Bructeri],” HE V.9, pp. 476–7). This curious list, John
Hines suggests, reflects “Bede’s knowledge of recent and projected mis-
sionary expeditions on the Continent, which is the immediate context
of the list, not his interest in the details of the English settlements.”22
The lists in Books I and V function differently in context; but together
they enabled Bede to connect the Insular Angles to their supposed Eu-
ropean ancestors, to reduce a mass of plot threads to straightforward
linear narratives of migration, and to highlight a few key protagonists.
The list in Book I went especially far towards establishing an Eng-
lish origin myth.23 This migration account is sometimes thought to have
been associated in Bede’s mind with the Hebrews’ journey to the Prom-
ised Land, with Britannia the divinely ordained goal of Continental
peoples in the fifth and sixth centuries.24 Some recent scholarship ques-
tions whether Bede really saw the gens Anglorum as latter-day Israelites
 Rædwald’s Unhappy Realm 39

uniquely blessed by God;25 but even if he didn’t, his Christian-exegeti-

cal cast of mind still led him to reject paganism as a worthless means of
cultural self-identification for all the peoples who had crossed the sea.
All were capable of Christian conversion, though Bede’s remarks about
the Angles suggest that he thought them advantaged in this regard.
Although Bede’s list in HE I.15 does not yet single out the East An-
gles for special attention, instead emphasizing their commonalities
with other peoples, it does imply that the larger population of Angles
to which they belonged were unusual in having totally abandoned
their homeland. The country of Angulus (Angeln or Anglia peninsula,
modern-day Southern Schleswig) is said to have “remained deserted”
ever since the various Anglian peoples left it; from this aside one infers
Bede’s belief in total population transfer, a willed dislocation from a
place whose very name Angulus may have connoted to the HE’s readers
a backwater, “retired place” or “outback.”26 The Angles’ enterprising
nature contrasts to the “segnitia Brettonum” (“slackness of the Brit-
ons,” HE I.15, pp. 50–1), whom they encountered in Britain. According
to Bede, sloth in arms and apathy of spirit cost the Britons their govern-
ance of the island, their just deserts for the pastoral indifference they
had showed earlier in refusing to convert the pagan invaders (HE I.22,
pp. 68–9). In contrast to the Britons, Bede’s “Saxons, Angles, and Jutes”
become the island’s last and most successful possessors.27 The Angles
seem especially worthy of this honour because they in effect had gam-
bled everything on the sea crossing; to their empty homeland of An-
gulus there apparently was no turning back, for they had effectively
made their homeland a wasteland.28 In the HE their place of origin has
reverted to the spatio-temporal nothingness that exists before history.
The Angles have remade themselves in Britain, and Bede’s
imperium-list portrays Rædwald as a king singularly on the move even
by the standards of his fellow Angles on the list. Even as the nam-
ing of peoples in HE I.15 hints at the Angles’ special character, the
imperium-list implies Rædwald’s idiosyncrasy: where the Angles come
into their own by leaving nothing behind in their original Continental
homeland, Rædwald rises by throwing off the yoke of his Christian
overlord. In HE II.15 he will be shown to cling to the pagan practices
of his forebears; the imperium-list recounts the king’s rise to power in a
way that does not prepare us for the later revelation of the same king’s
alleged syncretism. After identifying Ælle of the South Saxons, Cælin
(or Ceawlin) of the West Saxons, and Æthelberht of the people of Kent
as the first three wielders of imperium (translated by Colgrave and My-
nors as “sovereignty”), Bede explains that “quartus Reduald rex Ori-
entalium Anglorum, qui etiam uiuente Aedilbercto eidem suae genti
40 Angles on a Kingdom

ducatum praebebat, obtenuit” (“the fourth was Rædwald, king of the

East Angles, who, while Æthelberht was still alive, acted as the military
leader of his own people”; HE II.5, pp. 148–9).29 Calling the East Angles
as such implies a sense of geography, a sense made explicit when Bede
observes that “quintus Aeduini rex Nordanhymbrorum gentis, id est
eius quae ad borealem Humbrae fluminis plagam inhabitat” (“the fifth
was Edwin, king of the Northumbrians, the nation inhabiting the dis-
trict north of the Humber”). The imperium-list, like the tribal origins list,
imparts “politically meaningful ethnic identities” (Pohl) to the peoples
who had achieved dominion in Britain. Specifically, it implicitly credits
this or that gens with success in robbing other gentes of their auton-
omy.30 The Angles are noteworthy in this regard: having depopulated
Angulus itself, they crowd the imperium-list in the persons of Rædwald,
Edwin, and, later (HE II.5, pp. 150–1), Edwin’s fellow Northumbrians
Oswald and Oswiu. Rædwald stands out even in this exalted company
as an unusually ambitious warrior whose “overlordship” overlapped
with that of his predecessor.
Much ink has been spilt over the passage quoted above referring to
Rædwald’s ducatum or “military leadership”; most commentators take
it to mean that Rædwald won it by defeating Æthelberht.31 The East
Anglian rex is, then, distinguished not for having trounced other peo-
ples such as the Britons, Picts, or Irish, but for having taken command
of his own subjects at the expense of another, still-living imperator. This
apparently is a noteworthy achievement. Only in Rædwald’s case is a
verb in the imperfect tense used: by writing that he “ducatum praebe-
bat” (literally, “was providing [military] leadership”), Bede associates
the East Anglian king’s ambition with ongoing precociousness, albeit
in the past. Rædwald was singularly active, moving through time and
place to occupy the centre of early English political life on behalf of a
provincia that Æthelberht of Kent had sought to relegate to marginality.
Rædwald’s mobility characterizes East Anglia as a peculiarly dy-
namic place, one in which allegiance to one’s Christian overlord need
not have precluded one’s own self-aggrandizement. Rædwald’s master
Æthelberht may have elicited Bede’s sympathies; he had converted to
Christianity and remained steadfast in that faith, going on to promote
the earliest church in Canterbury (HE I.25–6, pp. 72–9). Yet the nature
of the imperium-list qua list is to record the fact of rule without divulg-
ing very much about the how or the why; it is likely that Æthelberht
had earlier coerced Rædwald to embrace the new faith.32 As Wormald
understands it, imperium entailed just such coercion, and a king forced
to adopt another king’s religion could be forgiven for chafing at the
bit. Bede, we shall see, was less forgiving in this case, but he included
 Rædwald’s Unhappy Realm 41

Rædwald in the roll of illustrious Southumbrian leaders not to regis-

ter approval of the man as such but merely to acknowledge that even
a rebel against his Christian overlord could shape the course of Insu-
lar history. Bede never attributes Rædwald’s success to God’s favour,
but he does seem to understand imperium – no matter who wielded
it – as a useful if impermanent precedent for the kind of broader, last-
ing political unity that one day might underpin enduring stability in
the Roman Church. Georges Tugène argues that Bede understood full
membership in that church to mean equality of participation among
all peoples rather than the “elect” status of any one gens: “Comme na-
tion missionnaire, la gens Anglorum participe aux côtés d’autres nations
à un mouvement d’ensemble qui, guidé par Rome, suggère l’image
d’une ‘Église des nations’” (“As a missionary nation, the gens Anglo-
rum participates alongside other nations in a movement of the whole
that, guided by Rome, suggests the image of a ‘Church of nations’”).33
If for Bede “overlordship” offered a foundation for eventual oneness of
belief, then Rædwald’s seizure of “imperial” powers from Æthelberht
may well have seemed to him a necessary evil, a loss for the Christian
king of Kent but a step towards long-term gain for an eventually Chris-
tian England.
The imperium-list shows Rædwald’s dominion to have been followed
by Edwin’s. The baton is passed yet again, so however lacking the East
Anglian king might have been as an individual, his performance had
not jeopardized what Bede would have regarded as the eventual col-
lective benefits of overlordship. The phenomenon of wide rule by one
person could be and was repeated, and the Northumbrian king Edwin
went on to become one of the shining secular lights of the entire Eng-
lish church. Edwin’s imperium, and the stable Christianization result-
ing thence, owed much to Rædwald’s help; yet in explaining that debt,
Bede, as we shall see, places Rædwald in such an ambiguous light that
early East Anglia itself is made to look like a land of irresolution. In this
chorographic characterization Rædwald’s queen plays no small role.

The East Anglian Queen as Spur to Honour

HE II.12 (pp. 174–83) supplements the imperium-list’s account of

Rædwald’s rise to overlordship by explaining how the East Anglian king,
after a period of doubt and apparent fear, resolved to help the Deiran
prince Edwin in his bid to assume the Northumbrian throne, occupied
then by a dangerous rival. The Bernician king Æthelfrith had sent Edwin
into exile and continued to persecute him from afar; having discovered
that his quarry had found shelter among the East Angles, he plied their
42 Angles on a Kingdom

leader Rædwald with offers of money, followed by threats, to make him

hand over the refugee-pretender. Initially Rædwald thought it prudent
to comply: “uel minis fractus uel corruptus muneribus cessit deprecanti,
et siue occidere se Eduinum seu legatariis tradere promisit” (“being ei-
ther weakened by [Æthelfrith’s] threats or corrupted by his bribes, [he]
yielded to his request and promised either to slay Edwin or to give him
up to the messengers”; HE II.12, pp. 176–7). Not quite the doughtiness
one would associate with an imperator, though under the circumstances
discretion may have seemed the better part of valour. Yet Bede’s loaded
adjectives fractus and corruptus discourage even-handed evaluation. Both
participles connote brokenness: fractus derives from the infinitive frangere,
“to break, shatter, smash” and just perhaps also, in this context, “break
down, exhaust, wear out” or even “to destroy [the] manly quality of”;
and corruptus is the past participle of corrumpere, “to harm, disintegrate,
spoil, rot,” or “to affect (w. disease or sim.), infect.”34 Whatever majesty
the East Anglian king may have gained from his inclusion in Bede’s
imperium-list looks fragile when contrasted to his actual behaviour, un-
til the East Anglian queen saves the day by intervening on their Deiran
guest’s behalf and chiding her husband for his disloyalty and greed.
All along, Edwin had been despondent, fearing his betrayal by
Rædwald to Æthelfrith; but a sympathetic messenger, whom Bede
quotes (and who turns out to be Paulinus, a future bishop of York), is
reported to have come to tell him that the queen herself “reuocauit eum
illa ab intentione, ammonens quia nulla ratione conueniat tanto regi
amicum suum optimum in necessitate positum auro uendere, immo
fidem suam, quae omnibus ornamentis pretiosior est, amore pecuniae
perdere” (“dissuaded [Rædwald] from it, warning him that it was in
no way fitting for so great a king to sell his best friend for gold when
he was in such trouble, still less to sacrifice his own honour, which is
more precious than any ornament, for the love of money”; HE II.12,
pp. 180–1). Until now Bede has given us scant evidence that Rædwald
was in fact tantus rex, aside from the imperium-list itself and the hint it
contains that the East Anglian ruler had risen up boldly against Æthel-
berht of Kent. Outside of that context, we depend for our knowledge
of the king’s high renown on the queen’s reminding him of it, or rather
on how Bede imagines her to have reminded him of it. The revelation
serves to diminish the stature of Rædwald, for in scolding him as she
does, the queen shows that the very stature as “great king” to which she
appeals is being undermined by its holder’s own pusillanimity.
Having thus required to be taught how to be tantus rex and, in effect,
a proper wielder of imperium, Rædwald girded his loins, resolved to de-
fend Edwin, and declared war himself against Æthelfrith. In a persuasive
 Rædwald’s Unhappy Realm 43

show of that ducatus or “military leadership” he had earlier won from

his Kentish predecessor, Rædwald killed Edwin’s Bernician foe at the
battle of the River Idle (near modern Gainsborough, Lincs), thus secur-
ing Edwin’s position as king of all the Northumbrians. The alliance cost
Rædwald dearly, for his own son Rægenhere, who had joined him in bat-
tle against Æthelfrith’s forces, died in combat (HE II.12, pp. 180–1). The
East Anglian king must already have exercised great power to have been
able to march through Middle Anglia and Lindsey to meet Æthelfrith
at the Idle;35 yet despite his control of a large swath of eastern England,
Rædwald suffered tragic personal loss in the death of his son. In defer-
ring to his queen’s advice not to “fidem suam … perdere” (“sacrifice his
own honour,” HE II.12, pp. 180–1), he had been willing to risk much to
defend Edwin; there seems no reason to think that Bede should have
judged Rægenhere’s death a blot on Rædwald’s reputation as a leader.36
A real blot, fully intended by Bede, is the queen’s critique of that rep-
utation and her having to spur her husband to live up to it. When all
due recognition is given to Rædwald for his success in making the East
Angles an Insular superpower, it is the anonymous queen who must
be credited with reviving his royal “honour” (fidem suam) and with re-
inforcing an image of East Anglia as a land where oaths matter more
than rewards. Having pricked her husband’s conscience, she is shown
helping her realm to consolidate both its Southumbrian military domin-
ion and its ethical stature. These outcomes benefited Northumbria too,
because Rædwald’s eventual show of courage led to Edwin’s crowning
and to his realm’s subsequent glory. “The kingdoms of Bede’s England,”
David Kirby has observed, “had evolved over a long time and contin-
ued to do so. The geography of power was in an almost continuous
state of flux as more powerful principalities assimilated weaker neigh-
bours”37 or simply intervened in their neighbours’ royal successions.
In her own way, and despite the risks involved, the queen contributed
to this flux and so raised East Anglia’s own “geography of power” to
especially high relief on the political and historiographical landscapes.
Rosalind Hill is surely right to identify in Rædwald’s “nameless and
remarkable wife” that devotion to “fidelity” which, in early England,
underpinned one’s loyalty to a secular lord as well as to one’s religion,
whether pagan or Christian.38 Bede memorializes the queen as East An-
glia’s conscience, the agent of historical change who determined that
Rædwald’s military action would elevate the kingdom beyond purely
local prominence. Rather than being relegated to the background of
history or permitting her land to be so relegated, she appears front
and centre as an irresistible, entirely laudable ethical force that com-
pels Rædwald to lead the East Anglian gens out of its isolated corner
44 Angles on a Kingdom

of England to pursue the greater good of wide-ranging, altruistic over-

lordship. Although the queen’s advice to Rædwald is not uniquely
Christian, it does accord with the exhortation to spiritual over material
values found elsewhere in the HE and, for example, in the Letter to Ecg-
bert.39 In HE II.12, wise counsel creates a temporary space for East An-
glia as an ideologically in-between polity, poised between the new faith
and the old even as it asserts itself against Kent and Bernicia.
That space is, however, an unstable one. When we compare the queen’s
private counsels with the king’s public behaviour, we find an East Anglia
distinguished by two markedly different royal attitudes towards leader-
ship: Rædwald’s initial preference for realpolitik on one hand, his wife’s
insistence on magnanimity on the other. In the above-described scene
from HE II.12, which is the first of Bede’s two accounts of Rædwald and
his queen, the “fidelity” identified by Rosalind Hill as a trait of the lat-
ter extends implicitly to her country, for it is the queen’s virtue that al-
lows Bede to establish East Anglia’s literary reputation as the refuge for
outsiders that, according to Jack Ravensdale and Richard Muir, has long
been one of the region’s characteristic features.40 Rædwald’s original in-
stinct, however, had been to surrender Edwin to Æthelfrith, so the re-
gion’s renown for sheltering newcomers can hardly be said to have been
intrinsic; when it emerges in the HE as one of East Anglia’s early defining
traits, it is because Bede underscores the queen’s success in persuading
her husband to put duty and loyalty before greed and cowardice.

Rædwald’s Divided Loyalties

This is as far as Bede is willing to go in fostering positive impres-

sions of East Anglia in this early period of its history. Francis Young
sees a transformation in the Rædwald of the HE from a “flawed hero,”
whose queen “shames him into fighting the Northumbrians,” to (again
with the queen’s help) an “avenging and victorious ideal warrior” af-
ter his son Rægenhere’s death.41 As far as Bede’s characterization of
Rædwald’s military exploits is concerned, Young’s analysis is spot on;
but the transformation does not apply to Bede’s depiction of Rædwald
qua baptized ruler. HE II.12 offers a generally positive portrayal of
both king and queen in part because Edwin’s ascent to the lordship of
Northumbria is shown to depend on East Anglian military aid.
In a rather different story, told in HE II.15, Edwin is now shown
to need nobody’s help: no longer beholden to an East Anglian ruler,
he governs Northumbria in his own right and eventually exercises
enough influence outside his domains to compel Rædwald’s successor,
Eorpwald, to follow his lead in baptism.42 It is when he explains why
 Rædwald’s Unhappy Realm 45

Eorpwald’s conversion had been necessary in the first place that Bede
offers an account of Rædwald and his wife that differs radically from
the story in the twelfth chapter of the HE’s second book. In this later
narrative, East Anglia comes into view not as an aid to Northumbrian
stability but as a threat to the Gregorian mission to convert the Eng-
lish. As the source of this threat, Bede’s Rædwald becomes the object of
chorographic character assassination.
The criticism begins when Bede notes Edwin’s wholesome influence
over Eorpwald, a son of Rædwald who at the outset of his reign had fol-
lowed in his father’s footsteps: “Tantum autem deuotionis Eduini erga
cultum ueritatis habuit, ut etiam regi Orientalium Anglorum Earpualdo
filio Redualdi persuaderet relictis idolorum superstitionibus fidem et
sacramenta Christi cum sua prouincia suscipere” (“so great was Ed-
win’s devotion to the true worship, that he also persuaded Eorpwald,
son of Rædwald and king of the East Angles, to abandon his idolatrous
superstitions and, together with his kingdom, to accept the Christian
faith and sacraments”; HE II.15, pp. 188–9). Eorpwald seems to have
required little time to convert, probably because Edwin’s influence on
him was political rather than purely theological.43 For his part Edwin
himself had delayed baptism for eleven years after receiving counsel
from Bishop Paulinus (HE II.12–14); even so, once he had accepted it he
clung to it until the end of his life,44 and Bede emphasizes the North-
umbrian king’s devotion as well as his skill as a teacher as the reasons
Eorpwald renounced the old ways.
This short account of Eorpwald and Edwin, likely edifying in its own
right to the HE’s early readers, prefaces Bede’s depiction of Rædwald
as a lacklustre defender of the “true” faith. For although it was not
their chief concern, seventh- and eighth-century kings were thought
to have at least some duty to further orthodox Christian worship,45
and Rædwald’s own imperium would have entailed no small show
of leadership in the matter of religion. The prestige of his rule is thus
compromised when Bede attacks East Anglia’s court ideology as mere
paganism, and then associates it with those who had the power to sway
the king’s judgment. Before gaining imperium Rædwald had been con-
verted to Christianity; but shortly thereafter he yielded to pressure from
his own queen and counsellors: “Et quidem pater eius Reduald iam-
dudum in Cantia sacramentis Christianae fidei inbutus est, sed frustra;
nam rediens domum ab uxore sua et quibusdam peruersis doctoribus
seductus est, atque a sinceritate fidei deprauatus” (“Indeed his father
Rædwald had long before been initiated into the mysteries of the Chris-
tian faith in Kent, but in vain; for on his return home, he was seduced by
his wife and by certain evil teachers and perverted from the sincerity of
46 Angles on a Kingdom

his faith”; HE II.15, pp. 188–91). Nicholas Higham argues that the East
Anglian court’s willingness to conjoin the two religions resulted from a
considered political strategy to preserve traditional culture:

If the traditional world was to be fully restored ... [t]he obvious direction
for Rædwald and his doctores to turn was the Baltic littoral whence the
English believed, with good cause, that they had originally derived. There
lay the heartland of Germanic paganism ... [and] the fount of English cul-
tural and racial identity.46

The word “syncretic” then, used often by scholars who comment on

the East Anglian experiment during Rædwald’s reign, need not imply
that the king had amalgamated two world views out of ignorance.47
By showing their resolve to sustain the religious practices of their an-
cestors even while learning new ones, the East Anglian court synthe-
sized ideologies out of deliberation, not desperation. Churchmen of
Bede’s stamp may have thought that this approach risked renouncing
heaven itself; but in keeping a foothold in the religion of his forebears,
Rædwald and his inner circle defended the culture that those forebears
had tried to salvage during their North Sea exodus.48 Bede ignores
these considerations when he scapegoats the East Anglian king, queen,
and “teachers” as sources of an especially pernicious spiritual unregen-
eracy. And although he expresses disappointment in Rædwald, he also
blames his wife and court doctores for their influence upon him and for
the temporary unmaking of Christian East Anglia that resulted. It is to
their representation that I now turn.

Believing Husband, Unbelieving Wife

Like her name, the political life of the East Anglian queen in its full
complexity has been lost to us, but something of her role may be sur-
mised from the fact that, as Martin Carver has pointed out with regard
to the Scandinavian context, “women, key spiritual agents in the pa-
gan period, remained in charge during the conversion process. Only
when Christianity became institutionalised within the political process
of nation-building did women all over Europe surrender their spiritual
authority.”49 Considered in this light, early East Anglia’s reputation for
calculated syncretism takes on a gendered character in Bede: the queen
showed more backbone than Rædwald because she was obliged to up-
hold “spiritual authority” in her domains.50 Bede’s East Anglia stands
out in the HE not only because its sole bretwalda, his wife, and their
court fall short of the Edwin model of prudent deliberation and delay,
 Rædwald’s Unhappy Realm 47

and not merely because they remain in part pagan, but also because
its queen insists upon these features of official East Anglian religious
policy, perhaps to safeguard her role in this area against eventual inter-
ference from a local bishop eager to get her husband’s ear.
The East Anglian queen challenged Bede’s very notion of what a
strong woman could and should be. Æthelthryth, the subject of chapter
2, was for him a better example. So too were Queen Æthelburh, wife
of Edwin, whom Pope Boniface V had exhorted to encourage her con-
verted husband to abandon his own lingering pagan practices (HE II.11,
pp. 174–5),51 and Bertha, the Frankish queen of Kent who had been in-
strumental in Æthelberht’s conversion.52 The HE’s portrayal of power-
ful women hints at the exegetical cast of mind that Judith McClure, Alan
Thacker, Georges Tugène, and other scholars have discerned as a link
between Bede’s narrative history and his biblical commentaries.53 For
example, Bede’s gloss on Proverbs 31 treats the mulier fortis allegorically,
or rather typologically, as a prefiguration of the church itself.54 Scripture
thus defines the “valiant woman”: “Consideravit agrum et emit eum.
De fructu manuum suarum plantavit vineam” (“She hath considered a
field and bought it. With the fruit of her hands she hath planted a vine-
yard”; Prov. 31:16).55 Believing with his fellow Christian commentators
that the church had a mission to cultivate minds and direct them heav-
enward, Bede held that Rædwald’s queen had thwarted the mission of
evangelization by sowing in her newly converted husband’s mind seeds
of doubt about the efficacy of Christian faith unaided by paganism.
As Damian Tyler has pointed out, “at least in Bede’s view, Raed-
wald’s wife was the motive force behind both his greatest triumph and
his blackest sin.”56 The fact that Bede apparently concedes the queen’s
virtue in handling the Edwin crisis chimes with the church’s willing-
ness to recognize that even pagans might grope their way towards the
“truth” if they had not yet encountered Christianity. This is why Bede
was less troubled by strictly pagan rulers from England’s past than by
those kings who were only half-converted. As Alan Thacker has shown,
the former at least could be likened to those virtuous Hebrews who had
lived before Christ and presumably would have embraced his teach-
ings had they been able to do so.57 The latter, professing Christianity
but practising paganism, struck Bede as being worse than thoroughgo-
ing pagans because they threatened to undermine reform.
East Anglia differed from neighbouring provinciae whose Christian-
ization Bede believed had been hampered by resurgences of pagan-
ism. In summing up his own analysis of pagan kings in Bede, Richard
North observes that the East Anglian rex had tried to observe pagan
and Christian practices without committing himself to either; for this
48 Angles on a Kingdom

reason, quite simply “Rædwald’s lapse is different from the others.”58

Had such syncretism become entrenched among subsequent East An-
glian rulers, the ecclesiastical health of England as a whole might have
been endangered by the implication that felicitas or “happiness” could
be enjoyed by kings regardless of conversion.59 A realm’s spiritual state
depended on the king’s convictions; what Bede perceived as Rædwald’s
lack of commitment to the new religion risked pulling East Anglia back
into a heathenism that, in his view, ought to have been renounced once
and for all. The HE contains only roughly comparable instances of what
Bede regarded as pagan backsliding; none is quite like Rædwald’s syn-
cretism. Eadbald, king of Kent, is said to have succeeded to the throne
in 616 as a pagan after the death of his father, the Christian Æthelberht
(HE II.5). He remained a heathen for an additional year, though D.P.
Kirby persuasively argues that the pagan interlude lasted at least five
years and possibly eight, and “must have been an anxious time for the
Gregorian mission.”60 Bede condemns Eadbald more harshly than he
does Rædwald;61 yet he also makes clear that once the former had been
converted, he remained firmly committed to the new faith: “ecclesiae
rebus, quantum ualuit, in omnibus consulere ac fauere curauit” (“[in
all things] he promoted and furthered the interests of the Church to the
best of his ability”; HE II.6, pp. 154–5).
Other early English kingdoms produced similar stories of individual
one-way royal conversion, and these too differ from Bede’s account of
Rædwald’s spiritual tergiversation. The Northumbrian king Edwin has
already been mentioned in this regard. To the south, in the kingdom of
the East Saxons, the death of the Christian king Sæberht had led to se-
rious trouble because his surviving three sons “pagani perdurauerant”
(“had all remained heathen,” HE II.5, pp. 152–3). Yet this was not strictly
a case of apostasy: the three sons had not publicly converted to Christi-
anity along with their father and then renounced their formal entry into
the new religion upon his death. Bede recounts that, before acceding to
the kingship, they refrained from pagan practices, likely in deference
to Sæberht’s wishes; but on the evidence of Bede’s narrative it is by no
means clear that they had ever been baptized in the first place. All three
died as unrepentant heathens in battle against the Gewisse or West Sax-
ons, and their kingdom only eventually returned to the Christian fold,
the Kentish king Eadbald’s conversion prompting the Londoners and
the rest of the East Saxons to toe the line. Bede clearly relishes narrating
the three East Saxons’ discomfiture, but their offence is still quite unlike
Rædwald’s. Although religious admixture can hardly have been unique
to East Anglia, and although Bede will have known that – as John Blair
has put it – “the skin-deep conversion of a king and his household was
 Rædwald’s Unhappy Realm 49

a shaky foundation at best,”62 the monastic historian would have his

readers believe that in seventh-century England only Rædwald and his
kingdom had tried to reconcile different religious world views to one
another. Bede told of other areas of seventh-century England that had
seen revivals of paganism,63 but he reacted to the East Anglian king’s
flexibility in the matter of religion as if it had posed unusual danger.
To be sure, despite being married to the Christian Bertha, even
Æthelberht of Kent had exercised caution in welcoming the new creed.
As he told the missionary Augustine, “Pulchra sunt quidem uerba et
promissa quae adfertis; sed quia noua sunt et incerta, non his possum
adsensum tribuere relictis eis, quae tanto tempore cum omni Anglo-
rum gente seruaui” (“The words and the promises you bring are fair
enough, but because they are new to us and doubtful, I cannot consent
to accept them and forsake those beliefs which I and the whole English
race have held so long”; HE I.25, pp. 74–5).64 That Bede should have
recorded this speech shows that even he acknowledged that tradition
could legitimately hinder conversion.
Yet a converted king who had relapsed must have struck Bede as
doubly culpable if he had also proved too pliable in the hands of an
unbelieving queen. Examining Bede’s representation of Rædwald
and other early English kings in their domestic contexts, Stacy Klein
compellingly argues that “increased proximity between husband and
wife tends to be associated with apostasy,” and that at the very least
“the king’s home space and domestic life appear as wholly inadequate
sites for fostering spiritual change.”65 Certainly in Bede’s East Anglia
the queen’s resolution contrasts vividly to the king’s irresolution, both
in governance and in conversion; the only development in the realm’s
spiritual life was regression. When he says that Rædwald had “in vain”
been “initiated [inbutus] into the mysteries” of the new faith, Bede is not
simply employing elegant periphrasis; he is reminding his audience of
the public, ritual cleansing of “original sin” effected through baptism
by water, which was to be followed by full imbuement of doctrine, both
processes negated by the East Anglian king in deference to his spouse
and court circle.66 Such acquiescence is very different from the kind of
royal passivity of which Bede approves, the act of being imbutus into
the Christian faith. Richard North has pointed out that his use of the
adjectives seductus and deprauatus to characterize Rædwald marks a
king who is “not the subject but the object of heathen activity.”67 Simi-
larly, the participial pairing “inbutus est … seductus est” underscores
Rædwald’s passive lordship by juxtaposing the king’s earlier, admira-
ble catechesis with his later about-face and surrender of true leadership
to what Bede regarded as the forces of evil.68
50 Angles on a Kingdom

Bede’s East Anglia only incompletely resembles the picture provided

by material evidence as studied by archaeologists.69 The monastic histo-
rian’s animus towards paganism and its defenders is well known, and
the words “paganism,” “Christianity,” “syncretism,” and “backsliding”
fail to do justice to the complex intermingling of religions that obtained
among many sixth- and early seventh-century English people.70 What
matters for present purposes is not that Bede misrepresented this state
of affairs, which is not in doubt, but rather how and why he did so. East
Anglia’s material history shows that early seventh-century political re-
alities had been fluid, more so than Bede could tolerate or even than
our own modern conventional vocabulary could accommodate until
recently. The Sutton Hoo ship-burial, for example, is usually classified
as “heathen,” but this perception “implies a much sharper divide be-
tween “pagan” and “Christian” burial practice than actually existed.”71
Principled opposition to (Frankish) Christian influence seems belied
by the presence in the ship-burial of thirty-seven Frankish coins, no
two from the same mint, as well as the (probably) Byzantine spoons
engraved with the names “Paulos” and “Saulos,” the latter inscription
the work of a Frankish die-cutter. That person may or may not have
known about Saul’s road-to-Damascus conversion that led to his be-
coming Paul, but the placement of the two spoons in the tomb has been
interpreted as a sign that mixed religious belief was attributed to the
personage buried therein.72 Such a hybrid assemblage of grave goods
as that found at Sutton Hoo suggests a degree of flexibility in Tom Wil-
liamson’s dichotomy between “Frankish” and “Scandinavian” cultures
and thus between the diverse orientations of the “two” East Anglias.73
As far as Bede was concerned, such reconciliation between religions
amounted to a betrayal of divine Providence itself. According to Ste-
phen Harris, Bede’s very use of the term gens Anglorum is informed by
a deep conviction about the historical progress the “English people”
ought to be making:

The term gens forms a nexus between the language of tribal identity and the
language of morality. Bede uses it to develop a supratribal, religio-political
identity in apposition to localized notions of groups and belonging. Con-
sequently, his implications in the HE as a whole develop from this histori-
cally instantiated identity such that those leaders who act against the logic
of their tribe’s own past by rejecting conversion suffer not only religious
but also political failure.74

On this reading, the Northumbrian scholar’s use of the word gens lies
at the heart of an ethnography that, at most, meets the various gentes
 Rædwald’s Unhappy Realm 51

themselves only part way. Those peoples, Bede believed, differed from
one another in dialect, geography, political structures, and royal geneal-
ogy; yet upon all of them the HE imposes a vision of divinely ordained
purpose. For Harris this is Bede’s logic of conversion, while for Nicholas
Howe it is Bede’s “logic of history” itself.75 The East Angles emerge as
composite in nature, their identity (really identities) a fusion of, on one
hand, Bede’s conviction that they ought to be steadfastly Christian, and
on the other hand the Rædwaldian court’s belief – just as tenacious –
that they could legitimately retain, and indeed needed to retain, their
ancestral pagan ways while recognizing new teachings.
Within the HE’s world view these combined identities risked lead-
ing the East Angles down a spiritual dead end. The queen and court
advisers, however, can hardly be blamed for their intransigence on the
matter. Theirs was a society that commemorated the illustrious dead
with ship-burials housed in barrows, the aim of that practice being not
only to evoke the spiritual passage between this world and the next,
but also, perhaps, to signal an enduring bond between the East Angles’
current home and the Continental and Scandinavian lands of their fore-
bears (as was discussed in the present book’s Introduction). The doc-
tores who counselled adherence to paganism will have been “learned
ones” within that cultural context. Not so for Bede, who uses the noun
doctores to refer to the professionalized agents of unbelief whom he
judged to have gripped Rædwald’s East Anglia. Conor O’Brien has
shown that Bede, in his Commentary on Genesis, discerned perverse
learning behind the Tower of Babel but true wisdom embodied in the
Jewish Temple: “As the Church has its teachers, the doctores and magis-
tri so vital to it, so do these alternative structures have wicked teachers
and preachers of error. The builders of the tower, like those of the tem-
ple, represent doctores, though mali doctores, and Bede even referred to
pagan and schismatic doctores.”76 The HE almost always reserves use
of the noun doctor to refer to exemplary Catholic Christian pastoral
work.77 The Northumbrian scholar was much exercised by those who
had fallen short in this regard; “[he] shows particular anxiety that con-
temporary spiritual leaders, including members of both the ordained
hierarchy and of the order of teachers and preachers, are not up to the
task, because they are corrupt or ignorant and unskillful.”78 Bede’s
worries extended beyond badly trained missionaries; as evidenced in
HE V, his familiarity with English evangelization in Frisia and Saxony
shows that he thought Christianity was imperilled even when the mis-
sionaries themselves were competent.79 Frequent too are his animad-
versions on heresy, which scholars of his work increasingly view as
signs of engagement with contemporary realities, not as expressions
52 Angles on a Kingdom

of antiquarian interest. “Heretics and their doings,” observes Thacker,

“were generally referred to in the present tense; for Bede they were part
of the here and now.”80 It is against this background that the reference
to “quidam peruersi doctores” in East Anglia is properly seen, as those
teachers represented the queen and, likely, the majority or an influential
minority within the East Anglian court.81

A Shrine Divided

Their sense of duty compelled the queen and counsellors to insist that
traditional belief should be represented in the royal temple. So forceful
were they that they succeeded in convincing Rædwald to place a small
altar or arula in it next to the Christian altare: “atque in eodem fano et
altare haberet ad sacrificium Christi et arulam ad uictimas daemonio-
rum” (“in the same temple he had one altar for the Christian sacrifice
and another small altar on which to offer victims to devils”; HE II.15,
pp. 190–1). The temple with its two devotional structures embodies the
East Anglian royal court’s ideological manoeuvring. As Bede charac-
terizes it, the arula enshrines the kingdom’s then-dualistic outlook and
co-animates and contaminates what should have been the kingdom’s
most sacred space.82
Scholars have debated whether Bede intended the noun arula’s
diminutive ending (-ula) to convey something of the scorn he plainly
expresses elsewhere about the king’s reluctance to abandon his old
ways. Dorothy Whitelock remarked that “the diminutive is probably
contemptuous,”83 but J.M. Wallace-Hadrill disagreed and inferred from
it simply that “Redwald meant the pagan altar to be less prominent
than his Christian altar.”84 Following Charles Plummer, Sam Newton
has claimed (persuasively, I believe) that Bede’s differentiation between
altare and arula “is purely rhetorical, which means that Rædwald’s altar
to the old gods was not necessarily physically smaller or less impor-
tant in its context than that to Christ.”85 Marilyn Dunn goes further;
sensitively discussing several possible meanings of the altare-vs.-arula
distinction, she concludes that “[i]t may be a mistake to read into Be-
de’s elliptical comment any significance other than that of Christian
diabolization of pagan deities.”86 Because Bede held both that “pagan-
ism” was absolutely distinct from Christianity and that he himself had
a moral duty to polemicize against the former and uphold the latter, the
ending of arula looks like an artful signal of contempt for a devotional
object that the monastic historian believed to have been used “ad uic-
timas daemoniorum” (“to offer victims to devils”). It may matter that
the diminutive ending of arula resembles that of the word ciuitatula,
 Rædwald’s Unhappy Realm 53

which Bede uses to refer to the “small deserted fortress” of Grantacæstir

(Cambridge); formerly a pagan Romano-British site, it was where the
monks of Ely are said to have discovered a marble sarcophagus that
would fit the remains of St. Æthelthryth (HE IV.19, pp. 392–5). Also sug-
gestive is Felix’s use of the word cellula to describe Guthlac’s hermit-
age in the Crowland fens; literally it means a “tiny cell,”87 but as a hut
(tugurium) built atop a reservoir-like cisterna attached to the side of a
barrow (tumulus),88 it is also associated with the Christian supersession
of formerly heathen structures.89
Whether or not such diminutive endings are all meant to alert read-
ers to underlying pagan cultural substrates (and I am not certain they
are), the desinence of arula likely has that function in Bede’s discussion
of the East Anglian temple. It not only creates obvious contrast to the
full- or at least fuller-sized Christian altare but also reflects on the pu-
sillanimity of the royal house, which had allowed the smaller structure
into the temple in the first place. Bede’s unkind quip about devil wor-
ship reminds one of that lack of growth, indeed lack of hope, which
some Christian writers ascribed to people who were prone to revert to
heathenism in times of crisis; one thinks of the villagers around Melrose
Abbey whom, according to Bede himself, St. Cuthbert was obliged to
re-evangelize because they had revived their pagan customs (in vain)
as protection against plague.90 Furthermore, at the outset of the HE’s
second book Bede praises Pope Gregory the Great because he deliv-
ered the English “de potestate Satanae” (“from the power of Satan”)
and because he “nostram gentem eatenus idolis mancipatam Christi
fecit ecclesiam” (“made our nation, till then enslaved to idols, into a
Church of Christ”; HE II.1, pp. 122–3). For these reasons, his noun arula
does more than feature as part of a mini-diatribe against Rædwald’s
pointless sacrifice of animals;91 it also gives tangible form to his sense
that the East Anglian king had betrayed the Gregorian mission by, in
effect, undoing his own conversion in Kent. When elsewhere in the HE
Bede praises Hild’s tenure as abbess of Whitby, he treats the altare as
a synecdoche for the liturgy and for the correct training of the priests
in “altaris officium” (“the service of the altar”; HE IV.23, pp. 408–11),
in other words as a sign of responsible and disciplined teaching of the
true faith. From Bede’s point of view, a compromised altare such as ex-
isted in Rædwald’s temple could hardly have provided royal support
for such teaching in early East Anglia.
Small wonder that the scholar of Wearmouth-Jarrow should have
lamented the East Anglian king’s lapse. Rædwald was no mere villager;
he was a ruler, and from Bede’s perspective he had brought from Æthel-
berht’s Christian Kent a new religion and the duty to spread it upon
54 Angles on a Kingdom

crossing back into pagan East Anglia. The physical frontier he traversed
upon his homecoming goes unremarked in the text, like that of other
geopolitical boundaries in the HE; but an ideological significance is
clear in his straddling of a spiritual limes between Christian and heathen
world views,92 a border that becomes tangible in the contact between
the altare and the arula. Rather than demarcating “before” and “after,”
the pagan-Christian divide compromises the temple by keeping two
ideologies in constant dialogue with each other, refusing to let the new
Word finally silence the old lore, as for example St. Paul wished had
occurred in the city of Athens, where the coming of Christianity had
initially resulted in confusion, an altar inscribed “Ignoto Deo” (“To the
unknown God,” Acts 17: 23) having been built – rather grudgingly, it
would seem – among a myriad of idols to other, better-known deities.93
The tone of the Bedan text is more critical than that of the passage from
Acts, for Paul at least could intervene in person to proselytize the Athe-
nian Jewish and pagan communities and teach them about the God
they professed not to know. Although Rædwald had no Paul to correct
his misbelief, he was a baptized Christian and could not very well have
claimed that the Christian God had remained unknown to him.
Although the “little altar” is smaller in stature than its Christian coun-
terpart, to Bede’s way of thinking it must have overshadowed the right-
ful embodiment of the Gregorian mission in the royal temple. In this
regard the arula is not unlike the queen herself, challenging the king’s
will despite possessing a nominally lesser power. A projection, perhaps,
of the royal couple’s own precarious symbiosis, the juxtaposed altars lie
at the ideologically charged heart of Bede’s chorography of East Anglia.
Dual in its cultural orientation, the temple embodies the duality of the
provincia itself.
The royal temple would have reminded Bede of what a house of
correct worship ought to have been, a means whereby the souls of
an English gens might be won for heaven, not lost to hell.94 Material
evidence suggests that there had been mutual influence, rather than
sharp distinction, between pagan and Christian practices of site con-
secration in sixth- to seventh-century England;95 yet Bede saw only the
rigid polarization of possibilities, evil pitted against good. The degree
to which Bede dichotomized right and wrong belief should not be un-
derestimated for the cultural work it performed, nor should the dichot-
omy’s long pedigree be taken for granted. Judith M. Lieu has seen in
the Gospel accounts of Jesus’s cleansing of the Temple the beginning
of a conscious literary representation of Christianity’s break with Juda-
ism culminating in fourth-century commentaries on those texts. Build-
ing on her work, Daniel Boyarin has investigated overlap between the
 Rædwald’s Unhappy Realm 55

forms of self-identification used by early Jewish and Christian commu-

nities and has concluded that “orthodoxy/heresy came to function as a
boundary marker, because the boundaries had indeed been blurred.”96
In the HE, East Anglia’s regional character derives much from Bede’s
conviction that local Christian worship had failed to make a clean break
with the pagan past; in this regard, too, the East Anglian royal family
were different from their peers elsewhere in seventh-century England.
Northumbria, by contrast, had had a proper temple-cleansing moment
when Coifi, King Edwin’s high priest who expected to thrive better
under the Christian dispensation than he had done while serving his
kingdom’s pagan gods, took it upon himself to desecrate the heathen
temple at Goodmanham by throwing a spear into it. Bede tells the story
with gusto (HE II.13, pp. 182–7), relishing the moment when conver-
sion might be shown to break decisively with paganism. In contrast
to Northumbria, East Anglia produced no such dramatic rupture with
the old traditions; Rædwald, unlike Edwin, neglected to advance the
work done by Pope Gregory the Great himself, who “nostram gentem
per praedicatores ... de dentibus antiqui hostis eripiens aeternae liber-
tatis fecit esse participem” (“snatched our race from the teeth of the an-
cient foe and made them partakers of everlasting freedom by sending
us preachers”; HE II.1, pp. 130–1).97 If Bede had anything to say about
it, the salvation of the English people would not be jeopardized by the
misguided fence-straddling of the likes of Rædwald.98
His own sense of what it meant to be a Northumbrian Christian in-
fluenced how Bede regarded East Anglia. Rædwald’s doctrinally flex-
ible imperium had hindered ecclesiastical unity and thus warranted
a reaction that to us looks highly partisan but is informed by Bede’s
awareness of the ideological fissures in his own native Northumbria,
despite Edwin’s eventual conversion and Coifi’s dramatic performance
at Goodmanham. As Alan Thacker has observed, “Bede’s stress on the
oneness of the English flows from a need to connect up the somewhat
unsatisfactory history of the origins of his own people’s Church with
the blue-chip catholicity of the Church in Kent.”99 On this analysis, the
ideologically homogenizing vision of the HE compensates for North-
umbria’s supposed deficiencies even as it underlies Bede’s hostility to-
wards the East Anglian royal fanum. The temple in question may have
stood at Rendlesham in modern Suffolk, where Suidhelm of Essex was
baptized (HE III.22, pp. 284–5);100 but more important than its literal
whereabouts is its place on the moralized “map” of East Anglia that
can be reconstructed from the HE. As an official place of, in effect, state
worship, the Wuffing temple may well have served Bede as a lightning
rod for his dismay with his own provincia’s shortcomings; it certainly
56 Angles on a Kingdom

focused his disdain for ideological divisiveness, sinful syncretism,

and fissiparity within the East Anglian kingdom. Stacy Klein regards
Rædwald and his queen’s fusion of pagan and Christian practices as
evidence of the ideological division and political stasis characteristic of
Bede’s depiction of religiously mismatched royal couples: “Apparently
convinced, or at least intent on convincing his readers, that queens
were powerless to effect kingly conversions, Bede consistently figures
spiritual division within marriage not as a catalyst for individual or
national change but as an inert and static condition to be remedied only
by the intercessory efforts of kings, or more typically, churchmen.”101
Within the East Anglian royal court itself, in the world outside Bede’s
narrative, things may have been quite dynamic; the experiment in com-
promise attempted by Rædwald may have added years to his political
(and perhaps biological) life by appeasing the queen and counsellors’
faction.102 But Bede’s depiction of the East Anglian royal couple does
indeed suggest “an inert or static condition”; for the historian, anything
short of progress towards the salvific unity of worship amounted to
stagnation at best, death and decay at worst.
As Bede describes it, the health of the East Anglian realm seems pos-
itively to have worsened from the time the king compromised his own
baptism. In a critical aside, he writes of Rædwald that “habuit poste-
riora peiora prioribus, ita ut in morem antiquorum Samaritanorum et
Christo seruire uideretur et diis, quibus antea seruiebat” (“his last state
was worse than his first. After the manner of the ancient Samaritans,
he seemed to be serving both Christ and the gods whom he had pre-
viously served”; HE II.15, pp. 190–1). Bede has adapted Luke 11:26 to
amplify his invective against Rædwald’s religious dualism,103 which
for him was an enormity worse than thoroughgoing paganism.104 Rich-
ard North observes that “Bede does not forgive Rædwald, comparing
him with the Samaritans in a reference to the worship of rightful and
unrightful gods” and associating him with the possessed man in Luke
11 from whom an unclean spirit is exorcised only to return to it accom-
panied by seven more demons.105 Perhaps too the reader is meant to
contrast the “bad” Samaritan who worshipped wrongly to the Good
Samaritan who cared for a hapless stranger lying beaten and ignored
by the inhabitants of Jericho (Lk. 10:25–37). Because Rædwald had
himself played the Good Samaritan to Edwin, his seeming ambivalence
about the altars may have struck Bede as doubly unconscionable.106
Furthermore, with regard to the HE’s adaptation of Luke 11, Bede
may also have thought Rædwald akin to the unclean spirit itself rather
than to the man it possessed. According to Scripture, Jesus dismissed as
foolish his hecklers’ charge that he enlisted Beelzebub’s aid to drive out
 Rædwald’s Unhappy Realm 57

demons: “Omne regnum in se ipsum divisum desolabitur, et domus

supra domum cadet” (“Every kingdom divided against itself shall be
brought to desolation, and house upon house shall fall”; Lk. 11:17). Like
the possessed victim whose “last state” of demonic possession was
“worse than his first,” East Anglia is shown to have been worse off than
it had been before Rædwald’s conversion. It too is a “kingdom divided
against itself,” because its ruler, by having permitted religious dual-
ism, defeated the exorcistic purpose of baptism107 and so introduced
“long-lasting evil and unhappiness” into his realm.108

Fear of a Pagan East Anglia? Post-Rædwaldian Developments

Evidently the kingdom remained ideologically divided against itself

for some time. Bede notes that “[q]uod uidelicet fanum rex eiusdem
prouinciae Alduulf, qui nostra aetate fuit, usque ad suum tempus
perdurasse, et se in pueritia uidisse testabatur” (“Ealdwulf, who was
ruler of the kingdom up to our time, used to declare that the temple
lasted until his time and that he saw it when he was a boy”; HE II.15,
pp. 190–1). From this aside one infers that Rædwald’s successors must
have had their work cut out for them if they sought to abolish their
traditional religion in favour of the new one. Assuming that the Coun-
cil of Hatfield (Herts) took place in 679, “Alduulfo rege Estranglorum,
anno septimodecimo regni eius” (“in the seventeenth year of the reign
of Ealdwulf, king of the East Angles”; HE IV.17, pp. 384–5), we can date
the beginning of Ealdwulf’s reign to about 662.109 That reign is usually
said to have ended in 713, so Ealdwulf’s boyhood may be supposed
to have spanned the 630s and early 640s.110 This estimate leaves any-
where between a mere handful of years and two whole decades for the
continued existence of the pagan altar following the death of Rædwald
himself in around 625.111 Although even twenty years is not an inordi-
nate amount of time for an early seventh-century kingdom to experi-
ment with religion, Bede seems to have worried about the long-term
prospects of the Christian church in East Anglia much as he did with
regard to Europe in general. His own evidence shows such anxiety to
have been unfounded and conversion eventually to have taken firm
root everywhere in Britain; moreover, the HE has persuaded scholars
that, following Rædwald’s death, “the conversion of the East Angles
[was] amongst the earliest in the country” and revealed “no suggestion
of relapse or of persistence of pagan elements.”112 Yet Bede’s glimpses
of post-Rædwaldian history indicate that the new faith had struggled
to gain traction.113 The remainder of this chapter considers the chaotic
middle decades of the seventh century and Bede’s efforts to convince
58 Angles on a Kingdom

not only his readers but also himself that East Anglia could now be
reckoned a reliable cornerstone of the early English church.
We know, because Bede tells us, that Eorpwald did not ascend to the
throne a Christian but was converted through the agency of the North-
umbrian king Edwin (HE II.15, pp. 188–91).114 Bede praises the activity
of the latter and, as we saw earlier, underscores his success in rescuing
Eorpwald’s kingdom; but in doing so he demonstrates that the path
to East Anglia’s Christianization was not as smooth as the passage in
HE II.15 suggests. That Edwin’s intervention was needed to secure the
church’s ideological influence in eastern England hints that, upon his
accession, Eorpwald forwent baptism and carried on as his father had
done before him, maintaining both altars but privileging old practices.
Again a foreign potentate is shown meddling in East Anglian affairs,
as Æthelberht of Kent had done with Rædwald. The intervention high-
lights the East Angles’ vulnerability and may explain the subsequent
broils within the ruling dynasty itself.
Although Bede tells us that Edwin secured the conversion of Eorp-
wald, he does not say just how pious the latter really was. Deeply con-
verted or not, he would soon be killed by a pagan rival, Ricberht, whose
usurpation temporarily decided East Anglia’s ideological orientation
in favour of tradition, or what Bede simply refers to as error: “tribus
annis prouincia in errore uersata est” (“the kingdom remained in error
for three years”; HE, II.15, pp. 190–1). What Bede represents as murder
followed by relapse into misbelief may actually have been the culmina-
tion of long-simmering tensions, caused either by old rivalries within
the Wuffing dynasty or by challenges to the dynasty’s legitimacy from
without; if the latter scenario, then suspicion falls upon the Mercians.115
Yet even if that rival gens had nothing to do with Ricberht’s rise to power,
the end of that “erroneous” king’s reign did not immediately lead East
Anglia to embrace the kind of stable Christian adherence Bede held
up as a condicio sine qua non of happy governance. “There was a very
sizeable royal family,” Ian Wood reminds us, “and … rulership was not
necessarily confined to one member of it at a time.”116 Although Bede
somewhat frustratingly leaves unexplained the reasons for this state of
affairs, he shows clearly enough that royal authority in East Anglia was
not always unitary or uncontested. Even the apparently peaceful (if
temporary) co-reign in the 630s of Ricberht’s successors Sigeberht and
Ecgric hints at competition and compromise within the royal court.117
As David Kirby has pointed out, Bede praises the Christian Sigeberht
for his patronage of the church (HE III.18, pp. 268–9) but expresses no
similar admiration for Ecgric, and “the probability is that Ecgric was
and remained a pagan.”118 Such tensions, whether or not they led to
 Rædwald’s Unhappy Realm 59

bloodshed, reverberate beneath the straightforward-sounding demo-

nym “East Angles” and perhaps suggest the presence of an early centre
of East Anglian dynastic power vying with Rendlesham, possibly as far
afield as Norfolk,119 where Mercian encroachment and influence would
have been easier. Or the tensions may have been purely social in origin,
deriving from competition within the Wuffing family itself in the “San-
dlings Province.”
The fact that Bede is silent on these possibilities implies a wish to
simplify and to polemicize. Nicholas Howe has shown that “demarcat-
ing the world as he knew it, designating it as Christian or pagan terrain,
as converted or yet-to-be converted, was fundamental to Bede’s sense
of his work as a historian and as a biblical commentator in the cause of
religious orthodoxy.”120 Rædwald is scapegoated as an enemy of ortho-
doxy who resisted ideological demarcation. For Bede’s purposes, the
crucial boundary in East Anglia was one that ran not between Nor-
folk and Suffolk, or between different districts of the one or the other,
but between true Christian belief and wicked pagan “error.” Anglian
religion, like Anglian migration, entailed for Bede an all-or-nothing
boundary crossing.
After chastising Rædwald for attempting to have it both ways in the
matter of the two altars, Bede goes on to provide a partial genealogy of
the East Anglian royal house: “Erat autem praefatus rex Reduald natu
nobilis, quamlibet actu ignobilis, filius Tytili, cuius pater fuit Uuffa, a
quo reges Orientalium Anglorum Uuffingas appellant” (“[Moreover,
the aforesaid] Rædwald, who was noble by birth though ignoble in his
deeds, was the son of Tytil, whose father was Wuffa, from whom the
kings of the East Angles are called Wuffings”; HE II.15, pp. 188–91). It’s
a curious moment to add a regnal list. According to Higham, “[t]he lit-
erary device is a subtle one and far from accidental, serving to separate
Rædwald as an individual from the inherent nobility which (as Bede
was keen to emphasise) was the general condition of his dynasty.”121
The separation of which Higham speaks, however, ruptures the reg-
nal list’s very integrity, the “constructed continuity” that Walter Pohl
discerns in “the rudimentary but highly structured narratives of ge-
nealogies.”122 Although Bede clearly concedes the East Anglian king’s
membership in an illustrious royal line, his opposition of natu nobilis
to actu ignobilis actually detracts from that line’s lustre.123 After all,
Rædwald’s “ignoble deeds” included trying to keep alive the old ways
practised by his forebears; it would be his successors who eventually
exemplified the new and improved model of kingship. The fact that
Rædwald’s name is even revealed by Bede when it is omitted from the
“Anglian List” in London, British Library, MS. Cotton Vespasian B.vi,
60 Angles on a Kingdom

fol. 110v, is itself significant; the acts of including and excising names
from royal genealogies had a propagandistic function,124 so when Bede
prefaces a regnal list with harsh opinions about one of its members,
he breaks the list’s spell over the audience. One reads the other kings’
names, remembers Bede’s censure, and wonders if the completely pa-
gan forebears of Rædwald are guilty of sin merely by association with
him. Rædwald’s conversion ought to have marked a new beginning,
the efflorescence of Christianity among the East Angles; a medieval
polity’s sense of its own importance depended on the recording of such
historical junctures, whether of royal lines or of ideological realignment
with a new religion. If a genealogy acts as a lifeline of dynastic prestige,
the mention of Rædwald’s pedigree immediately after an attack on the
king himself shows Bede going for East Anglia’s jugular.
The fragmentary nature of the regnal list as Bede reproduces it may
indicate that he was willing to acknowledge the importance of genealo-
gies only as a way of reminding his readers that, at this point in the HE,
his subject was a single kingdom’s pre-Christian history. Yet Georges
Tugène offers the fascinating insight that “Bède est prêt à faire état de
la généalogie païenne d’un roi chrétien, mais uniquement lorsque la
conversion de ce roi est récente, fragile ou superficielle. Cela signifierait
alors qu’il voit une incompatibilité entre la signification traditionnelle
des généalogies royales et le sens d’une adhésion véritable à la foi nou-
velle” (“Bede is prepared to mention the pagan genealogy of a Chris-
tian king, but only when that king’s conversion is recent, fragile, or
superficial. This would mean that he sees an incompatibility between
the traditional signification of royal genealogies and the meaning of
true adherence to the new faith”).125 Perhaps it is for this reason that
Bede describes post-Rædwaldian Christian evangelization in East An-
glia not in relation to a regnal list, much less to an imperium-list, but
rather in relation to individual pious kings, bishops, and missionaries
who laboured to spread the faith. The importance of King Anna, St.
Fursey, St. Botwulf, and especially St. Æthelthryth will be considered in
the next chapter; but to convey a further sense of East Anglia’s quirky
religious development as Bede recounted it, I turn next to the HE’s por-
traits of King Sigeberht and Bishop Felix before concluding this chapter.

Sigeberht the literalist

Sigeberht, Ecgric’s co-ruler, is shown to have gone above and be-

yond the call of duty to prove himself a devout Christian (and thus
to compensate for Ecgric’s probable paganism?). Likely a stepson of
Rædwald, he had endured a period of exile in Gaul while the latter was
 Rædwald’s Unhappy Realm 61

king (HE III.18, pp. 266–9) and even during the three years of Eorp-
wald’s reign (HE II.15, pp. 190–1). After securing his hold on power, he
sponsored the missionary activity of Fursey, even going so far as to re-
nounce royal rule altogether to become a monk. Unfortunately for him,
the pagan Mercian king Penda had designs on the East Angles, and
when he attacked their kingdom they insisted that Sigeberht renounce
the tonsured life to defend his people. One may be forgiven for feeling
somewhat nonplussed by the outcome as Bede relates it:

[D]um [Orientales Angli] se inferiores in bello hostibus conspicerent,

rogauerunt Sigberctum ad confirmandum militem secum uenire in proe-
lium. Illo nolente ac contradicente, inuitum monasterio eruentes duxerunt
in certamen, sperantes minus animos militum trepidare, minus praesente
duce quondam strenuissimo et eximio posse fugam meditari. Sed ipse pro-
fessionis suae non inmemor, dum opimo esset uallatus exercitu, nonnisi
uirgam tantum habere in manu uoluit; occisusque est una cum rege Ecg-
rice, et cunctus eorum insistentibus paganis caesus siue dispersus exercitus.

(As the East Anglians realized that they were no match for their enemies,
they asked Sigeberht to go into the fight with them in order to inspire the
army with confidence. He was unwilling and refused, so they dragged
him to the fight from the monastery, in the hope that the soldiers would
be less afraid and less ready to flee if they had with them one who was
once their most vigorous and distinguished leader. But remembering his
profession and surrounded though he was by a splendid army, he refused
to carry anything but a staff in his hand. He was killed together with King
Ecgric, and the whole army was either slain or scattered by the heathen
attacks. [HE III.18, pp. 268–9])

According to Wallace-Hadrill, Sigeberht’s religious devotion in trying

circumstances elicited Bede’s admiration;126 certainly as an early medi-
eval effort at imitatio Christi it is not easily surpassed. Yet although such
conduct is more honourable than Rædwald’s first instinct to hand over
Edwin of Deira to Æthelfrith of Bernicia – more honourable, that is, in
being more redolent of early medieval fidelitas to one’s religion – it is
hardly more laudable as a show of responsible kingship.
Bede himself seems to have been at a loss for words, remarkably so
in light of the material he had to hand. In the late tenth century, as we
shall see in chapter 5, Abbo of Fleury would have no difficulty weaving
into hagiography the loose threads of history and legend about King
Edmund’s murder at Scandinavian hands. In the early seventh century,
when the young and still-fragile Christian church in England depended
62 Angles on a Kingdom

on strong royal leadership, Sigeberht had benefited his realm neither

militarily nor, it would seem, spiritually by abdicating his rightful duca-
tus to die a martyr’s death; a hundred years later Bede neglected to
applaud that choice. It is one thing to promote missionary work and
establish schools, achievements for which Sigeberht earned Bede’s
unambiguous approval; it is quite another thing to choose invasion
as the context in which to emulate Christ’s last agonies on the cross.
Susan Ridyard argues persuasively that Bede would have found such
absolute renunciation of responsibility better suited to recluses than
to kings, and that he would have judged Sigeberht, “although a good
and religious man … ultimately rather misguided.”127 Alan Thacker
goes further, claiming that the most conspicuous admiration shown for
kings in the HE is reserved for rulers like the Northumbrians Edwin
and Oswald, who exemplified Christian piety while also using military
force to defend church and country.128 Sarah Foot goes furthest of all
when she maintains that kings like Sigeberht who renounced the re-
sponsibilities of rulership or ministerium “were not fulfilling the divine
will”; by forgoing their “paternal role,” they “contrived to make or-
phans of their subjects.”129 By displaying pacifism before Penda’s army,
Sigeberht ensured the East Angles’ defeat and risked the undoing of the
evangelization efforts that he himself had undertaken.
Such uncompromising all-or-nothing orthodoxy is a world away
from Rædwald’s accommodative synthesis. Students of East Anglia’s
later medieval and early modern history will remember the dramatic
swing in the region’s spiritual tenor from the late medieval Catholi-
cism of Julian of Norwich, John Lydgate, and even Margery Kempe
(who, though idiosyncratic, still esteemed pilgrimages and relics) to
the seventeenth-century iconoclasm of William Dowsing and his fellow
Puritans. Bede, focusing as he does on the relationship between kings
and the church from the seventh century to his own day, anchors East
Anglia’s penchant for astonishing oscillations of faith roughly a millen-
nium before the final spoliation of the abbeys, and shows it emerging
not over the course of centuries but within a mere couple of decades.
More to the point, Sigeberht’s self-sacrifice resembles the kind of
weak kingship that, in early medieval Eastern Europe and Scandina-
via, the church sought to compensate for by promoting exemplary
saint-kings. Susan Ridyard infers from the Polish historian Karol Gór-
ski’s work on the subject the principle that “[w]here the political power
of the Crown was weak, the church sought to bolster royal authority
by the creation of the saint king; where the monarchy was strong, the
saintly ruler was conspicuously – and deliberately – absent.”130 Rid-
yard, however, sees a more complex sociopolitical dynamic at work
 Rædwald’s Unhappy Realm 63

in the promotion of English royal saints’ cults, and I do not wish to

underestimate the complexity of this dynamic either in England or
in Bede’s thinking in particular. Even so, it is beyond doubt that the
Northumbrian monk rejected pagan Continental “sacrality,” which was
attributed to kings while they were still alive; it also seems pretty clear
that he refrained from crediting Sigeberht with posthumous “sanctity,”
a trait that the Roman Catholic Church recognized in Christian kings
held to have been martyred.131 Bede instead set much more store by
Sigeberht’s success at furthering pastoral work. After Rædwald’s time,
seventh-century East Anglian kingship no longer resulted in broad po-
litical imperium but did form part of the foundation for Bede’s narrative
about the church’s wider, gradual conversion of England.132 As such it
became the basis for a reformed East Anglia in the story recounted in
HE II.15 about that kingdom’s first bishop, Felix.

Felix’s Pious Cultivation

In the HE, East Anglia becomes a refreshed spiritual landscape at a

time when conventional imperium is no longer possible. Although Si-
geberht failed to shine as a military leader, he fulfilled his pastoral re-
sponsibilities by recruiting Felix to diffuse Christianity throughout his
realm: “Felix episcopus, qui de Burgundiorum partibus, ubi ortus et
ordinatus est, cum uenisset ad Honorium archiepiscopum, eique in-
dicasset desiderium suum, misit eum ad praedicandum uerbum uitae
praefatae nationi Anglorum” (“bishop [Felix], who had been born and
consecrated in Burgundy, came to Archbishop Honorius, to whom he
expressed his longings; so the archbishop sent him to preach the word
of life to this nation of the Angles”; HE II.15, pp. 190–1). The event is
dated 636 by the Parker manuscript of the ASC, which notes that “Felix
biscep bodade Eastenglum Cristes geleafan” (“Bishop Felix preached
the faith of Christ to the East Angles”).133 Felix is thought to have died
in 647,134 and Bede’s remark that his death occurred seventeen years
after the beginning of his episcopacy (HE III.20, pp. 266–7) places the
latter event in ca. 630 or 631. Bede’s diction, livelier than the annalist’s,
refers to the new faith as the “word of life” and, as we shall see, asso-
ciates that life with the imagery of agricultural labour. The effect is to
evoke responsible stewardship; East Anglia’s spiritual rescue is figured
as hard work on English soil, the Burgundian bishop having been iden-
tified as the only cultural import from the Continent.
At Archbishop Honorius’s bidding, Felix is said to have success-
fully dismantled the culture of paganism encouraged by Rædwald, his
queen, and his court counsellors, “quin potius fructum in ea multiplicem
64 Angles on a Kingdom

credentium populorum pius agri spiritalis cultor inuenit. Siquidem

totam illam prouinciam, iuxta sui nominis sacramentum, a longa in-
iquitate atque infelicitate liberatam ... perduxit” (“for the devoted hus-
bandman reaped an abundant harvest of believers in this spiritual field.
Indeed, as his name signified, he freed the whole of this kingdom from
long-lasting evil and unhappiness”; HE II.15, pp. 190–1). In asserting
that East Anglia had been a land long dominated by infelicitas before
Felix set to work, Bede has in mind an “unhappiness” or “unluckiness”
opposed to the felicitas that fully converted rulers were expected to fos-
ter by combining Christian orthodoxy with good government.135 Here
it is a bishop who effects the “national salvation” normally entrusted
to kings but forsaken by Rædwald.136 The East Angles have finally got
their Coifi, and then some; because Felix does the bidding of both the
archbishop and Sigeberht, his evangelical impact goes well beyond
even the Northumbrian high priest’s dramatic rupture with the past.
As A.H. Merrills has noticed, the HE contains a didactic and spiritual
geography resembling that found in the commentary on the Acts of the
Apostles that Bede was writing contemporaneously with his great book
on the English church. “In each case,” Merrills observes, “reference to
physical reality at crucial points of the narrative both provided a set-
ting for the evangelical episodes described, and allowed these victo-
ries to be located within the wider Christian world.”137 Thanks to Felix,
the “spiritual field” of East Anglia at last coalesces firmly despite its
limited extent as literal territory. Eighth-century readers knowledge-
able about this specific provincia would have known that it occupied a
sea-girt corner of an island; that its bishopric was near to or faced the
water at Dommoc (HE II.15, p. 190) or, more properly, Domnoc, recently
identified as Walton Castle near Felixstowe on the Suffolk coast;138 and
that the site given by Sigeberht to the Irish Fursey for monastic use
“[e]rat … siluarum et maris uicinitate amoenum, constructum in castro
quodam quod lingua Anglorum Cnobheresburg, id est Vrbs Cnobheri,
uocatur” (“was pleasantly situated close to the woods and the sea, in a
Roman camp which is called in English Cnobheresburg, that is the city of
Cnobhere (Burgh Castle)”; HE III.19, pp. 270–1).139 Yet it is instructive to
consider what Bede does not say about the sea.
Marine imagery offered ready tropes for stories of Felix’s evangeli-
zation of East Anglia, as it went on to do for the twelfth-century histo-
rian William of Malmesbury, who recounts that the missionary bishop
“ingenti studio et uigilanti labore toti regioni Christianam credulitatem
infunderet” (“flood[ed] the entire region with the Christian faith thanks
to his high endeavour and sleepless industry”).140 Here Felix is im-
agined not as a cultivator but as a kind of human pump, pouring the
 Rædwald’s Unhappy Realm 65

new religion everywhere into East Anglia in a benign version of that

literal inundation by which the Fens “are never reclaimed, only being
reclaimed.”141 Unlike William, Bede missed an opportunity to depict
the Christianization of East Anglia in maritime terms; the oversight (as
it may seem) is striking, given that “[s]ituated as he was on the banks
of the Tyne, and drawn by the powerful spiritual currents of the Irish
Sea, Bede’s writing was the product of a littoral, as much as literary, en-
vironment.”142 Currents, however, have a way of shaping and reshap-
ing landscapes in unexpected ways. As Tim Pestell has commented,
“[c]ertainly, the inhabitants of what was to become East Anglia were
geographically well-placed to absorb or react to the beliefs and material
culture of those passing through or choosing to settle within the local
landscape.”143 Perhaps from Bede’s perspective Rædwald’s court was
too well placed in that regard. Although coastal or fen environments
are literally the places where Felix, Fursey, and Æthelthryth establish
their retreats, only farmland is evoked by Bede as a figural or meta-
phorical setting for pastoral endeavour, and maritime locales are not
exploited for any symbolism that might be apt to figure the work of
proselytization.
In fact, as Lawrence Martin has shown, “Bede’s favourite metaphor
for preaching in his Ecclesiastical History is agricultural.”144 With its
connotations of stability, abundance, earnest production, and harmony
between human enterprise and the natural environment, the image of
harvesting aptly enables Bede to characterize the evangelization of East
Anglia by its first bishop. During his own, secular reign, Rædwald is
shown to have embodied none of those aforementioned virtues; and
although Bede does not associate his imperium with seaborne ideolog-
ical flux, he does link the more reassuring imagery of reaping with the
settled Christian pastoral work that proceeded after Rædwald’s time.
According to Peter J. Fowler, the metaphor of prayer as harvest evokes
the early Christianization of the Germanic peasantry, who regarded ag-
ricultural and religious labour as “really the same thing,” for “once you
get Christian religion coming in as the latest of religions, it very quickly
colonizes the agrarian cycle, which is, if you like, God-given.”145 Like
long-persistent prehistoric earthworks, East Anglia’s pagan substratum
is ploughed under by Felix’s zealous cultivation.146 One recalls that in
Super parabola Salomonis Bede figures the church as a strong woman
planting a vineyard of faith, and that in Luke 11:23 (which we know
Bede read) Christ uses the sowing trope to distinguish believers from
unbelievers.147 Finally, the “potius fructum” (“abundant harvest”) that
Felix reaped in his territory recalls the agricultural turn of phrase de-
ployed by Bede himself in his Preface, in which, ruminating on his own
66 Angles on a Kingdom

authorial labours, he asks the audience of his “historia … nostrae na-

tionis” (“history of our nation”) to pray together on his behalf: “apud
omnes fructum piae intercessionis inueniam” (“let me reap among
them all, the harvest of their charitable intercessions”; HE, Praefatio,
pp. 6–7).148 Shared imagery hints at similarity between two kinds of
spiritual reward: that which Bede hopes to gain for himself, and that
which East Anglia has secured for itself thanks to Felix’s ministry. The
harvest-tide trope nicely resolves the early cultural uncertainty of the
“Angles” as a whole, who, Bede reported, had deserted their Conti-
nental homeland for greener pastures in Britannia. With Felix as their
happy reaper, the eastern Angles are shown finally to have accepted a
well-regulated, healthy religious life and to have stopped feeding the
demons that had hungered for the victims Rædwald is said to have sac-
rificed to them. The HE seeks to reassure its readers that the most res-
tive of the Angles have found their proper niche in the English church
and that Felix’s labours have fortified East Anglia against heathenism
originating elsewhere in England.

Conclusion

Although the danger posed by the Mercian king Penda was a thing
of the past, heresy and paganism remained constant perils in Bede’s
imagination. The expectancy voiced in the active subjunctive inueniam
present in the Northumbrian scholar’s captatio benevolentiae, where he
asks for his readers’ prayers, also suffuses the depiction of Felix.149 For
couched though it may be in the certainty of indicatives – inuenit, per-
duxit – the account of his episcopacy nevertheless exudes Bede’s earnest
hope (more than wishful thinking, less than absolute certitude) that the
Christian faith had now become securely planted in East Anglian soil.
Early readers of the HE did not necessarily share Bede’s dismay at
Rædwald’s influence. In fol. 43v of the Saint Petersburg Bede,150 the
phrase “ad uictimas daemoniorum” is written in a smaller script than
the rest of the text but apparently in the same hand, and appears at the
bottom of the second column below what seems to have been intended
as that column’s last line: “[habe]ret ad sacrificium xrī et arulam.” It
looks as if the scribe had initially pondered excluding the line about
the devils’ victims, possibly believing it was unimportant, but then
changed his mind in a show of faithfulness to Bede’s text. The OE trans-
lation of the HE adds nothing in the way of astonishment or disdain
to Bede’s account of the East Anglian king.151 As Sharon Rowley has
demonstrated, however, the fact that the OE version “decenters Roman
authority and significantly reduces the voice of Gregory the Great”152 in
 Rædwald’s Unhappy Realm 67

comparison to the Latin original suggests that, in comparison to Bede,

the translator may have been less tetchy anyway about the ideological
implications of Rædwald’s two altars.
Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Hatton 43 is an early eleventh-century
manuscript of the HE and contains many corrections and marginal
notes; yet the annotator has ignored the passage about Rædwald’s dual
shrine.153 On fol. 60v a possibly twelfth-century corrector intervened
at the mention of reduuald (ninth line) and ræduuald (nineteenth line),
but merely to add the siglum “∙)” above the “d” in the East Anglian
king’s name to indicate that the Latin nominative ending -us should
be understood. In and of itself this correction is unexceptional, as it ap-
pears also over the names alduulf (seventeenth line), eorpuuald (line 22),
sigberct (line 25), and ælfuuin and ædilred on fol. 124r. To that reader such
names stood out not because they activated memories of their bearers’
piety or impiety, but rather because their OE forms had not been prop-
erly integrated into the Latinity of the surrounding text of the HE. Be-
yond striking the exacting corrector as lexically incomplete, the names
had effectively ceased to signify.154 Bede associated Rædwald’s name
with syncretism, but his disappointment and his anxieties belong to
the eighth century; scribes at work four hundred or so years later could
frown over grammatical case endings because they could afford to take
for granted so much else. Latinizing Old English names becomes a pri-
ority when the question of religious adherence can be laid to rest.
For his part, Bede knew that Britannia comprised many cultural lay-
ers, many ideological influences originating elsewhere. Paganism as he
understood it still survived, and he feared it as later copyists of the HE
could not have done, for to him it had been the common ground among
otherwise distinct early Insular realms. Writing of the rich inhumation
mounds created in eastern England during Bede’s lifetime, Martin
Carver remarks that “the burials signal a new cultural unity between
the kingdoms of the heptarchy, as if, in wishful imagination at least,
a unified England already existed.”155 Bede’s imperium-list also signals
unity of a kind, albeit frequently coerced, always temporary, and some-
times wrought by kings who had not been Christian, or not sufficiently
Christian for Bede’s tastes. It is rather the church that the HE proclaims
as the sole legitimate basis of unity, and thus the only true foundation
of a politically credible East Anglia. For this reason Bede might have
reacted to the Sutton Hoo ship-burial in Mound 1 with the same tactical
ambivalence he shows with regard to wielders of imperium. According
to J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, “Sutton Hoo was unknown to Bede; and, had it
been known, would have struck him as repellent and irrelevant.”156 Re-
pellent in itself? Perhaps. Irrelevant? Not necessarily, for if the modern
68 Angles on a Kingdom

consensus is right, the tomb honoured someone – Rædwald, maybe –

who had, after all, aspired to pre-eminence as a ruler and who exercised
a specifically royal power on which the church depended in order to
bring about eventual cohesion in England.
Bede acknowledged the importance of wide-ranging rule; what he
opposed was the ideological mutability that he found most egregious
in East Anglia’s early history but that had characterized the early histo-
ries of all the English kingdoms. To show that the English “nation” and
church had successfully joined the larger world of Roman Christianity,
Bede demonized Rædwald’s East Anglia, literally associating it with
devils, and then effected its historiographical exorcism lest that realm’s
influence should have confined all England to the spiritual equivalent
of that remote angulus to which it was sometimes relegated by medie-
val Continental writers and mapmakers.157 Among the English provin-
ciae East Anglia occupied a privileged position in the easternmost part
of the island world that Bede knew best, for it lay closest to the rising
sun and to Christianity’s roots “in primis orbis partibus” (“in the first
parts of the world”).158 As chapter 2 will show, Bede depicted Æthel-
thryth – East Anglian princess, sometime Northumbrian queen, and
founder of a monastery in the liminal Ely borderland – as a force that
had decisively returned East Anglia to the orbit of Christianity and so
augmented the “happiness” brought to the kingdom by Bishop Felix.
 2
Æthelthryth in a Virgin Wilderness

In likening the East Anglian missionary-bishop Felix to a reaper and his

converts to a harvest, Bede, as we saw in chapter 1, conjured up a vi-
sion of fields made productive by the plough, an image that would have
resonated with those of Bede’s eighth-century monastic readers familiar
with land transactions recorded in charters and reckoned in acres and
furlongs.1 Such readers would have known that enclosing a field for ag-
ricultural use involved demarcation, either the reuse of earlier bound-
aries or the creation of new ones, as well as occasional “trouble with
neighbours and the law” when the property rights of others were in-
fringed upon.2 But when Bede celebrates Felix’s activities in East Anglia,
he says nothing about that kingdom’s internal divisions; his remark that
“fructum in ea multiplicem credentium populorum pius agri spiritalis
cultor inuenit” (“the devoted husbandman reaped an abundant harvest
of believers in this spiritual field”; Historia ecclesiastica [HE] II.15, pp.
190–1) neither discloses any boundary disputes arising from the estab-
lishment of Domnoc3 nor alludes to any of the toil involved in evangeliza-
tion. The agricultural conceit succeeds because Bede focuses on the fight
against paganism, or rather the fight against the tolerance of paganism
that he associates with Rædwald and his queen; out of sight for the time
being are unpleasant political realities, especially the pagan Mercian
warlord Penda, likely the most unpleasant reality of all for the East An-
gles of the middle seventh century. Though absent from Bede’s vignette
of Felix, Penda nevertheless figures prominently in the HE’s accounts
elsewhere of Mercian aggression against East Anglia. “Trouble with the
neighbours” is, then, a recurrent theme of the latter kingdom’s early to
mid-seventh-century political fortunes and forms the background of Be-
de’s account of Æthelthryth’s foundation of a religious house at Ely.
My argument in this chapter is that Bede uses the sainted abbess, her
miraculous incorruption, and the fervour and loyalty of her community
70 Angles on a Kingdom

at Ely to show that the kingdom once cut off from correct Christian wor-
ship by Rædwald has been brought out of its idiosyncratic, ideologically
ill-defined corner of history to play a central role in the English church, a
role all the more noteworthy because of lingering threats posed by Mer-
cia in the latter half of the seventh century despite that kingdom’s con-
version to Christianity following Penda’s death. The HE demonstrates
the reintegration of part with whole by praising the achievements of
Eorpwald, Sigeberht, Felix, Fursey, and especially Æthelthryth, who for
Bede was the greatest East Angle of all. Despite the evangelization pro-
gram spearheaded by the male leaders whom Bede acknowledges (and
by St. Botwulf, whom he does not acknowledge), it is Æthelthryth’s vir-
ginity that confirms East Anglia’s spiritual intactness.
Although the abbess is often and correctly regarded by modern schol-
ars as generally English, Bede himself stresses her regional identity; for
this reason she should be seen as his personification of East Anglia at
its best. He identifies Æthelthryth as “filiam Anna regis Orientalium
Anglorum” (“daughter of Anna, king of the East Angles”; HE IV.19, pp.
390–1) and explains her decision to establish a religious community at
Ely by saying simply that “de prouincia eorundem Orientalium Anglo-
rum ipsa … carnis originem duxerat” (“she sprang from the race of the
East Angles”; HE IV.19, pp. 396–7). In thus bookending her Vita, such
regnal particularization does two things. As Catherine Matthews has
pointed out, it “subtly emphasize[s] the earthly status of this saint as a
way of indicating the successful spread of Christianity.”4 Yet the tech-
nique also invites us to contrast Æthelthryth to Rædwald and to deduce
that East Anglia has indeed been transformed from outpost of lingering
Germanic heathenism to vanguard of Christian asceticism (the rigid di-
chotomy between heathenism and Christianity reflecting Bede’s own
thinking, as pointed out in chapter 1). If Rædwald and his queen’s per-
sistent attraction to paganism be understood as spiritual fornication, as
suggested persuasively by Stacy Klein,5 then the HE’s pairing of virgin-
ity with orthodoxy in the figure of Æthelthryth takes on that much more
resonance as Bede’s way of announcing the ideological redemption of
the East Anglian gens: once a land of spiritual “unhappiness,” East An-
glia has returned to felicitas. Along with Sigeberht’s royal sponsorship
of the missionary endeavours of Felix and Fursey, Æthelthryth’s com-
munity at Ely signals what, much later and in a very different context,
would be called “the effects of good government in the countryside.”6
Within Bede’s narrative scheme, this triumph redounds generally to the
English church because it heralds the recovery of the formerly troubled
and troublesome East Anglia, now incomparably fertile in holiness – as
Bede implies – thanks to Æthelthryth.
 Æthelthryth in a Virgin Wilderness 71

Like Felix, Ely’s virgin abbess is shown to succeed as a cultivator of

Christian piety; but it is because of its local importance that her suc-
cess story belongs at least as much to the conflict-ridden early chorog-
raphy of East Anglia as to the turbulent wider history of the Christian
church in England. Her tireless self-dedication to Christ gains Æthelth-
ryth a reputation for sanctity that becomes associated with her monastic
community at Ely and with a spiritually renewed royal genealogy and
kingdom. Though self-exiled to the latter’s periphery in the Fens, Æthel-
thryth becomes the main attraction of East Anglia’s ecclesiastical culture
in the late seventh century, her hagiography a series of performances of
holiness that redounds to the credit of stirps and provincia alike.

Politics and Religion

According to Bede, Felix had established his East Anglian bishop-

ric at Domnoc (Walton Castle), and Fursey had founded a hermitage
at Cnobheresburg (?Burgh Castle); the Parker or “A” manuscript of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC) dates the former event to 636.7 By this
time, Rædwald himself was history; but the East Anglian kingdom and
church remained threatened as long as Penda could disrupt political
stability everywhere south of the Humber,8 as the three East Anglian
kings Sigeberht, Ecgric, and Æthelthryth’s own father Anna discovered
at the cost of their lives (HE, III.18, pp. 268–9). Meanwhile, St. Fursey
was forced to leave England for the Continent, founding a monastery at
Lagny in Francia (HE, III.19, pp. 276–7) and dying there ca. 650. We oc-
casionally need to go beyond the HE to unearth Penda’s long career as
a warlord; that career is hinted at in the brief hagiography of St. Foillán,
the Additamentum Nivialense de Fuilano, which mentions the expulsion
of King Anna and the sacking of Fursey’s monastery.9 The Liber Eliensis
(LE) blames Penda for ravaging a monastery at Cratendune, in or near
Ely, which is said to have been established by King Æthelberht of Kent
as a Canterbury initiative;10 a precursor to the more illustrious double
abbey created by Æthelthryth, it may have been known to her when she
was a girl.11 As an adult, she is more likely to have known that her un-
cle, Anna’s brother Æthelhere, was set up as a puppet king after Penda
had killed her father, and that her foundation at Ely replaced the ear-
lier Cratendune wiped out by Penda’s army surging in from the west.12
Æthelthryth would have remembered a time when nearby Mercia, not
faraway Angeln, threatened a return to paganism.
Remarking on this threat, Norman Scarfe maintains that “Felix’s
bishopric was no kind of pastoral idyll, more a saga: Penda put East
Anglia’s new Christianity on the anvil: an enduring link was forged
72 Angles on a Kingdom

between Christianity and patriotism.”13 Æthelthryth is not typically re-

garded by scholars as a patriot, nor her religious devotion likened to a
sword hammered in the smithy of war; yet when Bede turned her life
into hagiography he distinguished perhaps too neatly between Vergil’s
hero Aeneas and his own saintly protagonist. In his hymn he writes
“Bella Maro resonet; nos pacis dona canamus” (“Let Virgil echo wars,
let us sing the gifts of peace”);14 but if Æthelthryth knew anything at all
about her father Anna’s and her kinsman Sigeberht’s deaths at Penda’s
hands, she would have realized that the site of her religious house lay
close to enemy territory and that “the gifts of peace” were always on
loan. Proximity to an expansionist Mercia could make the Isle of Ely a
dangerous place to live, not unworthy of comparison with the hagiog-
raphical desert of St. Antony.
When Æthelthryth finally is shown establishing a house for religious
women and men at Ely ca. 673, the prospects for monastic survival in
East Anglia may have looked brighter; Penda had died eighteen or
nineteen years earlier at the battle of the Winwæd (HE III.24, pp. 290–5),
and the Mercians had been converted to Christianity. On Bede’s own
evidence the Mercians even contributed to the growth of the English
church, especially through the good offices of their Christian king Wulf-
here,15 whom, it may be noted, the LE identifies as the husband of Eo-
rmenhild, daughter of King Eorcenberht of Kent and of Æthelthryth’s
own sister Seaxburh.16 Yet the Mercians broke the peace even after
adopting the new faith. In 676 their ruler Æthelred invaded Kent, the
focal provincia of the Gregorian mission, and attacked monasteries in the
process, acts that provoked Bede’s wrath in HE IV.12 (pp. 368–9). Well
after Bede’s time, in 794, the Christian Mercian king Offa murdered, or
commanded to be murdered, the Christian East Anglian king Æthel-
berht II; this later event warrants mention here only to underscore the
point that Mercian aggression never resulted solely from differences
of religion. As J.M. Wallace-Hadrill asserted, “Bede’s Anglo-Saxons
showed no community of political sentiment”;17 at a time when hos-
tilities erupted frequently, Æthelthryth’s community at Ely depended
on luck or the Fenland for whatever calm could be enjoyed close to the
Mercian sphere of influence.
The rise of Ely, then, seems to have been part of a larger trend in
which East Anglian religious communities gambled on a climate of
relative if uncertain peace. The last half-dozen years or so of the mis-
sionary endeavours of St. Botwulf, who made his minster at Icanhoe
(Iken) in Suffolk ca. 653/4–ca. 680, overlapped with Æthelthryth’s ten-
ure at Ely from 673 to about 679. Evidence for Botwulf’s life and work
is found not in Bede but in the ASC’s brief annal for the year 654,18 in an
 Æthelthryth in a Virgin Wilderness 73

even briefer reference in the list of saints’ resting places known as the
Secgan be þam Godes sanctum þe on Engla lande ærost reston,19 and in the
post-Conquest Vita sancti Botolphi by Folcard of St. Bertin.20 Though un-
remarked by the Northumbrian scholar, Botwulf’s mission formed one
of several important mid-seventh-century efforts by the Christian East
Anglian royal court to evangelize the kingdom’s far-flung, still-pagan
corners. According to Wallace-Hadrill, “conversion of the countryside –
and not only of the countryside – was still a living issue in Bede’s
time,”21 and Bede states that Fursey “multos et exemplo uirtutis et in-
citamento sermonis uel incredulos ad Christum conuertit uel iam cre-
dentes amplius in fide atque amore Christi confirmauit” (“converted
many both by the example of his virtues and the persuasiveness of his
teaching, turning unbelievers to Christ and confirming believers in His
faith and love”; HE III.19, pp. 268–9).22 Significant populations of what
Bede regarded as “pagans” probably lived far from the Wuffings’ seat
in the Rendlesham–Sutton Hoo area, far too from the aristocratic circles
expected to follow the royal lead in conversion.
Bede, when he is aware of them, records that such royally sponsored
East Anglian evangelization efforts took place in remote or liminal ar-
eas. As we saw in chapter 1, Fursey, for example, is said to have un-
dertaken his missionary work at a site given to him by King Sigeberht
that “[e]rat … siluarum et maris uicinitate amoenum, constructum in
castro quodam quod lingua Anglorum Cnobheresburg, id est Vrbs
Cnobheri, uocatur” (“was pleasantly situated close to the woods and
the sea, in a Roman camp which is called in English Cnobheresburg, that
is the city of Cnobhere (Burgh Castle)”; HE III.19, pp. 270–1). Whether
Cnobheresburg was modern Burgh Castle, as is often claimed, is less im-
portant for present purposes than the text’s implication that it lay at
some distance from established settlements and made use of a former
Roman military outpost.23 A religious community arising there will
have taken advantage of existing walls, associated itself with imperial
cultural authority, and impressed upon villagers the antiquity of the
church itself.24 Fursey’s famous visions may be said to build upon the
physical foundations specified by Bede: on one occasion the missionary
was taken out of his own body and raised “in altum” (“up to a great
height”), where “iussus est ab angelis, qui eum ducebant, respicere in
mundum” (“he was told by the angels who were conducting him to
look back at the world”; HE III.19, pp. 272–3). When he turned around,
he saw four enormous flames threatening the planet, each with its own
allegorical meaning. The vision cannot be said to have been influenced
by Fursey’s perception of the East Anglian countryside, nor need it be
thought a commentary on life there;25 but a commonality nevertheless
74 Angles on a Kingdom

suggests itself between the fort-turned-hermitage at Cnobheresburg and

the hermit’s out-of-body visionary transports. In each case the physical
shell, useful though it may be in itself, proves especially valuable as a
foundation for or threshold to the divine, whether the shell be the body
of the saint or the Romanitas of the structure he appropriates.
Penda’s depredations obliged Fursey to flee East Anglia for Francia.
Almost a quarter-century later Æthelthryth founded her own commu-
nity at a site that was now safe enough to support it. Like both Fursey
and Rædwald, she was not unique in Insular history; as Bede was well
aware, other women had founded religious houses, such as Hild at
Whitby (e.g. HE III.24, pp. 292–3; IV.23, pp. 404–15) and Æbbe at Cold-
ingham (HE IV.19, pp. 392–3, 424–7). Æthelthryth’s sister Seaxburh cre-
ated two abbeys, at Milton Regis and at Minster-in-Sheppey, though
Bede knew only that she eventually would serve as abbess of Ely. Like-
wise, the Mercian noblewoman Kyneburga had been instrumental in
co-founding the double house at Medeshamstede (later Peterborough)
in the 650s, but for this information we need to turn to Dugdale’s Mo-
nasticon;26 Bede tells us simply that Kyneburga had been a daughter of
Penda and the wife of the (perhaps) Deiran sub-king Alhfrith (HE III.21,
pp. 278–89, and n. 3). There was also Æthelburh, who received from her
brother Eorcenwold, bishop of London, the monastery of Barking that
he had founded (HE IV.6, pp. 354–61).
Bede praises Æthelburh and Hild warmly but singles out Æthel-
thryth for special veneration, describing her piety with an intensity
that diverts attention away from the militarily sensitive border area
in which that piety is shown to take root. This is not to say that Bede
makes physical environments wholly irrelevant to his heroine’s devo-
tion; on the contrary, he shows her body to be deeply integrated with
her spirituality and thus characterizes her very differently from how he
portrays Fursey, whose flesh proved such an encumbrance to his tran-
scendental visions that he needed to leave it behind. Furthermore, Be-
de’s portrait of her in HE IV.19 (pp. 390–401) attributes to Æthelthryth
a somatic self-awareness that is intimately linked to the geographical
place in which her community arises.27 Her Vita and later Old English
and Anglo-Latin texts deriving from it have shed much light on the
roles women were expected to play qua women in the early English
church;28 some scholars have explored the sainted abbess’s hagiogra-
phy as the mother lode of Ely Abbey’s institutional power before and
after the Norman Conquest.29 Virginia Blanton’s recent monograph
has done the most to discern in her cult a catalyst for broader English
national identity formation from the early medieval to early modern
period.30 Less has been written, though, about how the saint’s textual
 Æthelthryth in a Virgin Wilderness 75

representation furthered East Anglian regional identities specifically.

Jacqueline Stodnick regards Bede’s depiction of Æthelthryth as a spur
to “local and regional identities” but emphasizes the absorption of
those identities into the larger national-ecclesiastical destiny envis-
aged in the HE.31 Blanton, Mechthild Gretsch, Christine Wille Garrison,
Paul Szarmach, and most recently Ian David Styler similarly view the
Æthelthryth textual corpus as connecting Ely to England.32 Of course,
Bede himself insists on celebrating the abbess as a paragon of English
holiness generally, and I agree with Stodnick, Blanton, and the other
scholars named above who demonstrate that her cult bridges the cate-
gories of “region” and “nation,” even if my own interest is in the ways
regional identities responded to, accommodated, or even resisted nar-
ratives of wider English unification.

Æthelthryth among Men

Because inter-dynastic unions created at least the hope of concord

between kingdoms, Æthelthryth was under considerable pressure to
marry. Bede’s HE, unlike the much later LE, provides relatively few
details of this pressure, though he shows plainly enough that her fu-
ture lay in the hands of powerful men. An intriguing alternation be-
tween passivity and activity characterizes Bede’s Æthelthryth, by turns
an East Anglian princess, Northumbrian queen, and finally East Ang-
lian abbess; the alternation recalls Rædwald’s own oscillation between
passivity and activity earlier in the HE. This trait contributes to Bede’s
representation of East Anglia as a kingdom that, having earlier (in ef-
fect) shunned the universal church, came to place itself wholly at the
church’s service. Bede’s Vita of and abecedarian hymn to Æthelthryth
exalt her sanctity as a transcendent and trans-temporal virtue that re-
dounds to Ely’s fame and secures East Anglia’s political redemption as
a polity fully reformed, even on its liminal Fenland periphery.
In Bede’s well-known account, Æthelthryth is a princess of the East
Anglian royal house who has been married off twice but eventually
exchanges the secular for the cloistered life. Her decision takes her first
to Coldingham Abbey ca. 672, a monastery under Northumbrian royal
patronage, and thence after one year to Ely.33 Prior to becoming a nun of
the former and abbess of the latter, however, she was beholden to men:

Accepit autem rex Ecgfrid coniugem nomine Aedilthrydam, filiam Anna

regis Orientalium Anglorum, cuius saepius mentionem fecimus, uiri bene
religiosi ac per omnia mente et opere egregii; quam et alter ante illum
uir habuerat uxorem, princeps uidelicet Australium Gyruiorum uocabulo
76 Angles on a Kingdom

Tondberct. Sed illo post modicum temporis, ex quo eam accepit, defuncto,
data est regi praefato. Cuius consortio cum XII annis uteretur, perpetua
tamen mansit uirginitatis integritate gloriosa[.]

(King Ecgfrith married a wife named Æthelthryth, the daughter of Anna,

king of the East Angles, who has often been referred to, a very religious
man and noble both in mind and deed. She had previously been mar-
ried to an ealdorman of the South Gyrwe, named Tondberht. But he died
shortly after the marriage and on his death she was given to King Ecgfrith.
Though she lived with him for twelve years she still preserved the glory of
perfect virginity. [HE IV.19, pp. 390–1])

Unsurprisingly, Bede and later hagiographers present Æthelthryth as a

woman ensconced and even objectified in a man’s world.34 Her passiv-
ity before male power reveals much about early medieval gender roles,
especially as Bede understood and represented them, and is reflected at
the level of grammar and syntax, which juxtapose the bride’s passivity
with the king’s agency. The verbal phrase “accepit … coniugem,” for
example, presents Ecgfrith as wife-taker and Æthelthryth as wife taken,
the construction being one of several in the passage that portray the
saintly heroine “as a packaged gift, being presented to one husband
after another with no voice at all in any of the transactions.”35
Life on the marital merry-go-round delays Æthelthryth’s brilliant ca-
reer at Ely, but Bede was in no position to blame Ecgfrith, the very king
“quo concedente et possessionem terrae largiente ipsum monasterium
fecerat” (“who had given permission and granted land for the found-
ing of the monastery”) in which Bede himself lived. Without Ecgfrith,
there could have been no Wearmouth-Jarrow, because he “uoluisse”
(“had desired”) that Pope Agatho should give Benedict Biscop “in mu-
nimentum libertatis monasterii quod fecerat, epistulam priuilegii” (“a
letter of privileges … protecting the liberty of the monastery he had
founded”; HE IV.18, pp. 388–9).36 In support of Benedict Biscop’s foun-
dation of Wearmouth in 674, Ecgfrith needed to grant land and secure
privileges.37 “The court of Ecgfrith,” writes Stephen Harris, “seems
to me a metonymy for political and ecclesiastical reform,”38 and Bede
knew that the demands of such reform sometimes obliged individu-
als to sacrifice personal career preferences. In this context, Æthelthryth
was herself a resource, valued as a means to promote the temporal
well-being of the Northumbrian kingdom.
Her tendency – as Bede portrays it – to be acted upon more frequently
than to act finds parallels in Bede’s earlier characterization both of
Rædwald and of the dependent state of the East Angles after his death. In
 Æthelthryth in a Virgin Wilderness 77

the middle of the seventh century, the gens was hemmed in by other gentes
and obliged to pursue strategic alliances for its very survival. Sought by
a prince of the South Gyrwe and subsequently by a Northumbrian king,
the princess Æthelthryth looks to be the linchpin of stable political rela-
tions.39 Yet her potential to advance peace for the East Angles mattered
much less to Bede than her determination to remain a lifelong virgin.40
We hear very little to nothing, for example, of the political fallout of
Æthelthryth’s decision to end her royal marriage to take monastic vows.
She must have plunged the Northumbrian court into confusion by leav-
ing Ecgfrith, though it must remain an open question whether her doing
so “would have … rendered him something of a laughing stock within
the court,” eventually “leaving him with an overwhelming feeling of
self-pitying failure.”41 Nor do we know the extent of the problems, if
any, she posed for her own family when she sundered the tie between
the East Anglian and Northumbrian gentes. In saying so little about her
political life, Bede has insulated his heroine from the flux of history. The
resulting image of the Isle of Ely is of a place of tranquil contemplation,
glad asceticism, and (precarious) safety along East Anglia’s western bor-
der zone during a time of Mercian expansion.42 Bede’s silence about ten-
sions between the two polities allows him to concentrate on the purely
spiritualized frontier between life within and life without the cloister.
As students of Æthelthryth’s Vita have long known, even the portrait
of the saint herself accords her very little political volition, aside from
simple acknowledgment of the fact of her twelve-year Northumbrian
queenship: “Sponsa dicata Deo bis sex regnauerat annis” (“The devoted
betrothed of God had reigned for twice six years”; HE IV.20, p. 398).43
Æthelthryth typifies most subjects of hagiography in embodying a par-
adox: total self-effacement on one hand; formidable self-possession,
usually in the face of familial pressures, on the other.44 The latter is
given restricted scope for development. As Lisa M.C. Weston observes,
“[h]er marriages are acts of dynastic politics that she accepts (by mar-
rying) even as she denies (by remaining virgin).”45 In the eighth cen-
tury we are a far cry from her cult’s later and especially post-Conquest
developments, in which Ely hagiography revels in the saint’s ability
to punish from beyond the grave any sceptics who impugn her rep-
utation.46 Combining agency with passivity, Bede’s Æthelthryth looks
not forward to the twelfth century but backward to the early seventh,
the era of Rædwald, whom the HE portrays as both wielder of impe-
rium and servant of his queen and court teachers. Although they have
little else in common, Bede’s Æthelthryth and Rædwald both raise the
prestige of their provincia by confronting and overcoming external dis-
paragement. The converted king fights against and kills Æthelfrith of
78 Angles on a Kingdom

Bernicia; Æthelthryth resists potential calumny by those who would

question her virginity. Bede uses reported evidence about her body to
validate the foundation story on which the community at Ely rested:

[S]icut mihimet sciscitanti, cum hoc an ita esset quibusdam uenisset in

dubium, beatae memoriae Uilfrid episcopus referebat, dicens se testem
integritatis eius esse certissimum, adeo ut Ecgfridus promiserit se ei ter-
ras ac pecunias multas esse donaturum, si reginae posset persuadere eius
uti conubio, quia sciebat illam nullum uirorum plus illo diligere. Nec dif-
fidendum est nostra etiam aetate fieri potuisse, quod aeuo praecedente
aliquoties factum fideles historiae narrant, donante uno eodemque Dom-
ino, qui se nobiscum usque in finem saeculi manere pollicetur. Nam etiam
signum diuini miraculi, quo eiusdem feminae sepulta caro corrumpi non
potuit, indicio est quia a uirili contactu incorrupta durauerit.

(When I asked Bishop Wilfrid of blessed memory whether this was true,
because certain people doubted it, he told me that he had the most perfect
proof of her virginity; in fact Ecgfrith had promised to give him estates
and money if he could persuade the queen to consummate their marriage,
because he knew that there was none whom she loved more than Wilfrid
himself. Nor need we doubt that this which often happened in days gone
by, as we learn from trustworthy accounts, could happen in our time too
through the help of the Lord, who has promised to be with us even to
the end of the age. And the divine miracle whereby her flesh would not
corrupt after she was buried was token and proof that she had remained
uncorrupted by contact with any man. [HE IV.19, pp. 390–3])

Just as in life Æthelthryth refuses Ecgfrith’s sexual advances, so too in

death her body resists decay; for Bede, the notion of resistance to corrup-
tion applies to both contexts. His passive infinitive construction “corrumpi
non potuit” (literally “would not be corrupted”) and past-participial ad-
jective phrase “incorrupta durauerit” (“remained uncorrupted”) strik-
ingly capture the synthesis of activity and passivity in Æthelthryth’s Vita.
A passive grammatical construction is what one expects when a cadaver
is being discussed, since the dead cannot act but only be acted upon; yet
even while prone and subject to decomposition, the body composes itself
in a show of personal agency that survives corporeal death.
East Anglia itself is shown to have been a damaged body politic
whose integrity, once restored, needs to be displayed. Bede’s emphasis
on the saint’s wholeness enhances his portrayal of the efforts made by
earlier male missionaries to dissolve Rædwald’s baleful legacy and im-
prove East Anglia’s reputation. Success in this regard mattered to Bede
 Æthelthryth in a Virgin Wilderness 79

and probably to his intended readers too, who would have included the
Northumbrian king Ceolwulf, like-minded monastic and secular read-
ers or listeners (female as well as male), and evidently “certain people” –
perhaps at Wearmouth-Jarrow or at the royal court? – who seem to have
persisted in doubting the late queen’s marital chastity.47 An attentive
reader of an earlier version of the HE, Ceolwulf wished to aid the book’s
greater diffusion throughout England “ob generalis curam salutis” (“in
[his] zeal for the spiritual well-being of us all”; HE Prefatio, pp. 2–3).48 He
will have noticed the shadow cast earlier on East Anglia’s character by
Rædwald’s mixed heathen and Christian temple, and will already have
known that that king’s successor Eorpwald had been baptized a Chris-
tian under the supervision of Edwin (HE II.15, pp. 188–9),49 Ceolwulf’s
illustrious predecessor, who had reversed the roles of Northumbria and
East Anglia and had “made sure to set the tune for the East Anglian king
to play.”50 Ceolwulf would have had reason to welcome Æthelthryth’s
sanctity as evidence that Edwin’s baptism of Eorpwald had created a
lasting foundation for East Anglia’s re-Christianization, one that would
help rather than hinder the growth of the larger English ecclesia.51

Vitality at the Edge

In the HE Æthelthryth is a paragon of virtue for the English church as a

whole, but her accomplishments redound first of all to her own credit,
to the prestige of her local community, and to the renown of her gens.
She is said to have departed from Ecgfrith not precipitously but only
after having waited many years for his permission to go; her kingly
husband, for his part, is not portrayed in an unflattering light, and Bede
reports nothing of his responses to his wife’s years of pleading with
him. Given his need for tactfulness when recounting this episode, Bede
depicts Æthelthryth’s behaviour as a mixture of passivity with agency:

Quae multum diu regem postulans, ut saeculi curas relinquere atque in

monasterio tantum uero regi Christo seruire permitteretur, ubi uix ali-
quando impetrauit, intrauit monasterium Aebbae abbatissae, quae erat
amita regis Ecgfridi, positum in loco quem Coludi urbem nominant, ac-
cepto uelamine sanctimonialis habitus a praefato antistite Uilfrido. Post
annum uero ipsa facta est abbatissa in regione quae uocatur Elge, ubi con-
structo monasterio uirginum Deo deuotarum perplurium mater uirgo et
exemplis uitae caelestis esse coepit et monitis.

(For a long time she had been asking the king to allow her to relinquish the
affairs of this world and to serve Christ, the only true King, in a monastery;
80 Angles on a Kingdom

when at length and with difficulty she gained his permission, she entered
the monastery of the Abbess Æbbe, Ecgfrith’s aunt, which is situated in a
place called Coldingham, receiving the veil and habit of a nun from Bishop
Wilfrid. A year afterwards she was herself appointed abbess in the district
called Ely, where she built a monastery and became, by the example of her
heavenly life and teaching, the virgin mother of many virgins dedicated to
God. [HE IV.19, pp. 392–3])

Not despite but rather in keeping with his characteristic portrayal of

Æthelthryth as the object of men’s desires, Bede explains that the royal
abbess resolved “in monasterio tantum uero regi Christo seruire” (“to
serve Christ, the only true King, in a monastery”; HE IV.19, pp. 392–3). A
hagiographical convention, Æthelthryth’s synthesis of self-abnegation
with self-advancement reaches its fulfilment in her geographical move-
ments, and these culminate in her return to Ely. Of course the move
may well have been arranged by her family behind the scenes; it is easy
to picture King Ealdwulf and his court mulling over the advantages
of bringing Æthelthryth back home now that her marriage had been
annulled.52 If the saintly woman was going to devote the rest of her life
to prayer anyway, why not have her do it on behalf of her fellow East
Angles in East Anglia?
Bede, however, does not explain the transfer from Coldingham to
Ely as the result of such manoeuvrings. Curiously, even the LE, which
so often fleshes out Bede’s accounts with details not found in the HE,
is just as silent as Bede is on this score, citing no Wuffing fiat as the
reason for the move.53 According to Tim Pestell, “Ely’s foundation
in the seventh century may be understood as a border outpost and a
symbolic statement of presence by the East Anglian royal family.”54
Bede, however, suggests that the former queen’s Fenland homecom-
ing is shown to have been willed by Æthelthryth herself, who carves
out what Virginia Woolf might have called “an island of one’s own” in
contrast to her earlier forced emplacement among Tondberht’s Gyrwe
and, later, Ecgfrith’s Northumbrians. To be sure, her separation from
her Northumbrian royal spouse will have cost her time and effort; Bede
heavily underscores her suppliant’s role when he characterizes her as
requesting (postulans) that she might be permitted (permitteretur) to
leave behind worldly cares (“saeculi curas relinquere”). The wording
stresses the queen’s patience and submissiveness even as it indicates
her desire to escape from secular affairs.55 Such agency as she can ex-
ercise is hinted at in Bede’s verbs impetravit and intravit. The former,
a compound translated by Colgrave as “she gained his permission,”
normally presupposes “request or entreaty,” and even without Bede’s
 Æthelthryth in a Virgin Wilderness 81

vix aliquando it connotes exertion on the part of the petitioner rather

than unsolicited generosity on the part of the giver.56 The latter verb, in-
travit, may (but needn’t) imply a free choice “to go into, enter (a closed
or defined space)”;57 here the only power ascribed to Æthelthryth is
simply the renunciation thereof. Bede attends chiefly to her personal
choice to grow in spiritual perfection. Whether Æthelthryth deplored
Coldingham for its lack of discipline or had simply quarrelled with
Ecgfrith’s aunt Æbbe, Bede does not say, though her departure invites
speculation.58 His silence on these issues enables him to strengthen her
semblance of autonomy.
East Anglia, of course, is shown to have benefited from Northum-
bria’s loss of the pious queen-turned-nun, but Bede plays down the
impact of that loss upon his own region. What Sharon Rowley has said
about Book IV of the OE translation of the HE applies to the same sec-
tion of Bede’s Latin original: “In many ways, Book IV is the success
story of the Church in England, with the English saints and miracles
far outweighing the problems, like the monastery at Coldingham.”59
Æthelthryth’s, and by extension East Anglia’s, relationships with oth-
ers are characterized by collaboration, negotiation, and understated su-
persession; simply put, by the transition from a good to a better state of
affairs rather than by the outright rejection of bad for good. As Bede de-
picts her, the abbess moves from place to place generating no ill will.60
Through a narrative approach that exploits or inserts key silences in the
record,61 the East Angles are made to look like more sociable partners
within the English church than they had ever been under Rædwald,
their reincorporation into it aided by Æthelthryth’s relatively smooth
passage between communities.
“In Bede’s narrative,” Harris observes, “Aethelthryth … moves tem-
porally through a series of sites and stages,” specifically from royal mi-
lieus “such as we might see in the Books of Kings or Samuel,” to “a
minster, an apostolic community wed to Christ such as we might see
in the Gospels,” and then lastly “to sanctity in the universal Church,
as we see exhibited in the Epistles.”62 Interestingly, these series take
the form of transitions presented in pairs, in which the saint improves
upon prior experience of stability. The first pair comprises her two
journeys “outward” – from East Anglia to Middle Anglia and, later, to
Northumbria, the territories (respectively) of her two husbands; these
journeys are essentially transpositions into the secular space and time
of the married state.
The second pair of transitions brings Æthelthryth “homeward,” as it
were, ever closer to sacred space and time in the form of the monastic
life she longs for; this trajectory comprises her stint at Coldingham and
82 Angles on a Kingdom

her extended sojourn at Ely. In each pairing, the first undertaking reads
like a pen trial for a later, more sustained, more successful venture: that
is, her marriage to Ecgfrith endured longer than her brief relationship
with Tondberht, and her seven years at Ely were more fruitful than her
single year at Coldingham.
Æthelthryth’s career of improvements aptly complements the
spiritual progress of the East Anglian gens. Although I risk getting ahead
of myself by looking ahead to Bede’s discussion of the abbess’s marble
sarcophagus, I find it necessary to cite here Jacqueline Stodnick’s anal-
ysis of that section of the HE because of its influence on my thinking
about Æthelthryth as an integral part of the East Anglian chorography
adumbrated by Bede:

As Ely is to Britain, so Æthelthryth is to her new sarcophagus, which

exactly replicates the contours of her body[.] … Bede’s attention to the
rewrapping and containment of Æthelthryth’s body restates the microcos-
mic relation between Ely and Britain itself, and provides a way to think
about her as simultaneously a local and an insular saint. … Bracketing
Æthelthryth’s narrative, this chapter [HE IV.18, concerning the sojourn
at Wearmouth-Jarrow by John the Archcantor] mirrors its concern with
a synecdochic notion of regionality that asserts the symbolic value of the
part in relation to the whole.63

One way the HE constructs East Anglia as a place is by showing its

progression, greatly spurred by Æthelthryth, from infelicitas to felicitas.
Her story recalls the history of her country’s Christianization, begun
unsatisfactorily with Rædwald and set to rights by Sigeberht and his
missionaries. The reading I propose here does not challenge Stodnick’s
claim that Bede’s Vita uses Æthelthryth’s coffin at Ely to encapsulate
a potential for sanctity that applies broadly to Britain as a whole; in-
stead it simply suggests that before Æthelthryth’s holiness could be
appropriated for the greater glory of the national church, it needed to
be proved fit for purpose at the regional level to show that the East An-
glian kingdom had been fully converted.

Chorography between Home and Rome

Bede depicts the founding of the Ely community not as a feat of reclama-
tion and engineering, as the physical rehabilitation of fen or mound,64
but rather as a social process, one centred on Æthelthryth herself as an
example to be imitated, or at least lauded, by Ely’s cenobites and by
the HE’s intended readers. After telling us about the abbess in her role
 Æthelthryth in a Virgin Wilderness 83

as teacher, Bede evaluates her day-to-day routine, noting that Æthel-

thryth denied herself most luxuries and wore “solum laneis uestimen-
tis” (“only woollen garments”). She rarely bathed except during major
liturgical celebrations, and seldom ate “plus quam semel per diem”
(“more than once a day”; HE IV.19, pp. 392–3). In practising this kind of
regimen, she served as a model for her fellow inmates. The social cast
of her piety seems to typify women’s saints’ lives generally;65 in Bede’s
account it suffuses Æthelthryth utterly.
As a pattern for the spiritual formation of others (in this case Ely’s
nuns and monks), the abbess’s conduct resembles Æthelburh’s devo-
tional life at Barking and its influence on Torhtgyth (HE IV.6–9, pp. 354–
63) as well as the asceticism of Hild at Whitby (HE IV.23, pp. 408–15).
Even in her last moments Æthelthryth is shown to be indivisible from
her companions, men as well as women: in Bede’s phrasing, “[r]apta est
autem ad Dominum in medio suorum” (“[s]he was taken to the Lord
in the midst of her people”; HE IV.19, pp. 392–3), the masculine geni-
tive plural suorum standing for both sexes and probably referring to the
mixed membership of the Ely community itself, though the meaning
“her kinsfolk” cannot be ruled out. Even after her death the abbess was
bound indissolubly to a community: “et aeque, ut ipsa iusserat, non al-
ibi quam in medio eorum iuxta ordinem quo transierat ligneo in locello
sepulta” (“she was buried by her own command in a wooden coffin, in
the ranks of the other nuns, as her turn came”; HE IV.19, pp. 392–3).66
It is striking that her final expression of agency occurred when Æthel-
thryth ordered that her body should be placed amidst the remains of
the monastery’s deceased inmates; forsaking the pomp and exception-
alism befitting her status, she instead chose interment in a small casket
(locellus) made of wood. In Bede’s narrative, such perishable material
aptly complements the simple ceremony at her entombment; substance
and form combine to showcase the humility with which Æthelthryth
becomes one with East Anglian soil.
It is in part to confirm that that soil and, by extension, the whole ide-
ological foundation of the East Anglian provincia have been sanctified
that the abbess’s humility must be showcased. Betokening her resist-
ance in life to worldly marriage, her virginal integritas unites the saint
with East Anglian territory, which becomes more prestigious thanks to
her interment in it. Yet again, however, and some sixteen years after the
interment, the wishes of Æthelthryth were overturned, not by a man
but by her own sister Seaxburh, who had succeeded her as abbess of
Ely and had come to believe that her saintly predecessor merited elabo-
rate commemoration in a marble sarcophagus.67 This, the last example
of supersession in Bede’s Vita, shows that even the disposition of her
84 Angles on a Kingdom

own body was finally not up to Æthelthryth to decide but depended on

the will of others:

Et cum sedecim annis esset sepulta, placuit eidem abbatissae leuari ossa
eius et in locello nouo posita in ecclesiam transferri; iussitque quosdam
e fratribus quaerere lapidem, de quo locellum in hoc facere possent. Qui
ascensa naui (ipsa enim regio Elge undique est aquis ac paludibus cir-
cumdata, neque lapides maiores habet) uenerunt ad ciuitatulam quandam
desolatam non procul inde sitam, quae lingua Anglorum Grantacaestir
uocatur, et mox inuenerunt iuxta muros ciuitatis locellum de marmore
albo pulcherrime factum, operculo quoque similis lapidis aptissime tec-
tum. Vnde intellegentes a Domino suum iter esse prosperatum, gratias
agentes rettulerunt ad monasterium.

(After Æthelthryth had been buried for sixteen years, the abbess [Seaxburh]
decided that her bones should be raised and placed in the church in a new
coffin; she therefore ordered some of the brothers to look for some blocks of
stone from which to make a coffin for this purpose. So they got into a boat
(for the district of Ely is surrounded on all sides by waters and marshes
and has no large stones) and came to a small deserted fortress not far away
which is called Grantacæstir (Cambridge) in English, and near the walls of
the fortress they soon found a coffin beautifully made of white marble, with
a close-fitting lid of the same stone. Realizing that the Lord had prospered
their journey, they brought it back to the monastery. [HE IV.19, pp. 392–5])

So much for a simple burial; Æthelthryth is now an institution unto her-

self. A new, properly monumental shrine is required and must be built
of stone; the challenge lies in finding enough of it. Later texts celebrate
Fenland sites like Ely, Peterborough, and Huntingdon as loci amoeni
blessed with abundance;68 but Bede makes it clear that workable stone
is one commodity for which Seaxburh and her community needed to
search afield.
Accordingly, the abbess despatched to the hinterland several “broth-
ers” who seemed to know exactly where to look for the prized ma-
terial: a disused civitatula or small fortified settlement.69 This is the
Romano-British site of the future city of Cambridge; already a known
quantity as the toponym Grantacæstir in the early English calculus of
place-names,70 it was evidently familiar as a supply point for materials
apt for long-term commemoration. In an address to the Cambridge An-
tiquarian Society in 1933, Helen Cam remarked that “the first recorded
archaeological discovery in this county [i.e. Cambridgeshire] was made
by the monks who found under its walls the stone coffin that they
 Æthelthryth in a Virgin Wilderness 85

needed for enshrining the bones of Etheldreda.”71 The find is a form

of “harvesting” worthy of comparison with Bishop Felix’s pastoral la-
bours and Fursey’s renovation of a Roman fort. In Bede, the Ely monks
quarry the ancient past, recycling a relic of imperial colonization for
better use. Their redeployment of Roman spolia is matched by Bede’s
decontextualization of the site itself; one would like very much to know
what the monks had seen at Grantacæstir. Christopher Taylor offers an
intriguing speculation but adds to the questions raised by the HE:

The old Roman town where they discovered a Roman coffin may have
been partly derelict but it is unlikely that the settlement was completely
abandoned. In any case the picture of destruction that the monks recorded
may well have been only a temporary phase resulting from the savage
wars between Mercia and East Anglia earlier in the seventh century.72

Bede’s claim that the site was desolata allows one to surmise that it was
partly or nearly vastata as well. Was the fort a casualty of old strife be-
tween the two neighbouring kingdoms? “The watercourses of Cam-
bridge,” Helen Cam wrote, “lead back to the days when ‘East Angle
and Mercian glared at each other across Magdalene Bridge.’”73 Hostili-
ties may have subsided enough to allow a quick scavenging operation,
but the monks must have been stout-hearted souls anyway to conduct
one in such an area.
Assuming (as I do, agreeing with Christopher Taylor) that by Bede’s
time Grantacæstir marked the spot of ancient conflict, and assuming too
that it signalled a frontier zone rather than a sharply delineated “bor-
der” in our sense of the word, one is still faced with questions about the
sarcophagus and the rival histories it encapsulates. Had it served as the
final resting place of a Romano-British pagan? If so, would it therefore
have been understood by Bede and his audience as a symbol of the old
order? Or had it been intended for a Christian Briton, either at the time
of its commissioning or at some point after the Edict of Thessolonica of
380, when Christianity became obligatory throughout the empire? The
latter scenario is possible, though a comparable Roman sarcophagus in
the Church of Saint-Étienne (Déols, dép. Indre) houses the remains of
St. Lusor; it was known to Gregory the Great and has been described
thus by John Crook: “pagan, adorned with hunting scenes, but this evi-
dently did not worry those who reused it for the saintly burial.”74 Beau-
tifully wrought Roman artefacts seem not to have worried Bede either.
As Nicholas Howe has reminded us, the Northumbrian scholar knew
very well “that Rome had once been physically part of the island’s cul-
ture” and that “[its] remains contributed, as architectural spolia, to the
86 Angles on a Kingdom

making of Christian England.”75 The Christian recycling of antiquity

meant appropriation, and it is very probable that Bede regarded the
sarcophagus found outside the fort’s walls as a remnant of both a by-
gone culture and an archaic world view.
More important than what it originally signified is the new purpose it
acquires at Ely in Bede’s narrative. Seaxburh’s enhancement of Æthelth-
ryth’s shine would be that much more successful if suitable stone could
be not only discovered and transported but “converted” as well. In his
hymn to Æthelthryth, as we shall see later, the glory of Bede’s subject is
said to surpass that of Vergil’s Aeneas; the account of Seaxburh’s effort
to enrich her sister’s shrine is especially impressive as an instantiation
of much the same principle, which Clare Lees and Gillian Overing have
identified as one in which “[t]he new triumphs by incorporating the old
within its ideology just as Pope Gregory recommended to Augustine
(EH 1. 30).”76 A symbol of Insular paganism is recovered by monks and
brought into Ely’s crypt, but rather than retaining its old identity and
being placed on the same level as a Christian artefact (like Rædwald’s
arula, allowed to stand near an altare), the sarcophagus is transformed
altogether, in service of what Bede would have maintained was the one
true faith. Its earlier Roman identity poses no threat to the community
but rather adds to the lustre of the shrine and its guardians.77 Trans-
ferred effortlessly from a Romano-British cultural environment to an
English one, the casket is not unlike its place of discovery, Grantacæstir,
which the HE shows to have been incorporated into the lingua Anglo-
rum – not just “the language of the English” but specifically “the lan-
guage of the Angles,” for, as John Hines has shown, the spelling of the
place-name reflects specifically Anglian dialectal features.78
The “conversion” of the casket – if the object was pagan originally
– furnishes an opportunity for Bede to drive the last nail into the cof-
fin of East Anglia’s heathen past, and to do so more decisively than
he could do when narrating the account of Rædwald’s two altars.79
Bede’s statement that the casket “[m]irum uero in modum ita aptum
corpori uirginis sarcofagum inuentum est, ac si ei specialiter praep-
aratum fuisset” (“was found to fit the virgin’s body in a wonderful
way, as if it had been specially prepared for her”; HE IV.19, pp. 396–7)
conforms the vestiges of an earlier culture to the monastic agenda of
the HE’s carefully curated textual space. Among the bits and pieces
of East Anglian history gathered therein, Roman fragments, whether
pagan or Christian, reveal enduring cohesive power. This cultural
augmentation-via-appropriation technique has been used already: the
Ely community’s reuse of the coffin parallels Fursey’s rehabilitation
of Cnobheresburg,80 both salvage operations testifying, in monumental
 Æthelthryth in a Virgin Wilderness 87

form, to the redemption of East Anglia itself after Rædwald’s mis-

guided fusion of Christian and pagan altars.81 Ely’s Roman fragment is
no less important than those altars, despite the use of the word locellus
(“chest, casket, box”) to refer to it.82 The diminutive endings of locel-
lus and civitatula understate major appropriations. Removed from its
original place of burial, the casket has quasi-figural meaning in a hag-
iographic context because the transfer heralds a synthesis of Christian
and pagan that is really the former’s supersession of the latter, a sign
of cultural maturation on the margins of East Anglia.83

Healing the Scarred Body Politic

The more important transfer, however, is that of Æthelthryth’s re-

mains from the old to the new coffin. Before the translatio, Seaxburh
had expected to exhume only her sister’s bones; instead the body “ita
incorruptum inuentum est, ac si eodem die fuisset defuncta siue humo
condita” (“was found to be as uncorrupt as if she had died and been
buried that very day”: HE IV.19, pp. 394–5). In a period when fledgeling
religious communities often had to make do with fragments of saints’
remains, and in certain cases only with burial cloths that failed to ex-
cite universal appreciation,84 Ely boasts a whole body in addition to the
“powerful contact relics”85 of the saint’s clothing; the discovery stands
to confer upon the Fenland community a high degree of prestige.
As in the account of Æthelthryth’s marital virginity, so too in the dis-
cussion of her posthumous pristine state, male expertise is brought in
for purposes of verification. The authority of Bishop Wilfrid is cited
once more, as is that of a physician, Cynefrith, who recounts how he
had lanced a tumour just below the abbess’s jaw and, years later during
the translation ceremony, discovered “tenuissima … cicatricis uestigia”
(“only the slightest traces of a scar”; HE IV.19, pp. 394–5).86 Bede’s nar-
rative treatment of Æthelthryth’s scar has been interpreted as a textual
“performance” of the female saint’s gender; as a reflection of male mo-
nastic writers’ control over the representation of female purity; and as a
locus of clerical anxieties about the challenges of historiography itself.87
Stodnick diachronically analyses the Life of Æthelthryth and the Life of
Edmund in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, and connects the abbess’s scar with
the king’s wound in order to situate Bede’s exaltation of the East An-
glian princess within a long-term nation-building project on the part
of early English writers.88 Yet even as it adumbrates pan-English sanc-
tity, the image of Æthelthryth’s posthumous healing also confirms, via
metonymy, that East Anglia has been fully healed of the ideological
wound inflicted upon it by Rædwald. Just as an oyster forms a pearl
88 Angles on a Kingdom

around an irritating grain of sand, so Æthelthryth is shown to envelop

her tumour in pious allegory, and the Ely community to enfold the
remains of Fenland Roman paganism within a shrine to a paragon of
Christian asceticism.
In both cases, sacred identities accrue around points of origin pre-
sumed to be profane. As Æthelthryth lay dying, she is said to have
confessed to a youthful love of jewellery and to have interpreted the
malignant growth on her neck as God’s punishment for it:

“Scio certissime quia merito in collo pondus languoris porto, in quo iuu-
enculam me memini superuacua moniliorum pondera portare; et credo
quod ideo me superna pietas dolore colli uoluit grauari, ut sic absoluar
reatu superuacuae leuitatis, dum mihi nunc pro auro et margaretis de
collo rubor tumoris ardorque promineat.”

(“I know well enough that I deserve to bear the weight of this affliction
in my neck, for I remember that when I was a young girl I used to wear
an unnecessary weight of necklaces; I believe that God in His goodness
would have me endure this pain in my neck in order that I may thus be ab-
solved from the guilt of my needless vanity. So, instead of gold and pearls,
a fiery red tumour now stands out upon my neck.” HE IV.19, pp. 396–7)89

Embedded in her self-glossing is a rare detail about Æthelthryth’s

childhood life as an East Anglian princess. Though raised a Christian,
she neither had denied herself, nor had been denied by her parents, the
pleasure of jewellery; only in deathbed retrospection does she apply
the word supervacua both to the necklaces of her girlhood and to the
vanity she believes they represented. A further connection is drawn,
via the word “weight,” between the jewellery and the tumour (“pon-
dus … pondera”). Her urgent disavowal of the perceived sins of long
ago links past to present and also indicates how Æthelthryth wished
to be remembered by posterity, or rather how Bede intended her to
be remembered. She is depicted longing for eternal salvation, but her
self-glossing expresses concern for the kind of posthumous renown she
sought within the Ely community. A member of a Christianized social
elite who deliberately renounces the trappings of earthly wealth, she is
implicitly aligned with post-Rædwaldian kings: as her father Anna and
as Sigeberht and Eorpwald did before her, she consolidates her gens’s
break with the pagan traditions that had followed her ancestors in their
migration from the Continent to East Anglia.
Howard Williams has situated individual burials, whether crema-
tion or inhumation, within larger cultural patterns. He sees both kinds
 Æthelthryth in a Virgin Wilderness 89

of mortuary practice as “relational technologies” that, despite the

differences between them, “were employed to define coherent group
mnemonic traditions as well as to simultaneously create social and re-
ligious distinctions between groups, both within and between burying
communities.”90 In the cases of women dressed for burial, “[m]ortuary
costume varied between and within cemeteries, suggesting its complex
and changing use as a medium for the expression of female identities
at multiple levels.”91 According to Williams, the five wealthy female
interments at the seventh- to eighth-century cemetery at Harford Farm,
Norfolk (near Caistor St. Edmund) are connected by “the social con-
struction of the body and the body’s use to mediate the identities of the
living and the deceased.”92 By contrast, the trait that Bede attributes to
Æthelthryth in her last moments is that of self-spoliation, the choice to
renounce not only “gold and pearls” but also the attachment to them,
an attachment that would have formed part of her early self-identity
but that, in retrospect, she thinks marred her youth. Yet the textual
performance of renunciation is itself a kind of “relational technology”
because it commemorates Ely’s founder and impresses upon early
readers of the HE the vitality of the English church on the very margins
of East Anglia. As a way of mediating regional identities for those read-
ers, Bede’s scene of Æthelthryth’s deathbed asceticism contrasts with
the cultural signalling performed by the dual shrines of Rædwald and
his queen.
Æthelthryth’s reputation for holiness affects even the way her clothes
are regarded posthumously. Rather than being placed in the new coffin
to mark her privileged social position, these are kept for the spiritual
and physical healing of others: “Contigit autem tactu indumentorum
eorundem et daemonia ab obsessis effugata corporibus et infirmitates
alias aliquoties esse curatas” (“It happened also that, by the touch of
the linen clothes, devils were expelled from the bodies of those who
were possessed by them, and other diseases were healed from time to
time”; HE IV.19, pp. 396–7). This is Bede’s testimony, not the physician
Cynefrith’s, and it adds further depth to a before-and-after tableau vi-
vant that can be imagined juxtaposing Rædwald and his court with
Æthelthryth and her cloister. In this pairing, the mere clothes of an
East Anglian royal abbess would, in theory, help to vanquish the kind
of diabolical power allegedly supplicated by the earlier East Anglian
king. Of the Harford Farm mortuary context Williams has observed
that “artefacts were displayed and disposed of to create specific mne-
monic connections to the dead among the living”;93 in a roughly similar
vein, the passage from the HE just quoted displays the sainted abbess’s
clothes strengthening Christian cohesion in the Ely community. In life,
90 Angles on a Kingdom

Rædwald is said by Bede to have sacrificed to devils in the East Anglian

royal temple itself, presumably at or close to the centre of regnal power;
in death, Æthelthryth indirectly exorcises demons from the kingdom’s
periphery and, in effect, from the East Anglian body politic.
Although the abbess fails to get her way even in the final disposition
of her body, one detects neither tension in her characterization by Bede
nor discord within the Ely monasterium. All is communal endeavour
and mutual support, as when Bede has Cynefrith recollect the gender
inclusivity of the ceremony at Æthelthryth’s translatio: “Cumque post
tot annos eleuanda essent ossa de sepulchro, et extento desuper papil-
ione omnis congregatio, hinc fratrum inde sororum, psallens circum-
staret” (“When, some years later, her bones were to be taken out of the
sepulchre, a tent was erected over it and the whole congregation stood
round singing, the brothers on one side and the sisters on the other”:
HE IV.19, pp. 394–5).94 Though divided by gender, “the whole congre-
gation” chants the Psalms as one body. Æthelthryth’s cloistered life and
commemorative afterlife exemplify conventual fellowship, a show of
unity in this corner of East Anglia that compensates for the disunity of
cult allowed by Rædwald.

Why Ely?

After Bede expresses wonderment at the perfect fit of the Roman sar-
cophagus to Æthelthryth’s body, especially with regard to the space
reserved for the head, he abruptly turns to contemplate the Isle of Ely
itself. The scant transition between these two topics serves a purpose.
Despite, or perhaps because of, its distance from Wuffing centres of
power further to the east, the isle is figured as the spiritual “head” of
the East Anglian church and kingdom. At this point in the HE, Bede is
thinking in spatial terms about the shape of Æthelthryth’s body and
that of her coffin, and about the relationship between her head and the
space seemingly allotted for it in the original making of the artefact.
This spatial emphasis invites us to ponder Ely as itself a spiritual head-
land, mostly detached from the main body of its provincia but essential
to that body’s function, organization, and proper reorientation towards
Christian orthodoxy. In his mini-chorography of Ely, one very small
portion of the East Anglian kingdom stands for the whole,95 and one
woman’s extreme zeal for bodily purity undoes an earlier period of
impurity presided over by a misguided syncretistic king.
Bede’s Vita of Æthelthryth resists linear chronology and intersperses
details about her posthumous incorruption and holiness with accounts
of her life. Given this oscillation, it is unsurprising that Bede should
 Æthelthryth in a Virgin Wilderness 91

bring us decidedly away from the miraculous and back to earth by re-
marking on Ely’s geography:

Est autem Elge in prouincia Orientalium Anglorum regio familiarum cir-

citer sexcentarum, in similitudinem insulae uel paludibus, ut diximus, cir-
cumdata uel aquis, unde et a copia anguillarum, quae in eisdem paludibus
capiuntur, nomen accepit; ubi monasterium habere desiderauit memorata
Christi famula, quoniam de prouincia eorundem Orientalium Anglorum
ipsa, ut praefati sumus, carnis originem duxerat.

(Ely is a district of about 600 hides in the kingdom of the East Angles and,
as has already been said, resembles an island in that it is surrounded by
marshes or by water. It derives its name from the large number of eels
which are caught in the marshes. This servant of Christ wished to have her
monastery here because, as has also been said, she sprang from the race of
the East Angles. HE IV.19, pp. 396–7)

There are several points of interest in this paragraph. First of all, Ely is
described as a regio (“region,” “district”) belonging to the larger East
Anglian provincia (“race” or, better, “kingdom”). It is not wholly severed
from the world but instead assigned a specific East Anglian political
identity that links it to the seventh-century kingdom’s administrative
core in eastern Suffolk. The linkage seems insouciant, regardless of
whether Bede is establishing the connection on his own authority or
relying for it on his sources. By so casually including the Isle of Ely
in the “prouincia … Orientalium Anglorum,” the HE glosses over the
problem of its distance from the royal court at Rendlesham. It is likely
that what eventually became an East Anglian regio had once been an
independent sociopolitical unit that went on to lose its autonomy dur-
ing the Wuffings’ expansion from south-eastern Suffolk in the sixth and
early seventh centuries. The text, however, remains squarely focused
on Æthelthryth’s desire to return to the land of her people, the East
Angles; Ely is implicitly no less “East Anglian” an area than any other
part of the provincia.
Furthermore, no matter how fluid its environs, the settlement lies
firmly within a familiar system of land reckoning, a territory parcelled
into familiae (“hides,” “households”), units of lived territory or “prac-
tised place,” to borrow Michel de Certeau’s phrasing.96 The so-called
Tribal Hidage uses “hides” to measure territory and thus “indicates a
degree of orderliness, or coherence in the exercise of power.”97 In a sim-
ilar vein, Bede’s Ely is made out to be a known quantity, a landscape
ordered by a community. It is also recognizable by its commodities,
92 Angles on a Kingdom

which are implicitly prized according to this-worldly criteria; the top-

onym is said to have originated with the eels living at the site. While
hardly enough to make Bede’s Ely a locus amoenus or “pleasant place,”
the reference to the area’s large quantity of autochthonous marine an-
imals recalls the symbolic and real value of “landscape as bounded,
as contained by human-defined purposes.”98 As natural resources go,
the isle’s eels have long been appreciated in the Fens.99 In the early
1070s, as Richard of Ely reflects in the Gesta Herwardi through the
speech of the captured Norman knight Duda, Hereward and his men
were able to keep William the Conqueror at bay simply with the ma-
terials they had to hand in their fastness on the isle;100 but even five
centuries earlier, Ely’s eels are said to have helped Æthelthryth and
her fellow monks and nuns hold out against the world. Contributing
to the wealth of food with which all England is blessed (HE I.1, pp.
14–15),101 they enable Ely to join a larger national economy, the part
finding its meaningful place within the whole. That this particular
part should be characterized in terms of its marshes (paludibus) and its
aquatic life implies sparseness of human settlement, another potential
reason for the area’s strategic value, especially in the seventh-century
Wuffing economy. “Remote and marginal locations,” Tom William-
son reminds us, “fitted in well with the needs of Dark Age kings, for
it was easier to donate the land necessary for a new community in
areas of woodland, marsh, and waste, away from the main cores of
long-settled tribal land.”102
The emphasis on abundant marine food also complements the piety
to be found in the isle, for the “copia anguillarum” (“large number of
eels”) befits the “uirginum Deo deuotarum perplurium” (“many vir-
gins dedicated to God”; HE IV.19, pp. 392–3) nurtured by Æthelthryth
herself. The intensive prefix per- in the adjective perplurium really sug-
gests not merely “many” virgins but “very many.” Ely is a wriggling
Eden, but just as there are no snakes, so too are there no sins. The ab-
bess’s virtue, a paradoxical combination of virginity and maternity,
breeds monks and nuns who are inspired by the example of their foun-
dress to be fruitful and multiply in virginal perfection.103
Such abundance hardly arises ex nihilo in a wilderness. Rather,
Æthelthryth is said to have chosen Ely as the site of her double house
because it was the place of her own origins.104 The HE does not reveal
whether she was given a specific grant of land by the East Anglian
king;105 although “charters do belong at the heart of the history of the
christianisation of England,”106 Bede apparently saw no need to treat
Æthelthryth’s choice of the isle as a matter of land grants. It is unlikely
that he possessed a copy of the seventh-century Ely equivalent of the
 Æthelthryth in a Virgin Wilderness 93

Chelsworth diploma discussed earlier in this book. The new abbey’s

origin at Ely is explained, evidently to Bede’s satisfaction, by the foun-
dress’s wish to dwell among her own people; practicalities of land
transfer disappear from view. The return to ancestral beginnings ena-
bles a sanctified future in situ that transcends a charter’s merely archi-
val permanence.
The HE likewise suppresses other prosaic ramifications of Æthelth-
ryth’s founding of Ely. As Christine Wille Garrison has astutely pointed
out, there is a paradox in the princess’s stated preference for her native
East Anglia as the setting of her new monastery, in that going back to
her roots entailed returning to the land whose ruling gens had forced
the reluctant bride into her two marriages.107 Moreover, Ely was situ-
ated in an area of the kingdom where dynastic influence was at its most
tenuous.108 In general “royal women monastics lived in a liminal con-
text, between court and church”;109 but Æthelthryth’s Ely would have
been that much more liminal – its natural wealth and its quantifiabil-
ity in hides notwithstanding – because of its physical situation in the
“frontier region” between Mercia and East Anglia,110 an area marked by
the odd relic of tempestuous times.
Bede, however, makes it clear that his protagonist regarded the Isle
of Ely as part of her homeland, and that fact was enough to justify the
house’s establishment therein. He slyly connects the isle’s quasi-insular
appearance to the abbess’s self-identification as an East Angle. Al-
though his parenthetical asides “ut diximus” and “ut praefati sumus”
seem merely to indicate awareness of self-repetition, they also serve to
link Bede’s discussion of the shape of Ely’s landscape with his reference
to Æthelthryth’s roots in that landscape via the East Anglian gens. One
would have expected Bede to identify the abbess primarily in relation
to that gens as such, but instead he associates her with a provincia. The
preference for the territorial over the social term situates his heroine in
place. And the construction “de prouincia eorundem Orientalium An-
glorum ipsa … carnis originem duxerat” – literally “she herself drew
the origin of her flesh from the kingdom of the selfsame East Angles” –
emphasizes corporeal attachment to place that is surprising in a textual
culture known for preferring tribal to spatial identification.
There may be a good reason for this emphasis. By stressing the
“kingdom” over the dynasty, the stirps, Bede forestalls questions
about any undue influence the latter might have had in the founding
of Ely. In life, Æthelthryth may well have acted freely to colonize her
part of the Fens, but the East Anglian royal family from which she
“drew the origin of her flesh” will have had its own interests to pur-
sue in the 670s. Barbara Yorke points out that aristocratic convents
94 Angles on a Kingdom

were guided by political and familial concerns, not merely spiritual

and personal motives:

Entering the religious life was one of the gendered roles allotted to women
within the royal family nexus, and the considerable investment of re-
sources in these nunneries implies that they were considered to have a val-
uable role in sustaining and promoting the interests of the royal kin-group.
These roles may have been primarily religious, but some are also likely to
have had political connotations, and it may not have been easy, then or
now, to draw a clear distinction between them.111

King Ealdwulf and his court surely discerned political utility in Æthel-
thryth’s foundation at Ely. Although they apparently preferred her to
marry into a powerful foreign gens, they will also have benefited from
prayers offered on behalf of the East Anglian dynasty in her prestigious
double house, which may be regarded as a cloistered extension of that
dynasty. The less-than-clear distinction between Ely’s religious and
political functions must have been blurred further after Æthelthryth’s
death, when the abbacy was assumed first by her sister Seaxburh, then
– if later evidence is reliable – by Seaxburh’s daughter Eormenhild, and
later still by Eormenhild’s daughter Werburh.112 “If this was indeed the
case,” Simon Keynes notes, “Ely takes on the appearance of a house
serving the particular interests of a royal family, in a way which might
not have met entirely with Bede’s approval.”113
But Bede plays down the importance of such familial interests in
Æthelthryth’s case. To find so much as a hint of a royal retinue we need
to turn to an altogether different chapter of the HE’s fourth book, in
which the historian comments almost in passing that a certain monk
named Owine had accompanied the East Anglian princess to North-
umbria: “Venerat enim cum regina Aedilthryde de prouincia Orienta-
lium Anglorum, eratque primus ministrorum et princeps domus eius”
(“He had come with Queen Æthelthryth from the kingdom of the East
Angles, being the chief of her officers and the head of her household”;
HE IV.3, pp. 338–9). The HE also minimizes Æthelthryth’s political in-
fluence as queen of the Northumbrians, and in this regard differs from
Stephen of Ripon’s Vita sancti Wilfridi.114 By associating Æthelthryth
with the East Angles, naming her as King Anna’s daughter, and plac-
ing her in a Fenland district reckoned in “hides” and known for its
eels, Bede accords her just enough nobility and physical reality to sup-
port the allegoresis he will impart to her life in the hymn that conveys
his homage to her. Henceforth Bede’s East Anglia will be represented
not by half-pagan imperatores or by slain Christian kings, but by a holy
 Æthelthryth in a Virgin Wilderness 95

woman who is shown to spurn temporal prestige altogether, in favour

of the spiritual glory of religious houses, “islands of repose and spring-
boards to eternity.”115 By exalting Æthelthryth, Bede shores up that cor-
ner of the English church occupied by the militarily evanescent East
Angles. It is small wonder that the mid-eighth-century East Anglian
king Ælfwald should have wanted to build on his dynasty’s success at
sponsoring saints’ cults, even if his own choice, the Crowland hermit
Guthlac, had been a Mercian.
Rebuilding the prestige of the East Angles was by no means an ec-
centric pursuit for the Northumbrian monastic historian. According to
J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, “Bede … knew the Western Church for what it
was: a confederation of churches, often fissile, divergent, ignorant, and
passionately local.”116 He perceived regional peoples in much the same
light; Barbara Yorke has shown that Bede regarded the individual gentes
of his island as more palpable, more real political entities than the gens
Anglorum itself, which always mattered more to him as an ideal than
as an ethnically demonstrable fact.117 Such particularism, especially of
regional churches, needed to be harnessed to the church as a whole. His
way of ending the Vita of the holy abbess elevates the local and regional
precisely as a condition for articulating the national.
Where Bede’s prose account of Æthelthryth’s life celebrates her lo-
cal impact, his verse treatment proclaims her universal significance.
The hymn is ostensibly uirginitatis (“on the subject of virginity”; HE
IV.20, pp. 396–7) but really about Æthelthryth in particular.118 Penned
“ante annos plurimos … elegiaco metro” (“many years ago in elegiac
metre”; HE IV.20, pp. 396–7),119 the text preceded the composition of
the HE and displays Bede’s interest in showing how the present incor-
porates the past and how wholes embrace many parts. Æthelthryth is
shown defeating time itself, her virtue linking her to the great Roman
virgin martyrs Agatha, Eulalia, Tecla, Euphemia, Agnes, and Cecilia.
Her transcendence exists alongside her fitness as a spiritual heroine for
Bede’s own time and place: it is precisely her supernatural piety that
makes her such an urgently needed model of conduct for the here and
now. In what follows, not all the hymn’s lines will be considered, partly
for reasons of space, but mostly because of the comprehensive philo-
logical treatment the text has received in Stephen Harris’s 2016 mono-
graph Bede and Aethelthryth. Readings of several excerpts, however, will
demonstrate that Bede adapted the themes and mode of secular pane-
gyric to Christian hagiography to create a verbal shrine to the sainted
abbess, a textual monument that paradoxically, and probably against
her wishes, transformed her simplicity and passivity into the stuff of
heroism. In so doing, Bede’s hymn establishes Æthelthryth’s eternal
96 Angles on a Kingdom

virtue as a defining trait of the East Anglian church that enables it to be

accommodated securely within the larger ecclesia gentis Anglorum.
Bede’s versified elegy is specifically an epanaleptic abecedarian
hymn, as scholars of the hymn have pointed out. In its progress through
the Latin alphabet, it displays a strict linearity not to be found in the
Vita itself; yet the epanalepsis, the repetition of words at the end of a
clause that have also appeared at the clause’s opening, has the effect of
making us as readers look backwards even as we know we must move
forwards. I defer to Harris’s terminologically precise explanation:
“Bede constructs his elegiac Hymn to Aethelthryth so that in each stanza
the clauses run chiastically A1-B1/B2-A2, where A1 is repeated verba-
tim in A2, and B2 varies a theme from B1.”120 This structure results in
a quasi-paradoxical recursive advancement that parallels the historical
oscillation that Bede effects between past and present:

Alma Deus Trinitas, qui saecula cuncta gubernas,

adnue iam coeptis, alma Deus Trinitas.

Bella Maro resonet; nos pacis dona canamus,

munera nos Christi; bella Maro resonet.

Carmina casta mihi, fedae non raptus Helenae;

luxus erit lubricis, carmina casta mihi.

Dona superna loquar, miserae non proelia Troiae;

terra quibus gaudet, dona superna loquar.

(God, nourishing Trinity, you who govern all the ages,

grant now this undertaking, God, nourishing Trinity.

Let Virgil echo wars, let us sing the gifts of peace;

let us sing the rewards of Christ, let Virgil echo wars.

Chaste songs for me, not the abduction of shameful Helen;

sumptuousness suits the inconstant, chaste songs for me.

I will speak of heavenly gifts, not of wretched Troy’s battles;

I will speak of heavenly gifts by which the earth rejoices.)121

 Æthelthryth in a Virgin Wilderness 97

The beginning of the carmen leads us back to the beginning of time and
beyond, since from Bede’s perspective the everlasting Trinity precedes
and frames temporality itself. We move quickly forward, however, to
postlapsarian saecula, the epochs of the Trojan War and of Vergil’s later
poetic celebration of it. Storied though they may be, epic battles pale
in comparison to Æthelthryth, the greatest of “the gifts of peace,” even
as the abandoned Roman civitatula of Grantacæstir must yield pride
of place to Ely, adorned with the marble sarcophagus taken away
from the ruined fort. Employing the “outdoing” topos,122 Bede exalts
the nobility of Æthelthryth’s life, and by extension elevates his own
Life above the subject matter of Vergil’s Aeneid. “The themes of grand
secular poetry are devalued in contrasts,” as Paul Szarmach argues;
“[t]he foundation myth of the West cannot equal the celebration of the
life of Æðeldreda and the dona superna that are the poet’s theme.”123
Lofty poetic subjects such as the Troy legend could be invoked even
in this context because they inspired admiration, even Bede’s; the his-
torian was not trying to disparage the Greco-Roman cultural patri-
mony. Rather, as Harris points out, “Bede is consciously writing in a
‘modern’ Christian age, viewing the classical past as ancient and out-
dated.”124 According to Szarmach, the HE is “a collective hagiography
or a compendium of early Anglo-Saxon saints, whatever else scholars
may wish it to be,”125 so in this context, and from Bede’s viewpoint,
the virginal Æthelthryth may be said to have built upon and super-
seded Aeneas’ accomplishments without calling into question the lat-
ter’s validity as comparanda.126
As Winthrop Wetherbee has observed, Bede’s engagement with Ver-
gil suggests neither hostility nor parody but rather “domestication”:

As in dealing with the intractable elements in the culture of his own day,
his approach to the most influential of classical authors is one of clear-
sighted tolerance, and enables him to establish a modus vivendi in which
the potentially disruptive force of Vergil’s eloquence is neutralized; … Be-
de’s appropriation of Vergil … is one more example of his unique ability
to recognize value in the product of an alien culture and make it serve his
own sure Christian purpose.127

The effect is not unlike that of Ely Abbey’s own reuse and reinterpreta-
tion of a Roman funerary artefact to honour Æthelthryth herself.128 Ro-
manitas is not limited, however, to Vergil and colonial military outposts;
it also includes virgin saints like Agatha, Eulalia, Thecla, Euphemia,
Agnes, and Cecilia (HE IV.20, pp. 398–9). All were venerated by the
medieval church for having endured martyrdom at the hands of pagan
98 Angles on a Kingdom

Romans; all are adduced by Bede as champions of self-sacrificing Chris-

tian devotion whose glory Æthelthryth matches or outdoes.
With all due respect to the East Anglian abbess and to her Northum-
brian hagiographer, it must be said that her escape from Ecgfrith was a
good deal less dramatic than Thecla’s rescue from being raped, burnt
at the stake, and devoured by wild animals; nor can her marriage to
him have been as excruciating as the torments and executions of Agnes,
Cecilia, Eulalia, and Euphemia. Bede’s point, however, is not to prove
exact similarity between Æthelthryth and the Roman saints but rather
to show that England has produced a paragon of sanctity worthy of
being named with them. His English heroine can claim a place on the
family tree of illustrious East Angles (King Anna having been her fa-
ther), but even more impressive to Bede’s way of thinking is a lineage
that connects her to victims of state-sponsored torture in the days of
the empire. At least one member, then, of the Northumbrian historian’s
“sanctified East Anglian royal family,” as Christine Fell has called it,129
has managed to obtain holiness without having to be killed.
Charters of land “substituted permanence for precariousness,”130
but in their own way the Vita and hymn likewise elevate the abbess
of Ely beyond time by figuring her home environment as the foun-
dation of her transcendence, a process that synthesizes the local, na-
tional, and spiritual. The effect instantiates on a small scale a pattern
that Anthony Smith discerns globally, in which nations create ethnic
self-consciousness out of diverse kinds of text that provide pleasure
while enhancing the enterprise of nationalism:

[E]thnic symbols provide satisfying forms, and ethnic myths are conveyed
in apt genres, for communication and mobilization. As they emerge from
the collective experiences of successive generations, the myths coalesce
and are edited into chronicles, epics and ballads, which combine cognitive
maps of the community’s history and situation with poetic metaphors of
its sense of dignity and identity. The fused and elaborated myths provide
an overall framework of meaning for the ethnic community, a mythomo-
teur, which “makes sense” of its experiences and defines its “essence.”131

Collectively, the many spiritual triumphs recorded in the HE prove

Bede’s England to be eminently worthy of admiration within the cos-
mos of Christendom; this much has become a near-truism of scholarly
comment on the book’s purpose. If we also bear in mind, though, that
provinciae such as those of the Northumbrians, Mercians, West Saxons,
and East Angles were more politically palpable to Bede than England
was, that “the wider concept of the gens Anglorum” coexisted with “the
 Æthelthryth in a Virgin Wilderness 99

political reality of the several gentes who inhabited provinciae and were
ruled by kings,”132 then of necessity the mythomoteur of regional sanc-
tity that Bede constructed in his Life of Æthelthryth would have em-
powered East Anglia’s prestige first and England’s second. Either as
myths or as mechanical contrivances, motors work well only if all their
moving parts are in good repair, and Bede needed to show that the part
originally broken by Rædwald had indeed been fixed by Æthelthryth. It
is true that, as David Pelteret has pointed out, “the literary virtuosity of
Bede’s composition serves only to distract us from Æthelthryth’s physi-
cal presence and her accomplishments by shifting our focus away from
her to the abstraction celebrated by the poem, Virginity.”133 Neverthe-
less, in emphasizing her bodily intactness, Bede established the sound-
ness of the English church in a place where the “true” faith (as he would
have understood it) had been undermined to the harm of Britannia.

Conclusion: Overlapping Identities

In this chapter I’ve argued that Bede’s Æthelthryth embodies a certain

form of East Anglian identity, the assertion of total Christian self-denial
in a way that supersedes Rædwald’s accommodation of paganism. Yet
nothing prevented Æthelthryth from having several social identities;
and the caveats in this regard that I offered in the Introduction, with
regard to East Anglia as a place, surely apply to the abbess of Ely as a
person. As a noblewoman she was deployed to serve dynastic interests,
as were her kinswomen; Bede introduces his readers to Æthelthryth
in the first place by mentioning her arranged marriages. Such unions
multiplied identities in the case of Seaxburh, too; prior to her own ab-
bacy she had been queen of Kent and wife of Eorcenberht.134 Eormen-
hild, Seaxburh’s daughter and Æthelthryth’s niece, had been married
to King Wulfhere of Mercia before eventually becoming abbess of Ely
in her own right.135 Monasteries, like dynasties, gentes, and individual
persons, were not exclusively defined by their immediate regional sur-
roundings, as the influence of Frankish monasteries on religious houses
in and out of East Anglia reveals.136
Nevertheless, the vicissitudes of aristocratic and religious life in early
England manifested themselves differently in different communities.
To illuminate the emplaced quality of the peoples described by Bede,
Clare Lees and Gillian Overing have recently adapted Alan Thacker’s
insights on space and sanctity to their own work on saints’ cults:

Getting one’s own saint – and thereby becoming a focus and locus for holy
relics – not only puts a community on the map but also creates that map.
100 Angles on a Kingdom

Local saints designate the coordinates of place and region in geographic,

political, and spiritual terms. Indeed, the saint, the relic, and/or the shrine
carry the power to particularize place, to make a geographic and spiritual
purview; these are particularly profound examples of the sacred jurisdic-
tion of place.137

These arguments help to shed light on Bede’s spiritual chorography of

Ely by enabling us to discern Æthelthryth’s cult as a living landmark,
which completed East Anglia’s ecclesiastical and ideological fortifica-
tion long after the kingdom had lost its military hegemony. Æthelth-
ryth’s “virginitatis integritate gloriosa” becomes proof in Bede’s history
that East Anglia’s earlier defining rupture with Canterbury has been
healed for good. If, as Christine Fell argues, “Ely probably faded into
oblivion after Seaxburh’s death” to be resurrected only by Æthelwold in
the late tenth century,138 then Bede will have prized all the more deeply
Æthelthryth’s personal “power to particularize place” (to borrow Lees
and Overing’s phrase). On the other hand, if Ely’s status as an Eigenk-
loster increased the chances for the outpost’s survival, Bede might not
have objected too strenuously to such an arrangement; if nothing else,
a royally sponsored monastic community would strengthen the endur-
ing link between church and stirps on East Anglia’s western border.
As Barbara Yorke has observed, aristocratic early English women
maintained lifelong and influential familial bonds even in the cloister.139
Although distaste for Coldingham may well have prompted Æthelth-
ryth to seek a new home, the remark that “she was … appointed ab-
bess” (“facta est abbatissa”) at Ely may be Bede’s way of intimating that
her relatives in East Anglia were still working on her behalf, over long
distances. Her spiritual aspirations may have been fulfilled by dynastic
manoeuvrings rather than being thwarted by them.140 In claiming that
she established her own religious house at Ely, though, Bede empha-
sizes her agency: once installed, Æthelthryth is said to have become, as
we have seen already, “the virgin mother of many virgins dedicated to
God.”141 In the HE, her spiritual relationships are portrayed more lov-
ingly than her familial ties, but the latter are by no means effaced; even
an Eigenkloster could house lofty transcendent aspirations.
Many places in the HE are said to have undergone change through
evangelization, the very process whereby Bede shows any kind of
change happening for the better.142 Not all English provinciae improved
uniformly, and some witnessed spectacular cultural transformation be-
cause of the specific leaders who effected it. Æthelthryth’s corner of
East Anglia in particular proves to be a scene of renovation on a grand
and even epic scale, or so Bede implies when he exalts the abbess’s
 Æthelthryth in a Virgin Wilderness 101

glory over that of Aeneas. Her triumph is also her country’s, and her
earlier marriages to Middle Anglian and Northumbrian leaders fortify
rather than dilute East Anglia’s distinctness by signalling her own fam-
ily’s efforts to prolong the kingdom’s survival via strategic wedlock.
Her eventual break from Ecgfrith may have undermined these efforts
by jeopardizing the alliance with Northumbria, but that is a political re-
ality evaded by Bede, at whose hands a Fenland monasterium more than
makes up for the country’s diminished secular clout. Although Bede
never uses the phrase mulier fortis to describe Æthelthryth, his gloss on
the trope in his commentary on Proverbs 31 – quoted in the previous
chapter – prizes the church-as-woman for cultivating in “missis ubique
doctoribus” (“teachers sent everywhere”) the virtue of bringing in “au-
dientibus” (“listeners”) who become believers in Christ.143 His Æthelth-
ryth exemplifies the church’s mission and inspires a mixed community
of men and women to imitate her; they help to compose an East Anglia
in which far-reaching pastoral work outlasts political overlordship.
 3
Solace for a Client-King: Felix’s
Vita sancti Guthlaci

Felix, an eighth-century monk, is known only for his Vita sancti Guthlaci
(VSG), which he claims to have written for Ælfwald, king of the East
Angles (r. ca. 713–49).1 Thanks to his explicit reference to a named pa-
tron identifiable from other sources, it is possible to assign to the Vita “a
date somewhere between 730 and 740.”2 Understanding why Ælfwald
commissioned the text poses a more intriguing challenge. Medieval
kings and nobles not infrequently patronized works of hagiography
and history (e.g. Bede’s HE), so the fact that this work was royally spon-
sored is in itself unsurprising. What is surprising, as D.P. Kirby put it,
is that this is “rather strangely an East Anglian piece of hagiography
about a Mercian saint.”3 Kirby’s puzzlement is shared by others, myself
included, despite Bertram Colgrave’s influential supposition that

the favourable picture of King Æthelbald in the Life, and the important
place he occupies, suggest that the relationship between Æthelbald and
Ælfwald was good at the time Felix was writing. It may well be that
Æthelbald had taken refuge in East Anglia during the exile and so, though
according to Bede all English provinces were subject to him, yet he had
grateful remembrances of kindnesses received during his time of exile.4

Colgrave’s hypothesis points to collaboration between the two provin-

ciae to promote the hermit’s cult, a joint enterprise that would have
reinforced the Christianization of south-eastern England, not least by
showing that Æthelthryth’s success in the Fens could be repeated.
The initiative may have been a dynastic family undertaking. Ælfwald
had an important monastic connection in the person of Ecgburh, an East
Anglian noblewoman whom Felix identifies as an early patron of the
Fenland hermit’s cult.5 Abbess of the Mercian house of Repton, where
Guthlac had spent two formative years, she was also a daughter of the
 Solace for a Client-King 103

East Anglian king Ealdwulf and therefore probably Ælfwald’s own

sister.6 “Perhaps,” Audrey Meaney speculates, “it was because of his
sister’s friendship with Guthlac that the East Anglian king [Ælfwald]
asked Felix to write the Life of a Mid Anglian saint.”7 Penda’s aggression
in the mid-seventh century would have made it desirable for the East
Anglian dynasty in the mid-eighth to contribute to a religious culture
shared with its old enemies across the Fenland. The Mercians coalesced
gradually and fitfully as a people,8 often overawing their neighbours
in the process; it may thus have been as an act of self-preservation that,
as Alan Thacker speculates, Ælfwald “intended the work as a tribute to
his overlord.”9 If this was the case, both patron and hagiographer used
a saint’s life to legitimize Mercian dynastic interests.10
The present chapter accepts Colgrave’s theory that “the relationship
between Æthelbald and Ælfwald was good,” but it argues that their
relationship was not so good that the latter ruler could have afforded
to remain complacent about the former’s increasing power or about the
East Anglian kingdom’s own future. As Thacker suggests, the VSG may
have been written as a form of “tribute”; nevertheless, the East Anglian
royal house had its own dignity, prestige, and independence to safe-
guard, and it may be supposed that Ælfwald supported Guthlac’s cult
and Vita to compete, not just to cooperate, with the Mercian ruling dy-
nasty. Rivalries of all sorts – between abbeys, kingdoms, individuals –
existed in contested spaces, or “spheres of influence” as Tim Pestell
terms them in his discussion of relationships between East Anglia and
Mercia.11 The overlap between the “spheres” of these two polities lay
in the land of the Middle Angles, a conglomeration of tribes gradually
swallowed up by them in the seventh century;12 their territory included
not only Guthlac’s Crowland but also the areas around Peterborough
and Ramsey. In retrospect Middle Anglia, dominated by the Fens, is
easily viewed as a transitional and volatile area;13 and if the Mercians or
Mierce were already “the ‘Marcher-people’ or ‘borderers,’ that is surely
not those living adjacent to the border, but rather those living between
borders, those in the middle of others’ edges,”14 then the Middle Angles
must have been the Marchers’ Marchers. Barbara Yorke, however, re-
minds us that Bede saw the Middle Angles as a gens in their own right
(HE I.15 and III.21) and “believed they should have their own bishopric
even though they were not always politically or episcopally independ-
ent.”15 A certain fluidity in their status is detectable in the case of Ely,
placed in East Anglia by Bede (HE IV.19, pp. 396–7) but later absorbed
by the Mercians.16 In the VSG Middle Anglia as a whole is an invisible
medium, discernible only in a criss-cross of “regnal”17 initiatives orig-
inating from Mercia on one side and East Anglia on the other; it is a
104 Angles on a Kingdom

charged “borderland,” “frontier zone,” or transitional area rather than

a sharply delineated geopolitical entity. Represented chiefly by Crow-
land and the inhabitants of its periphery, the district emerges through
negotiations between two militarily superior polities as a virtual stage
on which those polities’ own identities are projected and performed.18
One such performance seems to have been executed by Ecgburh, who
as abbess of Repton and as an East Anglian princess possesses two at-
tributed social identities in Felix and perhaps harboured dual loyalties
as well. Her activities in the cloister potentially served Mercian dynastic
purposes; on the other hand, as a noblewoman she may have identified
less with her adoptive territory than with her native provincia, not unlike
Æthelthryth. The fact that Felix refers to her as an East Anglian and not
just as an abbess of Repton shows his desire to underscore her ties to
Ælfwald’s family and that family’s strategic interests. In his 2004 book
Landscapes of Monastic Foundation, in an aside concerning the rivalry be-
tween the abbeys of Ramsey and Bury in the promotion of St. Edmund’s
cult in the late tenth century, Tim Pestell points out that “as a similar
principle, few people seem to have taken King Ælfwald commissioning
Felix to write his Life of Saint Guthlac as evidence for eighth-century East
Anglian claims for Mercian territory.”19 Since then, Nicholas Higham
has argued that Ælfwald’s commissioning of the VSG represents delib-
erate East Anglian poaching on a Mercian saint: “the East Anglian estab-
lishment had ambitions regarding the future of this fenland cult site [of
Crowland]. Indeed, dynastic ambitions may provide one explanation
for the commissioning of Felix’s Life by the king.”20 These arguments
have received serious consideration,21 and I subscribe to them myself
even if I disagree with Higham’s accompanying claim that “Æthelbald’s
stature is … systematically minimised by Felix” so that East Anglian
cultural and political aims may be furthered.22 Because Felix shows the
Mercian nobleman befriending Guthlac and later acting as the cult’s
chief secular patron, Catherine Cubitt is surely correct to assert that Fe-
lix “legitimises the rule of Aethelbald”23 rather than detracting from it.
So we have, then, a Life of Guthlac that simultaneously bolsters the
prestige of the Mercian king Æthelbald and seeks to appropriate a Mer-
cian cult for East Anglian dynastic ends, as implied by the very fact of
Ælfwald’s commission. The conundrum becomes even more perplex-
ing if we suppose that Felix “could have been a clerk of the East Anglian
royal household” and if we also believe that the Mercian orientation of
the text, “together with Crowland’s location in the Gyrwe and Guthlac’s
early period at Repton, suggests that Felix was attempting to establish
Guthlac’s appeal within a pan-Mercian context.”24 This scenario envi-
sions a member of the East Anglian royal court using a hagiographical
 Solace for a Client-King 105

commission to extend Mercian cultural influence. But why would he

have done so? One answer is that Ælfwald always intended the book
as homage to his overlord Æthelbald, as has frequently been claimed.
Another possible answer is that the VSG is a speculum principis,25 and
that Felix is indirectly offering spiritual and political advice to Ælf-
wald, the advice being that Mercia’s ascendancy makes it incumbent
upon an East Anglian subregulus to learn from Guthlac’s humility.26 A
weaker king would do better to imitate a hermit’s self-effacement than
to appropriate a stronger ruler’s cult to increase his own “cultural cap-
ital.”27 Laying claim to Guthlac would increase Wuffing prestige but
at the cost of straining relations with the more formidable Mercians.
My argument, then, is that although Felix credits Ælfwald with the Vi-
ta’s commission, he also tacitly warns him against expropriating a key
agent of Mercian sanctity and perhaps even proposes the eremitic life
as a legitimate career path for his royal patron.

Overview of the VSG

Though often discussed and analysed, Felix’s account of Guthlac’s life

warrants summary. A stylistically complex text, it goes well beyond the
laconic entry on Guthlac in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC) s.a. 714:
“Her forþferde Guþlac se halga” (“Here [i.e. in this year] Guthlac the
saint passed away”).28 Following the author’s dedication to Ælfwald are a
conventional but spirited justification for the work, a list of his fifty-three
chapters, and then the story proper. We are told that during the reign of
the Mercian king Æthelred, styled “inlustris Anglorum re[x]” (“illustri-
ous king of the English”), the aristocratic Penwalh and Tette had a son
whom they named Guthlac and whose birth had been heralded with a
miraculous sign from heaven. Guthlac proved the perfect child, tractable
and affectionate, but as a young man became warlike, butchering his en-
emies and destroying their lands. Nine years of bloodshed elapsed, after
which Guthlac’s foes quieverunt (“kept the peace,” pp. 80–1), even though
the hostilities seem to have been initiated by our protagonist. Eventually,
at age twenty-four, he underwent a road-to-Damascus conversion that
led him to abandon comrades, family, and homeland to take up the reli-
gious life at the Mercian monastery of Repton.29 After two years of study
there, he went forth to pursue the hermit’s vocation in the forbidding
eastern Fenland aided by his supernatural protector St. Bartholomew.
Once settled, Guthlac implements his martial training.30 Inter alia he
vanquishes diabolical, Brittonic-speaking spirits; exorcises a devil from
a malevolent visitor named Beccel, who stays on as a fellow hermit;
triumphs over yet more demons, disguised as wild animals; masters
106 Angles on a Kingdom

the area’s avian life; reveals to a local abbot the deceitfulness of two of
the latter’s servants; and cures the visiting Æthelbald’s retainers Ecga
of “an unclean spirit” (§42, pp. 130–3) and Ofa of a wound caused by a
thorn (§45, pp. 138–41). Mercian overtures towards Guthlac continue:
Bishop Headda arrives and consecrates him a priest (§47, pp. 144–7),
Headda apparently being the same prelate who headed the Mercian see
of Lichfield from ca. 690 until his death ca. 716–27.31
Significant East Anglian contact is belated, limited to Guthlac’s exor-
cism of the young aristocrat Hwætred, driven insane by an evil spirit
(§41, pp. 126–31), and to Ecgburh’s gifting of a leaden coffin and linen
burial shroud to Guthlac himself.32 As his benefactor, the abbess is un-
subtle in staking her claim to the hermit’s posthumous reputation; but
in starkly evoking Guthlac’s afterlife, her funerary gifts only place in
that much higher relief the lack of sustained East Anglian involvement
in Guthlac’s life. By contrast, the Mercian connections to the hermit re-
main strong throughout his time at Crowland.
Guthlac lives in eremitic purity for fifteen years until his death; after-
wards his holiness manifests itself in miracles. The most important of
these occur twelve months after his burial, when his body is found to
be incorrupt; his devoted sister Pega then houses it in a shrine and so
inaugurates the famous cult. Unlike Æthelthryth’s tomb, which was re-
constructed and beautified by a religious community with no apparent
royal involvement (that Bede was aware of), Guthlac’s shrine is said to
have been enriched by King Æthelbald himself (VSG §51, pp. 162–3),
evidently in gratitude for the consolation and hospitality he had re-
ceived twice from the Crowland hermit while fleeing the anger of Ce-
olred, then king of the Mercians. The first of those two occasions took
place while Guthlac was still alive (§49, pp. 148–51), the second after he
had died, when Guthlac’s spirit came to Æthelbald to reassure him that
he would soon triumph over his foe to become king of the Mercians
in his own right by the grace of God (§52, pp. 164–7). The friendship
between king and recluse led, or at least was thought to have led, to
tangible benefits for the monastic community that eventually arose at
Crowland; much later, Orderic Vitalis (1075–1142), as a guest of that
community, would report that Æthelbald had granted land and exemp-
tions to Guthlac before the latter’s death.33

Identifying the King: Felix’s Greetings to Ælfwald

As the above summary shows, the VSG gives the impression of having
been commissioned by a Mercian rather than by an East Anglian king.
Its lopsidedness in this regard has been noted often;34 one imagines
 Solace for a Client-King 107

Felix tossed by two competing yet unequal political tides and obliged
to yield to the greater pull of Mercia, much as Guthlac’s cult itself ap-
pears to have been so obliged before, during, and after the posthumous
saint’s translation.35 The Prologue, which praises not Æthelbald but
Ælfwald, is thus all the more arresting for its concealment of the Mer-
cian preoccupations that permeate the VSG:

In Domino dominorum domino meo, mihi prae ceteris regalium prima-

tuum gradibus dilectissimo Ælfwaldo regi, Orientalium Anglorum rite
regimina regenti, Felix catholicae congregationis vernaculus, perpetuae
prosperitatis in Christo salutem.

(In the name of the Lord of Lords, to my lord King Ælfwald, beloved by
me beyond any other of royal rank, who rules by right over the realm of
the East Angles, Felix, a servant of the Catholic community, sends greet-
ings and wishes him everlasting happiness in Christ. [Prologue, pp. 60–1])

Conventional though it may be, the dedication is the work of a highly

talented author.36 Felix tactfully honours Ælfwald as a king, as a
self-assured ruler fully in command of his own gens in south-eastern
England, rather than as the mere promoter of a saint’s cult. The latter
role will go on to eclipse the former in the VSG, but at this early junc-
ture the hagiographer employs textual diplomacy in a way that estab-
lishes his own corporate monastic identity and – to borrow a term of
Umberto Eco’s – “actuates” its royal patron both as a culturally literate
defender of St. Guthlac’s prestige and as the lord of his own people.37
In this latter regard the opening sentence anticipates the king’s
self-styling in a letter to Archbishop Boniface ca. 747–9, the dedication
of which reads as follows:

A☧Ω domino gloriosissimo et cum omni honoris affectu venerantissimo

Bonifatio archiepiscopo Aelbuualdus [sic] Aestanglorum Deo donante re-
gia potestate fretus simul et tota abbatia cum omni congregationi servorum
Dei in nostra provincia altithronum pro ecclesiarum incolomitate die noc-
tuque precibus pulsantem in Deo remuneratori omnium salutem.

(To Archbishop Boniface, illustrious and reverend master, gifted with

every honorable quality, Aelbwald [sic], ruler by the grace of God over
the East Anglians, together with the whole abbey and community of the
servants of God in our country, beseeching Him who is enthroned on high
with prayers day and night for the welfare of the churches, send greeting
in the name of God, the rewarder of all.)38
108 Angles on a Kingdom

Despite differences of emphasis, both dedications stress that the East An-
glian king governs alone. Felix claims that his patron “rules by right”
(“rite … regenti”); Ælfwald asserts that his power derives from God (“Deo
donante regia potestate”).39 The Letter to Boniface associates the king’s
authority with a provincia rather than with a mere regio;40 in doing so,
it implies continuity of royal status between Ælfwald and his predeces-
sors. One assumes the distinction would not have been lost on Boniface,
a shrewd stylist in his own right who could adapt the tone of his letters to
royal or ecclesiastical correspondents as circumstances required.41
Felix’s address to his patron in the VSG is vaguer than Ælfwald’s
self-styling in the Letter to Boniface. The former refrains from defining
the territory of the East Angles as either a provincia or a regio, perhaps
because the hagiographer wished to avoid committing himself on this
score. Nevertheless, in writing for a ruler who knew courtly rhetorical
conventions and orbited within the Bonifatian epistolary system, Felix
was aware of the need to flatter, so although it avoids the word pro-
vincia, his phrasing shows him delectating in the language of lordship
– “Domino dominorum domino meo,” “regi … regimina regenti” – in
a way that was surely calculated both to please his addressee and to
advertise Felix himself as a scrupulous advisor and auctor.
Eighth-century English regional identity derived as much from
loyalty to a king as from geographical affinity.42 Although Felix may
have been a Mercian, it is perhaps likelier that he was an East Angle.43
Then again, he may have been a Middle Angle; if so, and if he was thus
obliged to negotiate between Mercian and East Anglian loyalties, then
he was in roughly the same position as Barbara Yorke’s hypothetical
border-dweller, “[s]omeone living in the Peak District” who “may have
been both one of the Pecsaete, answerable to a local lord or admin-
istrator, and at various points in the seventh century also a Mercian
or a Northumbrian depending on the destination of his tribute pay-
ments.”44 Felix will have needed to reconcile East Anglian with Mercian
political pressures if, Janus-like, he was obliged to look in two different
directions to stake out safe Middle Anglian ground.
His tactful dedication to Ælfwald notwithstanding, Felix goes on to
acknowledge the earlier Mercian king Æthelred, in whose reign Guth-
lac had been born, as “inlustris Anglorum re[x]” (“the illustrious king
of the English,” §1, pp. 72–3). At the end of the VSG, as the summary
given earlier indicates, he even goes so far as to have Guthlac prophesy
that once Æthelbald assumes the throne he will enjoy God’s favour and
be made “principem populorum” (“chief over the peoples”; §49, pp.
148–9). Furthermore, speaking in his own voice, Felix adds: “Ex illo
enim tempore usque in hodiernum diem infulata regni ipsius felicitas
 Solace for a Client-King 109

per tempora consequentia de die in diem crescebat” (“For from that time
until the present day, his happiness as king over his realm has grown in
succeeding years from day to day”; §52, pp. 166–7). The phrase “princi-
pem populorum” seems to mean “wielder of imperium” in Bede’s sense,
though it coyly omits to add Anglorum (“of the English”).45 The refer-
ence to Æthelbald’s felicitas is a bigger understatement, for it was not
only the Mercian ruler’s “happiness” that had grown but also his im-
perium over all the kingdoms of the southern English. Whether or not
Bede disliked Mercian hegemony south of the Humber, he identified it
as such; Felix, living far closer than Bede did to both the Mercian and
East Anglian heartlands, and writing for an East Anglian king, resorted
to circumlocution.46
He also drew upon rhetorical tradition, deploying phrases and im-
agery that allowed him to adopt a corporate monastic scholarly persona,
the guise of the early-medieval public intellectual connected to networks
of textual authority.47 For example, Felix claims that he has composed
his Life of Guthlac “[i]ussionibus tuis obtemperans ... non absque procac-
itatis inpudentia” (“[i]n obedience to your commands, though not with-
out a bold forwardness”; Prologue, pp. 60–1). Here one detects the trope
of the learned person’s duty to teach others,48 a topos that allows Felix
to proclaim Æthelbald as the true princeps populorum however much in
accordance with right or rite Ælfwald may have ruled his own gens. The
latter, as an East Anglian king, may have objected to the often brutal
realities of Mercian overlordship, but he could ill afford to ignore them.
Literary subtlety allowed Felix to be both honest and politic.

Guthlac and Ælfwald, Mired in the World

Conventional language will have come in handy if any of Felix’s read-

ers besides Ælfwald bristled at the VSG’s pro-Mercian politics. As Ger-
not Wieland has persuasively argued, the hagiographer probably had
in mind a reading and/or listening public that went beyond the solitary
figure of the king.49 It needn’t have been numerically imposing to be
influential and may have been similar to the audience Bede had envis-
aged for the HE, a coterie public limited to the Northumbrian ruler and
“only … the nobles immediately associated with him.”50 Felix, antici-
pating criticism from some in his audience, made this appeal: “pestif-
eris obtrectantium incantationibus aures obturantes, velut transvadato
vasti gurgitis aequore, ad vitam sancti Guthlaci stilum flectendo quasi
ad portum vitae pergemus” (“let us stop our ears against the pestifer-
ous incantations of our detractors as though we were traversing the
waters of a vast whirlpool and let us steer our pen towards the life of
110 Angles on a Kingdom

St. Guthlac as though we were making for the haven of life”; Prologue,
pp. 62–3). Inveighing against obtrectantes recalls stylized anxiety about
public censure and the difficulty of fulfilling a powerful patron’s re-
quest.51 By using this rhetorical commonplace, Felix implicitly likens
appreciation of his work to salvation, and criticism of his work to an
impediment thereto. His wording both figures Guthlac’s own “portum
vitae” in the Fens as a gateway to heaven and positions Felix as his
readers’ guide.
Writing has long been compared to sailing through turbulent seas.52
Felix uses the trope to imply a commonality between his own scholarly
labours and his protagonist’s toil in the Fens, and additionally to make
himself and Guthlac out to be, in effect, Odysseus figures tormented by
sirenic adversaries,53 demons in Guthlac’s case, envious textual sabo-
teurs in his own. Going into the Fenland, whether as spiritual abode or
as literary subject, entails risks that build character.
The VSG famously describes the formidable landscape in a passage
that reveals Felix’s keen interest in threshold states of being, or lim-
inality (spiritual, psychological, social), especially in the depiction of
Guthlac’s encounter with supernatural forces. The hermit’s struggle
against proto-Welsh-speaking demons, I argue later in this chapter, is
a red herring that Felix lays in our path to distract us from tensions be-
tween the East Angles and the Mercians.54 More certainly, the setting of
Guthlac’s supernatural battles dramatizes the heroism of Guthlac him-
self (as commentators on the VSG have often pointed out) even as it
establishes a sharp distinction between the Fens and civilization (again,
an oft-repeated assertion in scholarship on the text):

Nec plura, intervenientibus aliquorum dierum cursibus, cum seniorum

licita volentia, incoepto aeternae prosperitatis itinere, solitudinem invenire
perrexit. Est in meditullaneis Brittanniae partibus inmensae magnitudinis
aterrima palus, quae, a Grontae fluminis ripis incipiens, haud procul a
castello quem dicunt nomine Gronte, nunc stagnis, nunc flactris, interdum
nigris fusi vaporis laticibus, necnon et crebris insularum nemorumque in-
tervenientibus flexuosis rivigarum anfractibus, ab austro in aquilonem
mare tenus longissimo tractu protenditur. Igitur cum supradictus vir bea-
tae memoriae Guthlac illius vastissimi heremi inculta loca conperisset,
caelestibus auxiliis adiutus, rectissimo callis tramite tenus usque perrexit.

(Briefly, after some days had passed, with the willing consent of the el-
ders, he started out on the path to eternal bliss and proceeded to look for
a solitary place. There is in the midland district of Britain a most dismal
fen of immense size, which begins at the banks of the river Granta not far
 Solace for a Client-King 111

from the camp which is called Cambridge, and stretches from the south as
far north as the sea. It is a very long tract, now consisting of marshes, now
of bogs, sometimes of black waters overhung by fog, sometimes studded
with wooded islands and traversed by the windings of tortuous streams.
So when this same man of blessed memory, Guthlac, had learned about
the wild places of this vast desert, he made his way thither with divine
assistance by the most direct route. [§24, pp. 86–7])

Liminality characterizes Guthlac’s passage from secular to consecrated

life but also the Fens themselves, where the natural and supernatural
meet in a border zone separating the Mercian and East Anglian king-
doms.55 Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, commenting on the district’s am-
biguous nature, observes that the VSG’s Crowland is both land and sea,
“at once contiguous territory and clearly marked as apart,” “known
and unknown,” an adaptation of the desert motif in Evagrius’s Vita
sancti Antonii “to produce the Crowland fen as a particular space of
incompatibles.”56 The semi-liquid borderland looks like the virtual an-
tithesis of civilization.57
Appropriately, Felix describes the place with the imagery of churn-
ing waters. Yet the reference to “intervenientibus flexuosis rivigarum
anfractibus” (“the intermittent windings of its [i.e. the Fens’] tortuous
streams”)58 parallels passages elsewhere in the text, where it is the every-
day world familiar to human beings, not the liminal Fenland, that is
characterized as a hostile aquatic environment. Felix has already urged
us to guard against his Siren-like critics, as if braving calumny were
like crossing the sea of an enormous whirlpool (“transvadato vasti gur-
gitis aequore”; Prologue, pp. 62–3). He later observes that Guthlac was
rescued from secular life as if “de tumido aestuantis saeculi gurgite,
de obliquis mortalis aevi anfractibus” (“from the eddying whirlpool of
these turbid times, from the tortuous paths of this mortal age”; §27, pp.
92–3). The vortical imagery also recalls Guthlac’s conversion, when he
“fluctuantes inter saeculi gurgites iactaretur” (“was being storm-tossed
… amid the whirling waves of the world”; §18, pp. 80–1). As conven-
tional as all this language may be, it is being used pointedly, to link the
Fenland with the world beyond it, and to connect both to the imagined
challenges of writing the VSG.59
Guthlac’s much-emphasized renunciations are therefore less total than
they look. To be sure, Felix’s Crowland is indisputably different from
Bede’s Ely: while the latter presents no formidable obstacle to Æthel-
thryth’s homecoming, the former drives away most would-be inhabit-
ants, except for Guthlac. The contrast, of course, is down to deliberate
and selective literary emphasis. As Jack Ravensdale has observed, “[t]he
112 Angles on a Kingdom

eremitical tradition could fulfil itself in isolation in small communities:

the hagiographer’s description of St. Guthlac’s settlement at Crowland
in the demon-tormented fens could well have been written of any of
them.”60 The fact that Felix’s Crowland doesn’t resemble Bede’s Ely says
much about the two authors’ distinct projects. One of the chief aims of
the VSG seems to have been to persuade Ælfwald, the work’s patron,
that Guthlac’s corner of the Fenland was simultaneously forbidding and
attractive. “In the eighth century,” Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe plausibly
surmises, “however cooperatively subordinate East Anglian kings might
have been, they must have looked both nervously and hopefully to the
fens as a buffer with their Mercian overlords.”61 As both retreat from and
source of danger, Felix’s dualistic Fenland makes an appropriate subject
of contemplation for a mid-eighth-century East Anglian king who was
and was not master of his own house, a ruler of his own gens who also
lived in the growing shadow of a foreign “princ[eps] populorum.”
By imagining such an evocative environment and placing Guthlac
in it, Felix performs an exquisitely delicate balancing act. He makes
the hermit seem, at first, insulated from the world, much as St. Antony,
his contemporaries, and his successors in Egypt are made to appear
in earlier hagiography, which shows them rejecting altogether the fer-
tile Nile valley “for its awesome antithesis, the neighboring desert.”62
The opposition between Mercia and Crowland seems just as stark. The
latter is made out to be worlds apart from the former, whose value in
terms of land-related service is reckoned at thirty thousand hides in the
Tribal Hidage.63
The contrast, however, is more apparent than real because Guthlac’s
passage from civilization to solitude is not absolute, any more than the
Fenland itself was utterly removed from the concerns of people dwell-
ing in eastern England.64 The warrior leaves behind only the secular
Mercia, and that gradually, for an ascetic and sacred projection of that
kingdom upon the Crowland fastness. His trajectory has him spend
two years at Repton Abbey (§§20–4; pp. 84–7), a transitional period in
which Guthlac learns monastic discipline without becoming a monk
per se. Æthelthryth herself spent a short period of time in an intermedi-
ate place, Coldingham Abbey, linked to the Northumbrian dynasty, be-
fore leaving to found a religious house of her own on the East Anglian
side of the Fens. Bede, we recall, blames no one for her move; although
he notes that Coldingham had its shortcomings (HE IV.19, pp. 392–3;
IV.25, pp. 420–7), he says only, and without explanation, that a year
after entering that house Æthelthryth was appointed to lead Ely. Felix
too steers clear of fault-finding when recounting Guthlac’s stint at Rep-
ton and eventual departure for Crowland. Monastery and hermitage
 Solace for a Client-King 113

are complementary, their relationship supersessive not oppositional.

Guthlac is said to surpass his confrères in piety, but not because of any
deficiency in the monks, who in any event were won over by his ear-
nestness at the beginning of his novitiate (notwithstanding their initial
hostility) and whose own wholesome traits furnished him with models
for imitation (§§21–3, pp. 84–7).65
In the story of Guthlac’s religious life, the stint in a coenobium marks an
important phase in the hero’s spiritual growth.66 A way station between
the throng of the world and the solitude of the hermitage, Repton’s com-
munal life is portrayed as an intrinsic good in itself, not least because it
provides Guthlac the opportunity to receive the Petrine tonsure, “mis-
ticam sancti Petri apostolorum proceris tonsuram accepit” (p. 84). This
doubtless helps to distinguish him from those “pseudo-anachoritas
diversarum religionum simulatores” (“false hermits and pretenders
of various religions”) whom Wigfrith, one of Bishop Headda’s attend-
ants, claims to have encountered among the Irish (“inter Scottorum …
populos,” §46, pp. 142–3).67 This specific kind of tonsure symbolizes
orthodoxy and thus connects Mercia to Rome,68 the symbolic “capital
of Anglo-Saxon England” in Nicholas Howe’s provocative phrase.69 As
a synecdoche for the Christianized Eternal City, the Roman tonsure fol-
lows Guthlac into the Fenland’s depths as a reminder that the world, it-
self a fusion of the secular and the sacred, is always closer than we think
as we read the VSG. Even Egypt’s fourth-century anchoritic communi-
ties had lain close to towns, which provided them with resources and
furnished them with the means to conceptualize their very vocation by
enabling them to define their solitary existences contrastively. Pachom-
ius, in Peter Brown’s formulation, had transformed the Egyptian desert
into “a ‘counter-world,’ a place where an alternative ‘city could grow”
out of nothing.70 Felix exaggerates the harshness of the Fenland “de-
sert,”71 but he also praises the site of Guthlac’s hermitage as a place of
spiritual transformation where even the most ambitious secular lords
can renounce the world without losing all contact with it.

A Desirable Desert

After first hearing of the Fens, Guthlac craves more information about
them and so makes enquiries among nearby residents. The mere fact
that there are people living thereabouts (“a proximantibus accolis,” §25,
pp. 88–9) suggests the area’s desirability; even demon-infested Crow-
land must have had something to recommend it because Tatwine, a
local, informs Guthlac “quam multi inhabitare temtantes propter incog-
nita heremi monstra et diversarum formarum terrores reprobaverant”
114 Angles on a Kingdom

(“[in what way] many had attempted to dwell there, but had rejected it
on account of the unknown portents of the desert and its terrors of var-
ious shapes”; §25, pp. 88–9). Would-be settlers have long been spooked
by certain things that Tatwine leaves ill-defined: phantasms, cognitive
shocks, multiform creatures that defy taxonomy.
Appropriately enough, the liminal zone of Crowland is located in the
larger threshold area of Middle Anglia, a frontier space affected by the
coinciding peripheries of Mercian and East Anglian “spheres of influ-
ence.”72 A linear border between the two polities need not have existed
for the VSG to emphasize what Dick Harrison describes as “qualitatively
important space” and “invisible cultural and geographical boundaries,”
as opposed to “the mostly hypothetical boundaries between early medi-
eval regna that historians are so fond of trying to pin down on maps.”73
Had Guthlac hoped to gain specific information about Crowland, car-
tographic or otherwise, he would have been disappointed, incognita mon-
stra and terrores being difficult landmarks to make sense of; nevertheless,
undeterred he avails himself of the navigational skills of Tatwine, who
transports him by skiff “per invia lustra inter atrae paludis margines”
(“through trackless bogs within the confines of the dismal marsh”). Ar-
riving at Crowland on 25 August, St. Bartholomew’s feast day, Guthlac
discovers that with the help of that saint and of God he can thrive in the
wilderness: “[A]damato illius loci abdito situ velut a Deo sibi donato,
omnes dies vitae suae illic degere directa mente devoverat” (“He loved
the remoteness of the spot, seeing that God had given it him, and vowed
with righteous purpose to spend all the days of his life there”; §25, pp.
88–9). He sees it as a locus amoenus even if nobody else does.74
Nevertheless, Guthlac is said to have returned to Repton to spend
three final months there to take proper leave of his erstwhile compan-
ions. Afterwards, he returns to Crowland “quasi ad paternae heredita-
tis habitaculum” (“as though to a home inherited from his father”; §26,
pp. 90–1). Though evoked only by way of simile, the mere suggestion
of inheritance is striking,75 marking the second time Felix has situated
Guthlac in relation to his forebears, the first having been his glance at
the warrior’s ancestry (§§1–2, pp. 72–5).76 In a saint’s Life set in a bor-
derland, it is noteworthy that a descendent of Icel, who “would appear
to have been regarded as the founder of the dynasty and of the Mercian
people,”77 should be said to have made himself at home in undisputed
territory, as if the site had been bequeathed by his father and, moreover,
“granted” or “bestowed” (donatus) by God Himself as a divine birthright.
“We must not read too much into this passage, though,” Eric John
cautions, “since it is evident from the surviving wills that a homestead
was sharply separated from ‘land’ in Anglo-Saxon thinking.”78 Felix,
 Solace for a Client-King 115

however, deliberately muddies this distinction by stabilizing the im-

permanent, by representing Guthlac’s right to Crowland as de facto
ownership of the land itself rather than as mere possession of the legal
power to bequeath it or to determine how its goods or concomitant ser-
vices will be exacted.79 It is as if Felix were gently reminding Ælfwald
that Crowland, though undergoing sanctification, was also a specifi-
cally Mercian royal patrimony.
Other Guthlac texts imply different concerns. In discussing the Old
English Guthlac A in relation to Latin diplomas, Scott T. Smith writes
that the poem “shares with those documents a conflation of the tenurial
and the sacred within a reward of property for service and loyalty,”
but adds that the poem’s “redemptive conflict” over the beorg between
Guthlac and Bartholomew on one hand and the demons on the other
“importantly occurs within an abstraction of place which frees it [i.e.
the conflict] from the pressure of historical forces and context.”80 This
analysis is commensurate with other pronouncements on Guthlac A that
stress or assume its topical non-specificity.81 Unlike Felix’s VSG, which
articulates a specific sense of place within the context of eighth-century
politics, Guthlac A displays a more abstract poetics of emplacement,
usually explained as the product of the tenth-century English Benedic-
tine Reform movement.82
In comparison to the vernacular poem, the Old English prose Life of
Guthlac is closer in spirit to the VSG.83 Kelley M. Wickham-Crowley has
adapted Sam Lucy’s research on prehistoric tumuli to her analysis of
the prose Life’s depiction of Guthlac’s barrow:

Beyond the Christianization of a pagan site … Guthlac’s claiming of a fen

island and its burial mound may be an exercise of religious control over
more than ghostly echoes: it asserts real power over the land, over the
past, and over the imagination. For peoples who immigrated to Britain,
staking such a claim links up with the mutable boundaries of water and
land to extend their history in them, blending pasts and the present.84

Yet even more so than the Old English prose Guthlac, the VSG treats
the Fenland not merely as the sum of its sinewy streams but also as
the correlative of the processual ebb and flow of political aspiration.85
Home to many previous occupants, the Crowland environs is always
up for grabs. Only Guthlac, however, can consolidate the fluctuating
landscape, for his settlement of it is compared to a lawful inheritance,
which itself implies continuity of ownership over time. This implica-
tion, in turn, is grist for the mill of Mercian not East Anglian expansion-
ism, for the duration of Guthlac’s life and beyond.86
116 Angles on a Kingdom

Despite settling what looks like forbidden ground, Guthlac comes

into his own as a landowner. Within the context of his Life, the Fens
are never so hostile or diabolical that ascetic devotion proves unable
to tame them.87 Indeed, Felix would have us believe that, appearances
aside, Crowland and its environs are the real earthly paradise, and what
lies outside them is a land of torments. Clare Lees and Gillian Overing
have written that “places … are the means by which the general be-
comes local, by which we comprehend a sense of region.”88 Some local-
ities do typify or at least recall their larger “national” cultures; others
stand out and are said to be “unique” within them. The VSG manipu-
lates readers’ expectations of the “general” and the “local” by using – as
we have seen – the imagery of whirlpools and serpentine waterways
to attribute horrors to a specific Fenland landscape and to everything
beyond it: Guthlac, we recall, was rescued from secular life as if “de tu-
mido aestuantis saeculi gurgite, de obliquis mortalis aevi anfractibus”
(“from the eddying whirlpool of these turbid times, from the tortuous
paths of this mortal age,” §27, pp. 92–3). Felix’s metaphors project onto
the temporal world those “eddying whirlpools” and “tortuous paths”
usually thought to characterize the Fens uniquely.
Although the description of Crowland may well owe something to
its author’s first-hand knowledge of the place, landscape historians and
scholars of saints’ Lives have warned us that it draws on hagiographic
convention.89 A separate but related observation about the text’s im-
agery, made earlier but worth repeating here, is that it recalls wording
used elsewhere in the VSG to refer to secular life in general, and to the
pressures of writing the VSG itself in particular (Prologue, pp. 62–3;
§18, pp. 80–1). For Felix, whirlpools and tortuous rivers aptly conjure
up this-worldly stresses and strains, perhaps too the burdens of secular
rule in a kingdom long past its political prime. The remedy for “turbid
times” is to be found in the very “dismal marsh” Guthlac calls home.
If a Mercian nobleman can forsake worldly chaos for the hermit’s life,
so too can an East Anglian king. Although the Vita militates against the
East Anglian dynasty’s unproblematic appropriation of Guthlac’s cult,
it does hint that Ælfwald might emulate Guthlac’s pious renunciation
to remain in Æthelbald’s good graces.

Cautionary Chorography: Roman Gronta and East Anglia’s Limits

On one level, the site of Crowland embodies a negation of, even a “re-
proach” to (in Thomas Merton’s sense of the word), the hectic secular
life well known to Guthlac as a nobleman and to Ælfwald as a king.90
The site’s rude simplicity drives home the point:
 Solace for a Client-King 117

Erat itaque in praedicta insula tumulus agrestibus glaebis coacervatus,

quem olim avari solitudinis frequentatores lucri ergo illic adquirendi de-
fodientes scindebant, in cuius latere velut cisterna inesse videbatur; in qua
vir beatae memoriae Guthlac desuper inposito tugurio habitare coepit.

(Now there was in the said island a mound built of clods of earth which
greedy comers to the waste had dug open, in the hope of finding treasure
there; in the side of this there seemed to be a sort of cistern, and in this
Guthlac the man of blessed memory began to dwell, after building a hut
over it. [§28, pp. 92–5])

Though nothing like the Devil’s Dyke or other earthworks, the tumulus
proves adequate fortification for Guthlac by helping him resist diaboli-
cal temptations to make him give up Crowland and the hermit’s life. St.
Bartholomew arrives on the scene, “nec sopor illud erat” (“[n]or was it
just a dream”; §29, pp. 96–7), and aids him in his struggle against despair.
Subsequently Guthlac fends off two devils who try to persuade him to
exceed reason and moderation in fasting (§30, pp. 100–1).91 Several days
later, a horde of grotesque demons attacks his “cellulam,” “domum ac
castellum” (“tiny cell,” “home and castle”; §31, pp. 101–3), drags him
through the Fens, and takes him “ad nefandas tartari fauces” (“to the
accursed jaws of hell”; pp. 104–5), threatening to toss him in. Again Bart-
holomew intervenes, rescuing the hermit and cowing the demons into
escorting him safely back to Crowland (§§32–3, pp. 106–9).
The text’s tumulus or “mound”/“barrow” has attracted much schol-
arly attention.92 The supernatural encounters that take place there have
local relevance thanks to the adaptability of hagiographical convention
to specific circumstances. Guthlac’s Fenland barrow has known attacks
from “avari solitudinis frequentatores,” a phrase rendered by Colgrave
as “greedy comers to the waste” but which may also be translated as
“greedy frequenters of the wilderness.” Either way, the place cannot
have been completely forlorn if so many people frequented it, and Jan
Peer Hartmann has recently noted that the noun frequentatores “perhaps
indicat[es] more strongly some sort of ongoing clandestine and illicit
behaviour.”93 Tatwine had spoken to Guthlac of would-be settlers who,
one assumes, wished to exploit its visible resources; others apparently
sought out treasures that lay hidden from view. Repeated visits by
scofflaws recall Guthlac’s own early predations as a freebooter within
Mercian territory, his seizure of Crowland for himself,94 and, for that
matter, Ælfwald’s poaching on Æthelbald’s cultural property. In the
VSG, Crowland boasts a many-layered history, with actors from each
layer keen to help themselves to other layers.95
118 Angles on a Kingdom

When, as we have seen already, Felix locates Crowland in that vast

stretch of the Fens “a Grontae fluminis ripis incipiens, haud procul a
castello quem dicunt nomine Gronte” (“begin[ning] at the banks of
the river Granta not far from the camp which is called Cambridge”;
§24, pp. 86–7), he adds further local, regnal, and international depth to
his Fenland chorography. The localization orientates the text’s readers
in relation to the same Grantacæstir referred to by Bede in his account
of Æthelthryth. Although Felix neglects to mention that the royal ab-
bess’s marble sarcophagus had come from that very place, Ælfwald
cannot have been so “encyclopaedically lacking” as to have heard in
the name of Gronta a mere flatus vocis that needed to be explained to
him by Felix.96 Audrey Meaney thinks that “it is unlikely that he [Ælf-
wald] would not have heard of Æthelthryth and very probably her
sister too.”97 Even if the cult of those abbesses had been abandoned
by the mid-eighth century, as Christine Fell has proposed, it is hard to
believe that Ælfwald knew nothing of Æthelthryth’s shrine at Ely and
the strategic significance of Gronta/Grantacæstir in enhancing it.98 Felix
himself seems not to have read the HE, but he did know and borrow
from Bede’s prose Life of St. Cuthbert and from the anonymous Life of
St. Fursey.99 It is at least possible that Æthelthryth’s absence from the
VSG was the result of choice rather than of ignorance on its author’s
part. If, as Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe supposes, “the short-lived mar-
riage between Tondberht, a prince of the (Middle Anglian) South Gyr-
was and the East Anglian princess, St. Æthelthryth (c. 652) suggests a
related, perhaps defensive, political interest, given [the Mercian ruler]
Penda’s record of aggression,”100 then Felix may have kept quiet about
the royal abbess to avoid reminding Ælfwald or Æthelbald of the East
Angles’ earlier attempt to subject the Fens to monastic colonization. In
any event, Æthelthryth’s Ely disappears as a precedent to Guthlac’s en-
terprise, and the marshy frontier zone between Mercia and East Anglia
reverts to a quasi-“virgin” wilderness.101
Despite obvious differences between Bede’s Ely and Felix’s Crow-
land, in each setting the abandoned fort serves to recall Roman im-
perial authority. Occasionally the caput totius mundi figures in early
English writings as the imagined if distant centre of Insular cultural
renewal;102 as D.P. Kirby observes, “[c]ommunications tended to bring
the Anglo-Saxons back again and again to old Roman towns” aban-
doned by their former, British occupants.103 Kirby warns that early Eng-
lish settlers valued utility over all else, such as the advantages for travel
and commerce created by Roman roads; yet he concedes the prestige
of association with Roman civilization itself.104 Writers like Bede and
Felix would have been especially alive to the power of even fragments
 Solace for a Client-King 119

of Romanitas to conjure up Britannia’s earlier participation in a great

empire; Felix, as discussed earlier, relies on Guthlac’s Roman tonsure to
place his hero and the Repton community squarely in the mainstream
of orthodox Catholic practice. To invoke Gronta is to evoke cultural
overlap: the old castellum might have reminded Ælfwald of his dynas-
ty’s claim to descent from Julius Caesar,105 or of his familial relationship
to Æthelthryth. Then again, thoughts of Gronta may have stimulated
Æthelbald to equate expansion into the Fens with appropriation of East
Anglia’s vestigial (or purely notional) Romanitas. More certainly, Felix’s
allusion to the ruined fort renders the Fenland environs less forbidding
and untamed than the phrase aterrima palus (“most dismal fen”) sug-
gests; and by linking Roman culture geographically to Guthlac’s career,
if only as a means of spatial orientation, the allusion also complements
Felix’s emphasis on Roman tonsuring as proof of Repton’s orthodoxy.
Both details ground Guthlac in a cultural tradition that stretches from
antiquity to his own day and connects eastern England to Rome. By
alerting us in the first place to a barrow that earlier frequentatores had
come to plunder, Felix invites us to think of the Fenland itself as a place
to be mentally probed, its layered identities awaiting selective excava-
tion. The archaeological site that furnished Ely with a marble sarcopha-
gus for Æthelthryth’s translatio is apparently off-limits, mentioned only
briefly and with no indication of its importance to East Anglian cultural
prestige in the eastern Fens. Where Bede links Grantacæstir to Ely and
thus plots it on a textual map of East Anglia, Felix brings Gronta into a
Mercian frame of reference.
Even as it evoked memories of Roman hegemony, the ruin stood for
the ravages wrought by time and by people. Although the old castrum
probably had been used by Roman forces to pacify restive Britons be-
fore the Angles arrived, it would have retained some military value
afterwards during what Christopher Taylor describes as “the savage
wars between Mercia and East Anglia.”106 Sir Henry Clifford Darby
likewise believed that the site “was probably a relic of border war-
fare.”107 Despite its seeming state of abandonment by Bede’s and Felix’s
time, Cambridge is not therefore inscrutable. It would have reminded
eighth-century readers of the HE and the VSG that the area had been a
battleground, and that “[t]he fenland which stretches for many miles to
the south and east of Crowland played an important part in early Eng-
lish history, for it prevented the Mercian kings from making East Anglia
a Mercian province.”108 Yet even if Gronta served to reassure Ælfwald
that “the Mercian kings [had] never obtained in East Anglia the unchal-
lenged ascendancy that was theirs in Lindsey,”109 it also would have
recalled Penda’s victories in the past and the uncertainty of the border
120 Angles on a Kingdom

district’s future. In the seventh century Ely belonged to the East Angles,
but Peterborough and Crowland fell to the Mercians; the latter gens had
done much to erode Middle Anglian autonomy.110 Mercia did not win
East Anglia outright later in that century, but neither did East Anglia
enjoy unlimited freedom.111 As a point of orientation for Ælfwald and
his court, the ancient riverine fortification at Gronta stands in the VSG
as a concrete reminder of the “eddying whirlpool of these turbid times”
over which East Anglian political history stood poised.

Demon-Expulsion as Mercian Triumph

Mercian power is further signposted in the account of Guthlac’s defeat

of Crowland’s guardian devils. Felix recounts that during the reign
of the Mercian king Coenred, “cum Brittones, infesti hostes Saxonici
generis, bellis, praedis, publicisque vastationibus Anglorum gentem
deturbarent” (“while the Britons, the implacable enemies of the Saxon
race, were troubling the English with their attacks, their pillaging, and
their devastations of the people”; §34, pp. 108–9), Guthlac, while pray-
ing in his cell, fell asleep and heard a throng of men yelling outside.
Realizing that the din was no dream, he sprang up, ventured out of his
dwelling, and realized that the men were speaking in a British Celtic
language:

nam ille aliorum temporum praeteritis voluminibus inter illos exulabat,

quoadusque eorum strimulentas loquelas intelligere valuit. Nec mora;
per palustria tectis subvenire certantes, eodem paene momento omnes
domus suas flamma superante ardere conspicit; illum quoque intercipi-
entes acutis hastarum spiculis in auras levare coeperunt. Tum vero vir Dei
tandem hostis pellacis millenis artibus millenas formas persentiens, velut
prophetico ore sexagesimi septimi psalmi primum versum psallebat: Ex-
surgat Deus, et reliqua; quo audito, dicto velocius eodem momento omnes
daemoniorum turmae velut fumus a facie eius evanuerunt.

([he] realized that British hosts were approaching his dwelling: for in
years gone by he had been an exile among them, so that he was able to
understand their sibilant speech. Straightway they strove to approach
his dwelling through the marshes, and at almost the same moment he
saw all his buildings burning, the flames mounting upwards: indeed they
caught him too and began to lift him into the air on the sharp points of
their spears. Then at length the man of God, perceiving the thousand-fold
forms of this insidious foe and his thousand-fold tricks, sang the first verse
of the sixty-seventh psalm as if prophetically, “Let God arise,” etc.: when
 Solace for a Client-King 121

they had heard this, at the same moment, quicker than words, all the hosts
of demons vanished like smoke from his presence. [§34, pp. 110–11])

At first, what Guthlac the latest Fenland frequentator sees are simply
devils who manipulate his mind, apparently resurrecting memories of
British raiders he had encountered earlier while in exile. Yet if Æthel-
thryth’s Ely was known for its eels, Felix’s Crowland could, as I pro-
posed early in this chapter, produce the odd red herring along with the
occasional crow.112 The demons can assume many forms; even without
their ethnic and linguistic role-playing, they comprise parts of many
species. But like monstrous versions of Umberto Eco’s Casaubon, they
possess multitudinous surfaces that disguise lack of depth.113 The mere
fact of the VSG’s genre makes their defeat a foregone conclusion, no
matter how many shapes they take. Whatever existential threat they
might pose pales in comparison to the cultural tensions they intimate.
The demons’ British guise is meant primarily to recall the hero’s lit-
eral experiences as a warrior among the Britons, but it is striking that we
learn about these experiences only now. Perhaps the information is dis-
closed abruptly because Felix obtained it only belatedly. The (unexpected)
­ethnic dimension of the VSG has been seen as part of Felix’s broader
nation-building enterprise; O’Brien O’Keeffe, for example, notes that
­
“[i]n the merging of Britons and demons, Felix produces a node in which
religious and political discourses, the material and the spiritual, are folded
into one.”114 The node is peculiarly dense, uniting all those belonging to
the Saxonicus genus and gens Anglorum against a similarly homogenized
British population.115 The true enemies of the English are Celts dwell-
ing far from Crowland and beyond the “English” border altogether in
present-day Wales.116 So neatly does the passage dichotomize relations
between the “English” and the “Britons” that it distracts us from more
pertinent conflicts between Mercians and East Angles in the Fens.
On the basis of Guthlac’s vision, historians used to speculate that
actual Britons had inhabited the Fenland as late as Guthlac’s time, and
that position has been revived forcefully by Susan Oosthuizen.117 Sir
Frank Stenton challenged such speculation long ago, thinking it unwar-
ranted; recently Lindy Brady has repeated such doubts and endorsed
– laudably, in my view – Colgrave’s warning against literal inference
of Britons from the above-quoted passage in the VSG.118 Felix’s pol-
ysemous demons need not betoken an actual British presence in the
Fens of Guthlac’s day; but their invasion of Crowland speaks to the
processual history of that district and of Britannia as a whole, histo-
ries that were alike constructed over time by patterns of migration in
which Germanic peoples competed for resources with, and on occasion
122 Angles on a Kingdom

dispossessed, the Romanized British Iceni, Trinovantes, and Catuvel-

launi.119 Felix portrays the Fenland in terms of what Richard Morris
calls “the wider process of fluctuating coming and going” characteris-
tic of ancient landscapes in general; if “the idea of wilderness as being
on culture’s edge takes shape about three thousand years ago … the
boundary moves back and forth.”120 Early medieval hagiographic texts
foreground the mutability of certain landscapes that have already been
culturally constructed as places of flux, where “the saints modify the
world’s spatial organization and redefine the distribution of familiar
and alien regions.”121 Felix’s narrative centres on land shaped by tran-
sitions between ownership and desuetude and back again; Guthlac’s
dispelling of British-seeming demons re-enacts in parvo the Angles’ con-
quest of Britain. The triumph, however, redounds to Mercia, not to East
Anglia, notwithstanding Ælfwald’s designs on the Crowland hermit’s
legacy; as Jeffrey Jerome Cohen puts it succinctly, “[a]fter Guthlac re-
moves the demons from their last remaining dwelling, the land belongs
to Mercia.”122 Ælfwald, then, would have done well to reflect on his and
his gens’s diminishing stature in eastern England and to consider, more-
over, that Mercian power could deal handily with any encroachment on
Guthlac’s cult, whether by evil demons or by rival dynasties.
In plumbing the depths of Crowland, Guthlac is not wholly unlike us
as we make our way through the VSG’s various surprises, dredging the
numerous identities and prior claims that compose the locale he settles
as his own. Because his arrival involved the expulsion of demons who
loudly insisted on their own rights to the land, Felix in effect portrays
the Mercian domestication of Crowland as a conflation of homecoming
and exorcism. The site of Guthlac’s hermitage is not truly “wild” but
rather “derelict,” “not … a story of desolation” but “a cycle of recurrent
reconfiguration”123 upon a landscape whose history resists erasure. The
Fens are places of habitation and visitation; Guthlac’s hermitage sees
no shortage of guests who need his help.124 With its record of ancient
grave-plunderers and its pilgrims eager for contact with the saint, Fe-
lix’s Crowland is a culturally stratified site, its heterogeneous history
complementing the VSG’s mixed patronage. Its often-reused territory
could not be seized easily by the East Anglian dynasty even as a form
of cultural capital, for the Mercians had the stronger claim.

Conclusion

As John Hines has reminded us, for the early English in general “con-
trol and use of land … remained the foundation stones of social posi-
tion and power,” and “there was scope for considerable variation and
 Solace for a Client-King 123

creativity in the manipulation of the land to achieve these goals.”125 In

literary texts, the manipulation in question sometimes takes the form
of seemingly solitary heroic resistance in, and even against, the land
itself. Jennifer Neville has pointed out that Beowulf, Andreas, and the
protagonists of the vernacular Guthlac A and Guthlac B “are literally
‘outstanding,’ for they prevail against the natural world without the
aid of society – they stand outside.”126 The VSG celebrates a similarly
“outstanding” character who tames a diabolically protected corner of
the Fenland. But Guthlac does not triumph alone: he is one of many
“Saxons” and “Angles” – equated by Felix with the Mercians127 – whom
the “Britons” allegedly persecuted and whom the Mercian king Æthel-
bald potentially benefits through his enhancement of the saint’s shrine
and his future imperium over all the English people. By honouring the
potentate as well as the recluse, the VSG exalts Mercian prestige and, in
effect, signals the limits of East Anglian authority.
The text ends suggestively with a miracle story in which Guthlac’s
sister Pega, who has laid the cultic foundation later built upon by Æthel-
bald,128 pours salt water into the eyes of a blind pilgrim, thus restoring
his sight (§53, pp. 166–71). Salt had been an important Fenland com-
modity since Roman times, and the particular piece of it used by Pega
had been “consecrated” (consecratam, p. 168) by the hermit before his
death. Touched by an autochthonous Crowland resource made holy by
Guthlac, the pilgrim undergoes renewal; having regained his sight, he
can bring others to spiritual reawakening. Moreover, he is now a leader
(dux, p. 170) in his own right to those who had led him, “nec sic re-
versus ut erat, viditque videntes quos prius videre negavit, grates Deo
persolvens dignas, quas nullus reddere nescit” (“[nor did he] return as
he was before, for he saw those who saw him and whom he once said
he could not see. And he returned fitting thanks to God, such as none
could fail to give,” §53, pp. 170–1).129 At the outset of the VSG Felix
urged his readers not to mistake the darkness of ignorance for the light
of wisdom (Prologue, pp. 62–3); approaching the end of his text, he de-
picts a blind man regaining sight, a fitting conclusion to an eye-opening
read for Ælfwald, who would have been made keenly aware that East
Anglia was losing literal and figurative ground to Mercia. Although it
has been said that Felix offers his patron a “Guthlac cast in the mould of
East-Anglian culture of the first half of the eighth century,”130 on closer
inspection he champions Mercian imperium, repackages East Anglian
identity as East Mercian, and implies that the safest way Ælfwald can
continue as a dominus is to govern happily as Æthelbald’s subregulus.
The Mercian overlord was himself no saint, as later events in his life
suggest;131 yet despite the impiety for which he was later criticized, and
124 Angles on a Kingdom

notwithstanding his successor Offa’s power to evoke, in retrospect, the

image of “a species of Mercian octopus,”132 Æthelbald himself is no
monster in the VSG. That role is assigned to Guthlac’s enemies, demons
who assume the form of Brittonic-speaking warriors. The Mercians in
effect superintend God’s Country, a land romanticized by Felix; in it,
Guthlac’s pre-conversion crimes are forgotten while Æthelbald’s own
enormities are as yet untold. Sacred Mercia produces a saint and so re-
deems itself, however stealthily and off-stage secular Mercia might be
inching its way eastwards. Felix’s depiction of the Fenland encourages
belief in political harmony between the Mercians and the East Angles,
insofar as both gentes are implied to be cooperating in the spread of
holiness in the Fens. Such an alliance, however, is an “imagined com-
munity” of a very high order of wishful thinking.133 Although the lim-
inal Crowland of the VSG is the nexus of East Anglian and Mercian
collaboration, it is also the centre of Mercian rather than East Anglian
ideological gravity.134
Commissioning a Life of Guthlac that was ostensibly sympathetic to
East Anglian interests would have allowed Ælfwald to further the rep-
utation for sanctity established earlier by Æthelthryth at Ely, Bishop
Felix at Domnoc, Fursey at Cnobheresburg, and Botwulf at Iken, and
perhaps to make further amends for Rædwald’s earlier ambivalence to-
wards Christianity. At a time when East Anglian imperium in Southum-
brian England was a thing of the past, a regnal reputation for sanctity
would have been a valuable compensatory resource.135 Indeed, when
they are read together, Felix’s VSG and Bede’s HE give the impression
that, in the Fenland, the East Anglian ruling dynasty had been deploy-
ing holy men and women to tame wildernesses, recycle Roman spolia,
and establish beachheads of holiness if not of actual military or tactical
strength. Yet when its Mercian emphases are considered fully, Felix’s
homage to Guthlac suggests that in the early to middle eighth century
the Wuffingas and the Iclingas were competing in a hagiographical and
chorographical space race, using aristocratic or even royal exemplars of
eremitic piety to stake claims of ownership in the watery march lying
between them.
Perhaps Ælfwald himself could become such an exemplar? It can-
not have been so very far-fetched for a royally sponsored hagiographer
to propose, in a tactfully roundabout way, that his patron should take
up the cloistered life. As Audrey Meaney has observed on the basis of
the hermit’s depiction in the VSG, “Guthlac may have started a trend
in royal Mercian retreat into monasteries, for Æthelred abdicated for
that purpose in 704, and his nephew and successor Cœnred left for
Rome in 709.”136 Clare Stancliffe identifies a half-dozen seventh- and
 Solace for a Client-King 125

eighth-century “kings who opted out” of royal rule in favour of the

monastery, several of whom we have met already: the East Anglian
Sigeberht; the West Saxon Centwine; the Mercian Æthelred; the East
Saxon Sebbi; Ceolwulf, Bede’s own dedicatee in the HE who renounced
the Northumbrian kingship in 737 (two years after Bede’s death) to
become a monk at Lindisfarne; and Ceolwulf’s successor Eadbert.137
“The monk-kings of the seventh and eighth centuries,” Stancliffe ar-
gues, “coincided with a monastic ‘craze,’ which swept up both kings
and their thegns.”138 King Ælfwald took monastic piety seriously: in his
letter to Boniface in the late 740s, he declared his readiness to imple-
ment the great missionary’s advice on celebrating mass and on pray-
ing in his kingdom’s monasteries.139 A few years earlier, he might well
have struck Felix as the sort of pious monarch who could learn from,
and be induced to imitate, an aristocratic warrior’s turn to the ascetic
life. The historical Guthlac may or may not have wished to influence
the decision of later potentates to renounce rule; but the hagiographi-
cal Guthlac, reconstructed by Felix as a once-viable royal scion,140 may
have been intended to inspire Ælfwald of the East Angles to contem-
plate precisely that choice. Indeed, Felix’s Guthlac is, in effect, shown
to have made virtue of necessity by “opting out” rather than waiting
to be booted out; what in reality may have been the political marginali-
zation of “a potential king” (Stancliffe) is thus glorified by Felix as the
free choice of the periphery. Far from seeking self-aggrandizement for
himself, the Mercian warrior traded worldly power for otherworldly
holiness, a hint Felix may have hoped would be taken by his patron.

Epilogue: Æthelberht II

Whatever harmony may have prevailed between East Anglia and Mer-
cia did not survive to the end of the eighth century. Many years af-
ter Felix’s time, in the 790s, the East Anglian subregulus Æthelberht II
showed that he had little use for the option of royal abdication and
ordered the minting of pennies bearing the inscription of his own name
and title, “REX EĐILBERH[T].” His gesture looks no more audacious
than Ælfwald’s own royal self-styling, but making it appears to have
been a dangerously bold thing to do, for Mercia was now even more
powerful than it had been in Felix’s time. Only a single specimen of the
penny coinage exists, having been unearthed in 2014. It is thought that
the Mercian over-king Offa approved the issue at first but later became
so offended by its implication that an East Anglian sub-king should
be ruling as a rex in his own right that, in 794, he ordered the decapi-
tation of his would-be rival,141 thus shattering any illusion of political
126 Angles on a Kingdom

community or ideological continuity that may have kept the peace

since Ælfwald’s day. The regicide is accorded scant notice in the ASC,
but twelfth-century hagiography romanticizes the story by explaining
that Æthelberht had provoked the wrath of Offa by seeking the hand of
the latter’s daughter.142
Regardless of the exact casus belli, the mere fact that Æthelberht had
to be killed to be neutralized “implies that [Offa’s] overlordship in the
east did not go unchallenged.”143 If the East Anglian king indeed strove
to become something more than Offa’s puppet, his coinage reflects a
more tangible version of the manoeuvre tried earlier by Ælfwald to as-
sert influence within, and despite the constraints of, Mercian hegem-
ony. Eventually the ambitious Æthelberht would be culted as a martyr;
an early twelfth-century Vita preserved in Cambridge, Corpus Christi
College, MS. 308 even parallels his doomed journey to Mercia in sup-
posed search of a bride to the exodus of Abraham and his kin (“uelut
abraham patriarcha de terra et de cognatione sua”).144 Such typological
liberties in a post-Conquest codex tell us little about how Æthelberht
was regarded just after his death, but they do offer eloquent testimony
to how an East Anglian ruler murdered for purely secular reasons even-
tually became a lightning rod for his realm’s devotional energies. In
the context of the late eighth century, the regicide was probably just an
instance of business as usual, a late round of that “fiercely contested
knock-out competition” which Steven Bassett sees as the essence of the
formation of eighth-century England.145 Nevertheless, although ca. 800
East Anglia was weaker than its western neighbour, it refused to go
down without a fight. As the next two chapters illustrate, texts of the
later ninth and tenth centuries underscore the distinctness of that king-
dom within England and signal the potential of the part to destabilize
the whole.
 4
Made in Wessex: Danish East Anglia
and the Alfredian Court

According to Clare Stancliffe, the royal and thegnly “craze” for mo-
nasticism waned after the eighth century;1 at around the turn of the
millennium, Ælfric in the Life of St. Edmund (SEKM) would espouse a
“royal pacifism” that envisaged kings imitating Christ Himself.2 The
intervening period saw profound political transformation in East
­
­Anglia. When Scandinavian “raiding-armies” or hergas killed ­Edmund
in 869, an ancient English kingdom became, in effect, foreign. This
was a new development. Previously, East Anglian imperium had been
eclipsed by the Northumbrians, Mercians, and West Saxons; but with
those gentes the East Angles had shared a language, a religion, and a
migration-myth. Furthermore, East Anglian kings are recorded b ­ etween
the 790s and 850s, a fact that has suggested to modern historians that
before 869 the Wuffings had been “able to resist both the reimposition of
Mercian overlordship and the establishment of a West Saxon one.”3 The
death of Edmund reintroduced the concept of utterly foreign conquest,
not ­recorded in Britain since the mid-fifth century; the vikings from far
away succeeded where the East Angles’ nearer ­neighbours had failed.
As scholars have often noted, West Saxon texts responded to this
­innovation by manufacturing the idea of the Angelcynn in contradis-
tinction to the type of the Scandinavian marauder-turned-settler.4 In
terms of the inter-regnal relationship between Wessex and East ­Anglia,
this process of identity-formation reacted to a paradox in which the
nominally English (or at least Anglian) Eastængle were bound by ­alien
law. To resolve the paradox, Cerdicing rulers redefined Edmund’s
­former domains as a now-hybrid land of Scandinavian East Anglians
and indigenous East Angles.
Recent scholarship explores the extent to which Alfred invented the
Angelcynn on the basis of political and ideological rather than ethnic
considerations; always a construct in the first instance, the invented
128 Angles on a Kingdom

ideal was performed by repeated textual iterations.5 The process had

a regional and territorial dimension as well. The interrelated nature of
polity and ethnicity, nation and district can be seen clearly through a
recognition of the cultural work performed by texts of the period. Rob-
ert Barrett, in his consideration of later, twelfth- to seventeenth-century
writings about Cheshire, has shown how those writings “work to-
gether to complicate persistent academic binaries of metropole and
margin, center and periphery, and nation and region.”6 Texts about East
Anglia that date to earlier periods likewise trouble neat dichotomies
and jostle modern scholarly fixation on the origins of the A ­ ngelcynn.
Specifically, the present chapter argues that the Anglo-Saxon C ­ hronicle
(ASC) and the Alfred-Guthrum Treaty (AGT) represent East Anglia as,
in ­effect, the condicio sine qua non of Cerdicing self-aggrandizement;
the ­region became the chief problem to which the unification of the
“­English” people was urged as the solution. In the eighth century, as
shown in previous chapters, Bede’s HE and Felix’s VSG depicted East
Anglia as a religiously orthodox kingdom, active in the promotion of
saints despite its earlier experiment in syncretism (as lamented by Bede)
and its encroachment on Mercian cultural capital (as indulged cau-
tiously by Felix). By contrast, the ASC and the AGT, reflecting secular
and military priorities, portray Scandinavian East Anglia as an o ­ ngoing
amorphous and volatile threat to an “England” that West Saxon leaders
were imagined to represent and defend.

“Viking” East Anglia

The Scandinavian conquest of East Anglia was heterogeneous rather

than monolithic.7 Cyril Hart identifies “Outer,” “Northern,” “­Southern,”
and “Eastern” Danelaws,8 each of whose war-bands or hergas likely
thought of themselves as possessing distinct identities and loyalties.9
Danish East Anglia and Danish Northumbria, however, are roughly
distinguishable from each other to modern eyes and seem to have been
so to contemporary West Saxon observers as well.
In 865, the Danish “Great Army” invaded England, wintered in East
Anglia, promised an expensive peace to its unwilling hosts, and then
took ship for Northumbria,10 where they spent the next four years cam-
paigning with their commander Ívarr the Boneless before following him
from York back down to East Anglia, which they conquered after killing
its ruler Edmund in 869. Later, Ívarr returned to N
­ orthumbria to join his
brother Ubba but left northern Britain for Dublin in 871. A ­different con-
tingent of the Great Army, led by another brother of Ívarr named ­Hálfdan,
campaigned in Wessex in 871, aggravating the havoc being wrought on
 Made in Wessex 129

that kingdom by a separate wave of invaders who had ­arrived the same
year. Known as the Great Summer Army, this latter troop may have been
led by Guthrum, who warred against Alfred before being defeated by
him at the Battle of Edington (­Wiltshire) in 878, following which defeat
he submitted to baptism as Alfred’s godson Æthelstan. The treaty he
signed with Alfred in or shortly after 880 ­acknowledged him as the new
ruler of a hybrid Anglo-Danish East Anglia.
From this time onward, the Scandinavian here (“raiding-army”) in
the easternmost part of England raided less frequently and turned
to a more settled way of life.11 How it did so hints at differences be-
tween their colonization of East Anglia and their counterparts’ take-
over of ­Northumbria. In ca. 876, the year after they captured Repton
(­Derbyshire), Hálfdan and his forces reached the north, where, accord-
ing to the “A” recension of the ASC, they took up farming. It was only
in 880 that Guthrum began “sharing out” East Anglia with his follow-
ers,12 but he appears to have encouraged or at least enabled a more sta-
ble life for them than Hálfdan, who craved dominions in Ireland, had
done for his soldiers. As Alfred Smyth puts it, “in spite of the settling of
the Danish army in Yorkshire in 876, Hálfdan himself remained a her-
konungr or warrior-king to the end of his life.”13 Perhaps, as David Rol-
lason has cautioned, it would be better to use the word “king” loosely
in his case, for Hálfdan’s hunger for gain outstripped his capacity for
proper digestion, his ardent claim to the Norse kingdom of Dublin end-
ing not long afterwards with his death at the Battle of Strangford Lough
in 877.14 No immediate successor inherited the state he had carved out
for himself in Northumbria, with its centre at York.15 It is noteworthy
that before he died many of his followers had defected, weary after ten
years of fighting and eager to exploit their hard-won Northumbrian
territories. Such large-scale resentment had no parallel in East Anglia,
where Guthrum’s decision to settle seems to have appealed to soldiers
ready to enjoy the fruits of rich farmland.16
Around the time of Guthrum’s death in 890, things seem to have
changed in both parts of Scandinavian England. A muddled picture
of governance obtains for East Anglia, a somewhat clearer picture
for Northumbria; in the latter, English kings can be glimpsed ruling
from Bamburgh, and Danish leaders can again be seen holding York.
­Focusing on the early to middle tenth-century West Saxon conquests
that had begun earlier under King Edward, Matthew Innes distin-
guishes between “the divergent histories of Northumbria, with its rela-
tively centralized kingship and its constant influx of ‘new’ Vikings, and
East Anglia and the East Midlands, where small-scale regional units
based on the personal obligation of ‘Danes’ towards their local here were
130 Angles on a Kingdom

easily and quickly swallowed up into the English kingdom.”17 Each of

Northumbria’s principal parts, Bernicia and Deira, was relatively co-
hesive and sometimes at war with the other; Scandinavian invaders
exploited these conditions to impose their own rule on the territory.18
By contrast, the scarce evidence of Danish East Anglian kingship fol-
lowing Guthrum’s death in 890 may indeed reflect decentralization of
authority and diffusion of governance in a series of small semi-urban
communities. In theory, an increasingly fissiparous East Anglia would
have posed fewer obstacles to West Saxon expansion.
Yet that expansion did not happen quickly. As James Campbell has
observed, “[King Edward’s] system of fortress building as a means
to conquest did not apply there,” despite the increased urgency of
Edward’s campaigning in the east after the rebellion of the West
­
Saxon royal pretender Æthelwold (about whom more later) following
­Alfred’s death in 899. Campbell adduces the apparently uneven nature
of ­Edward’s activities in East Anglia to explain Scandinavian peculiar-
ities in that region, peculiarities that persisted up to the late eleventh
century. Moreover, indigenous East Anglian influences seem to have
been grafted onto those peculiarities. Of Æthelwold’s alliance with the
East Anglian Danes Pauline Stafford remarks that “Viking settlers were
a novel element in relations among the kingdoms of the English, but
not a totally transforming one. They acted as Northumbrian and East
Anglian armies, identifiable at least to southern observers within older
political divisions.”19 Indeed, Campbell suggests that “[w]e ought to
consider the possibility that East Anglia between ca. 869 and ca. 920
was less a Scandinavianised conquest than the ongoing Kingdom of
East Anglia, not so very different from what it had been before, but with
a Danish dynasty which struggled hard to acclimatise itself.”20 Despite
King Edward’s crucial victory over Danish forces in that kingdom in
917,21 then, East Anglia remained a hybrid land, having adapted to and
then influenced Danish rule, and then later accepting while obstructing
West Saxon hegemony. Eric John has suggested that even the English
king Æthelstan’s reforms of East Anglian coinage and mints may have
been intended to check dangerous separatist tendencies.22
Differences between the East Anglian and Northumbrian “­Danelaws,”
or at least differences in how they were perceived by the West S ­ axons,
may explain the disparate ways in which Alfred’s descendants ­expanded
their power in the two areas. East Anglia’s relative closeness to Wessex
and its sphere of influence in the south (which facilitated Edward the
Elder’s recapturing of Essex in 917) may have encouraged the C ­ erdicing
court all along to believe that the erstwhile kingdom of Edmund could
be absorbed more readily than Northumbria into the “English” fold.
 Made in Wessex 131

Pauline Stafford has emphasized that sheer distance alone would have
prevented Cerdicing kings from doing in N ­ orthumbria what they were
able to do in East Anglia and Mercia, where they placed ealdormen (e.g.
Æthelstan “Half-King” in East Anglia) in positions of power, slowly
built up local loyalties to the descendants of Alfred, and were at least in
a position to try to stay regionalist impulses.23 Shane McLeod suggests
that, unlike the Scandinavian army in Northumbria, which had cam-
paigned extensively in Ireland before first coming to northern England,
the Scandinavians who seized East Anglia had had extensive previous
exposure to Francia. If this was the case, then a degree of ­Carolingian
acculturation among the latter group will have made them seem
slightly more familiar to the West Saxon court, especially if that group
included some Scandinavians who had been baptized in Francia even
before Guthrum’s baptism under Alfred.24
Sense of distance manifested itself in other ways. West Saxon texts
reveal that Cerdicing kings struggled not only to control Northumbria
but also to understand its territorial extension, as George Molyneaux
gathers from entries in the ASC for the 940s–50s and for 1016.25 In terms
of language, it may be significant that at an early stage in Scandina-
vian Northumbria’s history the Danish word jarl entered the English
language as “earl,” while south of the Humber the English noun eal-
dorman sufficed until Cnut’s reign.26 It has been claimed that “[i]n gen-
eral, Wessex could relate to the Danelaw as a less civilized version of
itself, in the same terms it used for thinking about its own past, with its
paganism and its crude, violent heroics.”27 The West Saxon court may
have deemed Scandinavian Northumbrian social and political designa-
tions more conceptually remote than Scandinavian East Anglian and
Mercian ones.28
That Northumbria lay farther from Wessex than did East Anglia
meant that West Saxon kings would need to expend more time and
resources travelling to and managing the north than they needed to do
when dealing with the east. In 926, for example, Æthelstan gave his sis-
ter Eadgyth in marriage to Sihtric, the viking king of York, and then cap-
italized on Sihtric’s death the following year by invading N ­ orthumbria
and seizing its late ruler’s capital.29 Yet in and of itself that victory failed
to secure Cerdicing hegemony over the “Danish” north. As indicated in
several recensions of the ASC, the Northumbrians in the 940s and 950s
occasionally defied that hegemony by choosing Scandinavian rulers.
Such acts provoked swift and repeated West Saxon military interven-
tion, which only highlights how difficult it was to manage Scandinavian
Northumbria from afar.30 Only in 959 do the Abingdon manuscripts of
the ASC claim confidently that “Eadgar … feng to rice ægðer ge on
132 Angles on a Kingdom

Westseaxum ge on Myrcum ge on Norðhymbrum, 7 he wæs þa .xvi.

wintre” (“Edgar … succeeded to the kingdom both in Wessex and in
Mercia and in Northumbria; and he was then 16 years old”).31 Even
this entry looks suspicious, however, because it implicitly equates the
obeisance that Edgar achieved in Wessex and Mercia to the fealty he ob-
tained in Northumbria, as if the compiler’s economical phrasing could
erase all memory of the trouble Cerdicing kings had had in dislodging
viking control of the north.
For its part, East Anglia is omitted entirely in the 959 entry, perhaps
because Edgar had failed to consolidate his power in the east, or per-
haps because East Anglian submission could be taken for granted. Such
complacency, if that is what it was, must have been hard won, as will be
considered a bit later in this section; but in retrospect a bit of compla-
cency could have been justified on the historical grounds that the East
Anglian vikings had, after all, adopted the Christianity of their erst-
while West Saxon enemies earlier than the Northumbrian vikings had
done, Guthrum having been baptized after his defeat by Alfred in 878.
By contrast, the Christianization of Scandinavian Northumbria seems
to have taken longer. Several years after Hálfdan’s death in Ireland in
877, the Dane Guthfrith (or Guthred) succeeded him as king of York.
The Roman religion certainly proved influential there to some extent,
for the monastic community of St. Cuthbert seems to have effected the
conversion of Guthfrith before his death and burial at York in 895, even
if some uncertainty continues to surround the exact nature and date of
that conversion.32 Yet his adoption of the new faith (if indeed he ever
adopted it) set no irreversible trend: although the aforementioned Si-
htric of York married the Christian Eadgyth in 926, “[n]either his new
wife nor his new religion was acceptable to the York Vikings, so he re-
pudiated both.”33
Its earlier conversion likely made East Anglia look less outlandish
than Northumbria to West Saxon eyes, and thus more amenable to as-
similation to Cerdicing “England.” It is true that after Edward the El-
der’s victory in 917 the eastern region never regained the autonomy it
had possessed before Guthrum’s arrival; East Anglia became an early
English ealdormanry and later an Anglo-Danish earldom.34 Yet idiosyn-
crasies persisted. Lucy Marten and other scholars argue compellingly
that East Anglia retained its tenacious local identity well after Edward’s
time, even during the ealdormanry of the West Saxon appointee Æthel-
stan “Half-King,” who from ca. 932 to 956 commanded almost as much
power as the West Saxon monarch himself.35 Viking raids began afresh
in the early 980s, a trend that would culminate in Sweyn’s capture of
the throne in 1013; the subsequent long reign of his son Cnut (1016–35)
 Made in Wessex 133

ushered in a renewed period of volatility in East Anglia that saw the

banishment of several earls.36 A history of unsettled conditions in the
region anticipated the more serious, anti-Norman rebellion of Here-
ward, later called “the Wake,” in the early 1070s.

Viking Conquest and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

The documentary account of Anglo-Scandinavian East Anglia’s tortu-

ous history begins when the ASC records King Edmund’s defeat by
Scandinavian raiders in 869 (870 according to the text). As in their ref-
erences to St. Guthlac and King Æthelberht II, here too the West Saxon
annals economize on detail:37

Her rad se here ofer Mierce innan Eastengle 7 wintersetl namon æt Þe-
odforda. 7 þy wintra Eadmund cyning him wiþ feaht, 7 þa Deniscan sige
namon 7 þone cyning ofslogon 7 þæt lond all geeodon.38

(Here [i.e. in this year] the raiding-army rode across Mercia into East
Anglia, and took winter-quarters at Thetford; and that winter King
­
­Edmund fought against them, and the Danish took the victory, and killed
the king and conquered all that land.)39

Laconic and detached, the entry from the “A” recension presents no
obvious point of view despite marking “the first time the Chronicle
refers explicitly to an Anglo-Saxon kingdom being conquered by the
Vikings,”40 and despite having been worked up at least twenty years
after the fact as part of the ASC’s so-called “Common Stock,” organ-
ized possibly in response to renewed Scandinavian raids.41 What does
seem clear is that, unlike Sigeberht much earlier, Edmund “fought
against” his kingdom’s invaders with a view to winning. Æthelweard’s
­Chronicon even claims that Edmund “[a]duersus quos optauit bellum”
(“decided on war against them”; ed. and trans. A. Campbell, pp. 36–7).42
The annalist neither elaborates nor reflects on the event.
Many Chronicle entries, including the 870 annal, are notoriously
terse and presuppose wide background knowledge of the events sum-
marized therein. “That which to us seems a lean and barren sentence,
was to them the text for a winter evening’s entertainment,” Charles
Plummer famously observed of the work’s early readers.43 They would
have filled in the annalists’ silences to reconstruct a coherent order, a
textual system.44 What was Thetford, for example? A village or a size-
able town? Ecclesiastical centre or royal estate?45 For the annalists and
their intended readers, it was surely a known entity, an apertum verbum
134 Angles on a Kingdom

rather than a mere flatus vocis.46 Because the “A” recension stands at
some remove from the original annals,47 one might have expected a
copyist somewhere along the line of transmission to add details about
the place. No one did, or for that matter took the trouble to link East
Anglia’s conquest one year to its occupation and divvying-up ten years
later, the process that made new East Anglians out of marauders.
As Paul Strohm has reminded medievalists, “[t]he text is found al-
ways to exist in intimate dialogue with the external/extratextual
world,” which “exerts a constant pressure on the text” even when the
latter seems reticent about divulging it.48 Returning to the 870 annal,
one gathers that in its dialogue with the world much was said sotto
voce. The vikings seem to have occupied Thetford seasonally and
only for military purposes, treating it as wintersetl (“winter-quarters”)49
before slaying Edmund and taking his realm. For the annalist, then,
Thetford was both strategic stopping-point and geographical resource,
the assumption being that before it was conquered it had existed as an
­English settlement, specifically as a “public” or “tribal ford,” or “ford of
the people/nation” (þeōde + ford).50 Archaeological evidence hints at a
fuller story, a “pressure on the text” the annalist counters with tacitur-
nity. The Danes appear to have improved what they seized, eventually
turning Thetford into a large, prosperous, and ecclesiastically important
town.51 As Barbara Crawford points out, the “process of settlement and
assimilation … was hugely important in turning the Viking raiders into
neighbours,” who in that capacity would have been “settled, provided
with land, and obliged to live according to a political code rather than
a military one.”52 Janet Nelson similarly cautions that “[i]n the historic
ninth century, there were indeed Northmen who threatened and dam-
aged the people they encountered in England and on the Continent. But
there were also Northmen that opted in.”53 Nelson’s reference to “the
historic ninth century” implies a distinction from the textual ninth cen-
tury, the period as it was written about; indeed, texts composed from
a West Saxon point of view hint at Anglo-Scandinavian assimilation in
East Anglia but rarely dwell on the complexities arising from it.
One of the most striking examples of such unremarked fusion ap-
pears in the entry for the year 1004 in the “C” recension, in which a
prominent local named Ulfcytel is said to have fought against newly
arrived plunderers who had targeted Thetford, among other places.
The annal has Ulfcytel’s Scandinavian foes acknowledge the singu-
lar prowess of their English adversary: “hi sylfe sædon þæt hi næfre
wyrsan handplegan on Angelcynne ne gemitton þonne Ulfcytel him
to ­brohte” (“they themselves admitted that they had never met with
harder hand-play in England than Ulfcytel gave them”).54 This was the
 Made in Wessex 135

Ulfkell Snillingr, Ulfcytel the Bold, of Old Norse saga;55 the 1004 e­ ntry
implies (but only implies, as scholars have noted) that he was the East
Anglians’ ealdorman. To attentive early eleventh-century readers of
the ASC he was certainly living proof that East Anglia had long been
bathed by cultural influences washing over it repeatedly from across
the North Sea. “[F]or Anglo-Saxons who had not yet identified geogra-
phy as a separate subject,” writes Nicole Guenther Discenza, “inhabit-
ants could define a place.”56 In the 1004 annal, Ulfcytel, by virtue of his
very name, defines East Anglia as an Anglo-Scandinavian land that had
been produced by cultural assimilation but was not therefore open to
any and all forms of further Scandinavian influence.
As Dawn Hadley has observed, towns in northern and eastern
­England that had changed hands in the late ninth century grew substan-
tially in the tenth, their growth owing much to the complex ­interaction
of local English, Scandinavian, West Saxon, and Continental cultural
influences.57 Mentioned in two very terse Chronicle entries, the place of
Thetford is allowed to stand for a comparatively simplified process of
change: hostile takeover by foreigners in 869, stalwart defence against
more foreigners in 1004. What would the site have meant to the for-
eigners themselves? Having traversed East Anglia in 865 on their way
to York, the here of 869 had already learnt something about the local
landscape and the importance of its towns. They could have contented
themselves with a merely symbolic victory, capturing any small village
in eastern Cambridgeshire close to the old Mercian frontier; instead
they penetrated deeply into the kingdom to make their base at T ­ hetford.
If the county names “Suffolk” and “Norfolk” reflect longstanding set-
tlement by two distinct peoples, a probability Dorothy Whitelock ad-
duced to ­explain Archbishop Theodore’s division of the East ­Anglian
see into two bishoprics in 672,58 then siting “­ winter-quarters” at
­Thetford, roughly at the modern boundary ­between the two shires,
would have made it easier for the vikings to repel defending levies
advancing from either of the kingdom’s principal regiones. Even if the
divisions “­Suffolk” and “Norfolk” originated only in Cnut’s reign, as
suggested by Lucy ­Marten, the invaders’ choice of Thetford still would
have been astute for the same reason the site would later appeal to Cnut
at A
­ ssendun in 1016: “The existing communication network of the ‘Ped-
dars Way’ and cross routes made Thetford a nodal point from which
troops could be deployed across East Anglia.”59
If, as Strohm claims, “[t]he meaning of a particular text exists some-
where in the range between broad tradition and unique articulation,”60
then the ASC’s 870 annal may be said to signify on several planes. It
traces the undoing of a whole English kingdom back to the takeover of
136 Angles on a Kingdom

a single settlement, yet simultaneously – by its very nature as an annal –

confines catastrophe at Thetford to a single year, and marks the year
itself as but one moment in an orderly temporal process supervised by
God, the source of time itself.61 It also allows, or at least implies a basis,
for f­ uture elaboration of the Edmund story, effected spectacularly in the
980s in Abbo’s Passio. In that text Thetford is simply an unnamed ciuitatem
(“city”),62 but even the use of that single Latin word is enough to suggest
a deep cultural opposition between “civilized” (i.e. Roman-derived and
Christian) East Angles and “uncivilized” Scandinavians.
These inferences amount to only a few ways to discern meaning in
a breviloquent annal. Recent scholarship offers other ways, which read
across entries diachronically so as to obtain a full range of meanings for
any one of them.63 Building upon heterogeneous work by Dominick
La Capra, Hayden White, and Cecily Clark, Jacqueline Stodnick finds
that “these entries are shaped and, moreover, that their ‘simplicity’ is
part of this shaping,”64 and demonstrates that even their limited set
vocabulary can be deceptively rich in its effects. For example, Stodnick
identifies the phrase sige namon (“they took the victory”), used in the
870 annal and elsewhere, as one of several rhetorical formulae pecu-
liar to ninth-century Chronicle entries about Anglo-Danish skirmishes.
Though seemingly unrevealing in isolation, together they served an
overall strategy to “enforce and mark differences between the English
and their Scandinavian opponents.”65 What looks to be only a brief note
about what the vikings did in East Anglia is actually one feature of a
larger quasi-gazetteer of conquest, an inventory of geographical dis-
possession whose vocabulary was developed for the purpose.66

Lordship and Land: The Annalist’s Knowing Silences

Even terseness could serve the West Saxon annals’ function as “prop-
aganda.”67 Alfred Smyth has claimed plausibly that the 870 annalist
­refrained from elaborating on Edmund’s murder because he wished to
avoid making the slain king look like a rival to King Alfred in prestige.68
In what follows, I concur with Smyth by arguing that the ­Chronicle
does indeed play down the impact of Edmund’s death, allowing West
Saxon historiography to absorb rather than be distorted by East ­Anglian
particularism. Where I depart from Smyth is in suggesting that this
­absorption was facilitated by the very choice to accord Edmund his full
status as an erstwhile king. West Saxon texts and ­Anglo-Scandinavian
coins honouring Edmund imply distinct rationales for celebrating the
royal saint, yet East Anglia’s character as both threat and stimulus to
Cerdicing security emerges from the intersection of those rationales.
 Made in Wessex 137

Even something as seemingly trivial as the 870 annal’s use of the

word cyning came charged with enough meaning to serve West Saxon
interests. Acknowledgment of kingship would have been a matter of
course in a work centred on kings.69 Although it conferred less honour
upon Edmund than, say, attribution of sanctity would have done (by
contrast, the Danish coins styled him both “king” and “saint,” as we
shall see later), the nod to royal status sufficed to measure the value of
the territorial prize that “England” had lost and that Alfred and his suc-
cessors might one day gain. More than a princeling or client ruler, more
than a mere ealdorman, Edmund had wielded royal power in his own
right; his lond was a kingdom, not some mere district within another
polity that it had been when Offa had had Æthelberht killed. Had East
Anglia always been but a regio governed by a princeps or subregulus,70 its
loss could have been endured as a temporary setback to be overcome
once a sufficiently large English army or fyrd drawn from surrounding
regiones had been organized to expel the intruders.
But East Anglia was a provincia in the Bedan sense of that word. Its for-
eign capture meant the disappearance from the mental map of the An-
gelcynn of the independent “Eastengla cyning 7 … þeod” (“king and …
nation of the East Angles”), as the ASC’s “A” recension styles them for the
year 823.71 Early readers of that recension would have registered the full
meaning of the word cyning; and when moving on to the entry for 827,
they would have seen, in a vernacular version of Bede’s imperium-list, a
reminder that the East Angles had even produced a bretwalda.72 Despite
Æthelberht’s murder in 794, East Anglia by Edmund’s time had been a
resurgent “nation” or “people,” still maintaining its own royal genealogy
and court customs and enjoying a measure of its old prestige. When the 870
annal uses the word cyning in regard to Edmund, it attributes regnal co-
hesion to the East Anglian þēod and turns the monarch’s death into a focal
point for larger-scale West Saxon political thinking by hinting at the stakes
involved. “Nothing,” Susan Reynolds observes, “could be more mislead-
ing than the textbook idea that a king of the ‘feudal age’ was merely primus
inter pares, dependent on ‘feudal bonds’ for what little authority he had.
Only kings were crowned: only kings could draw on the fund of prestige
which came from the church and from the kings of the Old Testament.”73
With a single word designating royal power, the annalist posthumously
grants to the defeated lord of the East Angles access to that same “fund of
prestige,” and suggests to West Saxon readers the quality of the cultural
capital on which Cerdicing expansion might one day draw.
The same noun is, of course, used to refer to invading warlords like
Guthrum, but the effect is different. Unlike the 870 annal’s association
of the cyning Edmund with the lond of the East Angles, the entry for the
138 Angles on a Kingdom

year 875 – like the AGT, as we shall see later – uses the title to ­indicate a
mere leader of “raiding-armies.” Such so-called kings have no history of
living in English territory, no status as heads of gentes, let alone dynastic
ties to regional saints. According to the annal for 875, “for Godrum 7
­Oscytel 7 Anwynd, þa .iii. cyningas, of Hreopedune to ­Grantebrycge mid
micle here 7 sæton þær an gear” (“Guthrum and O ­ scytel and Anund,
the 3 kings, went from Repton to Cambridge with a great r­ aiding-army,
and settled there for a year”).74 All three leaders are cyningas because
of the Chronicle’s already-mentioned royal interests; but they are
kings of nothing except the “great raiding-army” that has separated
itself from Hálfdan, who went on to lead his own men from ­Repton
to ­Northumbria.75 And even the word here (“raiding-army”) implies
more unity than may have existed among “various individual bands
that occasionally operated together but often pursued their own inter-
ests.”76 Lordship alone, the word cyning alone, would not have raised
Guthrum or any other Danish chieftain to equality with their ­English
counterparts. On the basis of Æthelweard’s Chronicon and entries in the
­vernacular annals beginning with the one for 871, Smyth asserts that the
West Saxon court distinguished among the several h­ ergas roving over
England.77 Despite this awareness, however, the ASC homogenizes the
armies, in part by leaving their discrete objectives unexplained, in part
by suggesting the lower status of their leaders’ command of their fol-
lowers. The 875 annal does not say, for example, why the two contin-
gents went their separate ways, or why the one that stayed in the south
went on to march from Repton to Cambridge. And by naming kings
without kingdoms, the 875 entry characterizes the Danish leaders as but
roving collectors of allegiance, unless we see the reference to cyningas as
a prolepsis reflecting their later dominion over eastern England.
The precise naming of Repton and Cambridge at least identifies sites
as points where the so-called kings and their armies stopped, if not as
parts of future realms actually governed. Nevertheless, although Smyth
is right to claim that the annalist for 875 “had good reason to observe
the movements of the southern division of this army very closely,”78 the
annal itself discloses very little observation. Instead, as Alice Sheppard
remarks of the entries for 872–5,

[T]he annalist does not allow the reader to see exactly how much of An-
glo-Saxon England is under Danish occupation. With one exception (Mer-
cia in 874), the annalist just names the places that the Danes occupy, the
places to which the army moves, and the places in which the Danes en-
counter Anglo-Saxon resistance. He strives to keep each town as a sepa-
rate entity, represented only by a place-name, and refuses to draw for his
 Made in Wessex 139

readers the kind of verbal map that would point out Alfred’s vulnerability.
Instead, by naming only the towns, the annalist suggests that the land-
scape across which the army moves is merely terrain.79

We are, then, in danger of missing the forest for the trees because Rep-
ton and Cambridge have become toponyms divorced from E ­ nglish
governance. At moments like this, the ASC suspends the histories of
places that surely continued to have histories, albeit ones no longer
determined by native English people. Just as repeated silences in an-
nals would not have diminished the annalists’ perception of divinely
­ordained “fullness and continuity … in the sequence of the years”
themselves,80 and just as formulaic phrases connect Chronicle episodes
and generate a piecemeal ethnography of us-versus-them, so too can
the mere unadorned mention of toponyms suggest a fleeting chorog-
raphy, a landscape punctured by gaps and robbed of its ancient attach-
ments to English kingships. The mere presence of these names hints at
some kind of spatial framework, an underlying “conception of England
as a territorial totality,”81 yet one predicated on a disrupted history.
How we interpret East Anglia’s changing regional identities from the
late ninth century onward, especially in the often less-than-voluble ASC,
hinges on the old question whether rulers were thought to govern peo-
ples (gentes, populi) or places (e.g. regiones, provinciae, regna). This issue
has been touched upon already, in this book’s Introduction, and must be
considered further here. Alice Sheppard has offered pertinent insights
on the Chronicle’s economical presentation of place-names: “In times
of political uncertainty when the borders of the land are disputed and
collective identity stressed, the annalists put aside land-based n ­ otions
of kingdom and identity” in favour of stressing how “the people are at
once created and defined by their acceptance of the king’s lordship.”82
On her analysis, towns mentioned in the annals as having been cap-
tured by the vikings become “uninterpreted” places, thanks to a docu-
mentary practice that “disguises … territorial losses” and consequently
evokes “Alfred’s kingdom … in the intangible relationship of man and
lord” rather than in terms of geographical sites that can be won or lost
at a time of profound political instability.83 In the annals, when place
recedes into the background, the people who live in it or occupy it enter
the foreground. The “uninterpreted” T ­ hetford of the 870 annal, then, is
where the initial stage of the ­momentous redefinition of East Anglian
lordship begins. Sheppard’s approach illuminates other passages in the
ASC where regional histories disappear altogether from view; certain
annals resort to a “strategy of obfuscation [in] not explaining the signif-
icance of the towns the army occupies.”84 By considering this “strategy
140 Angles on a Kingdom

of obfuscation” vis-à-vis its spatial sensibilities, we can better under-

stand the ideological mapping done by the West Saxon annalists.
In part, Sheppard’s argument reformulates the notion that early
­medieval writers regarded kings as rulers of peoples rather than of
­territories.85 Yet her analysis also obliquely illuminates the importance
of the latter, for it discloses the Chronicle’s occasional tendency to
use barebones references to leadership to overwrite and even ­silence
regional histories. When the entry for 875 names Cambridge, for
­
­example, it discloses nothing about the town’s importance in orien-
tating readers of the hagiography of Æthelthryth and Guthlac.86 Once
a castellum and even a civitatula known for its Roman antiquity and
quarriable stone, Grantebrycg loses its storied regnal associations as
its new masters go winter-settling their way through the landscape.
Again, much remains unsaid. Like Thetford, Cambridge went on to see
­urban renovation of a sort, a new burh being constructed by the Danes
to replace the one built earlier by Offa.87 Readers would not know this
from an annal that figures the newcomers as transients pursuing wider
submission and Cambridge as but a means to that end (“it was from
this sure base at Cambridge that Guthrum launched his war against
the West Saxons in 876”).88 The once-abandoned fort reprises its older,
Bedan role as the collateral damage of warfare but also takes on a new
(if laconically articulated) military identity as a landmark on a Scandi-
navian trajectory of conquest.

From Cambridge to Edington and Back to East Anglia

The invaders retained control of both Cambridge and Thetford ­despite

seeing their grander ambitions thwarted when, in the spring of 878,
Alfred of Wessex defeated the viking leader Guthrum at the B ­ attle
of Ethandun (Edington, Wiltshire). According to the ASC, earlier in
that same year Guthrum and his army “geridon Wesseaxna lond”
(“over-rode and occupied the land of Wessex”),89 vanquishing all
­opponents except for the West Saxon ruler, who eventually prevailed.
As victor, Alfred stood sponsor to Guthrum at the latter’s baptism, a
two-part ceremony in Somerset that began at Aller and concluded a
week later at Wedmore.90 Only in 880 (recte 879) are Guthrum and his
followers reported by the Chronicle to have settled permanently in East
Anglia after having sojourned a year at Cirencester; and even then,
and in retrospect, the annalist cannot fully convince himself that the
newcomers have been incorporated into their new surroundings: “Her
for se here of Cirenceastre on Eastengle 7 gesæt þæt lond 7 gedęlde”
(“Here the raiding-army went from Cirencester into East Anglia, and
 Made in Wessex 141

settled that land, and divided it up”).91 Baptized and allotted an adop-
tive homeland, the Danes are still “the raiding-army.” This habit of thus
referring to the Danes affects the ASC’s characterization of East Anglia
as a region, in part because, as Sheppard maintains, it is indeed lord-
ship that the annals place in the foreground: the East Anglians (that is,
the Danish army in East Anglia) are shown simply to be following the
leader. As the annals represent them, Guthrum and his men will not
stay settled for long, and even when appearing to do so they are always
primed to mobilize for an offensive against Alfred’s England.
Yet the ASC’s concern with lordship does not preclude sensitivity to
geography.92 Its frequent references to settlement and land-parcelling
show that, as Simon Keynes observes, “[t]he Alfredian chronicler
was able in retrospect to distinguish between the year in which the
Danes ‘conquered’ a kingdom and the year in which they ‘shared out’
the land.”93 Territory was coveted at least as often as obedience was
sought. In the ASC “sharing out” land is simply what Scandinavian
armies do after winning battles.94 The phrase is a formula, of a piece
with locutions like “to take the victory,” which Stodnick has found to
typify “ninth-century annals concerned with battles against Viking
­invaders.”95 East Anglia has become the place of the raiding-army that
divvies up territorial spoils, captured land formerly owned by English
East Angles who now must obey new masters.

The Alfred-Guthrum Treaty: Unequal Kingships

A substantial effort to contain the danger posed by Scandinavian East

Anglians newly provided with local resources was made by Alfred in
the form of his peace treaty with Guthrum. The agreement between the
two leaders merits extended discussion here because, in tandem with
certain entries in the Chronicle, it indicates how the West Saxons per-
ceived East Anglia after it was conquered and how they defined their
own territory and ambitions in relation to it. The AGT was certainly
written at some point after the 878 Battle of Ethandun;96 it was originally
thought to be later than 886, when Alfred was believed to have captured
London. But Mark Blackburn’s redating to the late 870s of coins minted
there in Alfred’s name suggests that the Scandinavians could not have
controlled the city between 878 and 886, as was formerly thought, and
that therefore the treaty could conceivably have been written quite
early in that period. Jeremy Haslam has suggested a very early date
indeed, in the second half of 879, but Paul Kershaw’s loose dating of the
text to the 880s will suffice for present purposes. And as Kershaw indi-
cates, such a dating still supports Patrick Wormald’s supposition that
142 Angles on a Kingdom

the document may predate Alfred’s law code or Domboc,97 thus making
it “the earliest legislative statement we have from Alfred”98 and one
that legislates a new East Anglia into existence.
The AGT survives in three forms. Two Old English versions, one
short, the other shorter, are extant in Cambridge, Corpus Christi C
­ ollege,
MS. 383, itself datable to the late eleventh or early twelfth ­century.99
A Latin translation exists as well, one of many items preserved in the
twelfth-century legal compilation known as the Quadripartitus. The
treaty sketches a very rough boundary between the territories con-
trolled by the West Saxons and by the East Anglian Danes; stipulates
compensation for certain crimes; sets terms by which accused persons
from either side may clear themselves; and prescribes conditions of
interaction between the two sides and of relocation from one side to
the other. According to Jeremy Haslam, through the AGT King Alfred
“contained the Viking threat by giving them a ‘homeland,’” and “[b]y
sparing [Guthrum] and facilitating the formation of the sovereign state
of East Anglia, Alfred gave himself an enhanced status as king of the
Anglo-Saxons.”100 I mostly agree with Haslam’s observation but would
add that Alfred never intended that this “homeland” should remain
in Scandinavian hands; although he treated with his defeated adver-
sary nominally as if they had both been on equal terms, he would not
have recognized East Anglia as a “sovereign state.” Alfred himself was
Guthrum’s overlord and, as Haslam himself points out, negotiated
from a position of marked strength vis-à-vis his Scandinavian coun-
terpart.101 What follows is an analysis first of key aspects of the AGT’s
Prologue and boundary-clause, then of the document’s unspoken ide-
ology, which was related to Alfred’s wider cultural program and to the
image of East Anglia that was predicated on this program.
The beginning of the treaty sets out the terms that ostensibly define
the two powers and their spheres of influence:

Đis is ðæt frið, ðæt Ælfred cyninc 7 Gyðrum cyning 7 ealles Angelcynnes
witan 7 eal seo ðeod ðe on Eastænglum beoð ealle gecweden habbað 7 mid
aðum gefeostnod for hy sylfe 7 for heora gingran, ge for geborene ge for
ungeborene, ðe Godes miltse reccen oððe ure.
1. Ærest ymb ure landgemæra: up on Temese, 7 ðonne up on Ligan,
7 andlang Ligan oð hire æwylm, ðonne on gerihte to Bedanforda, ðonne
up on Usan oð Wætlingastræt.102

(Prologue. This is the peace which King Alfred and King Guthrum and the
councillors of all the English race and all the people who are in East Anglia
have all agreed on and confirmed with oaths, for themselves and for their
 Made in Wessex 143

subjects, both for the living and for the unborn, who care to have God’s
favour or ours.
§1. First concerning our boundaries: up the Thames, and then up the
Lea, and along the Lea to its source, then in a straight line to Bedford, then
up the Ouse to Watling Street.)103

It’s important to note that the text refers to both Alfred and Guthrum
as kings, one ruling the Angelcynn, the other the Eastængle. Both leaders
are accorded the same degree of prestige associated with the royal title
­specifically.104 Smyth believes that “[t]he Christian tone of the text is
noticeable as is the fact that it is a treaty between equals – in no way
­indicative of a relationship between a conqueror and the v ­ anquished.”105
This ­ostensible equality is an illusion, however, and it will be necessary
to return quickly to the Chronicle to see why.
The annals, not surprisingly, do not treat West Saxon and Scandina-
vian kingship alike. In the “A” recension, Alfred’s royal status is em-
phasized so strongly that it is announced early on in the elaborate West
Saxon regnal list that prefaces the whole work.106 Bede, we ­recall, used
partial genealogies to confirm the stature of Rædwald and ­Æthelthryth,
and Felix did likewise with Guthlac. The genealogical preface at the be-
ginning of the ASC’s “A” version associates historiography itself with
the royal house of Wessex and signals the role of Alfred in that associa-
tion, whether or not he himself commissioned the annals. In its own way,
the 878 entry also proclaims the West Saxon king’s ­exalted position; but
it does so by exposing differences between Alfred and Guthrum, first
by stating the former’s victory over the latter at E ­ dington, second by
implying that the Danish leader, quite unlike his English counterpart,
had been sidelined by his own soldiers.
After being defeated by Alfred, “salde se here him foregislas 7 micle
aþas, þæt hie of his rice uuoldon 7 him eac geheton þæt hiera kyning
fulwihte onfon wolde, 7 hie þæt gelæston swa” (“the raiding-army
granted him hostages and great oaths that they would leave his king-
dom, and also promised him that their king would receive baptism;
and they fulfilled it”).107 Thomas Charles-Edwards spots a striking
incongruence here: “The initial transactions are between the [Danish]
army on the one side and Alfred on the other. Guthrum, at the begin-
ning, and the West Saxon people, throughout, occupy far less promi-
nent positions: Guthrum’s baptism is the fulfilment of an undertaking
by the Danish army not by Guthrum.”108 In his capacity as leader, the
man identified by the treaty as a cyning is seemingly displaced in the
878 annal by the men under him. How to account for this? Viking
­armies in England may well have been only loosely organized anyway,
144 Angles on a Kingdom

as Ben Raffield demonstrates,109 so perhaps the annalist is simply being

accurate in crediting the Scandinavian leader with limited authority.
Or ­perhaps the annalist meant that the raiding-army had spoken for
Guthrum once they had been directed by him to convey his promises
to Alfred. Yet by foregrounding the here’s power to speak and to act,
the annal implies that the duty to honour a vow had been fulfilled not
by the commander but by his subordinates. The kyning who went on to
“share out” land in East Anglia looks oddly diminished in this context;
like the “kings” of raiding bands in the 875 annal, Guthrum seems a
king in name rather than in substance.
If we return to the treaty and ask of what or of whom it makes
Guthrum king, we find that the seemingly obvious answer, “eal
seo ðeod ðe on Eastænglum beoð” (“all the people who are in East
­Anglia”), is more ambiguous than it looks at first sight. The key sig-
nifier has been detached from its signified; the AGT has had to break
with tradition by using a form of the word “Angles” or “Anglians”
to refer to a gens that effectively had ceased to be Anglian. On lexical
grounds alone, the frið looks to be a dubious agreement between two
rather ill-defined groups. On one side, there are Alfred’s Angelcynn, the
demonym purporting to represent all the “English people” (whether
or not the Cerdicing monarch seriously intended to conquer them
eventually),110 but perhaps indicating more importantly the authentic
“­Angles,” whoever Alfred might have thought them to be. On the other
side, there are the “East Angles” or “East Anglians,” who are neither
properly Anglian nor led by an Anglian ruler. Nor are they even associ-
ated exclusively with the historical provincia of that people, for the AGT
assigns to Guthrum E ­ ssex and eastern Mercia.111 Add to this confused
state of affairs the dual meaning of the noun Eastængle itself (the trea-
ty’s Eastænglum b ­ eing the dative plural form), which can mean either
the East Anglian territory or the East Anglian people,112 and it becomes
unclear whether “eal seo ðeod ðe on Eastænglum beoð” with whom
Alfred is entering into a pact should be taken to mean “all the (Danish)
people who are among the (English) East Angles” or “all the (Danish)
people who are in East Anglia.”113 The AGT presupposes that the ðēod
is distinct from the Eastænglum (whether people or place), and the pre-
supposition opens a loophole in Alfred’s favour. The upshot is that the
text obliged Guthrum and his “people” to respect the boundary stretch-
ing from the Thames to Watling Street, that is, to acknowledge that the
West Saxon king held sway over all his own subjects living to the west
and south of it. Alfred, for his part, was to heed the boundary-clause’s
implicit injunction forbidding him to encroach on land belonging to the
Danish ðēod. Evidently the treaty did not necessarily prohibit him from
 Made in Wessex 145

entering lands occupied by all the people on Eastænglum who lived

­under ­Scandinavian overlordship; the text applied only to the Danish
ðēod living in East Anglia or among the indigenous East Angles, not to
the indigenous East Angles themselves.
The treaty formalizes an East Anglia at once outlandish and familiar,
governed by foreigners yet situated in Britannia. It seeks to isolate a raid-
ing-army whose very nature, the ASC implies, is to remain mobile and
defy containment. To this end, the AGT’s boundary-clause, while hardly
a model of topographical precision,114 forged a frontier of sorts out of
known landscape features. In conceptualizing even an inexact frontier,
Alfred may have been influenced by changes in border-thinking under-
way across the Channel. Hans-Werner Goetz has surveyed developing
Continental notions of realms and their boundaries between the fifth and
ninth centuries, and concludes that “­Carolingian authors … perceived
kingdoms … as geographical units with clear border-lines,” and that
“the Carolingian border was not an undefined ‘march’ or ­border-land
(at least not in theory), but a very concrete frontier, thus document-
ing a clear notion of realms notably distinct from each other.”115 More
recently, Shane McLeod has suggested that Guthrum and his retinue
themselves may have brought these Carolingian attitudes with them to
England after having been exposed to them on the Continent.116 As a
literate king and as the victor at Edington, however, Alfred would have
been in a better position than Guthrum to dictate the treaty’s terms and
exploit the textual effects of written landgemæra (“borders”).

The Alfred-Guthrum Treaty: The Performance of Welcoming

With its seemingly equal treatment of Alfred and Guthrum and its
ostensibly objective delineation of the frontier, the AGT looks like a
serious effort at constructive policy, its very status as a document cal-
culated to convince the Danish here that East Anglia was to be theirs
indefinitely. So impressive is the performance that one might reckon
the frið to “have been a genuine offer of welcome into the religio-ethnic
family of Christendom”117 and to have “present[ed] Guthrum as a
Christian king, and as a legislator in the Christian, western European
tradition.”118 This was the very impression the treaty sought to convey.
Yet Alfred knew how unruly the international Christian family could
be; the English branch alone offered many examples, and Guthrum,
despite being christened Æthelstan, was not English.119 Neither was
the polity he led. Paul Kershaw has noticed that the treaty juxtaposes
a precisely termed English witan with a less clearly described Danish
ðēod; he suggests that the latter noun “covered a mixed population of
146 Angles on a Kingdom

settlers and pre-existing inhabitants” and “may also have denoted a

general vagueness on the part of the English as to the political organiza-
tion of the Scandinavian settlers.”120 Though acknowledged as human
­beings rather than as mere pirates or as the hagiographer’s “satellites of
the devil,” Guthrum’s subjects are still the here and the ðēod.121 It is the
English who are defined politically as a council, as if Guthrum and his
retinue were imagined contrastively to live in a primitive, pre-political
state; perhaps the difference between the two terms opened up another
loophole that Alfred might some day exploit.
Even if it did not, the treaty’s terminology still suggests a hierarchy of
value. A witan will have possessed a certain degree of structural devel-
opment along a continuum leading to what Simon Keynes has called
“procedures of royal government in the tenth and eleventh ­centuries …
which historians are pleased to describe as ‘sophisticated.’”122 The
term ðēod may imply something similar in certain contexts, but not, it
seems, in the AGT. What it does imply instead is social and territorial
unity, ­another illusion. George Molyneaux has noted the fissiparity of
the several eastern English hergas as they appear in early ­tenth-century
­Chronicle annals; he reads that heterogeneity back into the viking
­armies of the 880s and questions the AGT’s ability to reflect or impart
organization on the Danish side of the landgemæra. Similar cautions
against “exaggerat[ing] the political coherence of the Scandinavian
­regions” in ­England have been raised by Lesley Abrams.123
Vagueness about the frontier may be related to the frequency with
which it was violated. R.H.C. Davis and Cyril Hart claim that the
boundary persisted only until the year 911;124 Simon Keynes and
­Michael Lapidge are less optimistic, adducing the Chronicle’s reference
to an ealdorman of Essex who served Alfred from 893 to 895 as evi-
dence that the boundary had changed at some point in that period and
that Alfred had changed it.125 Perhaps it would be more accurate to say
that he had changed it back; even before Ethandun the West Saxon king
would have known that Essex had been under Cerdicing control in the
820s.126 Alfred’s willingness to cede it to Guthrum in the 880s amounts
to short-term generosity to make his counterpart feel anchored in the
east, far from the West Saxon heartland. Guthrum, for his part, seems
to have been bound to the letter rather than to the spirit of the frontier,
for in 885 the Eastængle endangered Wessex indirectly by doing noth-
ing to stop a band of newly arrived vikings at Rochester. Æthelweard,
in his Chronicon, states explicitly that these latter raided across the
Thames and that the Scandinavian East Anglians, “plebs immunda”
(“[t]he foul people”), actively aided them.127 Provoked, Alfred sent a
fleet into East Anglia. This counter-offensive had mixed results, and the
 Made in Wessex 147

chronicler dwelt on the district’s treachery by way of concluding the

year’s ­heterogeneous entry: “7 þy ilcan geare se here on Eastenglum bręc
friþ wiþ Ęlfred cyning” (“And the same year the raiding-army in East
­Anglia broke the peace with King Alfred”).128 ­Alfred and Guthrum’s
frið proved no more fixed than the East Anglians themselves.
The foregoing discussion confirms Chris Rumford’s insight that
“[h]ow we experience borders and how we think about borders de-
pends very much on our personal circumstances: what constitutes a
border to some is a gateway to others.”129 Hastings Donnan and Thomas
Wilson point out that

[i]t is something of a truism to claim that borders unite as well as divide,

and that their existence as barriers to movement can simultaneously create
reasons to cross them. Though the rigour with which different borders
are policed can make them more or less difficult to cross, the imbalance
between the opportunities which may exist on either side can create com-
pelling reasons to try.130

Borders in early England were similarly regarded as spaces that opened

as well as closed windows of opportunity. “Space,” writes Andrew
Scheil, “is characterized by the implementation of boundaries and by
intermittent (and essential) transgression across those boundaries.”131
Elaine Treharne argues that “[f]or the Anglo-Saxons, the fluidity of
borders is discernible in their desire to fix them and make the space
between them known, even if left unmapped”; the resulting border
space “is often better defined as a center not a margin, an expanse of the
in-between, rather than abutting the boundary.”132 The act, or threat, of
traversing a frontier area can shape a society’s sense of identity, of how
it understands its own “side.”
On the basis of the above formulations, I suggest that the AGT’s bor-
der between “England” and “East Anglia” instantiated a mythomoteur (to
borrow again Anthony Smith’s term) of West Saxon identity-formation
predicated on East Anglian difference. In so doing, the border func-
tioned simultaneously as a “clearly demarcated line,” which helped to
stabilize identities either side of it, and as a “frontier area,” “frontier
zone,” or “transition zone.” Such a zone would have created oppor-
tunities for Alfred, not necessarily to devise shared cross-border le-
gal categories to meet the possibly unique needs of border-dwellers,
but rather to stimulate planning for eventual West Saxon expansion
and to develop an ideological basis for it.133 The engine of imaginary
nation-building was fuelled by the nearby presence of a rival kingdom
that occasionally crossed the line and would need to be subdued. As
148 Angles on a Kingdom

Kershaw has pointed out, the text did not, after all, envisage lasting and
unproblematic harmony between the two peoples concerned:

Alfred and Guthrum’s peace settlement was tempered with realism. It did
not seek to stop all violence per se between English and Danish communi-
ties, but rather sought to foster the peaceful resolution of disputes through
the due process of law. This was, then, a peace within which there was an
acceptable level of violence, and acceptability turned on the possibility of
its ready resolution.134

The treaty and its terms arose in the transition between war and peace
and indeed compose that transition.135 They advance the c­ horography of
East Anglia by contributing to the choreography of “quick dance-steps
of attraction and repulsion, conflict and curiosity” performed by the
early English and the Anglo-Scandinavians alike in the late ninth and
early tenth centuries.136 More specifically, in assuming that individ-
ual persons from either territory would try to cross over to the other,
as well as commit crimes, Alfred did not regard the “raiding-army”
problem as settled. For the time being, though wary of the existing
­Scandinavian presence, he nevertheless may have feared the arrival of
“future Guthrums,” as Richard Abels has persuasively surmised; for
that reason he may have sought to use the present Guthrum’s E ­ astængle
as “a buffer zone” against subsequent Scandinavian attack.137 As
shown above in the discussion of the “A” recension’s 885 annal, the
strategy had little long-term success; but the attempt is interesting not
least ­because it signals the role the West Saxon court may have been
devising for East Anglia. As a Cerdicing projection of Alfred’s concern
to safeguard his own kingdom, it had already in a sense been co-opted
into the West Saxon portfolio of geopolitical assets.
As Thomas Charles-Edwards observes in comparing ninth-century
Anglo-Danish and Franco-Danish treaties, “the making of a treaty,
and sometimes also the initial negotiations, occurred on the fron-
tier, in marca.” Although the AGT itself “does not claim to be a treaty
drawn up on the boundary,” it is nevertheless alive to the challenges
and ­opportunities arising in that volatile space.138 A potentially restive
though settled enemy was the challenge, its usefulness in discouraging
further invasions the opportunity. In addition to exploiting East Anglia
as a vast rampart against new seaborne incursions, Alfred may have
­intended the treaty to stabilize a land he expected eventually to conquer.
To be sure, the AGT does acknowledge the importance of the West
Saxon witan in deliberations and thus suggests a concern for wider
­social representation than just the figure of the king.139 Alfred might
 Made in Wessex 149

have felt duty-bound to honour the traditional advisory role of the

political community.140 The nod to the witan, however, amounts to lit-
tle more than a courtesy. Jenny Benham has reminded us that “for the
­medieval period it was primarily the individual, usually but not always
the ruler, who entered into agreements. … [T]reaties were essentially
agreements between rulers, and ‘international,’ in the absence of nation
states, should be taken to mean ‘inter-ruler.’”141 To focus on the AGT’s
interpersonal aspect is, then, to confront territory itself as royal projec-
tion,142 East Anglia as the creation of Alfredian diplomacy despite being
ceded to Guthrum. Negotiated into existence by Alfred as Guthrum’s
bailiwick, the new East Anglia symbolizes the clash between compet-
ing imperatives: on one hand, the Scandinavians’ desire to rule and to
settle; on the other hand, the West Saxons’ concern to limit disruption
to their day-to-day economic, political, and ecclesiastical affairs and
to promote long-term cultural improvement, conceived by Alfred in
specifically Christian and literate terms. These terms are crucial to an
­understanding of Cerdicing designs on East Anglia.

The Alfred-Guthrum Treaty: Ideological Boundaries

As his biographer Asser took pains to show, Alfred as a young man had
not been content simply to hear texts read aloud to him. He had wanted
to learn to read on his own, and as king he famously included reading
in his regimen of daily activities, thus providing ample justification for
David Pratt’s analysis of “the force and status of Alfred’s texts in rela-
tion to contemporary structures of kingship and political authority,”
and of “the effects of Alfred’s learning as a tool of kingship.”143 Asser,
for one, was greatly impressed with “devotam erga studium divinae
sapientiae voluntatem eius” (“his devout enthusiasm for the pursuit of
divine wisdom”),144 and Alfred’s Pastoral Care advocates a cultural pro-
gram centred on literacy as the key to England’s political and spiritual
revival. Even Malcolm Godden, who has raised serious doubts about
the authorship of several texts usually ascribed to the king, claims that
the Pastoral Care with its polemical prefaces could have been written
by Alfred, probably was not, but in any event “was almost certainly
circulated in Alfred’s reign and with his approval.”145 In the “Prose
­Preface,” Alfred, or whoever it was who wrote in his name and with
his consent, maintains that illiteracy among the clergy had resulted
from the destruction of monasteries and libraries by Scandinavian
invaders and from the carelessness of the English clergy themselves.
This period of cultural loss had marked the nadir of English history,
a lamentable trend that Alfred wished to be seen as reversing.146 “For
150 Angles on a Kingdom

Alfred learning and the wisdom that could be acquired as a result of

it were essential to the spiritual as well as to the economic health of
his kingdom: loss of wisdom, he believed, brought with it calamity.”147
Between Alfred’s and Guthrum’s territories, then, there lay not only
a political border zone but also the boundary between the Christian,
bookish enlightenment spearheaded by Alfred and the very recent reli-
gious conversion undertaken by a coerced Guthrum, thanks to whose
compatriots “eall forhergod wære & forbærned” (“everything was ran-
sacked and burned”) in the England that the West Saxon king wished
to ­re-educate.148 If Alfred’s “Prose Preface” is any guide, the future the
West Saxon king longed for in its most idealized form was one in which
book-learning enjoyed royal favour. This desideratum certainly would
be pursued by Alfred, less certainly by Guthrum; for although the for-
mer could read, the latter could not, and that distinction affects the
representation of East Anglia during the period of Scandinavian occu-
pation beginning ca. 880.
As it has come down to us, possibly as a revised version of an early
draft,149 the treaty envisions readers, and exclusively English ones at
that. Pierre Chaplais groups the document with three other extant
­pre-Conquest diplomatic texts that, as he puts it, “read like records
drawn up unilaterally on the English side for domestic use rather than
copies of treaties actually delivered by one side to the other.”150 Both sides
will have known and accepted the treaty’s substance because both sides
formed – to borrow Brian Stock’s and Martin Irvine’s ­terminologies –
a “textual community,” one whose participants, “literate, semiliterate,
and illiterate,” were “expected to participate in textual culture, having
the necessary texts, and their interpretation, read to them.”151
If Chaplais is right, though, Alfred and his court would have b ­ elieved
themselves superior to their unlettered Danish adversaries regard-
less of whatever knowledge the latter might have acquired during
their Frankish campaigns.152 As Kathleen Davis has said of the “Prose
­Preface,” “Alfred’s literary project emerges as both conforming to uni-
versal Christian tradition and as distinguishing England within that
tradition as a national, homogeneous unit with its own language and a
single political, as well as spiritual, identity.”153 To these cultural a­ spects
of the king’s agenda should be added a military component. The “Prose
Preface,” as Scott Thompson Smith has shown, reveals Alfred’s deep
admiration for past English kings who not only heeded God’s laws
and maintained order domestically but also widened the scope of their
rule and “ut hiora eðel gerymdon” (“expanded their homeland out-
wards”).154 Bookishness and bellicosity complemented each other in
the West Saxon king’s world view.155
 Made in Wessex 151

When the ASC figures the Danes primarily as restless conquerors of

English places, it creates a role for Alfred and his successors as stabiliz-
ers of a too-liquid landscape. The notion of expanding one’s homeland,
it should be said, verges on the paradoxical, for the word ēðel (“a per-
son’s native country,” “fatherland”)156 possesses a temporal as well as
territorial meaning. Strictly speaking, the land of one’s birth cannot be
enlarged, because it is a remembered place defined in part by a tradition
of agreed borders.157 To aggrandize it is necessarily to change the very
idea of the homeland by encroaching on someone else’s time-honoured
boundaries. Viewed in light of this Alfredian ideal of ēðel-enlargement,
the AGT sets out the terms of a provisional peace that countenances
“an acceptable level of violence” (Kershaw) in the short term, even as
it undertakes reconnaissance work in potentially hostile territory in the
long term. The treaty probes ideological frontiers even as it establishes
territorial confines; it assumes, rather than declares, that literacy beto-
kens intellectual progress. By this measure of cultural achievement, a
land ruled by an illiterate subregulus who had become Christian only
through forced baptism risked lapsing into ignorance.
The AGT would have meant more to Alfred and his court than to
its Danish hearers, but uneven agendas seem to have been normal in
early pact-making. According to Sarah Foot, typical land charters, for
example, “were designed … to ensure that of all the plural memories
and recollections available, only this one story was, and could be, told.
Charters were not written down in case memory should fail, but rather
to prevent the wrong memory from triumphing.”158 Michael Clanchy
puts the matter even more bluntly when discussing Domesday Book
and other post-Conquest texts: “Making records is initially a product of
distrust rather than social progress.”159 For sheer reasons of diplomacy,
of course, the arrangements between the two rival polities needed to
look fair, needed to convey the impression of reining in potentially law-
less behaviour among Alfred’s own subjects no less than Guthrum’s.160
The agreed frontier, however, speaks to West Saxon political ambition;
the treaty “projected control: Alfred had made the peace,”161 and it was
primarily Scandinavian behaviour that was to be controlled, appear-
ances of equal treatment notwithstanding.
Theorists of border spaces, literal as well as ideological, have taught
us that such spaces test the limits of centralizing power and serve as the
arenas for that power’s implementation. In response to Homi Bhabha,
Robert Young, and Marjorie Perloff, Daniel Boyarin has acknowledged
that borders can indeed serve as “sites where identities are performed
and contested,” but he issues this stern caveat: “Borders, I might add,
are also places where people are strip-searched, detained, imprisoned,
152 Angles on a Kingdom

and sometimes shot. Borders themselves are not given but constructed
by power to mask hybridity, to occlude and disown it.”162 When read
in conjunction with the emphases on book-learning found in Asser’s
Life of King Alfred and in the “Prose Preface” to Pastoral Care, the treaty
strengthens one’s impression that the geographical reconfiguration of
England had not been decided in isolation from considerations of cul-
tural and ideological differentiation, in short from strategies for the ex-
ercise of power.
To borrow Kathy Lavezzo’s phrasing from a different context,
“[n]ational fantasies … can have historical agency.”163 The AGT was
willed by the same mind that conceived the foundational narrative of the
­Angelcynn. Kershaw persuasively argues that “[b]y the 880s both kings
were ruling over territories in which their authority was new: Alfred in
‘English’ western Mercia and Guthrum in East Anglia. Both seized the
opportunity afforded by the treaty to follow strategies of image-building
and legitimation within those territories.”164 Alfred’s strategizing, I
suggest, knew no bounds. Precisely because the frið permits the Danish
East Anglians to come into view “in familiar terms” to West Saxon com-
mentators and to Cerdicing political interests,165 it also puts them in
Alfred’s crosshairs despite its ostensible affirmations of peace. George
Molyneaux believes that neither Alfred nor Edward seriously planned
to expel Guthrum and other Scandinavian leaders from England,166 but
Bede and Felix had shown that past overlords could make or break
client-kings.167 Guthrum was already, in effect, a West Saxon sub-ruler
of the East Angles; Cerdicing imperium over East Anglia, a process
that would begin militarily in the early tenth century, was probably
a fantasy with agency in the late ninth. According to ­David Dumville,
“[u]nification of the English was an essential aspect of policy, leading to
Alfred’s promotion of his ‘(over)kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons.’”168 The
AGT and the ASC suggest the aspirations of a West Saxon governing
class content to play the long game in East Anglia.

The 890 Annal: The Exception That Proves the Rule

A momentous event worth recording in itself, Guthrum’s death gave

the writer of the ASC annal for 890 a chance to express West Saxon atti-
tudes about what the Danish East Anglian ruler was and what he was
not: “Godrum se norþerna cyning forþferde, þæs fulluhtnama wæs
Ęþelstan, se wæs Ęlfredes cyninges godsunu, 7 he bude on Eastenglum
7 þæt lond ærest gesæt” (“Guthrum, the northern king, whose baptis-
mal name was Athelstan, passed away; he was King Alfred’s godson,
and he lived in East Anglia, and was the first to settle that land”).169
 Made in Wessex 153

Although the text stops short of heralding the now-vacant East Ang-
lian throne as an opportunity for Cerdicing expansion, it indicates Al-
fred’s role in domesticating that throne’s recently deceased occupant.
Baptized and transformed into a settler, Guthrum in the early 880s had
had to settle for less than what he had originally sought, which had
been “submission rather than loot.”170 Although the annal’s obituary of
Guthrum leaves out these details, its use of Alfred’s influence to sup-
plement the foreign king’s stature makes East Anglia seem a land of
unfinished business.
To his credit, the 890 annalist refrains from dismissing the deceased
as a mere leader of pirates, instead characterizing him as “the north-
ern king,” a seemingly neutral description. It has been said that, on
the whole, the notice conveys “a solemnity that reveals nothing but
­respect for an adversary who had kept his word and his new religious
faith.”171 In describing his royal status, however, the entry character-
izes Guthrum as being northern, not East Anglian; and when his realm
is eventually mentioned, it is identified as the land he had inhabited
rather than the kingdom he had ruled. It is þæt lond, i.e. “that land”
which Guthrum had been the first to settle, but also that land, that pecu-
liar bit of England which, though literally settled, remains figuratively
unsettled and unsettling, neither English nor Scandinavian but some-
how both. Its late ruler is recognized as “se norþerna cyning” but not
se Eastengla cyning, the status implicitly conferred on Edmund by the
ASC entry for 870 and insisted upon by Abbo of Fleury and Ælfric of
Eynsham more than a century later.
The annalist’s recollection that Guthrum “þæt lond ærest gesæt”
could be as much complaint as compliment, perhaps a wistful recol-
lection of the time when Guthrum’s raiding-army had been the only
one in eastern England. So laconic is the claim that, if taken literally, it
would anticipate Sellar and Yeatman’s tongue-in-cheek textbook lesson
that “the Danes invented a law called the Danelaw, which easily proved
that since there was nobody else alive there, all the right-hand part of
England belonged to them.”172 Of course, the annalist simply meant
that Guthrum had been the first of the Scandinavian invaders to live in
a formerly Anglian area of eastern England.173 The annalist’s past parti-
ciple gesæt derives from gesittan; along with “settle” and a host of other
possible Modern English translations, the renderings “occupy” and
“take possession of” are permissible, and even preferable.174 As Tim In-
gold might put it, the 890 annal represents Guthrum as “neither place-
less nor place-bound but place-making,”175 though it presupposes the
reader’s knowledge that the late ruler, who was neither the heir of King
Edmund nor demonstrably the recipient of divine favour (as Guthlac
154 Angles on a Kingdom

was said to have been), had necessarily depended on Alfred’s blessing

to obtain his pre-eminent place in the east.
Early readers of the 890 entry would have known not only about
Guthrum’s desire for all of Wessex (this from the 878 annal),176 but also
about his people’s succour of the new Scandinavian army arriving
at Rochester in 885 mentioned earlier. Although the 890 entry partly
­incorporates the Scandinavian leader into his East Anglian surround-
ings, then, it does not fully concede the legitimacy of his kingship,
which still has something of the “northern” or alien to it.177 Indeed,
in the decade after Guthrum died, his East Anglian heirs and sub-
jects still eluded West Saxon control.178 Coins and annals of the period
­reveal local leaders striving for legitimacy at home and assailing West
Saxon power abroad. When read in tandem with subsequent Chronicle
­entries, the 890 entry represents Guthrum not as the exception to the
rule of typically Scandinavian aggression in England, but rather as the
­exception that proves the rule.

Buying Legitimacy: Danish East Anglia in the 890s

A foray into ninth-century numismatics must precede the plunge back

into the Chronicle’s wars. To appropriate King Edmund’s authority,
East Anglia’s new rulers availed themselves of non-military as well as
military means; this much is suggested by the roughly 1,800 unearthed
pennies and halfpennies (mostly the former) bearing the legend “S[an]
c[t]e Eadmund Rex” (“O St. Edmund, King!” or “O Holy King Ed-
mund!”). Minted between ca. 895 and ca. 917/18 in Danish-controlled
areas,179 the coins indicate the complexity of Scandinavian East Anglian
cultural politics. Seemingly situated on the opposite end of the behav-
ioural spectrum to raiding and plundering, their minting formed part
of a broad strategy of regional self-determination that included force,
much as the minting of coins harmonized with the arts of war in Alfred
the Great’s own policymaking.180
There are different explanations for the coinage. Mark Blackburn
and Hugh Pagan have suggested that “by the mid 890s the cult [of
St. ­Edmund] had built up such a head of steam across the region gen-
erally that it was politically astute for the local Danish king to asso-
ciate his regime with it by putting the saint’s name on his coins.”181
Susan Ridyard earlier identified more specific reasons for the Danes to
be ­politically astute: one was “to perform an act of expiation and polit-
ical reconciliation,” the other “to draw the sting from a cult of rebels,”
i.e. from whoever had remained of the old East Anglian aristocracy fol-
lowing Edmund’s death.182 Anna Chapman instead sees “Alfred and
 Made in Wessex 155

his successors” behind the coinage: “Instead of acknowledging who-

ever had succeeded Guthrum to the kingship, they chose to honour
Edmund as the only king; undermining Viking claims to legitimacy by
removing them from the list of East Anglian rulers altogether.”183 Chap-
man argues that such West Saxon intervention, if this is what it was,
allowed the Cerdicings to connect their own lineage to that of Edmund
so as to promote themselves as East Anglia’s rightful kings.
For Gareth Williams, however, the coinage implies “a conscious resur-
gence of East Anglian identity, and perhaps a corresponding rejection of
West Saxon influence.”184 Rebecca Pinner does not adjudicate between
the different positions but instead argues that “this ambiguity is pre-
cisely what led to Edmund’s popularity”; that is, “the ambiguity which
so frustrated generations of modern scholars was actually one of the
greatest strengths of Edmund’s cult, as, in the absence of fact, Edmund
was a blank canvas onto which could be written the ideologies and as-
pirations of generations of devotees.”185 As a diachronic evaluation of
the cult’s social and political utility through the ages, Pinner’s analy-
sis is compelling; but it need not invalidate the assumption, shared by
all the scholars named above, including Pinner herself, that those who
commissioned the coins had unambiguous motives for doing so.
The Scandinavian East Anglian elite were in a better position than
Alfred’s court to turn motive into action. The former had wielded
power in East Anglia since 869, and there is no record of a local insur-
rection against their (possibly distant) overlordship over the following
decade. Nor does there seem to have been any rebellion against their
direct control of the district between 879 (880 according to the ASC’s
“A” recension), when the Danes first began to “share out” the land, and
ca. 895, when the commemorative coins were struck. Guthrum’s earlier
“Æthelstan” coinage of the 880s, so-called because it bears his baptis-
mal name, deliberately imitated Alfredian models; but that coinage was
Guthrum’s own issue and reflects his own power to mint.186 According
to Shane McLeod, the use of the name “Æthelstan” on those coins may
have been intended to “highlight a fictional continuity between his
rule and that of his Anglo-Saxon predecessors.”187 Because no evidence
points to broken Danish control of East Anglia after Guthrum’s death
in 890, the Edmund memorial pennies and halfpennies of the following
decade seem best interpreted as evidence that such “fictional continu-
ity” was ongoing, that a Scandinavian ruler or rulers were directing
the local East Anglian economy and manipulating Edmund’s cult to
augment their mastery of the land.
The vocative ending of the word sancte on the coins implies an ap-
peal to Edmund for forgiveness, or a request for his protection, or both;
156 Angles on a Kingdom

it voices the Scandinavians’ desire to draw on the “fund of prestige”

(to return to Susan Reynolds’s term) associated with the saint-king to
­enhance their own political standing in East Anglia.188 As Blackburn
and Pagan have pointed out, the Edmund coins circulated chiefly
among the Scandinavians in their territories, and “have rarely been
found in areas under Anglo-Saxon control or in Francia, but that is as
one would expect since their monetary systems operated on different
weight standards and would have required the St. Edmund coins to be
reminted.”189 Furthermore, Stewart Lyon’s study of early t­ enth-century
coinage ­explains the differences between Edward the Elder’s issues
and Danish imitations, and shows why West Saxon control of the
Danelaw mints of Thetford, Cambridge, Norwich, and Lincoln was
unlikely even well after Alfred’s death.190 The St. Edmund memorial
issue would seem to be the East Anglian Danes’ economic, ideological,
perhaps even apotropaic supplement to their raiding activities in the
middle to late 890s and beyond. For his part, Alfred will have had to
confront the Eastængle both as a future goal for eventual English unifi-
cation and as a present threat of catastrophe, a military foe now appro-
priating Edmund himself as its spiritual protector.191
The Chronicle entry for 894 (recte 893), for example, shows that, far
from losing their grip on East Anglia, the Scandinavians there were
able – with the Northumbrian army’s help – to put the squeeze on
Wessex itself.192 The annals for 895–7 (recte 894–6) suggest likewise,
despite occasional victories by Alfred’s forces.193 Two entries record
that women among the Danish raiders were placed in East Anglia for
their own safety;194 clearly the Scandinavian forces regarded the entire
ex-kingdom, not just Thetford or Cambridge, as their own stronghold.
Alfred had little leisure to challenge that assumption in the short term.
Threats to Cerdicing territory were frequent and severe, coming both
from established and from newly arrived hergas; in this period battles
erupted from Devon to Essex. Alfred could hardly have had the time
or means to usurp East Anglian minting in the mid-890s when he was
fighting for his own kingdom’s life. The ASC’s annal for 897 (896) claims
that natural causes proved more devastating to the English in that year
than the here had done: “Næfde se here, Godes þonces, ­Angelcyn ealles
forswiðe gebrocod, ac hie wæron micle swiþor gebrocede on þæm þrim
gearum mid ceapes cwilde 7 monna, ealles swiþost mid þæm þæt man-
ige þara selestena cynges þena þe þær on londe wæron forðferdon on
þæm þrim gearum” (“The raiding-army, by the grace of God, had not al-
together utterly crushed the English race; but they [i.e. the English] were
a great deal more crushed in those three years with pestilence among
cattle and men, most of all by the fact that many of the best of the king’s
 Made in Wessex 157

thegns there were in the land passed away in those three years”).195
Nevertheless, the sense of general chaos is clear enough, and insofar
as the vikings were blamed for part of it, they were blamed implicitly
as enemies to the adopted religion of Guthrum-Æthelstan. In the same
year, a sea battle was fought somewhere off the Devon or Dorset coast;
although the West Saxons lost fewer lives (62 casualties along with 11
Frisian mercenaries slain, versus 120 Scandinavian dead), the fight was
revealingly understood by the annalist to have a religious aspect, for
only the West Saxon force is described as cristnan (“Christians”).196
The Chronicle’s entries for the middle 890s suggest that the Scandi-
navian East Anglians, notwithstanding their defeats and losses, were
secure in the mastery of their own house and keen to weaken Alfred’s
hold on his. However “timeless” the English landscape may seem to
be as a result of the annals’ use of geographical detail, however con-
vincingly the ASC uses “accepted and traditional forms” of spatial de-
scription to “produce place as stable and as a totality,”197 these effects
are phantasmic, designed to conjure up stability where none existed.
Guthrum was the exception that proved the Chronicle’s rule of viking
untrustworthiness; East Anglia was the proximate threat that created
England as a country. In her analysis of the copying of the ASC in
Northumbria between the mid-tenth and mid-eleventh centuries, Paul-
ine Stafford urges us simultaneously to see the chronicles as “multiple
and fluid” and to bear in mind the “core narrative” of Englishness they
all share. “Are plural chronicles texts for an age of devolution?” she
asks. “Not if we are searching for separatist tales, or local stories. These
chronicles are neither, though reading one of them provoked an expres-
sion of northern pride if not resistance in Northumbrian scribes.”198
Entries between the 880s and, as we shall see below, the early 900s like-
wise contain no “separatist tales, or local stories”; but this is ­because
they busily suppress such accounts, preventing them from being told
in ways that would unravel the core of the textual narrative that Staf-
ford rightly discerns binding together the ASC’s multifarious itera-
tions. My regional emphases, both here in this chapter and throughout
this book, complement more familiar ethnic or political analyses that
credit ­Scandinavian incomers with spurring the West Saxons to fash-
ion England as a cohesive entity. The East Anglia of the 880s and 890s
challenged the Alfredian program of a totalized Angelcynn; as the next
section shows, the region’s influence was contagious, infecting even a
nephew of King Alfred himself; and the various versions of the ASC
responded to the threat by grounding, in different ways, a “separatist
tale” before it could really take off: the story of an unholy if short-lived
West Saxon-East Anglian alliance against the House of Cerdic.
158 Angles on a Kingdom

East Anglia’s Secret Weapon? Æthelwold Ætheling

A neat geopolitical dichotomy is found in the “A” recension’s entry for

the year 900 (recte 899), which styles the recently deceased ­Alfred as
“cyning ofer eall Ongelcyn butan ðæm dæle þe under Dena o ­ nwalde
wæs” (“king over all the English people except that part which was
under Danish control”).199 Although it concedes Scandinavian onwald
of certain parts of England, it trumpets the West Saxon monarch’s
pre-eminence everywhere else. Alice Sheppard claims that the term
Ongelcyn presupposes not just ethnic Englishness but also, and more
importantly, “acceptance of Alfred’s lordship.”200 The meaning of
the entry is thus more complex than it looks. The alliterative echo of
­Ongelcyn in the word onwald invites readers to contemplate each noun
in relation to the other, and to reflect that at the turn of the tenth cen-
tury there were English people living under ­non-English rule, as well
as historically E­ nglish territories that had no kings of their own, let
alone “overlords” or bretwaldan, as the “A” C ­ hronicle’s entry for 827
translates the ­Bedan concept of rulers who exercised i­mperium.201 In
the 900 annal Scott Thompson Smith detects the wish to underscore
“quietly but emphatically” the shrunken boundaries of England dur-
ing Alfred’s reign;202 a good dǣl of Insular territory had been taken
away by Scandinavian invaders who, in Northumbria as well as in
East ­Anglia, subsequently gedǣled it out amongst themselves. “It
would fall to Alfred’s descendants to realize the political ideal of both
achieving domestic security and extending dynastic lands.”203 Because
the Eastængle proved especially eager and able to thwart these aims,
they appear to be depicted virtually as the “other” in the ASC. Yet the
seemingly straightforward “us-versus-them” dichotomy so often
noted by scholars of the annals is also more complex than it looks,
because English West Saxons as well as Scandinavian East ­Anglians
trespassed across the boundary fixed by the AGT. Lines of cultural
demarcation were tested from both sides.
The West Saxon ætheling (or royal heir) Æthelwold is a case in
point.204 He was a son of Alfred’s predecessor Æthelred I and his queen
­Wulfthryth; as Alfred’s nephew, he had a good claim to the throne of
Wessex and pressed it. Sensing trouble in advance, Alfred had sought
to bolster the position of his own son Edward (r. 899–924) by trying to
satisfy his nephew with lands in remote Sussex and Surrey. According
to Ryan Lavelle, “a marginalization of Æthelwold seems to be shown
in the distance of these bequeathed lands from the heart of power –
indeed … from Æthelwold’s own support base.”205 Shunted aside, the
ætheling had reason to resent Edward’s eventual coronation. Among the
 Made in Wessex 159

various narratives of his rise and fall, the entry in the “A” text of the
Chronicle stands out because of its singularly strenuous effort to dimin-
ish the rebellion’s importance. According to Hart, the “B” ­recension con-
tains “[t]he oldest and more authoritative” account of the story, while
“the official version in the ‘A’ text is clearly a late revision, intended to
justify King Edward’s position and to reinforce his ­authority.”206 The
“A” recension’s propaganda, however, erases neither the rebel’s impor-
tance nor East Anglia’s destabilizing potential.
As “A” has it, the disappointed thegn first seized the royal estate at
Wimborne in Dorset but then sneaked away after nightfall, avoiding
Edward’s forces and escaping to Northumbria in hopes of finding al-
lies among its Scandinavian elite (perhaps because he initially expected
to find greater anti-Wessex hostility in Northumbria than in the more
nearby East Anglia?). The text neglects to clarify whether Æthelwold
enjoyed much luck in the north – other versions admit he did, as we
shall see below – but it does make plain that he met with great success
when he extended his recruitment drive to East Anglia. According to
the entry for 905 (904),

Her aspon Æðelwald þone here on Eastenglum to unfriðe, þæt hie her-
godon ofer Mercna land oð hie comon to Creccagelade 7 foron þær ofer
­Temese 7 namon ægðer ge on Brædene ge ðær ymbutan eall þæt hie
­gehentan mehton 7 wendan ða eft hamweard. Þa for Eadweard cyning
æfter, swa he raðost mehte his fird gegadrian, 7 oferhergade eall hira
land betwuh dicum 7 Wusan, eall oð ða fennas norð. … 7 þær wæs on
gehwæðre hond micel wæl geslægen, 7 þara Deniscena þær wearð ma
­ofslægen, þeh hie wælstowe gewald ahton.207

(Here [i.e. in this year] Æthelwold enticed the raiding-army in East ­Anglia
into hostility, so that they raided across the land of Mercia until they came
to Cricklade [Wiltshire] and there went over the Thames, and took all
that they could grab, both in Braydon [Wiltshire] and round about there,
and then turned back homewards. Then King Edward went after them
as quickly as he could gather his army, and raided across all their terri-
tory between the Dykes and the Wissey, all as far north as the Fens. …
[A]nd on either hand there was great slaughter made, and there were
more of the Danish killed there although they had possession of the place
of slaughter.)208

The annal does not disclose, let alone justify, a Cerdicing thegn’s m
­ otives
for pursuing a seemingly unholy alliance with the enemy. Nor does it
concede that there had been a precedent for this sort of thing: in 878
160 Angles on a Kingdom

disaffected West Saxon thegns had similarly aligned themselves with

vikings, even with Guthrum at Edington, because seven years earlier
Alfred had assumed the throne by sidelining the sons of his predeces-
sor and brother King Æthelred.209 Instead, the annalist seeks to sustain
the ASC’s standard bifurcation of geopolitical realities into tidy English
and East Anglian categories.
Rather than delving into details and adducing precedents, the 905
entry foregrounds the treachery of Æthelwold and the battle that
­followed. The wælstowe is explicitly identified in the “C” recension as
Holme, probably the Fenland Holme located in Huntingdonshire (­itself
now within Cambridgeshire);210 but the “A” annalist seems to have
thought it sufficient to leave the general region unspecified and to rely
on the reference to the here’s home territory “on Eastenglum” to provide
geographical contextualization. Peter Sawyer has rightly reminded us
that “[s]ettlement did not mean that these invaders abandoned their
warlike ways,” and that “for the Chronicler there was perhaps little to
choose between a here of raiders without permanent homes and one
that had.”211 That is, regardless of whether they were mobile or settled,
the Eastengle were still dangerous in West Saxon eyes, and their terri-
tory continued to signify the potential for destabilization. The annal’s
“on Eastenglum” and “eall hira land” imply a sense of geography just
sufficient to allow West Saxon readers to imagine the fray taking place
in an enemy territory that, while liable to ravaging by Edward, was still
capable of exacting a high price from his forces.
Indeed, a Kentish contingent is said to have ignored Edward’s ­order
to withdraw from the area and stayed behind while the rest of the
“­English” army departed; thus isolated, the men of Kent came ­under
attack from the East Anglians. Among the casualties on both sides
was one Eohric, the region’s Scandinavian king, and Æthelwold him-
self, “ðe hine to þæm unfriðe gespon” (“who had incited him to that
hostility”).212 The annal explicitly blames the West Saxon pretender for
­violating the peace, as if the East Anglians had been guilty only of being
“incited” to violence. Twice in this context the annalist uses the verb
aspanan, “to incite, provoke” (present also in the form gespon);213 the
effect is to slight the quality of Æthelwold’s leadership but also to figure
“þone here on Eastenglum” as a readily unleashed force, to be harnessed
against Wessex. The frið between Alfred and Guthrum proved unable
to prevent a later generation of Scandinavian East Anglians from being
stirred tō unfriðe. Tacitly the 905 annal judges the vikings ­according to
the terms by which they had entered the larger Insular political order,
even as it plays down their active role in helping a ­Cerdicing nobleman
wage war against other Cerdicings.
 Made in Wessex 161

Ryan Lavelle has plausibly surmised that the annal conceals “a level
of tragedy of legendary proportions that has been lost to us: an ­English
Chanson de Roland, perhaps?”214 James Campbell argues that “[h]ad
Æthelwold won the battle … England could, we may fairly guess, have
been united in a different manner, involving much less warfare than
ultimately proved to be the case.”215 Such pronouncements speak to
the enormous threat posed to West Saxon security by East Anglian
armies, the less-than-total ideological cohesion among the Cerdicings
themselves, and the selectivity with which the ASC records the past.
A telltale hint of the magnitude of the danger is betrayed by the “A”
annalist’s concession that “hie wælstowe gewald ahton” (“they had
possession of the place of slaughter”), another phrase from that “Com-
mon Stock” vocabulary of warfare-related formulae that serves “to en-
force and mark differences between the English and their Scandinavian
opponents.”216 Even after Guthrum’s time, and despite the 890 annal’s
reassurance that Guthrum had been baptized a Christian, the ASC has
not altogether put aside its tendency to demonize the East Anglians.
They remain the here or “raiding-army,” capable of creating a wælstowe
in 905 on the sociopolitical map of England into which they are sup-
posed to have been ostensibly incorporated by King Alfred about a
quarter-century earlier.
Yet the ASC’s ethnographic demarcation seeks to disguise the extent
of Æthelwold’s own blurring of borders between friend and foe. Ac-
cording to Stodnick, the 905 annal uses the wælstowe-formula to por-
tray Æthelwold’s rebellion ostensibly “as one between insiders and
outsiders, when in fact it arises from a dynastic struggle that is being
mapped onto complex, mutable, and internal categories of difference
both regional and ethnic.”217 Scandinavian East Anglians endangered
the English West Saxons, but at least one of the latter was willing to
align himself and his followers with the former. The 905 entry would
have its readers believe that the new East Anglians were always poised
to revert to their old viking habits, but clearly in this case it took a rogue
Cerdicing to trigger their relapse. The alienness of the Eastængle was
partly intrinsic to them, partly “incited,” as it were, by West Saxons
themselves.
One sees why the revisions in the “A” recension, as Cyril Hart has
shown, “play down the whole affair, and understate Æthelwold’s au-
thority as a leader” in comparison to “B,” which concedes the rebel’s
stature as an ætheling and admits that the Northumbrians “hine un-
derfengon heom to cinge 7 him to bugan” (“accepted him as king and
[undertook] to bow down to him”).218 The Annals of St. Neots expose the
inconvenient truth even further, styling the rebel “king of the Danes”
162 Angles on a Kingdom

(“rex Danorum”) and “king of the pagans” (“rex paganorum”).219 Sir

Frank Stenton doubted such assertions and supposed that the claim
by “B,” “C,” and “D” that the Northumbrians had made Æthelwold
their king was “improbable in itself” and unlikely in the face of the “A”
recension’s “silence” on this score.220 But “A” is just as silent on the
matter of Æthelwold’s elite status; I defer again to Hart’s insight (ad-
umbrated above) that “the A text compiler embarked on a systematic
revision, with the objective of eliminating any suggestion that the æthe-
ling Æthelwold might have received legitimate recognition in his bid
for the English crown.”221 It would seem that the pretender evidently
had done more to unify the various “raiding-armies” – N ­ orthumbrians
as well as East Anglians – than they had managed to do on their own.
Moreover, the “A” compiler refused to admit that the rebel, rather than
having merely “enticed” the East Anglians to attack, had virtually
­become an East Anglian himself. In observing that Æthelwold and his
Scandinavian allies “foron … ofer Temese,” the “A” recension recalls
the river’s status as a frontier but glosses over its nature as the site of an
unspeakable enormity, a double-cross no less than a double-crossing, a
betrayal signalled by a Cerdicing’s dual traversal of early tenth-century
England’s Rubicon: the first time as a West Saxon, the second time as a
de facto East Anglian.
If the AGT incorporated the Anglo-Scandinavian East Anglians into
a known cultural and political order, as scholars have claimed, such
textual domestication did not necessarily make for cosier affinity.
­Stenton asserted that, over time and thanks to the frið, the Danes had
been “­making Englishmen familiar with their language and customs,”
and that for this reason Æthelwold was able to betray his own house
and people “without placing himself outside the pale of civilization.”222
This last statement, however, is debatable. The “A” recension denies
Æthelwold lordship of the East Anglians, dismissing his influence
over them as mere enticement; such characterization detracts from the
princeling’s stature by denying him his role as a leader. The strategy
is consonant with the AGT’s reference to Guthrum’s followers as but
a ðēod, a word whose power to evoke “civilization” falls short of that
possessed by the word witan, the treaty’s term for Alfred’s counsellors.
Even more resistant to Stenton’s claim is the St. Neots Chronicle’s iden-
tification of the rebel’s supporters as but “pagans.” Both sets of annals,
then, complicate the thesis that by ca. 900 Scandinavian East Anglia had
been integrated into a wider European system of political legitimacy.
The facts may well warrant a more optimistic view of that ­integration
than the one I offer here. Lavelle proposes “that the Vikings only
 Made in Wessex 163

­discredited Æthelwold’s cause after his defeat”; before his defeat, he

argues, they could have provided credible support for a disinher-
ited but victorious West Saxon ætheling. This was so because, Lavelle
adds, “the Vikings of late ninth-century England were part of the
political ‘­establishment’ in a way that the roving bands of Vikings
in ninth-century West Francia or Magyar armies in tenth-century
­Ottonian G ­ ermany could not be for Frankish or Saxon rebels. Perhaps,
ultimately, ­Æthelwold had chosen well.”223 But did Æthelwold really
seek out the aid of the Anglo-Scandinavians because he valued their
legitimacy? He certainly valued their military prowess; but by recruit-
ing viking aid against his own relatives, he overturned the familiar po-
litical order, a gesture not easy to reconcile with a deep concern for
optics. If his allies in northern and eastern England seem more respect-
able than their counterparts on the Continent, it is at least in part be-
cause they were more settled. Yet the mere fact that the East Anglians
were not “roving bands” would not have sufficed to make them part
of the “­establishment” in any meaningful sense of the term. It is rather
because they continued to be regarded as simultaneously volatile and
settled “­pagans” that their treachery ripples through the pages of the
annals and resists modern efforts to smooth it into the surrounding nor-
mative cultural context. To King Edward, the conquest of East Anglia
must never have looked more urgent than after Scandinavian hergas
had helped a West Saxon magnate betray his own house and after that
same magnate had coaxed the viking East Anglians to disavow the
­legitimacy outwardly conferred upon them earlier by Alfred.
The princeling’s rebellion hints at the psychological no less than
geopolitical impact of Scandinavian East Anglia as a place that both
threatens West Saxon stability and excites Cerdicing disloyalty. Twice
the ætheling is said to have “enticed” (aspon, gespon) the East ­Anglians
to join him, but more disquieting is what remains unsaid: the en-
emy had succeeded in enticing a West Saxon thegn away from his
own kin and country. According to Lavelle, the subsequent peace that
­Edward secured in 905 with the East Anglians and the Northumbri-
ans at ­Tiddingford (Bucks) marked a stepping-up of his efforts to in-
tervene in Scandinavian England.224 The danger to Wessex posed by
the vikings, especially those in þæt lond of East Anglia, had been far
greater than Alfred’s premature speaking for all the Angelcynn might
suggest.225 ­Although the conversion of Rædwald’s successors had as-
suaged ­Bede’s fears in the 730s, the christening of Guthrum in the late
870s failed to dispel the threat of East Anglia, a land that could induce
a Cerdicing scion to behave like a “king of the pagans.”
164 Angles on a Kingdom

Wishful Thinking: West Saxon East Anglia

If entries in the Chronicle’s “A” recension for the period 912–21 are
to be believed, Edward offset the disaster at Holme in 905 by siphon-
ing large numbers of East Anglians from their Anglo-Scandinavian
lords. The annals scrupulously avoid using the verb aspanan or
gespanan to ­ describe Edward’s success, the implication being that
the king’s lordship was legitimate from the outset and that his enemies
had been itching to acknowledge it as such. No explanation is given
for their surrender, and early tenth-century readers probably knew
enough about the background not to need one; yet if taken on their
own terms, the ­relevant entries create an impression of instant and
thorough East Anglian allegiance to Edward. Until recently, this
illusion of sudden willingness to embrace West Saxon overlordship
did much to convince modern historians that Alfred’s descendants
had “reconquered” East Anglia rather than using it as an object of
wishful thinking.
In 912, claims the Chronicle, Edward and his forces were construct-
ing a stronghold or burh at Witham in northern Essex, close to the
present border with Suffolk and thus to East Anglia proper. Suddenly,
“him beag god dæl þæs folces to þe ær under deniscra manna an-
walde wæron” (“a good part of the people who were earlier under the
control of Danish men submitted to him”).226 We are not told which
“dæl þæs folces” surrendered at Witham or why. Perhaps they were
“English” men and women, or Anglo-Scandinavians like that Ulfcytel
the Bold who almost a century later would defend East Anglia against
a fresh wave of Danish attackers. In the years before his success in
Essex King Edward had encouraged his subjects to buy property in
Danish-held territory, as two charters from Æthelstan’s reign strongly
suggest;227 the seemingly sudden switch of local East Anglian alle-
giance at Witham may thus have been simply the culmination of a
gradual process whereby West Saxons had already begun to make
themselves at home in East Anglia. Rather than being inextricably
linked to East Anglian territory and allegiance, as it is in the annal
for 900 (899) that records Alfred’s death, Danish anwald a dozen years
later is shown loosening dramatically. The East Anglians come to Ed-
ward; he has no need to go to them. The 912 entry thus neatly coun-
terpoints, and cleverly compensates for, the 905 annal, which shows
Æthelwold travelling throughout Danish England to “entice” allies
to join him.
Supposed East Anglian willingness to accept West Saxon lord-
ship is made yet more explicit in the entry for the year 917. Here the
 Made in Wessex 165

propaganda is more pointed because it has the East Anglian Danes, not
the English population, offering submission. While the king was at Col-
chester repairing its damaged fortifications,

him cirde micel folc to ægþer ge on Eastenglum ge on Eastseaxum þe ær

under Dena anwalde wæs, 7 eal se here on Eastenglum him swor annesse
þæt hie eal þæt wolden þæt he wolde, 7 eall þæt friþian woldan þæt se
cyng friþian wolde, ægþer ge on sæ ge on lande; 7 se here þe to Grantan-
brycge hierde hine geces synderlice him to hlaforde 7 to mundboran 7 þæt
fæstnodon mid aþum swa swa he hit þa ared.228

(a great tribe, both in East Anglia and in Essex, that was earlier under
the control of the Danes, turned to him; and all the raiding-army in East
Anglia swore union with him: that they wanted all that he wanted, and
would keep peace with all with whom the king wanted to keep peace,
both on sea and on land. And the raiding-army that belonged to Cam-
bridge individually chose him as their lord and protector, and confirmed
that with oaths just as he determined.)229

To contemporary readers of the ASC the year 917 must have seemed
an annus mirabilis in the history of West Saxon-East Anglian hostilities.
Edward yet again receives spontaneous submission from people who
have not obviously been coerced into offering it or been threatened
with destruction if they withhold it.230 The text’s repetitive diction, em-
phasizing unity both of desire and of the will to make peace (“hie eal
þæt wolden þæt he wolde, 7 eall þæt friþian woldan þæt se cyng friþian
wolde”), suggests that the annalist was thinking of the rhetoric of trea-
ties in general, or perhaps of a specific, actual agreement; indeed, Lucy
Marten has argued that “[t]he use of lyrical repetition in the phrasing of
this Chronicle extract certainly suggests that it originated in a genuine
oath.”231 The echo effect – the enemy’s sudden adoption of the victor’s
rhetorical and military terms – conjures up perfect ideological same-
ness between the Scandinavian East Anglians and the English under
West Saxon leadership. Where the AGT sought to impose mutual cul-
tural intelligibility through the letter of the law, the 917 annal imagines
uniformity of spirit, depriving the East Anglians of a voice and figuring
Edward as a conqueror who can compel both the formal undertaking
and the earnest desire of a frið.
This supposed outbreak of like-mindedness between West Saxon
king and East Anglian population contrasts sharply to the strong like-
lihood, discussed by Dawn Hadley, that West Saxon soldiers arriving
in Danish-held lands were not universally embraced as liberators; in
166 Angles on a Kingdom

reality, the prospect of imminent invasion may have led English and
Scandinavian East Anglians to defend their common home.232 Further-
more, by suggesting East Anglian desire for West Saxon lordship, the
“A” Chronicle entry for 917 suppresses the region’s general reputa-
tion for volatility and opportunism as well as the specific fact that, as
­Stenton put it, “for all its recent defeats, the army of East Anglia was
still formidable” and that, even at the oath-swearing, it was “still an
organized army.”233 In attributing military cohesion to the East ­Anglian
here, the Chronicler can plausibly claim that it displayed further voli-
tional concord rather than a tendency to make decisions on the basis
of random circumstances or mere whim.234 It is upon this imagined
(though not necessarily fictitious) foundation of unity that the annalist
constructs the region’s commitment to obeying Cerdicing political will.
The ASC’s entries portray the relationship between West Saxon
­England and Scandinavian East Anglia in terms of conflict and its
resolution, by violent or non-violent means. During the early tenth
century, visitors to the land of Guthrum and his successors, or to any
other part of what was later called the Danelaw, would have beheld
more complex realities. These could be seen daily, in hybrid metal-
working designs for strap-ends used on clothing;235 in farmsteads with
new Anglo-Scandinavian rather than strictly foreign features;236 in the
choices made by Scandinavians to live and work in West Saxon terri-
tory; in the decisions taken by West Saxons to throw in their lot with
the “enemy” (Æthelwold being only the most illustrious example);237 in
pennies that showed St. Edmund’s influence on a foreign elite’s public
image;238 in linguistic comprehension between native and newcomer
even when each spoke only his or her own language.239 In short, our
hypothetical visitors might have grasped the essential truth of Dawn
Hadley’s insight that “ethnic identities were mutable, that they were
especially liable to be transformed in the face of contact with new peo-
ples, as social circumstances changed and the political tide turned, and
that they were not invariably expressed through a standard set of char-
acteristics.”240 The AGT and the annals instead prefer simplified identi-
ties, predicated on persistent mutual antagonism.
Such antagonism was only gradually resolved, pace the ASC’s entry
for 917. The annals’ later tenth-century readers would have had to ad-
mit that the Cerdicing takeover of East Anglia had remained incom-
plete even in their own day. Lucy Marten concedes that two extant
tenth-century charters show West Saxon kings granting land in East
Anglia: one dated 945 (from King Edmund I to Bury Abbey), the other
dated 962 (from King Edgar to Æthelflæd of Damerham; the Chelsworth
diploma discussed in the Introduction, above). But both transactions,
 Made in Wessex 167

Marten argues, were made possible by the agency of “women with

East Anglian connections,” respectively Edmund I’s queen Æthelflæd
and Edgar’s queen Ælfthryth.241 The likelihood that the Chelsworth
­estate had been destined eventually to pass to Bury St. Edmunds points
to a nascent relationship between the West Saxon court and the East
­Anglian ecclesiastical establishment, or at least to the former’s inter-
est in cultivating one.242 It bears repeating that the local West Saxon
ealdorman Æthelstan had wielded so much autonomy in East Anglia
before his death in 956 that he was styled “Half-King” and “for a while
during Eadred’s reign [946–55] … was practically a regent of all Eng-
land.”243 Surveying all these West Saxon encroachments upon the land
once held by Guthrum and his ðēod, Marten acknowledges that “the
tenth century in East Anglia was a period of developing and strength-
ening ties between the region and the successors to Edward the Elder”;
but she alerts us to “one fundamental development of Edgar’s reign
[959–75] that was noticeably absent from East Anglia: the symbolic
mix of royal politics and religion known as the ‘tenth-century monastic
­reform movement.’” Marten explains this phenomenon by suggesting
that Edgar’s lack of land in the region prevented him from acting often
as a monastic benefactor.244
Military setbacks too, as Simon Keynes acknowledges, slowed the
transformation of ideas of Englishness in the late ninth and tenth
centuries through their various “West Saxon,” “Anglo-Saxon,” and
finally “English” stages. Generally that development can be traced
from ­Alfred to Edward (aided by the Mercian ealdorman Æthelred
and by Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians) and then to Æthelstan.245 In
this scenario, “events are driven by far-sighted design towards their
eventual outcome”; but Keynes warns “that the Alfredian vision of a
new political order was not embraced by all, and that the new order
was not necessarily exclusive of other, more traditional, perceptions of
its component parts.”246 East Anglia’s self-perception comes foremost
to mind. Detecting it in texts is a bit like identifying a black hole; one
discerns it by observing its effects on nearby matter. Late ninth- and
early tenth-century East Anglian identities come into view because
they ­affected Cerdicing plans, either “far-sighted” schemes for eventual
national unification (if we prefer the teleological model) or piecemeal
management of troublesome Scandinavian raids on an ad hoc basis.
The chorographic product that emerges was, in any event, intended
for West Saxon consumption. As Hadley remarks, “the kings of Wessex
manipulated the concept of Englishness for political purposes, but it
cannot be claimed that this was meaningful to the majority of the popu-
lation; indeed, the main audience for such propaganda may have been
168 Angles on a Kingdom

Wessex itself rather than the whole of England.”247 The result is that the
West Saxon claim to speak for all the Angelcynn left little room for East
Anglia to be regarded as anything other than a shifting, unpredictable
land in need of stabilization. It was the very slipperiness of the concept of
the Eastængle that threatened to make the notion of Englishness less com-
plete or settled than Alfred and his royal successors would have wished.

Conclusion

The AGT and several key entries from the ASC represent East Anglia
as a menace to be defeated or at least contained, or as a prize wait-
ing to offer itself to West Saxon hegemony. As Richard Abels points
out, “[t]hough Alfred’s dealings with his viking godson had at times
been stormy, overall he could take satisfaction in having achieved the
transformation of a heathen viking raider into what could pass for a
­Christian king.”248 But the qualification “what could pass for” gives
pause for thought; mutatis mutandis George Bernard Shaw’s Henry
Higgins could have used the same phrase to describe his linguistic
makeover of Eliza Doolittle. Like Eliza, Guthrum enjoyed the practical
benefits of cultural “improvement,” but it was for his own benefit that
he staged the performance of Christian kingship. Neither for him nor for
Shaw’s ­protagonist would self-possession be sacrificed to an enforced
decorum. New Scandinavian raiders in the mid-880s sought the help of
Guthrum;249 his collaboration with them, and his ­successors’ minting of
the Edmund coins in the 890s, show that the new East ­Anglians refused
to remain mere West Saxon subjects.
“Conquest and crisis,” observes Pauline Stafford, “remained the
major stimuli to the writing of historical narratives in tenth- and
eleventh-century England.”250 Chroniclers and hagiographers who
were thus stimulated helped to construct East Anglia as both threat and
invitation to West Saxon imperium. The oscillation between these poles
of perception is akin but not identical to the factitious ethnic ­dichotomy
between “vikings” and “English” that Catherine E. Karkov has so
­admirably identified as the source of further misleading dichotomies:

The “Vikings,” as they were labeled, were a transnational imaginary

­constructed by the peoples with whom diverse groups from the countries
that are now Denmark, Norway, and Sweden came into contact. … The
­Viking invasions allowed King Alfred and his successors to forge a strong
sense of English identity, both literate and Christian, around which the
country could rally, and through which Bede’s gens Anglorum could be
transformed into the Anglo-Saxons and eventually the English. And that
 Made in Wessex 169

process allowed for the creation of a set of cultural binaries that carried
over into modern scholarship: Christian vs. pagan, literate vs. illiterate,
civilized vs. barbaric, peaceful vs. violent.251

Such binaries, like the foundational vikings-vs.-English pairing itself,

distort the heterogeneity that existed within so-called Danish commu-
nities as well as the instances of overlap or accommodation between
“Danes” and “English.”252 As R.I. Page notes of the long-held dichot-
omy between “Christian” West Saxons and “pagan” Scandinavians,
“[t]he distinction … is too stark for historical truth. It is a rhetorical
one, designed to stress the virtue of the English and the vice of the
Vikings.”253 Judith Jesch demurs from Karkov’s analysis, maintain-
ing instead that Scandinavian settlers were capable of defining their
own identities apart from medieval or modern (mis)representations of
them.254 The difference between the two positions is one of emphasis:
Jesch’s is on extra-textual reality whereas Karkov’s, like mine, is on tex-
tual characterization. Both aspects of “viking” history are important
and correspond roughly to the processes of identity-attribution I have
been concerned with all along: those originating with the locals and
those imposed by outsiders.
The West Saxon-vs.-East Anglian binary is another pairing that
­invites discussion in terms of attributions of identity; such a discussion
was attempted earlier in this chapter with the juxtaposition of English
texts with Anglo-Scandinavian coins. The regional dichotomy, however,
is distinct from the ethnic one, because whereas the latter made use
of labels that were clearly intended to differentiate “us” from “them”
(“Danish,” “northern,” “viking,” “pirate,” even “the raiding-army”),
the former employed a term, “East Anglian,” that preserved a lexical
reminder of sameness, of common – if always to a certain point facti-
tious – Anglian origins. That is, ethnic likeness to Alfred’s Angelcynn is
embedded within the very word Eastængle; the name of the place and
its people threw down an explicit challenge to the West Saxon rhetoric
of differentiation, rhetoric that was more successful when it branded
the adversary as the hergas, the Deniscan, or the norþerna cyning.
By contrast to the term Eastængle, the word Norþhymbra
(“­Northumbria,” “the Northumbrians”) would have implied to late
ninth- and early tenth-century West Saxons a greater degree of ­cultural
as well as geographical distance, the Northumbrian Bede’s own
­impeccable “Englishness” notwithstanding. The residual familiarity
connoted by the “Anglian” root of the name Eastængle instead likely
served as a “minor stimulus” (to adapt Pauline Stafford’s phrasing,
above) to West Saxon efforts to conceptualize and to realize a united
170 Angles on a Kingdom

England. The ēþel or “homeland” could be legitimately expanded once

it had been articulated comprehensively, whether or not the process
of articulation was itself legitimate in the view of those living outside
of Wessex. The Chronicle’s 905 entry shows Edward coming close to
beating the Anglo-Scandinavian East Anglians at their own game: he
“oferhergade eall hira land” (“raided across all their territory”), the
verb oferhergade hinting at the West Saxons’ ability to overtake and even
out-here the here despite failing to secure the battlefield. As if to make up
for the disappointment at Holme in 905, Edward is shown to have suc-
ceeded at Witham in 912 and at Colchester in 917 in detaching the East
Anglians from, respectively, “deniscra manna anwalde” (“the control
of Danish men”) and “Dena anwalde” (“control of the Danes”). Those
two annals’ sense of a foregone outcome implies a deceptively easy
dissolution of that bond between Scandinavians and East Anglians to
which Alfred had originally given his temporary blessing.
The later hagiography of St. Edmund capitalizes on a century of
retrospection during which Cerdicing rulers sought to consolidate
their claims to East Anglia, claims that further separated the Eastængle
from Scandinavian anweald. Late in the tenth century, however, new
viking raids threatened to reverse those gains, and Edmund became
the ­embodiment and epiphenomenon of a struggle for East Anglia’s
complex identities. Although those identities also encompassed stra-
tegic territorial resources (e.g. the region’s fertility, rivers, and fortified
towns), hagiography came once more to play a major role in defining
East Anglia’s character. In the eighth century, Bede and Felix had em-
ployed that genre to project their own visions of the provincia’s rela-
tionship to the rest of England. Towards the end of the tenth, Abbo
of Fleury and Ælfric of Eynsham wrote vitae of Edmund that likewise
sought to articulate a place for the East Anglian region within an E ­ nglish
nation. That nation was tested by the return of “Danish men” despite
being ­increasingly united by Cerdicing kings allied with ­Benedictine
reformers.
 5
Edmund, East Anglia, and England

East Anglia was absorbed by the West Saxon political elite only grad-
ually, despite the suggestion in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC) that
Edward extracted oaths of firm allegiance from its populace. During
renewed Scandinavian raids in the late tenth century, Benedictine hag-
iography allowed the Cerdicings to redouble their effort at absorp-
tion by seizing upon St. Edmund and his territory as vital features of
an England that was increasingly falling under their sway. Even in
the late tenth century, however, East Anglian regionalism proved an
idiosyncratic and tenacious reality not easily reconcilable with the
West Saxon program of national unification. Much has been writ-
ten about Edmund’s role in the medieval identities of Bury Abbey,
Bury St. ­Edmunds, ­Suffolk, East Anglia, and England itself.1 To avoid
­reinventing too many wheels, the present chapter restricts its focus to
Abbo’s Passio sancti Eadmundi (LSE), Ælfric’s Life of St. Edmund, King
and Martyr (SEKM), and the ­debate over East Anglia’s uniqueness – as
proposed by Abbo and challenged by Ælfric – that the relationship be-
tween the two texts implies.2
Abbo (b. ca. 945–50; d. 1004) was a French monk who resided for a
time at the recently founded Ramsey Abbey, located in the Mercian fens
just west of East Anglia proper and close to the Mercian sphere of influ-
ence.3 The English Benedictine Ælfric (ca. 950–ca. 1010) lived at Cerne
(Cerne Abbas) in Dorset before becoming abbot of Eynsham in 1005.4
Both authors were agents of the Benedictine Reform that was spear-
headed by West Saxon kings and archbishops; both would have been
aware that the Reform had struggled to establish itself in Edmund’s
ancient provincia. Moreover, both would have known that “[c]ults
were powerful centres of local gravity,” to borrow Patrick Wormald’s
­insight.5 Hagiography often made its subjects the foci of territorial iden-
tities, regional mythomoteurs, as Anthony Smith might call them. In East
172 Angles on a Kingdom

Anglia, the cult of Edmund, slain by “pagans,” eventually outshone

the combined cults of Fursey, Botwulf, Æthelthryth, Guthlac (who had
never been fully “East-Anglianized” to begin with), and Æthelberht. So
successful were Abbo and Ælfric in this regard that William of Malmes-
bury later asserted that Edmund was “patriae compatriotarum sancto-
rum primus” (“the first of the saints of his country”).6
Nevertheless, and despite their common Benedictine formation,
the two authors reveal distinct geopolitical concerns and ecclesias-
tical priorities. Abbo exalted East Anglia as a land whose holiness,
thanks to Edmund, had set it apart from the rest of England. Rebecca
Pinner has drawn attention to “[t]he overwhelming sense of regional
identity with which Abbo imbued his Passio”;7 and Mark Taylor has
observed that “Abbo himself established a symbiotic link between
­Edmund and the East Anglian landscape; as a holy but vulnerable
kingdom, it shared the characteristics of the king as perceived by
Abbo, and vice versa.”8 Singularly blessed, the realm is shown to
have been threatened neither by dodgy amalgamation of pagan and
Christian altars, nor by attacks involving fellow Angles hostile to con-
version, nor even by Brittonic-speaking demons evoking memories
of ancient Anglo-British strife. Instead, as the Passio conjures it up,
East Anglia’s halcyon perfection is menaced by an indomitable peril:
the invading Danes, whose eventual settlement as Christians in East
Anglia over a century earlier Abbo conveniently suppresses so that he
can essentialize them as evil incarnate, sprung from the septentrional
abode of Satan himself.9 As Julia Barrow observes, “the story of an
English king killed by Vikings had added relevance in the 980s, since
from 980 onwards England was once more threatened by Scandina-
vian raids.”10 Although Abbo ostensibly concerned himself with the
events of 869, he was also sensitive to contemporary dangers – new
viking assaults for one; encroachment on abbeys by powerful, home-
grown lay magnates for another.11 This dual perspective, embracing
past and present simultaneously, was common among early medie-
val historical writers, who often imposed their own topical concerns
upon their versions of the past.12 The protagonists of saints’ Lives in
particular were raised beyond their own local and temporal contexts.
For hagiographers, “[t]he saints were distinguished – if at all – by
the glory of their martyrdoms (a visible token of their acceptance to
God) and by their efficacy in dealing with various human suffering.”13
­Unencumbered by the modern historian’s need to recover the “true”
circumstances of Edmund’s death, “Abbo was effectively recounting
a ­myth-making process,”14 using hagiographical topoi that would
 Edmund, East Anglia, and England 173

e­ dify his immediate readers. Those topoi make his East Anglia stand
out from its neighbours.
Ælfric of Eynsham took a different route to commemorate the East
­Anglian king. It is, of course, a testament to the adaptability of ­Edmund’s
cult and of the complexity of hagiography as a genre that Ælfric should
have used the very same saint to articulate an alternative moralized ge-
ography. But his efforts seek to fit the region within a broader national
church by playing down East Anglia’s uniqueness and asserting instead
the widespread diffusion of holiness throughout English territory. Like
his Latin auctor, the monk of Eynsham wrote about the past from a
“presentist” perspective, envisaging broad English unity by evoking a
recurrent external threat. The year 993 had seen fresh marauding cam-
paigns;15 and if a version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was indeed
kept up at Winchester,16 where Ælfric had studied, he might well have
known the conventional annalistic practice of equating Scandinavians
with land-based hergas and ship-born plunderers. ­Conventional West
Saxon wisdom held that Danish violence was the rule rather than the
exception, and Ælfric would have been no stranger to such preconcep-
tions, or to the realization that East Anglia lay especially prone to vi-
king violence and might act more quickly than other districts to come
to terms with new invaders, as Guthrum had done in 885.
Yet when Ælfric mentions the invasions of the 860s, he says only this:
“[h]it gelamp ða æt nextan þæt þa Deniscan leode ferdon mid sciphere
hergiende and sleande wide geond land swa swa heora gewuna is” (Ælfric,
SEKM, pp. 44–5; “[t]hen eventually it happened that the Danish people
came with a pirate force, harrying and slaying widely throughout the
land, as their custom is”; Ælfric, PSE, p. 98).17 In comparison to Abbo’s
invective, Ælfric’s remarks about the invaders are quite restrained. Are
all the “Danish people” barbaric, or just those who make up the “pirate
force”? It is suggestive that although Hinguar and Hubba, the sciphere’s
leaders, are said to have been “geanlæhte þurh deofol” (Ælfric, SEKM,
p. 45; “united by the Devil”: Ælfric, PSE, p. 98), the Scandinavians as a
people are not denigrated as the spawn of Satan.18 Unlike Abbo, Ælfric
lived permanently in England; he would have paused at the implica-
tions of disparaging a group of people whose members included the
ancestors of powerful Englishmen like Oswald, archbishop of York.
Instead Ælfric would have his readers believe that the abiding enemies
were the Jews. His OE Life of St. Edmund concludes with a bizarre,
gratuitous foray into antisemitism, a radical departure from Abbo that
was evidently the Grammarian’s way of reinforcing Edmund’s exem-
plarity and of implementing West Saxon Benedictine efforts to unify
England. By taking aim at an easy because perennial target of Christian
174 Angles on a Kingdom

persecution, Ælfric, I argue, suppresses the challenge presented by East

Anglian particularism. The Jews serve him as a means to distract his
readers from regional identities that in fact had thwarted visionary pro-
grams of national synthesis since Bede’s time.

Sainted Edmund and Sanctified Kingdom

Abbo’s hagiographical promotion of Edmund exalted the East ­Angles

over their neighbours by crediting them with a kind of spiritual ­imperium,
which, in its impact on early English hagiography, went well beyond the
short-lived political overlordship enjoyed by Rædwald two and a half
centuries earlier. Moreover, the Passio surpassed the hagiography of Si-
geberht, Æthelthryth, Guthlac, and Æthelberht by depicting its protago-
nist as a martyr whose self-sacrifice in Christ’s name infused his country
with unrivalled holiness.19 Before idealizing the kingdom and its king,
however, the scholar from Fleury needed first to create the right context.
Abbo composed the LSE during a two-year sojourn in England at
Ramsey Abbey ca. 985–7;20 his pupil Byrhtferth would recall later that
an account of Edmund’s martyrdom fulfilled a request by the R ­ amsey
monks for instruction in advanced Latin grammar.21 Indeed, as the
author of a treatise entitled Quaestiones grammaticales, Abbo will have
sensed no sharp divide between grammar and history, and in all like-
lihood would have thought hagiography as apt a genre for his peda-
gogical needs as any other.22 The resulting textual monument to the life,
death, and miracles of the murdered king is extant in three manuscripts
from the eleventh century and over a dozen from the twelfth and thir-
teenth, including abridgements.23 The LSE also laid a sturdy foundation
for many subsequent stories. Some of these may derive from anecdotes
not recorded by Abbo; others reveal decidedly creative, “romancing”
minds at work.24 In his Prologue Abbo claims to have derived his infor-
mation about the Danes’ killing of Edmund from first-hand reportage by
Archbishop Dunstan, the work’s dedicatee,25 who in turn had heard it as
a boy from an elderly sword-bearer of Edmund’s who had lived to tell
the tale to King Æthelstan.26 Scholars continue to debate the soundness
of this chain of oral testimony;27 but the chain matters not least because it
links the story of a regional ruler to a larger national context, an England
that Abbo believed to have been unified by a king and an archbishop.
This emplacement of a regional saint’s life within national power
structures exemplifies what Jacqueline Stodnick has called, in relation
to Bede’s portrait of Æthelthryth, a “synecdochic notion of regionality
that asserts the symbolic value of the part in relation to the whole,”
a notion that enables the very discourse of nationhood itself from the
 Edmund, East Anglia, and England 175

time of Bede’s HE to the anonymous fourteenth-century Life of St. Erk-

enwald. According to Stodnick, “[e]ven though their immediate ener-
gies may be being harnessed by their authors in the service of local
identity formation, these texts bear a fascinating relation to E
­ nglishness
precisely because they promote and develop the type of thinking neces-
sary to uphold such a concept.”28 That Abbo himself had such a broad
“national” perspective is amply confirmed when he repeats the hal-
lowed “migration myth” so dear to Bede.29 In his hands, however, the
adventus Saxonum serves to highlight the distinctness of East Anglia at
the ­expense of that of England.
At the outset, the usual (Bedan) folk-units of Saxons, Jutes, and
­Angles are named as the first Germanic arrivals in Britain to be sum-
moned by the indigenes to defend their land against enemy attack. As
in Bede so too in Abbo the newcomers seize much of the island for
themselves once they perceive its owners’ weakness. They

se et suos defensarent fortiter, illi uero ignauiae operam dantes quasi

prolaetarii ad solam uoluptatem domi residerent, fisi de inuicta fortitu-
dine stipendianorum militum quos conduxerant, ipsos miseros indigenas
domo patriaque pellere deliberant: factumque est. Et exclusis Britonibus
statuunt inter se diuidere uictores alienigenae insulam, bonis omnibus
fecundissimam, indignum iudicantes eam ignauorum dominio detineri,
quae ad defensionem suam idoneis posset prebere sufficientem alimo-
niam et optimis uiris.

(defended themselves and their clients with courage; but as the latter were
given over to sloth, and stayed at home, as might be expected of a prole-
tariat, absorbed in pleasure alone, trusting to the unconquered bravery of
the hireling soldiery whom they had retained, the protectors took counsel
for the expulsion from home and country of the wretched natives. And so
it was done; the Britons were turned out, and the alien conquerors set to
work to parcel out among themselves the island, replete, as it was, with
wealth of every kind, on the ground that it was a shame that it should be
retained under the rule of a lazy populace, when it might afford a compe-
tent livelihood to men of mettle who were fit to defend themselves. [LSE,
pp. 68–9; Passion, pp. 11–13])

This outsized historical backdrop has been said to amount to mere

rhetorical “padding” and to be “somewhat irrelevant” to the life of
an otherwise obscure regional English leader.30 Yet it seems likely that
both Abbo and the Ramsey novices would have discerned in this pad-
ding some relevance to their own historical situation. Might not the
176 Angles on a Kingdom

pre-viking East Angles of the ninth century, and for that matter the
East Anglians or West Saxons of the late tenth, warrant comparison to
those fifth-century Britons condemned as slothful sybarites? Hundreds
of years earlier, “alien conquerors” had seized much of the island for
themselves; the process had happened again when, in 869, a Danish here
in East Anglia had “gesæt þæt lond, 7 gedælde,” as we saw in chapter 4.
After 980, new Scandinavian raids might have portended, to some, yet
another translatio imperii.31
For his part, Abbo seems not to have encouraged such specula-
tion, even if later embroiderers of Edmund’s life did.32 The adventus
­Saxonum could be a disabling or enabling cultural myth; Nicholas
Howe has shown that “its central motif for ordering experience is
that of migration,” and that therefore “[b]y its very nature, this motif
is dynamic rather than static.”33 Writers thus responded to it, as they
did to stories of diaspora in general, with appropriate flexibility, de-
riving this inference or driving home that moral as needed. Although
Bede in the eighth century had been drawn to God’s covenant with the
­ancient Israelites, he did not necessarily think that his own ancestors,
let alone his contemporaries, deserved to suffer hardships of biblical
­proportions.34 ­Between the late ninth and early tenth century, the OE
translator of Bede’s HE exercised similar independence of thought,
departing from some of his contemporaries by sharply distancing
the adventus Saxonum motif from recent viking irruptions, as Sharon
Rowley has demonstrated.35 From a different perspective, as George
­Molyneaux has emphasized, ninth-century evocations of the migration
myth suppressed any notion of divine favour that might have been
read into Bede’s Latin Historia.36 To be sure, the myth is predicated on
unworthiness, the belief in justifiable “transference of dominion” hav-
ing animated Bede’s account of slothful British natives losing Britannia
to vigorous Germanic settlers.37 But in certain contexts, it could be used
simply to express patriotic fervour, as in the Old English poem The
­Battle of Brunanburh, inserted in several manuscripts of the ASC s.a. 937
to mark King Æthelstan’s victory over an alliance of Dublin vikings,
Scots, and Strathclyde Britons.38 In that text, the adventus ­Saxonum
heightens the importance of the ­English king’s triumph with terms of
comparison from the distant past.
Abbo too counted on the adaptability of England’s origin story.
­Although he follows precedent in blaming the slothful Britons for hav-
ing lost Britannia to Germanic settlers, he departs from tradition by
­using the migration myth’s grandeur to frame a narrative about a re-
gion not a nation. In retrospect, the successful culmination of the adven-
tus is not England but East Anglia; it is the latter that is shown to enjoy
 Edmund, East Anglia, and England 177

divine favour. Thus does the LSE supply East Anglia with its very own
origo gentis narrative; the only element missing from it is a dynastic ge-
nealogy, notwithstanding that genre’s possible overtones of Germanic
paganism.39
Narrowing his focus from England to its easternmost corner, Abbo
anticipates Malcolm Bradbury in describing Edmund’s land as a kind
of quasi-island, cut off only partly from the rest of England and bathed
by the waters of the North Sea (oceanus) and the Fens (immensae paludes).
By the late tenth century a sure way to evoke the holiness of East Anglia
was to bring up the Fenland, despite the latter’s location at the region’s
westernmost fringe:

At predicta orientalis pars cum aliis tum eo nobilis habetur quod aquis
pene undique alluitur, quoniam a subsolano et euro cingitur oceano, ab
aquilone uero immensarum paludum uligine, quae exorientes propter
aequalitatem terrae a meditullio ferme totius Brittanniae per centum et eo
amplius milia cum maximis fluminibus descendunt in mare. (LSE, p. 69)

(But the aforementioned eastern part is held to be distinct on account of

this as well as other [reasons]: that is, it is washed almost on all sides by
waters, for on the east and south-east it is girded by the ocean [i.e. the
North Sea], [and] on the north [i.e. north-west] by the dampness of truly
immense swamps. These rise up almost from the centre of Britain, and be-
cause of the levelness of the land make their way downward towards the
sea, together with many rivers, for more than a hundred miles.)40

Abbo adduces the region’s quasi-insular topography both to explain

why the area is distinct or celebrated (nobilis) and to provide the proper,
“noble” element for his protagonist. East Anglia would have resem-
bled those parts of Essex lying just south of the River Stour as well as
the easternmost fringe of the Mercian fens;41 nevertheless, his wording
suggests that Abbo knew the local landscape well enough to imply that,
with its beauty and its lack of pronounced defensive features, it made
an apt and even singular environment for a saintly king willing to die
for his faith. Edmund’s personal nobility looms large in the Passio not
only as the result of rhetorical embellishment but also as a kind of hag-
iographical counterpart to East Anglia’s geomorphic exposure. John of
Worcester’s later assertion – repeated by the Annals of St. Neots and by
Geoffrey of Wells – that Edmund was crowned at the villa regia or “royal
vill” of Bures makes the king address the problem of his land’s vul-
nerability in a dramatic way. The town, which today comprises B ­ ures
St. Mary in Suffolk and Bures Hamlet in Essex, straddles the River
178 Angles on a Kingdom

Stour, the ancient frontier between the East Angles and the East Saxons.
If John of Worcester is correct, Edmund may have chosen this spot in
which to assert his authority because he sought to firm up a border
zone that, like border zones in general, all but invited transgression.42
Where John depicts Edmund displaying secular majesty in a specific
liminal area in the kingdom’s south-east, Abbo attends to the problem of
East Anglia’s over-accessible topography by focusing on the south-west.
In delineating its borders, as he goes on to do, he seems to be aware that
all land is merely on loan to its users,43 but especially so when it pre-
sents an easy target for invaders. To its west the East ­Anglian district
(prouincia)44 is said to be bounded by land and therefore ­vulnerable and
traversable (peruia), necessitating defence through h ­ uman intervention:
“sed ne crebra irruptione hostium incursetur aggere ad instar altioris
muri fossa humo praemunitur” (LSE, pp. 69–70; “but so that it is not
chronically molested by the irruption of armies, a ditch in the earth is
fortified by means of a rampart resembling a substantially high wall”;
translation mine).45 The fossa is the Devil’s Dyke, “one of several dykes
in Cambridgeshire which were apparently intended to control the main
route into East Anglia from the south-west.”46 In a saint’s life that pits
English against Danes as polarized enemies, the dyke epitomizes the
proverbial line in the sand; its mention at this juncture in the text serves
to prepare readers for the cultural bifurcation on which Abbo’s whole
narrative turns.
Although the LSE deploys the dyke to foreshadow the eventual clash
between “us” and “them,” specifically between late ­ninth-century East
Anglia’s insiders and outsiders, it neglects to mention that the earth-
works had formed part of a system “which had been thrown up, ar-
guably by the East Anglians against the Mercians in the early eighth
century,” as pointed out by Cyril Hart.47 Ryan Lavelle notes that
“[e]ven in the ninth century it had been more usual for the ­Anglo-Saxon
kingdoms to fight with each other than with external enemies.”48 James
W. Earl uses Ælfric’s SEKM as a launch-point for a psychoanalytic study
that concludes that “[t]he tendency to orientalize the Vikings as a bar-
baric Other is really a way of deflecting attention away from ­Anglo-Saxon
violence.”49 Abbo’s treatment of the Devil’s Dyke has a similar if
­smaller-scale deflective purpose in the text: as innuendo, it presages the
author’s eventual account of East Anglia’s S ­ candinavian invaders, the
LSE’s inevitable villains; yet it suppresses any reference to the kingdom’s
older battles with Mercia and its more recent ­tensions with Wessex, just
as Felix’s Brittonic-speaking phantoms in the VSG served to sublimate
trans-Fenland tensions in the middle of the eighth century.50
 Edmund, East Anglia, and England 179

“Landscape,” writes Yi-Fu Tuan, “is personal and tribal history made
visible.”51 In the case of tenth-century East Anglia, Abbo uses writ-
ing to render this connection that much more visible by depicting the
­kingdom’s vulnerability in geographical terms. Describing a frontier
as peruia makes a statement about territory but also hints at the dimin-
ished strength of local governance; by contrast, Bede ventured no such
hint about East Anglia’s frontier when describing Rædwald. In the LSE,
­Edmund becomes his own country’s spiritual bulwark in part because
his realm’s literal defences chronically give way. Credit has to be given to
the dyke’s original architects for trying to defend a stubbornly flat land-
scape; but in the end, as Bill Bryson waggishly observes, “it didn’t take a
whole lot of tactical genius to realize that all an invading army had to do
was go around it, which is what all of them did, and within no time at all
the Devil’s Dyke had ceased to have any use at all except to show peo-
ple in the fen country what it felt like to be sixty feet high.”52 Yet if East
Anglia’s earthworks, fens, and rivers proved no bar to invasion, they did
help writers impart form to the landscape and map the ebb and flow of
regnal power. It was by reference to the dykes and the River Wissey (or
Ouse) that the annalist of the “A” version of the Chronicle s.a. 905 (904)
had measured the havoc wrought by E ­ dward the Elder on the Fenland.53
Having considered its strategic weaknesses, Abbo then defines the
kingdom’s territory by considering its natural beauties. To East ­Anglia’s
doubtful ability to repel is added an undoubted power to attract; both
traits are connected through Abbo’s use of landscape commentary as
an element of political analysis. By conjuring up a locus amoenus he
­answers the unasked question why an army should have wanted to
invade this country in the first place:

Interius ubere glebae satis admodum loeta, ortorum nemorumque amoe-

nitatae gratissima, ferarum uenatione insignis, pascuis pecorum et iumen-
torum non mediocriter fertilis. De piscosis fluminibus reticemus, cum
hinc eam, ut dictum est, lingua maris allambit, inde paludibus dilatatis
stagnorum ad duo uel tria milia spatiosorum innumerabilis multitudo
preterfluit. Quae paludes prebent pluribus monachorum gregibus opta-
tos solitariae conuersationis sinus, quibus inclusi non indigeant solitudine
heremi; ex quibus sunt sancti monachorum patris Benedicti caelibes coe-
nobitae in loco celebri hac tempestate. (LSE, p. 70)

(In the interior the fortunate [province] is quite sufficiently fertile of soil,
and exceedingly pleasant thanks to the charms of its gardens and groves.
It is distinguished for the hunting of wild animals, nor is it indifferently
180 Angles on a Kingdom

fruitful in pasturage for sheep or beasts of burden. We remain silent about

the rivers filled with fish, since, as has been said already, on one side
a tongue of the sea licks it [i.e. the province], and on the other side an
­innumerable multitude of wide marshes flows past it, in fens spreading
out for two or three miles. These fens provide hollows54 desired by many
flocks of monks for the solitary monastic life, through which [fens] may
the enclosed hermits never want for the solitude of the desert. Among
these [monks] are celibate brothers of the monastic order of the holy father
Benedict, in a place now famous.) [Trans. mine, but see too Hervey’s trans.
in Abbo, Passion, p. 15.]

The Devil’s Dyke, then, is so necessary because East Anglia is so

­desirable – especially to monks and hermits, for example those liv-
ing “in loco celebri hac tempestate” (“in a place now famous”), about
which we shall hear more soon. As much as any other part of the LSE,
this descriptive vignette of local topography is a literary exercise, yet
its chorographic potential is in no way diminished by the pedagogical
concerns that prompted Abbo to write it.
In distinguishing between agrarian interior and watery edge, the
French hagiographer provides what has been called a “remarkably ac-
curate” and “precise” topography of the region.55 His is topography
with an agenda, however, for it seeks to illustrate how the district’s
natural resources serve people, how they fit into humanly devised
economies of animal husbandry or spiritual salvation. Even when it
conforms to the locus amoenus tradition,56 Abbo’s East Anglia evinces a
concern with practical ends; fen, river, and pasturage were all service-
able commodities, made by God for people. The LSE and other texts
“envision not a universe where men and women struggle to impose
meaning on vast emptiness, but a cosmos already full of meaning for
humanity to interpret,” as Nicole Guenther Discenza has remarked
of early English perceptions of space.57 This is quite a different world
view from that implied in Julian Tennyson’s modern recollections of
East Anglia; aided, or perhaps burdened, by the influence of landscape
painting on regional writing, Tennyson laboured in his famous Suffolk
Scene to define the region’s je ne sais quoi,58 believing, for example, that
“[t]he marsh has a character and an atmosphere, a mystery and a rarity
that cannot be transcribed.”59 His Fens transcend human purposes and
thus elude language; their “meaning” (if any) resists our capacity to
interpret it. Not so for Abbo, or for Bede and Felix before him, or for
Hugh Candidus and Richard of Ely after him, all of whom believed that
landscapes rewarded or tested human endeavour, fashioned as they
were by a deity who envisioned them as human habitats.60
 Edmund, East Anglia, and England 181

The “Pleasant Place” and Reformed Monasticism

Although Abbo’s East Anglian chorography is influenced by concerns

for utilitarian value, it embraces other aspects of place as well. There is
a spiritual quality to his locus amoenus characterized not by a transcend-
ence that eludes language but by the idiosyncrasies of monastic reform.
As Catherine Clarke observes with regard to Exeter Book poems like
The Phoenix, Guthlac A, and Genesis A, “[t]he locus amoenus plays a cen-
tral role within the reforming rhetoric and ideology of revival, renewal
and Englishness” during the tenth-century Benedictine movement on
the island.61 Abbo perceived no incommensurability between praising
East Anglia’s beauty and affirming England’s cohesion from Æthel-
stan’s reign down to Dunstan’s archiepiscopate. His own vocation and
his ties to the archbishop of Canterbury suggest a personal stake in
upholding at least some aspects of Benedictine reform, and his image
of East Anglian particularism was doubtless intended to encompass
those larger, overarching aspects. Before proceeding with an analysis of
­Abbo’s use of the locus amoenus to celebrate East Anglia, we need first to
acknowledge the multifaceted nature of the Benedictine Reform itself
and to situate Abbo’s royal politics in relation to it, the better to eluci-
date the “national” as well as royalist agendas that the LSE’s chorogra-
phy of East Anglia eclipses even as it depends on them. These agendas
will later be restored to full prominence by Ælfric of Eynsham in his OE
life of St. Edmund.
What has long been called the tenth-century Benedictine Reform
movement in England is increasingly coming to be understood as a
collection of diverse emphases and affiliations.62 Basic commonalities
among them, as well as heterogeneity within the movement, have been
ably explored by Christopher A. Jones:63 “‘Reform’ from its beginnings
was a complex and pliable notion, and even its three great proponents,
Dunstan, Æthelwold, and Oswald, appear to have fostered their own
individual standards.”64 Abbo, for his part, cites Dunstan as the ulti-
mate source of his material, as we have seen, and in so doing transmits
his LSE through the most important channel of ecclesiastical authority
in the England of the 980s. As scholarship on his text has often noted,
Abbo sought to narrate a story rather than merely list events; he went
far beyond both the 870 annal in the ASC and the courtly and secular
horizons of that composite work as a whole. Abbo celebrated Edmund
as a martyr who had refused to take up arms against his would-be kill-
ers and had instead chosen death at their hands in imitation of Christ’s
example of voluntary self-sacrifice.65 This portrayal of royal transition
182 Angles on a Kingdom

from majesty to martyrdom required little effort, since Abbo believed,

as Marco Mostert has shown, that kingship by its very nature conferred
quasi-divine status on its wielder.66 Focusing in particular on the eighth
chapter of the LSE, which has Edmund boast to the vikings of his pecu-
liarly tenth-century Christian approach to governance, Mostert argues
that “Abbo showed himself to stand firmly in the Carolingian tradition
which had made kings part of a ‘corpus mysticum’ which consisted of
kings, martyrs, priests and prophets.”67 Infusing Edmund with holi-
ness even before his death, Abbo preferred a theologically influenced
model of royal characterization to contemporary political reality.68
The Frankish scholar agrees with the 870 ASC reference to Edmund
as a king in his own right but avails himself of more recent ­Continental
political thought to portray him as a royal martyr. Likewise, he has
him fulfil the more general early medieval Christian requirement that
royal sanctity should be achieved rather than assumed, conferred by
the church after the king’s death rather than being taken for granted as
a natural concomitant of rule.69 With these emphases the hagiographer
suppresses the kingly prerogative of war even in a kingdom’s defence,
and instead stresses exemplary Christ-like self-sacrifice. This tack per-
haps defers to local legends about Edmund; more likely it shows Abbo
developing ideas about kingship that would benefit contemporary
monasteries in their dealings with royal patrons, who had the power to
confirm existing privileges.70 His interest in mystical kingship reflects
tensions between monasteries and local bishops that would increas-
ingly occupy his attention after returning to Fleury ca. 987. Even in the
LSE he touches on the subject of monastic exceptionalism in a way that
suggests continuity with his later, more explicit defences of religious
houses against episcopal meddling.71 If a king has a moral obligation to
protect monasteries and ensure the diffusion of Christianity, he should
behave accordingly in war. Abbo sacralizes the official image of Ed-
mund and in consequence promotes East Anglia itself both as a bastion
of monastically sanctioned privilege and as a spiritual fortress against
renewed Scandinavian paganism.
Within the text of the LSE, the trope of the “pleasant place” thus
brings out the splendours of a timeless landscape while fashioning a
new identity for the old provincia as a hub around which the rest of the
English church might revolve. It was suggested in chapter 1 that, for
Bede, Rædwald’s Christian altare conjoined with a pagan arula contam-
inated all of East Anglia and threatened the unity of the whole ecclesi-
astical enterprise. A related understanding of the link between a king’s
religious adherence and the resulting prosperity of the realm informs
Abbo’s view of East Anglia’s charmed landscape. Even grace can be
 Edmund, East Anglia, and England 183

commodified in the royal presence; though different from the poten-

tial yield of garden, grove, or river, the blessings conveyed through
Edmund’s body and shrine similarly nourish the surrounding ­polity.
As Abbo tells us in his penultimate chapter – to which we shall return
later – East Anglia warrants special admiration because it produces more
wonders (uirtutes) than does any other part of England.72 This choro-
graphical singularity owes much to the mystical power of E ­ dmund,
whose spiritual exceptionalism sets him apart from the c­ ommon run of
humanity, much as East Anglia’s aqueous surroundings (nearly) divide
the kingdom from its Insular neighbours.

“Ramsey St. Edmunds”? Abbo’s Monastic Mediations

In the topographical passage considered earlier in this chapter, Abbo

writes that hermits and monks are drawn to make their homes in the
East Anglian fens, especially “in loco celebri hac tempestate” (“in a
place now famous”) where religious devotion is, one may assume,
held to be especially commendable. Antonia Gransden understands
this allusion to an unnamed but renowned establishment as “an
oblique reference to Ramsey,”73 its inclusion in the LSE an unobtru-
sive gesture of thanks to the cloister that had hosted Abbo for two
years and fed him the strange food and beer he would later blame for
his obesity.74 One of the great Fenland Benedictine houses, R ­ amsey
was situated on an island surrounded by just the sort of watery ter-
rain evoked by Abbo in his topographical passage. According to his
student Byrhtferth, the natural bounty of the environs had struck
the house’s founder St. Oswald (bishop of Worcester before becom-
ing archbishop of York) as “congruam monachis ad habitaculum”
(“suitable for housing monks”); Byrhtferth’s description of the local
landscape chimes with Abbo’s verbal portrait of the Fenland as a
whole.75 Abbo’s choice of the adjective celeber to describe Ramsey is
no hyperbole: at the death in 992 of its patron, ealdorman Æthelwine
“Dei Amicus,” the house was “a powerhouse of the monastic reform
movement.”76 No meagre contribution to its legacy had been made
by Abbo himself, whose scholarship and the books he had brought
with him from Fleury “immediately put the new foundation on the
intellectual map of Anglo-Saxon England. His visit was perhaps the
most significant event in Ramsey’s early history.”77 If Abbo did indeed
have Ramsey on his mind when he wrote the description of the Fens
in the LSE, then associating it with the cult of Edmund, even by means
of the most subtle and passing aside, can have only redounded to the
abbey’s prestige – likely his patrons’ objective all along.
184 Angles on a Kingdom

It is noteworthy, though, that Abbo refrains from naming the house;

doing so would have added that much more lustre to Ramsey’s reputa-
tion, but perhaps he wished to avoid implying a contrast between the
timeless beauty and abundance he attributes to East Anglia proper and
the newness of Ramsey Abbey, founded only in 966.78 Perhaps too he
wanted to avoid stoking undue pride in his pupils, though this lesson
(if such it was meant to be) seems to have been lost on one of them.
As Michael Lapidge has noted, “Byrhtferth was inordinately proud
of his learning, and took every possible opportunity to display it,”79
having no qualms about inserting in his Life of St. Oswald Abbo’s own
learned and highly flattering fourteen-line poem on Ramsey, “O Rame-
siga cohors.” An example of encomium urbis, the work praises Ramsey
to the stars, indeed almost literally, for it localizes the abbey in relation
to the three constellations Hercules, Boötes, and Cynosura,80 as if the
orientation of the cosmos itself somehow depended on the monastery’s
prestige. Such explicit adulation has no parallel in the LSE, in which
Abbo appears to rein in his prose just at the moment when he might
have been expected to acknowledge Ramsey by name before returning
abruptly to the matter of Edmund. I linger over that abrupt transition
because it seems that Abbo wanted neither to dwell on it himself nor
to invite his original readers to do so. Had they paused in that textual
space between the absent presence of Ramsey and the explicit presence
of Edmund, they might have connected the unnamed location to the
person. They surely would have done so had Abbo named the place of
his “exile,” praised it as he does in “O Ramesiga cohors,” and then woven
in an explicit transition to the life of Edmund.
Abbo, however, connects Edmund’s life neither to Ramsey nor to
the house’s Mercian fenland site, some thirty-seven miles from Bury
St. Edmunds as the crow flies. Ramsey is sometimes said to have “col-
onized” Bury in the later tenth century by introducing the Benedictine
rule there. Tim Pestell, however, has expressed doubts about this theory
and infers from surviving evidence that it was only Cnut’s patronage
in ca. 1020, coupled with colonization from St. Benet’s Abbey, Hulme
(near Horning in Norfolk), that brought the Benedictines to Edmund’s
cult; this arrangement will have confirmed “Bury’s situation in an East
Anglian rather than Fenland/Mercian sphere.”81 Bury’s slow adoption
of the rule has led Pestell to surmise, very plausibly, “that the people
of East Anglia may have retained a distinctive regional identity. Within
this, Edmund could be employed as a totem to highlight their unity and
independence.”82 This analysis has received support recently from Lucy
Marten, who, as was discussed in chapter 4, also finds scant evidence
of Bury’s Benedictinism before Cnut’s time and, just as important, a
 Edmund, East Anglia, and England 185

dearth of royal Cerdicing grants in East Anglia generally. According

to Marten, these factors militate against Ramsey’s influence, bespeak
East Anglian resistance to West Saxon–sponsored Benedictine reform
efforts, and thus indicate tenacious regionalism persisting beyond the
conventionally agreed period of homogenization under King Edgar.83
By keeping the locus celeber anonymous, indeed by making only fleeting
mention of it at all, Abbo prevented his hosts in the western part of the
Fenland from exaggerating their association with the Edmund story,
despite their apparent interest in doing precisely that.
Played down though it may be, Ramsey’s role in sponsoring the Life
of a royal martyr culted at Bury nevertheless suggests “a bid by the
Benedictine order to manage and control the memory of East Anglia’s
greatest saint.”84 It also hints at competition between Ramsey and Bury85
reminiscent of the East Anglian king Ælfwald’s attempt to infringe on
the cult of the Mercian hermit Guthlac. In this case the rivalry, if such
it was, seems to have arisen not between kingdoms but between Fen-
land religious communities, an understandable development when one
recalls how thick the general area was with religious houses, each of
which depended on land and on the good will of its lay benefactor, who
was not necessarily above hostility towards a rival monastery.86 The
Passio testifies to the various and complex pressures that moulded east-
ern English regional identities in the late tenth century. The mere fact
that Abbo should have treated the locus celeber as part of East Anglia is
itself intriguing: the association plays down ideological divergence be-
tween Edmund’s realm (and by extension the secular priests guarding
his shrine, about whom more later) and the Benedictine Reform that
had been implemented at Ramsey. If at this time the area around Bury
was nicknamed sǣlig Sūþfolc or “holy Suffolk” (a phrase heard even
today, though often garbled as “silly Suffolk”),87 that reputation would
be strengthened by subtle linkage to properly regulated monasticism,
while arriviste Ramsey, for its part, would see its own “cultural capital”
enriched by connection with East Anglia’s heartland and royal core.
Then again, the monks of Ramsey, and for that matter Abbo too, may
have thought they were living in East Anglia proper. By the 980s the
district had changed much since Alfred’s or Edmund’s time, let alone
Rædwald’s; once a kingdom, it was now an ealdordom within an
­increasingly united England. It had also grown, having vaulted over
the Fens that had long separated it (more or less) from Mercia; under
Æthelwine (r. 962–92), the East Anglian ealdordom comprised the
­
­ancient Norfolk-Suffolk core, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, “and
perhaps also parts of Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, L ­ incolnshire and
Northamptonshire.”88 Naturally Ramsey was included, so if (as Young
186 Angles on a Kingdom

suggests) “the monks of Ramsey viewed Edmund as a saint for all East
Anglians – for all English people, even,”89 and if Abbo himself regarded
Ramsey as an East Anglian foundation, then the enlarged ealdordom of
the LSE simply reflects the administrative reality created by Æthelstan
“Half King” and maintained by his son Æthelwine.
Turf sensitivities and hard-won privileges, however, made each
­monastic house in eastern England, in the traditional Mercian as well as
East Anglian lands, acutely aware of its own identity, its own territorial
extension, and the boundaries it shared with its competitors. Jealousies
between abbeys sharpened the notional outlines of jurisdictions, which
persisted in the enlarged late-tenth-century East Anglian ealdordom.
Furthermore, by invoking the adventus Saxonum legend and by citing
the Fens and the Devil’s Dyke as regnal boundaries, Abbo reveals that
his East Anglian geography derives at least as much from centuries-old
tradition as from the relatively recent Cerdicing apportionment of
East Anglia. Book lore no less than landscape determined his sense
of the kingdom’s extent. If his Ramsey pupils were paying attention
when Abbo traced the watery boundaries of East Anglia, explaining
that the ancient kingdom “nobilis habetur” (“is held to be distinct”)
precisely because “aquis pene undique alluitur” (“it is washed almost
on all sides by waters”), they would have had to concede that their
own house lay outside those boundaries. Historically the area around
Ramsey had belonged to Mercia, and Abbo was being asked by a ge-
ographically Mercian and politically West Saxon monastery to poach
on the turf of an East Anglian and as yet “un-Benedictinized” house.
Mediating between Ramsey’s patronage and Bury’s cult, he was con-
scripted to assist in a hagiographical raid on Bury from across the Fens,
an elegantly textualized smash-and-grab that could be justified, from
Ramsey’s perspective, as a victimless crime insofar as it sought to hon-
our the unbowed fortitude and Christ-like piety of Edmund.
To sum up: Abbo wrote the LSE at the instancing of the Benedictine
house of Ramsey – as Pinner puts it, “[i]t … seems most likely that
the Passio was written for, if not at, Ramsey”90 – and abetted an act of
textual appropriation of Edmund’s cult orchestrated by that house.
Though new, the Fenland abbey held several estates in East Anglia;91
it was extending its territorial reach into the ancient kingdom of the
Wuffings even though it lay “in a fundamentally Mercian sphere of in-
fluence,” along with Crowland, Peterborough, St. Albans, and Thor-
ney.92 The monks of Ramsey in the late tenth century, like Ælfwald, king
of the East Angles roughly two hundred and fifty years earlier, hoped
to adopt an out-of-town saint’s cult and thus enhance the prestige of
their own community, even though it lay outside the place where the
 Edmund, East Anglia, and England 187

cult had actually arisen. By exalting the sanctity of East Anglia and its
murdered ruler, Abbo enriched the chorography of the ancient provincia
while simultaneously bolstering the prestige of the Mercian house that
underwrote his propaganda campaign.
The LSE reaffirms the distinctly East Anglian character and territory
of Edmund’s spiritual reach, promoting Bury as a model for Ramsey’s
emulation but also permitting Ramsey to partake somewhat of Bury’s
glory. Antonia Gransden has surmised that Abbo’s aim “to add another
illustrious name to the catalogue of East Anglian saints … would have
appealed to the Ramsey monks”;93 indeed, the appeal would have been
that much stronger for any inmates who knew that their house occu-
pied land in what had once been Middle Anglia, that ancient battlefield
between Mercian and East Anglian interests. Some of those monks may
even have been amused to reflect that “the catalogue of East Anglian
saints” was about to be increased by the efforts of a house that could
boast neither an illustrious history nor traditional ties to the ancient
East Anglian kingdom itself.

A King “for” East Anglia

His loving delineation of the kingdom’s identities would not be com-

plete if Abbo neglected to attend closely to the virtues of the king.
Edmund is said to have been “atauis regibus aeditus” (LSE, p. 70) or
“begotten by royal ancestors,”94 and to have been compelled by the
East Angles to rule over them: “omnium comprouincialium unanimi
fauore non tantum eligitur ex generis successione quantum rapitur ut
eis praeesset sceptrigera potestate” (LSE, p. 70; “he was, by the unan-
imous choice of all his fellow-provincials, not so much elected in due
course of succession, as forced to rule over them with the authority
of the sceptre”: Passion, p. 15). According to the LSE, the East Anglian
gens in the mid-ninth century sought a benevolent rather than an ambi-
tious ruler. If the witan had been hoping to revive their country’s early
seventh-century imperium, they would have crowned a king more like
Rædwald than like Sigeberht; Abbo’s verb rapitur describes a man who
virtually had to be dragged to the throne.
Inexplicably, the great and the good of East Anglia had seen mar-
tial potential in Edmund; even his looks told them that “erat ei species
digna imperio” (LSE, p. 70; “He had an appearance that was worthy of
overlordship”: my translation, though Hervey appealingly translates
imperio as “for sovereignty” in Abbo, Passion, p. 15). Either Abbo is let-
ting his rhetoric get the better of him, or he is using irony to foreshadow
Edmund’s later and utter disregard for overlordship. Then again, the
188 Angles on a Kingdom

power of which Edmund’s bearing is said to have been worthy may not,
from the hagiographer’s point of view, have been strictly secular. The
use of the noun imperium in this context warrants a closer look; Abbo
may have understood it to signify mere “rule” over the East ­Anglian
gens, but his knowledge of Bede’s HE makes it likely that he sought
to exploit more far-reaching connotations.95 These need not have been
purely secular in nature. Marco Mostert writes that

When Abbo addressed Hugues [Capet] and Robert [II, the Pious], or
when he talked about Edmund of East Anglia, or about some other king
or emperor, he chose his allocutions from the common stock provided by
Scripture and the traditions of the Roman empire. Both of these sets char-
acterized kings invariably by some aspect deriving from their majesty,
their sovereignty, or from one of the royal virtues or functions.96

Imagining Edmund’s authority required a retrospective approach,

however; Abbo was not addressing a living monarch but commemo-
rating a dead one who had been killed by non-Christian invaders. His
subject embodies what Mostert terms “‘majestas’ … [which] derived
from God’s majesty,” for “the characteristics of the theocratic ruler were
borrowed from the source of his authority.”97 Abbo’s use of the word
imperium in relation to Edmund anticipates the LSE’s later emphasis on
the vertical rather than horizontal dimension of that king’s authority,
not military dominion over other peoples but supremacy over them in
holiness.
Imperium as spiritual potestas (“power”) would be feasible for a ruler
who wanted to die like Christ at the hands of violent persecutors.
­Although his rationale for thus defending his kingdom is open to seri-
ous challenge on the grounds of strategy and common sense, Edmund
nevertheless is said to have believed that eternal salvation in heaven
mattered more to him than short-term earthly safety. Such pious qui-
etism, as we shall see, is more than just the result of the hagiographer
Abbo’s having to making virtue of necessity (which in part, of course, it
is) when narrating the death of a king who refused to fight. When one
of his chief episcopal counsellors advises Edmund to flee or face torture
and death at viking hands, Edmund rejects the option of outliving his
own people and consequently being derided as a coward; instead he af-
firms “honestum michi esset pro patria mori” (LSE, p. 75; “it would be
honourable for me to die for my country”: translation mine). Adducing
the three principal signs of his authority, i.e. the robes of healing, his
confirmation by the bishop, and popular as well as clerical acclaim,98
Edmund declares: “Anglorum reipublicae decreui plus prodesse quam
 Edmund, East Anglia, and England 189

praeesse, aspernando subdere colla iugo nisi diuino seruitio” (LSE,

p. 76; “I have determined to be the benefactor rather than the ruler of
the English Commonwealth, in scorning to bow my neck to any yoke
but that of the service of God”: Passion, p. 29). The point goes undevel-
oped, but Abbo clearly wishes to show that Edmund’s stance is not tan-
tamount to self-centredness. Adapting the famous Horatian sentiment
“dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (“it is sweet and fitting to die for
one’s country”; Odes 3.2.13),99 Abbo characterizes Edmund’s impend-
ing death not as a matter of subjective sweetness or of vague fitting-
ness, but as an objective marker of the ruler’s noble origins and rigorous
ethics. These traits, however contingent, are grounded in shared social
custom rather than in mere individual judgment. Edmund’s behaviour
implicitly reflects the East Anglian gens’s conviction, and ­Abbo’s own,
that good kings give up their lives to imitate Christ.
At this point Bede’s ambivalence towards Sigeberht’s suicidal piety –
discussed in chapter 1 – may come to mind, along with the persuasive
analyses of that ambivalence by Susan Ridyard, Sarah Foot, and others.
It seems that Abbo’s Edmund is pursuing his own spiritual welfare over
his subjects’ physical safety when he treats Inguar’s Danish messenger
to a long speech that defends dying in Christ’s name as a guarantee
of “perpetuam … libertatem” (“perpetual liberty,” i.e. ­eternal salva-
tion). In retrospect, Æthelthryth’s life had lent itself more easily than
Edmund’s to hagiography because, never having been queen of East
Anglia, the Ely abbess never obliged later writers to explain how such
royal renunciation as hers might benefit a country under ­attack. Nei-
ther her Vita nor St. Æthelwold’s tenth-century refounding of her com-
munity forced Wulfstan to strain for the purely metaphorical meaning
of the concept of “perpetual liberty.” For Wulfstan, the “aeternae lib-
ertatis priuilegio” (“privilege of eternal liberty”) meant only the legal
protection Æthelwold had procured for Ely from King Edgar.100
By contrast, Abbo’s memorialization of Edmund beggars belief, for
it has him reject not only the king’s prerogative to increase the ēðel or
“homeland” but also his minimal duty to defend what he currently
governs. According to Laura Ashe, such renunciation exemplified a
larger millennial trend in English writing whose “effect was to offer
the severest practical challenge yet to the ideological identity of secular,
English culture, at the very time when clerical theorizing withdrew all
support from the culture’s secular ideals.”101 Abbo’s form of this chal-
lenge has chorographic implications, for it risks leading readers to as-
sume that Edmund’s ascetic passivity characterizes East Anglia itself.
As Mark Taylor and Rebecca Pinner have pointed out, Abbo’s East
Anglia aptly complements its king insofar as both are preternaturally
190 Angles on a Kingdom

beautiful yet vulnerable to attack.102 If late tenth-century readers at

Ramsey took the hint of complementarity between king and king-
dom to its logical conclusion, they would have wondered if the
Anglo-Scandinavian East Anglia of the 980s should or would turn the
other cheek to viking invaders or, with the right kind of pressure, will-
ingly embrace Cerdicing influence along with the same West Saxon
Benedictinization that had underwritten Ramsey’s own founding. By
commissioning a Life of St. Edmund, Ramsey appears to have wanted
to exercise control of the slain king’s cult, possibly to facilitate Wessex’s
eventual total mastery of East Anglia.
If I understand him correctly, Francis Young maintains the opposite
view, that Abbo and the Ramsey community together aimed not to un-
dermine but to validate East Anglian distinctness: “Abbo’s emphasis
on the role of the people in Edmund’s story may have been his way, and
Ramsey Abbey’s way, of channelling East Anglian anxieties about be-
ing ruled by the House of Wessex and being incorporated into a larger
English kingdom.”103 That is, Abbo, in concert with Ramsey, wished to
create the impression that the East Angles retained agency. Their integ-
rity as a ruling gens would be symbolized by their initial discernment
of imperium (whether secular or spiritual) in Edmund and by their later
success in recovering and reassembling the slain king’s body and inau-
gurating his cult.
The Ramsey monks, however, were poaching on Bury’s cult and
thus infringing on its independence; for this reason it seems unlikely
that they were “channelling East Anglian anxieties” about losing their
­autonomy. It may be that Abbo’s patrons wanted to present themselves,
via their commissioning of the LSE, as protectors of both Edmund’s
cult and the clerical community who tended it at Bury; but as protec-
tors against whom? The Benedictines at Ramsey surely would have
had no reason to oppose either the Benedictinization of Bury or the
West Saxon leadership that would have sponsored it. It seems rather
the case that it was Abbo’s, not Ramsey’s, choice to emphasize “the
role of the people in Edmund’s story” discerned by Young, and that
Abbo supported the independence of the cult and the East ­Anglian
people despite ­ Ramsey’s commissioning of the LSE. The general
­absence of tenth-century East Anglian charters issued by West Saxon
kings, ­excepting Sawyer 507 (Bury, 945) and Sawyer 703 (Chelsworth,
962), hints at a degree of r­ egional freedom only decades before Abbo
composed the Passio.104 Young is right to note Abbo’s attentiveness to
the East Angles’ agency in fostering Edmund’s cult; but this emphasis,
­especially when read alongside the earlier passages describing the locus
amoenus and the kingdom’s vulnerable borders, raises the possibility
 Edmund, East Anglia, and England 191

that Abbo was critical rather than supportive of his patrons’ attempt
to co-opt Edmund’s shrine and cult on behalf of Mercian-West Saxon
Benedictinism. Boundaries, the LSE implies, should be respected,
whether they be political or monastic. In conjuring up a land resolved
on maintaining its integrity even in the face of invasion, Abbo invests
East Anglia with a familiar capacity to synthesize passivity with activ-
ity, a trait we have already seen in Bede’s vignettes of Rædwald, his
queen, and ­Æthelthryth; in the a­ mbivalence suggested in Felix’s VSG
towards its patron Ælfwald; and in the AGT’s and ASC’s representa-
tions of Guthrum and his fellow East Anglian Danes.
In Abbo this oscillating quality centres on Edmund himself. The hag-
iographer praises Edmund’s pacifism as a saintly virtue; as Catherine
Matthews observes,

in accepting that his choice will likely result in his death, Edmund moves
the battlefield from the land itself to his own body. Arguably, this moment
is one where the king’s body becomes identified with something greater
than just his identity as Edmund. He is offering himself in place of East
Anglia and is willing to suffer for the land and its people.105

Edmund’s strategy hints at an unconventional form of agency, very

different of course from the use of the Devil’s Dyke as a means of
straightforward physical defence, but nevertheless indicative of
a deliberate royal policy, a considered choice. On the basis of this
(admittedly suicidal) choice, East Anglian self-defence becomes a
spiritual rather than military objective.106 In the 980s, in the face of re-
newed viking attacks on a land that was already partly S ­ candinavian
and had, in Guthrum’s day, given aid to enemy fleets, Abbo pro-
jected onto the past a symbolic victory of Christian piety over pa-
gan aggression. ­Moreover, the theological currents of his own time
allowed him to depict Edmund’s form of heroism as a legitimate
kind of ­anti-Scandinavian resolve and as a characteristically East
­Anglian form of service to the rest of Britannia. The quality of be-
ing integer (“whole”), later said to characterize Edmund’s body (LSE,
p. 82; ­Passion, p. 45), becomes an ideological virtue, more impor-
tant than a somatic trait like ­Æthelthryth’s virginity (though Abbo
credits ­Edmund with virginity too, as we shall see), and more reso-
nant than a merely political triumph like the victories won for East
­Anglia by Rædwald at the expense of the Kentish Æthelberht and
the ­Bernician Æthelfrith. By demonstrating his intact Christian faith,
­Abbo’s ­Edmund continued to be for the East Angles, to be of use to
them (prodesse, from prosum), as opposed to merely being before them
192 Angles on a Kingdom

or ruling over them (praeesse, from praesum).107 To be martyred is to

­enable a realm’s spiritual cohesion amidst dynastic dissolution.108

Wounds and Wholeness

Even the localization of the king’s remains served to strengthen the

bond between rex and regnum. The vikings are said to have decapitated
their victim and thrown his severed head into the wood at ­Hæglesdun.109
A mysterious wolf is shown to guard the head until help can arrive
(LSE, pp. 79–81; Passion, pp. 36–43), and subsequently the body is
given proper burial at the presumably nearby Bedricesgueord (i.e.
­Bedricesweorth, Bury St. Edmunds). Years later an inspection reveals that
the head has been reunited with the body, with only “una tenuissima
riga in modum fili coccinei” (LSE, p. 82; “an extremely thin red crease,
like a scarlet thread”: Passion, pp. 45–7) on the neck to indicate the place
of the wound. Just as Æthelthryth’s own healed neck reinforced the
sense of monastic community at Ely, Edmund’s reattached head speaks
to an enduring connection between the saint-king and Bury specifically,
as well as East Anglia generally, despite his abdication of the royal duty
to defend the patria. Perhaps that bond was symbolically reinforced, in
Abbo’s eyes, by the guardianship of the wolf, with its relevance to the
East Anglian gens’s perception of itself as being descended from Wuffa
and from Rome. One suspects, though, that if Abbo had wanted to play
up East Anglia’s Romanitas, he would have referred to the dynasty’s
traditional self-derivation from Julius Caesar.110
This issue invites curiosity about whether all the important details
of the LSE were in fact authored by Abbo. Antonia Gransden has spec-
ulated that several well-known episodes, including the one explaining
the translation of Edmund’s body to Bury, were not actually written by
the Frankish scholar himself but were inserted at Bury during the time
of Abbot Baldwin, ever keen to marshal documentation proving his
house’s exemption from episcopal interference.111 In Gransden’s view,
the addition of a passage specifying Bedricesgueord as a royal vill (villa
regia) would have suited Baldwin’s purpose by suggesting to meddle-
some bishops that Bury St. Edmunds had enjoyed kingly protection
since the time East Anglia itself was a kingdom.112
Several considerations, however, support the view that the passage
in question was instead original to Abbo. Firstly, adding a bit of lo-
cal detail in the form of a place-name, presented first in Old English,
then in its Latin equivalent, is just the sort of thing the Fleury hagi-
ographer would have done to flesh out his narrative, given his pen-
chant for elaboration and embellishment and his awareness that he
 Edmund, East Anglia, and England 193

was writing for an East Midlands monastery whose inmates would

have been generally familiar with East Anglian geography and thus
would have appreciated the reference. Secondly, the fact that Ælfric
of Eynsham makes no mention of Bury in his Old English translation
of the LSE need not imply that the manuscript of Abbo’s text that lay
before him lacked the passage referring to it.113 As a translator, Ælfric
frequently condensed and rearranged his source material and could
easily have dispensed with a toponym if he had deemed it irrelevant
to his purpose or to his audience.
Lastly, if Baldwin inserted, or caused to be inserted, an overt refer-
ence in the LSE to Bedricesgueord for the purpose of underscoring Bury’s
royal establishment and exemption from episcopal taxation, then why
did he not also delete, or order to be deleted, the text’s potentially dam-
aging concluding lines? In them Abbo refers to the saint’s famulantes at
Bury (LSE, p. 87; literally “servants” but translated by Hervey as “those
who render to him the ministry of human reverence” in Passion, p. 57),
­implies they are not in celibate orders (for he hopes they may be mind-
ful of “­virgineo flore pudicitiae”/ “the flower of virgin modesty”), and
prays for their eternal salvation (LSE, p. 87; Passion, pp. 57, 59). If the fam-
ulantes were not Black Monks, they must have been secular or diocesan
priests; acknowledging their guardianship of Edmund’s relics would
have bolstered a post-Conquest bishop’s argument that the saint’s
shrine properly belonged under episcopal control. For all the above rea-
sons, the LSE’s specific reference to Edmund’s burial and veneration at
Bedricesgueord looks to be Abbo’s own work. It links the p ­ iety of the
East Angles’ last native ruler to the territory he governed, and in effect
makes of that territory both a locus amoenus and a locus sanctus.
The recomposition and veneration of important bodies mattered to
the East Anglian sense of place in specific local communities. To the
examples of Edmund and Æthelthryth should be added Byrhtnoth,
ealdorman of Essex and hero of the OE poem The Battle of Maldon.114
A benefactor of Ely Abbey, he was himself killed and decapitated by
vikings in 991 and his headless body brought back to Ely Abbey for
inhumation. The Liber Eliensis (LE, II.62) explains that before his burial
a ball of wax had had to be placed in his coffin to substitute for his unre-
covered head, which had been taken by the attackers.115 In Byrhtnoth’s
case the virtual reheading of the acephalous patron honours a man who
had lived and died for the community.116
All three cases, though quite different from one another, speak to a
common, deeply felt desire for closure. Unassailable virginity needed to
be proved, as Blanton and others point out with regard to Æthelthryth;
historiographical truth or finality needed to be achieved, as Stodnick
194 Angles on a Kingdom

suggests, also with regard to the Ely abbess; and finally, intact individ-
ual bodies needed to be shown to be capable of signalling the whole-
ness of place, the seamless union in East Anglia of religious houses with
the royal or noble figures who lead the people with “integrity” (in both
its literal and metaphorical senses).117 It is for this reason that the LE
compiler cherishes Byrhtnoth’s substitute head as a signum or “sign”:
“quo signo diu postea in temporibus nostris recognitus honorifice inter
alios est locatus” (“Long afterwards, in [our own] times, he was rec-
ognized by this sign, and was honourably entombed among the oth-
ers”).118 Just as St. Æthelthryth was said by Bede to have been “in medio
eorum … sepulta” (“buried … in the midst of them,” i.e. Ely’s monks
and nuns)119 following her death of a neck tumour, so too is the ealdor-
man of Essex united with a community of fellow benefactors to signal
Ely’s corporate wholeness in the wake of a corporeal wound.120 Pagan
decapitation sought to ensure that the victim stayed dead.121 Christian
reheading, in the contexts cited above, instead testifies to the desire for
unity of religious institutions with their defenders, their ­patrons, and
their territories.
In the LSE, the saint’s posthumous miracles continue the fight against
fragmentation that has already been won by the proof of Edmund’s
bodily intactness. Abbo tells of an arrogant layman, Leofstan, who
­insisted on viewing the saint’s body; for his arrogance he was blinded
by Edmund’s supernatural power and subsequently ejected from his
house by his own father (LSE, pp. 85–6; Passion, pp. 52–3). Abbo lik-
ens Edmund in his role of vengeful punisher to St. Lawrence, who had
killed eight people who were likewise too eager to exhume his corpse;
he then apostrophizes the East Anglian king and the site of his venera-
tion: “O quanta reuerentia locus ille dignus existit qui sub specie dor-
mientis tantum Christi testem continet, et in quo tantae uirtutes fiunt et
factae esse referuntur, quantas hac tempestate apud Anglos nusquam
alibi audiuimus!” (LSE, p. 86; “Oh! what deep reverence was due to that
place, which contains in the guise of one asleep so august a witness to
Christ, and in which such wondrous works are said to have occurred,
and do occur, as in these times we have heard of in no other part of
England!”: Passion, p. 55). Further on, Abbo makes a passionate case
for virginity and associates this trait too with Edmund.122 Like Bede’s
Æthelthryth, Abbo’s Edmund showcases East Anglia as a land where
wounded bodies are miraculously made whole and corporate territo-
rial identities prove indissoluble.
Such praise was especially apt for the ruler of a part of England poised
to revert to paganism. Written a century after the AGT and Alfred’s
“Prose Preface” to Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care, the LSE amounts
 Edmund, East Anglia, and England 195

to a hagiographical second front in post-Alfredian efforts to steel Eng-

lish resolve in the face of renewed invasion. As mentioned in chapter
4, Scott Thompson Smith has emphasized that in the “Prose Preface”
Alfred expressed deep admiration for past English kings who not only
heeded God’s laws and maintained order in their own domains but also
“ut hiora eðel gerymdon” (“extended their homeland outward”),123 i.e.
widened their rule by conquest. Although Abbo could not rewrite his-
tory to make Edmund defeat the Danes and so extend the East Anglian
homeland outwards, he did adopt a strategy of symbolic appropriation
when decisive military victory proved elusive. Within the conventions
of the saint’s Life, Abbo has his hero prevail spiritually over his ene-
mies and lay the ideological foundation of the Bury community as both
­extension of the Christian ēðel and as spiritual capital of East Anglia.
By supposedly renouncing literal warfare, Edmund is shown to score a
decisive victory for Christianity even as his kingdom is taken over by
then-pagan Scandinavians.
Although that victory is represented by Abbo in binary ethnic terms,
it eventually brought together English East Angles and Scandina-
vian East Anglians. Writing of the role of Edmund’s cult in unifying
late ninth-century East Anglia, Michel Sot observes that “[i]l s’agis-
sait de réconcilier autour de lui les Angles, plus anciennement chré-
tiens, et les Vikings, nouvellement convertis, qui formaient désormais
la population de l’East-Anglia” (“around it [i.e. the body of Edmund]
it was necessary to reconcile the more anciently Christian Angles and
the newly converted Vikings, who formed henceforth the population
of East Anglia”).124 This need recurred in the late tenth century, long
after the Scandinavian population had been converted to Christianity
but during a period of renewed invasions on Æthelred II’s watch. As
­depicted by Abbo, however, Edmund’s self-sacrifice neatly divides the
East ­Anglia of 869 into foreign pagans and native Christians.
To Abbo’s way of thinking, Edmund’s sanctity had indeed tran-
scended the confines of his body to hallow the territory where his cult
went on to flourish. Far from being a liability, the king’s supposed vir-
ginity elevated him beyond the normal ranks of royal men and women;
according to Louis-Marie Gantier, Abbo associated virginity with con-
templation and regarded spiritualized bodily wholeness as a desid-
eratum not just for monks but for all members of the church.125 That
blessed trait appears to be linked in the text to East Anglia’s beauty and
fecundity; the pristineness of virginal ruler and realm depends on the
viking threat to both, a threat made to seem all the more enduring by
Abbo’s silence on the intermingling of Angles and Scandinavians in the
century since 869. As Antonia Gransden surmises, Abbo “tailored his
196 Angles on a Kingdom

narrative, with the approval of the Ramsey monks, primarily to please

[Archbishop] Dunstan”; he may well have remembered that “Dunstan
wanted to encourage the growth of St. Edmund’s cult at Beadericesworth
[Bury] in order to increase the prestige and prosperity of the community
serving his shrine.”126 The ethnic and ideological (pagan-vs.-Christian)
dichotomies of the LSE seem thus to have been intended to enhance the
text’s appeal to a wide social range of religious readers. The dichoto-
mies affect the characterization of East Anglia as a whole, not just Bury:
the whole provincia is that much more exalted than the rest of England
because it witnessed the local triumph of Christianity over adversity.
Abbo surely meant no offence to Archbishop Dunstan, but his Passio
enshrines East Anglia’s uniqueness apparently in an effort to prevent
interference from outside forces, whether archiepiscopal or abbatial.

Ælfric of Eynsham and Monastic Reform

When in the 990s Ælfric of Eynsham set himself the task of translating
the LSE into Old English for inclusion in his Lives of Saints, he had his
own pedagogical and moralizing concerns. These, like Abbo’s, have
been oft noted.127 His vernacular rendering is much condensed and
largely devoid of rhetorical ornament, and it has been said that Ælfric
approached Abbo “in an adapted and simplified way that shows he
knew how much a half-lettered and not very learned audience could
take.”128 That audience, however, was more heterogeneous than this
remark allows, and certainly included the layman Æthelweard, author
of a Latin translation of the ASC, as well as his son Æthelmær.129 This
fact and the concerns evident in the OE rendering suggest that however
simplified the translation may be in comparison to the Passio, it was by
no means simplistic. In his reworking of Abbo’s text, Ælfric engages
with the Frankish scholar’s sanctification of East Anglia and attends
closely to the relationship between region and nation. As we shall see,
where Abbo implied that only East Anglia could boast such sanctity
as Edmund’s, Ælfric reminds his readers of the wealth of saints to be
found throughout the country, a point that enables him to play down
the ­potential of Edmund’s martyrdom to stimulate East Anglian region-
alism. England was still a political work in progress, “a single regnum,
albeit one only recently and perhaps rather insecurely united,” as Sarah
Foot reminds us;130 it could be undone by domestic rivalries no less
than by foreign aggression. Ælfric was alive to roughly the same danger
that Benedetto Croce tried to combat in the first decade of the twentieth
century, a trend whereby – as Croce saw it – an inability to think beyond
strictly regional terms prevented certain Italian critics from evaluating
 Edmund, East Anglia, and England 197

works of Italian literature as such, as the cultural building blocks of a

recently unified kingdom.131
By emphasizing holy plenitude throughout England, Ælfric
­contributed to the creation of a centuries-long national commonplace
according to which, as Kathy Lavezzo expounds it, “apparent territorial
deficiency is paired with remarkable fecundity” so that “notwithstand-
ing its marginalization, medieval England is superlatively abun-
dant.”132 In bringing this strategy to bear on Edmund and East Anglia,
however, Ælfric found in Abbo’s LSE a similar technique of regional
description that seemingly elevated the region over the nation. In the
Latin text, Edmund’s holiness compensates for East Anglia’s territorial
featurelessness, anticipating the modern observer’s praise of the dis-
trict’s huge skies to mitigate the absence of stunning mountain vistas.133
Ælfric was more focused than Abbo on constructing an early “national”
identity, and his SEKM seeks to minimize regional particularism and
interregional competition so as to enhance England’s prestige.
This priority reflects Ælfric’s approach to the Benedictine Reform
movement, one that overlapped with but was not identical to Abbo’s.
­Ælfric’s choice of the vernacular, as well as his own pedagogical and
political agendas, resulted in a translation distinct from its Latin source.
Elaine Treharne writes that “beyond doubt, his corpus of religious and
instructional texts – the homilies and saints’ Lives, the Grammar and
­Colloquy – consolidated the growing status of English as a prestigious
medium of writing,” so that “[i]n promoting his own work, Ælfric pro-
mote[d] the ideology of the Benedictine Reform, though in a way that
is often quite idiosyncratic and doctrinaire.”134 Ælfric had close contacts
with subsequent archbishops of Canterbury but, as Joyce Hill has ob-
served, “of the three leading reformers, Ælfric makes no reference at all
to Oswald, and only limited reference to Dunstan: his declared allegiance
is always, and repeatedly, to Æthelwold, whose period as bishop of
­Winchester covered all but the last three years of Ælfric’s time there.”135
His allegiances, however, knew limits, especially with regard to the
promotion of royal authority in the monastic sphere.136 Ælfric’s view of
kings as patrons of the church and of religious houses was tempered
by his disappointment in Æthelred II, whose expropriation of monastic
lands affected even Ælfric’s former house, the Old Minster, Winchester.
During his reign, local nobles reversed the trend of royal control of mo-
nastic property favoured by Edgar and sought “to assert the priority of
regional identity over royalist attempts to consolidate a centralized na-
tional government.”137 As Christopher Jones observes, “[w]hen, in the
late 980s, Scandinavian raids followed close upon this early souring of
the royal-monastic partnership, the king’s critics within the church did
198 Angles on a Kingdom

not hesitate to view the events as cause and effect. When Ælfric himself
implicitly rebukes Æthelred for failing to ward off the attacks, his criti-
cism is, tellingly, couched in nostalgic praise of Edgar.”138 For good rea-
son, then, Ælfric’s attitude towards the figure of the king and the kind of
influence he could wield over monasteries differed from ­Abbo’s; where
the scholar of Fleury promoted regal authority nearly to the point of
apotheosizing it, the English “Grammarian” was more measured and
occasionally critical in assessing its actual implementation.139
Ælfric objected, for example, to Æthelred’s misuse of royal author-
ity to seize monastic estates;140 though subtle, his criticism signals a
­departure from the mysticism with which Abbo suffused kingly power.
The author of SEKM could hardly attack kingship itself, of course,
­especially when he was writing for a lay nobleman like Æthelweard,
who was conscious of being “directly descended from Æthel[red]
I (865–71), elder brother of King Alfred the Great.”141 In Ælfric’s view,
an English king could and should lead his nation’s spiritual reform,
which might move God to show mercy in a time of renewed Scandi-
navian oppression. Precisely because of the stakes involved, however,
it would have been pointless to attribute to a king a mystical holiness
to which his actions conceivably could give the lie. Successful reform
required the king to work with his magnates and prelates on a national
rather than merely regional level. According to Mechthild Gretsch, such
is the viewpoint on offer in the Prayer of Moses that Ælfric included as
the thirteenth item in the Lives of Saints: “a cruel enemy can be over-
come only by a concerted programme of prayer offered by all groups of
society.”142 A program of this sort could be realized more readily if the
whole of England boasted supreme achievements in holiness.
As Gretsch has shown, however, the limited influence enjoyed by
­Edmund made that king an unlikely choice of saint to fill such a niche;
in the eyes of Æthelwold and his pupil Ælfric, the leading candidate
for that role had to be Cuthbert. “The newly forged ‘Kingdom of the
­English’ needed pan-English saints to form what in modern jargon
would be called ‘a corporate identity,’ and Cuthbert, not having been
actively involved in contemporary politics, had a better potential to be
developed into a such a truly pan-English saint than (say) kings Oswald
of Northumbria or Edmund of East Anglia, both of whom were firmly
rooted in the history of their respective peoples.”143 The latter’s cult
nevertheless invited appropriation on a grand scale; Edmund had been
killed by invaders, then remade into a martyr by a Continental scholar
with his own ties to the Benedictine Reform via the former archbishop
Dunstan. With such credentials as these, Edmund’s cult demanded
­attention; especially during a reign as problem ridden as Æthelred’s,
 Edmund, East Anglia, and England 199

the example of a king supposed to have given his life in imitation of

Christ could not be dismissed as a merely regional figure.
In translating the LSE into English, then, Ælfric outdid Abbo’s
­already considerable effort to draw Edmund out of his East Anglian
corner into national prominence. Indeed, Young argues that among
all the changes introduced to the Old English version of Abbo’s text,
“[m]ost significantly of all, Ælfric’s Passion explicitly portrays Edmund
as an English rather than an East Anglian saint,” and that “Ælfric seems
to have been more comfortable than Abbo with the idea of Edmund
as a universal saint for England.”144 Gretsch’s and Young’s divergent
perspectives both have much to commend them, though in my view
the former underestimates Ælfric’s efforts to salvage even Edmund as a
“pan-English saint,” while the latter plays down the discomfort ­Ælfric
apparently felt with Edmund’s regional pre-eminence. The OE Life
suppresses Abbo’s emphasis on East Anglia’s distinctness by implying
that the slain monarch was a first among equals rather than England’s
sole exemplar of royal holiness. East Anglia itself, no longer singled
out for divine favour, becomes a part restored to its uniformly blessed
whole. Adorning but not outshining the rest of England, the region pro-
duces a Christ-like king to edify all the Angelcynn.

Ælfric, auctoritas, Englishness

Ælfric’s SEKM is one of twenty-seven hagiographical works in the Lives

of Saints. Although it by no means denies the royalty of its protagonist,
it refers to him first as a saint – “Sancte Eadmunde” (SEKM, p. 43) –
and reserves the regal title initially for kings of all England. D
­ espite his
misgivings about Æthelred, Ælfric uses that monarch’s reign to ground
the narrative about Edmund in an English macro-history that subtends
the micro-history of East Anglia. His first sentence states that Abbo had
come from overseas “on Æþelredes cynincges dæge to Dunstane ærce-
bisceope þrim gearum ær þam þe he forðferde” (Ælfric, SEKM, p. 43;
“[i]n the time of King Æthelred … to Archbishop ­Dunstan, three years
before he died”: Ælfric, PSE, p. 97); Abbo had heard from Dunstan the
story of Edmund’s death just as the old sword-bearer had in turn told
it in King Æthelstan’s presence. Readers enter the Old English transla-
tion much as they would have entered the Latin Passio, proceeding past
the names and titles of dignitaries both royal and archiepiscopal who
had wielded far-ranging rather than merely local or regional power.
­According to Hugh Magennis, it is because Ælfric, like Abbo, “is pro-
moting a saint not universally acknowledged” that he “feels obliged
to provide more by way of authenticating detail than is normally the
200 Angles on a Kingdom

case with hagiographical texts,” “trac[ing] the line of transmission …

back, via several unimpeachable intermediaries, to the testimony of an
eye-witness who was close to Edmund himself.”145 To be sure, the extra
authentication builds upon what Ælfric already found in Abbo, who
also cited Archbishop Dunstan as dedicatee and King ­Æthelstan as a
vital link in the chain of oral testimony to Edmund’s death. The use
of authoritative figures to frame hagiographic narrative is a v ­ enerable
tack, deployed for example by Wulfstan of Winchester, who in the
twenty-seventh chapter of his Vita sancti Æthelwoldi celebrates the
recent spate of monastic foundation by invoking King Edgar, Arch-
bishop Dunstan, and Bishop Æthelwold as the triune force driving it.146
Large-scale monastic reform included inter alia the writing or rewriting
of saints’ Lives; institutional renovation and hagiographical production
alike promoted spiritual endeavour in an explicitly English cultural
context. Naming royal and religious leaders confirms the integrity of
the achievements being touted.
Having laid the ideological foundation of his narrative, Ælfric credits
the scholarly authority of his Latin auctor in a way that implies the differ-
ent cultural environments he and his predecessor inhabit. He acknowl-
edges that Abbo first wrote Edmund’s Passio; that he, Ælfric himself, has
translated it into English; and that “[s]e munuc þa, Abbo, binnan twam
gearum gewende ham to his mynstre and wearð sona to abbode geset on
þam ylcan mynstre” (Ælfric, SEKM, p. 43; “within two years the monk
Abbo returned home to his monastery and was straightway appointed
abbot in that very monastery”: Ælfric, PSE, p. 98). Ælfric thus contextu-
alizes his Life by referring to distinct spheres of influence: the English
king governs the island; the foreign scholar, his duties discharged, re-
turns to France as abbot of his own house. ­Abbo’s newly acquired au-
thority seems to fulfil the promise of his very name (Abbo/abbode) and
signals a degree of personal merit that might rub off on Ælfric too by
association.147 A subtext in the Old English rendering, however, is that
meritorious accomplishments should be improved upon, not merely
acknowledged as such. Just as Æthelred might benefit from reading
about an earlier king who had put Christ’s kingdom b ­ efore his own,
so too would Abbo’s LSE spread Edmund’s glory all the more widely
if it could be rendered into English and condensed.148 ­Furthermore, by
stating that Abbo returned home to his Frankish ­cloister, Ælfric tactfully
nudges his foreign auctor out of the picture, removing a Continental
competitor from the field of English writerly activity.
The Grammarian’s immediate audience, as mentioned above, com-
prised two powerful secular West Saxon patrons, Æthelweard and his
son Æthelmær. Yet the former, in his eponymous Chronicon, had written
 Edmund, East Anglia, and England 201

that in 870 “[a]duersus quos optauit bellum rex Eadmundus, breui

­spatio a quibus et interimitur ibi” (“King Eadmund decided on war
against them [i.e. the Danes], and after a brief interval he was killed by
them there [at Thetford].” Although Æthelweard decried the invaders
as barbari (“barbarians”),149 he did not depict Edmund as a martyr for
the faith; surely he would have noticed that Ælfric’s hagiographical Life
was taking liberties with the received account of the event, especially
because Æthelweard himself had been involved in peace negotiations
with viking invaders in 994.150 Ælfric, however, seems not to have wor-
ried that his translation from Abbo might have struck his patron as in-
accurate; he was, after all, trying to bring a merely regional king into
line with broader political and ecclesiastical concerns, such as nostal-
gia for the religious reforms undertaken during Edgar’s reign. Within
the agenda of Ælfric’s SEKM, those concerns meant that East Anglia
needed to look less distinct than in it did in Abbo’s original.
The vernacular historian knew, for example, that Edmund had not
been the only early English king to succumb to attack by “pagans.” In
the seventh century, the insatiable Penda had killed and mutilated the
Northumbrian king Oswald, who went on to become the subject of a
formidable hagiography in his own right, Bede “developing a ‘mirror
of princes’” out of stories of his pious life and posthumous miracles.151
­Ælfric praised both the Northumbrian and East Anglian royal “mar-
tyrs,” but not, as Gretsch points out, as fulsomely as he did Cuthbert
and Æthelthryth, whose cloistered lives shielded them from the regional
politics that made Edmund and Oswald more problematic cases.152
Edmund, having died more recently than Oswald and having been
killed by vikings, posed special difficulties for Ælfric. The East Anglian
king could inspire local resistance to foreign influence, a possibility ac-
ceptable if the foreigners were Scandinavians, but less so if they were
Cerdicings accompanied by Benedictines. According to John Hines, its
proximity to the North Sea enabled East Anglia to negotiate its own
alliances with incoming Scandinavian invaders, alliances that the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle admits threatened West Saxon security; for this
reason “it … mattered to the tenth-century West Saxon monarchy to
write East Anglian kingship out of the script of continuing history with
the hagiographical legend of a model Benedictine end for Eadmund,
last king of East Anglia, virgin martyr, and saint.”153 Susan Ridyard has
similarly observed that Abbo of Fleury had used Æthelstan’s name in
the Passio to shore up West Saxon efforts at “claiming and proclaiming
a right of legitimate succession to [Edmund’s] kingdom” at the expense
of any local heir to the East Anglian crown.154 Slipping in Æthelstan’s
name would have reminded Abbo’s audience that, over the course
202 Angles on a Kingdom

of the tenth century, England had achieved such cohesion as it pos-

sessed thanks to Cerdicing leadership. To survive new viking attacks,
it would need all the unity it could muster. That unity would not have
been served by Abbo’s claim that “orientalem ipsius insulae partem,
quae usque hodie lingua Anglorum Eastengle uocatur, sortito nomine
­Saxones sunt adepti” (LSE, p. 69; “the eastern part of the island, which,
even to this day, is called ‘Eastengle’ in the speech of the Angles, fell to
the lot of the Saxons”: Passion, p. 13). That East Anglia’s first settlers are
here being identified as Saxones rather than Angli has been noted pre-
viously, as has Abbo’s claim that Edmund himself was descended from
the Saxons.155 Francis Young claims that “by ascribing a Saxon identity
to Edmund he made him a kinsman of the kings of Wessex/England”
and “thereby legitimated West Saxon rule over East Anglia”;156 but if by
doing so Abbo augmented the prestige of the Saxones as a group and of
the Cerdicings as a stirps, he also highlighted the tenacity of the p ­ eople
living in East Anglia by suggesting that after the adventus Saxonum
they, the Angles, had taken eastern England for themselves, despite the
Saxons’ alleged prior linguistic claim to it. This awkwardness, with its
potential to legitimate East Anglian exceptionalism or at least remind
readers that the various “English” regna did not always have commen-
surate political agendas, is made to disappear in Ælfric’s OE Life.
Within the context of East Anglia’s evolving chorography, Ælfric’s
most significant changes to Abbo’s Latin come at the expense of East
Anglian particularism and appear at the very end of the text, after the
discussion of Edmund’s miracles.157 The Passio, following its own enu-
meration of those miracles, claimed that the spot where Edmund was
buried merited great reverence and had witnessed more miracles than
any other place in England.158 Ælfric neither doubts Edmund’s achieve-
ment nor contests Abbo’s praise of it as such but departs from his source
to correct its apparent underestimation of England’s treasury of holiness:

Nis Angelcynn bedæled Drihtnes halgena, þonne on Engla landa licgað

swilce halgan swylce þæs halga cyning, and Cuþberht se eadiga, and
Æþeldryð on Elig, and eac hire swustor, ansunde on lichaman, geleafan
to trymminge. Synd eac fela oðre on Angelcynne halgan þe fela wundra
wyrcað – swa swa hit wide is cuð – þam Ælmihtigan to lofe, þe hi on gely-
fdon. (Ælfric, SEKM, p. 58.)

(The English nation is not deprived of the Lord’s saints, since in England
lie such saints as this saintly king, and the blessed Cuthbert, and in Ely
Æthelthryth, and her sister also, incorrupt in body, for the confirmation of
the faith. There are also many other saints among the English who work
 Edmund, East Anglia, and England 203

many miracles – as is widely known – to the praise of the Almighty, in

whom they believed. [Ælfric, PSE, p. 102.])

It is not enough for Ælfric to say that England abounds in saints; he

­insists that England has not been bedæled (“deprived”) of them, his
choice of verb recalling the term used to characterize the vikings’ par-
titioning of East Anglia in the ASC entry for 870. Nothing – n ­ either
Scandinavian raiders nor Frankish hagiographers – will rob the
­
­Angelcynn of their justly won hoard of holy men and women. The
use of the OE word for “deprived” has a further function. Litotes or
­understatement, common in OE literature, is used here so that Ælfric
can avoid the unseemly act of bragging in a work that honours a king’s
supreme self-effacement. Having drawn from Abbo the inference that
saints are few and far between in England, he replies with a turn-of-
the-first-millennium form of “one-downmanship,” that “subtle, indi-
rect boasting – the s­ howing-off disguised as deprecation” that Kate Fox
sees in Ælfric’s modern compatriots.159
As the passage clearly indicates, however, the translator is earnest
in his claim. “The English dimension of Ælfric’s hagiography,” Hugh
Magennis points out, “is … apparent, and may be viewed as an aspect
of his larger commitment to the idea of a national English church.” Sur-
veying the Lives of Saints as a whole, Magennis observes that “[i]t is …
interesting that Ælfric’s English saints happen to represent different
parts of the country.”160 As Catherine Cubitt has shown, Ælfric repre-
sented a tenth-century Reformist tendency to diffuse English holiness
widely, to broaden what had been the merely local culting of saints:
“The tenth-century reformers drew upon this latent pool of sanc-
tity for their own ideological aims, asserting the moral continuity of
their reforming programme with the church of Cuthbert and Bede.”161
Imagined cohesion between past and present would not have been
strengthened by admissions of regional distinctiveness, and ­Abbo’s
East Anglia presented a potential source of fissiparity within Ælfric’s
Angelcynn. As Cubitt, Magennis, Young, and other scholars have un-
derscored, Ælfric’s insistence on the abundance of saints in England
speaks to his promotion of a “national” church. The Grammarian’s case
is weakened, however, by the East Anglian origins of three of the four
saints he adduces.162 Perhaps he sought to appropriate them as hon-
orary West Saxons, but his list of holies leaves the impression that the
Reform movement ostensibly sponsored by the descendants of Alfred
is dominated by East Anglian contributions.163
For reasons discussed earlier, especially his anachronistic endorse-
ment of royal overlordship,164 Abbo in the middle to late 980s would
204 Angles on a Kingdom

have had no natural inclination to stir up interregional strife by exalt-

ing East Anglia over the rest of England; to do so might have seemed
tantamount to undermining King Æthelred’s sovereignty. Yet in prais-
ing East Anglia as he did, he created a suitable landscape for a ruler
wielding a peculiarly tenth-century Frankish type of imperium whose
spiritual majesty compensated for its diminished territorial reach.
Even if it be dismissed as just one more rhetorical exercise in the Passio,
­Abbo’s spiritualized chorography of East Anglia inadvertently elevates
region over nation, in effect “depriving” England of her other saints.
When Ælfric approached Abbo’s Latin text with a view to translating
it into the vernacular, he sought to prevent the chief written repository
of information about St. Edmund from dimming the glory of other par-
agons of English holiness. No doubt he intended Æthelthryth and her
unnamed sister Seaxburh, notwithstanding their East Anglian links,
to represent the common cultural patrimony of the English church;
­indeed, Mechthild Gretsch argues that Ælfric had precisely this aim in
the Life of Æthelthryth, which he included in the Lives of Saints.165 If, as
Rebecca Pinner suggests, Abbo’s emphasis on Edmund’s healed body
(following the king’s decapitation) provided Bury St. Edmunds with
a means of scoring off its rival Ely, whose patron saint had not died a
violent death,166 Ælfric insists that the saints and shrines of England
should be seen as a homogeneous and harmonious ensemble.
James Campbell has discerned in the evolution of Edmund’s cult the
apparent derailing of “East Anglian particularism” in favour of royal
and national agendas:

One might have supposed that Edmund, a king of East Anglia martyred by
the Danes, would have been an ideal focus of East Anglian particularism,
should there have been such a thing. Nothing of the kind ­happened. …
The cults of the saints are nodes and links in a network which connected
royal power to local piety over most of England.167

By showcasing a treasury of saints who, as Magennis remarks, had hailed

from all over the country, Ælfric refrained from bestowing honour upon
individual provinciae; highlighting the “nodes and links” pinpointed by
Campbell was simply his way of weaving a textual tapestry represent-
ative of England as a whole. In part this strategy may have been an at-
tempt to resist the renewed danger of cultural fragmentation posed by a
reprisal of viking attacks, which had been launched only a few years be-
fore Abbo’s Ramsey sojourn and would increase in ferocity in the 990s.168
Pauline Stafford has gone so far as to say that notwithstanding these
attacks, the tenth-century Benedictine Reform succeeded so thoroughly
 Edmund, East Anglia, and England 205

that “England was experiencing a minor renaissance, in which Ælfric

and Wulfstan are only the most famous names.”169 Abbo’s LSE did not
seek to promote “East Anglian particularism” as a foundation for polit-
ical separatism; Ælfric’s translation seems designed to ensure that the
vernacular SEKM will have no such consequences, ­intended or other-
wise. By insisting that English sanctity was not confined to Edmund’s
kingdom, however, the English translator nearly legitimates the regional
exceptionalism he is trying to suppress, thanks to his association of
Æthelthryth and her (unnamed) sister Seaxburh with Ely.

The Jewish Other: Blessing in Disguise

A perhaps more promising way to distract readers from East Anglia’s

pre-eminence in holiness and to reduce any strain on English unity that
it might create would be to fashion an enemy, the Jews, against which
all the various Insular provinciae and gentes might unite. By spewing
antisemitism at the end of the Life, Ælfric descends gratuitously and
contemptibly into ethnic hatred:

Crist geswutelað mannum þurh his mæran halgan þæt he is Ælmihtig

God þe macað swilce wundra, þeah þe þa earman Iudei hine eallunga
wiðsocen, for þan þe hi synd awyrgede, swa swa hi wiscton him sylfum.
Ne beoð nane wundra geworhte æt heora byrgenum, for ðan þe hi ne ge-
lyfað on þone lifigendan Crist; ac Crist geswutelað mannum hwær se soða
geleafa is, þonne he swylce wundra wyrcð þurh his halgan wide geond
þas eorðan. Þæs him sy wuldor a mid his heofonlican Fæder and þam
Halgan Gaste. Amen. (Ælfric, SEKM, pp. 58–9)

(Through his glorious saints Christ makes clear to men that he who per-
forms such miracles is Almighty God, even though the wretched Jews
completely rejected him; wherefore they are damned, just as they wished
for themselves. There are no miracles performed at their graves, for they
do not believe in the living Christ; but Christ makes clear to men where
the true faith is, inasmuch as he performs such miracles through his saints
widely throughout this earth. Wherefore to him, with his heavenly Father
and the Holy Spirit, be glory for ever. Amen. [Ælfric, PSE, pp. 102–3])

Virulent though it is, this display of antisemitism participates in ­SEKM’s

moralistic and pedagogical program. As an expression of belief in the
reality and efficacy of miracles performed by God through Christian
saints, the aside is consistent with what Ælfric displays in his homily
on the Catholic faith, as Malcolm Godden has shown.170 Furthermore,
206 Angles on a Kingdom

as Carl Phelpstead explains, “[i]n comparing Edmund’s enemies to the

Jews Ælfric constructs a clear parallel between the king and his model,
strengthening the identification of Edmund with Christ by identifying
his enemies with the supposed enemies of Christ.”171 This interpreta-
tion is convincing; but it is just as plausible to argue that, by scapego-
ating in this manner, Ælfric is resorting to a red-herring tactic similar
to what may be present in Felix’s VSG. Specifically, he is attempting to
minimize any East Anglian exceptionalism that might be centred on the
locus sanctus of Edmund’s enshrined body.
Both Felix and Ælfric target marginalized groups as threats to “nor-
mative,” i.e. Christian English, societies. Whether or not Guthlac’s
spectral Britons recalled seventh- and eighth-century proto-Welsh raids
into Mercia, or perhaps even vestiges of an actual British population in
the Fenland, they also would have distracted Ælfwald from the more
irksome aspects of Mercian overlordship while rallying East Anglian
support around the Mercian royal house’s unassailable sponsorship of
Guthlac’s cult. It is significant that, in comparison to its Latin source,
Guthlac A is much less specific as to setting; perhaps its author, not
unlike Ælfric, believed that playing down regional particularism (and
thus avoiding local political issues) would better serve a Benedictine
Reform agenda.172 The Jews of SEKM bespeak an agenda roughly simi-
lar to Felix’s insofar as they, like the British-speaking demons, are used
to catalyse English cultural unity; distraction caused by a foreign com-
mon enemy (likely absent in real life)173 serves to allay any misgivings
about old rifts among “English” people. Ælfric conjures up that unity
while excising Abbo’s praise of East Anglia’s unusual virtues; the tack
resembles in a general way Guthlac A’s strategy of replacing regional
consciousness with a cosmic perspective.
In suggesting that the Jews in SEKM function more or less like the
demons in Felix’s VSG, that is, as red herrings, I do not mean to practise
the “interpretive supersession” that Elisa Narin van Court has detected
in some scholarly readings of the fourteenth-century Siege of Jerusalem
and the Croxton Play of the Sacrament. In her view, this form of inter-
pretation errs by treating the Jews in those texts as surrogates for other
groups, such as Lollards.174 In the case of SEKM, Ælfric clearly intended
the Jews to represent themselves, or rather to represent themselves as he
perceived them, as the collective embodiment of what he thought Jew-
ish culture might signify and offer to his readers: the basis for a unity
that was otherwise fragile. By effacing or distorting Jewish identities,
he indulges in hagiographical triumphalism, the depiction of an entire
people in terms of their alleged rejection of Christ. He then harnesses
 Edmund, East Anglia, and England 207

that factitious ethnic attribution to his Reform-inflected project of lit-

erary nation-building. Demonized as spiritual foes yet constructed as
proofs of Christian holiness on a national scale, the Jews enter SEKM as
England’s blessing in disguise.
This exploitative ethnography has been ably illuminated by Andrew
Scheil in his analysis of other Ælfrician texts:

Honoured yet derided, repudiated yet ever-present, external yet internal,

the Jews embody a rhetorical effect of Christian identity. By repudiating
Judaism, defining it as lack, Christianity inexorably yokes itself into a tor-
mented relationship with its sibling. This ambivalence gives the Jews a
curious ideological mobility, a capacity to be deployed as sheer rhetoric in
the flux of everyday life. The anti-Judaism of Ælfric’s homily Maccabees in
the Lives of Saints exemplifies this capacity for the Christian understanding
of the Jews to function as a mobile, all-purpose political signifier in specific
historical circumstances.175

Ælfric’s contribution to fashioning the Jews as the “rhetorical effect

of Christian identity” is paralleled by comments in his sermon on the
Assumption that in effect, according to Adrienne Williams Boyarin,
reduce a living people to the dead language of the Hebrew Bible.176
SEKM goes further by ignoring any self-expressed cultural identity
for the Jews, substituting for it an identity attributed by Ælfric: wilful
self-damnation, a supposed defining trait being derived from Matthew
27:25.177 Erased in life, the Jews are silenced even in death, their tombs
made out to be antithetical to miracles.178 In order, then, to under-
score the plenitude of English Christian holiness – or rather, the extent
to which England has not been “bedæled Drihtnes halgena” – Ælfric
deprives the Jews of any “miracles” even as he accuses them of hav-
ing deprived themselves of all hope of salvation. With this distraction
technique East Anglia’s uniqueness is forgotten; suppressed too is the
region’s potential to remind tenth- and early eleventh-century English
readers of the nation’s sometimes conflicting internal identities.
No Jews had barged in on Ælfric from the pages of Abbo’s Passio.
That they should have been thought to pose any threat at all to the
“imagined community” of Christian England is the fiction maintained
by the OE Life of St. Edmund, and this fiction obscures abiding dan-
gers to that community presented by its constituent English regions.
By fabricating a Jewish enemy whose essence is “lack” (as Scheil points
out) because their holy places are judged unable to compete with
Christian shrines in the generation of sacred power, Ælfric skirted the
208 Angles on a Kingdom

perennial problem posed by bellicose yet Christian Danes, particularly

those s­ ettled in East Anglia who might offer assistance to new waves of
­Scandinavian invaders making the south-east their first port of call.179
The fissiparity of “England” into numerous partes was, after all,
only gradually being arrested and reversed in the late tenth century.
In the Old English translation of Bede’s HE, for example, their particu-
lar identities are so much more prevalent than in Bede’s Latin original
that Sharon Rowley has argued that “the OEHE is much more likely
to atomize than generalize when it comes to naming political or tribal
affiliations.”180 Insofar as the Angelcynn assumes singular cohesion in
SEKM, it is because Ælfric hopes that the Jewish outliers to the “true”
faith will inspire uniform censure in East Anglian, Mercian, and West
Saxon alike. According to Scheil, for Ælfric and his tenth-century con-
temporaries “the Jews became not only a surpassed people supplanted
by the ‘New Israel’ [i.e. the English themselves] and a dark repository
of Christian anxieties, but also a rhetorical cipher, a political tool used
to promote the visions of the Benedictine reform.”181 As a feature of
SEKM, antisemitism is used further to unite “England” against the
­regional particularism that Ælfric found in Abbo.

Conclusion

The Passio sancti Eadmundi shows its Frankish author cleaving to his
animosity towards Scandinavians as if hostilities had persisted unbro-
ken since 869, and as if the trauma of foreign conquest had remained as
fresh in the minds of Abbo and his audience as it had been for ­Edmund’s
sword-bearer. Nothing in the LSE reminds readers that a frið (however
short lived and insincere it may have been) had stabilized, if only tem-
porarily, relations between Alfred’s English subjects and Guthrum’s
Danes; that “[t]he kingdom of St. Edmund had passed into Danish but
not into heathen hands”;182 or that subsequent assimilation had gone
some way towards bridging the cultural divide imagined by some an-
nalists at the West Saxon court to be unbridgeable.183 The text’s vitriol
responds to contemporary realities, specifically to the “second wave” of
Scandinavian attacks that had begun only a few years before Abbo ar-
rived at Ramsey. By associating East Anglia with Edmund’s attributed
holiness, the LSE prepares the region for new spiritual battles it soon
would need to fight if the viking armies that had ravaged Southampton,
Thanet, Cheshire, and the Devon and Welsh coasts in 980–1 should turn
eastward.184 Ælfric, born and raised in England and equipped with his
own contacts within the Benedictine Reform movement, plays down
the Scandinavian menace because he knows better than Abbo that, by
 Edmund, East Anglia, and England 209

the late tenth century, a fine line separated “Dane” from “English.”185
For the Grammaticus the real spiritual war that needed to be fought was
one against Jews, a war that, from his perspective, was already being
won by Christians.
Although Cerdicing power had made inroads into East Anglia by
the early tenth century, the district’s persistent idiosyncrasies and long-
standing Anglo-Scandinavian amalgamation made the region seem just
outré enough to aggravate existing dread of new attacks from across the
North Sea. Politically, as Lucy Marten has shown, East Anglia ­remained
distinct until at least Cnut’s reign;186 though more a duchy than a king-
dom, it occupied a conceptual middle ground between such polities,
having grown during the ealdormanries of the powerful Æthelstan
“Half-King” and his son Æthelwine. Abbo does not term this virtual
half-kingdom a media provincia; for him it is a provincia, and although
both he and Ælfric may have understood that word to signify nothing
more than “province,” Ælfric followed his Latin auctor in acknowledg-
ing that Edmund had been a ruler in his own right, an Eastengla cynincg
(Ælfric, SEKM, p. 43; “King of East Anglia”: Ælfric, PSE, p. 98). To be
sure, the monk of Eynsham maintained that the “true home [of the
English was] heaven” rather than England itself,187 yet he also ­affirmed
a broadly English foundation for Edmund’s sanctification as a way
of demonstrating the value of local cults to the universal church. To
­establish that foundation more firmly, he resorted to demonization – as
Bede, Felix, Abbo, and the annalists of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle had
done before him – as a way of curbing East Anglia’s potential to disrupt
cohesion within the wider imagined kingdom of England.
 Conclusion

In his recent fine book, Francis Young proposes St. Edmund as a “foun-
dation on which an English national identity can be rebuilt” follow-
ing Britain’s departure from the European Union.1 His study proves
the ongoing vitality of Edmund’s legacy and the amenability of the
king’s cult to a dazzling array of cultural and political needs.2 Young
convincingly demonstrates the Englishness of Edmund and of East
­Anglia, and if on occasion his partisanship makes the region stand in
for the nation in a way reminiscent of what Richard Morris describes
as ­nineteenth-century English historiography’s “tendency to expect
­local history to be national history in microcosm,”3 it also confirms that
no region is an island: to explore any discrete area is by definition to
ponder the bridges, literal or symbolic, connecting it to its surround-
ings. Moreover, far from being peculiar to the modern period, this
­necessarily dual perspective of chorography, which glances at part and
whole together, informs Abbo of Fleury’s Passio sancti Eadmundi (LSE)
and ­Ælfric of Eynsham’s Life of St. Edmund, King and Martyr (SEKM).
In their divergent ways, those hagiographical works make the local
­answerable to a programmatic concept of the national and vice versa.
The present book, insofar as it seeks to reconstruct certain aspects
of early English geographical thought, is liable to the charge of what
Emily Thornbury identifies as the historian’s “imaginative sympathy.”4
I have tried to address this risk by not treating early East Anglia as es-
sentially a mini-England but instead approaching it as a self-contained
construct whose textual identities, though (in part) defined by writers
from elsewhere, were not therefore reduced wholly to local particular-
izations of “Englishness.” It has sometimes been challenging to dis-
tinguish between “East Anglian” and “English” as these two concepts
emerge from the writings of the period. In his classic study Space and
Place, Yi-Fu Tuan touches on this general problem, though in a different
 Conclusion 211

context, when he remarks on one hand that “[t]he part may be essen-
tial to the functioning of the whole, but the part is not the whole in
miniature and in essence,” yet on the other hand, and in his very next
sentence, concedes that “[i]n mythical thought the part can symbolize
the whole and have its full potency.”5 As represented in early texts, the
“part” of the East Anglian provincia oscillated between perfecting and
threatening the English “whole.”
As was pointed out in the Introduction, Roy Rainbird Clarke b ­ elieved
that East Anglia had long had more in common with the Continent than
with the rest of England; nevertheless, the Mercians, West ­Saxons, and
Northumbrians lived close enough to the East Angles (and, later, to the
Anglo-Scandinavian East Anglians) to tap into the region’s cultural
capital at strategically opportune moments. The East Angles some-
times reciprocated, as Ælfwald’s interest in the Mercian Guthlac shows.
Regional and supraregional identities co-existed. Bede famously
­
claimed individual provinciae as parts of a common gens Anglorum de-
spite their regnal differences and their occasional mutual animosities.
Illustrious East Anglian personages were likewise appropriated within
larger geopolitical causes once the English nation or church had been
asserted to exist and had subsequently demanded ideological uniform-
ity. The accounts in the Historia ecclesiastica (HE) of Rædwald and his
queen, of Æthelthryth, of Bishop Felix, and of Fursey were diverse in
origin but were given their final shape within Bede’s agenda. His attri-
bution of identities was made possible by a dialogue of sorts between
local information and external synthesis, though in the last analysis
the dialogue was moderated by Bede himself as the agent of the latter.
­Pervia (“accessible”), we recall, is the word Abbo of Fleury later used to
describe the Fenland portion of Edmund’s realm;6 the adjective i­ mplies
simultaneously the presence of a barrier tangible enough to be passed
through and the reality of the barrier as a thing separating travellers
from some ulterior destination. The word speaks to the broader iden-
tities that East Anglia has long possessed, for at least as long as peo-
ple have been writing about it and certainly longer than the period in
which kings governed it. To return to Yi-Fu Tuan: “landscape is per-
sonal and tribal history made visible.”7 Although Tuan has in mind the
relationship between Indigenous societies and their territories, the texts
surveyed in the present book likewise testify to, and shaped in their
own times, a dynamic bond between peoples, texts, and land.
The impulse to claim regional identities for wide English consump-
tion persisted long after the ages of Rædwald, Æthelthryth, Guthlac,
Æthelberht, and Edmund. Late eleventh- and twelfth-century hagiog-
raphy takes us beyond this book’s temporal limits, but a glance at it is
212 Conclusion

necessary to disclose ongoing efforts to incorporate East Anglian and

Middle Anglian saints’ cults into a pan-English church. As Edmund
is the royal personage most often associated with the region’s history,
the following short foray beyond the period covered in this book will
­restrict itself to him.
The much-studied post-Conquest boom in the slain king’s hagiogra-
phy is only one indication that Ælfric had not had the last word about
East Anglia’s place within England. Many scholars have explored
the ways in which Herman the Archdeacon in the 1090s depicted
­Edmund’s power to defend Bury Abbey’s privileges against powerful
post-Conquest East Anglian landowners and bishops.8 Describing such
attributed power required, as always, selective emphasis; to this end
Herman seems to have laid greater stress on Edmund’s sanctity than on
his royalty, perhaps because the saint had proved unable or unwilling
to protect his kingdom consistently from foreign aggression.9 In gather-
ing stories of Edmund’s miracles, Herman contributed to the ongoing
process of defining the place of East Anglia, as in the following passage:

Qui regioni Est Engle cui fuerat quasi eptarcha, patrocinator permanens
cum Dei gratia, suffragari non destitit circum circa, apud omnipotentem
promerens ut credimus, nullum post se preter Deum successorem in illis
partibus. Partiebatur enim Anglia tunc temporis regum plurium regimine,
sed acciderat in Westsexe maioritas regiminis cuidam Edered nomine[.]

(Remaining, by God’s grace, the defender of East Anglia (to which he had
been a sort of heptarch), Edmund provided unceasing support all over
that region. For we believe he merited this privilege from the Almighty:
that none other than God should succeed him in those parts. For England
at that time was divided under the rule of many kings, the lion’s share
having fallen to one called Æthelred in Wessex.)10

Herman’s creative use of royal titles suggests a desire both to multiply

Edmund’s roles within East Anglia and to obfuscate the kind of gov-
ernance those roles might connote. The passage implies not so much a
rejection as a diminishment of Edmund’s “regnal” regality, a restriction
of it to what is now being referred to as a regio. From a post-Conquest
perspective, even the word provincia, which had already dwindled in
connotative reach when Abbo used it in the late tenth century, no longer
seems appropriate to East Anglia’s status. Nevertheless, Herman ac-
cords his protagonist a new title, eptarcha, which Tom Licence identifies
as “a neologism” and as “the earliest known reference to the Heptarchy,
as it was later called: the sevenfold division of English kingdoms.”11
 Conclusion 213

Herman’s praise is effusive, especially his assertion that after his death
Edmund had no successor and therefore no patrocinator except God,
as if the client-kings after 869, Guthrum after 880, and subsequent An-
glo-Scandinavian rulers of East Anglia had never existed.
Yet as exceptional as Edmund is made to look in this passage, his
kingship seems paradoxically devalued by the historical connotation
and almost archival “feel” of the word eptarcha, despite its newness on
the linguistic scene. Such impressions are strengthened by Herman’s
aside that in Edmund’s day, i.e. in the late ninth century, there had been
“many kings,” the implication being that kingship itself in the distant
past had been understood to mean something different from what it
meant in Herman’s England; in bygone days royal status had been far
more commonplace. Though not seriously depleted by the hagiogra-
pher’s aside, the “fund of prestige” that Susan Reynolds discerns as
a unique attribute of royal status12 loses some of its value because of
it. Unlike God’s regality, which inhered uniformly “in illis partibus”
(“in those parts”), Edmund’s own power is both circumscribed by the
fact of royal surplus and dispersed by the proliferation of alternative
titles such as eptarcha and patrocinator.
Even as Herman’s Miracula downgrades Edmund’s “national” stat-
ure, it bolsters the bond between the disembodied martyr-king and
his land, especially Bury Abbey. When the Scandinavian King Sweyn
(r. 1013–14) was persecuting the Bury sacrist Aelwine, Edmund is said
to have offered succour to the latter while he was sleeping: “martyr
adest pretiosus procurator eius ac dictator uie ipsius, alleuians eum
ponderis mestitia” (“the martyr appears, his precious guide who directs
his footsteps, and relieves his heavy heart”).13 The wording attributes
a tenderness to Edmund that underscores his ongoing if posthumous
agency within his domains; striking is the note of personal intimacy in
his bond with the Bury sacrist. Tom Licence sees titles such as eptarcha,
patrocinator, procurator, and dictator as evidence that “[l]ike no hagiogra-
pher in England before him, Herman presented his saint as the heir and
patron of a region,” “a sort of regional, heavenly heptarch.”14 I agree
with this view, despite the titles’ cumulative effect of rendering ambig-
uous the idea of the regio as an administrative entity.
This ambiguity is reflected in the different emphases that scholars
perceive in Herman’s Miracula, though the underlying consensus is
that some kind of region-vs.-nation tension between East Anglia and
England persisted into the post-Conquest era despite having under-
gone major changes since Bede’s time, when the gens Anglorum was a
by-product of the Northumbrian scholar’s vision of a unified English
church. Susan Ridyard and Rebecca Pinner have shown that Herman
214 Conclusion

and his fellow Bury monks downplayed Edmund’s regional impor-

tance in favour of his Englishness and his links to subsequent English
rulers.15 Simon ­Yarrow instead discerns the continued usefulness of re-
gional identities to Bury Abbey even in the late eleventh century: “When
taken up by Hermann in the De miraculis, the subsequent history of the
saint’s cult sustains the idea of St. Edmund as inhabiting a pivotal po-
sition ­between East Anglia as a discrete political entity and those out-
siders seeking to consolidate their authority over it.”16 It can be difficult
to define what that “pivotal position” was as Herman characterized it
near the end of the eleventh century. Ridyard points out that although
his posthumous revenge against the intrusive King Sweyn was meant
to stress “the political dominance and consequent inviolability within
East Anglia of the abbey of Bury St. Edmunds,” nevertheless “[t]he
Bury monks … did not press the point too far. A regional protector
was always useful, but a separatist saint might be self-defeating.”17
Yet the separatism that may have been “self-defeating” from Herman’s
perspective had contributed earlier to a provincia-wide process of
self-promotion and even self-defence when Guthrum’s successor in the
890s minted the St. Edmund memorial pennies and halfpennies. A cen-
tury later Ælfric may have perceived the afterlife of that separatism in
Abbo’s LSE and, deeming it dangerous, eliminated all trace of it in his
vernacular translation. For the Eastængle and the West Saxons between
the late ninth and late tenth centuries, a “separatist saint” could serve
as a banner heralding very real regional identities.
This is not the place to settle the debate over whether, a century
beyond Ælfric’s time, Herman the Archdeacon simply revived the
regional or merely asserted the national identity of Edmund’s cult. It
must suffice here to say that, several decades after the Norman Con-
quest, writers were still tapping into Edmund’s “delayed legacy”18
and, in the process, trying to achieve chorographic equilibrium for East
­Anglia, a process that entailed using local mythomoteurs to empower
the region without threatening its vital conceptual and political bond
with the nation.19 England would become more cohesive (though far
from happily so) on the eve of the twelfth century than it had been at
the turn of the tenth or even the eleventh; it is undeniable that the East
Anglian part eventually came to be fitted within that increasingly uni-
fied English whole. Nevertheless, what Sir Henry Clifford Darby wrote
in 1934, with regard to the region in the seventh and eighth centuries,
applies to East Anglia in the later pre-Conquest centuries as well and
could practically stand as an epigram for this entire book: “The old ties
of its people,” he observed, “were replaced by wider allegiances. Yet
 Conclusion 215

still it retained a certain measure of its old life.”20 Angles on a Kingdom

has attempted to understand the extent to which writers from Bede
to ­Ælfric responded to, represented, and repurposed that “old life” to
make it amenable to “wider allegiances,” in the negotiations of which
East ­Anglia sometimes but not always participated willingly.21
In the thirteen years or so that I have spent planning, researching,
writing, and at times cursing this book, I have been haunted period-
ically by an image more tangible than any dispossessed demon from
Crowland or even the redoubtable Black Shuck.22 The image is that
of Helen Cam urbanely disembowelling the American historian Carl
Stephenson’s Pirenne-esque hypothesis on the origins of the city of
Cambridge.23 It is not so much the specific details of her critique that
have given me pause as her critique’s general moralitas, quite simply
that “scholars from another country are at a special disadvantage.”24
Although the present book is a study of other books and not of place as
such, and although its writing has been facilitated by technological aids
undreamt of in the 1930s, it is still an outsider’s study. Moreover, and
perhaps more problematically, it is an attempt at interdisciplinarity by a
person trained in one discipline only, the study of literature. These facts
have doubtless contributed to shortcomings in the book that will be-
come clear to me only in retrospect.25 For now, by way of apologia I can
only repeat that I have sought to capture, synthesize, and make sense
of ancient perceptions of a region rather than looking to make momen-
tous discoveries about the region itself, a task best left to others. I have
taken heart from the chorographic transports of W.G. Hoskins, who de-
scribed thus his meditations on the one-inch Ordnance Survey maps of
the Wash coasts of Lincolnshire and Norfolk: “One dissects such a map
mentally, piece by piece, and in doing so learns a good deal of local his-
tory, whether or not one knows the country itself.”26 My own project has
taught me much about East Anglia itself, especially about its mediation
through texts that refract space and place in highly creative ways.
Even as a study of perceptions, however, the present book cannot
pretend to offer a complete picture of its subject. Selectivity having
guided my perambulations, the sense of the whole is likely to have
suffered distortion. British expatriate novelist Tim Parks, who has
written unforgettably about Italy’s Veneto region, reflects on this risk
in his a­ utobiographical narrative Italian Neighbours; in his preface he
likens his book to “the gesture … of a busy but inexpert fellow dash-
ing about the narrow confines of his territory waving a net at the end
of a long stick,” more specifically “a will-o’-the-wisp net,” whose con-
tents never yield quite as much as what the chase itself promised.27
216 Conclusion

Given the fenny and marshy character of some parts of East Anglia,
the i­ gnis fatuus analogy befits the subject of the present monograph, for
the pinpoints of regional awareness briefly flickering across the pages
of the authors surveyed here have lured me in many different direc-
tions: Bede’s HE with its accounts of a king’s religious syncretism, his
successors’ widespread missionary labours, and a Fenland abbess’s
self-abasing spirituality; ­Felix’s Vita sancti Guthlaci (VSG) with its tanta-
lizing hints of regnal ­rivalry between the East Angles and the ­Mercians;
the Alfred-Guthrum Treaty (AGT) and the various recensions of the
­Anglo-Saxon ­Chronicle (ASC) with their suggestions of alternating
­viking and West Saxon e­ fforts to control the Eastængle; and finally Abbo
of Fleury’s and ­Ælfric of ­Eynsham’s hagiographies of Edmund with
their compatible but competing reflections on that king’s holiness and
its implications for the region’s place within the English church.
In making sense of the contents of my own “will-o’-the-wisp net,”
I have tried to resist the temptation to mount East Anglia’s early lit-
erary identities within a too-rigid framework that ignores distinct
authorial purposes and audience expectations. Nevertheless, I have
hazarded to suggest that various texts responded variously to the
region’s cultural ambiguities and did so from the vantage points of
would-be architects of order – kings or monks, historians or hagiog-
raphers – who sought to contain and correct East Anglia’s destabiliz-
ing potential. In his recent wide-ranging book The English and Their
­History, Robert Tombs has said that, between the age of Bede and the
period of the Scandinavian invasions, England’s wider self-perception
crystallized under the pressure of perils introduced from without: “If
English identity began as a religious concept, it took political form
in response to a deadly external threat, which overturned the polit-
ical structures of the island and the near Continent: the Vikings.”28
­Sometimes, however, the threat was an internal one emanating from
East Anglia. Rædwald’s perceived syncretism threatened Bede’s
­vision of English Christian orthodoxy as no other imperium-wielder
had done. Ælfwald’s commissioning of a Vita of St. ­Guthlac risked
upsetting ­political stability in the Fens by encroaching on a cult pro-
tected by the Mercian king Æthelbald, whom Felix suggestively styles
“principem populorum” (“chief over the peoples”; ed. Colgrave, §49,
pp. 148–9]. Scandinavian hergas (“armies”) may have been regarded in
Wessex as strange and intractable, but after 869 they dwelled within
the confines of Britannia. Even the West Saxon nobleman Æthelwold
was regarded as a “king of the pagans” by the St. Neot’s Chronicler
because he had joined forces with them.
 Conclusion 217

In its relationships with the rest of England, early East Anglia gave
rise to textual representations that sometimes proffer binaristic eth-
nographies, at other times begrudge continuities. Like the vikings as
a whole in James Earl’s analysis,29 the Eastængle known to Alfred and
his successors defied neat categorization; for although the Scandina-
vian East Anglian elite originally embodied a “deadly external threat”
to Wessex (to borrow Tombs’s phrase), after Guthrum’s baptism they
made a show – as many scholars have noted – of embracing the same
Christian religion and the same cult of King Edmund that were hon-
oured by the West Saxons, even while keeping their options open when
dealing with newly arriving Scandinavian attackers. Commentators on
East Anglian identities had increasingly to reckon with complex ad-
mixtures of ethnicities, political allegiances, and monastic loyalties that
blurred boundaries between “us” and “them.”
East Anglia, then, emerges from this book as a region simultaneously
distinct and fissiparous, characterized by discrete attributions of piety
or impiety, holiness or strangeness, yet also prone to invasion from
without as well as dissolution from within. In speaking meaningfully
of an East Anglia whose early character could comprise seemingly op-
posed tendencies, specifically Romano-Frankish and Scandinavian in-
fluences, Tom Williamson has shrewdly refused to align the region’s
identities with one cultural pole or the other but rather insists that
the whole should be regarded as distinct in its way of amalgamating
these influences.30 In an early phase of its existence the gens Orienta-
lium Anglorum may have formed by overcoming hostilities amongst
its constituent folk-groups in what are now Norfolk, Suffolk, and east-
ern Cambridgeshire; such political cohesion as there was arose either
by force or by diplomacy. It may well be that East Anglia’s crowning
trait throughout and beyond the early English period was its knack
for survival and adaptation, its ability to persist through internal con-
tradictions and foreign confrontations to maintain hybrid identities.
Texts from the mid-eighth to the very late tenth century show the re-
gion’s resistance to that utter absorption by other powers which, in ret-
rospect, sometimes looks to have been an all but inevitable feature of
that “fiercely contested knock-out competition” among early polities
that has been so evocatively described by Steven Bassett.31 Although
none of the writers discussed in this book are likely to have believed in
the existence of a literal genius loci, their various chorographies at least
tacitly credit the spirited resilience of East Anglia. The kingdom had
typically lain at some remove from the various centres of early English
political authority that had sprung up between the age of Æthelberht
218 Conclusion

of Kent and the time of Æthelred “Unræd”; yet the ancient provincia
remained indispensable to that authority’s claims to wield control over
“England,” itself a construct always in need of elaboration. Given the
region’s strategic importance, writers from Bede to at least Ælfric found
it imperative to fashion a place for East Anglia, in the process defin-
ing it as both bane and boon, with the potential either to make or to
­unmake the Angelcynn.
 Notes

Introduction

1 One thinks of Amanda Prynne’s line “Very flat, Norfolk” in Coward’s

­Private Lives, act I, p. 30; but see Dutt, Highways, pp. 2–3; Tennyson, Suffolk
Scene, passim; Seymour, Companion Guide, p. 9; Muir, “Landscapes,” p. 36;
Whiteman and Talbot, East Anglia, pp. 10–11; Dymond, Norfolk Landscape,
pp. 24–5; Christopher Taylor, Cambridgeshire Landscape, pp. 21–2; Parker,
Men; Barkham, “This Sinking Isle.” The demands of village life are
­illustrated in Blythe, Akenfield; Chamberlain, Fenwomen; and Craig Taylor,
Return. J. Page lyrically surveys a large body of writings about the region
in “Is There an East Anglian Literature?”
2 Bradbury, “Loving Norfolk,” p. 124; compare Young, Edmund, p. 19;
­Pestell, “Kingdom” (on East Anglia as “an almost island-like territory
itself on England’s east coast”).
3 The Norfolk-Suffolk distinction is explored fully by Williamson, “East
Anglia’s Character,” pp. 47–8, 57–62, and will be revisited later.
4 Blythe, Akenfield, p. 111.
5 “Even in the nineteenth century, ‘The Shires’ beyond were often regarded
with suspicion by the folk of Norfolk and Suffolk”: Ravensdale and Muir,
East Anglian Landscapes, p. 14.
6 See e.g. Williamson, Sutton Hoo, esp. pp. 132–41, and the various contri-
butions to Bates and Liddiard, East Anglia.
7 The phrase “Anglo-Saxon” continues to be used by institutions aiming
at wide audiences, for example by the British Library during its major
exhibit “Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War” (19 October 2018–
19 February 2019). Yet when the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists
decided in November 2019 to change its name to the International Society
for the Study of Early Medieval England, it did so amidst far-reaching
and well-substantiated scholarly discussion. Important interventions
220 Notes to pages 4–7

include Remein, “ISAS”; Miyashiro, “Decolonizing”; Rambaran-Olm,

“Anglo-Saxon Studies”; Karkov, “Post ‘Anglo-Saxon’ Melancholia”;
Dockray-Miller, “Massachusetts Medievalist”; Wilton, “What Do We
Mean…?” I am grateful to an anonymous reader for recommending these
contributions, to which should be added Ellard’s Anglo-Saxon(ist) Pasts.
Also relevant are Townsend’s adoption of the word Englisc (“­Cultural
Difference,” esp. p. 71, n. 12); Harland’s interrogation of the term
“Germanic” (“Memories,” p. 966; see below, n. 95); and now Karkov’s
analysis, in Imagining, of the proto-imperialistic, utopian self-imaging
­embedded in Alfredian and later ideas of the “Anglo-Saxon” people.
8 Geoffrey of Wells, De infantia, ed. and trans. Hervey, pp. 136–7. The issue
of the antiquity of Norfolk and Suffolk is considered below and in n. 126.
9 M. Taylor, Edmund, p. 94, includes Essex in East Anglia, but Hart,
Danelaw, p. 562, trenchantly excludes it. Wareham, Lords, p. 6, groups
­Essex, Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdonshire with Norfolk and ­Suffolk
but omits Lincolnshire. For nuanced pronouncements, see Yorke, Kings,
p. 65; Carver, “Sutton Hoo,” pp. 497–8; Williamson, “East ­Anglia’s
­Character,” pp. 60–1; Ravensdale and Muir, East Anglian ­Landscapes,
p. 9. Liddiard acknowledges the broader definition but cautions
that the ­medieval region was limited chiefly to Norfolk and Suffolk:
“­Introduction,” p. 8. On Bede’s inclusion of Ely, see below, chap. 2,
­especially the section “Why Ely?”, and Pestell, “Kingdom,” p. 193. When
referring to the Fens/Fenland, I generally capitalize the initial letter F, as
do R.R. Clarke (East Anglia) and Rackham (History).
10 E.g., Ravensdale and Muir, East Anglian Landscapes, p. 9; Liddiard,
“­Introduction,” p. 8; Hines, “Origins,” p. 16; Williamson, “East Anglia’s
Character,” p. 44; Heslop and Thøfner, “Introduction,” pp. 1–4; Carver,
“Sutton Hoo,” p. 499; M. Taylor, Edmund, pp. 93–4.
11 I derive the will-o’-the-wisp analogy from Parks’s Italian Neighbours
(“­Author’s Note”) and return to it in the Conclusion.
12 I use “viking” rather than “Viking,” following Hadley, “Cockle,” p. 111,
n. 2; Abels, “Alfred,” p. 195, n. 1; McLeod, Beginning, pp. 7–9 (who prefers
“Scandinavian”); and Downham, “Viking Ethnicities,” p. 1.
13 Chapter 4, below, differentiates between textual representations of
­Scandinavian East Anglia and of Scandinavian Northumbria in the late
ninth and early tenth centuries. I have not been able to consult Capper’s
unpublished master’s thesis “Insights,” but her summary reflections on it
in her “Practical Implications” align some of its findings with those of Pes-
tell, Landscapes, and indicate that “[her] project investigated how aspects
of regional written and material culture, for example material artefacts,
economic ties and religious cults, reflect multiple identities, and how they
 Notes to pages 7–8 221

were used in accommodation to negotiate the acceptance or resistance of

outside identities at a regional level” (“Practical I­ mplications,” p. 13).
14 Life of St. Æthelwold, ed. Lapidge and Winterbottom, pp. 38–9. For the
date 996, see Lapidge and Winterbottom’s introduction, p. xvi.
15 Hines, “Becoming,” p. 49, emphasis in original. Gillingham (English,
pp. 139–40) considers “not only self-identification but also identification
by others” in references to English crusaders in the Annales Sancti Disi-
bodi. See too Bassett, “In Search,” p. 22. For Härke (“Ethnogenesis,” p. 4),
“ethnicity is not a given, but a flexible and situational concept; e­ thnicity
is ‘in the heart,’ not ‘in the blood.’” For the reference to Härke’s paper I
am indebted to Hartmann, “Monument Reuse,” p. 260, n. 85.
16 Wood, Merovingian North Sea, p. 4.
17 Strohm, Theory, p. 216, n. 12, engaging with the thought of Fredric
Jameson and Robert Young. I have also been guided by compatible
­pronouncements in Le Goff, Medieval Imagination, pp. 107–31; Stock, Impli-
cations, e.g. p. 89; Stock, Listening, p. 29; and N.Z. Davis, Fiction, pp. 3–5.
18 Hiatt, “Beowulf,” pp. 18–19 (who also discusses the word’s etymology);
Rohl, “Chorographic Tradition,” pp. 1–2. See too Helgerson, Forms,
pp. 107–47 and passim. Rohl cites Helgerson and many other scholars who
have revived the term. The related term “chorology” is “the study of the
areal or habitat differentiation of the earth” (Sauer, “Morphology,” p. 316).
19 Hiatt, “Beowulf”; Howe, “Angle” and Writing; Michelet, Creation;
Lavezzo, Angels, esp. pp. 27–45; Discenza, Inhabited Spaces. See too
­Harvey, Maps. The title of the present book was inspired by the titles of
Howe’s “Angle” and Lavezzo’s Angels.
20 With regard to the phrase “social map”: “especially if a broad definition
of ‘map’ is allowed, including purely verbal maps[,] it is undeniable that
from the ‘age of Bede,’ and certainly by the tenth and eleventh centuries,
a culture existed in which both global and local mapping practices were
known within educated circles”: Hiatt, “Beowulf,” p. 21.
21 K. Davis, “National Writing,” p. 618. Davis uses this phrase to charac-
terize Patrick Wormald’s tracing of English self-consciousness to Bedan
and papal notions of a gens Anglorum (“English people”); Davis agrees
with and furthers Wormald’s argument that King Alfred’s ­invocation
of Angelcynn as a unified place and people was at odds with the ­actual
­heterogeneity of the various English kingdoms. See also Karkov,
­Imagining, pp. 1–49, 56.
22 S. Reynolds prefers “regnal” to “national” to emphasize the elite social
classes that often confront historians of early medieval “national iden-
tity” (Kingdoms, p. 254). For spirited defences of the term “nation” as a
means of underscoring continuities – often to the detriment of subjugated
222 Notes to pages 8–9

peoples – between the early medieval period and the postcolonialist pres-
ent, see K. Davis, “National Writing”; Mehan and Townsend, “Nation.”
23 H.M. Thomas, English, p. 270; see too Foot, “Making,” pp. 48–9; Higham
and Ryan, Anglo-Saxon World, pp. 8–10. As McLeod argues of the period
865–900, “the Anglo-Saxon populace were more likely to have a sense of
allegiance to whichever kingdom they were living in, and to even smaller
regional identities, than to ‘England’ and the ‘English’”: Beginning, p. 3.
Compare Abrams’s remarks about tenth-century parallels between the
West Saxons’ “creation of a new allegiance to the kingdom of England”
and “the operation of regional identities – shaped, in the Danelaw, by the
Scandinavian heritage” (“King Edgar,” p. 181).
24 Turville-Petre, England, p. 142.
25 Here and throughout I use the terms “Danes” and “Scandinavians”
for convenience only. In early English sources, labels like “Danes” and
“Northmen” were by no means static in their connotations; see Roffey
and Lavelle, “West Saxons,” esp. pp. 10–11, 15. (I owe the reference to
Roffey and Lavelle’s chapter to Konshuh, “Constructing,” p. 158, n. 16.)
On the heterogeneity of the peoples who settled in England from 865
­onwards, see McLeod, Beginning, pp. 7–9.
26 Sheppard, Families, p. 189. Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, in his Lectiones in
­festiuitate Sanctae Sexburge, strengthens that association in his ­celebratory
account of the marriage between Seaxburh, sister of Æthelthryth, and
King Eorcenberht of Kent, as shown by Blanton, “Kentish Queen,”
pp. 195, 202–12.
27 See the studies cited in nn. 19–23 and 31, as well as Wormald,
“Anglo-Saxons” and “Engla Lond,” and Dumville, “Origins,”
esp. pp. 86–108. On the fluid state of eastern England ca. 600, see Yorke,
“Anglo-Saxon Gentes,” pp. 389–90, and studies cited therein. Wood,
­Merovingian North Sea, p. 4, explores the gradual development (vs. ethnic
continuity) of early medieval European peoples in general. Dumville,
“Origins,” agrees with the anti-teleological view of early English history
but nevertheless argues that “[w]hatever previous perceptions there may
have been, England (Englaland) and the kingdom of the English certainly
now existed” after Æthelstan’s conquest of Scandinavian Northumbria
in 927 (“Origins,” p. 73, and passim). In light of East Anglia’s resistance
to West Saxon expansion (as noted by Marten and Pestell; see below,
chap. 5, pp. 184–5), what certainly existed after 927 is the West Saxons’
increased confidence in dominating the rest of England.
28 Rollason, Northumbria; Stodnick, “Emergent Englishness”; Brown and
Farr, Mercia; Barrett, Against All England; Blanton, Signs; Pinner, Cult.
Many other studies could be cited, and the reader is referred to this
book’s individual chapters.
 Notes to pages 9–12 223

29 Kirby, Earliest English Kings, p. 21, considers Canterbury’s influence on

“East,” “West,” and “Middle” designations.
30 Söderbaum, “Introduction,” p. 7, paraphrasing and then quoting Hettne,
“New Regionalism,” p. 27. An especially poignant analysis in this regard
is Harris, Race, p. 12.
31 Bassett, “In Search”; Hines, “Becoming”; Yorke, “Political and Ethnic
Identity”; Frazer, “Introduction”; Moreland, “Ethnicity” and “Land”;
Harris, Race; Foot, “Making”; Dumville, “Origins.” See too Discenza,
­Inhabited Spaces, pp. 5–9 and passim.
32 D. Newman, “Borders”; Rumford, “Introduction” (citing sea changes in
political and sociological thinking beginning in the 1990s); ­Anzaldúa,
­Borderlands; Mignolo, Local Histories; King, “Borders”; Boyarin, B ­ order
Lines; Rollason, Northumbria; Ingold, Lines; Pohl, “Ethnic Names”;
­Treharne, “Borders” (citing Anzaldúa on p. 10); Brady, Writing, citing
(on pp. 8–10, 21–2 for notes) Anzaldúa as well as recent scholarship
on ­historical frontiers and frontier societies, e.g. Abulafia and Berend,
­Medieval Frontiers; Curta, Borders; Bartlett and MacKay, Medieval ­Frontier
Societies. See too Wickham-Crowley, “Fens,” esp. pp. 75–6. On the
heterogeneity as well as mutability of Carolingian frontier areas, see
J.M.H. Smith, “Fines,” pp. 171, 176–7.
33 Bede, HE, ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, IV.19, pp. 396–7; Felix,
VSG, ed. and trans. Colgrave, §24, pp. 86–7; Abbo, LSE, ed. Winterbottom,
p. 70; Abbo, Passion, trans. Hervey, p. 15. Unless otherwise noted, subse-
quent references to the HE, VSG, LSE, and Passion are to these editions
and translations.
34 Discenza, Inhabited Spaces, p. 100. Yi-Fu Tuan, on whom Discenza draws,
makes the related, general point that “space is humanly construed
space” (Space, 35). One of his examples, the ancient Greek tyrants who
“­promoted the identity of their capital cities” (p. 176), illustrates the
power of elite figures to “construe” space to maximal effect.
35 Such thinking can be traced at least as far back as the Hebrew Scriptures.
As Matthews points out in her analysis of Ælfric’s Life of St. Æthelthryth,
the biblical Book of Kings “focuses on the influence that a king’s behavior
has on his kingdom: good kings, simply put, are those who honor God
and do his will, earning God’s blessing for their kingdoms; bad kings
bring down God’s judgment upon their kingdoms” (“Token,” pp. 53–4).
Loyalty bonds also shaped early English notions of social space, as
­detailed in Sheppard, Families.
36 A. Williams addresses the relative dearth of information about “the lowest
groups in society” in pre- and post-Conquest texts: The English, pp. 2–3.
37 London, British Library, Harley Charter 43 C 3 (S 703 in the Electronic
Sawyer); text and translation in Hart and Syme, “Earliest Suffolk Charter,”
224 Notes to pages 12–14

repr. in Hart, Danelaw, pp. 467–85; for discussion, see their study and
Wareham, Lords, p. 55. See too PASE, s.v. “Æthelflæd 14.”
38 I am indebted in what follows to Hooke, Anglo-Saxon Landscape, pp. 50–71;
M. Reed, “Anglo-Saxon Charter Boundaries,” esp. 285–7 and 297–8
(cited by Howe, Writing, p. 39 and p. 239, n. 30); Rackham, History, p. 10;
Howe, “Angle,” pp. 17–21; Howe, “Landscape,” pp. 98–102; Howe,
Writing, pp. 29–46; Lowe, “Development,” pp. 63–5; S.T. Smith, Land,
esp. pp. 155–7.
39 Lowe, “Development,” p. 65.
40 Howe, Writing, p. 43. See also Ellard, Anglo-Saxon(ist) Pasts, pp. 183–4.
41 Manna is identified as “the landowner of Kettlebaston” (Hart, Danelaw,
pp. 482–3). Asa and Oswyth were women; “women often possessed prop-
erty in their own right” (pp. 484–5). Hart also provides mini-biographies
of the charter’s witnesses (pp. 475–8) and adduces a 1632 Chelsworth
survey that refers to Culfen Meadow (p. 484). One suspects, though, that
“Meadow” was added late in the place-name’s history after the original
meaning of Culfen had been forgotten. Ekwall, Concise Oxford Dictionary,
p. 135, suggestively derives “Culford” in Suffolk from “Cūla’s ford.” The
names “Manna,” “Culla,” “Eadwold/Eadwald,” and “Oswyth” have
­entries in PASE, but not for the persons named in this charter.
42 Hart, Danelaw, pp. 472, 475; pp. 476, 478 on Abingdon as the likely milieu.
43 Ekwall, Concise Oxford Dictionary, pp. 99 (Chelsworth) and 535 (worþ);
DOE, s.v. ceorl, I.B.1, I.B.1.a.i, I.C, respectively. At I.B.1 the DOE cautions
that the noun “carried different legal meanings in different periods and in
different areas of England”; section I.F lists 16 Old English place-names that
­contain the element, including the one under discussion here. ­According to
­Hudson, “in a broad sense it covered all free men below the status of thegn,
that is[,] all the men of 200s. wergeld. It would therefore cover men else-
where referred to as, for example, geburs or cottars”: H ­ istory, p. 208.
44 Hart, Danelaw, pp. 479, 480, citing a study by H.P.R. Finberg. On ninth-
and tenth-century East Anglia, especially with regard to its occupation by
Danish forces, see below, chaps. 4 and 5.
45 This concept is explored in the East Anglian context by G.E. Evans, P ­ attern,
pp. 256–7.
46 Howe, “Angle,” p. 19, with regard to the charters’ bilingualism.
47 See DMLBS, fasc. 14, p. 2874, s.v. ruricola 1a, “one who tills the land,
husbandman.”
48 Tennyson, Suffolk Scene, p. 5.
49 My use of “Cerdicing” to refer to Alfred and the other descendants of the
house of Cerdic follows Molyneaux, Formation, p. 16.
50 Marten, “Shiring,” p. 7 and her important footnote 29, which identifies
the wills (in the Electronic Sawyer) of Æthelflæd, her father, and her sister,
 Notes to pages 14–15 225

and localizes in Suffolk the lands mentioned in those wills (on which
lands, see too Lowe, “Nature,” pp. 41–4; Lowe, “Linguistic Geography,”
pp. 154–5). Marten adds that Chelsworth “was probably always intended
to revert to Bury” (p. 7), a point made also by Hart, Danelaw, p. 468.
51 Pestell, Landscapes, p. 12. Williamson, in Environment, argues trenchantly
for the role of landscapes in determining social and political formations
throughout early medieval England.
52 R.R. Clarke, East Anglia, p. 13. For more nuanced formulations, see
­Williamson, “East Anglia’s Character,” pp. 48–50; Pestell, “Kingdom,” p. 193.
53 Carver, “Kingship,” p. 148, citing, with implicit approval, Böhme, “Das
Ende,” esp. pp. 558–9. For finely grained interpretation of the relevant
archaeological evidence, see T.F. Martin, Cruciform Brooch, pp. 174–5. Also
important for the question of dating is Härke, “Ethnogenesis,” pp. 9–10.
Rainbird Clarke placed the beginning of the Germanic migrations to
­Britain in the late fourth century (East Anglia, p. 130), but most scholars
have favoured a date in the early to middle fifth (e.g. J. Campbell, “Lost
Centuries,” pp. 31, 34; Salway, Roman Britain, p. 310).
54 McLeod, Beginning, p. 58, and noting (on the same page) additional, spe-
cifically Swedish connections with Sutton Hoo archaeological finds as
discerned by Marzinzik, Sutton Hoo Helmet, pp. 34–5, and Bruce-Mitford,
Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial, vol. 2, pp. 91–9, 205–25. See also Brookes,
“Boat-Rivets,” p. 2.
55 Higham, “Sources,” p. 115; compare A. Reynolds, Later Anglo-Saxon England,
pp. 43–4.
56 H. Williams, “Engendered Bodies,” pp. 30–1. On the many cultures
­reflected in the burial rites at e.g. Snape (Suffolk), see Filmer-Sankey, “Dis-
cussion,” p. 264; on the cosmopolitan trade evidenced at Rendlesham (on
which site, see below), see Scull, Minter, and Plouviez, “Social,” pp. 1603–4;
Scull and Williamson, “New Light.” Wickham claims that East Anglia was
precocious in developing “large-scale exchange relationships … in the
eighth century,” and therefore relationships between landowners and peas-
ants (Framing, pp. 811–14, quotation at p. 812); but Moreland sees a wider
eastern context for such developments (see the citation in Wickham, Fram-
ing, p. 813, n. 206, as well as Moreland, “Land,” pp. 185–8). Other impor-
tant studies of distinct East Anglian agricultural organization and tenurial
arrangements include Douglas, Social Structure; Marten, “Shiring”; Black-
burn, “Expansion,” esp. p. 138; Molyneaux, Formation, pp. 27–8 (citing inter
alia Marten’s essay); W ­ illiamson, Environment, pp. 135, 139 (and source
cited in n. 42), 234, 238–40, and passim (but see too pp. 143–5 for cautions).
In his study of coinage reforms throughout mid-eighth-century England,
Naismith maintains that “minting survived longest and on the largest scale
in East Anglia” (“Kings,” p. 296).
226 Notes to pages 15–17

57 Ravensdale and Muir, East Anglian Landscapes, p. 9.

58 Scarfe, Suffolk Landscape, p. 36. Compare Carver’s observations on East
Anglia in general: “It is an unaccentuated landscape, without obvious
topographic boundaries (apart from rivers), in which to set a geographi-
cally determined agenda” (“Sutton Hoo,” p. 497).
59 Rackham, History, p. 1.
60 Pestell, Landscapes, p. 128. Rivers could be effective (Williamson, “East
Anglia’s Character,” p. 62), and charters demarcated territory on a small
scale (see above, and also Pestell, Landscapes, pp. 9, 128–39; Rackham,
History, pp. 9–12, 19). Pestell argues that major frontiers were fairly vague
in early medieval Europe, but this vagueness may have decreased by the
Carolingian period (Goetz, “Concepts”). J.M.H. Smith points out that
the terms marca, limites, confinia, termini, and fines all refer to boundaries
in Carolingian texts, and “[a]ll could refer to either a particular line or a
swathe of land at the margin of the empire” (“Fines,” p. 176).
61 My thinking here is indebted to similar but more nuanced assessments
of the rise of early English identities by K. Davis, “National Writing,”
esp. pp. 617–27, and by several of the studies she cites: Wormald, “Bede,
the Bretwaldas,” “Engla Lond,” and “Making”; Foot, “Making”; and
Howe, Migration, pp. 4–7. See also Discenza, Inhabited Spaces, pp. 5–9,
and Higham’s general point that “Dark Age territoriality” was “socially
constructed, and both multi-layered and dynamic,” and characterized
by “accumulation and sub-division [that] will have occurred contem-
poraneously, in bewildering patterns and often at great speed”: “From
­Sub-Roman Britain,” p. 8.
62 Barrett, Against All England, p. 27.
63 Exemplary in this regard are Hines’s Voices and Morris’s Time’s Anvil.
64 Abbo, LSE, p. 69. Hervey, Passion, p. 13, translates pervia as “accessible.”
65 Carver, “Sutton Hoo,” p. 499. Carver elsewhere argues that East ­Anglian
kingship had a territorial basis from the late sixth century onward:
“At this point the concept of ‘kingship’ could be promoted through
­genealogies and regalia; such a role would have to be supported by the
reimposition of territorially based tribute, that is, tax as opposed to rent”
(“Conclusion,” p. 198).
66 I have in mind Judith Butler’s work on the performative nature of g ­ ender
(e.g. Gender Trouble). In a different context, Yorke, “Anglo-Saxon Origin
Legends,” p. 24, observes that “[b]urial under mounds … helped ­create
a visual focus for a new dynasty that tied it to the land it claimed to
rule, but also evoked the memory of those who may have ruled it in
the past.” In support of her claim, Yorke cites (p. 24, n. 51) H. Williams,
“­Ancient Landscapes,” p. 25; and Carver, “Reflections,” esp. p. 133, on
the ­self-consciousness of the “new leaders and their heirs” who, at Sutton
 Notes to pages 17–19 227

Hoo, sought to display their rising power conspicuously and defiantly,

“to oppose the imperialism of the Christian Franks” (see too Carver,
“Reflections,” p. 140). For even more nuanced views of Sutton Hoo’s
­performative qualities, see Pitt, “Enigmatic,” and Brookes, “Boat-Rivets.”
67 For brief summary of the grave goods, see Carver, “Ship-Burials,”
pp. 186–91. For fuller treatment in three volumes, see Bruce-Mitford,
­Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial.
68 HE, II.15, pp. 188–91. On the Vespasian manuscript witness of the so-called
“Anglian Collection,” see Newton, Origins, pp. 57–8, citing Dumville,
“Anglian Collection,” pp. 24–5. The genealogy of the Eost engla is printed
in Dumville, “Anglian Collection,” p. 31.
69 Tyler, “Offa’s Dyke,” p. 160.
70 Bourdieu’s concept of “cultural capital” includes “all the goods, material
and symbolic, without distinction, that present themselves as rare and
worthy of being sought after in a particular social formation”: Outline,
p. 178 (emphasis in original).
71 See e.g. Hines, Scandinavian Character; Higham, “From Sub-Roman
­Britain,” p. 7 and sources cited in his n. 45; and Pestell’s caveats about the
use of archaeological evidence in “Kingdom,” p. 199.
72 Hines, “Origins,” p. 17.
73 Lawson, “Lyre Remains,” p. 223 and map on p. 222.
74 Newton, Origins. Thoughts supportive of Newton’s view are offered in
Filmer-Sankey, “Discussion,” p. 266; Williamson, Environment, p. 79; and
more conjecturally but nevertheless strikingly by Neidorf, “Beowulf,”
pp. 862–3, 868–9.
75 For Discenza, the scope of that self-perception is broadly English:
“­Beowulf never names England because it never needs to do so. England
remains at the heart of its audiences’ lived experiences” (Inhabited Spaces,
p. 124). Neidorf instead claims that the sensibilities of Beowulf’s original
audiences would have been regional and pan-Germanic rather than
­national and English (“Beowulf,” esp. pp. 860–9).
76 North, Origins; Neidorf, “Germanic Legend”; Newton, Origins, p. 143.
77 Klaeber, “Notes,” p. 122, in reference to Beowulf, lines 32–52.
78 Fenwick, “Insula,” p. 37, citing relevant studies. See too S. West,
Corpus, p. 273; R.R. Clarke, East Anglia, pp. 139, 149; Filmer-Sankey,
“Grave 1,” p. 194; Filmer-Sankey, “Discussion,” p. 265 (citing Ipswich’s
­Buttermarket cemetery); Fulk, Bjork, and Niles, “Commentary,” p. 114
(updating ­Klaeber, “Notes,” p. 122); Newton, Origins, pp. 136, 138; Pitt,
“­Enigmatic,” pp. 1–2; Brookes, “Boat-Rivets,” pp. 1–2.
79 Newton is aware that Beowulf occasionally intimates a dark future for the
Geatish people (e.g. Origins, p. 48, 95–100), but unless I have overlooked
it, he does not draw a connection between that aspect of the poem and
228 Notes to pages 19–20

East Anglia’s own political precariousness in the eighth century. ­Newton

accepts Colgrave’s view that East Anglia and Mercia were on good terms
when Felix wrote the VSG for King Ælfwald, and suggests that
“[p]erhaps the cult of St. Guthlac helped to provide a unifying focus for
the continuity of goodwill between East Anglia and Mercia, at least dur-
ing the second quarter of the eighth century” (Origins, p. 81). See chap. 3,
below. Neidorf observes that “details surrounding Ælfwald suggest how
[Beowulf’s] patron might have fashioned himself” (“Beowulf,” p. 868) and
stops just short of proposing that king as the poem’s actual patron or
­intended reader.
80 On the question of Snape’s visibility, see Williamson, Sutton Hoo, p. 108.
For Sutton Hoo and the Deben, see Pitt, “Enigmatic,” pp. 15 (citing inter
alia Williamson, Sutton Hoo, p. 102), 19, 28–9. Brookes (“Boat-Rivets,” p. 15)
discusses the ideological implications of the conspicuousness of Sutton
Hoo and of several possible precursor “pseudo-boat burial” sites in Kent.
81 H. Williams, Death, p. 161.
82 Williamson, Sutton Hoo, pp. 101–6.
83 Williamson, Sutton Hoo, p. 106; Pitt, “Enigmatic,” p. 16 (citing H. ­Williams
and Williamson). Pitt also points out that “Roman age barrows on the
­opposite bank of the River Deben ... would have been visible from
the Sutton Hoo burial mounds at the time they were constructed”
(“­Enigmatic,” p. 19, citing a study by Roberta Frank). The Deben’s
­visibility from Rendlesham as well (on which site, see below) has been
noted by Scull, Minter, and Plouviez, “Social,” pp. 1597–8, 1602.
84 Williamson, Sutton Hoo, p. 108.
85 A wide geographical and chronological overview of England’s bond with
the sea is offered in the essays in Sobecki, Sea.
86 H. Williams, Death; see too H. Williams, “Mortuary Practices,” esp. p. 258.
With regard to Sutton Hoo’s strategic position, H. Williams writes that
“the scale of the exclusive burial plot chosen on the prominent ridge
above the Deben took mound-building and the elaboration of mortuary
theatre to new heights”: Death, p. 158. Influential on my wording above
is Carver’s statement that “the burial mound, ostensibly for the celebra-
tion of the dead, was also the principle instrument for mobilising the
living” (“Burial Mounds”). Pitt has recently built upon these insights in
“­Enigmatic,” esp. pp. 9–15, 26–9. See also, now, Ellard’s rich discussion in
Anglo-Saxon(ist) Pasts, pp. 108–15.
87 Williamson, Sutton Hoo, cites numerous examples in Norfolk and Suffolk
(p. 106) while conceding that the East Angles, “[i]n identifying in some
way with their local river … were not entirely unique” (p. 112).
88 Carver, “Anglo-Saxon Cemetery,” p. 350; compare Carver, “What Were
They Thinking?,” p. 926; Pitt, “Enigmatic,” p. 28.
 Notes to pages 20–1 229

89 P.H. Blair, Introduction, p. 32, favouring a scenario involving attacking

Germanic peoples defending themselves via these earthworks against
counter-attacking Britons. For more cautious views, see Higham and
Ryan, Anglo-Saxon World, pp. 52–4. See too Oosthuizen, Anglo-Saxon
­Fenland, p. 73; M. Taylor, Edmund, pp. 80–5.
90 On Iron Age and Roman East Anglia, see Collingwood and Myres, Roman
Britain, pp. 59, 81, 87–104 and passim; R.R. Clarke, East Anglia, pp. 91–131;
Dymond, Norfolk Landscape, pp. 37–68; Warner, Origins, pp. 20–66;
Williamson, Origins, pp. 20–58; Williamson, Sutton Hoo, pp. 124–7;
­Ravensdale, “Themes,” pp. 24–9. See too D.N. Briggs, “Sacred Image” (on
the Iceni in Norfolk); Mattingly, Imperial Possession, pp. 49 (map), 100–1
(on the Iceni), 106–8 (Iceni and Trinovantes).
91 See“Hoxne Hoard,” Google Arts and Culture, https://www.google.com
/culturalinstitute/beta/entity/m0cls08, and Hobbs, Mildenhall Treasure.
92 See Salway, History, p. 189, for discussion and dating of the Notitia
and for the customary translation of what he regards as “a thoroughly
­unsatisfactory but completely entrenched term.” The name “Saxon
Shore” seems to derive from the threat of “Saxon” invasion on the coast,
not from any large-scale Teutonic settlement already in place: P.H. Blair,
Introduction, p. 4, n. 1.
93 On the possibility that foederati had established themselves at such an early
date in Britain, see J. Campbell, “End,” p. 18; Scarfe, Suffolk Landscape,
pp. 72–4, 82–3. Difficulties with this hypothesis have been pointed out
by Salway, History, pp. 287–9, 300–1, 310, and by Härke, “Ethnogenesis,”
pp. 19–20. Mattingly (Imperial Possession, p. 536) favours a date after 409
but does not rule out the use of Germanic mercenaries earlier.
94 Hines, Scandinavian Character, pp. 109, 198, 286 (cited by J.F. Kershaw,
­Viking Identities, p. 213), and pp. 270–85, 300 (as cited by McLeod,
­Beginning, pp. 56–7). See too Hines, “Origins,” pp. 19–43; Young, Edmund,
p. 21, citing (n. 7) Plunkett, Suffolk, pp. 33–5; and Bede, HE V.9, pp. 476–7
(discussed below). Furthermore, Härke concedes that “there clearly was
some foederati presence in [East Anglia], particularly around Norwich,”
specifically at Caistor-by-Norwich (“Ethnogenesis,” p. 11).
95 Goffart argues that ethnic heterogeneity was so great that the label
“Germanic” should be discarded altogether (Barbarian Tides); see too
the compelling archaeological critique of the term in Harland, “Memo-
ries” (esp. pp. 961, 965–6). I share Harland’s misgivings about the term
but cannot easily do without it, because my primary focus is textual
rather than ethno-historical. Bede, for example, spoke of Saxons, An-
gles, and Jutes as “tribūs Germaniae populis” (HE I.15, pp. 50–1); and a
“­pan-Germanic perspective” is, as Neidorf convincingly argues, central
to Beowulf’s implicit anti-Celtic xenophobia as well as to its explicit, “not
230 Notes to pages 21–2

merely pre-national, but perhaps even anti-nationalist” political outlook

(“­Beowulf,” pp. 860–1, 869).
96 HE I.15, pp. 50–1; V.9, pp. 476–7. For further discussion of this list, see
below, chap. 1. On the problem of simplification, see e.g. P.H. Blair,
­Introduction, pp. 10–11; Hines, “Becoming,” pp. 50–2.
97 Wood, “Before and After,” p. 44. See too Filmer-Sankey, “Discussion,”
p. 264. Wood underscores cultural heterogeneity but adds that “within
this overall diversity there will have been some very close-knit groups”
(p. 45).
98 On Angeln, see Young, Edmund, pp. 20–1. More generally, “[m]odern
Y-chromosome DNA points to Anglo-Saxon origins in Dutch Frisia,
northern Germany and Denmark”: Härke, “Ethnogenesis,” p. 5.
99 P.H. Blair claims that “there are many grounds for thinking that [Bede’s]
threefold division reflects the orderliness of his own mind rather than the
realities of the settlements” (Introduction, pp. 10–11), but Blair emphasizes
ethnic similarities among the settlers rather than differences. Higham
cautions that, pace Bede, “neither term [i.e. neither ‘Anglian’ nor ‘Saxon’]
need have any bearing on contemporary perceptions of nomenclature
and group identity in the fifth century” (“From Sub-Roman Britain,” p. 7).
100 Collingwood and Myres long ago rightly insisted upon “a continuous pro-
cess extending over a considerable period”: Roman Britain, p. 352; compare
Härke’s argument for “a process rather than an event, with i­ mplications
for variations of the process over time” (“Ethnogenesis,” p. 10). The vast
bibliography on the so-called adventus Saxonum also i­ ncludes Wormald,
“Engla Lond”; Howe, Migration; Howe, Writing, pp. 50–1, 141–3; P.H. Blair,
Introduction, pp. 13–34; Sims-Williams, “Settlement,” esp. pp. 19–41; Hines,
“­Becoming”; Wood, “Before and After”; Moreland, “Ethnicity”; Harris,
Race, pp. 60–72; N. Brooks, “English Identity”; Michelet, Creation,
pp. 198–269; Mattingly, Imperial Possession, pp. 535–7; Yorke, “­Anglo-Saxon
Origin Legends”; Scully, “Bede, Orosius”; Brugmann, “­Migration”;
Hedges, “Anglo-Saxon Migration”; Konshuh, “Constructing,”
esp. pp. 164–70 (on the adventus as represented in the ASC).
101 MS A, ed. Bately, p. 17; ASC, p. 12.
102 Gildas, Ruin, trans. Winterbottom, pp. 25–9 (English), pp. 96–9 (Latin);
Nennius (attrib.), Historia, pp. 44–7, 54–65 (Latin on even-numbered
pages, English on odd-numbered).
103 Hooke, Landscape, pp. 39–47; Hooke, “Anglo-Saxons,” pp. 66–7, and her
discussion with John Hines on pp. 89–90. See, however, Powlesland,
“Early Anglo-Saxon Settlements,” esp. p. 102. Also pertinent is Frazer’s
postcolonial response to Moreland’s “Ethnicity” in “Introduction,” p. 8.
104 Hooke (on the West Midlands, Kent, and Essex), Anglo-Saxon Landscape,
pp. 17–18; Hooke, Landscape, p. 46. For East Anglia, see Williamson,
 Notes to pages 22–4 231

Sutton Hoo, pp. 124–7; Warner, Origins, pp. 66–7. Powlesland concedes the
tenacity of major estate boundaries during the transition period; see his
discussion of Hooke’s “Anglo-Saxons,” p. 91.
105 Oosthuizen, “Culture.” See too her recent Anglo-Saxon Fenland. I am
grateful to Stephanie Lahey for this reference.
106 Oosthuizen, Anglo-Saxon Fenland, p. 137.
107 Wood, “Before and After,” p. 46; compare Dumville, “Origins,” pp. 75–80;
Higham, “From Sub-Roman Britain,” p. 6; and Wickham-Crowley’s
­response in “Fens,” p. 70, to certain of Oosthuizen’s claims. See also the
sources cited above in nn. 103–4. Young (Edmund, pp. 21–2) cites genetic
and place-name evidence to prove Continental absorption rather than
destruction of indigenous British culture; Scull, Minter, and Plouviez
(“Social,” pp. 1600–1) show continuity between the “late Roman element”
and the “culturally Germanic presence” at Rendlesham in Suffolk (see
below); Härke (“Ethnogenesis,” p. 17) adduces DNA, archaeological,
and linguistic evidence to point generally to “a one-way process” of
assimilation that “was essentially Anglo-Saxon, not mixed or hybrid
­Anglo-British.” Dumville’s claim of “cultural genocide” (“Origins,” p. 75)
seems to apply to some geographical areas more than to others.
108 For convenient summary of these issues, see Young, Edmund, pp. 23,
28–31, synthesizing important studies by Newton, Plunkett, A.C. Evans,
and Pinner. See also Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, p. 90 and his n. 91, citing a
study by Erich Hoffman. On the Vespasian regnal genealogies, see below,
n. 122.
109 Young, Edmund, pp. 30, 31; see also below, chap. 1, n. 130 (Ridyard reply-
ing to Górski on the use of saints’ cults to compensate for lost political
pre-eminence).
110 Young, Edmund, p. 31.
111 Sauer, “Morphology,” p. 325, building on an insight by Oswald Spengler.
112 Pestell, Landscapes, p. 12.
113 Rollason, Northumbria; Brown and Farr, eds., Mercia; Dumville, “­Origins,”
pp. 90–100 (on sub-kingdoms and other small folk-units within the
East Saxon, South Saxon, West Saxon, and Mercian polities). See too
­Capper, “Practical Implications,” p. 13, summarizing the argument of her
“­Contested Loyalties,” on the transformation of peoples and polities once
they had been absorbed into Mercia.
114 Carver and Williamson have reaffirmed (though the latter tentatively) the
traditional connection between the ship-burial and the East Angles put
forward by Bruce-Mitford: Carver, “Sutton Hoo,” pp. 496–8; W ­ illiamson,
Sutton Hoo, pp. 20–1. See also Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial,
vol. 1, pp. 690–1, and most recently Pitt, “Enigmatic.” The Essex position
is set forth in Pearson et al., “Three Men,” and emphatically dismissed in
232 Notes to pages 24–5

Filmer-Sankey, “Discussion,” pp. 265–6. Williamson, Sutton Hoo,

pp. 119–26, summarizes their arguments and challenges them less
­emphatically, conceding the territorial divisions within Suffolk and within
the ancient Wuffing kingdom that their arguments raise to the fore.
115 Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial, vol. 1, pp. 715–17. For discussion,
see e.g. Keynes, “Rædwald”; J. Campbell, “Impact”; Kirby, Earliest English
Kings, p. 66; Plunkett, Suffolk, pp. 70–96; Marzinzik, Sutton Hoo Helmet,
pp. 54–5; Hines, “Origins,” p. 17; Pitt, “Enigmatic,” 7–10. None of the
arguments advanced in the present study depend on proving that Sutton
Hoo’s Mound 1 is the grave of Rædwald.
116 See Bede, HE, III.22, pp. 284–5. McClure and Collins (trans., E ­ cclesiastical
History, “Explanatory Notes,” p. 395) warn against assuming a
­relationship between Sutton Hoo and Rendlesham; but J. Newman’s
­article “Late Roman and Anglo-Saxon Settlement Pattern,” which they
cite in implicit support of their caution, actually argues quite confidently
for “yet ­another link” between the two (p. 38). The link is also supported
by Davies and Vierck, “Contexts,” p. 274; by Williamson, Sutton Hoo,
p. 18; and by Pitt, “Enigmatic,” pp. 7–8, 20–1.
117 On which, see Filmer-Sankey and Pestell, Snape.
118 Williamson, Sutton Hoo, p. 20, citing Filmer-Sankey, “Snape,” pp. 50–1.
On Snape’s idiosyncrasies, including its complex social character and
­resemblances to Sutton Hoo as well as to Mucking II cemetery in Essex,
see Filmer-Sankey, “Discussion,” pp. 262–5. Carver notes differences
­between Snape and Sutton Hoo in “Sutton Hoo,” p. 497.
119 Filmer-Sankey, “Discussion,” pp. 265–6. Filmer-Sankey retreats ­somewhat
from this view in “Snape,” but in my opinion without providing as
­cogent an explanation as the one supporting his earlier position.
120 Williamson, Sutton Hoo, pp. 20, 109, citing Warner, Origins, pp. 120–1 (see
too Warner’s p. 157). See also Williamson, Environment, pp. 83–4.
121 On Blythburgh as Anna’s burial place, see LE, I.7, ed. Blake, p. 16 (trans.
Fairweather, p. 22), noted too by Newton, Origins, p. 135, n. 8. Blythburgh
may have been chosen simply because Anna had died in the immediate
vicinity, or because it was already an important royal vill, as Haslam
argues (“Dommoc,” pp. 43–4). An early monastery or minster has been
inferred from the discovery there of an eighth-century whalebone writ-
ing tablet (Newton, Origins; Pestell, Landscapes, p. 92; Warner, Origins,
pp. 120–1), but I do not know whether this supposed community existed
prior to 654 or was founded to commemorate the slain king.
122 “Eni Tyttling, Tyttla Wuffing,” quoted and discussed in F. Stenton,
“East Anglian Kings,” reconstructing the genealogy from the Vespasian
MS. and from Bede. See too PASE, s.vv. “Anna 1” and “Eni 1”; New-
ton’s genealogies in Origins (p. xiii), Reckoning (p. 44), and “Forgotten”;
 Notes to pages 25–6 233

Kilpatrick, “Place-Names,” p. 42; and Yorke, Kings, pp. 67–8 and pp. 58–
71 on the early kingdom and on difficulties associated with the geneal-
ogy. See also below, chap. 1, n. 116.
123 See Anderson, Imagined Communities, esp. pp. 5–7.
124 Williamson, Sutton Hoo, p. 14. On differences between northern and south-
ern East Anglia, see Williamson, “East Anglia’s Character,” pp. 58–60.
A compelling case for the early medieval kingdom’s identity as a syn-
thesis of different cultural influences from Scandinavia, the Continent,
and northern as well as central England is made by Hines, “Origins,”
esp. pp. 42–3.
125 From his Suffolk perspective, Jocelin of Brakelond thought Abbot Sam-
son’s Norfolk dialect different enough to warrant mention: Chronica, ed.
Rokewode, p. 30; Chronicle, trans. Greenway and Sayers, p. 37. See too
Lowe, “Linguistic Geography,” pp. 156–7.
126 Yorke, Kings, p. 69, for this quotation and for general discussion of the
kingdom’s internal division and two bishoprics. See too Whitelock,
“Pre-Viking Age Church,” pp. 1, 8 and n. 5; Scull, “Before Sutton Hoo,”
p. 5; Bassett, “In Search,” p. 26. The single diocese of East Anglia was
established only ca. 1095, at Norwich (Whitelock, “Pre-Viking Age
Church,” p. 1). On Domnoc as Walton Castle, see below, chap. 1, p. 64.
127 Marten, “Shiring.”
128 A point made by Kirby, Earliest English Kings, p. 64, regarding East ­Anglia
and Northumbria. Rush’s unpublished “Cultural Transition” (which
I have not seen) argues that Romanized Britons contributed to the hetero-
geneity of early medieval East Anglia.
129 On the Tribal Hidage: Dumville, “Tribal Hidage,” pp. 228–9; Davies and
Vierck, “Contexts”; Bassett, “In Search,” pp. 26; Pestell, Landscapes,
pp. 128–9; Oosthuizen, “Culture,” pp. 10–14; Wickham-Crowley, “Fens,”
pp. 74–6 (citing David Roffe). On the first, eleventh-century appearances
of the words “Norfolk” and “Suffolk,” see Scarfe, Suffolk Landscape, p. 42.
130 Kirby, Making, p. 55, identifying the prehistoric Icknield Way as the likely
route of military expansion.
131 “The absence of any rival centres visible in the archaeology of the late
sixth and early seventh centuries suggests that this family [i.e. the East
Anglian kings and their kin] networked effectively and reconciled
­potential rivals from an early date”: Higham and Ryan, Anglo-Saxon
World, p. 141, noting the clutch of important sites (Rendlesham, Snape,
Sutton Hoo) in south-eastern Suffolk.
132 E.g. Tennyson, Suffolk Scene, pp. 40–2; Scarfe, Suffolk Landscape, pp. 36–43.
According to Plunkett, “Suffolk’s western cultural area” extended,
“[i]n archaeological terms,” well into the Fens, into Cambridgeshire and
even Lincolnshire: Suffolk, pp. 34, 47–8; see too Williamson, Sutton Hoo,
234 Notes to pages 26–7

p. 126. The area would thus include Ixworth, near Bury St. Edmunds; on
the seventh- to eighth-century treasures unearthed there in the 1850s, see
M.F. Reed, “Sculpture.”
133 Williamson, “East Anglia’s Character,” pp. 58–62; Williamson, Sutton Hoo,
pp. 123–6. See too the discussion in Filmer-Sankey, “Discussion,” p. 265.
The Scandinavian features of East Anglian material culture have been
set out by Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial, vol. 1, p. 693; Hines,
Scandinavian Character (confirming Bruce-Mitford); Hines, “Origins.”
See too Carver, “Kingship,” passim and p. 149 (agreeing with Hines and
thus with Bruce-Mitford). Yorke, noting the likely English provenance
of goods formerly thought to have been made in Sweden, speaks of
“contacts between the East Anglian and Scandinavian courts”: Kings,
p. 61, citing (in n. 27) A.C. Evans, Sutton Hoo Ship Burial, pp. 114–16. On
the Frankish influences: Wood, “Franks”; Wood, Merovingian North Sea,
pp. 12–17 and Merovingian Kingdoms, pp. 177–8, 314; Wood,, “Before
and After,” p. 49; J. Campbell, “Impact”; Wickham, Framing, pp. 810–18
(­discussing, inter alia, Frankish influences on East Anglia and on Kent).
134 Williamson, “East Anglia’s Character,” p. 60.
135 Ravensdale and Muir, East Anglian Landscapes, pp. 13–14. Their
­co-authored book has been a major influence on my own thinking about
East Anglia.
136 Williamson, “East Anglia’s Character,” p. 62; emphasis in original.
137 See e.g. Hamerow, Hinton, and Crawford, eds., Oxford Handbook,
­especially but by no means exclusively the essays by Hills, Brugmann,
Richards, D. Griffiths, Hedges, and Owen-Crocker. Literary and material
intersections are explored with characteristic richness by Hines, “Literary
Sources.” Other relevant studies include Pohl, “Ethnic Names”; Harris,
“Overview”; Harris, Race (esp. p. 43); Frazer, “Introduction”; Moreland,
“Ethnicity.” In the East Anglian context, Capper, “Insights” (cited in
Capper, “Dialogue,” p. 13), and Rush, “Cultural Transition,” are also
important.
138 See pertinent cautions by Hills, “Overview,” pp. 3–11; Harris, Race, p. 4;
Frazer, “Introduction,” p. 3.
139 Yorke, “Anglo-Saxon Gentes,” p. 390; Sims-Williams, “Settlement,” p. 24;
Moreland, “Ethnicity,” p. 46. According to A.D. Smith, however, Bedan
and other early medieval evocations of regna suggest “broader popular
loyalties and rationales”: Ethnic Origins, p. 72.
140 On the terminology, see J. Campbell, Essays, pp. 85–98, 132 (­quotation at
p. 86); J. Campbell, “Secular and Political Contexts,” p. 27 and ­studies
cited on p. 39, n. 5; Loyn, “Kings,” pp. 75–6; Foot, “­Historiography,”
p. 130 (for regnum, imperium, and provincia in Bede, and citing
J. ­Campbell); Yorke, “Political and Ethnic Identity,” pp. 73–6, 82;
 Notes to pages 27–30 235

F. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 305; Dumville, “Origins,” p. 91 (on

­Isidore as source of Bede’s use of provincia).
141 Sturdy, Alfred, p. 4. Commensurate insights can be found in Wood, Merov-
ingian North Sea, p. 4; Yorke, “Anglo-Saxon Gentes,” pp. 389–90.
142 The formidable power of the ealdormen in the middle to late tenth century
is ably illustrated by John, Reassessing, pp. 10–16 and passim; by Higham,
Death, pp. 4–14, 22–5 and passim; and by Hart, Danelaw, pp. 569–604.
143 F. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 450; Hart, Danelaw, p. 471; Wareham,
Lords, pp. 14, 23–8; PASE, s.v. “Æthelwine 2.”
144 See e.g. Stafford, Unification, p. 37; Sheppard, Families, pp. 4, 10–11,
39–40 and passim; Higham, “From Tribal Chieftains,” p. 140; Wood,
“­Monasteries,” pp. 11–12; P.H. Blair, Introduction, p. 12; Scull, “Before
Sutton Hoo,” p. 6 (citing Davies and Vierck, “Contexts,” pp. 228–9); Hiatt,
“Beowulf,” p. 32; Neidorf, “Beowulf,” pp. 855–60.
145 Higham and Ryan, Anglo-Saxon World, p. 8; compare P.H. Blair,
­Introduction, pp. 11–12; Foot, “Making,” and “Historiography,” pp. 129–32;
Sheppard, Families, esp. pp. 16–19 and 48–9 (citing Foot); Discenza,
­Inhabited Spaces, pp. 8, 60; Molyneaux, Formation, pp. 201–6; Dumville,
“Origins,” p. 81. Molyneaux’s challenges to Foot and Wormald are not
­immediately germane to the present discussion.
146 K. Davis, “National Writing,” pp. 619–21; Nelson, “Presidential Address,”
p. 27; S.T. Smith, Land, p. 153; Lavelle, “Geographies.” S. Reynolds,
­Kingdoms, pp. 219–49, explores the sometimes fluid interrelation between
“private lordship” and “public province.” I return to this topic below, in
chap. 4.
147 Oosthuizen, Anglo-Saxon Fenland, pp. 53, 57–60, 66, 87.
148 P.H. Blair, Roman Britain, p. 169.
149 MS A, ed. Bately, p. 41; ASC, p. 60 (s.a. 823 for 825). Italics mine.
150 MS A, ed. Bately, p. 47; ASC, p. 70.
151 The treaty may date to the early 880s; see below, chap. 4. Kathleen Davis
discerns a similar fluidity in the Alfredian noun Angelcynn, which can
­refer to a people or a place: “National Writing,” pp. 619–21.
152 Attenborough, Laws, p. 98; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 171.
153 With regard to the phrase “eal seo ðeod ðe on Eastænglum beoð,”
­Hadley suggests that it “probably indicates both settlers and ­pre-existing
­inhabitants of East Anglia”: Vikings, p. 32. Roffey and Lavelle (“West
­Saxons,” p. 8) similarly view the AGT as “implying that provision [for
the Angelcynn] was being made for the Engliscne inside Danish-held
­territory” (“West Saxons,” p. 8). But would the original “English”
­inhabitants of East Anglia have been involved in the peace-making
­between Alfred and his witan on one side and Guthrum and his followers
on the other?
236 Notes to pages 30–4

154 Howe, “Angle,” p. 18, n. 41 (citing Dorothy Whitelock and Eric John);
Hadley, Vikings, p. 56 and n. 125 (citing an early work of Frank Stenton’s);
John, Reassessing, p. 91.
155 Rowley, Old English Version, p. 2.
156 This view is based on Rowley’s argument that the OE Bede was neither
produced by the Alfredian court nor associated with its ideological pro-
gram: Old English Version, esp. pp. 57–70. (One should also note Waite’s
argument [“Preface”] that the Preface to the OE Bede and the body of
that text were not written by the same person.) Furthermore, Molyneaux,
by way of critiquing Wormald, argues that neither Bede nor his OE trans-
lator was appropriated by that program: “Old English Bede,” pp. 1289–90
and passim. See also Molyneaux’s “Did the English Really Think” and
Formation, pp. 199–206 and passim.
157 Old English Version, ed. and trans. T. Miller, I.14, pp. 56–7. I depart slightly
from Miller’s translation, but my use of ModE kingdom for OE rīce echoes
Miller’s.
158 Old English Version, ed. and trans. T. Miller, III.18, pp. 208–9. For the
phrase fore beon “to rule over,” see DOE, s.v. fore, A.3.a.i.
159 Old English Version, ed. and trans. T. Miller, III.19, pp. 216–17. Compare
III.19, pp. 210–11.
160 Bede consistently uses provincia not regio to refer to the East Anglian
kingdom. On the word regio, see Dumville, “Origins,” p. 96; J. Campbell,
Essays, pp. 86–7. For mǣgð and the definitions I have provided in pa-
rentheses, see Bosworth-Toller, s.v. mǣgð, senses IVa, IVb, IVc. It should
be noted, though, that one of the examples given in Bosworth-Toller’s
definition “province, country” (sense IVc) is taken from the OE Bede and
treats mǣgþ as the equivalent of Bede’s Latin word provincia.
161 Old English Version, ed. and trans. T. Miller, II.5, pp. 108–9. I am grateful
to an anonymous reader for pointing out to me that Miller’s translation
“temporal” is based on the emendation of MS. willendlecan to hwilendlican.
On the latter word and its variants, see DOE s.v. hwīlwendlic, hwīlendlic.
162 Michelet, Creation, p. 26.
163 Saints’ cults were of course widespread in early England; see e.g.
Thacker, “Dynastic Monasteries,” with special emphasis on Wessex.
164 See the works of these authors cited below in chaps. 2, 3, and 5.
165 See Hart, Danelaw, pp. 37–41, and Plunkett, Suffolk, pp. 155–213, for post-
749 regnal histories that supplement F. Stenton, “East Anglian Kings.”
Their reconstructed genealogies may be paraphrased thus: Beonna
(749–ca. 760; on whom see also Naismith, “Kings,” pp. 295, 307–11),
perhaps reigning with the co-rulers Hun and Alberht (Æthelberht I);
Æthelred I (ca. 760–79); Æthelberht II (779–94); Eadwald (794–ca. 821);
Æthelstan I (ca. 821–ca. 845); Æthelweard (ca. 845–54); and Edmund
 Notes to pages 34–5 237

(854–69). See the respective entries in PASE. For the post-869 period, Hart
notes numismatic studies of coins bearing the names of another Æthelred
and a certain Oswald (Danelaw, p. 41). Blackburn cites and builds upon
Michael Dolley’s placement of those two kings between 869 and 879–80
and writes that they “ruled briefly in East Anglia immediately after
­Edmund’s demise, before Scandinavian control was fully established”
(“Expansion,” p. 127; see too Capper, “Practical Implications,” p. 17,
citing Blackburn, and Capper, “Insights” and “Contested Loyalties”).
Hadley plausibly surmises that the two kings were Danish-nominated
puppets (Vikings, p. 11–12), as do McLeod, Beginning, pp. 181 and passim,
and Young, Edmund, p. 70; but G. Williams is less certain (“Coins,” p. 23).
166 The term “Danelaw” is traceable only as far back as the early
eleventh-century so-called Laws of Edward and Guthrum but is often used
to refer to that enormous swath of eastern, central, and northern England
that fell to the vikings in the late ninth. On the word’s problematic nature,
see John, “Age,” p. 161; Holman, “Defining”; McLeod, B ­ eginning, p. 9.

Chapter 1

1 An earlier, shorter version of this essay appeared in New Medieval

­Literatures 15 (2013): 97–122. I thank Brepols Publishing for ­permission
to include this revised and expanded iteration here. Monographs and
essay collections on Bede include A.H. Thompson, Bede; Bonner, ­Famulus;
C.W. Jones, Bede; G.H. Brown, Bede and Companion; Houwen and
­MacDonald, Beda; Lebecq, Perrin, and Szerwiniack, Bède; Gunn, Bede’s
Historiae; ­DeGregorio, Cambridge Companion and Innovation; Darby and
Wallis, Bede. Also important are Brown and Biggs’s Bede: Part 1 and Bede:
Part 2, in the Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture series.
2 My thinking here owes much to Thacker’s insight that Bede “sought
to chart how the English became part of the universal Church and to
establish their particular role in the economy of salvation” (“Bede and
History,” p. 172); to G.H. Brown’s observation that “the main aim of the
whole work [i.e. the HE] is to expound the development of God’s plan
for the English as a chosen people and the development of one unified
Church in a violent and feuding land” (Companion, p. 106; cf. Brown,
Bede, p. 89); and to Goffart’s pronouncement that the HE is “a tale of ori-
gins framed dynamically as the Providence-guided advance of a people
from heathendom to Christianity” (Narrators, p. 235).
3 Merrills, History, p. 235 (and similar pronouncements passim), citing
Tugène, “L’Histoire,” pp. 140–2. Merrills’s chapter on Bede (pp. 229–309)
masterfully explores the intersections among the Northumbrian scholar’s
historical, geographical, computistical, and exegetical concerns.
238 Notes to pages 35–6

4 On this dual use of gens, see Thacker, “Bede and History,” p. 176; Thacker,
“Bede’s Idea,” p. 4.
5 Merrills, History, p. 233.
6 Howe, Writing, pp. 5–8. On the early medieval “relationship between
God and the material world, set out graphically and symbolically” in
mapping practices, see Harvey, Maps, p. 10.
7 Tugène, L’idée, p. 333. Translation mine.
8 Lozovsky, “Earth,” p. 92.
9 When I use words like “paganism,” “Christianity,” “backsliding,” “apos-
tasy,” and “syncretism,” I intend no moral judgment but rather seek to
reconstruct Bede’s own attitudes and to gauge their effect on his rep-
resentations of place. On the questionable value of such labels within
early English cultural contexts, see below, nn. 17, 47, 70, 71, and 95.
10 Bede’s limited scope and Northumbrian bias are well known: Thacker,
“Bede and History,” pp. 184–5; Thacker, “Bede’s Idea,” pp. 7–9; Goffart,
Narrators, p. 240 and passim; Sims-Williams, “Settlement,” pp. 25–6; Yorke,
Conversion, pp. 21–2; Merrills, History, p. 234. Merrills does, however,
­emphasize Bede’s concern for the “wider context,” as does Tugène in L’idée.
11 HE, Preface, pp. 2–7. See Whitelock, “Pre-Viking Age Church,” pp. 2–3;
Yorke, Kings, pp. 3, 25, 32, 58. The Northumbrian royal family was also a
likely source, as proposed by Whitelock and seconded by W ­ allace-Hadrill,
Historical Commentary, p. 76.
12 Ian Wood has argued that Bede and other eighth-century ecclesiastical
writers, especially Northumbrian historians, “rarely purveyed informa-
tion without moulding it in one way or another. They played an active
part both in the development of the Northumbrian kingdom and in the
process of its memorialisation”: Wood, “Monasteries,” pp. 12–13, citing
Geary, Phantoms, p. 7 and passim.
13 A.D. Smith, Chosen Peoples, p. 137.
14 Only a very terse reference to Rædwald appears in the Anonymous Monk
of Whitby’s Earliest Life of Gregory the Great, ed. and trans. ­Colgrave,
pp. 98–9. His regnal dates are uncertain. “(?–616/627)”: J. Campbell,
“First Christian Kings,” p. 53 (compare PASE, s.v. “Rædwald 1”); “(ante
AD 600–ca. 625)”: Hoggett, Archaeology, p. 28. See too Newton, R ­ eckoning,
pp. 40, 44 (suggesting a date of death as “c. 625”); Hines, “­Origins,”
pp. 16–17; Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial, vol. 1, p. 698. On the
­difficulty of precise dating, see Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial,
vol. 1, pp. 696–8; Wood, “Franks,” pp. 3–4.
15 On Bede’s understanding of pagan worship (e.g. its use of idols), see
Church, “Paganism,” p. 170 (cited in Barrow, “How Coifi Pierced,”
p. 694, n. 6); Petts, Pagan, pp. 73–96; Reilly, “Islands”; Wilson, Anglo-Saxon
­Paganism, pp. 29–32. Tyler, “Reluctant Kings,” discusses Bede’s disregard
 Notes to pages 36–9 239

both for the utility of paganism and for the strategic reasons kings
­sometimes had for resisting Christianity.
16 My use of “scapegoat” is indebted in a general way to Northrop Frye’s
“pharmakos, or scapegoat,” the “sacrificial victim, who has to be killed to
strengthen the others,” “the human symbol that concentrates our fears
and hates”: Anatomy, pp. 41, 148, 45.
17 As shown e.g. by Barrow, “How Coifi Pierced”; O’Brien, “Quotation,”
pp. 185–6; Del Giacco, “Exegesis,” esp. pp. 26 and 28; Wetherbee, “Some
Implications,” p. 26; Tyler, “Reluctant Kings,” pp. 153–4.
18 Studies of the importance of the list genre in early medieval England
­include Sisam, “Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies”; Dumville, “Kingship”;
Howe, Catalogue Poems; Stodnick, “Old Names” (citing and building
upon Sisam and Howe); Yorke, “Bretwaldas,” pp. 85–6.
19 Scholarly commentary is extensive, but see e.g. Wormald, “Bede, the Bret-
waldas”; J. Campbell, Anglo-Saxon State, pp. 43–6 (responding to Wormald);
Yorke, “Bretwaldas”; Fanning, “Bede,” pp. 24–5; Keynes, “Rædwald”;
and further bibliography in Grossi, “Place,” pp. 97 and 99, nn. 10 and 16
­respectively. See now Dumville, “Origins,” pp. 99–101. On bretwalda as the
ASC’s term for a king who wielded imperium, see below, chapter 4, n. 201.
20 Keynes, “Rædwald,” p. 115.
21 Pohl, “Ethnic Names,” pp. 13–14. See too Wood’s thoughts on genealogies
in “Before and After,” pp. 49–51, as well as Hines’s important remarks on
Bede’s “authentic information in a distorted form”: “Becoming,” pp. 50–1.
22 Hines, “Becoming,” p. 50 (emphasis in original). Concerning the list in
Book V Morris remarks: “This is more like it – yet we cannot be sure
that even this list is complete, or that its definitions were stable either in
­Bede’s day or two centuries before” (Time’s Anvil, p. 233). Härke adduces
archaeological evidence to add Franks, “at least one Goth,” Norwegians,
and Alemanni to Bede’s second list: “Ethnogenesis,” p. 11.
23 Howe, Migration, p. 60. See too Yorke, “Anglo-Saxon Origin Legends.”
Critiques of the inaccuracy of that myth abound; Ellard cites a cluster
of them in Anglo-Saxon(ist) Pasts, p. 176, n. 2 (specifically, Magennis,
­Cambridge Introduction, pp. 34–5; Pohl, “Ethnic Names,” p. 25; and
Higham and Ryan, Anglo-Saxon World, pp. 7–10).
24 See e.g. Wormald, “Engla Lond”; Howe, Migration; Howe, Writing,
pp. 50–1, 141–3; Dumville, “Origins,” p. 74 (citing HE, I.22).
25 Harris, Race, p. 15; Merrills, History, pp. 271–4, 290–308; Tugène, L’idée,
p. 336; and especially Molyneaux, “Did the English Really Think” and
“Old English Bede.”
26 As, according to Fairweather, it connoted to readers of the twelfth-­century
Liber Eliensis (LE): “‘angle,’ ‘corner,’ ‘nook,’ ‘a retired, unfrequented place’:
roughly, then … the ‘Outback’”: LE, trans. Fairweather, p. 12, n. 38.
240 Notes to pages 39–44

27 As pointed out by Howe, Migration, pp. 51–2. In a reading of Bede, Felix,

and several OE texts, Neidorf compellingly suggests that “pan-Germanic
identity did not travel to Britain with the Germanic migrants, but
was rather generated there in the context of ethnic hostility with the
­indigenous Celtic peoples” (“Beowulf,” p. 865).
28 I use “wasteland” in the merely idiomatic sense; for the technical ­meaning,
see Rackham, “Medieval Countryside,” p. 15, cited by Discenza, Inhabited
Spaces, p. 142, n. 6, in her rich discussion of literary representations of
wasteland in Beowulf, Guthlac A, and Andreas.
29 In this quotation I have slightly modified Colgrave and Mynors’s punc-
tuation of the Latin and have replaced their translation of Bede’s remarks
on Rædwald with the translation proposed by Wormald and Charles-­
Edwards in Addenda, p. 222.
30 It is possible but unlikely that subject gentes consented to foreign
­rulers’ imperium; see Wallace-Hadrill, Historical Commentary, pp. 59–60;
­Wormald, “Bede, the Bretwaldas,” pp. 132–3, nn. 2, 3.
31 The debate is summarized in Grossi, “Place,” pp. 100–1.
32 As emphasized by Higham, Convert, pp. 102–3.
33 Tugène, L’idée, p. 249.
34 DMLBS, fasc. 4, pp. 1002–3, s.v. fractus 1, 13, 13b; DMLBS, fasc. 2, p. 502,
s.v. corrumpere and sense b.
35 On the likelihood that Rædwald controlled eastern Mercia, see Dumville,
“Essex,” p. 132, cited approvingly by Kirby, Early English Kings, p. 66 and
p. 74, n. 29. Newton thinks Rædwald’s control of Lindsey “possible”;
“[i]f not, the military power of Rædwald might have been just too large
for the king of Lindsey to challenge”: Reckoning, p. 33.
36 Pace Higham, English Empire, p. 198; but see Higham, Convert, p. 152.
37 Kirby, Earliest English Kings, pp. 19–20.
38 R. Hill, “Bede,” p. 100. Compare Newton, Reckoning, p. 30; Scarfe, S ­ uffolk,
pp. 30–5 (on the queen’s strength of will, her commitment to her religious
beliefs, and, perhaps, her role in depositing the famous coin hoard at ­Sutton
Hoo); Mayr-Harting, Coming, pp. 21, 65–6; J. Stevenson, “­Christianity,”
p. 180; Carver, Sutton Hoo, p. 34; and especially Klein, Ruling Women, p. 35.
Tyler stresses the influence queens had over their husbands: “­Reluctant
Kings,” pp. 155–7, discussing, among others, Rædwald’s spouse.
39 Bede, Letter to Ecgbert, ed. and trans. Grocock and Wood, esp. pp. 135–49.
40 Ravensdale and Muir, East Anglian Landscapes, pp. 13–14, quoted and
­discussed above in the Introduction, p. 26.
41 Young, Edmund, p. 27.
42 Edwin later died in battle against Penda of the Mercians at Hatfield
Chase; Bede praises him in a manner reminiscent of hagiography (HE
II.20, pp. 202–5), and Lutterkort characterizes the account as a “miracle
story”: “Beda,” pp. 94–9. See too Higham, Convert, pp. 166–7.
 Notes to pages 45–7 241

43 Wallace-Hadrill, Historical Commentary, p. 75; Kirby, Earliest English Kings,

pp. 78, 79; Tugène, L’idée, pp. 132–3; Plunkett, Suffolk, p. 97; Higham, Convert,
pp. 181–3; PASE, s.vv. “Eorpwald 1,” “Edwin 2”; Pitt, “Enigmatic,” pp. 8–9.
44 Uncertainty about Christianity remained his crowning trait long after he
became king of Northumbria, as stressed by Lutterkort, “Beda,” p. 95;
see too Kirby, Earliest English Kings, p. 62 (though on p. 79 Kirby stresses
how unusual Edwin’s baptism was in the first place, as royal conversion
outside of Kent was rare in the 620s); Higham, Convert, pp. 166–7. Tyler
discusses Edwin’s strategic hesitation in “Reluctant Kings,” pp. 147–8.
According to Tugène, however, Bede defends Edwin’s protracted delibera-
tion on the grounds that it reveals the Northumbrian king’s desire to learn
the new faith t­ horoughly, a motive quite different from that of the pagan
priest Coifi: L’idée, pp. 204–9. See too Gunn, Bede’s Historiae, pp. 160–1.
45 Thacker, “Bede’s Ideal,” pp. 146, 152; Foot, “Bede’s Kings,” p. 43, draw-
ing a parallel between Bede and Isidore and citing a study of Michael
Wallace-Hadrill’s.
46 Higham, English Empire, p. 305; in the same study Higham writes that
Rædwald was “the champion of religious conservatism [i.e. paganism]
and political orthodoxy in an England already touched by the new
­Christian monotheism” (p. 183). See too Wallace-Hadrill, H ­ istorical
­Commentary, p. 76; Newton, Reckoning, pp. 6, 14–15; and Kilbride’s
­perspicacious defence of Rædwald’s agency in “Why” (pp. 5–8), cited in
­Hoggett, Archaeology, p. 29, n. 50.
47 See e.g. Diesner, “Inkarnationsjahre,” p. 22, building on work by
Karl Hauck. (Diesner’s study is cited in Wallace-Hadrill, Historical
­Commentary, p. 76.) Carver’s caution in this regard should be noted: see
“Agency,” p. 7. Compare Kilbride, “Why,” p. 8.
48 Undoubtedly Rædwald underwent conversion to “advance his own
­personal prestige” (Young, Edmund, p. 26, citing Hoggett, A ­ rchaeology,
p. 29). That prestige, however, depended for its meaning on an
­aristocratic East Anglian social context that Bede disregards because it
predated Christianity’s arrival among the Wuffings.
49 Carver, “Agency,” p. 3. For related insights, see Newton, Reckoning, p. 14,
citing (n. 23) Chaney, Cult, pp. 25–8; Higham, Convert, p. 36. Women in
pagan Germanic societies were valued for their political counsel and reli-
gious authority: Klein, Ruling Women, pp. 11, 35. See too Tyler, “Reluctant
Kings,” pp. 155–7 for examples of influential conversion-age queens.
50 It is also significant that, on the basis of grave goods, East Anglia may be
said to be “one of the first regions in which women living in Britain are
giving their allegiance to the Germanic cultural idea”: Carver, “Sutton
Hoo,” p. 498.
51 Bede shows Boniface quoting 1 Cor. 7:14 (noted by Colgrave and Mynors,
p. 175, n. 1).
242 Notes to pages 47–8

52 On Bertha, see Wood, Merovingian Kingdoms, pp. 121, 176–8; Wood,

­Missionary Life, pp. 9–10; Rowley, Old English Version, passim, but
esp. pp. 101–2, 117–18 (summarizing recent scholarship). Dunn explores
the complexities of Bertha’s involvement in the Christian mission in Kent
in Christianization, pp. 48–56, 101–5.
53 E.g. McClure, “Bede’s Old Testament Kings”; Thacker, “Bede’s Ideal”;
Tugène, L’idée, esp. pp. 13–19, 207–8; DeGregorio, “Old Testament”;
Holder, “New Testament.” For related suggestive remarks, see ­Cowdrey,
“Bede,” pp. 517–19, 23. I owe the reference to Cowdrey’s article to
­Molyneaux’s “Old English Bede,” p. 1289, n. 3.
54 In the HE Bede includes his commentary on Proverbs among works he
had completed earlier, “a major group of mature commentaries” ­begun
with the commentary on 1 Samuel, “dedicated to Acca and written
around 716” (Thacker, “Ordering,” p. 54).
55 Here and elsewhere, I quote scriptural passages from Vulgate Bible, ed.
Edgar and Kinney. Bede’s Commentary on Proverbs further idealizes
Bede’s notion of the early church as a “strong woman”: “Mulier autem
vineam plantavit, cum ecclesia primitiva latius per orbem missis praedi-
catoribus fidei semina dispersit. Consideravit namque agrum, cum orbem
universum vitiorum spinetis horrentem, cultore spirituali opus habere
perspexit. Emit vero eum, cum, missis ubique doctoribus, ­talentum verbi
audientibus contulit, ut eos credentes felicissimo Christi mancipatui sub-
deret” (“The woman, moreover, planted the vineyard, ­because the primitive
church scattered seeds of faith more widely by means of preachers sent
throughout the world. And because she considered the entire world a field
bristling with thorn-groves of vices, she perceived [it] to have a need for
a spiritual cultivator. Truly she bought it, when by means of teachers sent
everywhere she exchanged the talent of speech for listeners, in order that,
by means of a most felicitous purchase, she might add them as ­believers
in Christ”). For the Latin text, see Bede’s Super parabola Salomonis, ed.
Giles, pp. 175–6. Translation and emphases mine.
56 Tyler, “Reluctant Kings,” p. 155. My analysis follows and builds on North’s.
57 Thacker, “Ordering,” pp. 55–6, and pp. 56–7 on Bede’s excoriation of the
British Christians as heretics and as modern equivalents to the Jews.
58 North, Heathen Gods, p. 322.
59 On Bede’s belief that Christianity was linked to prosperity, see Rollason,
Northumbria, pp. 201–2; Foot, “Bede’s Kings,” p. 33.
60 Kirby, Earliest English Kings, p. 41; HE II.6. See too N. Brooks, Early
History, p. 64; compare Higham, English Empire, pp. 202–4; Wilson,
Anglo-Saxon Paganism, p. 174.
61 Compare HE II.5 (Eadbald) and II.15 (Rædwald). Penda, it should be
­admitted, comes in for perhaps the harshest censure of all, largely because
of his hostility to Northumbria; see Thacker, “Bede’s Idea,” pp. 11–12.
 Notes to page 49 243

62 J. Blair, “Anglo-Saxon Period,” p. 77. Compare Kirby, Earliest English

Kings, p. 62; Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, p. 174. On certain kings’
refusal to baptize their sons, and the “intra-dynastic competition” the
practice implies, see Tyler, “Reluctant Kings,” pp. 157–60 (discussing e.g.
Eadbald and the sons of Sæberht).
63 Diesner (“Inkarnationsjahre,” p. 22) notes that in general Bede “das
ständige Hin und Her zwischen Christentum und Heidentum in den
angelsächsischen Staaten des 7. Jahrhunderts bewuẞt war” (“was aware
of the constant back-and-forth between Christianity and paganism in the
Anglo-Saxon states of the seventh century”; translation mine).
64 Wood suspects that, pace Bede’s own chronology of events, ­Æthelberht
may have been baptized two years before St. Augustine’s arrival:
­Merovingian North Sea, p. 15. This possibility would not affect my reading
of the implicit contrast between Æthelberht’s conversion and Rædwald’s
as Bede viewed it.
65 Klein, Ruling Women, pp. 39–45 (pp. 39, 42). According to North, “there
is neither reaction nor apostasy in this tale” because “Rædwald’s wife
and friends did not expel the Christian cult”: Heathen Gods, p. 322. The
­corrective, however, raises Bede’s demonization of Rædwald to that
much higher relief. Compare Wallace-Hadrill: “[Rædwald] was not
hostile to Christianity and not unique in his decision to keep his o ­ ptions
open. … It is clear that East Anglian paganism was strong enough
to ­resist conversion and possible that the dual-purpose temple was
the brave effort of a defeated Christian at a serious form of religious
syncretism; but Bede does not give Redwald the benefit of the doubt”
(­Historical ­Commentary, p. 76). See too Higham, Convert, p. 138.
66 On baptism’s performative and even “exorcistic character,” see Dumitrescu,
“Bede’s Liberation Philology,” p. 49 (and sources cited therein); Dunn,
Christianization, p. 142; Foxhall Forbes, Heaven, pp. 99–100.
67 North, Heathen Gods, p. 322. Eric John claims that the advising role of the
witan or “wise men” was normally a mere formality and that kings took
decisions unilaterally: “When there appears to be evidence of genuine
­debate it is unwise to make too much of it” (Reassessing, p. 17). On the
other hand, “Redwald, returning home [from Kent, where he had under-
gone conversion to Christianity], found his wife and some of his senior
witan opposed, so he sought a compromise” (p. 29).
68 Noticing sexual connotations in Bede’s critique, Klein claims that, both in
this passage and in his account of the impiety of Eadbald of Kent, Bede
concurs with “the pervasive formulation within biblical and patristic
writings of apostasy as spiritual fornication”: Ruling Women, p. 41 (and
sources cited on p. 215, n. 57). The biblical Jezebel was an antitype of
queenship in early English thought; see Matthews, “Token,” pp. 53–5,
citing Klein’s discussion in Ruling Women, e.g. pp. 126, 128, 133–4. Biblical
244 Notes to pages 49–51

associations between harlotry and worldliness in general are discussed in

MacCarron, “Æthelthryth,” and “Adornment,” pp. 143–4.
69 See the salutary critiques of historicist enterprises in Cramp, “Not Why,”
and Capper, “Practical Implications.”
70 Against such over-simplification, see Carver, “Agency,” pp. 14 and 8,
respectively; Kilbride, “Why”; Pestell, “Paganism”; Yorke, Conversion,
pp. 98–109; Petts, Pagan, pp. 73–96; Pluskowski, “Archaeology” (who,
like Petts, cites Kilbride); Hines, “Religion,” p. 377; Wormald, “Bede,
­Beowulf,” pp. 66–7; Higham, Convert, p. 136.
71 Dunn, Christianization, p. 164, citing (p. 239, n. 165) Carver, Sutton Hoo,
p. 503. See too Wood, “Franks,” p. 2. Pitt suggests that Sutton Hoo’s
­ideological orientation needn’t amount to proof of pagan religious belief
as such but instead displays what Judith Jesch calls “cultural paganism”
(“Enigmatic,” p. 23, citing, in her n. 154, Jesch, “Scandinavian,” pp. 58,
67–8), though it should be noted that Jesch primarily discusses ­survivals
in the otherwise explicitly Christian England of the age of Cnut and
Wulfstan.
72 “Saulos” may be merely an incompetent rendering of “Paulos”; see
Bruce-Mitford, who plausibly suggests that, regardless of the engraver’s
intention, “[t]he ‘uneducated copy’ could still have been read as Saulos
… and the antithesis with Paulos could still have been intended by those
who arranged the burial”: Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial, vol. 1, pp. 707–9.
73 See above, Introduction, p. 26, as well as Pestell, “Kingdom,” pp. 217–18;
Oosthuizen, “Culture,” p. 8.
74 Harris, Race, p. 64. On the relationship between rex and gens in Bede’s
thinking, see also Tugène, L’idée, pp. 49–90.
75 Howe, Migration, p. 52.
76 O’Brien, Bede’s Temple, p. 140 and sources in his notes 79 and 80.
­DeGregorio notes that Bede understood true doctores and praedicatores
as members of his intended audience, “namely people in positions
of spiritual leadership anywhere whose charge it was to oversee the
­salvation and moral edification of the faithful”: “Old Testament,” p. 130.
On the role of doctores in combatting heresy as expounded in Bede’s
­commentary on the Book of Samuel, see Thacker, “Britons,” p. 143.
S. Coates, “Ceolfrid,” p. 84, shows that in the same commentary Bede
condemned clerical laxity as a compromise with paganism.
77 Examples include HE IV.11, pp. 368–9 (regarding the pious East Saxon
king Sebbi’s burial in “ecclesia beati doctoris gentium” [“the church of
the blessed doctor of the Gentiles”]); HE III.7, pp. 232–3 (Bishop Birinus’
promise to Pope Honorius that “se … in intimis ultra Anglorum partibus,
quo nullus doctor praecessisset, sanctae fidei semina esse sparsurum”
[“he would scatter the seeds of the holy faith in the remotest regions of
 Notes to pages 51–3 245

England, where no teacher had been before”]; and HE III.22, pp. 282–3
(the East Saxon king Sigeberht’s request that the Northumbrian king
Oswiu send doctores to his realm “qui gentem suam ad fidem Christi
conuerterent ac fonte salutari abluerent” [“to convert his people to the
faith of Christ and wash them in the fountain of salvation”]).
78 Thacker, “Ordering,” p. 55, discussing the Super parabola Salomonis and
other exegetical works written ca. 716. Compare Thacker, “Bede’s Ideal,”
pp. 132–4.
79 For discussion of HE V in this regard, see Wood, Missionary Life, pp. 42–5,
and Wood, Merovingian North Sea, p. 7, on “[t]he strength of continuing
paganism in the region [of Frisia] into the eighth century.”
80 Thacker, “Why Did Heresy Matter?,” p. 47; “[f]or Bede, ‘heresy’ was
code for a whole spectrum of contemporary problems,” p. 66. See too
Thacker, “Britons,” pp. 142–4; Wallace-Hadrill, Historical Commentary,
p. xxiii; Laistner, Thought, pp. 124–5. Bede may even have believed that
­Monothelitism, tackled by the Council of Constantinople (680–1), might
survive and spread to Britain: see HE IV.17–18 and V.19, discussed by
MacCarron, “Christology,” p. 171.
81 Dunn intriguingly supposes that the dual temple “enabled Rædwald
to keep up two alliances, the pagan one probably to another emergent
­ruling family represented by his wife”: Christianization, p. 103.
82 Indeed, “polluted” would not be too strong a word for this ­context, as
Bede held that each of the two baptized kings Eanfrith (a ­Bernician)
and Osric (a Deiran) had returned to paganism “polluendum
­perdendumque” (“thereby to be polluted and destroyed”): see HE, III.1,
pp. 212–13 and Dunn’s discussion in Christianization, pp. 107–8.
83 Whitelock, “Pre-Viking Age Church,” p. 3. Whitelock ventured the
­remark as an aside only.
84 Wallace-Hadrill, Historical Commentary, p. 76. According to DMLBS
(fasc. 1, pp. 70 and 135, respectively), in the context of HE II.15 altare
means simply “altar (Christian)” and arula “little altar.”
85 Newton, Reckoning, p. 16, citing Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae Historiam,
vol. 2, p. 60.
86 Dunn, Christianization, p. 68.
87 VSG, ed. and trans. Colgrave, §31, pp. 101–2.
88 VSG, §28, pp. 92–5.
89 I thank an anonymous reader for suggesting a possible link among these
three –ulas.
90 Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, p. 36, discusses the relevant passage in
Bede’s Life of St. Cuthbert. This instance of apostasy in rural Northumbria
is not associated with royal sponsorship and thus differs from Rædwald’s
official tolerance of paganism in East Anglia.
246 Notes to pages 53–6

91 Pagan English sacrificial victimae probably were animals, not human

beings: Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, pp. 33–4, 37, 99 (citing Bede’s
quotation from Gregory’s letter to Mellitus in HE I.30, pp. 106–9). See too
Dunn, Christianization, p. 74.
92 Like Bede, Gregory of Tours understood the ideological nature of spatial
borders: see Goetz, “Concepts,” p. 77.
93 I am grateful to an anonymous reader for referring me to this passage
from Acts.
94 For discussion of this contrast as it informs Bede’s thinking in De
­templo, see O’Reilly’s introduction to Bede, On the Temple, ed. Connolly,
pp. xlvi–vii.
95 Hines, “Religion,” p. 389; J. Blair, “Anglo-Saxon Pagan Shrines,” p. 22;
Pluskowski, “Archaeology,” p. 772 (citing Blair).
96 Boyarin, Border Lines, p. 72 for the quotation, and p. 6 for the discussion
of Lieu’s insights. The story of Jesus’s cleansing of the Temple appears in
Mt. 21:12–17, Mk. 11:15–19, Lk. 19:45–8, and John 2:13–16.
97 Molyneaux discusses the omission of this passage in the Old English
translation of the HE: see his “Old English Bede,” p. 1303. I retain Col-
grave’s translation but prefer Molyneaux’s substitution of the untrans-
lated Latin word gens for Colgrave’s “race.”
98 Church, building on work by Barbara Yorke, speculates that Rædwald’s
influence retarded the conversion of Essex, Kent, and Northumbria: “Pa-
ganism,” pp. 177–8 and n. 78. See too Higham, Convert, pp. 136, 141–2.
99 Thacker, “Bede and History,” p. 185.
100 On Rendlesham’s importance, see Williamson, Sutton Hoo, esp. pp. 96–
101; Scull and Williamson, “New Light”; Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo
Ship-Burial, vol. 1, pp. 30–2; R.R. Clarke, East Anglia, p. 138; Newton,
Reckoning, pp. 18–24 (and sources cited therein); Newton, Origins, pp. 127,
139; Ravensdale, “Themes,” p. 30; Scull, Minter, and Plouviez, “Social.”
Scarfe, Suffolk, p. 30, cites Martin Carver’s suggestion that Kingston may
have been meant, and Wood (“Franks,” p. 13) also defends Kingston; but
archaeological finds in 2008–14 support the traditional view of Rendlesh-
am’s significance: see Scull, Minter, and Plouviez, “Social.” On Rend-
lesham’s connection to the important East Anglian port of Ipswich, see
Wickham, Framing, p. 809; though Scull, Minter, and Plouviez (“Social,”
pp. 1606–7) provide a more nuanced interpretation.
101 Klein, Ruling Women, p. 43.
102 On the topic of the queen’s influence in matters of royal conversion, see
Tyler, “Reluctant Kings,” pp. 156–7.
103 Colgrave and Mynors note the quotation from Luke 11:26 (HE, p. 190, n. 1).
104 See e.g. Higham, English Empire, p. 188; North, Heathen Gods, p. 322.
105 North, Heathen Gods, p. 322.
 Notes to pages 56–8 247

106 As Newton points out on the basis of II Kings 17:41, the Samaritans
long worshipped the Hebrews’ God along with their own gods, so it is
fair to ask with Newton “Is it thus an exact analogy to the situation of
Rædwald?” (Reckoning, p. 15). To be sure, Bede was selective in the way
he applied scriptural allusions and quotations to English history.
107 See above, n. 66.
108 As discussed below, Bede credits St. Felix for bringing the East Angles “a
longa iniquitate atque infelicitate” (“from long-lasting evil and unhappi-
ness”; HE II.15, pp. 190–1). Bede’s rigid dichotomy between Rædwald’s
long-lived iniquitas and its later eradication by Felix recalls Jesus’s stern
admonition in Luke 11:23: “Qui non est mecum adversum me est, et qui
non colligit mecum dispergit” (“He that is not with me is against me, and
he that gathereth not with me scattereth”).
109 On the dating, see HE, ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, p. 385, n. 3.
The Synod is sometimes dated 680, and the beginning of Ealdwulf’s reign
to 663 or 664.
110 Plunkett puts the first year of Ealdwulf’s kingship at 664 and speculates
that “Ealdwulf … was perhaps about 35” at the time: Suffolk, p. 120.
111 On the date, see above, n. 14. The speculation that the fanum persisted
well after Rædwald’s death finds some support in J. Stevenson, “Christi-
anity,” p. 182; Scarfe, Suffolk, pp. 30–1, 36; Newton, Reckoning, pp. 15, 17;
Hoggett, Archaeology, p. 29.
112 Respectively, Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, p. 17; Bruce-Mitford, Sutton
Hoo Ship-Burial, vol. 1, p. 705. Compare F. Stenton, “East Anglian Kings,”
in Preparatory, p. 399.
113 Wormald, “Bede, Beowulf,” pp. 60–1, discusses Bede’s fear of pagan
resurgence.
114 See above, p. 45.
115 According to Carver, Penda’s wars against the East Angles “should be seen
in the light of interfactional struggles within East Anglia”: “Kingship,”
p. 155, quoted by Kirby, Earliest English Kings, p. 110, n. 58. Did Penda’s
influence lie behind the pagan Ricberht’s murder of Eorpwald as well?
Pitt observes that Ricberht, like any other claimant, would have needed to
­enjoy “the support of (most of) the East Anglian elites,” and that therefore
“it is tempting to infer that Ricberht’s pagan beliefs made him a palatable
alternative to the Christian Sigeberht” (“Enigmatic,” p. 9). See too Higham’s
analysis in Convert, pp. 182–3.
116 Wood, “Franks,” p. 4, noting the tangled picture of the East Anglian
­dynastic succession in HE. For reconstructions and studies of the East
Anglian royal genealogy, see above, Introduction, nn. 122 and 165.
117 HE, II.15, pp. 190–1; III.18, pp. 166–9; Colgrave and Mynors’s notes,
pp. 266, 268. See now Pitt’s conjectural reconstruction of the power
248 Notes to pages 58–62

dynamics involving Eorpwald, Sigeberht, and Ricberht (“Enigmatic,”

pp. 8–10).
118 Kirby, Earliest English Kings, p. 81.
119 Yorke, Kings, pp. 69–70. Scull, “Before Sutton Hoo,” p. 6, surmises
that the two kings, as well as the origins of Norfolk and Suffolk, can
be ­explained by earlier “administrative subdivisions, or … smaller
­constituent groupings under East Anglian hegemony.” See too Bassett,
“In Search,” pp. 23, 26. Norfolk is often secondary in discussions of the
early East Anglian kingdom, but see Williamson, Origins, pp. 76–7. In
2016, sumptuous grave goods, including coins dated to ca. 650–75, were
­unearthed in ­Winfarthing, Norfolk; they belonged to a woman “who
probably had aristocratic or royal connections” (Kennedy, “Detectorists”).
120 Howe, Writing, p. 130.
121 Higham, English Empire, p. 189. Newton seems to interpret Bede’s r­ emark
about ignobility to refer not to Rædwald himself but to his deeds, “­because
he had been badly advised by his wife and others”: Reckoning, p. 16.
122 Pohl, “Ethnic Names,” p. 9.
123 My argument here is inspired by Stodnick’s analysis of the form and
function of royal genealogies in “Old Names.” On Bede’s occasional
statements in the HE that this or that person’s “nobility of birth was
matched by nobility in virtue,” see Yorke, Conversion, pp. 246–7, dis-
cussing Bede’s passages on St. Æthelthryth. Yorke claims that “Bede’s
personal respect for Æthelthryth may have been underpinned by the
deference he would naturally have felt as a member of the Northum-
brian nobility for a princess of the East Angles who had been a queen of
Northumbria” (p. 247). Such “personal respect” clearly did not extend to
Rædwald, despite the vital aid he had given to the Northumbrian Edwin.
124 Newton, Origins, pp. 60–1, building upon Dumville, “Kingship,” p. 83.
On the propagandistic function of early English, especially West Saxon,
genealogies more generally, see Yorke, “Political and Ethnic Identity”
(esp. p. 78), and sources cited above in n. 18.
125 Tugène, L’idée, p. 95 (translation mine); see too his general ­discussion
on pp. 94–6, in which Tugène proposes the view that it was this ­attitude
­towards genealogies that induced Bede to exclude them from his
­accounts of Northumbrian kings. Wormald takes a different view of
­regnal lists in “Bede, Beowulf,” p. 57.
126 Wallace-Hadrill, Historical Commentary, p. 111. Bede mentions but does
not dwell on the death of the (perhaps) pagan Ecgric; his terseness in this
regard keeps the reader’s attention fixed on Sigeberht’s piety. See PASE,
s.vv. “Sigeberht 3,” “Fursa 1,” “Ecgric 1.”
127 Ridyard, Royal Saints, p. 92. See too Hare, “Heroes”; Hill, “Non nisi.”
128 Thacker, “Bede’s Ideal,” p. 146; compare McClure, “Bede’s Old Testament
Kings,” pp. 87–92.
 Notes to pages 62–5 249

129 Foot, “Bede’s Kings,” pp. 48–9.

130 Ridyard, Royal Saints, p. 5, and reference to Górski’s work in her n. 5. For
a comparable suggestion on the East Anglian stirps’s use of the Roman
wolf symbol to compensate for their political weakness after Rædwald’s
time, see Young, Edmund, pp. 30, 31 (see above, Introduction, n. 109).
131 On pagan “sacral” and Christian “sacred” kingship, see Chaney, Cult,
p. 48; Nelson, “Royal Saints”; Ridyard, Royal Saints, pp. 76–8; Rollason,
Northumbria, pp. 198–200; Cubitt, “Sites”; Klaniczay, Holy Rulers,
pp. 78–94; Phelpstead, “King,” pp. 33–4 (also citing most of these
­studies). Hare, “Heroes,” discusses Bede’s varied portrayals of the
­Christian rulers Æthelberht of Kent, Edwin of Northumbria, and Oswald.
132 It should be conceded, however, that devotion to royal saints had popu-
lar as well as political origins; see e.g. Cubitt, “Sites.”
133 MS A, ed. Bately, p. 28; ASC, p. 26, though I have substituted “East Angles”
for “East Anglians.”
134 Plunkett, Suffolk, p. 102; “647x648” according to PASE, s.v. “Felix 2.”
135 Ridyard, Royal Saints, pp. 75–6.
136 Ridyard, Royal Saints, p. 75, identifies this quality along with the pax and
prosperitas associated with kings’ “attainment of national felicitas.”
137 Merrills, History, p. 247. See too McClure, “Bede’s Old Testament Kings,”
pp. 83–5, 94–5.
138 Breeze, “Bede’s Civitas Domnoc,” building upon R. Coates,
“­Domnoc/­Dommoc” and confirming Rigold’s hypothesis in “­Supposed
See” and “Further Evidence.” Other contributions to the debate
­include Wallace-Hadrill, Historical Commentary, p. 78; Wormald and
Charles-Edwards, Addenda, p. 224; Scarfe, Suffolk, p. 41; Haslam,
“­Dommoc”; Hoggett, Archaeology, pp. 36–9; J. Campbell, Anglo-Saxon State,
pp. 108–10. I am grateful to Dr. Breeze for referring me to his own and
Coates’s articles.
139 Bede’s “siluarum et maris uicinitate amoenum, constructum in castro
quodam” follows the wording of his source, the Vita sancti Fursei, but
with changed word order; see Vita virtutesque Fursei, ed. Krusch, p. 437,
§7. On the question whether Cnobheresburg was indeed Burgh Castle in
Norfolk (but part of Suffolk until 1974), see below, chap. 2 and n. 23.
140 Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, II.74, ed. and trans. Winterbottom, vol. 1,
pp. 234–5.
141 Swift, Waterland, p. 8.
142 Merrills, History, p. 252.
143 Pestell, “Paganism,” p. 66.
144 L.T. Martin, “Bede,” p. 159, quoting Bede on Felix’s mission to East
­Anglia and citing further examples in the HE.
145 Fowler, “Discussion,’” p. 403. See too Fowler’s analysis of the converted
farmers’ point of view: “And, you know, it doesn’t take a great deal of
250 Notes to pages 65–8

energy to say a prayer: it’s a good thing to do and it’s not much effort. It
seems to me that the Christian religion very quickly moved in and took
over in the thought processes that go along with the physical activity of
farming” (p. 403).
146 My argument here is informed by Frantzen, Desire, pp. 141–6 (and need
not conflict with Dumitrescu’s claim in “Bede’s Liberation Philology”
that the Cædmon story, despite its Latinity, exalts the English language).
147 See above, n. 108. On Luke’s parable of the sower as Bede’s inspiration,
see L.T. Martin, “Bede and Preaching,” p. 159.
148 In what Mynors calls the c (earlier) version of HE, and in copies
­descended from it, this prayer concludes the entirety of the work; in
the m (later) type, the prayer appears at the end of the Preface (“Textual
­Introduction,” pp. xl–xli; see too Waite, “Preface,” p. 85).
149 In what follows, my thinking about Bede’s subjunctive is influenced
by Hines’s discussion of the Old English Seafarer’s appeal to its readers
to contemplate how they might discover and reach their true spiritual
home: “The sentiment, and in particular the variability implied by those
two subjunctives [“hwær wē hām āgen” and “hū wē þider cumen” in
lines 117b and 118b], were indeed deeply embedded in the Anglo-Saxon
experience”: “No Place,” p. 39.
150 Formerly the Leningrad Bede; here and in what follows I refer to the
­facsimile edition by Arngart.
151 Old English Version, ed. and trans. T. Miller, vol. 1, pp. 140–3.
152 Rowley, Old English Version, p. 56. Rowley, and Molyneaux in “Old
­English Bede,” both explore the ideological shift between the HE and its
later OE translation and question the latter’s influence on King Alfred’s
reform program.
153 A very late, elegantly written manuscript of the HE, Glasgow, Hunterian
Library, MS. Hunter 86 (ca. 1515) lacks marginalia altogether.
154 In London, British Library, MS. Royal 13.C.v (an eleventh-century
­manuscript of the HE), an annotator has added, on fol. 56r, a superscript
9 (for the Latin noun termination –us) to the end of each of the names
­ræduuald, aeduin, osuuald, and osuiu, but not to aelle, celin, ceaulin, or æðil-
berht. On similar corrections to London, British Library, MS Royal 13.A.xv,
a tenth-century manuscript of Felix’s VSG, see Voth, “Three,” p. 128.
155 Carver, “Sutton Hoo,” p. 499.
156 Wallace-Hadrill, Historical Commentary, p. 77.
157 On Bede’s manipulation of the tropes of Rome as centre and Britain as
periphery, see Howe, “Angle,” esp. pp. 9–12; Howe, Writing, pp. 104–11;
Lavezzo, Angels, pp. 7, 30 (also citing Howe); Scully, “Bede,” pp. 37–42;
O’Reilly, “Islands.” Discenza (“Map”) traces the flexibility of this
­dichotomy in the Alfredian era. My use of Thietmar of Merseburg’s word
 Notes to pages 68–71 251

angulus to describe Britain is indebted to Howe’s discussion in “Angle,”

esp. p. 12. Compare Michelet, Creation, pp. 142–60. Pohl comments on
Widukind’s reference in the Rerum gestarum Saxonicarum (ed. Hirsch and
Lohmann) to Britain’s location “in angulo … maris”: “Ethnic Names,” p. 17.
158 The quotation is from Bede’s preface to In cantica canticorum as quoted in
turn and translated by Merrills, History, p. 237. See too Merrills’ astute
insight on pp. 238–9 into Bede’s belief that England lay “[s]ituated simul-
taneously at the end of Christian time and at the fringes of the Christian
world” (and compare p. 273).

Chapter 2

1 Hooke, Anglo-Saxon Landscape, pp. 192–3, on land transactions. For dis-

cussion of the Bedan passage in question, see chap. 1 above, pp. 63–4.
2 Rackham, History, p. 155.
3 On Domnoc as modern Walton Castle, Suffolk, see above, chap. 1, n. 138.
4 Matthews, “Token,” p. 39.
5 Klein, Ruling Women, p. 41; see discussion above, chap. 1, p. 49 and n. 68.
6 I have in mind Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s painting Effetti del buon governo in
campagna (Siena, Palazzo Pubblico, 1338–9).
7 Respectively, HE II.15, pp. 190–1; HE III.19, pp. 270–1; MS A, ed. Bately,
p. 28; ASC, p. 26.
8 Though see Hart, “Kingdom,” p. 53, on the use of earthworks by neigh-
bouring kingdoms to hinder Mercian aggression.
9 Additamentum, ed. Krusch, p. 449, and translation in Fouracre and
­Gerberding, Late Merovingian France, p. 327. For discussion of the Addita-
mentum, see Whitelock, “Pre-Viking Age Church,” p. 6 (cited in Hoggett,
Archaeology, p. 45), and Luckhardt, “Gender,” pp. 46–50. I owe the ­reference
to Fouracre and Gerberding’s book to Luckhardt’s article (p. 46, n. 55).
10 LE, ed. Blake, pp. 3–4; trans. Fairweather, pp. 4–6.
11 This is highly conjectural. Æthelthryth would have been in her teens
when she married the Middle Anglian nobleman Tondberht “before 654”
(Blanton, Signs, p. 6), her father King Anna having been killed by Penda
either in that year or in 655, according to Kirby, Earliest English Kings,
p. 51, on the basis of HE III.7. The Mercian king may have ­destroyed Cra-
tendune at roughly this time. See PASE, s.vv. “Æthelthryth 2,” “­Tondberht
1,” “Penda 1.”
12 Penda had secured Æthelhere’s aid in the Battle of the Winwæd in 654/5,
in which both men died (HE, III.24). LE I.7 (trans. Fairweather, p. 22)
makes explicit what is only implicit in Bede, that Æthelhere was Penda’s
client-king rather than an independent ruler. See Kirby, Earliest English
Kings, p. 93; PASE s.v. “Æthelhere 1”; Prestwich, “King Æthelhere,” p. 90
252 Notes to pages 71–3

(citing Plummer’s study of the LE), referenced by McClure and Collins

in the “Explanatory Notes” to their edition of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History,
p. 396.
13 Scarfe, Suffolk, p. 42.
14 HE IV.20, p. 398 for the Latin text; for the translation, I turn to the word-
for-word rendering in Harris, Bede and Aethelthryth, p. 158, but without
Harris’s use of small capitals to correspond to initial words in Bede’s
strophes.
15 E.g. HE III.24; III.30; IV.3; IV.13; V.13; V.19. Wulfhere reigned 659–75; see
PASE, s.v. “Wulfhere 1.”
16 LE, I.7, ed. Blake, p. 19; trans. Fairweather, p. 23.
17 Wallace-Hadrill, Historical Commentary, pp. xviii–xix, commenting on the
accuracy of Charles Plummer’s insight about the lack of cohesion among
the early English gentes as represented by Bede.
18 See e.g. the “A” recension’s notice for 654 that “Her Onna [i.e. King
Anna] cyning wearþ ofslægen, 7 Botulf ongon mynster timbran æt
Icanho”: MS A, ed. Bately, p. 29. “Here [i.e. in this year] King Anna was
killed; and Botwulf began to build a minster at Icanho”: ASC, p. 28.
On Botwulf and the identification of Icanho with Iken in Suffolk, see
­Swanton’s note 7 on p. 28, citing F.S. Stevenson, “St. Botolph”; West,
Scarfe, and Cramp, “Iken.” See too Scarfe, Suffolk, 44–51; Hoggett, Archae-
ology, pp. 47–51; Pestell, Landscapes, pp. 25, 97; PASE, s.v. “Botwulf 1”; and
Newton, “­Forgotten History.”
19 Where Botwulf’s body is said to lie at Thorney Abbey (on Þornige) along
with the remains of saints Athulf, Huna, Thancred, Torhtred, Hereferth,
Cissa, Benedict, and Tova: see Liebermann, Heiligen Englands, p. 15. On
the Secgan, see Rollason, “Lists,” esp. p. 66 (noting that Botwulf’s body
was translated to Thorney only during King Edgar’s reign), and Blanton,
Signs, pp. 126–7 (citing Rollason’s article).
20 On which, see Love, “Folcard”; Love, “Anglo-Saxon Saints”; Newton,
“Forgotten History,” p. 5. The year 654 is given by John of Worcester for
Botwulf’s foundation at Icanhoe and Penda’s killing of Anna: Chronicle,
ed. Darlington and McGurk, trans. Bray and McGurk, vol. 2, p. 105, and
n. 7 referring to various recensions of the ASC.
21 Wallace-Hadrill, Historical Commentary, p. xxii.
22 For discussion in relation to Irish missionary activity, see Wormald,
“Venerable Bede,” p. 16, contrasting Bede’s account of Fursey to Bede’s
source, the Merovingian Vita virtutesque Fursei (ed. Krusch; Fursey’s
visions, however, are edited separately in Ciccarese, “Le visioni,” cited
in Thacker, “Guthlac and His Life,” p. 13, n. 67). According to Gunn,
Bede presents Fursey’s hermitage favourably because, though Irish in
­foundation, it was not in Northumbria and therefore could not compete
 Notes to pages 73–5 253

with Wearmouth-Jarrow for Northumbrian royal patronage (Bede’s Histo-

riae, pp. 76–8).
23 On Bede’s borrowing from the Vita sancti Fursei, see above, chap. 1 and n.
139. For discussion of the problem of the site’s identification, see Wallace-
Hadrill, Historical Commentary, p. 113; J. Campbell, Essays, p. 101; Pestell,
Landscapes, pp. 56–7; Pestell, “Kingdom,” p. 197, n. 5; Hoggett, Archaeology,
pp. 56–60; Williamson, Sutton Hoo, p. 19. For Wallace-Hadrill, “[a]t least it
is certain that Fursa’s site was a royal gift, and thereafter an object of royal
bounty; and this interests Bede” (Historical Commentary, p. 113).
24 On monastic re-use of Roman sites, see Pestell, Landscapes, pp. 48, 56–62;
Hoggett’s full discussion in Archaeology, pp. 53–67; Young, Edmund, p. 32.
25 Because the account is not explicitly connected to Fursey’s physical envi-
ronment or indeed to any particular historical context, it is not surprising
that it survives in excerpted form in manuscripts that do not contain the
HE; see Colgrave and Mynors’s note, p. 270, n. 3.
26 Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. Caley, Ellis, and Bandinel, vol. 1, p. 344.
27 Bede’s focus on Æthelthryth’s body-centred piety at Ely (e.g. her
­fasting and infrequent bathing) is noted by Blanton, Signs, p. 39. See too
­Matthews, “Token,” pp. 33–58; Elliott, “Sex,” chap. 4. For a seminal study
of the relationship among bodily, cognitive, and spiritual states in early
English writing ­generally, see Lockett, Anglo-Saxon Psychologies.
28 Blanton, Signs; Garrison, “Lives” (cited in Blanton, Signs, p. 31, n. 29);
Black, “Nutrix pia”; Karkov, “Body”; Elliott, “Sex”; Pulsiano, “Blessed
Bodies”; Pelteret, “Bede’s Women”; G. Griffiths, “Reading”; Waterhouse,
“Discourse”; Foot, Veiled Women, vol. 1, p. 22; Gulley, Displacement,
pp. 11–12, 115–18; Lees and Overing, Double Agents, pp. 20–9 and 65–9;
Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women, pp. 12–13; Meyer, “Queens”; Szarmach,
“Æðeldreda”; and Watt, “Earliest Women’s Writing?” I thank my students
Claire Hutchinson and Danielle Criddle for alerting me to Watt’s article.
29 See e.g. Higham, (Re-)reading, p. 119; Blanton, Signs; Blanton, “Presenting”;
Love, Goscelin; Rabin, “Holy Bodies,” pp. 234–43, 259–65.
30 Blanton, Signs. See also Styler’s recent doctoral thesis “Story.”
31 Stodnick, “Emergent Englishness,” p. 501.
32 Blanton, Signs, p. 63; Gretsch, Ælfric, p. 225; Garrison, “Lives,” pp. 3,
7, 35, 42 and 46; Szarmach, “Æðeldreda,” pp. 145, 149; Styler, “Story.”
­Originating in the HE, the Ely-England connection is drawn too in
e.g. the Miracvla Sancte Ætheldrethe’s claim that Ely was created by
­Æthelthryth, “this bright lamp of the English and brilliant gem of
­paradise” (“hec Anglorum lampas perspicua gemmaque paradisi claris-
sima”): Love, Goscelin, pp. 104–5.
33 On the date of ca. 672, see Blanton, Signs, p. 32; Hoggett, Archaeology,
p. 33. The LE claims that Æthelthryth had retired to Ely after Tondberht’s
254 Notes to pages 75–7

death and was subsequently forced by her kinsfolk to leave in order to

marry Ecgfrith: LE, I.8, ed. Blake, p. 20; trans. Fairweather, pp. 24–5.
34 See especially the studies cited above in notes 27 and 28, and Gunn, B ­ ede’s
Historiae, p. 155–6, on Merovingian influences upon Bede’s depiction of
Æthelthryth’s relationship with Ecgfrith.
35 Garrison, “Lives,” p. 40.
36 See too Bede’s History of the Abbots, ed. and trans. Grocock and Wood,
pp. 22–3 and 36–7. On Ecgfrith’s endowment, see Gunn, Bede’s ­Historiae,
pp. 45–50; Wickham-Crowley, “Fens,” p. 80. Wood suggests that
­Wearmouth may have been founded on land expropriated from Benedict
Biscop’s family: “Foundation,” pp. 87–9. Levison situated Pope Agatho’s
granting of privileges to Wearmouth within the context of enduring
early English awareness of Rome’s place in the English church (England,
pp. 15–26).
37 As an aside, it should be noted that Bede transposes the order of events;
Ecgfrith’s endowment of Wearmouth followed his separation from
­Æthelthryth by two years.
38 Harris, Bede and Aethelthryth, p. 134. Compare p. 136.
39 See P.A. Thompson, “St. Æthelthryth,” p. 484; Weston, “Saintly Lives,”
p. 403; Garrison, “Lives,” pp. 9–13; Bullimore, “Unpicking,” e.g. pp. 838
and 849.
40 Relevant is the concept of freoðuwebbe, “peace-weaver” (see e.g. B ­ eowulf,
line 1942a, in Klaeber’s Beowulf, p. 66), but Cavell, in “Formulaic
­Friþuwebban,” has shown that the word was not uniquely applied to
women. I thank an anonymous reviewer for this reference. Bede may
have been sceptical of the efficacy of “peace-weavers” anyway (Hollis,
Anglo-Saxon Women, p. 230), though in Æthelthryth’s case he may have
discerned a queen’s special ability to make or break international peace
(Bullimore, “Unpicking,” p. 849).
41 Sneesby, Etheldreda, p. 74. The possibility is strong. By depriving
­Ecgfrith of offspring, Æthelthryth “prevented him from fulfilling his
proper duty of fathering princes to rule after him,” as observed by Foot
(“­Bede’s Kings,” p. 38). As Matthews puts it, “an obdurately celibate
queen would have been a political crisis” (“Token,” p. 34, building
upon insights by Ridyard). See too Bullimore’s analysis of the alliance
­networks that ­Æthelthryth’s separation from Ecgfrith will have disrupted
(“Unpicking”).
42 For a different view, however, see Oosthuizen, Anglo-Saxon Fenland, p. 74.
43 See Harris, Bede and Aethelthryth, p. 159. On Bede’s general suppression of
Æthelthryth’s “political and social activities as an East Anglian princess,”
see Blanton, Signs, p. 27; for full discussion of the mentality behind that
suppression, see Ridyard, Royal Saints, pp. 82–9.
 Notes to pages 77–9 255

44 Female sainthood is discussed in the context of familial and sexual ob-

ligations by Heffernan, Sacred Biography, pp. 188–9; and P. Brown, Body,
pp. lvi–lvii, 343–5, 356, and 363. On women’s agency in certain hagiog-
raphical contexts, see Pelteret, “Bede’s Women,” pp. 39–46; Pulsiano,
“Blessed Bodies,” p. 41; Meyer, “Queens,” pp. 91 and 108–9; Higham,
“Bede’s Agenda,” p. 490; Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women, pp. 73 and 136 (but
cf. pp. 12–13); Garrison, “Lives,” pp. 24–8 and 41–6 and studies cited
therein; Matthews, “Token,” pp. 44–5 (on Bede’s and Ælfric’s portrayal
of Æthelthryth). Szarmach, “Æðeldreda,” pp. 146–9, is trenchant in his
defence of the abbess’s agency (“[t]he powerful Æðeldreda cannot be de-
nied”; p. 147). Harris explains her monastic vows as “not a diminishment
of her will, but an exercise of will to reform her appetites in the service of
right order” (Bede and Aethelthryth, p. 137).
45 Weston, “Saintly Lives,” p. 403. Compare the “ambiguously passive and
active” sexuality attributed to the saint by the LE as discussed by Otter,
“Temptation,” p. 141.
46 See Miracvla Sancte Ætheldrethe, in Love, Goscelin, pp. 95–131, at pp. 104–11
and 122–31; LE, II.131–4 and III.92, ed. Blake, pp. 210–17 and 338–41; LE,
trans. Fairweather, pp. 250–60 and 415–19. Commentary includes Blanton,
Signs, pp. 161–71; Otter, “Temptation”; Ridyard, Royal Saints, pp. 192–3
and 208–10; P.A. Thompson, “St. Æthelthryth,” p. 485; Thompson and
Stevens, “Gregory of Ely’s Verse Life,” pp. 345–7; Rollason, Saints, p. 223;
Garrison, “Lives,” pp. 158–60; Lundgren, “Hereward,” pp. 73–4 (citing
Ridyard, “Condigna,” pp. 184, 185); Black, “Nutrix pia,” pp. 178–80 (on
­Ælfhelm’s tenth-century accounts of Æthelthryth’s posthumous violence
later added to LE Book I). See also Styler’s subtle analyses in “Story,” p. 6,
16, 122–4, 139, 141, 149–62.
47 Bede’s audience may have numbered not only male clerics such as “the
Northumbrian religious hierarchy” (Styler, “Story,” p. 55, ­paraphrasing
Higham, (Re-)reading, p. 41) but also “high-status female readers or
­listeners” (Yorke, “Weight,” p. 108). On Bede’s expectation of a ­monastic
but “no ‘popular’ audience for HE,” see Wallace-Hadrill, Historical
­Commentary, p. 113; compare Gunn, Bede’s Historiae, pp. 36–7, 186.
48 On this passage see Thacker, “Bede’s Ideal,” p. 146. Gunn questions
­Ceolwulf’s Latin literacy (Bede’s Historiae, pp. 31–3), but it surely ­matters
that Bede’s wording indicates expectation of the king’s support of
­thoroughgoing Christianization, regardless of how much Latin Ceolwulf
could actually read.
49 See above, chap. 1, p. 45.
50 Mayr-Harting, Coming, p. 67.
51 Concerning the debate over Bede’s “reform agenda,” Higham remarks
on “the assumption that runs across Books IV and V of the History that
256 Notes to pages 79–81

everything that was wrong in the present was the consequence of a

long-running failure of royal leadership, even alongside ­churchmen
who had retained their excellence throughout”: “Bede’s Agenda,”
p. 483. Whether or not early readers of HE IV.19 blamed ­Ecgfrith
for ­Æthelthryth’s departure from Northumbria, they would have
been ­justified in crediting Edwin for the conversion process that had
­nurtured Æthelthryth’s piety. Styler (“Story,” p. 34) argues that Bede
“used ­elements of Æthelthryth’s story and character as examples to the
­Northumbrian church of how it could peacefully co-exist, under the
­umbrella of Christianity, with the other kingdoms of Britain.”
52 The LE identifies Ealdwulf as Æthelthryth’s brother (trans. Fairweather,
pp. 14, 44, 68). For the view that she was his cousin, see J. Stevenson,
“Brothers and Sisters,” p. 20.
53 See LE, I.13–16, ed. Blake, pp. 29–35; trans. Fairweather, pp. 38–46. The
text claims that Æthelthryth’s move to Ely was spurred by Ecgfrith’s
persecution of her; that she had received Ely from her first husband
Tondberht; that King Ealdwulf (identified, as mentioned above, as her
brother) merely helped her in the building works she had commenced at
Ely rather than arranging for her transfer there in the first place; and that
Wilfrid, bishop of York, consecrated her abbess of Ely in situ. This last
claim has no basis in Bede, as noted by Fairweather, LE, p. 45, citing LE,
ed. Blake, p. 34, n. 2: “This may be a local tradition or more probably –
and without justification – inferred from Bede[.]”
54 Landscapes, p. 129. Blanton, Signs, p. 49, and Ridyard, Royal Saints,
pp. 178–9 also explore Ely’s links to the East Anglian royal dynasty.
55 Unlike the HE, the Middle English Vita of Æthelthryth in London, British
Library, MS. Egerton 1993 portrays Ecgfrith as passive and his queen as
determined: “Þe king wel longe hit wiþsede and loþ him was þerto./ Ate
laste he graunted hit, þo he ne miȝte non oþer do” (fol. 163r–v, quoted by
Pulsiano, “Blessed Bodies,” p. 36).
56 DMLBS, fasc. 5, p. 1254, s.v. impetrare 1: “to obtain by request, demand, or
sim.” I am grateful to an anonymous reader of an earlier version of this
chapter for asking me to inspect Bede’s verb forms closely.
57 DMLBS, fasc. 5, p. 1452, s.v. intrare 1.
58 Bede identifies Coldingham as lying in Ecgfrith’s domains and the ab-
bess Æbbe as Ecgfrith’s aunt: HE IV.19, pp. 392–3. Blanton notes the
atypicality of Æthelthryth’s move: Signs, p. 39, n. 51. On lax standards at
Coldingham, see HE IV.25, pp. 420–7, and commentary by Blanton, Signs,
p. 39; Fell, “Saint Æðelþryð,” p. 22; Plunkett, Suffolk, p. 122; Foot, Veiled
Women, vol. 1, p. 22. Coughlan, “Notes,” sees Æthelthryth’s house as a
foil to Æbbe’s.
 Notes to pages 81–4 257

59 Rowley, Old English Version, p. 147. Compare DeGregorio, “Monasticism,”

cited by Harris, Bede and Aethelthryth, p. 126.
60 The HE’s preference for mere transition over strife is evident in Æthel-
thryth’s unlikeness to Roman virgin martyrs, a difference that, as Hollis
observes, “suggests that the conversion of England was not marked by
domestic conflict between parents and the monastic aspirations of their
daughters” and thus differs profoundly from the subject’s treatment in
Norman hagiography (Anglo-Saxon Women, p. 71).
61 A point forcefully made by Kirby, “Bede’s Native Sources,” pp. 361, 363,
and 370–1.
62 Bede and Aethelthryth, p. 136.
63 Stodnick, “Emergent Englishness,” pp. 500, 501. Similarly, Blanton ob-
serves that “the multiple enclosures of [Æthelthryth’s] body are symbols
for the institution’s boundaries, both architectural and geographical”:
Signs, p. 136. Compare Otter, “Temptation,” p. 147, citing Otter, Inven-
tiones, pp. 31–3.
64 More detailed in this regard are the accounts in LE, I.8 and I.15 (ed. Blake,
pp. 20, 33; trans. Fairweather, pp. 24, 43), which admit the hardships
­involved. On the Crowland fens as a landscape to be subdued, see VSG,
ed. Colgrave, pp. 86–7, and discussion below in chap. 3.
65 On differences between men’s and women’s Vitae, see Pulsiano, “Blessed
Bodies,” pp. 11–42; Bynum, Fragmentation, pp. 27–51.
66 Although Colgrave and Mynors translate “in medio eorum” as “in the
ranks of the other nuns,” the masculine genitive plural eorum refers to
Æthelthryth’s already-mentioned “people” (genitive plural suorum), who
included men; Bede normally stresses different roles for nuns and monks
but here emphasizes community between them. Bede’s “non alibi quam
in medio eorum … sepulta” is more persuasively translated by J.E. King
as “buried … in none other place than in the midst of them,” Bede’s “in
medio suorum” being rendered by him as “in the midst of her company”:
see Bede, Ecclesiastical History, IV.19, trans. J.E. King, p. 107.
67 Matthews, “Token,” p. 52, analyses the difference between Æthelthryth’s
“simultaneous expression of humility and authority” and Seaxburh’s
more forceful display of authority in Ælfric’s Life of St. Æthelthryth.
68 Chronicle of Hugh Candidus, ed. Mellows, p. 5; Peterborough Chronicle of
Hugh Candidus, trans. Mellows and Mellows, p. 2; Henry, Archdeacon of
Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, VI.6, ed. and trans. Greenway, pp. 348–9;
De Gestis Herwardi, ed. and trans. Meneghetti, chap. 23, pp. 136, 138;
Deeds of Hereward, trans. Swanton, pp. 72–3. Darby discusses other
­examples of twelfth- and thirteenth-century praise of Fenland monaster-
ies (e.g. Crowland, Ramsey, Thorney) in Medieval Fenland, pp. 52–4.
258 Notes to pages 84–6

69 Or, possibly, “a small city,” “a small civitas,” according to Luscombe,

“City,” p. 45, in reference to Cambridge.
70 On Granta/Gronte, “a Celtic name interpreted as ‘muddy or fen river,’” see
Oosthuizen, Anglo-Saxon Fenland, p. 40, and sources cited in her note.
71 Cam, Liberties, p. 4.
72 Christopher Taylor, Cambridgeshire Landscape, p. 259. Charles-Edwards,
weighing Bede’s story of Æthelthryth’s sarcophagus as well as accounts
(in the Anonymous Life of St. Cuthbert and in Bede’s own prose Life of
the saint) of the Northumbrians’ taking of the Romano-British city
of Carlisle, suggests that “[e]arlier Englishmen may sometimes have
­deliberately avoided Roman sites, regarding them as foreign to their way
of life, although this was certainly not a consistent attitude”: Early Chris-
tian ­Ireland, p. 324.
73 Cam, Liberties, p. ix, quoting Collingwood and Myres, Roman Britain,
p. 393; see too Cam, “City,” p. 2. Cam cites, with apparent approval,
the arguments put forth by Gray (Dual Origin; “Ford”), whose findings
are also used by Leader, History, p. 9. For a not altogether convincing
­challenge to Gray’s thesis, see Lobel, Cambridge, p. 3, n. 20.
74 Crook, English Medieval Shrines, p. 31. Crook describes other surviv-
ing examples and also discusses, on pp. 31–2 and 60, Æthelthryth’s
shrine, though without saying whether he thinks it specifically pagan in
­origin. Higham refers to “[t]he Roman practice of coffin-use” in “From
­Sub-Roman Britain,” p. 13.
75 Howe, “Angle,” p. 11 and n. 18 (citing Hooke, Anglo-Saxon Landscape,
pp. 190 and 249); Howe, Writing, pp. 83–5; Hunter, “Germanic and
­Roman Antiquity,” pp. 35–6 (e.g. “Roman remains were used as a quarry
for current needs,” regarding Bede on Æthelthryth’s coffin); Brady,
“­Echoes,” p. 671 and n. 11, citing Howe and Hunter.
76 Lees and Overing, Double Agents, p. 20, in an analysis of Bede’s treatment
of Cædmon’s “Hymn.”
77 On the Christian equation of Romanitas with cultural auctoritas, see de
Lachenal, Spolia, pp. 133–4, and her discussion of the ninth-century
­Milanese bishop Angilbert’s reuse of an ancient sarcophagus to unite the
bones of saints Gervasius, Protasius, and Ambrose.
78 Hines, “Becoming,” p. 51, and source cited therein.
79 In similar fashion, early Christians reused Roman building m ­ aterials to
effect both cultural continuity with the pagan past and a “quasi-exorcistic”
(“quasi esorcistico”) conquest of that past: Lugli, N
­ aturalia, pp. 14–15.
80 On which, see Rowley, Old English Version, pp. 140–3; and nn. 22–3 above.
Also pertinent is Pestell’s discussion of “the influence of romanitas” in
Landscapes, pp. 56–8, 62.
 Notes to pages 87–90 259

81 Compare Guthlac’s appropriation of a prehistoric tumulus or barrow

in VSG, pp. 92–5 (discussed below, chap. 3); see J. Blair, Church, p. 184;
Hines, Voices, pp. 62–3. For pertinent reflections on the ways in which the
reuse of Roman stonework “allows … for the creation of a monumental
palimpsest that maps the transitions and negotiations between cultures,”
see Karkov, “Postcolonial,” p. 155.
82 DMLBS, fasc. 5, p. 1630, s.v. locellus 2a (derived from the primary meaning
of “small place, space”; DMLBS, s.v. locellus 1).
83 My analysis here is influenced by Auerbach, Scenes, pp. 70–1.
84 Thacker, “Loca,” pp. 18–19. On the efficacy of Æthelthryth’s clothes and
even of her original wooden coffin, see Rollason, Saints, p. 35.
85 Crook, English Medieval Shrines, p. 61, for the use of this phrase in discuss-
ing Æthelthryth’s translation as recounted by Bede.
86 On Bede’s use of the authority of the physician Cynefrith, see Blanton,
Signs, pp. 42–3; Matthews, “Token,” pp. 36–8.
87 For discussion of the first two points, see Blanton, Signs, pp. 13, 41–56; on
all three points, see Stodnick, “Emergent Englishness,” pp. 501–2.
88 Stodnick, “Emergent Englishness,” pp. 502–3. In Styler’s commensurate
analysis, Cynefrith’s expertise serves as a foundation on which Bede
could build the national reputation of a regional saint: “Story,” pp. 56–60.
89 MacCarron, “Adornment,” provides an especially full analysis. See too
Matthews, “Token,” pp. 49–52, on the equivalent passage in Ælfric’s Life
of the saint.
90 H. Williams, “Mortuary Practices,” p. 242.
91 H. Williams, “Mortuary Practices,” p. 249.
92 H. Williams, “Engendered Bodies,” pp. 33–4.
93 H. Williams, “Engendered Bodies,” p. 33.
94 Æthelthryth’s biological sister Seaxburh would have presided over the
­ceremony. The role of siblings in saints’ cults is explored by Schulenburg,
Forgetful, pp. 270–305, with discussion of Æthelthryth and Seaxburh on
pp. 302–3. See too Blanton, “Kentish Queen,” esp. p. 199 (Bede’s depic-
tion of ­Seaxburh’s role in Æthelthryth’s translation). On the strong East
Anglian familial ties at Ely, see Schulenburg, Forgetful, p. 278; Blanton,
“Kentish Queen”; ­Rollason, Saints, p. 125; Ridyard, Royal Saints,
pp. 176–80 (cited too by ­Rollason); Gretsch, Ælfric, p. 205; J. Stevenson,
“Brothers and Sisters,” p. 20.
95 Ely and its environs seem to have been a third territorial division
within the East Anglian kingdom alongside Suffolk and Norfolk; see
­Oosthuizen, Anglo-Saxon Fenland, pp. 69–89. The general district of
the Isle of Ely may have been originally under the control of the South
Gyrwe and acquired by the East Angles only during and after the time
260 Notes to pages 90–2

of Æthelthryth’s foundation of a religious house there; see Yorke, Kings,

pp. 69–70, thus interpreting HE IV.19.
96 de Certeau, Practice, p. 117. Donnan and Wilson make what is, for me,
an even more cogent distinction between space as “conceptualisation of
the imagined physical relationships which give meaning to society” and
place as “the distinct space where people live … encompass[ing] both the
idea and the actuality of where things are” (Borders, p. 9, citing work in
cultural anthropology). See too Discenza, Inhabited Spaces.
97 J. Campbell, “First Christian Kings,” p. 61. On “hides” as “units
of ­service, not area,” see John, Reassessing, p. 15; compare Keynes,
“­England,” pp. 21–5; Davies and Vierck, “Contexts,” p. 229. On Bede’s
use of the hide (familia) in observations about English geography in the
HE, see Merrills, History, pp. 246–7, discussing previous scholarship and
cautioning that “no two regions are described in precisely the same way
by the historian.”
98 Howe, discussing early English charters in Writing, p. 39 (reprinting
Howe, “Landscape,” p. 102), quoted by S.T. Smith, Land, p. 157.
99 On the resources of wetlands, see Hooke, Landscape, pp. 170–95;
­Oosthuizen, Anglo-Saxon Fenland; J. Blair, Church, pp. 193–4.
100 De Gestis Herwardi, ed. and trans. Meneghetti, ch. 23, p. 136; Deeds of
­Hereward, trans. Swanton, pp. 72–3. The case for Richard of Ely’s author-
ship of the Gesta is cogently put forward by van Houts, “Hereward and
­Flanders,” pp. 202–3.
101 On this passage, see Howe, Writing, p. 141.
102 Williamson, Origins, p. 146. See too Muir, “Landscapes,” pp. 179, 186.
For a recent, full discussion of early English literary treatments of waste-
land, see Discenza, Inhabited Spaces, pp. 140–78, building upon work by
­Rackham and Hooke inter alios.
103 On the ideal – nurtured by saints Jerome, Marcella, Paula, and Mela-
nia – of “virginal fertility, through spiritual guidance and scholarship,”
see P. Brown, Body, p. 369. Black, in exploring Æthelthryth’s evolving
role from the eighth to the tenth century, detects a “shift from the n ­ arrow
emphasis on corporeal virginity to the more inclusive notion of c­ hastity/
steadfastness and resultant fruitfulness”: “Nutrix pia,” p. 169. For Black,
this shift is gradual and is anticipated by Bede himself, both in the
HE and in the earlier Chronica maiora included in De temporum ratione
(“­Nutrix pia,” pp. 172–5, building upon Blanton’s insights in her Signs,
pp. 245 and 246).
104 LE I.3 (ed. Blake, p. 13; trans. Fairweather, p. 15) identifies the saint’s
birthplace as Exning, in the far west of Suffolk and only about a dozen
miles from Ely. For further discussion, see Oosthuizen, Anglo-Saxon
­Fenland, p. 71.
 Notes to pages 92–5 261

105 Oosthuizen writes that Bede “explain[ed] that [Ely] had formed the en-
dowment with which Æthelthryth, the daughter of King Anna of East
Anglia, had founded her monastic house in about 673” (Anglo-Saxon
­Fenland, p. 69). This is a plausible inference from the HE, though Bede
does not actually refer to Ely as an endowment by a donor to a recipient.
106 Wood, “Monasteries,” p. 13, commending Patrick Wormald’s choice of
title in “Bede and the Conversion.” Wood’s article is cited in his, “Founda-
tion,” p. 96, n. 23.
107 Garrison, “Lives,” p. 40.
108 See above, p. 80 and n. 54. The first chapter of Sneesby’s Etheldreda, “The
Outpost,” is aptly titled. In the late tenth century the monastery would
be absorbed into the Mercian diocese of Dorchester (Pestell, Landscapes,
pp. 129 and 103); later still it would become part of the diocese of Lincoln
(LE, II.65, trans. Fairweather, p. 164).
109 de Vegvar, “Saints,” p. 75.
110 Colgrave, “Introduction,” p. 2. For discussion of “frontiers” and
“­borderlands,” see above, p. 10 and n. 32; and below, pp. 147, 151–2, and
267, n. 18. On the Fenland’s “liminality,” see Pestell, Landscapes, pp. 52–6;
O’Brien O’Keeffe, “Guthlac’s C ­ rossings,” pp. 1 and 12. On places “hidden,
inaccessible, and liminal – e­ nclosed within surrounding curtains of hills, or
by marsh, water, or sea,” see Semple, “Sacred Spaces,” pp. 756–7.
111 Yorke, Nunneries, p. 9.
112 See PASE, s.vv. “Seaxburg 1,” “Eormenhild 1,” “Wærburg 4.” For
­evidence of these last two abbesses we must turn yet again to the LE,
­specifically I.36–7, pp. 51–2, cited and discussed by Keynes, “Ely ­Abbey,”
p. 13 and n. 56, drawing attention to differences between the Liber’s
­account and that provided by Goscelin’s Vita sancte Werburge.
113 Keynes, “Ely Abbey,” p. 13. On Ely as a probable Eigenkloster, see too
Gretsch, Ælfric, p. 205 (remarking on the hereditary nature of the abbacy);
Ridyard, Royal Saints, p. 178; Blanton, “Presenting”; Klaniczay, Holy
­Rulers, p. 88.
114 Eddius’ Life of Wilfrid, ed. Colgrave, pp. 40–1, 44–7; Life of Wilfrid, trans.
Webb and Farmer, pp. 125–6, 128. See discussion in Blanton, Signs,
pp. 32–3; Black, “Nutrix pia,” pp. 170–1; and esp. Bullimore, “­Unpicking.”
As Gunn observes, though, Bede does not omit all evidence of
­Æthelthryth’s royal authority (Bede’s Historiae, p. 154).
115 The phrasing is that of Rouche, “Early Middle Ages,” p. 433. Szerwiniack
argues that by idealizing the monastic life, especially in seventh-century
England, Bede was criticizing corruption and urging a return to Britain’s
purported original state of Eden-like moral purity: “L’Histoire ecclésias-
tique,” esp. pp. 169–70 (which includes an analysis of the HE’s praises of
Æthelthryth).
262 Notes to pages 95–8

116 Wallace-Hadrill, Historical Commentary, p. xxiii.

117 Yorke, “Political and Ethnic Identity,” pp. 73–4.
118 For Harris, “Bede’s lexical doublets signal that the poem does double
duty, in praise of virginity generally and in praise of Aethelthryth specifi-
cally”: Bede and Aethelthryth, p. 129.
119 Perhaps ca. 709, the year Wilfrid left England for good (Thornbury,
Becoming, pp. 187–8). On the debts to Venantius Fortunatus evident in
Bede’s hymn, see Gretsch, Ælfric, p. 213, n. 204 (with regard to the De
virginitate); Gunn, Bede’s Historiae, pp. 152–3 (De virginitate and Life
of St. Radegund). The influence of Sedulius and Aldhelm is traced in
­Thornbury, Becoming, pp. 187–9.
120 Harris, Bede and Aethelthryth, pp. 124–5. See too Thornbury, Becoming, p. 188.
121 HE IV.20, p. 398; Harris, Bede and Aethelthryth, p. 158 (slightly modified).
As indicated above in n. 14, quotation from the hymn will be based on
Colgrave and Mynors’s Latin text and on Harris’s translation.
122 On which see Curtius, European Literature, pp. 162–5.
123 Szarmach, “Æðeldreda,” p. 134.
124 Harris, Bede and Aethelthryth, p. 98.
125 Szarmach, “Æðeldreda,” p. 132, referring to and agreeing with Whatley’s
inclusion of the OE translation of Bede’s HE among “major Old English
prose works that are hagiographic in content but collective in form”
(Whatley, “Introduction,” p. 3).
126 I thank an anonymous reader for pointing out that Bede is not so much
comparing Æthelthryth and Aeneas literally as preferring her sacred
achievements to his secular triumphs. I also have in mind Szarmach’s
analysis of the ways in which Bede uses Æthelthryth to exalt virginal
over Vergilian heroism (“Æðeldreda,” p. 134).
127 Wetherbee, “Some Implications,” p. 28.
128 On this aspect of the hymn, as well as on Bede’s departure from Roman
hagiographical convention, see e.g. Fell, “Saint Æðelþryð,” pp. 21–2;
P.A. Thompson, “St. Æthelthryth,” p. 477; Yorke, Nunneries, pp. 34–5 (citing
Fell’s article); Blanton, Signs, p. 22; Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women, pp. 71–2.
129 Fell, “Saint Æðelþryð,” p. 27. In context Fell’s tone is actually rather
snarky but is justified by her analysis of the “power politics that family
played,” a fact of Æthelthryth’s life that Bede largely ignores.
130 J. Campbell, “Secular and Political Contexts,” p. 31. See too S.T. Smith,
Land, passim, but esp. pp. 9–13 and 28–30; Howe, Writing, pp. 43–6.
131 A.D. Smith, Ethnic Origins, p. 24, citing (on mythomoteurs) earlier studies by
John Armstrong (who in turn derived the word from the Catalan medieval-
ist Ramon d’Abadal i de Vinyals) and Henry Tudor. Smith clearly under-
stands the word “essence” as a social construction rather than a real thing
(hence his scare quotes), as does Frazer, “Introduction,” p. 3. Similar to the
 Notes to pages 98–100 263

idea of the mythomoteur is Frazer’s recognition that “stories of social life, to

some extent, steer action” (p. 4). Compare Pohl, “Ethnic Names,” p. 9.
132 Yorke, “Political and Ethnic Identity,” p. 74.
133 Pelteret, “Bede’s Women,” p. 38. Watt, “Earliest Women’s Writing?,”
pp. 541–2 (building upon Love, Goscelin, p. xiv, and Blanton, Devotion,
p. 62), persuasively argues that Bede’s narrative strategy also distracts us
from the role played by Seaxburh and other women at Ely in promoting
Æthelthryth’s cult.
134 Blanton, “Kentish Queen,” attending especially to Seaxburh’s representa-
tion in Goscelin’s Lectiones in festiuitate Sanctae Sexburge.
135 PASE, s.v. “Eormenhild 1.” See discussion in Fell, “Saint Æðelþryð,”
pp. 33–4 (doubting the historicity of Eormenhild and her ­daughter
­Wærburh as abbesses of Ely). According to Blanton, Goscelin of
­Saint-Bertin used his lections on Seaxburh and Eormenhild and his Vitae
of Wærburh and Wihtburh (the latter a supposed fifth daughter of King
Anna) to represent “the community at Ely … [as] the locus of Christian
England, the place from whence royal daughters go out to evangelize”
(“Kentish Queen,” p. 212). Because intermarriage multiplies identities,
Goffart regards Æthelthryth as one of two “Northumbrian saints [whose
­bodies were elevated] outside Northumbria,” the second being Oswald
(­Narrators, pp. 259–60).
136 Yorke, Nunneries, pp. 24–7, 35–6, 51; Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women, p. 93
and n. 96; Thacker, “Loca,” pp. 39, 42; Crook, “Enshrinement,” pp. 206–8;
Rosser, “Æthelthryth”; Styler, “Story,” pp. 47–51.
137 Lees and Overing, “Anglo-Saxon Horizons,” p. 21 (on Thacker, “Loca”).
138 Fell, “Saint Æðelþryð,” p. 34. Blanton, Signs, p. 39, n. 49, cites Fell’s
­hypothesis with apparent approval. There are more cautious f­ ormulations
in E. Miller, Abbey, pp. 1–15; Ridyard, Royal Saints, pp. 184–5;
Gretsch, Ælfric, pp. 162, 167–9, 197–204; and Oosthuizen, Anglo-Saxon
Fenland, pp. 76–7, 128. (The continuity of Ely’s and ­Æthelthryth’s fame is
a different matter; see Keynes, “Ely Abbey,” p. 15.) The t­ welfth-century
Libellus Æthelwoldi says nothing about conditions in the early to middle
eighth century: see LE, ed. Blake, Appendix A, p. 396, sec. 19; F ­ airweather,
trans., LE, Appendix A, p. 487, sec. 1. I thank Catherine Clarke for recom-
mending the Libellus to me and for alerting me to Simon Keynes and Alan
­Kennedy’s forthcoming edition and English translation.
139 Yorke, Nunneries, pp. 7–8; compare Schulenburg, Forgetful, p. 80.
140 A wide evangelization program may have underlain the appointment
of Æthelthryth at Ely; the years 672 and 673 saw both this event and
the splitting of the East Anglian diocese. On the latter: R.R. Clarke,
East Anglia, p. 148; F. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 134; Whitelock,
“­Pre-Viking Age Church,” p. 8.
264 Notes to pages 100–2

141 These “virgins” included men as well as women; see above, n. 66. On Be-
de’s appropriation of the maternal role to serve clerical ideological pur-
poses, see Lees and Overing, Double Agents, pp. 22–9 (discussing Bede’s
treatment of Hild).
142 As Howe reminds us in Writing, pp. 129–30.
143 For the Latin text, see Bede’s Super parabola Salomonis, pp. 175–6. Translation
mine. See also chap. 1 above, p. 47.

Chapter 3

1 Ælfwald’s dates of reign are so given in Newton, Reckoning, p. 44; see

too PASE, s.vv. “Ælfwald 6,” “Felix 3,” “Guthlac 2” (whose lifespan is
given as “c. 674–716”). In the present chapter I occasionally refer to other
texts in the Guthlac corpus, such as the Old English poem Guthlac A and
the Old English prose Life of Guthlac, but my focus is largely on the VSG
­because of the contextualization made possible by its naming of historical
personages.
2 Colgrave, “Introduction,” p. 19. Schütt followed C.W. Jones in suggest-
ing the 720s or 730s (“Vom heiligen Antonius,” p. 88 and n. 56, citing
Jones, Saints’ Lives, p. 219, n. 12); see too Leeser, “On the Edge,” p. 154.
On background and sources, see Colgrave’s “Introduction,” pp. 1–25;
Kurtz, “From St. Antony”; the studies by Jones and by Schütt (pp. 88–91);
Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature, pp. 1–91; Liebermann, “Über ­ostenglische
Geschichtsquellen,” pp. 245–6; Berschin, Biographie, part 2, §9.10,
pp. 301–5 (cited in Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature, p. 10, n. 45); Love,
“Sources”; Downey, “Intertextuality,” pp. 25–66; Thacker, “Guthlac.”
Invaluable too is Roberts, “Inventory.” T. Hall provides bibliography in
“Handlist,” pp. 5–6.
3 Kirby, “Bede’s Native Sources,” p. 370. For roughly similar reactions, see
Roberts, Guthlac, p. 5 (“Despite the dedication of the life to an East ­Anglian
king, its centre of interest is Mercia”); Roberts, “Seals,” pp. 113–14;
Thacker, “Bede’s Idea,” p. 17; Cheong, “Felix’s Life”; Hartmann,
“­Monument Reuse,” p. 259, n. 59.
4 Colgrave, “Introduction,” p. 16, citing (n. 1) HE V.23; compare Colgrave,
“Earliest,” p. 55; Newton, Origins, pp. 80–1 (agreeing with Colgrave);
Leeser, “On the Edge,” pp. 153–4 (with caveats on pp. 154–5); Bacola,
“Vacuas,” p. 77. See too PASE, s.v. “Æthelbald 4.” “There can be little
doubt that both kings and kingdoms were manoeuvring around the cult,
and Felix probably wished to ensure the satisfaction and benevolence of
both”: Cavill, “Naming,” p. 38 (though Cavill adds that Felix sought “to
promote the cult of Guthlac … as independent” of either king’s ­authority;
“it was worthy of royal respect and enrichment, but [was] not to be
 Notes to pages 102–3 265

subject to undue royal control,” p. 44). On Mercian hegemony: Kirby,

Making, p. 63; Hart, “Kingdom,” p. 43; Keynes, “England” (refining Sir
Frank Stenton’s famous “Mercian supremacy” thesis).
5 On Ecgburh, see VSG §48, pp. 146–9; Colgrave, “Notes,” p. 191; R ­ oberts,
“Seals,” pp. 113–14; PASE, s.v. “Ecgburg 1”; Bacola, “Vacuas,” p. 77; Leeser,
“On the Edge,” p. 155. See too LE, I.7, ed. Blake, p. 19 (“­Ædburga”); trans.
Fairweather, p. 23 (“Eadburh”). On the genealogy of the East Anglian
kings, see the studies cited above, pp. 232–3, n. 122.
6 Roberts, “Seals,” pp. 113–14; Kilpatrick, “Place-Names,” p. 44. Repton’s
royal Mercian associations were confirmed with the burial of King
Æthelbald (after the time of the VSG’s composition), though it may have
had them earlier: see J. Blair, Church, pp. 128, 229, 293–4; Biddle and
Kjølbye-Biddle, “Repton”; Rollason, Saints, pp. 117–18; Yorke, “Burial,”
pp. 251–3; Kilpatrick, “Place-Names,” 14–15.
7 Meaney, “History …?,” p. 75. Roberts goes further: “Ecgburh … may have
been involved in the commissioning of the life” (Guthlac, p. 5); compare
Kilpatrick, “Place-Names,” pp. 16–18, 46–7. Roberts elsewhere discusses
Ecgburh’s career at Repton, a Mercian house, and suggests that “despite the
dedication of the vita to an East Anglian king, the i­mpetus for the writing
of the life of Guthlac probably came from Repton” (“­Hagiography,” p. 70).
See too Roberts and Thacker, “Introduction,” p. xxiv. On the p ­ ossibility that
­Felix actually wrote the Vita at Repton, see Wragg, “Early Texts,” p. 255,
­citing (n. 20) Cohen, Machines, p. 118, and Roberts, Guthlac, p. 6.
8 As often mentioned in scholarship on their kingdom and on the VSG,
e.g. Hart, “Kingdom,” p. 47; N. Brooks, “Formation,” pp. 160–1; Keynes,
“England,” p. 27; Yorke, “Origins,” pp. 13–22; Thacker, “Kings,” p. 14;
Siewers, “Landscapes,” p. 8; Cohen, Machines, p. 121; Noetzel, “Monster,”
pp. 129–30, building upon Siewers and Cohen; Brady, “Colonial Desire”
(responding to Siewers and Cohen); Brady, Writing, pp. 67–70; Wragg,
“Vernacular Literature,” pp. 46–9. I am grateful to Ken Streutker for
bringing my attention to Noetzel’s article.
9 Thacker, “Social,” p. 325, citing (for the claim about Mercia) D.M. Stenton,
Preparatory, pp. 48–58. In a similar vein, Colgrave plausibly argued that
“Ælfwald was a subject king” under Æthelbald and adduced as evidence
Felix’s higher regard for the latter than for the former (“Earliest,” p. 52);
compare Colgrave, “Notes,” p. 176, citing Whitelock, English Historical
Documents, p. 453. See too Leeser, “On the Edge,” p. 154 (cautioning,
however, that Ælfwald needn’t have been a “subject king” if the VSG
was written as early as the 720s). Keynes acknowledges the plausibility
of Colgrave’s supposition and of Kirby’s view that “this alliance with
the East Angles was in fact ‘the cornerstone of Æthelbald’s ascendancy’”:
“Kingdom,” p. 8, quoting Kirby, Earliest English Kings, pp. 131–2.
266 Notes to page 103

10 Thus Wragg argues that “Felix’s Latin vita, though composed for an
East Anglian king, reflects Mercian perspectives during its developing
­hegemony” (“Vernacular Literature,” p. 46); compare Wragg, “Early
Texts,” pp. 256–7, and “Guthlac A,” pp. 216–17, 224–5, 228. Yet Leeser
argues powerfully for shared East Anglian and Mercian interests in
promoting Guthlac’s cult: “On the Edge,” esp. pp. 151–6. On Guthlac’s
cult as a means to “stimulate [Mercian] contacts with East Anglia,” see
Thacker, “Kings,” p. 17.
11 Pestell prefers “spheres of interest” to “territories”: Landscapes, p. 103,
n. 9. Wragg situates Ecgburh’s Repton within the Mercian dynasty’s own
“sphere of influence” (“Vernacular Literature,” pp. 51, 54–5), as does
­Kilpatrick in her full discussion in “Place-Names,” pp. 11–18.
12 Bede distinguishes between the East and Middle Angles in HE I.15. Tribal
Hidage individuates further but within Middle rather than East Anglia,
specifying Suþ gyrpa, Norþ gyrpa, Spalda, Wigesta, etc.: see Dumville,
“Tribal Hidage,” pp. 228–9, Oosthuizen, Anglo-Saxon Fenland, pp. 53–68;
Leeser, “On the Edge,” pp. 138–41. For further discussion of the Middle
Angles, see F. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 42–3; Dumville, “Essex,”
pp. 130–4; Bassett, “In Search,” p. 26; Courtney, “Early Saxon Fenland”;
Pestell, Landscapes, pp. 128–9; Kilpatrick, “Places,” pp. 100–4; and sources
cited below in n. 15. Hines, “Origins,” p. 17, remarks that “[b]y the
mid-seventh century … the historical records imply that at best East An-
glia could continue to exercise some power or influence within the Middle
Anglian zone [between it and Mercia].”
13 H.C. Darby, “Fenland Frontier,” p. 190; O’Brien O’Keeffe, “Guthlac’s
Crossings,” p. 7. Oosthuizen, Anglo-Saxon Fenland (pp. 23–8, 35, 50–68,
96, 135 and passim), argues for continuous and ample settlement in the
­Fenland between the Roman and early English periods (though for a
more cautious view, see Kilpatrick, “Places,” pp. 110–11). Whether condi-
tions remained peaceful is another matter.
14 Treharne, “Borders,” p. 14, citing Yorke, “Origins,” pp. 19–20 (who
­pinpoints known sites of Mercian power – Repton, Tamworth, Lichfield –
but from the Tribal Hidage infers Mercia’s overlap with adjacent tribal
­areas). See too Sims-Williams, Religion, pp. 16–17; N. Brooks, “­Formation,”
p. 162; Charles-Edwards, “Wales,” p. 91; D. Hill, “Mercians.” Yorke and
Charles-Edwards both cite Brooks’s study.
15 Yorke, “Political and Ethnic Identity,” p. 74 and n. 33. For the view that
the Middle Angles never were an autonomous kingdom, see Davies and
Vierck, “Contexts,” p. 237; for more guarded scepticism, see P.H. Blair,
Roman Britain, pp. 178, 183. Their existence as a people is attested by
archaeological finds dating back to the sixth century: Hines, “Origins,”
p. 38. Bede, in HE III.21, recounts that Penda created Middle Anglia for
 Notes to pages 103–4 267

his son Peada: see discussion in Roberts, “Hagiography,” p. 73 (citing

F. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 120); Dumville, “Origins,” pp. 94–5,
97–8; Kilpatrick, “Place-Names,” p. 9 (citing, in her n. 36, Wallace-Hadrill,
Historical Commentary, pp. 116–18).
16 Pestell, Landscapes, p. 129, notes that by 970 Ely had been absorbed into
the Mercian diocese of Dorchester. See also the rich discussion of Ely and
the Isle in Oosthuizen, Anglo-Saxon Fenland, pp. 69–89.
17 I borrow again S. Reynolds’s term (Kingdoms, p. 254), as in the Introduc-
tion, p. 8, and p. 221, n. 22.
18 Relevant studies of in-between “borderland” spaces include T ­ reharne,
“Borders,” pp. 9, 17, 19–20; Rumford, “Introduction,” pp. 161–2;
D. N ­ ewman, “Borders,” pp. 173, 179–81; Donnan and Wilson, Borders,
pp. 2, 15–16, 45–53; Wickham-Crowley, “Fens,” esp. pp. 75–6. See too
­Capper, “St. Guthlac,” p. 182, on the VSG’s conceptualization of “­Guthlac’s
cult as having a mediating role in relations among Middle Anglian
groups,” wedged between Æthelbald’s Mercia and Ælfwald’s East Anglia.
19 Pestell, Landscapes, p. 110, n. 39.
20 Higham, “Guthlac’s Vita,” p. 86; “Felix reflects a sense of competition
between Mercian and East Anglian establishments in his treatment
of Bishop Headda and abbess Ecgburh” (p. 87). Compare Noetzel,
“­Monster,” p. 117, citing Colgrave’s “Introduction,” p. 16.
21 Like Kirby (above, n. 3), Cheong finds it “intriguing … that Guthlac,
a Mercian saint, was … chronicled after his death by an East Anglian
scribe for an East Anglian king. This raises questions of political mach-
inations at work in the attempt by one Anglo-Saxon kingdom to claim
a popular saint from another”: “Felix’s Life.” See also Grossi, “Barrow
­Exegesis” and “Felix”; Hartmann, “Monument Reuse,” p. 259, n. 59
(­citing Higham).
22 “Guthlac’s Vita,” p. 86. Leeser disagrees with the general drift of
Higham’s argument but does treat the VSG as an expression of the East
Anglian royal house’s ongoing desire to shape ecclesiastical life in its
larger sphere of influence (“On the Edge,” pp. 152, 154–5).
23 Cubitt, “Memory,” p. 56; cited by Higham (who disagrees), “Guthlac’s
Vita,” p. 86.
24 Cubitt, “Memory,” pp. 56 and 57. Colgrave writes that “Felix was either
an East Angle or at least living in East Anglia when this was written”
(“Introduction,” p. 16). Noetzel both claims that “Felix does mention
Guthlac’s Mercian origins, but he spends much more time and places
greater importance on the saint’s settlement in the local Fens, thereby
writing him into the East Anglian cultural narrative,” and believes that
“Guthlac represents a (specifically Mercian) Anglo-Saxon notion of
­national unity and identity”: “Monster,” pp. 117, 129.
268 Notes to pages 105–6

25 The speculum principis is usually reckoned a somewhat later medieval

genre, but G.H. Brown sees the “mirror for princes” function adumbrated
in Bede’s dedication to Ceolwulf in the HE (“Royal,” p. 20). Mattéoni,
“Mirrors,” detects Fürstenspiegel qualities in Augustine’s Civitas Dei, V.24,
but sees the distinct genre itself emerging only in Jonas of Orléans’s De
­institutione regia and Hincmar of Reims’s De regis persona et regio ministerio.
26 On Ælfwald as “a subject king” under Mercian sovereignty, see above,
n. 9. See too Foot, “Bede’s Kings,” p. 33, citing HE V.23 in her n. 37; and
Dumville, “Origins,” pp. 90–1 on subreguli. Bacola argues that, on a gen-
eral level, “Felix’s narrative defines the process by which his audience
may likewise reform their own lives” and notes that “Felix wrote his Vita
for Ælfwald” (“Vacuas,” p. 76).
27 On Bourdieu’s phrase “cultural capital,” see above, Introduction, n. 70.
As Higham observes, “[i]ncreased East Anglian influence over the cult
might offer enhanced status for East Anglian kings, much as the Mercian
embrace of St. Oswald had brought Æthelred success” (“Guthlac’s Vita,”
p. 88).
28 MS A, ed. Bately, p. 33; ASC, p. 42. The difference is also noted by
Downey, “Intertextuality,” p. 165, who goes on to discuss the d ­ ivergent
kinds of interest in Guthlac taken by chroniclers and more ­self-consciously
literary writers.
29 Schütt explores Felix’s thinking on predestination and grace with regard
to Guthlac’s conversion (“Vom heiligen Antonius,” pp. 89–90).
30 Felix does not fault his warrior past but rather puts it to good hagiog-
raphical use; see Bolton, “Background,” pp. 597–600; Iamartino, “San
Guthlac,” pp. 785–96; Damon, Soldier Saints, p. 74 and passim; Appleton,
“Psalter,” pp. 63, 82–3; Bacola, “Vacuas,” 74–5. (Iamartino’s chapter is
cited by Thacker, “Guthlac,” p. 12, n. 62.) For a different view, see A. Hall,
“Constructing.” Guthlac’s activities at Crowland are described in military
metaphors (§27, pp. 90–1); on the use of such language in VSG and in the
OE Guthlac A, see Olsen, Guthlac, esp. pp. 25–67; Lundgren, “­Hereward,”
pp. 31–4, 73–4. On “the Christian Latin tradition of using military lan-
guage in religious contexts,” see Neville, Representations, p. 124, and source
cited in her n. 155.
31 Keynes, “Appendix II,” p. 556.
32 Nevertheless, Bacola is right to observe that “[t]hese few references to
East Anglia suggest that Ælfwald was the impetus for a Vita in which he
found material favourable to him” (“Vacuas,” p. 77). It should be noted
that Felix confusingly claims that the shroud was gifted by the abbess
Ecgburh (§50, pp. 154–7) and by an anchorite Ecgberht (§51, pp. 162–3).
“Perhaps the names have been confused; and yet there is no MS. evi-
dence of such confusion, so that such confusion, if confusion there be,
 Notes to pages 106–7 269

goes back to a very early stage in the history of the transmission of the
Life” (Colgrave, “Notes,” p. 194). This possibility hardly seems far-
fetched. Sims-Williams discusses different misspellings of “Ecgburh” in
two relatively late manuscripts of the VSG and in the LE (Religion, p. 223).
33 Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, IV, pp. 338–9. For the Pseudo-Ingulph’s
account of the friendship between Guthlac and Æthelbald as contained
in the late medieval Historia Croylandensis, and for the early Croyland
Abbey charters ostensibly preserved in the Historia, see Pseudo-In-
gulph, ­Chronicle, ed. Riley, pp. 3–11. Partly derived from Orderic’s own
­language, the charters are spurious but nevertheless shed fascinating
light on Croyland’s self-understanding. See Liebermann, “Über osteng-
lische Geschichtsquellen,” p. 247; Chibnall, “Introduction,” vol. 2, pp. xx-
viii; and especially Brady, “Crowland Abbey.” I am thankful to Henry
Ansgar Kelly for bringing the Pseudo-Ingulph to my attention.
34 E.g. by Thacker, “Social,” pp. 324–6; C.A.M. Clarke, Writing, p. 32; ­Bacola,
“Vacuas,” p. 76; Orchard, “Lege,” pp. 26–7; Wragg, “Guthlac A,” p. 215;
Wragg, “Vernacular Literature,” pp. 43–61; Wragg, “Early Texts,” p. 255
(“textual clues indicate that the vita was primarily intended to promote
the cult of Guthlac as a Mercian saint, and perhaps to extend the political
and ecclesiastical claims and prestige of Repton into East Anglia”). “Even
the dating of incidents in the Life is by Mercian regnal years”: Thacker,
“Social,” p. 325.
35 J. Blair observes that Guthlac’s and other “very opulent and
­well-publicized translations were in reaction to special pressures from
politics or inter-monastic competition, and the practice did not become
general”: Church, p. 145.
36 Whose numerous talents have been noted by Kurtz, “From St. Antony”;
C.W. Jones, Saints’ Lives, pp. 85–7; Schütt, “Vom heiligen Antonius,”
esp. p. 91 (concurring with Kurtz and Jones); Thacker, “Social,” p. 324;
Downey, “Intertextuality,” pp. 25, 67–106, and passim; and contributors
to the 2014 conference “Guthlac of Crowland: Celebrating 1300 Years,”
organized by Jane Roberts and Alan Thacker. See now Roberts and
Thacker’s co-edited Guthlac: Crowland’s Saint. On the question whether
­Felix was an Englishman named Eadwald, see Orchard, “Lege,” pp. 52–4,
citing (p. 52, n. 63) Lapidge, “Felix.”
37 According to Eco, “a text is emitted for someone who actualizes it – even
if the concrete and empirical existence of this someone is not hoped for
(or wanted)” (“un testo viene emesso per qualcuno che lo attualizzi –
­anche se non si spera (o non si vuole) che questo qualcuno concretamente
o empiricamente esista”): Lector, p. 53.
38 Ælfwald, Letter to Boniface, in Sancti Bonifatii et Lulli epistolae, ed. Tangl,
p. 181; Letters, trans. Emerton, p. 128. For comment see Pestell, Landscapes,
270 Notes to pages 107–9

p. 21; Plunkett, Suffolk, pp. 153–4; Hoggett, Archaeology, pp. 34–5 (citing
Pestell, Plunkett, and others).
39 Felix’s declaration that Ælfwald “rules by right” signifies more than
­ceremony and “may be an implicit reference to his lord’s royal pedigree”:
Newton, Origins, p. 78. On Felix’s use of alliteration in this passage (to
which I return briefly in the following paragraph) and elsewhere in the
Vita, see Downey, “Intertextuality,” pp. 77–82.
40 At least for Bede, “the primary unit … was the individual kingdom,
for which his normal term was provincia, whose inhabitants could also
be designated as a gens”: Yorke, “Political and Ethnic Identity,” citing
­approvingly J. Campbell, “Bede’s Reges” (in J. Campbell, Essays, pp. 85–98).
Yorke also discusses “regiones as subdivisions of kingdoms” (pp. 82–6,
quotation at p. 82).
41 Herren, “Boniface’s Epistolary Prose Style,” pp. 23, 25. On Boniface’s cir-
cle, see Thornbury, Becoming, pp. 200–8.
42 On geography and loyalty as determinants of Mercian cultural identity,
see Yorke, “Origins,” pp. 20–1. Harris acknowledges the malleability of
tribal identity as stressed by Patrick Geary, but he is especially interested
(as I am) in “how an author (or group of authors) imagined a collective,
and the categories by which those images came into physical being in
narrative”: Race, p. 9. See also above, Introduction, p. 28.
43 Roberts favours a Mercian identity (Guthlac, p. 5), while East Anglian
origins are proposed by Cubitt (“Memory,” pp. 56) and especially persua-
sively by Leeser, who envisions an East Anglian milieu for the writing of
the VSG (“On the Edge,” p. 152).
44 Yorke, “Origins,” pp. 20–1. For his part, Felix is not as explicit in his
­ethnograpy as one might wish. He tells us that Guthlac’s father Penwalh
was “de egregia stirpe Merciorum … cuius mansio in Mediterraneorum
Anglorum partibus” (“of distinguished Mercian stock … whose dwelling
… was in the district of the Middle Angles”; VSG §1, pp. 72–3), but he
neglects to localize that “stock” within Mercia or to specify which M ­ iddle
Angles Penwalh lived among (for examples, see the following note).
I thank Jane Roberts for drawing my attention to this passage (email mes-
sage to author, 14 March 2018).
45 Unless the various “peoples” in question are simply folk-groups subject
to Mercian lordship (the North Gyrwe, South Gyrwe, Spalda, etc.).
46 On Bede’s acknowledgement of Æthelbald’s Southumbrian hegemony,
see HE V.23, cited by Colgrave, “Introduction” to his edition of the VSG,
p. 7 and n. 1. Leeser, sensing a backhanded compliment in Felix’s re-
mark about Æthelbald’s felicitas, suggests that the VSG’s composition
in the 720s might explain why the remark “seems to damn him with
faint praise” (“On the Edge,” p. 153–4). Yet felicitas was reckoned a sign
 Notes to pages 109–11 271

of politically and spiritually sound kingship; see Ridyard, Royal Saints,

pp. 75–6 (cited in chap. 1, above, nn. 135–6).
47 According to Antonio Gramsci, the individual “intellectual” can
­operate not only alone but also within groups, and more broadly within
“‘the ­ensemble of the system of relations’ within which knowledge is
­produced”: Crehan, Gramsci, p. 133. See too Weston, “Guthlac Betwixt,”
pp. 5–7 (on Felix’s use of “intertextuality” to signal his scholarly author-
ity); B. Brooks, “Felix’s Construction”; Bacola, “Vacuas”; Orchard, “Lege”;
­Appleton, “Psalter”; Grossi, “Barrow Exegesis”; and especially Downey,
“Intertextuality.”
48 See Curtius’s overview of the classical and biblical commonplace that
“[t]he possession of knowledge makes it a duty to impart it”: European
Literature, p. 87, and the discussion of hagiographical convention in
Townsend, “Hagiography,” pp. 618–20.
49 Wieland, “Aures,” p. 176. Wragg believes that “[t]hough the work was
dedicated to Ælfwald, Guthlac’s cult was predominantly Mercian. It
seems likely, then, that the vita’s implied audience was also Mercian”
(“Early Texts,” p. 256). Like Leeser (in “On the Edge”), I believe that the
audience comprised Mercian and East Anglian readers and that the pro-
cess of defining the political orientation of the cult was still in flux when
Felix wrote.
50 Rollason, Saints, p. 87. Thacker posits a mixed audience embracing both
“a clerical community of some kind” and an “elite secular culture”:
“Guthlac,” p. 4.
51 On these various “modesty topoi,” see Curtius, European Literature,
pp. 83–5.
52 Curtius, European Literature, pp. 128–30, cited by Keynes and Lapidge,
Alfred, p. 239, n. 45, adducing (in addition to Asser) Aldhelm, Alcuin, and
Æthelweard. See too Smyth, King Alfred, p. 297, referring to Byrhtferth
of Ramsey and Æthelweard, as well as Asser (or Pseudo-Asser, as Smyth
controversially styles him).
53 I thank Gernot Wieland for stressing the Homeric connection in this
regard.
54 Brady (Writing, p. 57), similarly describes this passage as “a critical red
herring” but because, in her view, it has been misinterpreted to suggest
that the Anglo-Welsh marches were places of constant conflict between
two opposed peoples. “In fact … this passage actually indicates the oppo-
site: that the Welsh borderlands during Guthlac’s life were a site of mixed
Anglo-Welsh culture, not strife” (p. 58).
55 A few of the many commentators on various kinds of border or threshold
space in the Vita, the OE Guthlac A, and/or the OE prose Life of St. ­Guthlac
include Wentersdorf, “Battle,” p. 140; O’Brien O’Keeffe, “Guthlac’s
272 Notes to pages 111–12

Crossings,” passim, esp. pp. 7, 11, 22; Sharma, “Reconsideration,”

pp. 199, 200; Siewers, “Landscapes,” p. 24 (and citing Wentersdorf’s arti-
cle in n. 105); Cohen, Machines, pp. 137–9, 141–3; Symonds, “Territories,”
p. 36; Hines, Voices, pp. 62–70; Wickham-Crowley, “Living,” pp. 96–105;
Wickham-Crowley, “Fens”; C.A.M. Clarke, Literary Landscapes, pp. 45–58;
Brady, “Echoes,” p. 674 (also citing Sharma’s article); Brady, Writing,
pp. 53–81; Weston, “Saintly Lives,” p. 391; Weston, “Guthlac Betwixt”;
Noetzel, “Monster”; Wragg, “Vernacular Literature,” pp. 59–60; ­Estes,
Landscapes, pp. 92–4, 98–116; Frenze, “Holy Heights”; Hartmann,
“­Monument Reuse.”
56 O’Brien O’Keeffe, “Guthlac’s Crossings,” p. 11; compare p. 22. See too
Pinner, “Thinking Wetly,” p. 7. Pertinent too is Eliade, Myth, pp. 9–10, on
the ritual taming of wild places.
57 For comparable remarks on Guthlac A, see Discenza, Inhabited Spaces,
pp. 177–9, and Sharma, “Reconsideration,” p. 200 (“[i]n their imagination,
Old English poets seemed to assume a natural relation between evil, espe-
cially of the supernatural sort, and border-space”).
58 The rare word rivigarum is translated by Colgrave as “of … streams,” and
this is the sense adduced in DMLBS, fasc. 14, p. 2843, s.v. riviga, “stream,
river.” For the meaning “[of] the banks of a river, or lake,” see Maseres,
Historiae anglicanae, p. 330, note c, citing du Cange’s Glossarium and the
passage from VSG as reproduced by Orderic Vitalis. See also DMLBS,
fasc. 14, p. 2843, s.v. rivagium senses 1 and 1b, “shore, bank of a river, land
beside river,” “landing-place.” Then again, Felix’s noun may simply be “a
misreading of the Vulgate, Isaiah xix. 6” (Colgrave, “Notes,” p. 180).
59 The foregoing analysis has, in part, been anticipated by Noetzel, “­Monster,”
pp. 120–1 (adapting Mircea Eliade), who sees the imagery as linking the
Fens and “humanity’s corporeal existence on Earth”; and by Downey, who
notes Felix’s use of the word gurgites to characterize both “worldly turmoil”
and Guthlac’s “spiritual change” (“Intertextuality,” pp. 18–19).
60 Ravensdale, Liable, p. 5, discussing principally the former monastic
sites of Elmeney, Waterbeach, and Denney, roughly half-way between
­Cambridge and Ely and near the confluence of the rivers Great Ouse
and Cam. Some heterogeneity of landscape is, however, documented in
H.C. Darby, Medieval Fenland, and in Oosthuizen, Anglo-Saxon Fenland.
61 “Guthlac’s Crossings,” p. 7; see too Hartmann, “Monument Reuse,”
p. 239 (also citing O’Brien O’Keeffe). H.C. Darby, seemingly less attentive
than O’Brien O’Keeffe is to the unequal power of East Anglia and Mercia,
observes simply that “[k]ingdoms, finding their limits here, partitioned
the marshy wastes between them, and the barrier of the Fens became
a permanent feature in the political geography of the Anglo-Saxon
­Heptarchy” (“Fenland Frontier”), p. 185.
 Notes to pages 112–13 273

62 P. Brown, Body, p. 215, with specific reference to the protagonists of Palla-

dius of Galatia’s Historia Lausiaca (419–20 CE).
63 On the thirty thousand hides of the “Myrcna landes,” see Featherstone,
“Tribal Hidage,” p. 24; Yorke, “Origins,” p. 20. Difficulties of interpret-
ing the document are discussed in Featherstone’s and Yorke’s essays;
­Dumville, “Tribal Hidage”; Keynes, “England,” pp. 21–5; Keynes,
“­Kingdom,” p. 11. John notes that the “hides” of the Tribal Hidage refer to
“units of service, not area”: Reassessing, p. 15.
64 Kilpatrick makes this point in “Place-Names.” On the literary situation
of religious houses in seemingly liminal places, J. Blair observes that “the
tension between the ideal of the wilderness and the reality of embedded-
ness in secular life required an element of make-believe”: Church, p. 194.
In arguing that “the evidence of place-names and archaeology indicates
a region full of people,” Oosthuizen goes furthest in disputing the Fens’
reputation for otherworldly terrors (Anglo-Saxon Fenland, p. 50).
65 At this point in the Vita Felix is drawing upon two sources, the Lives
of St. Antony and St. Fursey; see Colgrave’s marginal notes in VSG,
pp. 84–7; Mayr-Harting, Coming, p. 230; Rollason, Saints, p. 84; Downey,
“­Intertextuality,” p. 56 (on echoes of the Vita sancti Fursei).
66 Constable helpfully distinguishes between coenobium and monasterium in
Reformation, p. 9. See too C.A. Jones’s analysis of the different approaches
to the cenobitic life in the VSG and Guthlac A (“Envisioning”). I speak of
Guthlac’s period of monastic training as intermediate between his war-
rior and eremitic lives, but within “[a]n ascetic’s optimum career-path,”
as reconstructed by J. Blair, it marks but the first step: Church, p. 218.
67 On Felix’s indirect asides on Irish monasticism, see Colgrave, “Introduc-
tion,” p. 16 and n. 2. The tonsure also distinguishes Guthlac from the
wayward gyrovagi condemned by Benedict: Rule of Saint Benedict, ed. Fry
et al., I.10–11. As C.A. Jones demonstrates (“Envisioning”), Guthlac A
suppresses the protagonist’s two years at Repton and instead character-
izes Guthlac’s eremitic life as containing the core elements of communal
conversatio.
68 Repton’s Roman associations, perhaps deliberately cultivated, are dis-
cussed by Yorke, “Burial,” pp. 252–3.
69 Howe, “Rome”; Howe, Writing, pp. 101–24. See Discenza’s refinement
upon Howe’s thesis in “Map,” p. 84. On Bede’s exaltation of “papal and
not imperial Rome,” see Scully, “Bede,” p. 37. According to Hoenicke
Moore, Bede was devoted to the ecclesiastical universalism that Rome rep-
resented, a virtue that could be transferred to Wearmouth-Jarrow’s library
(“Bede’s Devotion”). On the reduced emphasis on papal Rome in the OE
translation of Bede, see Rowley, Old English Version, pp. 4, 12, 98–113.
70 P. Brown, Body, p. 217.
274 Notes to pages 113–15

71 On the exaggeration, see Rackham, History, pp. 374–5; Oosthuizen,

­Anglo-Saxon Fenland, p. 50. The Fens’ natural resources are discussed
by Rackham, History, pp. 381–2, 387; Barley, Lincolnshire, pp. 123–6;
H.C. Darby, Medieval Fenland, p. 21 (quoting Hugh Candidus); Morris,
Time’s Anvil, pp. 110–11. (Darby’s Medieval Fenland is cited in its first
­edition by Colgrave, “Introduction,” p. 2, n. 4.) Some scholars instead
emphasize Felix’s descriptive accuracy, e.g. B. Brooks, “Felix’s Construc-
tion,” pp. 55, 65–70, and studies cited therein.
72 On Pestell’s term, see above, n. 11. On spaces influenced by the presence
of borders, see D. Newman, “Borders,” and above, p. 266 and n. 14, as
well as n. 15 on the situation of Middle Anglia.
73 Harrison, “Invisible Boundaries,” p. 91 (Harrison’s article is cited in
Michelet, Creation, p. 5, n. 15).
74 On the locus amoenus in early English literature, see C.A.M. Clarke,
­Literary Landscapes, esp. pp. 7–66, and pp. 31–4 for discussion of the trope
as used in the VSG. The OE Guthlac A explicitly shows Crowland becom-
ing transformed into a “pleasurable place.”
75 Four centuries later, the Gesta Herwardi will describe the root cause of
Hereward’s rebellion against William the Conqueror as precisely the
­desire to reclaim a paternal inheritance.
76 For rich discussions of Guthlac’s name and Felix’s understanding of its
origins, see Cavill, “Naming,” and Bolton, “Background.” On p ­ olitical and
propagandistic uses of genealogy, see Sisam, “Anglo-Saxon Royal Geneal-
ogies”; Dumville, “Kingship”; Yorke, “Origins,” pp. 16–17 (­referring e.g. to
Felix’s Vita and citing Dumville’s work); Stodnick, “Old Names” (and cit-
ing Sisam and Dumville). Meaney writes that “it sometimes appears that
royal ancestry is, if not a prerequisite, certainly a useful contributory factor
in the attribution of Anglo-Saxon sanctity” (“Hagiography,” p. 31).
77 Yorke, “Origins,” p. 15. On Icel’s importance within the VSG see too
Thacker, “Kings,” p. 5; Newton, Origins, p. 62; Roberts, “Seals,” p. 119,
n. 38. Thacker nevertheless cautions that Felix may have thought Icel
was simply “the founder of a dynasty of Mercian origin which included
­famous kings” (email message to author, 21 February 2017).
78 John, Land Tenure, p. 62.
79 The use of the land being referred to in laws and charters as facultas,
“the right to dispose of property, and not … the landed property itself”:
John, Land Tenure, p. 13. In greater depth than I can attempt here, S. Clark
explores this term and its relevance to Guthlac A in “More Permanent
Homeland,” p. 81, n. 26, citing John and Wormald.
80 S.T. Smith, Land, pp. 212, 213.
81 E.g. Neville, Representations, p. 127; Black, “Tradition,” §9; S. Clark,
“More Permanent Homeland,” p. 83; S. Clark, “Guthlac A,” p. 52; Brady,
 Notes to pages 115–17 275

“Colonial Desire” (esp. p. 74, on the connection between the “fluid land-
scape” of Guthlac A and Mercia’s unstable boundaries during Guthlac’s
lifetime); Discenza, Inhabited Spaces, pp. 153–7, 162–3; Wragg, “Vernacular
Literature,” pp. 65–6; Weston, “Guthlac Betwixt,” p. 19.
82 Downey et al., “Books Tell Us,” esp. pp. 156–7, furthering arguments by
Patrick Conner and Christopher A. Jones. For an ecocritical analysis of
the poem’s engagement with the Benedictine Reform, see Bovaird-Abbo,
“Redeeming.”
83 Analyzing the stylistic relationship between the prose Life and the VSG,
Downey concludes that the former “appears to be the work of a con-
sistent and careful translator or redactor(s); its composition shows both
respect for the source text and a willingness to adapt when necessary”
(“Intertextuality,” pp. 144–5).
84 Wickham-Crowley, “Living,” p. 99. On Guthlac’s barrow, see below, n. 92.
85 Again Wickham-Crowley’s insights warrant quotation: “Boundaries
distinguish differences on either side, yet have identities and characters
of their own. Introducing water into landscape considerations gives us
a variable that suggests permeable, dynamic boundaries; in some cir-
cumstances, such as the siting of religious foundations, their inherent
­uncertainty and ambiguity may be cultivated”: “Living,” p. 105.
86 It is not a contradiction to argue that the VSG’s depiction of Guthlac’s
tumulus “inheritance” both serves specifically Mercian political interests
and encourages pious longing for eternal salvation, beyond time and
place. For the latter argument as it pertains to Guthlac A, see S. Clark,
“More Permanent Homeland,” p. 76.
87 In this Felix may be typifying the representation practice found in OE
­poetry: see Neville, Representations, pp. 44 (referring to the Guthlac A).
88 Lees and Overing, “Anglo-Saxon Horizons,” p. 6.
89 The debate is ongoing; see above, n. 71 and n. 2.
90 Manhattan’s Cloisters Museum, notwithstanding its “[s]ynthetic”
­amalgamation of elements from five medieval French and Spanish
­monasteries, represented to Merton “a reproach to everything else
around it, except the trees and the Palisades”: Seven Storey Mountain, p. 7.
91 For a full analysis, see Downey, “Too Much.”
92 Discussions of the mound in the VSG and corresponding beorg in G ­ uthlac
A are many and varied; see e.g. Colgrave, “Earliest,” p. 54; Colgrave,
“Notes,” pp. 182–4; Shook, “Burial Mound”; Reichardt, “Guthlac A”;
Wentersdorf, “Battle”; Roberts, Guthlac Poems, p. 132; Sharma, “Reconsider-
ation,” pp. 194–8; Kilpatrick, “Place-Names,” 24–5, 31–3; B. Brooks, “Felix’s
Construction,” pp. 70–1; S. Clark, “Guthlac A”; Michelet, Creation, pp. 173–
89 passim; Foxhall Forbes, Heaven, pp. 93–4; Brady, “Colonial Desire,” and,
Writing, pp. 60–7. On the multiple identities of ancient burial mounds, see
276 Notes to pages 117–18

e.g. J. Blair, Church, pp. 53–4 (and sources in n. 170); Morris, Time’s Anvil,
pp. 43–4 and 206; Semple, “Fear,” pp. 112–13 (cited by Weston, “Guthlac
Betwixt,” p. 24, n. 2); Estes, Landscapes, pp. 111–15; Frenze, “Holy Heights”;
Hartmann, “Monument Reuse”; Ellard, Anglo-Saxon Past(s), pp. 107–29
(with particular reference to the barrow in Beowulf).
93 Hartmann, “Monument Reuse,” p. 236. Hines shows that Guthlac’s
revolutionary Fenland colonization is belied by evidence of widespread
settlement: Voices, p. 67; see also Oosthuizen, Anglo-Saxon Fenland,
p. 50 (as cited above in n. 64). For a more guarded view, see Kilpatrick,
“Place-Names,” pp. 33–6. By contrast, Pestell asserts that “[t]he archaeo-
logical evidence for the site is equivocal … and that the whole island of
Crowland was one of very low intensity occupation, and probably only
properly settled with the establishment of the Benedictine monastery [in
the tenth century]”: Landscapes, p. 133. The issue is explored sensitively
by Hartmann, “Monument Reuse,” pp. 239–40, 243–5.
94 This last point is made by Wickham-Crowley, “Living,” p. 97.
95 Wickham-Crowley’s remarks about the corresponding passage from the
OE prose Life of Guthlac are relevant here: “Are these [demons] the spir-
its of the ancient burial mound? Or are they more recent battle victims,
those killed in battle with the Mercian English? While modern archaeol-
ogy might choose one over the other, the text leaves that identity open,
allowing ancient and recent pasts to merge in the fens”: “Living,” p. 98.
See also Brady, “Echoes,” p. 679. As Lees and Overing have evocatively
observed, “[p]laces, like their inhabitants, are redolent with contradiction
and with the multivalence of the past”: “Anglo-Saxon Horizons,” p. 16
(with reference to Bede’s account of England’s fitful Christianization).
96 Here I borrow Scholastic terminology from Eco, Lector, p. 55.
97 Meaney, “Hagiography,” p. 44.
98 Fell, “Saint Æðelþryð,” p. 34 (see discussion above, chap. 2). Kilpatrick
plausibly surmises that “[i]f the place-name [Gronta] was not integral to
Guthlac’s biography, it was perhaps significant to the patron of the text
or his relations”: “Places,” p. 108; see too her long n. 61 (same page) on
Æthelthryth’s translation in HE IV.19.
99 So much so that Cubitt observes that “Bede’s Life of St. Cuthbert forms
the essential backdrop to the Life of St. Guthlac which attempts to show
­Guthlac’s superiority over Cuthbert” (“Memory,” pp. 53–4, building
upon Alan Thacker’s insights). Higham goes further, describing Guthlac
as but “a clone of Cuthbert”: “Guthlac’s Vita,” p. 85. See also Downey,
“Intertextuality,” pp. 55–65, on Felix’s borrowings from the Vitae of
Fursey and Cuthbert.
100 O’Brien O’Keeffe, “Guthlac’s Crossings,” p. 6. If Higham (“Guthlac’s
Vita”) is right to sense “competition” between Mercia and East Anglia in
the promotion of Fenland saints, then the presence of Æthelthryth and
 Notes to pages 118–21 277

Guthlac in the territory of the Gyrwe may itself have been a sensitive
issue. As noted by Colgrave (“Introduction,” p. 2, n. 7), the document
known as the Secgan (Resting Places of the English Saints) places Crowland
in the territory of the Gyrwe: “Đonne resteð sancte Guðlac on þare stowe,
þe is genemnod Cruland, þæt mynster is on middan Girwan fænne” (text
in Liebermann, Die Heiligen Englands, pp. 9–20, at p. 11, §10).
101 Relevant here is Elliott’s term “revirginization” to describe the holy
women of Aldhelm’s De virginitate, the OE Elene, and Ælfric’s Homily on
Judith and Lives of Saints (especially the Life of Æthelthryth): Elliott, “Sex,”
pp. 16–81. Kilpatrick, “Place-Names,” persuasively conjectures that
­Felix’s silence about other Fenland monasteries may have been a means
“to portray Guthlac either as a trendsetter or to claim him as the first
­hermit of the fens” (p. 37); compare Kilpatrick, “Places,” pp. 111–15.
102 See the references to Howe’s “Rome” and Writing, above, n. 69.
103 Kirby, Making, p. 249. For a probing theoretical analysis of Roman and
other ruins in the early English context, see Estes, Landscapes, pp. 61–87.
104 Kirby, Making, pp. 249–50.
105 On the early East Angles’ singular interest in claiming an ancestral
­Roman identity for themselves, seen in e.g. their alignment of the she-
wolf motif with their own lupine dynastic imagery, see above, Introduc-
tion, p. 23 and notes 108 and 109.
106 Christopher Taylor, Cambridgeshire Landscape, p. 259. Taylor believes the
ruins found by the Ely monks near the end of the seventh century repre-
sented a period of conflict “earlier” in that century.
107 H.C. Darby, “Fenland Frontier,” p. 196.
108 F. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 50. This theme recurs in H.C. Darby,
“Fenland Frontier,” whose findings are supported in Davies and Vierck,
“Contexts,” pp. 251–2.
109 F. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 50. Compare P.H. Blair, Roman
Britain, pp. 182–3. The Fenland was not as impenetrable as formerly
thought, however; see Oosthuizen’s analysis of its varied topography in
­Anglo-Saxon Fenland, pp. 13–30, and discussion by Hartmann, “­Monument
Reuse,” pp. 243–5.
110 H.C. Darby, “Fenland Frontier,” p. 194, assigning Thorney and Whittlesmere
to Middle Anglia and thus to Mercia; yet “[t]he division was not without
fluctuation” (p. 194, cited in Colgrave, “Introduction,” p. 2).
111 For a similar view, though one emphasizing East Anglian expansion
rather than freedom, and Mercia’s inability to conquer its eastern
­neighbour, see Yorke, Kings, p. 65. My own formulation merely reverses
the emphases in Yorke’s analysis.
112 “As sure as there are holy crows in Crowland,” swears Martin Lightfoot
in Kingsley’s Hereward (p. 64); but Ekwall, Concise Dictionary, p. 133,
s.v. “Crowland,” surmises that crow- here derives from “an otherwise
278 Notes to page 121

unknown word crūw (crūg),” which may have “meant ‘a bend’” in what
is now the River Welland. Ekwall is cited by Colgrave, “Notes,” p. 181;
Kilpatrick, “Place-Names,” p. 22 (in a rich analysis); and ­Kilpatrick,
“Places,” p. 106. See too Noetzel, “Monster,” p. 105. The riverine land-
scape itself throws a kink into this theory, however; see Chisholm,
“Crowland,” pp. 319–25.
113 Lia describes Casaubon as follows: “You sometimes seem profound,
but it’s only because you piece a lot of surfaces together to create the
impression of depth, solidity. That solidity would collapse if you tried
to stand it up”: Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum, p. 50. Nevertheless, the VSG’s
British phantoms and other terrors are solid enough in Guthlac’s mind
to ­warrant interpretation as evidence of psychological trauma (Lee,
“­Healing Words”), as obstacles to be overcome on the way to psycholog-
ical recovery (Anlezark, “Stand Firm”), or even as hallucinations caused
by the eating of a certain kind of fungus that grows on barley bread
(­Foxhall Forbes, Heaven, p. 92, and source cited in her n. 143).
114 O’Brien O’Keeffe, “Guthlac’s Crossings,” p. 21.
115 On the text’s pitting of a cohesive English people against the Britons
tout court, see (in addition to O’Brien O’Keeffe’s article) Cohen, Ma-
chines, pp. 117, 142–4; Siewers, “Landscapes,” pp. 10–14, 25 (with regard
to Guthlac A); J. Davies, “Literary Languages,” p. 265; Brady, “Echoes,”
esp. pp. 676–82; Brady, Writing, pp. 57–9; Harris, Race, p. 37 (cited by
Brady, “Echoes,” p. 677); Capper, “St. Guthlac” in toto; Estes, L ­ andscapes,
pp. 107–11; Hartmann, “Monument Reuse,” pp. 243–51; Neidorf,
“­Beowulf,” pp. 865–7. According to Higham, “What Felix was seeking to
do by reference to Britons was to contrast Guthlac’s reputed victory over
‘British’ devils with the failure of Coenred’s protection of the English
­nation against actual British attacks. He did this in a context that would
not have offended the current Mercian establishment, dominated as that
was by Aethelbald” (“Guthlac’s Vita,” p. 88).
116 Scholars who adduce a western context for Guthlac’s British-speaking
demonic foes include Colgrave, “Introduction,” p. 3; Colgrave, “Notes,”
p. 185; Kirby, “Welsh Bards,” p. 38; Cohen, Machines, pp. 143–4; Yorke,
“Origins,” p. 19; Brady, Writing, pp. 53–81; and Capper, “St. Guthlac,”
esp. p. 211. Colgrave (“Notes,” p. 176) and Sims-Williams (Religion, p. 26)
caution against assuming Guthlac’s own possible British origins (implied
by the name of his father, Penwalh); but see Siewers, “Landscapes,” p. 11
(citing sources), and especially Brady, Writing, pp. 54–5, and Hartmann,
“Monument Reuse,” pp. 243, 250–1, who suggest that Felix may have
wished to promote a Mercian (or English?) policy of inclusiveness that
embraced ethnic Britons or at least envisaged ethnic British acceptance
of Mercian sovereignty. Härke (“Ethnogenesis,” pp. 18–19) argues for
 Notes to pages 121–2 279

early English supersession, not just continuation, of British culture in the

“increasing inclusion of Britons into Anglo-Saxon society.” In response,
Hartmann claims that “Guthlac’s burial next to a pre-Anglo-Saxon
­barrow can be read as an act of transforming, rather than erasing, past
meaning” (“Monument Reuse,” p. 248), but the tone of VSG §34 per-
suades me that Härke’s argument better explains what Felix is up to.
117 Oosthuizen, Anglo-Saxon Fenland, pp. 38–42, 136, relying in part on what
strikes me as a too-literal reading of the above-quoted passage from Felix.
A similar concern is registered in Hartmann, “Monument Reuse,” p. 243.
The question of continuous British occupation of the Fens is also explored
in Higham, “Guthlac’s Vita,” p. 88; Siewers, “Landscapes,” pp. 11–12 and
sources cited therein; Capper, “St. Guthlac,” pp. 188–94; Brady, “Echoes,”
pp. 676–81; Estes, Landscapes, p. 103; and Hartmann, “Monument Reuse,”
who is, like me, interested in the Fens primarily as the VSG represents
them (pp. 244–5).
118 Brady, Writing, p. 58; see too Colgrave, ed., VSG, pp. 185–6; Colgrave,
“Earliest,” pp. 53–4; F. Stenton, in D.M. Stenton, Preparatory, p. 362;
­Roberts, Guthlac, p. 17. This is not to deny that, in real life, Britons may
have co-existed (albeit on unequal terms) with the Germanic newcomers
and their descendants, in and out of the Fens; surveying a wide range of
­evidence in late fifth- to late seventh-century cemeteries, Härke concludes
that “Britons made up as much as half of the male population of the
communities we identify as ‘Anglo-Saxon’ on the basis of their material
culture”: “Ethnogenesis,” p. 13. See too Härke’s reference (“Ethnogene-
sis,” p. 15 and n. 90, and p. 16) to a 1985 study by Christopher Scull of a
sixth-century British cultural presence in the south-eastern Fens.
119 On these tribes, see above, Introduction, pp. 20–1 and sources cited in n.
90, to which may be added the following brief references to the Catuvel-
launi: Collingwood and Myres, Roman Britain, pp. 46–7, 54–7 and passim;
­Salway, History, pp. 29–31, 38–9, 47, and passim. A similar point concern-
ing multiple cultural layers is made by Cohen, Machines, pp. 142–3.
120 Morris, Time’s Anvil, pp. 156–7.
121 Michelet, Creation, p. 166.
122 Cohen, Machines, p. 144. Wragg too situates the VSG firmly in a Mercian
context (“Vernacular Literature”; “Guthlac A”). On Guthlac’s lineage as
but one branch of the Mercian royal dynasty, see Leeser, “On the Edge,”
pp. 143–6; Wragg, “Vernacular Literature,” pp. 48–9, 57–8, 78; Roberts
and Thacker, “Introduction,” p. xxiii. For the opinion that the Mercians’
“original connections were with the Wash and East Anglia,” see Stafford,
East Midlands, pp. 96 and 202, n. 5 (citing VSG); W. Davies, “Annals,”
pp. 20–4. Against this view, see N. Brooks, “Formation,” p. 162, and
Yorke, “Origins,” p. 15.
280 Notes to pages 122–3

123 On these distinctions, see Morris, Time’s Anvil, pp. 156–9 and p. 111,
­referring, respectively, to Snowdonia and the Fenland. Estes notes that
both the VSG and the OE prose Guthlac “refer quite clearly to several
­layers of pre-existing occupancy” (Landscapes, p. 102). J. Blair situates
Guthlac’s takeover of Crowland in the context of Christian appropria-
tion of pagan sites: Church, p. 184; and Hartmann’s brilliant “Monument
­Reuse” touches on these and a host of other aspects of the VSG.
124 C.A.M. Clarke emphasizes Guthlac’s enduring links to society:
Writing, pp. 20–1. Compare Wickham-Crowley, “Living,” p. 97;
Wickham-Crowley, “Fens,” p. 84; Kilpatrick, “Place-Names,” pp. 35–8,
and “Places,” pp. 111–13 (noting, in both studies, Felix’s likely exagger-
ation of Crowland’s desolation); Weston, “Saintly Lives,” pp. 394–5, and
“Guthlac Betwixt,” pp. 10–12. Cohen instead stresses Guthlac’s isolation
and relates it to the flux of eighth-century Mercia: Machines, pp. 116–53.
125 Hines, Voices, p. 54.
126 Neville, Representations, p. 124. See also Michelet, Creation, p. 171.
127 VSG §34, pp. 108–9. Brady instead argues that neither Felix’s references
to Saxonici and Anglorum nor his recollections of British hostilities against
those peoples pertain to the Mercians; “the separate identities of the
Anglo-Saxon kingdoms should not be elided” (Writing, p. 58). Although
I agree with this principle as she formulates it, I also believe that Felix
himself deliberately resorts to ethnographic elision in VSG §34 and blurs
Anglian, Saxon, and Mercian identities in order to justify Æthelbald’s
eventual authority over all the English. See Thacker, “Bede’s Idea,” p. 17,
suggesting the influence on Felix of Boniface’s conflation of Mercians
with Angles.
128 On Pega, see VSG §50–1, pp. 154–63; §53, pp. 167–71; Colgrave,
“­Introduction,” pp. 6 and passim; Colgrave, “Notes,” pp. 192–3; Leeser,
“On the Edge,” pp. 142–3; Lumley Prior, “Pegeland Revisited,” esp.
pp. 326–9.
129 Translation slightly emended from Colgrave’s “but he did not return as
he was before[.]” Felix’s last words in describing the cured man’s grati-
tude echo Vergil’s Aeneid, as noted in Colgrave’s edition (p. 170). Perhaps
the allusion is meant to persuade Felix’s readers that even praising God
and spreading word of Guthlac’s miracles are heroic acts that can sub-
stitute for lost military might? Guthlac’s similarities to Aeneas are noted
in C.A.M. Clarke, Literary Landscapes, p. 32; Bacola, “Vacuas,” pp. 78–82;
­Orchard, “Lege,” pp. 26–7. Other accounts of Felix’s borrowings from
Vergil include Thacker, “Guthlac,” pp. 16–18; Appleton and ­Robinson,
“Further Echoes”; Anlezark, “Stand Firm.” B. Brooks, in “Felix’s
­Construction,” cautions against over-interpretation of such echoes, and
 Notes to pages 123–6 281

Downey’s remarks in “Intertextuality,” pp. 64–5, also warrant mentioning

in this context.
130 Mayr-Harting, Coming, pp. 230, 231. He continues: “That does not mean
that the Life is far removed from the real Guthlac, who was himself part
of that culture and indeed helped to fashion it” (p. 231). Elsewhere in his
book, however, Mayr-Harting refers to Felix’s saintly protagonist as “the
Mercian prince Guthlac” (p. 20).
131 Colgrave, “Introduction,” p. 7.
132 Keynes thus memorably describes Offa (r. 757–96) in “Kingdom,” p. 14.
133 I refer of course to Anderson’s Imagined Communities.
134 I am influenced by Michelet’s remark that Guthlac A, Andreas, and
Cynewulf’s Elene “redefine centrality and periphery … and they transform
the border-lands – non-places – into religious centres”: Creation, p. 197.
On the ambiguity of medieval representations of border spaces, see too
Treharne, “Borders”; Brady, “Echoes.” Applicable to Felix’s C ­ rowland is
Howe’s remark, regarding boundary clauses in charters, that “the periph-
ery is … more central than what fills the center” (Howe, W ­ riting, p. 39).
135 See above, Introduction, p. 23, n. 109; and chap. 1, p. 62, n. 130.
136 Meaney, “History …?” p. 77; compare Stancliffe, “Kings,” p. 157 and
especially p. 171 (“[t]he phenomenon of kings adopting the religious life
gathers momentum only in the latter part of the seventh century, peaking
in the years 685–710 when no fewer than six kings took this decision”).
Was Felix gently prodding his patron to join this trend?
137 Stancliffe, “Kings,” pp. 154–5.
138 Stancliffe, “Kings,” p. 172.
139 For text and discussion of the Letter to Boniface, see the references above
in n. 38.
140 Stancliffe observes that “Guthlac was never a king; but he was a ­potential
king, a man of royal blood who gathered a warband about him and
lived by pillage, much as Caedwalla had done before he seized power in
Wessex”: “Kings,” p. 167. Compare Stafford, East Midlands, pp. 96, 107;
Charles-Edwards, “Early Medieval Kingships,” p. 37.
141 “‘Unique’ Anglo-Saxon Coin”; Naismith, “New Type.”
142 Bately, ed., MS A, s.a. 792 [recte 794]; James, “Two Lives”; Plunkett, Suffolk,
pp. 171–5; Yorke, Kings, pp. 59; Rollason, Saints, pp. 122, 128; Ridyard,
Royal Saints, p. 244, citing James in n. 20; Wright, Cultivation, pp. 94–106
and the appendices on pp. 259–65 (cited, as is the article by James, in
­Garmonsway, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. 55, n. 3); Thacker, “Kings,”
pp. 16–18; Cubitt, “Sites,” pp. 75–7 (who also cites, inter alia, Thacker’s
article on p. 54, n. 1). The studies by James and Thacker are also cited by
Yorke, Kings, p. 185, n. 9.
282 Notes to pages 126–9

143 Keynes, “Kingdom,” p. 10.

144 James, “Two Lives,” p. 238.
145 Bassett, “In Search,” pp. 26–7. Williamson, however, believes “Anglian”
leaders achieved domination only over fellow “Anglians” with whom
they had “certain aspects of a common culture” (Sutton Hoo, pp. 138–41).

Chapter 4

1 Stancliffe, “Kings,” p. 172.

2 Earl, “Violence,” p. 135, extending an insight by Eric John. For a more
polemical perspective on Ælfric and other late tenth- and early eleventh-­
century writers in this regard, see Ashe, Conquest, pp. 14–20 and passim.
3 Ryan, “Anglo-Saxons,” p. 240; cf. Wormald, “Engla Lond,” p. 5. See the
Introduction above, n. 165, for kings’ reigns in the period 794–854; Pestell,
“Kingdom,” pp. 212–13, for the coinage of King Æthelstan I from the 820s
to the 840s. Keynes envisions East Anglia during this period “minding its
own business in typical obscurity” (“Power,” p. 186).
4 E.g. Wormald, “Anglo-Saxons,” esp. the trenchant point made
on p. 26; Wormald, “Engla Lond,” esp. p. 6; Foot, “Making”; Foot,
“­Historiography,” p. 129; K. Davis, “National Writing,” pp. 617–27 (inter
alia critiquing Foot, as does Stodnick, “What (and Where),” p. 89; but
see the reply to Davis by Discenza, “Map,” p. 85, n. 6); P.J.E. Kershaw,
“­Alfred-Guthrum Treaty,” p. 59; J. Campbell, “What Is Not Known,”
p. 22; Keynes, “Edward,” pp. 57–62; N. Brooks, “English Identity,”
pp. 46–8; Higham and Ryan, Anglo-Saxon World, p. 9; Molyneaux,
­Formation, p. 9; Konshuh, “Constructing,” pp. 157–60; Karkov, Imagining,
pp. 9–11, 14–19, 26–49. Molyneaux’s critique (Formation, pp. 201–11) of
Wormald and Foot will be considered later.
5 See especially Wormald, “Engla Lond”; Foot, “Making”; K. Davis, “­National
Writing”; Chapman, “King Alfred,” pp. 40–1; Pratt, Political Thought,
pp. 106–7; Discenza, Inhabited Spaces, p. 111; Dumville, “Origins,” p. 109–10.
6 Barrett, Against All England, p. 1.
7 E.g. Abrams, “Edward the Elder’s Danelaw,” pp. 132–3 (and sources cited
therein); McLeod, Beginning. See too notes 10, 11, and 17 below.
8 Hart, Danelaw, pp. 8–19.
9 Abels, “Alfred.”
10 In what follows I am indebted to Smyth, Scandinavian Kings, pp. 22–3,
178–83, 201–4, 240–66; Hadley, Vikings, pp. 10–11; Molyneaux, Formation,
pp. 21–5; and Abels, “Alfred,” pp. 265–6. See too McLeod, Beginning,
pp. 6–7; Richards and Haldenby, “Scale,” esp. pp. 327–8.
11 Though not germane to my discussion, the question whether the Danes
arrived in sufficient numbers to replace or merely to command the n ­ ative
 Notes to pages 129–31 283

English peasantry has been raised often. See Abrams, “Edward the Elder’s
Danelaw,” p. 134; Hadley, Vikings, pp. 1–27 (who argues for “a diversity of
forms of Anglo-Scandinavian interaction”; pp. 20–1); Raffield, “Bands” and
sources cited therein. McLeod favours an estimate in the low thousands
rather than in the hundreds (Beginning, pp. 12–13, citing Else Roesdahl’s
work). Richards and Haldenby argue convincingly that, in Northumbria,
“the sharing out of the land by Halfdan left little room for co-existence
with the indigenous Northumbrians,” and that “[s]uch extensive disloca-
tion argues against the minimalist position adopted by Sawyer [in Vikings]
and reinforces the scale of the Great Army, and its impact”: “Scale,” p. 345.
12 MS A, ed. Bately, pp. 50 and 51, s.a. 876 and 880, respectively. See Moly-
neaux, Formation, p. 21.
13 Smyth, Scandinavian Kings, p. 259. Hadley plausibly reasons that
­Hálfdan’s “humbler warriors and other followers, and doubtless also
the pre-existing tenants of these [seized English] estates” would have
done the actual work of farming: Vikings, p. 85, quoted in Richards and
Haldenby, “Scale,” p. 344.
14 Smyth, Scandinavian Kings, pp. 265–6.
15 Rollason, Northumbria, pp. 215–16.
16 Smyth, Scandinavian Kings, p. 266.
17 Innes, “Danelaw Identities,” p. 80.
18 Rollason, Northumbria, p. 235. See too Dumville, “Origins,” p. 118.
19 Stafford, Unification, p. 24; compare Stafford, p. 27: “Here too [in East
Anglia] Viking rule can be seen as reasserting previous independence.”
Compare Lavelle’s remark about Æthelwold’s success in ­Northumbria:
“the rivalries of the so-called Heptarchy were surprisingly alive at
the ­beginning of the tenth century” (“Politics,” p. 74). Richards and
­
Haldenby’s “Scale” nevertheless offers sobering evidence for massive
transformation of Northumbrian non-elite town and rural life.
20 J. Campbell, “What Is Not Known,” p. 22 (the source too of Campbell’s
discussion of Edward’s fortress-building), and the study by R.H.C. Davis
cited therein.
21 On the battle, see e.g. MS A, ed. Bately, pp. 67–8, s.a. 917.
22 John, Reassessing, p. 109. This is not to challenge the claims for
­Æthelstan’s achievements as a “king of the English” advanced by
e.g. Foot, Æthelstan, and Dumville, “Origins.”
23 Stafford, Unification, p. 34; pp. 37–9 on Æthelstan “Half-King” as ­ealdorman
of East Anglia and the West Saxon management of regional separatist feel-
ing. On the uncertain character of King Edgar’s lordship in Scandinavian ter-
ritories, “especially in northern England,” see Abrams, “King Edgar,” p. 172.
24 On these and other connections between Scandinavian Francia (including
the northernmost part of Frisia) and East Anglia, see McLeod, Beginning,
284 Notes to pages 131–3

pp. 132–58, 229, 266–7, 279–80; on the Irish background of Hálfdan’s

army, see pp. 162–5. Ryan explores Carolingian parallels to aspects of the
rebellion of Æthelwold (about whom more later); see Places, pp. 114, 165,
169–76, 291–2.
25 Molyneaux, Formation, pp. 2–4, 24–5.
26 John, Reassessing, p. 105.
27 Earl, “Violence,” p. 142, part of his fine psychoanalytical analysis of
the “awkward, intimate antagonism” between Scandinavian and
non-Scandinavian England in the tenth century (p. 142).
28 The parcelling of land presents specific complexities. Douglas points out
that, in the East Anglian Domesday survey, land in Norfolk and Suffolk
is divided into “carucates,” but these differ from carucates found else-
where in the Danelaw; furthermore, East Anglia’s “hundreds” are unlike
both the “wapentakes” of the northern shires and the hundreds found in
shires of the South and the East Midlands (Social Structure, p. 4).
29 Foot, Æthelstan, p. 18; John, Reassessing, p. 92.
30 MS D, ed. Cubbin, s.a. 941, 943, 946, 948, 954, pp. 43–5; MS A, ed. Bately,
s.a. 946, p. 74; MS E, ed. Irvine, s.a. 944, 954, pp. 55, 56; ASC, pp. 111–13.
31 MS B, ed. S. Taylor, p. 54; compare MS C, ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, p. 80;
ASC, p. 113.
32 On Guthfrith, see F. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 262, 433; Hadley,
Vikings, pp. 37–41; McLeod, Beginning, pp. 217–18, 246, 275.
33 John, Reassessing, p. 92.
34 These evolving territorial terms reflect the tenth- to twelfth-century
­developments traced by S. Reynolds, Kingdoms, pp. 224–27. On the early
origins of the title of ealdorman, see F. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England,
p. 305; John, “Age,” p. 172.
35 Hart, Danelaw, pp. 569, 574–84. On the resurgence of regionalism following
the death of King Edgar in 975, see Rabin, “Holy Bodies,” p. 229, and dis-
cussion below in chap. 5, p. 197 and n. 137.
36 These were Thorkill “the Tall” (MS D, ed. Cubbin, s.a. 1021, p. 63);
Osgot or Osgod Clapa “the Staller” (Chronicle accounts vary, but see
e.g. MS C, ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, s.a. 1046, p. 109); Harold Godwineson
(MS C, ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, s.a. 1051, p. 112; MS F, ed. Baker, s.a. 1051,
p. 124, for a fuller account); and Ælfgar Leofricson (MS D, ed. Cubbin,
s.a. 1058, p. 76).
37 The contrast between the annalistic and hagiographic portrayal of
­Edmund has been noted by Smyth, Scandinavian Kings, p. 206, and many
others. Chapter 5 returns to this topic.
38 MS A, ed. Bately, p. 47.
39 ASC, p. 70.
40 Ryan, “Anglo-Saxons,” p. 260.
 Notes to pages 133–4 285

41 On the term “Common Stock,” and on the dating of key interventions to

the early 890s, followed by revisions of ca. the 920s and 950s, see Brede-
hoft, Textual Histories, p. 4 and p. 171, n. 2; Keynes, “Alfred,” pp. 15, 34–5;
S. ­Irvine, “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,” esp. pp. 344, 350–2, 362–6; Ryan,
“Sources,” pp. 271–6; Konshuh, “Constructing,” p. 154.
42 Emphasis mine. Even from the ASC’s terse wording Young plausibly
infers that “Edmund, not the Danes, was the aggressor” (Edmund, p. 48),
and quotes (p. 48) Asser’s claim in the Life of Alfred, as trans. by Keynes
and Lapidge, that Edmund had “fought fiercely against that army”
(Alfred, p. 78). Damon argues that Æthelweard’s claim, by portraying
Edmund as a warrior-king who had lost in battle, would have validated
West Saxon expansion into the Danelaw “as the righting of old wrongs”
(Soldier Saints, pp. 173–4).
43 Plummer and Earle, eds., Two of the Saxon Chronicles, vol. 2, p. xxi, cited
by Stodnick, “Sentence,” p. 91. For relevant insights into the terseness
(and sometimes blankness) of the Annals of St. Gall (Annales Alamannici),
see White, Content, esp. p. 11, and discussion in Stodnick, “What (and
Where).”
44 In saying this, I have been anticipated by Stodnick, “What (and Where),”
pp. 99–104, though my sense of the order imagined by the annals differs
from her claim that the “ordered and systematic whole” (p. 100) gener-
ated by the Chronicle is related to a process whereby the “annals begin
to write a map of the landscape and produce a sense of relations between
places that is visible and timeless” (p. 104).
45 It was probably not a royal vill, unlike Rendlesham, where according to
Bede the East Saxon king Swithhelm had been baptized, evidently under
East Anglian influence (“in uico regio qui dicitur Rendlaesham, id est
mansio Rendili” [“in the royal village called Rendlesham, that is, the resi-
dence of Rendil”; HE III.22, pp. 284–5]).
46 Eco discusses the “open word” and “empty word” in the context of the
rapport between authors and their audiences, and the “encyclopaedias”
that the former require of the latter: Lector, p. 55. See too M. Irvine,
“­Medieval Textuality,” p. 209.
47 S. Irvine, “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,” p. 350 and n. 28, citing studies by
Bately, e.g. “Introduction” to MS A, pp. lxxiii–lxxxix.
48 Strohm, Theory, p. xv.
49 The distinction is stressed by Charles-Edwards, “Alliances,” p. 56, n. 50.
50 With the first element of the compound in the genitive singular. On
­Thetford as “public ford,” see Cameron, English Place-Names, p. 170. On
the element þeōd “a nation, people,” see Bosworth-Toller, s.v. þeōd, I.
51 On Scandinavian contributions to English towns in general, see Jesch,
Viking Diaspora, p. 27. With regard to Thetford, see Dymond, Norfolk
286 Notes to pages 134–6

Landscape, p. 90; Hadley, Vikings, 174–6 (expressing reservations); Haslam,

“King Alfred,” p. 125; Rogerson, “Vikings” (cited by Haslam, “King
­Alfred,” p. 148, n. 15); Hart, Danelaw, pp. 47–53; Marten, “Shiring,” pp. 3,
17–18; Poole (cited by Marten), “Skaldic Verse,” p. 279 (and sources
cited in his nn. 77–8). On the Danes’ expansion of Ixworth in Suffolk, see
M.F. Reed, “Sculpture,” pp. 39–40.
52 Crawford, “Vikings,” p. 61. See too Pratt, Political Thought, p. 93.
53 Nelson, “Presidential Address,” p. 28. Hadley remarks that Insular ethnic
identities “were mutable … especially liable to be transformed in the face
of contact with new peoples, as social circumstances changed and the
­political tide turned” (Vikings, p. 9).
54 MS C, ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, pp. 90–1; ASC, p. 136, n. 1, noting the pres-
ence of the statement in the “C” recension (the second of two Abingdon
compilations) and the “D” (Worcester) manuscript.
55 F. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 380–2 and n. 1. Freeman, History, vol. 1,
p. 433, surveys the Scandinavian sources mentioning Ulfcytel. See too Hart,
Danelaw, pp. 52, 195, 525–6 and passim; Marten, “Shiring,” pp. 14–18.
See too PASE, s.v. “Ulfcytel 3.”
56 Discenza, Inhabited Spaces, p. 100.
57 Hadley, Vikings, chap. 4 and esp. p. 182. See too Cam, Liberties, pp. 2, 10.
58 Whitelock, “Pre-Viking Age Church,” p. 8, n. 5. As noted above in the
­Introduction, Whitelock’s view is echoed by Yorke, Kings, p. 69.
59 Marten, “Shiring,” p. 17, citing (n. 82) Poole, “Skaldic Verse,” p. 279. Smyth
also explains Thetford’s suitability in King Alfred, pp. 28–9. For Marten’s
suggestion about Cnut’s creation of Norfolk and Suffolk, see p. 17.
60 Strohm, Theory, p. xvi.
61 This analysis is partly indebted to White, Content, pp. 8–9, on the Annals of
St. Gall. But see now Ashe, Conquest, pp. 46–52, on the crisis of historiogra-
phy and epistemology evident in some of the Chronicle’s entries ca. 1000.
62 Abbo, LSE, p. 72.
63 Relevant here is Wallace’s succinct defence of diachronic literary analysis
in the Cambridge History: “General Preface,” pp. xxii–iii.
64 Stodnick, “Sentence,” p. 94.
65 Stodnick, “Sentence,” p. 105.
66 The word here, used by the ASC rather than fyrd or folc, is a further
­example of West Saxon distinctions between Scandinavian and English
­military forces, as shown by Abels, “Alfred,” pp. 267–8.
67 Ashe, Conquest, p. 35, adduces Æthelweard’s Latin chronicle as evi-
dence for the vernacular annals’ propagandistic nature. See too Ryan,
“Sources,” pp. 272–3; Smyth, King Alfred, pp. 71, 73, 89–98, 510, and
especially 514–26; M. Irvine, “Medieval Textuality,” p. 207 (on the “A”
or Parker MS as “a monument to the Alfredian dynasty”); Sheppard’s
 Notes to pages 136–9 287

Families; and Konshuh, “Constructing.” For caveats, see Keynes, “Power,”

p. 180; Dumville, “Origins,” p. 110; Stafford, “Making,” p. 83.
68 Smyth, King Alfred, p. 29.
69 As stressed by N. Brooks, “Why…?”
70 On these terms, see Bassett, “In Search,” pp. 17–18; J. Campbell, Essays,
pp. 85–98, 132; Yorke, “­Political and Ethnic Identity,” pp. 73–6 (citing
Campbell); Harris, “Overview,” pp. 748–9. See also above, Introduction,
n. 140, and chapter 3, n. 26.
71 MS A, ed. Bately, p. 41; ASC, p. 60, s.a. 823 for 825.
72 MS A, ed. Bately, p. 42; ASC, p. 60, s.a. 827 for 829.
73 S. Reynolds, Kingdoms, p. 259.
74 MS A, ed. Bately, p. 49; ASC, p. 74, s.a. 875 (874).
75 MS A, ed. Bately, p. 49; ASC, pp. 72, 74, s.a. 875 (874). On Guthrum as
leader of the “Great Summer Army,” see Smyth, Scandinavian Kings,
p. 243. Abels argues that the involvement of Guthrum, Oscytel, and
Anund in the summer 871 invasion of England “is sheer speculation”
(“Alfred,” p. 276). Smyth argues that the split between the two cohorts
at Repton “would seem to derive from the distinct character of the two
separate armies (which never again reunited) and from a definite plan
of action arrived at by the leaders at Repton in 875” (Scandinavian Kings,
p. 243). Elsewhere Smyth hypothesizes that the division of the army in
two reflects a generation gap between older warriors keen to settle land
in Northumbria and younger ones “who were still hopeful of yet further
conquests in the south”: King Alfred, p. 67.
76 Abels, “Alfred,” p. 265. See too Raffield, “Bands,” pp. 310–12, 324–6 (and
passim), building upon Abels’s remarks; and McLeod (Beginning, pp. 70,
101, 107, and passim), who argues for kin groupings within an otherwise
heterogeneous Great Army.
77 Smyth, Scandinavian Kings, pp. 241–3.
78 Smyth, King Alfred, p. 66.
79 Sheppard, Families, pp. 38–9, adapting the spatial theory of Michel de Certeau.
80 White, Content, p. 9.
81 Stodnick, “What (and Where),” p. 96, regarding the annals for 892–96.
82 Sheppard, Families, p. 4; compare pp. 10–11. This view dovetails with
N. Brooks’s argument about the kingly emphasis of the Chronicle
(“Why…?”), as well as with Harris’s observation that, following the Scan-
dinavian migrations of the late ninth century, “ethnic identity was not
necessarily of interest per se: the various identities on offer were chiefly
markers of legal obligation”: “Overview,” p. 750.
83 Sheppard, Families, pp. 39 and 40. Influenced by de Certeau, Lefebvre,
and Bhabha, Sheppard’s analysis is full of compelling insights such as
the following: “In this picture of Alfred’s kingdom [drawn by the entry
288 Notes to pages 139–41

for 871], the West Saxons continue to lose physical territory, but retain the
metaphorical moral high ground in their practice of lordship” (p. 42).
84 Sheppard, Families, p. 39. Also, “though some contemporary readers of
the Chronicle would have known whether the towns and battlefields men-
tioned had any political or cultural significance, this knowledge is never
brought to bear on the text by the annalist himself” (p. 39).
85 E.g. Stafford’s observation that “political identities were manipulable,”
and their “raw material was loyalty and identification”; “[p]olitical
­geography,” she concludes, “may have been shaped in the mind as well
as on the ground and the battlefield”: “Kings,” p. 16. See also the dis-
cussion above (in the Introduction) as well as Oosthuizen, Anglo-Saxon
­Fenland, which discerns land use as a basis for folk-identities in the Fens.
86 Guthlac’s cult was also associated with Repton in Derbyshire, as noted in
chap. 3. For two different opinions about the viking impact on that royal
estate, see Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle, “Repton and the ‘Great Heathen
Army’” (compare Raffield, “Bands”); and Hadley, Vikings, pp. 12–15.
87 Haslam, “Development.”
88 Smyth, Scandinavian Kings, p. 244. Compare R.H.C. Davis, “East Anglia,”
p. 31.
89 MS A, ed. Bately, p. 50; ASC, p. 74.
90 MS A, ed. Bately, p. 51; ASC, p. 76. See too PASE, s.vv. “Alfred 8” and
“Guthrum 1.” A helpful summary account is Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred,
pp. 20–3. “‘Civilizing’ entailed not only the creation of stable political
units, but the Christianization of the native populace, to provide a com-
mon cultural ground upon which to deal”: Abels, Alfred, p. 167.
91 MS A, ed. Bately, p. 51; ASC, p. 77. Swanton’s “Here” means “in this
year.”
92 The former is not incommensurate with the latter; see e.g. Lavelle,
“­Geographies,” pp. 200–2 (acknowledging Sheppard’s argument); S.T.
Smith, Land, p. 153; Nelson, “Presidential Address,” p. 27. H.C. Darby
notes the “bond between the soil and the state”: “Fenland Frontier,” p. 188.
93 Keynes, “Alfred,” p. 22.
94 In the wake of dispossession, some English persons may have been
­retained as administrators; Smyth, Scandinavian Kings, adduces the prec-
edent in Northumbria and Mercia to argue that “[t]his Danish practice of
carving up or ‘sharing out’ (dividere) an English kingdom into a Danish
and an English region, with the latter ruled by a tributary English king,
seems likely to have been Ívarr [the Boneless]’s original plan for East
Anglia” (p. 207, citing R.H.C. Davis, “East Anglia,” pp. 26–7). See too
McLeod, Beginning, p. 214.
95 Stodnick, “Sentence,” p. 104. See also above, n. 65, and below, n. 216.
 Notes to pages 141–4 289

96 In what follows, I am indebted to P.J.E. Kershaw, “Alfred-Guthrum

Treaty,” pp. 46–8; Blackburn, “London Mint,” pp. 122–3 (cited by
­Kershaw); Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 105–6; Hadley, Vikings, pp. 30–3;
Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 311; Keynes, “King Alfred and the
­Mercians,” pp. 29–34; Keynes, “Alfred,” p. 23; Haslam, “King Alfred”;
­Attenborough, Laws, pp. 96–7. On the treaty’s codicological circum-
stances, see Gobbitt, “Manuscript Contexts.”
97 Wormald, Making, I, p. 286, cited by P.J.E. Kershaw, “Alfred-Guthrum
Treaty,” p. 47.
98 P.J.E. Kershaw, “Alfred-Guthrum Treaty,” p. 47, building upon Wormald.
However much legislative or military confidence Alfred might have
felt in the 880s, Dumville reminds us that in the first half of 878, as the
­Chronicle recounts, the West Saxon kingdom looked to have been all but
lost: “Origins,” pp. 111–12.
99 “From the material evidence incorporated in the manuscript page, ver-
sion 2 [the fuller one] seems primarily to have served as a reference text
to correct and otherwise expand and clarify the information incorporated
in the more functional version 1”: Gobbitt, “Manuscript Contexts,” p. 51.
100 Haslam, “King Alfred,” p. 125. Compare Lambert’s aside that “the text’s
presentation of Alfred as acting on behalf of all the English … is most
­naturally interpreted as ideological self-aggrandisement”: “Frontier
Law,” p. 22, n. 6. See too Konshuh, “Constructing,” pp. 159–60.
101 Haslam, “King Alfred,” p. 127. Compare Olsson, “Peace Agreements,”
pp. 270–4 (noting Alfred’s advantageous position but also pointing out
concessions to Guthrum).
102 Attenborough, Laws, p. 98.
103 Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 171.
104 See S. Reynolds’s formulation, above, p. 137 and n. 73.
105 Smyth, King Alfred, p. 92.
106 MS A, ed. Bately, pp. 1–2; ASC, pp. 2, 4.
107 MS A, ed. Bately, p. 51; ASC, p. 77.
108 Charles-Edwards, “Alliances,” p. 47.
109 Raffield, “Bands.”
110 I take Molyneaux’s point (Formation, pp. 203–4, by way of reply to Foot
and Wormald) that the term Angelcynn need not encode an aspiration
to subjugate all the English peoples, given that in the OE translation of
Bede’s Historia the noun lacks the ideological sense of nation-building
found in Alfred’s works. Nevertheless, the fact that the Old English Bede
employs the word neutrally would not have prevented Alfred from
imbuing it with his own meaning and his own aspirations. See Keynes,
“Edward,” pp. 57–62.
290 Notes to pages 144–5

111 Lapidge, Blair, Keynes, and Scragg, eds., Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia,
map 11, p. 571; Keynes, “King Alfred and the Mercians,” fig. 1, p. 32;
McLeod, Beginning, pp. 233, 241. Dumville (Wessex, pp. 1–27) thought the
treaty’s boundary had been misunderstood, that in reality it had given
to Guthrum some lands west of the Lea and to Alfred certain territories
to the east of it; but his argument has been challenged persuasively by
Abels, Alfred, p. 163, n. 100; by Keynes, “King Alfred and the Mercians,”
p. 33; by Molyneaux, Formation, p. 22, n. 26; and especially by Haslam,
“King Alfred,” pp. 123–4.
112 See, e.g. Dumville, Wessex, p. 8. In the Passio sancti Eadmundi, Abbo refers
to “orientalem ipsius insulae partem, quae usque hodie lingua ­Anglorum
Eastengle uocatur” (“the eastern part of the same island, which to
this day is called Eastengle in the language of the English”): LSE, ed.
­Winterbottom, p. 69. Translation mine.
113 Angelcynn too can refer to either the English people or the place of
­England: Stodnick, “What (and Where),” p. 104, n. 60; Karkov, Imagining,
pp. 33–4 and sources cited therein. On the word as “a term of distinction
from non-English-speaking peoples” even before the vikings’ arrival, as
well as its capacity to signify “a reality of anti-Danish lordship” after-
wards, see Pratt, Political Thought, p. 107.
114 As noted by P.J.E. Kershaw, “Alfred-Guthrum Treaty,” pp. 45–6.
115 Goetz, “Concepts,” pp. 81–2. Whether frontiers were actually so cut and
dried is another matter: see especially Curta’s polemical “Introduction,”
and J.M.H. Smith, “Fines.” Goetz’s insights inform my own because they
attend to perceptions conveyed in texts, as do those of Pohl, “­Frontiers,”
and Berend, “Hungary,” pp. 201–3 (though criticized by Curta,
“­Introduction,” pp. 3–4, n. 9). See too Lambert, who argues that the AGT,
the Ordinance concerning the Dunsæte, and the peace treaty II Æthelred
“treat frontiers not as zones but as clearly demarcated lines” (“Frontier
Law,” p. 39). For the more abstract purpose of identity-formation (as
­opposed to legal formulation), however, “zones” and “clearly demar-
cated lines” need not be sharply distinguished from each other; see below
and n. 133. I owe the references to Curta’s, Pohl’s, and Berend’s studies
to Brady, Writing, pp. 9–10. For cautionary remarks against a totalized
“­Carolingian” mindset, however, see Pratt, Political Thought, pp. 4–5.
116 McLeod, Beginning, pp. 209–13. McLeod is careful to concede that Al-
fred’s court would have been familiar with treaties and boundary clauses
from their own experiences.
117 Harris, “Alfredian World History,” p. 508; compare Harris, Race, p. 104.
For similar insights about the political acculturation of Guthrum’s Danes,
effected either by the treaty or by Guthrum’s baptism, see P.J.E. ­Kershaw,
“Alfred-Guthrum Treaty,” pp. 45–6, 56, 58–9; Charles-Edwards,
 Notes to pages 145–7 291

“­Alliances,” p. 49; Abels, Alfred, p. 165; Hadley, Vikings, pp. 32–3 (concur-
ring with Kershaw).
118 Hadley, Vikings, p. 33. Compare McLeod, Beginning, pp. 210, 241; Abels,
“King Alfred’s Peace-Making,” pp. 30–2.
119 As Abels pointedly puts it, “Alfred had succeeded in bringing the Viking
chieftains into the Anglo-Saxon political structure, but this made them
no more safe or reliable than their Anglo-Saxon counterparts” (“King
­Alfred’s Peace-Making,” p. 34).
120 P.J.E. Kershaw, “Alfred-Guthrum Treaty,” p. 57, and sources cited therein.
This view is cited approvingly by Hadley (Vikings, p. 32 and n. 21).
McLeod infers from the treaty’s prologue that Guthrum “ruled by some
form of consensus” (Beginning, pp. 210, 225).
121 “7 ealle we cwædon … þæt ne ðeowe ne freo ne moton in ðone here faran
butan leafe” (“And we all agreed … that no slaves or freemen might
go over to the army without permission”): Attenborough, Laws, p. 100;
Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 172. Emphases mine.
122 Keynes, “Edward,” p. 60.
123 Abrams, “Edward the Elder’s Danelaw,” p. 132; Abrams, “King Edgar,”
p. 172. Compare Molyneaux, Formation, p. 22 (“it is unlikely that the terri-
tory on its north-eastern side formed a coherent unit”). Doubts about the
unity of the viking armies qua armies have been raised by the scholars
cited above, p. 287 and n. 76.
124 R.H.C. Davis, “Alfred and Guthrum’s Frontier,” pp. 804–6; Hart, Danelaw,
p. 7. Also commenting on the treaty’s short life are Abrams, “Edward the
Elder’s Danelaw,” p. 132 (citing both Davis and Dumville), and Lambert,
“Frontier Law,” p. 22.
125 Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 289, n. 29; p. 311, n. 1 (citing R.H.C. Davis
and their own note on p. 289); see too Hadley, Vikings, pp. 34–5. When
the Scandinavians changed the frontier is, for my purposes, less impor-
tant than the West Saxons’ belief that they had broken the peace after the
treaty, as conceded by Dumville, Wessex, e.g. at pp. 8 and 10, and by Hart,
Danelaw, p. 28, n. 5, on incursions from 885 to 920.
126 On the West Saxons’ conquest of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and Essex, see
MS A, ed. Bately, s.a. 823, p. 41; ASC, s.a. 823 (825), p. 60; Hadley, Vikings,
p. 34; Keynes, “Power,” p. 186.
127 See MS A, ed. Bately, p. 52, s.a. 885; ASC, p. 78; Chronicon Æthelweardi,
ed. and trans. A. Campbell, p. 44–5. Swanton, ASC, p. 78, n. 6, and
D.M. ­Stenton, Preparatory, p. 112 (cited by Swanton) helpfully yoke
­together these sources to produce a coherent picture of events, one in
which the raiders’ incursion across the Thames explains Alfred’s dis-
patching a fleet to East Anglia in his own violation of the AGT.
128 MS A, ed. Bately, p. 53; ASC, p. 80.
292 Notes to pages 147–8

129 Rumford, “Introduction,” p. 159, and pp. 163–6 on the limits of

borderlessness.
130 Donnan and Wilson, Borders, p. 87.
131 Scheil, “Space,” p. 198.
132 Treharne, “Borders,” p. 20. If strategies of negotiation and compromise
can be described as “central” to ninth-century Continental political ide-
ologies, one can readily understand why for the Carolingians “shifting
alliances of Christian with non-Christian were a normal part of frontier
politics”: J.M.H. Smith, “Fines,” p. 176.
133 Others have had a similar hunch about Alfred’s long-term plans; see
­Konshuh, “Constructing,” pp. 160, 177, 179; Roffey and Lavelle, “West
Saxons” (cited by Konshuh, p. 158, n. 16); and Wormald, Making,
pp. 285–6 (cited in turn by Roffey and Lavelle, p. 27, n. 16). My own
thinking draws on the language and/or thinking of Lambert, “Frontier
Law,” p. 39; Donnan and Wilson, Borders, p. 87; Treharne, “Borders,” p. 20;
and Rackham, History, p. 1 (see above, Introduction, n. 59). Also sugges-
tive in this context are Karkov’s remarks on Alfred’s ”Prose Preface” in
Imagining, pp. 33, 56 (amplifying an insight by Davis, “National Writing,”
p. 621). My understanding of a “border area” or “transition zone” nev-
ertheless differs from that of Lambert, who regards it as the space inhab-
ited by “a cohesive frontier community straddling a border, united by a
distinctive legal culture” (“Frontier Law,” p. 39). Lambert persuasively
claims that the AGT never envisaged such a space or such a “distinctive
legal culture,” though he does believe, as I do, that the text’s seemingly
sharp boundary served “to bolster the internal cohesion of each side”
(p. 39). He also suggests, quite plausibly, that the treaty would have given
rise to a geopolitical area with its own unique social and psychological
­realities, one where “the pressures of frontier politics” may, “[f]rom
the perspective of the heartlands,” have made inhabitants of that zone
“­appear unsettlingly anarchic and uncivilised” (p. 40).
134 P.J.E. Kershaw, “Alfred-Guthrum Treaty,” p. 54; see too Lambert, “Frontier
Law,” pp. 22–3 (agreeing, in his n. 6, with Dumville, Wessex, p. 22), 28, 38.
135 In his book Peaceful Kings (pp. 243, 252–61), P.J.E. Kershaw demonstrates
that Alfred, though seriously committed to peace-making, entertained a
“vision of peace as the product of strong rule” (p. 260).
136 Frank, “Terminally Hip,” p. 23.
137 Abels, “Reflections,” p. 55; compare Abels, “Alfred,” pp. 277–8. For
Frankish comparanda see J.M.H. Smith, “Fines,” pp. 171, 172, 175;
­Dunbabin, “West Francia,” p. 378 (on Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s account of
Rollo of Normandy).
138 Charles-Edwards, “Alliances,” pp. 55, 56.
 Notes to pages 148–50 293

139 On the communal imaginary of the Prologue, see Wormald, Making,

p. 286, and P.J.E. Kershaw, “Alfred-Guthrum Treaty,” p. 47, building
upon Wormald. Smyth, King Alfred, p. 92, is trenchant on the point of the
witan’s representation.
140 S. Reynolds, “Idea,” p. 57.
141 Benham, “Law,” p. 488. I am thankful to an anonymous reader for insist-
ing that I bear in mind this aspect of medieval treaty-making.
142 “Many … borders are imposed, top-down, upon a public who are not
always aware of the immediate implications and significance of this form
of societal compartmentalization”: D. Newman, “Borders,” p. 175.
143 Pratt, Political Thought, p. 7, as well as his pp. 130–4, discussing the dis-
tinctive authorizing features of Alfredian texts. Also, see now Ellard,
Anglo-Saxon(ist) Pasts, pp. 192–208, on authorizing representations of sov-
ereignty in Asser’s Life of King Alfred; and Karkov, Imagining, pp. 27–52
(also citing Pratt), 59–62.
144 Asser, Life of King Alfred, ed. Stevenson, p. 73; Life of King Alfred, in Keynes
and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 99. See too Howe, “Cultural Construction,”
pp. 15–17. In his Life of King Alfred (pp. 99–100), Asser makes much of Al-
fred’s acquisition of Latin literacy in 887, but his references to the king’s
longstanding knowledge of English (pp. 75, 91) lead Keynes and Lapidge
to surmise that Alfred had learnt to read texts in that language ca. 860:
Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 239. On Asser’s use of Latinity as a means
of articulating cultural and ethnic difference in England despite indulg-
ing Alfred’s wish to have himself styled rex Angulsaxonum, see Townsend,
“Cultural Difference.”
145 Godden, “Did King Alfred,” p. 15 (and p. 18 for his conclusions).
146 See Alfred’s “Prose Preface” to his translation of Gregory the Great’s
­Regula pastoralis, in Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 124–6. For an anal-
ysis of the expansionist, anti-viking aspirations and anxieties underly-
ing Alfred’s ostensibly cultural and educational concerns in that text,
see now Karkov, Imagining, pp. 11, 14–19, 26–59. Especially relevant to
this discussion is Discenza’s astute observation about the political and
linguistic ­authority that Alfred claims for himself in both his verse and
prose prefaces to Pastoral Care: “His assertion of this authority also helps
justify extratextual interventions, such as the acquisition of church lands
during the Viking wars” (“Alfred’s Verse Preface,” p. 631, cited in Karkov,
­Imagining, p. 49 and n. 58). See also the studies cited above, n. 133.
147 Nelson and Bately, “Alfred,” p. 28. P.J.E. Kershaw observes that both
“­reorganiz[ing] Wessex’s defences” and “reviv[ing] Southumbrian learn-
ing … served peace, or at least that was how Alfred, and some others,
saw it” (Peaceful Kings, p. 253); Kershaw goes on to discuss a missive by
294 Notes to page 150

Fulk of Rheims to the West Saxon king as well as several texts associated
with the latter and his court.
148 Alfred, West-Saxon Version, ed. Sweet, p. 5 (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS
Hatton 20); “Prose Preface,” in Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 125. ­Hadley
reminds us that Guthrum converted for practical reasons (“­Cockles,”
pp. 125, 133–4) and that there may have been a “distinction between pri-
vate conversion and public Christianization” (p. 130; see too M. Taylor,
Edmund, p. 57). Abels raises a similar point in Alfred, p. 166, but empha-
sizes Guthrum’s agency in representing himself as a Christian king.
149 As Lavelle plausibly surmises in Alfred’s Wars, p. 328.
150 Chaplais, English Diplomatic Practice, p. 36.
151 M. Irvine, “Medieval Textuality,” p. 185. Irvine differentiates (p. 184)
between his concept of “textual communities” and the more famous for-
mulation by Stock, but the latter’s admission of oral recitation in Listening
is just as pertinent here. See too Howe’s engagement with Stock’s work
(“Cultural Construction,” esp. pp. 11–18). “As the use of the written word
backed by religious sanction was a major political element of the C ­ hristian
world into which Guthrum was allowed in 878, it did not matter whether
he could actually understand the words themselves, but it did matter that
the written word was invoked”: Lavelle, Alfred’s Wars, p. 328.
152 See above, pp. 131 and 145 and nn. 24 and 116. Alfred himself knew
something about political culture across the Channel, perhaps too the
­Carolingian principle that in theory and in most cases “rulers of periph-
eral kingdoms, pagan or Christian, were expected to defer to Carolingian
superiority and recognise Frankish overlordship” (J.M.H. Smith, “Fines,”
p. 176).
153 K. Davis, “National Writing,” p. 615. Furthermore, “the dominance of
English square minuscule from the late ninth through the tenth century
… coincides with the military events contributing to unification under
the West Saxon dynasty, with the beginning of the Benedictine Reform
movement” and other cultural developments (p. 628).
154 S.T. Smith, “Marking Boundaries,” p. 167; S.T. Smith, Land, p. 150, citing
Alfred’s recollection of bygone days in King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version, ed.
Sweet, I, 3. The translation is Smith’s. Relevant here too is K. Davis’s argu-
ment (“National Writing,” pp. 620–1) that in the “Prose Preface” to Pastoral
Care Alfred’s insistence upon translation, and his refusal to name East
­Anglia, Mercia, and other regional kingdoms, obscure political heteroge-
neity within late ninth-century England. See too Karkov, Imagining, p. 35.
155 Although, as Keynes observes, a dating of the Treaty to ca. 878–80
“place[s] it some time before the Alfredian revival got under way,”
“­Alfred’s use of the written word depended on a revival of literacy in
the late 880s” that included making use of “practices which were deep
 Notes to pages 150–2 295

rooted in Wessex, if largely unseen.” Drawing upon these practices, even

amidst the distractions of governance and warfare, was not “a king with
a series of different identities: the soldier, the law-maker, the statesman,
the educator, and the scholar,” “not Alfred the Great, but the integrated
Alfred, for whom all these things were inseparable aspects of his determi-
nation to discharge the responsibilities of his high office for the good of
his subjects and in the service of God”: “Power,” pp. 192, 197 (emphasis
in original).
156 Bosworth-Toller, s.v. ēþel, I.1. S.T. Smith, citing the DOE, glosses the word
to mean “homeland” and “hereditary land or ancestral domain” (Land,
p. 150). Note the temporal aspect of these translations.
157 “In the same way that boundaries are associated with the restriction of
mobility, they are also structured by movement within territories which
avoids them. It is as much the absence of movement across them, as the
activity contained within them, which contributes to the association
­people have with a particular territory, and the recognition of b ­ oundaries
as definitive liminal spaces between social groups”: Symonds,
“­Territories,” p. 28. On Alfred’s fabrication of a shared English memory
as a way of conjuring up England as a nation, see K. Davis, “National
Writing,” pp. 621–4, and the studies cited above in n. 4.
158 Foot, “Reading,” p. 63.
159 Clanchy, From Memory, p. 6.
160 On the scope for West Saxon malfeasance, see Lavelle, Alfred’s Wars, p. 96.
161 Lavelle, Alfred’s Wars, p. 325, and source cited in his n. 51. Abels too
­emphasizes Alfred’s superior position: “King Alfred’s Peace-Making,”
p. 30, as does Konshuh, “Constructing,” pp. 160, 177 (characterizing
Guthrum as “a sub-king under Alfred”). That Alfred took for granted that
the English nation (as he imagined it) should grow both spiritually and
militarily, i.e. at other peoples’ expense, is shown by K. Davis, “National
Writing,” pp. 623–5.
162 Boyarin, Border Lines, p. 15.
163 Lavezzo, Angels, p. 9. Her insights are more nuanced than my selective
quoting reveals. For commensurate remarks, see A.D. Smith, Chosen
­Peoples, p. 137.
164 P.J.E. Kershaw, “Alfred-Guthrum Treaty,” p. 59. Compare Wormald,
“­Anglo-Saxons”; Haslam, “King Alfred,” p. 125; Lambert, “Frontier Law,”
p. 39 (who approvingly cites, in his n. 58, the chapter by Kershaw).
165 P.J.E. Kershaw, “Alfred-Guthrum Treaty,” p. 56; yet Kershaw also s­ uggests
that Alfred “seems to have sought to understand [the Scandinavians in
England] on their own terms” too (p. 56).
166 Molyneaux, Formation, pp. 45–6. But see Davis, “National Writing,” p. 21,
and now Karkov’s remarks on Alfred’s “Prose Preface” in Imagining,
296 Notes to pages 152–4

pp. 33, 56 (agreeing with and building upon Davis), 67–8. Also important
is Konshuh’s argument that even those of the ASC’s entries concerning
the adventus and its aftermath plant the “seeds” of eventual Cerdicing
­incursions into Scandinavian East Anglia and Northumbria by “­creat[ing]
a unified English and Christian identity” (“Constructing,” p. 179;
­compare her pp. 159–60 and 177).
167 Much the same point is made by Abrams, “Edward the Elder’s Danelaw,”
p. 134. Furthermore, with regard to Carolingian relationships with pagan
sub-kings, “[b]aptism and benefices, separately or together, completed
the ritual expressions of overlordship” (J.M.H. Smith, “Fines,” p. 183).
168 Dumville, “Origins,” pp. 114–15. See also now Konshuh’s persuasive
argument that the ASC’s construction of a coherent English identity, one
based on West Saxon authority, would eventually bolster “the narrative
of liberation and subsequent rule [of viking-held East Anglia] by Wessex”
under Edward the Elder: “Constructing,” p. 177.
169 MS A, ed. Bately, p. 54; ASC, p. 82.
170 Abels, Alfred, p. 152. Haslam explains the settlement of East Anglia as the
sacrifice of Guthrum’s Mercian gains: “King Alfred,” p. 126.
171 Smyth, King Alfred, p. 97. “It has been pointed out that the language of
Asser’s account of Alfred’s sponsorship of Guthrum, following that of
the Chronicle, glorifies Guthrum and the Danes as well as Alfred, while
­simultaneously establishing a political hierarchy in which Alfred indis-
putably occupies the most powerful position”: Karkov, Ruler-Portraits,
p. 27, citing Charles-Edwards, “Alliances,” and Dumville, Wessex, chap. 1.
172 Sellar and Yeatman, 1066 and All That, p. 8.
173 As pointed out by commentators; e.g. Swanton, ASC, p. 82, n. 8; Keynes
and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 282, n. 7.
174 Bosworth-Toller, s.v. ge-sittan, III.b.α, “to settle,” “of permanent ­occupation,
to settle, live in a country”; III.1, “to occupy, take possession of,” “to
­possess territory.”
175 Ingold, Lines, p. 101, on the active quality of wayfaring.
176 On the different compilers of the annals of the 870s and of the 880s, see
Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 278.
177 Written long after the “Viking Age,” the Latin Annals of St. Neots,
­produced at Bury St. Edmunds ca. 1100–50, admitted Guthrum into the
local regnal culture by noting his burial at Hadleigh (Suffolk), referred to
as a “uilla regia” (Annals of St. Neots, ed. Dumville and Lapidge, s.a. 890,
p. 95), as if the viking with his “royal vill” had been another Wuffing.
178 Marten, “Shiring,” esp. pp. 6, 10, 13–14. Guthrum’s immediate successor
may have been Eohric, who perished in battle against a Kentish c­ ontingent
under the command of King Edward the Elder; see below, n. 212.
 Notes to pages 154–6 297

179 Smyth, King Alfred, p. 29. See too Blunt, “St. Edmund Memorial Coinage”;
Blackburn and Pagan, “St. Edmund Coinage”; Grierson and Blackburn,
Medieval European Coinage, vol. 1, pp. 319–20; Lyon, “Coinage,” pp. 73–4;
Damon, Soldier Saints, p. 172 (citing Ridyard, Royal Saints; Rollason,
Saints, p. 157, n. 89; and Blunt’s article as well, esp. pp. 242 and 252–3),
and Blackburn, “Expansion,” on the number of coins and the date range.
180 J. Campbell, “Placing.”
181 Blackburn and Pagan, “St. Edmund Coinage,” p. 2. Compare Abels,
“King Alfred’s Peace-Making,” p. 32; McLeod, Beginning, p. 275 (citing a
study by Lesley Abrams), and Young, Edmund, p. 73. Mostert associates
the coinage with the Anglo-Scandinavian East Anglians’ “need for a
reconciliation between [their] recently accepted Christian attitudes and
[their] own Scandinavian traditions” (Political Theology, p. 41).
182 Ridyard, Royal Saints, p. 216; Pinner quotes this passage in Cult, p. 6. For
more on the Edmund coinage in its Anglo-Danish context, see Abrams,
“Conversion,” p. 147; Innes, “Danelaw Identities,” p. 79; Blackburn,
“Expansion,” pp. 127, 134; Pestell, Landscapes, pp. 76–9; Abels, Alfred,
pp. 166–7.
183 Chapman, “King Alfred,” p. 43, also quoted by Pinner, Cult, p. 6. See too
Smyth, King Alfred, pp. 29–30. Chapman’s analysis seems, to me, more
convincing when applied to the later hagiography of Edmund penned
by Abbo and translated by Ælfric than when applied to the coinage. See
Hines, “Origins,” p. 42 (quoted below, chap. 5, p. 201).
184 G. Williams, “Coins,” p. 22; emphasis mine.
185 Pinner, Cult, pp. 6, 9.
186 The “Æthelstan” coinage is thought to herald Guthrum’s involvement
in English political culture (Chapman, “King Alfred,” p. 39; Harris,
“­Alfredian World History,” p. 508; Harris, Race, p. 104; Abels, Alfred,
p. 167). Blackburn instead sees only “a Christian or perhaps Anglo-Saxon
approach to coin design” (“Expansion,” p. 136). For Hadley, the coinage
reflects Alfred’s influence but also “local East Anglian demands” (Vikings,
pp. 29–37, quotation at p. 34). Guthrum-Æthelstan’s coins may indicate
sincere Christian belief but more certainly shows strategic alignment of
the royal persona with Romanized Canterbury.
187 McLeod, Beginning, p. 229.
188 See above, n. 73. Regarding the coinage, Abels reminds us that there is a
connection between “integration … into an Anglo-Saxon Christian cul-
ture” and the fact that viking leaders in England “aspired to possess the
power and authority of Anglo-Saxon rulers”: Alfred, p. 167.
189 Blackburn and Pagan, “St. Edmund Coinage,” p. 10. See too Blunt,
“St. Edmund Memorial Coinage,” pp. 239, 252–3 and studies cited
298 Notes to pages 156–8

therein; and McLeod, Beginning, pp. 230–1 on Scandinavian East Anglia’s

dual economy, based on bullion and on coin.
190 Lyon, “Coinage,” pp. 73–7.
191 My analysis has been partly anticipated by Young, who discerns the
West Saxons’ own appropriation of Edmund in the following: Edward
the ­Elder’s naming of one of his sons (on which, see also Damon, S ­ oldier
Saints, p. 174; and Moilanen, “Writing,” p. 65 and citing in her n. 66
­Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, p. 89); King Æthelstan’s involvement in Ed-
mund’s cult (hinted at in Abbo’s Passio); and Æthelstan’s self-styling as
rex ­Anglorum. According to Young, Edmund “was in danger, before 917,
of becoming as much a Danish as an English saint, and a determined
effort had to be made to recover him for the English” (Edmund, p. 77).
Marten and Pestell, however, suggest (see below, p. 167 and n. 244) that
Cerdicing domination of East Anglia was incomplete even in Edgar’s
reign (959–75). Moreover, this was no “English reconquest” (pace Young,
Edmund, p. 77) but a new West Saxon conquest (see e.g. Wormald, “Engla
Lond,” p. 6; Dumville, “Origins,” p. 115).
192 Scores of their ships reached Devon and Exeter; Chester was attacked
later that year (MS A, ed. Bately, pp. 56, 58; ASC, pp. 86, 88). It should be
noted that the entries for 893–96 continue the “Common Stock” of ­annals
but are regarded as distinct from it (see Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred,
p. 279).
193 MS A, ed. Bately, pp. 58–61; ASC, pp. 88–91.
194 MS A, ed. Bately, pp. 58, 59, s.aa. 894 and 896; ASC, pp. 88 and 89 (s.aa.
894 [893], 896 [895]).
195 MS A, ed. Bately, pp. 59–60 (s.a. 896); ASC, pp. 89–90 (s.a. 897 [896]).
196 MS A, ed. Bately, p. 61; ASC, p. 91.
197 Stodnick, “What (and Where),” p. 104.
198 Stafford, “Making,” p. 85.
199 MS A, ed. Bately, p. 61; ASC, p. 91 (s.a. 901 [899]), though I have s­ ubstituted
“people” for Swanton’s “race.”
200 Sheppard, Families, p. 49. Sheppard sees a distinction between the
­concepts of bretwalda and “cyning ofer eall Ongelcyn” in her discussion of
the 900 annal.
201 MS A, ed. Bately, p. 42; ASC, p. 60 (s.a. 827 for 829); see also ASC, p. 61,
n. 10. On anweald in the context of the Chronicle, see S.T. Smith, Land,
pp. 150–3, 158–66.
202 S.T. Smith, Land, p. 151.
203 S.T. Smith, Land, p. 151.
204 In what follows I depend on Lavelle, “Politics,” esp. pp. 55–9; Lavelle,
Places, pp. 30–31, 161–76, 288–98; Hart, “B Text,” pp. 252–3; Hart, Danelaw,
pp. 511–15; S.T. Smith, Land, pp. 158–60, 162–3; Dumville, “Ætheling,”
 Notes to pages 158–61 299

pp. 4, 22, 33; F. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 321–2; J. Campbell,

“What Is Not Known.” See also PASE, s.v. “Æthelwald 35.” Dumville’s
and Stenton’s studies are also cited by Smith, and I owe the reference to
Campbell’s study to Lavelle, “Politics,” p. 54, n. 11.
205 Lavelle, “Politics,” p. 59, and Places, p. 168.
206 Hart, Danelaw, p. 512.
207 MS A, ed. Bately, pp. 62–3.
208 ASC, pp. 92, 94, s.a. 905 (904). Swanton identifies the Wusan as the
River Wissey but “possibly the Ouse”: ASC, p. 94, citing a study by P.H.
Reaney. Hart, Danelaw, acknowledges that Charles Plummer identified
the Wusan as the Ouse but adds that “the River Nene was also called the
Wusan” (pp. 513–14).
209 As expounded by Nelson, “Alfred’s Carolingian Contemporaries,”
pp. 299–300.
210 MS C, ed. O’Brien O’Keeffe, s.a. 902, p. 75 (“æt þam Holme”); ASC, p. 93
(“at the Holm”). Hart places this Holme in Huntingdonshire: Danelaw,
p. 515, cited by Lavelle, “Politics,” p. 54, n. 11. Swanton’s supposition
“[p]resumably in Kent, but not certainly identified” (ASC, p. 93, n. 11) is
less convincing, as an East Anglian location would have made it easier
for the Danes to retain control of the battlefield despite losing more men
than the West Saxons did.
211 Sawyer, Age, p. 150. Compare Innes, “Danelaw Identities,” p. 81.
212 MS A, ed. Bately, p. 63; ASC, p. 94. On Eohric’s identification as “[k]ing of
East Anglia,” see Swanton, ASC, p. 94, n. 4; PASE, s.v. “Eohric 1.”
213 DOE, s.v. ā-spanan, 2, citing the “A” manuscript entry for 904. “‘B’
tells us that Æthelwold induced (‘A’ says ‘seduced’) the army in East
­Anglia to break the peace”: Hart, Danelaw, p. 513. Compare “A’s” verb
­aspon, “­enticed,” with “B’s” gelædde, “led,” “induced”: MS A, ed. Bately,
p. 62; MS B, ed. S. Taylor, p. 46. Bately characterizes the verb gelædde as
“­emotively neutral” (“Introduction,” p. cxi), but the verb connotes leader-
ship, not only incitement. See Stodnick, “Sentence,” pp. 106–8.
214 Lavelle, “Politics,” p. 79; see too Lavelle, Places, pp. 297–8.
215 J. Campbell, “What Is Not Known,” p. 22.
216 Stodnick, “Sentence,” p. 105; see above, nn. 65 and 95.
217 Stodnick, “Sentence,” pp. 105, 107. Æthelwold’s status as an English
“insider” is discussed by Bredehoft, who argues that the 900 annal es-
sentially uses the famous story of Cynewulf and Cyneheard s.a. 755 as a
template: “the composition of post-Alfredian annals (as here) can extend
the Common Stock’s narrative precisely by interpreting more recent
events in terms of the Chronicle’s own historical record” (Textual Histories,
p. 62). For earlier, Carolingian parallels and contrasts to Æthelwold, see
J.M.H. Smith, “Fines,” pp. 180–1.
300 Notes to pages 161–6

218 MS B, ed. S. Taylor, p. 46. Translation mine. See discussion in Hart,

“B Text,” pp. 252–3; Hart, Danelaw, pp. 511–15. S.T. Smith similarly points
out discrepancies between the two Chronicle accounts: Land, pp. 159–60.
219 Hart, “B Text,” p. 253; see now Lavelle, Places, p. 292, on the St. Neots
annalist’s “notable acknowledgement of Æthelwold’s position in eastern
England”; “[t]his verdict on Æthelwold may have been inherently hostile,
but it reflects the manner in which Æthelwold had moved on to an alto-
gether larger political stage.” For the appellations, see Annals of St. Neots,
ed. Dumville and Lapidge, s.aa. 903 and 904, pp. 104–5. As Hart points
out, Æthelwold was “king long enough for coins bearing his name to be
struck at York” (Danelaw, p. 513, citing studies by C.E. Blunt).
220 F. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 322, n. 2.
221 Hart, “B Text,” pp. 252–3.
222 F. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 322.
223 Lavelle, “Politics,” p. 77. Emphasis in original. See too Lavelle, Places,
p. 297, as well as his consideration of the possibility that “Vikings may
not have helped his cause in retrospect in terms of legitimacy” (p. 291).
224 Lavelle, “Politics,” pp. 78–80.
225 “Practically the whole of the Danelaw was … represented, and this shows
the true measure of Æthelwold’s rebellion, the threat of which has been
underestimated by modern historians”: Hart, Danelaw, p. 514. Compare
Lavelle, “Politics,” esp. pp. 53–4, 74–7; Lavelle, Places, pp. 297–8; J. ­Campbell,
“What Is Not Known,” pp. 21–3; and Yorke, “Edward,” pp. 29–37.
226 MS A, ed. Bately, p. 64; ASC, p. 96, s.a. 913 (912). S.T. Smith (Land,
pp. 158–66) discusses this annal in relation to other ASC entries in the
period 912–20 that track Cerdicing expansion by reference to strongholds
or “burhs” (OE byrig).
227 Sawyer 396 and 397; information and texts at the Electronic Sawyer. For
references and discussion, see Abrams, “Edward the Elder’s Danelaw,”
p. 136; Keynes, “Edward,” p. 56. Again there are Carolingian precedents:
J.M.H. Smith, “Fines,” p. 186.
228 MS A, ed. Bately, p. 68, s.a. 917 as emended by Bately.
229 ASC, p. 103, s.a. 921 (920).
230 F. Stenton reconstructs the surrender’s context in Anglo-Saxon History,
pp. 327–9.
231 Marten, “Shiring,” pp. 4–5.
232 Hadley, “Cockles,” p. 121. Compare Abrams, “King Edgar,” p. 174 and n.
14, citing revealing remarks by William of Malmesbury concerning wide-
spread opposition to Edward the Elder.
233 F. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 329.
234 On the general viking willingness to switch allegiance depending on cir-
cumstances, see Hadley, “Cockles,” p. 120.
 Notes to pages 166–9 301

235 G. Thomas, “Anglo-Scandinavian Metalwork,” pp. 242–52. McLeod dis-

cusses “hybrid” as well as “distinctly Scandinavian” artefacts (Beginning,
pp. 66–9 and passim), as does J.F. Kershaw, Viking Identities, p. 213, cited
approvingly by Richards and Haldenby, “Scale,” p. 324.
236 Richards, “Identifying,” esp. pp. 302–3, 306.
237 P.J.E. Kershaw, “Alfred-Guthrum Treaty,” p. 53.
238 On the Edmund coinage, see above, and Abrams, “Conversion,” p. 147;
Innes, “Danelaw Identities,” p. 79; Blackburn, “Expansion,” pp. 127, 134;
Chapman, “King Alfred”; Ridyard, Royal Saints, pp. 216–17; Pestell, Land-
scapes, pp. 76–9.
239 Townend, “Viking Age England,” p. 90. See now his Language,
esp. pp. 181–3 for conclusions.
240 Hadley, Vikings, p. 9. See too Richards, “Anglo-Scandinavian Identity,”
p. 48 (citing Hadley, Vikings, pp. 28–71); Frank’s brilliant “Terminally
Hip”; Halstad McGuire, “Sailing” (on ship-burials in the Orkneys and
in Iceland); and Roffey and Lavelle, “West Saxons,” p. 9 (“an early
­medieval perception of ethnicity could include both its attribution to a
­geographical area and … the activities undertaken by a group”).
241 Marten, “Shiring,” pp. 7–8. The charters are 507 and 703 in the Electronic
Sawyer. The former’s authenticity has been doubted, but Marten reports
that Sarah Foot and Kathryn Lowe believe the charter to be genuine
(“Shiring,” p. 7, n. 30), while Hart maintains that at least the boundary
clause is (Danelaw, p. 59).
242 Marten, “Shiring,” p. 7.
243 Dumville, “Ætheling,” p. 31.
244 Marten, “Shiring,” pp. 9–10. See too Whitelock, “Wulfstan,” p. 19;
­Pestell, Landscapes, pp. 149–51; Abrams, “Edward the Elder’s Danelaw,”
pp. 136–9.
245 Keynes, “Edward,” p. 61.
246 Keynes, “Edward,” pp. 61, 62. On King Edgar’s apparent recognition of a
degree of Scandinavian regional autonomy in legal matters, see Abrams,
“King Edgar,” with special reference to the ASC’s entry for 959 (“D”
recension) and the laws known as IV Edgar. Also pertinent here are Staf-
ford’s insights in “Making,” p. 85 (see above and n. 198).
247 Hadley, “Cockles,” p. 121.
248 Abels, Alfred, p. 176.
249 See above, p. 146 and n. 127.
250 Stafford, Unification, p. 6.
251 Karkov, “Postcolonial,” p. 153. See too Nelson, “Presidential Address”;
R.I. Page, “Most Vile People”; Chapman, “King Alfred,” pp. 40–1.
252 R.I. Page, “Most Vile People,” pp. 8–9; Poole, “Anglo-Scandinavian
Language,” pp. 579–80, citing Hadley, Vikings, pp. 83–4. Also relevant in
302 Notes to pages 169–71

this context are Hadley, “Cockles” and “Hamlet”; Stodnick, “Sentence,”

pp. 107–10; McLeod, Beginning.
253 R.I. Page, “Anglo-Saxon Aptitudes,” p. 13.
254 Jesch, Viking Diaspora, p. 3.

Chapter 5

1 McKeehan, “St. Edmund”; Loomis, “Growth”; Whitelock, “Fact”; C. Clark,

“Ælfric”; J.I. Miller, “Literature”; McDougall, “Serious E ­ ntertainments”;
Gransden, “Legends”; Gransden, “Abbo of Fleury’s P ­ assio”; Mostert,
“King Edmund” (which I have been unable to consult in its entirety);
Ridyard, Royal Saints, pp. 61–73, 211–33; V.B. Jordan, “Monastic
­Hagiography,” passim; Cownie, “Cult”; Cavill, “Analogy”; Cavill, “Fun”;
Chapman, “King Alfred”; Frantzen, Bloody Good, pp. 53–72; Yarrow,
Saints, pp. 24–62; the essays gathered in Bale, Saint Edmund (and review
by Allen); Faulkner, “Like a Virgin”; Liddiard, “Introduction,” pp. 8–10
(citing Yarrow); M. Taylor, Edmund; Licence, “Cult”; Pinner, Cult; Young,
“St. E ­ dmund” (on the saint’s late-medieval to modern afterlife); Young,
Edmund. See too T. Hall, “Handlist,” p. 10 (for bibliography). I have been
unable to consult Lesley Allen’s 2008 Ph.D. dissertation (­University
of I­ llinois at Urbana-Champaign) “Inventing the Sacred ­Nation: Saint
­Edmund of East Anglia and English Identity in Medieval Text and Image.”
2 See PASE, s.vv. “Edmund 6,” “Abbo 1,” “Ælfric 94.” In this chapter, refer-
ence will be made parenthetically to Abbo’s Passio, ed. Winterbottom, as
“Abbo, LSE”; to Hervey’s 1907 English translation as “Abbo, Passion”; to
Ælfric’s St. Edmund, King and Martyr (in Lives, ed. Needham, pp. 43–59)
as “Ælfric, SEKM”; and to Swanton’s translation (in Anglo-Saxon Prose,
ed. and trans. Swanton, pp. 97–103) as “Ælfric, PSE.” Occasionally, how-
ever, the need for more literal translation obliges me to provide my own
rendering.
3 On Abbo’s life and career, see Mostert, “Abbo” and Political Theology;
Damon, Soldier Saints, pp. 167–9; Riché, Abbon; Dufour and Labory, eds.,
Abbon; Dachowski, First.
4 Studies of Ælfric include Skeat, “Preface”; Clemoes, “Chronology,”
“Ælfric”; Pope, “Introduction”; Hurt, Ælfric; Gneuss, Ælfric; Godden,
“Ælfric,” “Ælfric’s Saints’ Lives,” “Introduction”; Clayton, “Ælfric”;
Magennis and Swan, Companion; Gretsch, Ælfric; C.A. Jones, Ælfric’s
Letter and “Ælfric and the Limits”; Magennis, “Warrior Saints”; Wilcox,
“Ælfric in Dorset”; Stanton, Culture, pp. 144–71; Damon, Soldier Saints,
pp. 192–246, 264–74 and passim; Phelpstead, “King”; Faulkner, “Ælfric”;
Halbrooks, “Maccabees”; Arthur, “Giving” (citing several of the above
studies); Gulley, Displacement.
 Notes to pages 171–3 303

5 Wormald, “Engla Lond,” p. 13, adding, however, that “Anglo-Saxon

saints were more than focuses of local sentiment. They were a heritage all
‘­Angelcynn’ shared.”
6 Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, II.74.20, ed. and trans. Winterbottom, pp. 242–3.
I owe the reference to Bates, “Abbey,” p. 5.
7 Pinner, Cult, p. 65. Pinner contrasts this feature of Abbo’s narrative to the
illustrations in New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.736, which
contains the LSE and Herman’s Miracula (“[i]nstead, the artist locates the
events of Edmund’s life and death in a national context”; p. 65). The aim
of the present chapter is to show that the regional and national contexts
are both distinct from each other and mutually reinforcing.
8 M. Taylor, Edmund, p. 29. A similar point is made by Pinner, Cult, p. 43.
See below, pp. 189–90 and n. 102.
9 Abbo explains that the cruelty of the Danes should not be wondered at,
“cum uenerint indurati frigore suae malitiae ab illo terrae uertice quo
sedem suam posuit qui per elationem Altissimo similis esse concupiuit”
(LSE, p. 71; “seeing that they came hardened with the stiff frost of their
own wickedness from that roof of the world where he [i.e. Satan] had
fixed his abode who in his mad ambition sought to make himself equal to
the Most High”: Passion, pp. 18–19).
10 Barrow, “Danish Ferocity,” p. 84. Compare Young, Edmund, p. 3.
11 On the prevailing sense of crisis, see Ashe, Conquest, p. 13. On
anti-monastic reaction after Edgar’s death in 975, see C.A. Jones, “Ælfric
and the Limits,” p. 70; Hart, Danelaw, p. 594; Clayton, “Ælfric,” pp. 67–8,
74; Pestell, Landscapes, pp. 103, 128; Lapidge, Byrhtferth of Ramsey: Lives,
p. 122, n. 101; Rabin, “Holy Bodies”; and sources cited by these authors.
12 Burke, Renaissance Sense, pp. 1–20, is still valuable, but for more nuanced
insights on historiographical self-consciousness (esp. concerning Richerus
of Reims’s Historiarum libri quatuor of the mid- to late 990s), see White,
Content, pp. 17–22.
13 Lapidge, “Saintly Life,” p. 269.
14 M. Taylor, Edmund, p. 25; compare Cavill, “Analogy” and
“Armour-Bearer.”
15 MS A, ed. Bately, p. 79; ASC, p. 126.
16 On the controversy, see Bately, “Introduction,” pp. xiv, xxxiii. Ælfric him-
self had been schooled at Winchester before being transferred to Cerne
Abbas.
17 Emphasis mine in each case.
18 Mitchell and Robinson (Guide, p. 97, §187, i[b]) show that, in this pas-
sage, the past participle geanlæhte is plural in number, agreeing with the
compound predicative nominal “Hinguar and Hubba” rather than with
the dative-singular noun in the phrase “[o]n þam flotan” (Ælfric, SEKM,
304 Notes to pages 173–4

p. 45; “[i]n that fleet”: Ælfric, PSE, p. 98). In this narrow context Ælfric is
not even demonizing all Scandinavian fleets, let alone all Scandinavians.
Earl, “Violence,” offers additional reasons for Ælfric’s reticence in this
regard; see below, n. 50.
19 Edmund’s supersession of Æthelberht was particularly dramatic. After
the turn of the twelfth century, a church dedicated to the latter at Hoxne
was rededicated to Edmund thanks to the machinations of Herbert de
Losinga, bishop of Norwich (Scarfe, Suffolk Landscape, p. 155).
20 Which he would have considered “a hardship equivalent to exile,” a “sac-
rifice”: Dachowski, First, p. 64, and pp. 66–9 for the reasons. For the dates
of Abbo’s stay at Ramsey, see Lapidge, “Saintly Life,” p. 254; Dachowski,
First, p. 69. For the background to Abbo’s stint there, see Riché, A ­ bbon,
pp. 30–5; Dachowski, First, pp. 57–64. Riché discusses the Passio on
pp. 40–6. See too Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Library, pp. 242–3. L ­ icence cautions
that “[i]t is far from certain that Abbo did write the P ­ assio at R
­ amsey”
(“Origins,” p. 57, n. 60, citing Dumville, English C ­ aroline Script, p. 36).
21 “Abbo … inhabitans in eodem loco [i.e. Ramsey] atque doctrinam
grammatice artis affluenter suos erudiens discipulos” (“Abbo … ­living
in that same place and instructing his disciples copiously in the art
of grammar”): Byrhtferth of Ramsey, Vita s. Oswaldi, ed. and trans.
Lapidge, III.18, pp. 91–2. On Abbo’s teaching mission at Ramsey, see e.g.
V.B. ­Jordan, “Monastic Hagiography,” pp. 52–3; Dachowski, First, p. 72.
Though commissioned by a specific monastic milieu, “[t]he Passio is an
extravagant work, aiming at an international audience” (Stanton, Culture,
p. 163).
22 On Abbo’s historiography, interest in language, and conceptual ac-
commodation between history and hagiography, see Sot, “Pratique,”
esp. pp. 205–6.
23 On the many MSS of Abbo’s Passio, see Winterbottom, Three Lives, pp. 8–10.
24 For studies, see above, n. 1.
25 On Dunstan’s role in the gestation of the Passio, see John, “Return,”
p. 206; Pinner, Cult, p. 38. Faulkner suggests that “Oswald, along with
Dunstan, encouraged Abbo to write” because Oswald had spearheaded
the founding of Ramsey Abbey: “Like a Virgin,” p. 51.
26 LSE, p. 67; Passion, p. 9. The story’s transmission has been ­discussed
­often. See e.g. McKeehan, “St. Edmund”; Loomis, “Growth”; Whitelock,
“Fact”; Smyth, Scandinavian Kings, p. 205; Gransden, “Abbo of ­Fleury’s
‘Passio”; Ridyard, Royal Saints, pp. 63–5; Damon, Soldier Saints,
pp. 169–70; Pinner, Cult, pp. 35–8; Cavill, “Analogy,” “Fun,” and
“Armour-Bearer.”
27 Pinner, Cult, pp. 35–8, questions the faith in Abbo’s story placed by
Whitelock (“Fact,” p. 221), Ridyard (Royal Saints, pp. 63–4, 67), and
 Notes to pages 174–6 305

Gransden (“Abbo of Fleury’s Passio,” p. 57). Earl admits the unlikeliness

of the transmission but argues that it “accords with independent Viking
traditions about the episode” (“Violence,” p. 129). Cavill has done much
to illuminate the account’s derivativeness; see his “Analogy,” “Fun,”
and “Armour-Bearer.” V.B. Jordan, “Monastic Hagiography,” pp. 46–51,
considers Abbo’s rhetorical strategies, as does Young, Edmund, pp. 51–8,
­accepting in Abbo’s account a core of veracity but nevertheless identify-
ing numerous incongruities.
28 Stodnick, “Emergent Englishness,” pp. 501, 509.
29 Among the relevant studies cited above in the Introduction, special men-
tion should be made of Howe, Migration, and Michelet, Creation. Among
Abbo’s many known sources was Bede’s geography of Britain in HE I.1,
as noted by Gransden, “Abbo of Fleury’s ‘Passio,’” p. 31 (citing, in her
n. 56, Whitelock, “Fact,” p. 219), and by Winterbottom, Passio, p. 68, and
his note to chap. 1, line 1. Lapidge’s survey of the roughly one hundred
books known to have been owned by Ramsey Abbey during Abbo’s
two-year stint there suggests that no version of the ASC is likely to have
­existed in its library (Anglo-Saxon Library, pp. 122–7, 242–3); but see
Hart’s “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle” and “B Text.”
30 McKeehan, in her wide-ranging “St. Edmund,” p. 15. V.B. Jordan iden-
tifies the historical background as a rhetorical exordium and discusses
its purposes in the LSE, e.g. its contextualization of Edmund and its
­evocation of biblical parallels to early England: “Monastic Hagiography,”
pp. 58–9.
31 Resemblances between those chronologically far-flung invasions have
not been lost on modern scholars. Commenting on Continental Saxon
“pirates, who had taken advantage of the collapse of the Saxon shore
defences to plunder both sides of the Channel and the Atlantic coast of
Gaul,” Wood observes that “[i]n a sense, despite the vast development
of maritime technology between 450 and 800, this was a first Viking age”
(Merovingian North Sea, p. 5).
32 As Curtius famously explains it, translatio imperii “implies that the trans-
ference of dominion from one empire to another is the result of the sinful
misuse of that dominion” (European Literature, p. 29, tracing the notion
back to Ecclesiasticus 10:8 [p. 27]). The twelfth-century illustrator of the
Pierpont Morgan Library manuscript of Abbo’s Passio and Herman’s
Miracula exploited such parallels: Pinner, Cult, pp. 65–7. Keynes shows
that Wulfstan earlier had done likewise (“Abbot,” pp. 207–8) and that
Ælfric had blamed the invasions of the 990s and afterwards on his fellow
English rather than on the Scandinavian invaders themselves (“Abbot,”
p. 170). Ælfric’s thinking on the subject evolved over time, however, as
shown by Godden, “Apocalypse,” pp. 131–42.
306 Notes to pages 176–8

33 Howe, Migration, p. 6; compare pp. 63–5, 70–1. See too Wormald, “Engla
Lond,” p. 14 (on Bede’s ideological use of the phrase); Harris, Race,
pp. 60–72 (on the relationship between the adventus and Bede’s concept of
a gens Anglorum).
34 On Bede’s interest in the biblical Israelites as offering models for inter-
preting early English history, see e.g. Harris, “Anglo-Saxons,” p. 37; Foot,
“Bede’s Kings,” p. 39; Zacher, Rewriting, pp. 26–8 and 103–4 (as cited by
Foot); Dumville, “Origins,” p. 74. See also Wormald, inter alia his “Engla
Lond,” as well as the summary and response in Molyneaux, “Old English
Bede,” p. 1289. Molyneaux does not wholly refute Wormald’s argument
but challenges its comprehensiveness: “Old English Bede,” p. 1302, and
“Did the English.”
35 Rowley, Old English Version, pp. 51–3, 75–6. Elsewhere, Rowley points out
that “[t]he main translator … never compares the recent (or perhaps on-
going) Scandinavian invasions with the Germanic ones, and refrains from
interpreting the invasions as punishment” (Old English Version, p. 92).
Similarly, The Battle of Maldon rejects the notion that the vikings embod-
ied divine wrath directed at English unworthiness, as Trilling shows in
­Aesthetics, pp. 129–33, 159–74.
36 Molyneaux, “Old English Bede.”
37 Howe, Migration, pp. 51, 53, 58–9, 69; Wormald, “Engla Lond,” p. 14;
Michelet, Creation, pp. 247–51, 257–8.
38 MS A, ed. Bately, pp. 70–2; ASC, pp. 106, 108–10. See too Neidorf,
“­Beowulf,” p. 850. I thank an anonymous reader for suggesting the appro-
priateness of Brunanburh in this context.
39 Tugène, L’idée, pp. 94–6 on the pagan associations of regnal lists.
­Wormald, however, plausibly claims that those genealogies satisfied a
persistent “need for a heroic past … even in educated, and thus presuma-
bly clerical, circles” (“Bede, Beowulf,” p. 57).
40 The rendering is mine, but I have also consulted Hervey’s translation,
which for stylistic elegance is much to be preferred.
41 On this point, see the Introduction. Young, Edmund, p. 19, emphasizes the
isolation of Norfolk and Suffolk from their neighbours though not their
topographical distinctness from them.
42 Whitelock (“Fact,” pp. 224, 225) notes that the story of Edmund’s Bures
coronation appears in “Florence [i.e. John] of Worcester” and the Annals
of St. Neots. For the passage in Geoffrey of Wells on Bures as “uilla cor-
one antiquitus regie certus limes exassye et sudfulchie sita super staram
fluuium cursu rapidissimum” (“of old a town belonging to the Crown,
and … the boundary mark between Essex and Suffolk, being situated on
the Stour, a river which … flows with extreme rapidity”), see De infantia,
ed. and trans. Hervey, pp. 154–5. See also John of Worcester, Chronicle, ed.
 Notes to page 178 307

Darlington and McGurk, trans. Bray and McGurk, vol. 2, p. 630; Annals of
St. Neots, ed. Dumville and Lapidge, s.a. 856, p. 51.
43 On this concept in vernacular OE texts, see Fell, “Perceptions,” pp. 181–3;
S.T. Smith, Land, pp. 8–15; P.J.E. Kershaw, Peaceful Kings, p. 256.
44 Here used to mean simply “district,” “region,” or “province,” rather than
“kingdom” in Bedan usage. See above, Introduction, for discussion of
political terminology.
45 Pinner astutely points out that “Abbo’s assertion that the eastern prov-
ince is vulnerable on account of its western land border with the rest
of the island is … disingenuous, as it is its wateriness which proves its
­undoing in this instance. Water was therefore both a means of defence
and East Anglia’s greatest vulnerability” (“Thinking Wetly,” p. 5).
46 J. Campbell, “First Christian Kings,” p. 67, caption to illustration 67.
Campbell continues: “It may well be Dark Age, and is about 5 miles
long, 40 yards across and 30 feet from ditch bottom to bank top.” See
too ­Christopher Taylor, Cambridgeshire Landscape, pp. 48–9 and passim;
M. Taylor, Edmund, pp. 80–1; Oosthuizen, Anglo-Saxon Fenland, pp. 73,
122. For Winterbottom, the aggere is “probably the Devil’s Dyke”: LSE,
p. 69, n. to 2.9.
47 Hart, Danelaw, p. 26. On the same page Hart suggests that the various
dykes may have been recycled, perhaps dug in the Iron Age, “­refurbished
by the East Anglians,” and subsequently used by the Danish East
­Anglians against Edward the Elder. On reuse of dykes generally, see
Higham, “Britain In and Out,” pp. 52–4. See too Hoggett’s remarks on
the “fluctuating western boundary to the [East Anglian] kingdom” as
indicated by a “series of Anglo-Saxon linear earthworks … the most
­famous of which is the Devil’s Dyke”: Archaeology, p. 2, citing, inter alios
(in n. 11), Pestell, Landscapes, pp. 11–12.
48 Lavelle, Alfred’s Wars, p. 45, and sources cited therein.
49 Earl, “Violence,” p. 127.
50 Earl, in “Violence,” argues that SEKM refrains from demonizing the
Danes in part because of “the dogmatic non-violence of Ælfric’s monas-
tic ideology” and because of “the deep historical relationship between
the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes: the enemy was too uncannily familiar
to be reduced to the merely Other, but mirror-like instead he seemed to
­expose the Anglo-Saxons’ own moral weaknesses” (p. 143). T.R.W. Jordan
observes that Ælfric, by showing restraint in characterizing the Scandi-
navian invaders, “diminish[es] Edmund as an extreme example of other-
worldly holiness” and instead “leaves the emphasis on him as the good
king to his people – something Æthelred had not been” (“Holiness,”
p. 11). As discussed later in the present chapter, however, Ælfric does in-
vite a violent response towards the Jews, who become new “scapegoats”
308 Notes to pages 178–81

(Frantzen, Bloody Good, p. 63) as well as a distraction from the problem of

East Anglian particularism.
51 Tuan, Space, p. 157, on the territorial sensibilities of Indigenous peoples in
the United States and in Australia.
52 Bryson, Notes, p. 157.
53 MS A, ed. Bately, p. 62; ASC, pp. 92, 94 (s.a. 905 [904]). See also the discus-
sion of this annal above in chap. 4.
54 There is a possible play on words here, since the fourth-declension nomi-
native plural noun sinūs can mean “hollows,” “bays,” or “bosoms.” Also,
although I use “marsh” as a near-synonym for “fen” simply to avoid
­repeating the latter word unduly, the two forms of wetland differ from
each other: see Rackham, History, pp. 376–9.
55 Gransden, “Abbo of Fleury’s ‘Passio,’” pp. 24 and 31. See also the discus-
sion of the practical usefulness of Fenland resources in Pinner, “Thinking
Wetly,” analysing not only the LSE but also Felix’s VSG, Hugh Candi-
dus’s Peterborough Chronicle (see below, n. 60), the Liber Eliensis (LE), and
other sources.
56 For a rich and chronologically ambitious study of this tradition as it was
deployed and problematized by English writers, see C.A.M. Clarke,
­Literary Landscapes, esp. pp. 7–66.
57 Discenza, Inhabited Spaces, p. 30.
58 “I carry in my head many … true and perfect pictures of marshes, both
inland and by the sea; and yet I cannot reproduce them here, for I feel
that in print all their charm and colour would be lost in the same way”:
Tennyson, Suffolk Scene, pp. 220, 221.
59 Tennyson, Suffolk Scene, p. 221. Compare Turner, Rivers: “Marshes and
flat lands have some subtle charm which it is not easy to put into words”
(p. 3); and Whiteman, East Anglia, pp. 10–11.
60 For twelfth-century descriptions of the Fens from the perspectives of
­Peterborough and Ely, see, respectively, Chronicle of Hugh Candidus,
ed. Mellows, p. 6 (and Peterborough Chronicle of Hugh Candidus, trans.
­Mellows and Mellows, p. 3); De Gestis Herwardi, chap. 21, ed. Meneghetti,
p. 128 (and Deeds of Hereward, trans. Swanton, p. 68).
61 C.A.M. Clarke, Literary Landscapes, p. 41; compare p. 61. See too Downey
et al.’s arguments on lexomic grounds for the dating of Guthlac A to the
period of the tenth-century Reform (“Books Tell Us”).
62 For good summaries of the Reform, especially as background to a dis-
cussion of the works of Ælfric and Wulfstan, see Hurt, Ælfric, pp. 15–22;
Gatch, Preaching, pp. 8–11. See too Cubitt, “Review Article”; Barrow,
“­Ideology”; C.A. Jones, “Ælfric and the Limits”; and the following note.
63 The similarities include “a uniform observance of the Benedictine Rule
in all English monasteries; the professed cultivation of royal over local
 Notes to pages 181–2 309

aristocratic patronage; a harsh polemic against secular clerks and their

expulsion from some cathedral chapters and minsters; the ‘restoration’
of a monastic episcopacy as witnessed by Bede in the ‘golden age’ of the
Anglo-Saxon church; and, fuelled by that nostalgia, a pride in the ‘­native’
element in Anglo-Saxon monasticism relative to continental trends of
­revival and liturgical embellishment” (C.A. Jones, Ælfric’s ­Letter, pp. 42–3,
citing [in n. 103] Wormald, “Æthelwold,” and Gransden, “­Traditionalism”).
Compare Faulkner, “Like a Virgin,” p. 51. Summarizing and building
on the work of Gransden, Wormald, and Jones, Klein observes that “the
reforms were characterized by a rather complicated sense of nostalgia, a
desire to return to two different pasts: a faraway Anglo-Saxon golden age,
with its firmly entrenched monastic episcopacy; and the more immediate
past of Edgar’s reign, in which monasteries flourished, Danish invasions
were minimal, and the monastic orders were able to depend on wholesale
support from the royal family”: Ruling Women, p. 175.
64 C.A. Jones, Ælfric’s Letter, p. 42. The heterogeneity of the reforms is
masterfully illuminated in Jones’s chapter “Ælfric and the Limits.”
See too R ­ abin, “Holy Bodies,” pp. 224–5 (citing Jones inter alios); and
R. ­Stephenson, Politics, pp. 31–6 (on Ælfric and Byrhtferth of Ramsey).
65 See e.g. Pinner, Cult, pp. 40–1.
66 Mostert, Political Theology, p. 157. Mostert illuminates the creative tension
– between traditional Christian theological influences on one hand and
tenth-century political considerations on the other – that informs Abbo’s
portrayal of Edmund, and shows how the former outweigh the latter.
­Damon builds upon Mostert in his own full analysis of Abbo’s portrayal
of Edmund’s holy kingship: Soldier Saints, esp. pp. 176–91.
67 Mostert, Political Theology, p. 153, citing (in n. 89) Wolpers, Die ­englische
Heiligenlegende, p. 145. Abbo’s highly idealized political philosophy ­required
a strong king to limit episcopal power and thus benefit ­monasteries:
Dachowski, First, pp. 138–9 (quoting and building upon Mostert, Political
Theology, p. 155). Dachowski distinguishes between English and Frankish
reform movements on pp. 70–1, where she identifies “strong royal power
and a generation of monastic bishops” as key English traits.
68 See too Pinner, Cult, p. 42, citing (n. 48) Gransden, “Abbo of Fleury’s
Passio,” pp. 48–50. Abbo promoted Capetian imperial pretensions even
amidst general tenth-century decline in royal economic and political
clout; see Dunbabin, “West Francia,” pp. 394–7.
69 Ridyard, Royal Saints, pp. 76–8. Her discussion of Edmund in particular
(pp. 211–35) traces that king’s achievement of sanctity and the posthu-
mous recognition of it as such. M. Taylor, however, sees in Edmund’s
hagiography a confluence of pagan ideas about kingly sacrality and
Christian notions of royal sanctity: Edmund, esp. pp. 29–30.
310 Notes to pages 182–4

70 Mostert, Political Theology, p. 157.

71 This continuity is discerned by Head, Hagiography, p. 241.
72 LSE, p. 86; Passion, p. 54.
73 Gransden, “Abbo of Fleury’s ‘Passio,’” p. 24.
74 Aimo of Fleury recalls Abbo’s complaint in De vita et martyrio sancti
­Abbonis, chap. 11; for the reference and commentary see Wormald, “Æthel-
wold,” p. 23. Dachowski suspects that normal middle-age weight gain,
rather than English cookery per se, may have been the culprit: First, p. 69.
75 “Intrans denique in illam et cernens sollicitis optutibus ipsam esse con-
gruam monachis ad habitaculum, mirabiliter est letus effectus. Videbat
ibi pratum, siluam, stagna aquarum, piscium multa genera, auium
multitudinem” (“As he entered and saw with careful inspection that it
was suitable for housing monks, he was wondrously overjoyed. He saw
there a meadow, woodlands, fish pools, many kinds of fish, and a mul-
titude of birds”): Vita s. Oswaldi, 3.16, ed. and trans. Lapidge, pp. 88–9.
On Ramsey’s early history, see Lapidge, “Introduction” to Byrhtferth’s
Lives, pp. xvi–xxix; for the topography, see too his note 161 to the Vita,
3.16, pp. 88–9, as well as Byrhtferth’s own chorography of the site, which
blends etymologizing with first-hand knowledge of the environs (3.19,
pp. 92–5). C.A.M. Clarke, Literary Landscapes, chap. 3, discusses Ramsey
as a locus amoenus; see too C.A. Jones, “Ælfric and the Limits,” p. 100 and
notes 118 and 119.
76 Pestell, Landscapes, p. 110. On Æthelwine “Dei Amicus” and his father,
ealdorman Æthelstan “Half-King,” see Hart, Danelaw, pp. 569–604;
­Wareham, Lords, pp. 13–28 (citing Hart, among others).
77 Lapidge, “Introduction,” p. xxv.
78 On this date, see Lapidge, “Introduction,” p. xviii. Young, Edmund, p. 83,
places the foundation in 969. For background on the abbey and its role in
the larger social landscape of tenth-century England, see Wareham, Lords,
pp. 14–28 and passim; F. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 450–1.
79 Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Library, p. 122.
80 Vita s. Oswaldi, ed. and trans. Lapidge, III.19, pp. 90–3, and Lapidge’s
comments in notes 176–80. See too C.A.M. Clarke, “Panegyric,” which
inter alia plumbs the depths of Abbo’s “deliberate intellectual puzzle or
game” (p. 295), situates the poem within the locus amoenus tradition, and
shows how the text connects Ramsey Abbey in its Fenland setting to the
constellation Hercules, the demigod who slew the Hydra.
81 Pestell, Landscapes, p. 118, and pp. 100–18 for the argument leading to this
conclusion. In plumping for “the fundamentally East Anglian nature of
Bury St. Edmunds and the improbability that Ramsey was involved in
its Benedictinisation” (p. 116), Pestell challenges the Ramsey thesis advo-
cated by Gransden, “Legends,” p. 101, and by Dumville, English Caroline
 Notes to pages 184–9 311

Script, p. 36 (and also by Hart, Danelaw, pp. 471–2). Licence, “Origins,” ad-
vances his own sustained argument for St. Benet’s role in colonizing Bury.
82 Pestell, Landscapes, p. 149. Pestell goes on to aver that “Benedictinism was
readily associated with West Saxon political influence” (p. 149). Pestell’s
discussion on pp. 150–1 importantly associates the late tenth- and early
eleventh-century Reform with efforts to found houses in East Anglia and
the Fens in “isolated locations” that were also “close to old administra-
tive and power centres” (p. 151).
83 Marten, “Shiring,” esp. pp. 6, 10, 13–14; see too Pestell, Landscapes,
pp. 127–31.
84 Young, Edmund, p. 83.
85 Pestell, Landscapes, p. 110, building upon Gransden, “Legends,” pp. 100–1.
86 As the ealdorman Æthelwine, founder of Ramsey, was towards the com-
munity at Ely: see LE, II, ed. Blake, p. 126 (trans. Fairweather, p. 152), as
discussed in J. Paxton, “Lords,” p. 234. On rivalry between Bury and Ely
in and after the eleventh century, see Pinner, “Thinking Wetly,” pp. 14–15
and 19–20, furthering the argument in her Cult, pp. 141–4.
87 I have not been able to trace this phrase back to an actual OE source, but
for discussion of the thinking behind it see M. Taylor, Edmund, pp. 93, 95.
88 Wareham, Lords, pp. xvii (map 1) and 16. See too Hadley, Vikings, p. 65.
89 Young, Edmund, p. 83.
90 Pinner, Cult, p. 38.
91 Pestell, Landscapes, p. 110, and fig. 24 on p. 111.
92 Pestell, Landscapes, p. 103; compare p. 107.
93 Gransden, “Legends,” p. 4.
94 My translation. Hervey translates as “[d]escended from a line of kings”
(Abbo, Passion, p. 15).
95 On Abbo’s knowledge of Bede, see n. 29 above.
96 Mostert, Political Theology, p. 160.
97 Mostert, Political Theology, p. 155, citing a study by Walter Ullmann.
On differences between English and Byzantine ideas of imperium, see
Charles-Edwards, “Alliances,” pp. 61–2.
98 As discussed by Mostert, Political Theology, pp. 152–3; see LSE, p. 76;
­Passion, p. 29.
99 As noted by Winterbottom in Three Lives, p. 75, note to Passio, 8.26–7.
For Horace’s ode and the translation, see Odes and Epodes, ed. and trans.
Rudd, pp. 144–5. On Abbo’s use of Horace’s Odes, see Mostert, Political
Theology, p. 66, n. 5; Thornbury, Becoming, pp. 78–81.
100 For quotation and discussion of Wulfstan’s Vita sancti Æthelwoldi, see
Blanton, Signs, pp. 69–71, and in toto her second chapter on Ely’s fortunes
during the heyday of the Benedictine Reform movement in the last three
decades of the tenth century (pp. 65–129).
312 Notes to pages 189–92

101 Ashe, Conquest, p. 32, preceded by analysis of, among other texts, Abbo’s
LSE and Ælfric’s SEKM, which she claims urge royal self-sacrifice as the
only basis of kingly sanctification (pp. 28–9; but see Sklar, “Construct-
ing,” pp. 137–40, for a different reading of SEKM’s advice on kingship).
Other acknowledgements of the problems caused by Edmund’s renunci-
ation are Earl, “Violence,” pp. 132–47; Matthews, “Token,” pp. 68 and 73;
Phelpstead, “King,” pp. 36–7; and Damon, Soldier Saints, pp. 216–18 (both
cited by Matthews). Ælfric nevertheless urged kings to defend their coun-
tries ably: Clayton, “Ælfric,” pp. 80–8 (citing e.g. Godden, “Apocalypse,”
pp. 131–2, and C.A. Jones, Ælfric’s Letter, p. 49).
102 See above, p. 172 and n. 8. Damon neatly sums up the active-passive Ed-
mund represented by Abbo and Ælfric: “Resistance to the Vikings is just,
but the saint follows God’s chosen path for him, the route of non-violent
resistance” (Soldier Saints, p. 216 and n. 72 on hagiographic pacifism).
103 Young, Edmund, p. 84. Although Young speculates that the LSE
­encourages identification of Edmund with West Saxon interests, e.g. by
referring to Edmund as a descendent of Continental Saxons (as opposed
to Angles), he also suggests that the acclamation of Edmund by “the
­people” of his own realm is such that “the Passion plays the role of a
political assertion of East Anglian rights and privileges within the larger
England of the tenth century” (p. 84).
104 See above, pp. 184–5, nn. 82 and 83 (arguments by Pestell and Marten),
and chap. 4, p. 167, n. 241, on the two charters.
105 Matthews, “Token,” p. 72, referring to Ælfric’s SEKM but in terms
­applicable to Abbo’s LSE as well. Compare Godden, who in a paren-
thesis notes that, with East Anglia’s defences wiped out anyway by the
Scandinavian invaders of 869, “we are perhaps invited to suppose that
Edmund’s sacrifice more effectively defends his people by diverting the
Viking assault upon himself”: “Ælfric’s Saints’ Lives,” p. 303. See too
Frantzen, Bloody Good, pp. 58–64. Damon also sees Abbo’s reworking of
Edmund’s royal role as a transformation of defeat into triumph: Soldier
Saints, p. 172.
106 Noticing this emphasis, a later medieval interpolator of London, British
Library, MS. Cotton Tiberius B.ii, fol. 9r, has inserted fide et (“for faith and”)
above and between the words pro and patria of Edmund’s assertion “hon-
estum michi esset pro patria mori” (see above, p. 188), as Winterbottom
remarks in his edition of the Passio (p. 92, note to chap. 8, line 27; see p. 9
on the interpolator).
107 Klaniczay traces this linguistic opposition back to Isidore of Seville and
subsequent Carolingian thought: Holy Rulers, p. 92 and sources cited in
his n. 95.
108 Scholars debate whether Edmund’s self-sacrifice for his kingdom reflects
Christian values, residual pagan notions, or a combination thereof; see
 Notes to pages 192–4 313

M. Taylor, Edmund, pp. 30–8 (and passim); F.S. Paxton, “Abbas,” p. 209;
Phelpstead, “King,” p. 34, n. 30 (and source cited therein).
109 S.E. West identified the site as Hellesdon Wood (or Ley), belonging to
Bradfield St. Clare near Bury St. Edmunds: “New Site …?,” cited by
­Ridyard, Royal Saints, pp. 218–19 and n. 34, and by Pestell, Landscapes,
p. 80. For an objection, see K. Briggs, “Was Hægelisdun …?,” cited by
­Burgess, “Hidden East Anglia.” Young, Edmund, pp. 15, 61–6, persua-
sively reaffirms Hellesdon Wood and adds new evidence to West’s.
110 See Introduction, p. 23, and nn. 108 and 109. For Matthews, the wolf’s
“protective posture toward Edmund, the sacrificial lamb, could be seen
as a counterbalance to the ineffectiveness and insufficiency of the bishop
as ‘shepherd’”: “Token,” p. 78. Earl argues that the wolf symbolizes the
­taming and rehabilitation of the vikings (usually likened to wolves)
by suggesting a parallel to the domesticated and baptized Guthrum
(“­Violence,” pp. 139–41). T.R.W. Jordan contrasts Abbo’s and Ælfric’s uses
of the wolf motif in “Holiness,” pp. 11–12, 18–19.
111 See Gransden, “Baldwin,” pp. 72, 73; but note her second thoughts in
Gransden, “Abbo of Fleury’s ‘Passio,’” p. 41. See too Licence, “Introduc-
tion,” p. xviii.
112 Abbo does not say which early East Anglian king had made the future
Bury St. Edmunds a villa regia. An interlineal note in the earliest manu-
script of the Liber Eliensis identifies Betrichesworde (modern Bury) as the
monastery that Sigeberht founded in the 630s: see Whitelock, “Pre-Viking
Age Church,” p. 4, n. 4, citing LE, ed. Blake, p. 11; see too Hoggett,
­Archaeology, p. 32, n. 76 (citing Whitelock, the Liber, and a study of his
own, but questioning the reliability of the interlineal note); M. Taylor,
­Edmund, p. 66; Young, Edmund, pp. 33–4, 66, 79.
113 According to Cavill, “[i]t is more likely that Ælfric wished to diminish the
significance of locality, and point out that the saints were not bound by
time and place, but were omnipresent and powerful in the fight against
the evil that was encroaching in his time in the form of new Viking
­attacks” (“Analogy,” p. 43).
114 Battle of Maldon, ed. van Kirk Dobbie, pp. 7–16; trans. Crossley-Holland,
Anglo-Saxon World, pp. 11–19.
115 LE, ed. Blake, p. 136; LE, trans. Fairweather, pp. 162–3.
116 For an especially rich reading of the poem’s historical, ethnic, and typo-
logical implications for an early eleventh-century understanding of the
English (not East Anglian) people, see Harris, Race, pp. 157–85.
117 In his study of Ælfric’s SEKM, Earl analyses the reuniting of Edmund’s
head and body in terms of the idea of the king as Christus domini (“the
anointed of the Lord”) who is returned to his people.
118 LE, ed. Blake, p. 136; LE, trans. Fairweather, pp. 163. The bracketed inser-
tion is by Fairweather, who also points out that the phrase “inter alios”
314 Notes to pages 194–6

refers to “the other six benefactors commemorated in the source-text”

(p. 163, n. 305).
119 HE IV.19, trans. J.E. King. See above, chap. 2, p. 83 and n. 66, for discus-
sion of this substitution of King’s translation for that of Colgrave and
Mynors.
120 It is pertinent that the LE honours Byrthnoth as a champion of late
tenth-century reformed monasteries against their detractors (II.62);
see LE, ed. Blake, p. 134; trans. Fairweather, p. 160; and discussion in
Faulkner, “Like a Virgin,” p. 51.
121 Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, pp. 92–5, 98. Wilson is cautious about
attributing ritual significance to all cases of early English beheading.
He also cites decapitated bodies whose missing heads were replaced at
­burial with stones, a shield boss, and urns.
122 On the issue of Abbo’s attribution of virginity to Edmund, see Ridyard,
Royal Saints, p. 226; Phelpstead, “King,” p. 43 (citing Ridyard); Faulkner,
“Like a Virgin,” p. 47; Frantzen, Bloody Good, pp. 56–61.
123 S.T. Smith, “Marking Boundaries,” p. 167, citing Alfred’s evocation of
­bygone days.
124 Sot, “Pratique,” p. 212 (translation mine); see too Mostert, Political Theology,
p. 41, cited and tentatively endorsed by Moilanen, “Writing,” p. 65.
125 “La virginité n’est pas l’apanage de l’ordre monastique, ni une condition
nécessaire pour y accéder, mais elle y acquiert son expression ecclésiale
éminente par son alliance avec la contemplation”: Gantier, “L’ecclésiol-
ogie,” p. 301. Compare Mostert, Political Theology, p. 44 (adducing LSE
chap. 17, lines 9–11, p. 87), p. 99 (analysing Abbo’s exhortation to virgin-
ity and its relationship to his understanding of relics of the saints, and
inferring from LSE chap. 17 that Abbo was “[a]dmonishing” the caretak-
ers of Edmund’s shrine), and p. 169 (“[i]t is as if the virtues of clerics and
laymen, whether kings or simple subjects, could be derived from those of
the monks, the group which occupied the highest rank in Abbo’s social
and moral thought”).
126 Gransden, “Abbo of Fleury’s ‘Passio,’” pp. 41–2. Pinner argues persua-
sively that Dunstan would have wanted to revive Bury’s fortunes after
the viking attacks, though she refrains from endorsing Dumville’s theory
that Abbo wrote the LSE in honour of Bury’s supposed refoundation as
a Benedictine house in the 980s (English Caroline Script, pp. 77–8), and
she rejects outright Gransden’s hypothesis that Dunstan intended the
LSE to bolster Bury’s prestige as a prospective second episcopal see in
East ­Anglia (“Abbo of Fleury’s ‘Passio,’” pp. 41–5). See Pinner, Cult, p. 38.
I agree with Pinner that Dunstan could have envisaged strengthening the
Bury community without necessarily having brought about its regulari-
zation himself, let alone having turned it into a bishopric.
 Notes to pages 196–8 315

127 Studies of Ælfric’s teaching priorities (whether for clergy or for laypeo-
ple) include Clemoes, “Chronology,” pp. 42, 52–3, 57–8 and passim;
Gatch, Preaching, esp. pp. 47–56, 72–101; Grundy, Books; Blanton, Signs,
pp. 104–22; Upchurch, “Big Dog”; Matthews, “Token,” esp. p. 41, 82–8;
T.R.W. Jordan, “Holiness”; R. Stephenson, Politics, pp. 138–87, 191–4.
A conspectus of Ælfric’s ideals appears at the end of his Life of St. Swithun,
ed. Needham, pp. 60–81, at p. 80; see discussion in C.A. Jones, Ælfric’s
Letter, p. 47 and nn. 117 and 118.
128 John, “Return,” p. 206.
129 On the mixed nature of Ælfric’s audience, see esp. Clayton,
“­Homiliaries,” pp. 175–89; Stanton, Culture, p. 162 (citing Clayton);
Godden, “Ælfric’s Saints’ Lives,” pp. 299–301; Godden, “­Introduction,”
pp. xxii–xxvii; Cubitt, “Ælfric’s Lay Patrons”; Gneuss, “Ælfric,”
pp. 27–9; Phelpstead, “King,” p. 29; T. R.W. Jordan, “Holiness,” pp. 8–9;
­Moilanen, “Writing,” p. 60. Æthelweard’s translation has been edited by
A. ­Campbell as Chronicon Æthelweardi.
130 Foot, “Historiography,” p. 132. Compare A.D. Smith, Ethnic Origins,
p. 109; Dumville, “Origins,” passim.
131 Croce, “Regionalismo.” A.D. Smith sees Italian regionalism as “a grave
impediment to national cohesion, if not national consciousness” (Ethnic
Origins, p. 73).
132 Lavezzo, Angels, p. 8.
133 “There may be no spectacular lines of mountains, rushing torrents and
high waterfalls … [But] what need is there then for high hills, when the
clouds can create mountains higher and grander than the Himalayas?”
(Whiteman and Talbot, East Anglia, pp. 10–11).
134 Treharne, “Authority,” p. 565.
135 J. Hill, “Ælfric,” p. 41.
136 In what follows I incur debts to C.A. Jones, Ælfric’s Letter, pp. 43–9; Rabin,
“Holy Bodies,” pp. 224–9; and Klein, Ruling Women, p. 173 and p. 252, n.
30 (citing Jones). Concerning Ælfric’s departure from Æthelwold in em-
bracing stylistic clarity, see Lapidge, “Æthelwold,” pp. 107–8.
137 Rabin, “Holy Bodies,” p. 229. On Æthelred’s move against the
­religious houses following Æthelwold’s death as a way of placating
the ­anti-monastic nobles, see Yorke, “Æthelwold,” pp. 85–6, and Rabin,
“Holy Bodies,” p. 230, both of whom cite Keynes’s Diplomas, p. 177.
138 C.A. Jones, Ælfric’s Letter, p. 47. Jones goes on to discuss (p. 47 and nn. 117
and 118) the aforementioned ending of Ælfric’s Life of St. Swithun (see above,
n. 127) and the De oratione Moysi, lines 147–55. See too ­Rabin, “Holy Bodies,”
pp. 230–1, and Sklar’s discussion of the SEKM and contemporary entries in
the ASC in the context of what she calls the “terminal trickle-down incom-
petence” afflicting England at this time (“Constructing,” p. 131).
316 Notes to pages 198–200

139 C.A. Jones, Ælfric’s Letter, pp. 43–9, cited in Klein, Ruling Women, p. 173
and p. 252, n. 30. Skeat’s judgment that Ælfric was “one born to be a
teacher” and “a true patriot” (“Preface,” p. liii) was informed by his
awareness that Ælfric was displeased by Æthelred’s failings.
140 Klein, Ruling Women, pp. 152–5. As Clayton has argued, even after
Æthelred had changed his ways and, beginning ca. 993, selected counsel-
lors who were sympathetic to the Benedictine Reform, monks had reason
to distrust him, and Ælfric was especially if tacitly censorious: “Ælfric,”
pp. 69, 71–3, 80–8.
141 Cubitt, “Ælfric’s Lay Patrons,” p. 167. With regard to Æthelweard’s Latin
version of the Chronicle, Cubitt writes that “[h]is preface to this text
makes clear his own investment in his royal kinship and in the history of
his own people: King and country were central to Æthelweard’s identity”
(p. 167). Ælfric’s defence of unitary kingship appears in the Preface to
his Lives of Saints, where he justifies departing from his Latin sources by
pointing out that “gens nostra uni regi subditur, et usitata est de uno rege
non de duobus loqui” (“our nation is subject to one king and is accus-
tomed to speak of one king, not of two”): Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, ed. and
trans. Skeat, vol. 1, pp. 3–4; Ælfric’s Prefaces, ed. and trans. Wilcox, p. 131,
both quoted in K. Davis, “Boredom,” p. 327 and n. 21.
142 Gretsch, Ælfric, p. 57. See too Cubitt, “Ælfric’s Lay Patrons,” p. 179;
C.A. Jones, “Ælfric and the Limits,” pp. 74–5.
143 Gretsch, Ælfric, p. 96, and pp. 99–100 on Ælfric’s special interest in
­Cuthbert. On Bede’s championing of the seventh-century Oswald as the
ideal English saint-king, see Foot, “Bede’s Kings,” pp. 28, 32, 44–5.
144 Young, Edmund, p. 85.
145 Magennis, Cambridge Introduction, pp. 127–8. With regard to Ælfric’s
possible doubts about Edmund’s universality as discussed by Magennis,
Pope held that the Sermo de memoria sanctorum was intended “to stand
at the head of his set of saints’ lives and serve as a general introduction
to them” precisely because “[i]n this piece the saints are placed within a
universal framework” (Pope, “Ælfric,” p. 205).
146 “Sicque factum est, consentiente rege, ut partim Dunstani consilio et
actione, partim Ætheluuoldi sedula cooperatione, monasteria ubique
in gente Anglorum, quaedam monachis, quaedam sanctimonialibus,
constituerentur sub abbatibus et abbatissis regulariter uiuentibus”
(“And so it came about, with the king’s agreement, that thanks both
to Dunstan’s counsel and activity and to Æthelwold’s unremitting aid,
monasteries were established everywhere in England, some for monks,
some for nuns, governed by abbots and abbesses who lived according
to the Rule”): Wulfstan of Winchester, Life of St. Æthelwold, ed. and trans.
Lapidge and Winterbottom, pp. 42–3.
 Notes to pages 200–2 317

147 Ælfric’s Lives of Saints predates Abbo’s murder in 1004, so at the time the
English translator started working he could not have known Abbo’s fate.
On Ælfric’s use (though in a different context) of “correspondences of
sound – for instance, the repetition of the same root in different word-forms
… [to] bring out the relationship between ideas that are complementary,”
see Clemoes, “Ælfric,” p. 177.
148 On the widespread promulgation of Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, for
­example, see Wilcox, “Ælfric in Dorset,” p. 62, quoted with measured
support by Lockett, Anglo-Saxon Psychologies, p. 419. On the “cultural
­recuperation” by which Ælfric reaffirms the Englishness of Edmund and
of his own translation of Abbo, see Sklar, “Constructing,” esp. pp. 133–5.
149 For both quotations, see Chronicon Æthelweardi, ed. and trans.
A. ­Campbell, p. 36.
150 Phelpstead, “King,” p. 37; Sheppard, Families, p. 100. Æthelweard was, as
Godden elucidates, “a man of considerable piety and a staunch supporter
of monasticism, but also an ealdorman responsible for the defence of the
south-west against the Vikings” (“Ælfric’s Saints’ Lives,” p. 303).
151 Rollason, Northumbria, p. 201, noting Bede’s reference to Oswald as rex
Christianissimus.
152 Gretsch, Ælfric, p. 96.
153 Hines, “Origins,” p. 42.
154 Ridyard, Royal Saints, p. 226. Pestell notices that Edmund’s lack of
­offspring was convenient for Anglo-Scandinavian as well as West Saxon
rulers: Landscapes, p. 78.
155 E.g. by McKeehan, “St. Edmund,” p. 28; Whitelock, “Fact,” p. 219; Weiss,
“East Anglia,” p. 104; Pinner, Cult, pp. 39–40, 66–7; Young, Edmund, p. 42.
156 Young, Edmund, pp. 42 and 84, citing (p. 162, n. 82) Newton, Origins,
p. 140, who in turn builds upon Hervey, Corolla, p. xxxvi. The passage in
question in Abbo identifies Edmund as “ex antiquorum Saxonum nobili
prosapia oriundus” (LSE, p. 70) or “sprung from the noble stock of the
Old Saxons” (Passion, p. 15). Young notes additional signs of West Saxon
appropriation of the slain king’s cult in Edmund, pp. 15–16, 89–92.
157 On Ælfric’s changes to his source, see McKeehan, “St. Edmund,” p. 22;
Whitelock, “Fact,” p. 222; Bethurum, “Form” (general observations,
though not on the Edmund); C. Clark, “Ælfric”; Pope, “­Introduction,”
p. 150 (general observations on the Catholic Homilies and Lives of Saints; see
also Pope, “Ælfric,” e.g. pp. 187, 204–5); Hurt, Ælfric, pp. 80–2, 131–5; Ben-
skin, “Literary Structure,” pp. 9–10 (with “structural s­ ynopsis” on p. 9),
21–4; Godden, “Ælfric’s Saints’ Lives,” pp. 288–9, 293; Earl, “Violence”;
Stanton, Culture, pp. 163–6; Cavill, “Analogy” and “­Armour-Bearer”;
Frantzen, Bloody Good, pp. 61–3; Damon, Soldier Saints, p. 218; Gretsch,
Ælfric, p. 226; Magennis, “Warrior Saints,” p. 44; P
­ helpstead, “King”;
318 Notes to pages 202–4

Matthews, “Token,” pp. 66–75; Arthur, “Giving” (citing Magennis’s a­ rticle

on p. 331, n. 27, and Gretsch’s book on p. 330, n. 18); T. R.W. Jordan,
“­Holiness”; Moilanen, “Writing,” pp. 68–9, 73–81, 89–94, 104–6.
158 See above, p. 194.
159 Fox, Watching, pp. 363–4, where Fox says that this trait “is not the result
of careful thought,” because “[t]his kind of indirectness just comes natu-
rally to us” (p. 364).
160 Magennis, Cambridge Introduction, p. 127.
161 Cubitt, “Universal and Local Saints,” p. 450. Along similar lines, Cubitt
elsewhere observes that “[t]he new Benedictine houses … were intru-
sions and included great monasteries such as Abingdon, Ely and Ramsey,
­established by figures like St. Æthelwold and St. Oswald in alliance with
the king and great aristocrats: they advertised their monopoly on sacral-
ity by promoting the new ethos of religious virginity which must have
cut across the old ties of family and locality, and by appropriating the rel-
ics of local saints”: “Ælfric’s Lay Patrons,” p. 185, citing LE, II, ed. Blake,
pp. 40 and 53.
162 The East Anglian influence on Ælfric’s translation of the Passio may have
gone beyond these named saints. According to Faulkner, Ælfric chose to
write a Life of Edmund in the first place because St. Edwold, a presumed
brother of Edmund’s, was patron saint of Cerne Abbey (Dorset), ­Ælfric’s
home from roughly 987 to 1005 and a house founded by his patron
Æthelmær (Faulkner, “Ælfric”). On Ælfric’s tenure at Cerne, see e.g. Hurt,
Ælfric, pp. 31–7; Godden, “Introduction,” p. xxi, xxix–xxxi; Upchurch,
“Big Dog,” p. 522, n. 78; R. Stephenson, Politics, pp. 136–7 (citing, in her
n. 6, C.A. Jones, Ælfric’s Letter, p. 7, n. 23); Keynes, “Abbot,” p. 160.
163 There may have been a seventh-century precedent for this. Young speaks
of incorrupt saints as a “trend in the East Anglian royal family” begun
by Æthelburh (d. 664), “a (possibly illegitimate) daughter of Sigeberht’s
cousin and successor, Anna” (Edmund, p. 36). On Æthelburh and the
“trend,” Young cites Ridyard, Royal Saints, pp. 60–1.
164 “Abbo of Fleury, writing for [the Capetian kings] Hugh and Robert,
­exploited classical and Carolingian sources to exalt what he took to be
an unchanged and unchanging monarchy”; “[t]he equation of kingship
with empire proved popular among west Frankish churchmen; Abbo of
Fleury defended it enthusiastically”: Dunbabin, “West Francia,” pp. 396
and 396–7, citing Mostert, Political Theology, pp. 137–8 and 131, respec-
tively. My remarks that follow are indebted to Dunbabin’s incorporation
of Mostert’s insights.
165 Gretsch, Ælfric, pp. 225–31. On Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester’s
­cultivation of Ely within a wide program of English ecclesiastical ­reform, see
Gretsch, Ælfric, pp. 195–205; Blanton, Signs, pp. 65–129; ­Otter, “­Temptation,”
 Notes to pages 204–6 319

p. 142 (citing e.g. Ridyard, Royal Saints, pp. 181–5); all cited by Stodnick,
“Emergent Englishness,” pp. 508–9. If the Old ­English version of Edgar’s
confirmation of Ely’s privileges (Electronic Sawyer 779, Latin text dated 970)
is really Ælfric’s and was composed ca. 1006, as Pope argued, it offers fur-
ther evidence of the Grammarian’s commitment to the universalizing scope
of the Benedictine Reform and may be read as “a piece of propaganda,
not only for the monks of Ely but for the monasteries in general” (Pope,
“Ælfric,” p. 112, and endorsing on p. 111 Angus McIntosh’s dating of the
translation). For Moilanen, Ælfric’s emphasis on “[r]eligious assimilation
was important not because it implied a connection between the king and his
heavenly counterpart, but because it implied the similarity – but not identi-
calness – of all saints and the ­universal authority of God”: “Writing,” p. 106.
166 Pinner, Cult, p. 118.
167 J. Campbell, Anglo-Saxon State, pp. 41–2. For similar views on the national
deployment of local saints’ lives in England, see Ridyard, Royal Saints;
Rollason, Saints, esp. pp. 155–7, concerning Edmund as both a local and a
West Saxon saint; Stodnick, “Emergent Englishness.”
168 Earl, “Violence,” explores the connections latent in Ælfric’s SEKM
­between late tenth-century monastic reform and the viking invasions. On
the difference in impact between the Scandinavian raids of the 980s and
those beginning in the following decade, Keynes has pointed out that
“[f]rom 991 to 1005, the English suffered the worst and most sustained
viking onslaught in over a hundred years” (“Abbot,” p. 153).
169 Stafford, “Church,” p. 11. I take her point about the inaccuracy of the
terms “reform” and “revival” in this context (pp. 11–12). Consonant with
her remarks on Ælfric’s influence is Wilcox’s claim that “[t]he voice of
pastoral care in late Anglo-Saxon England is, to a very great extent, the
voice of one single writer: Ælfric”: “Ælfric in Dorset,” p. 52.
170 Godden, “Ælfric’s Saints’ Lives,” pp. 288–90. (Godden’s study is cited in
Matthews, “Token,” p. 94, and Keynes, “Abbot,” p. 162, n. 55.) See too
Grundy, Books, pp. 271–2.
171 Phelpstead, “King,” p. 38; see too Frantzen, Bloody Good, pp. 62–3, and
Sklar’s remarks on the Jews of SEKM as “a conveniently pre-demonized
population” (“Constructing,” p. 136). Phelpstead also ably explores
(pp. 39–44) the tensions in Ælfric’s characterization of Edmund’s idio-
syncratic approach to kingship. In addition to the Grammarian’s hostility
towards the Jews, “[t]he common theme running through all the legends
[i.e. the Lives of Saints] is clear, the triumph of ascetic Christianity over
paganism” (Bethurum, “Form,” p. 533).
172 On Guthlac A’s place in tenth-century monastic reform in England, see
C.A. Jones, “Envisioning”; Downey et al., “Books Tell Us.” My supposi-
tion is commensurate with Brady’s argument in “Colonial Desire.”
320 Notes to pages 206–8

173 On the absence or near-absence of Jews in pre-Conquest England, see

Scheil, “Anti-Judaism,” p. 65; Harris, “Anglo-Saxons,” p. 28; Younge,
“New Heathens,” p. 124 and studies cited in his n. 5. On the question
whether a native British population remained in the Fenland in Felix’s
time, see above, chap. 3.
174 van Court, “Siege.” The critical approach she identifies “elides the very
real issue of Jewish presence in Christendom that continues to concern
the Christian community even in the absence of Jews” (p. 166).
175 Scheil, “Anti-Judaism,” p. 73. Scheil’s formulation may suggest a le-
gitimate response to van Court’s cogent criticism, cited in the previous
note. In dialogue with Scheil’s work, Younge observes that “[i]n con-
trast to the immediacy of [viking] paganism in pre-Conquest society,
the Anglo-Saxon idea of the Jew was remote and theoretical, mediated
entirely through textual traditions,” specifically through “the Bible, Late
Antique historical works, and patristic commentaries”: Younge, “New
Heathens,” pp. 128, 124, citing Scheil’s Footsteps. See too the reference to
Williams Boyarin’s Miracles in the following note.
176 Williams Boyarin, Miracles, p. 49. See too Lavezzo’s theorization of what
she terms the “sepulchral Jew” as constructed by Bede and Cynewulf:
­Accommodated Jew, pp. 27–63. Ælfric’s exploitation of the Jews is also
­related to his tendency in the Catholic Homilies to dichotomize race by
contrasting the whiteness of Anglian slave-boys to the blackness of the
devil: see Lavezzo, Angels, pp. 38–44 (but also Magennis, “Geography”).
For a comparative survey of early English treatments of whiteness, see
Harris, Race, p. 53.
177 As identified by Needham in Ælfric, SEKM, p. 59, note to line 223; and by
Swanton in Ælfric, PSE, p. 102, n. 5.
178 “The sterility of Jewish sacred places (whatever those might be in Ælfric’s
imagination) is a strong contrast to the overflowing divine presence at the
tombs of Swithun and Edmund, and thus bolsters the English claims by
deflecting any doubts onto the Jews”: Scheil, “Anti-Judaism,” p. 71.
179 Earl points out the more general problem that “[t]he Vikings were too
much a part of Anglo-Saxon culture to be conveniently demonized,
since the earlier invasion had resulted in a large Danish immigration”
(“­Violence,” pp. 141–2). See too the sources cited above in n. 171.
180 Rowley, Old English Version, p. 69.
181 Scheil, Footsteps, p. 20, and pp. 295–330 for penetrating readings of
­Ælfric’s De populo Israhel and Maccabees.
182 Loyn, Vikings, p. 43.
183 For examples of this assimilation, see above, chap. 4, p. 166.
184 As recorded in the “C” manuscript of the ASC, s.a. 980–1. See MS C, ed.
O’Brien O’Keeffe, p. 84; ASC, p. 124.
 Notes to pages 209–12 321

185 Earl, “Violence,” pp. 141–2. Abbo’s anti-Danish sentiment may amount to
a mere exercise in rhetoric for his students’ benefit, but Abbo must have
known that St. Oswald, one of the greatest of the tenth-century reformers
as well as the founder of Ramsey, had himself been of Danish extraction;
see Wareham, “St. Oswald’s Family.”
186 Marten, “Shiring”; see too Molyneaux, “Why Were Some …?” Marten’s
essay is cited by Molyneaux, and Molyneaux’s article in turn is refer-
enced in Baker and Brookes, Beyond the Burghal Hidage, pp. 22–3. “Eng-
land, in a political sense, would be the creation of Alfred’s grandsons and
great-grandsons”: Ryan, “Anglo-Saxons,” p. 262.
187 Discenza, Inhabited Spaces, p. 135, commenting on the Catholic Homilies;
elsewhere, Discenza observes that even “Alfredian texts, even while they
make Anglo-Saxon England a place of importance, deny the importance
of place. As Angelcynn claims its place in the tradition of learning, the
texts present places that signify symbolically” (p. 126).

Conclusion

1 Young, Edmund, p. 18.

2 On this adaptability, see Pinner, Cult (e.g. pp. 6 and 9), and the studies by
Ridyard, Mostert, Cownie, Bale, Licence, Yarrow, and M. Taylor cited in
chap. 5 above, n. 1. Kingsnorth, Real England, pp. 89–96, recounts a recent
appropriation of St. Edmund by citizens of Bury opposed to the homoge-
nizing effects of corporate capitalism.
3 Morris, Time’s Anvil, p. 187, citing (in n. 27) Hoskins, Local History, p. 30,
where Hoskins resists “the treatment of local history as only national
­history writ small.”
4 “Imaginative sympathy is so dangerous precisely because it prevents
us from seeing the extent to which we have created the past in our own
­image. And yet without imaginative sympathy, our capacity for discover-
ing anything new in the past is foreclosed”: Thornbury, Becoming, pp. 2–3.
5 Tuan, Space, pp. 99–100.
6 LSE, p. 69; Passion, p. 13. See above, Introduction, p. 16.
7 Tuan, Space, p. 157, also cited above in chap. 5, p. 178 and n. 51.
8 Gransden, “Legends,” pp. 8–10, 23; Ridyard, Royal Saints, pp. 228–31
(­inter alia comparing Bury’s struggles with those of Ely); Cownie, “Cult”;
Yarrow, Saints, esp. pp. 39, 42, 47–52, 61; Pinner, Cult, pp. 52–4 (also citing
parallel contemporary developments in the cult of Æthelthryth as studied
by Blanton, Signs, pp. 131–41, 166–71; see too the studies cited in chap. 2
above, nn. 28–32); Licence, “Cult,” 113–30 (detailing the hostility towards
Herman evident in Goscelin of Saint-Bertin’s miracles of Edmund);
Young, Edmund, p. 97.
322 Notes to pages 212–15

9 Yarrow, Saints, pp. 35–6.

10 Herman, Miracles, ed. and trans. Licence, pp. 6–7. Licence points out (p. 6,
n. 27) that the reference to Æthelred is to “King Æthelred of the West
­Saxons (865–71),” the brother of King Alfred.
11 Herman, Miracles, ed. and trans. Licence, p. 6, note 25.
12 S. Reynolds, Kingdoms, p. 259.
13 Herman, Miracles, ed. and trans. Licence, pp. 22–3.
14 Licence, “Cult,” pp. 113–14.
15 Ridyard, Royal Saints, p. 230; Pinner, Cult, e.g. pp. 57–8 (quoting Ridyard)
and p. 67: “Eliding the distinction between the regional and the national
­locates Edmund within a broader historical context and suggests that his
martyrdom, and presumably also his cult, are universally significant” (refer-
ring to the cultural work performed by the illustrator of New York, Pierpont
Morgan Library, MS. M.736). See too Pinner’s discussion in Cult, pp. 63–75.
16 Saints, p. 34. Yarrow’s book is cited passim by Pinner, Cult.
17 Ridyard, Royal Saints, p. 230; quoted too by Pinner, Cult, p. 57.
18 I thank John Black of Moravian College for this felicitous phrase.
19 On the term mythomoteur as used by Anthony Smith, John Armstrong,
­Ramon d’Abadal i de Vinyals, and Henry Tudor, see above, chap. 2, n. 131.
20 H.C. Darby, “Fenland Frontier,” p. 197.
21 In this light, it is intriguing that in the late twelfth or early thirteenth cen-
tury Laƺamon should have claimed that a Romano-British king Gratian
had been killed by two peasants from Æst Ængle named Eðelbald and
Ælfwald (Brut, lines 6111–50, ed. Brook and Leslie, vol. 1, pp. 318–20),
the two personal names recalling the Mercian and East Anglian royal
promoters of Guthlac’s cult and vita. By repurposing those names, was
Laƺamon simply indulging his antiquarianism? Or was he trying to
project onto late fifth- or sixth-century history a hint of the complex and
sometimes turbulent “wider allegiances” that would arise later in eastern
England? I am grateful to Jane Roberts for this reference.
22 On the linguistic relationship between the name of the demonic, dog-like
Black Shuck of the Fens and the Old English word scucca (see Beowulf,
line 939a), see Newton, “Forgotten History,” pp. 10–11, and sources
cited in his notes 86–8 and 92. On scucca in some English toponyms, see
­Foxhall Forbes, Heaven, p. 92.
23 Cam, Liberties, pp. 1–18, discussing C. Stephenson, Borough. My levity
aside, Cam does concede the virtue of Stephenson’s use of topography in
his analysis.
24 Cam, Liberties, p. 1.
25 The pitfalls awaiting the monodisciplinary student who attempts inter-
disciplinarity are explained by Woolf, “Dialogue,” p. 6; and especially
by Capper, “Practical Implications,” pp. 11–12, 18–19. I regret having
 Notes to pages 215–17 323

­ iscovered these two articles only very belatedly, after the manuscript of
d
this book had undergone its final external review.
26 Hoskins, Making, p. 95.
27 Parks, Italian Neighbours, “Author’s Note.”
28 Tombs, The English, p. 27.
29 Earl, “Violence,” pp. 141–2.
30 Williamson, “East Anglia’s Character,” p. 62.
31 Bassett, “In Search,” pp. 26–7.
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 Index

Abbo of Fleury, 10, 16, 17, 24, 28, Angilbert, 258n77

34, 61, 153, 170, 171–7, 180–6, “Anglian Collection,” 17, 23, 25,
188, 190–3, 195–204, 208–9, 210, 59–60
211, 212, 214, 216, 304n21; “O “Anglo-Saxon” as demonym/
Ramesiga cohors,” 184; Passio ethnonym, 4
sancti Eadmundi, 5, 10, 16, 28, 34, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 5, 17,
136, 171, 172, 174–209, 210, 211, 22, 24, 28, 34, 128, 131, 133–41,
212, 214, 216, 290n112, 312n101, 145, 151, 152, 157, 158, 161, 166,
312n103, 314n126, 317n147, 168, 171, 173, 176, 181, 182, 191,
318n164, 321n185 196, 201, 203, 209, 216, 230n100,
Additamentum Nivialense de Fuilano, 239n19, 252n20, 285n42, 296n166,
71 296n168, 305n29, 315n138; “A”
adventus Saxonum, 22, 37–40, 175–6, (Parker) recension, 22, 29, 63, 71,
186, 202, 296n166 72, 105, 126, 129, 133, 134, 137–8,
Agatho, Pope, 76, 254n36 140–1, 143–4, 147, 152–4, 155,
Aimo of Fleury, De vita et martyrio 156–7, 158–62, 163, 164–6, 170,
sancti Abbonis, 183, 310n74 179, 252n18, 284n30, 291nn126–7,
Alcuin of York, 271n51 303n15, 306n38; “B” recension,
Alde, 19 131–32, 159, 161, 162, 284n31; “C”
Aldhelm, 262n19, 271n52, 277n101 recension, 134–5, 160, 162, 284n31,
Alfred, 4, 5, 7, 14, 28–30, 127, 129–32, 320n184; “D” recension, 162,
136, 137, 139–58, 160–4, 167–70, 284n30, 301n246; “E” recension,
185, 194–5, 198, 203, 208, 217, 284n30; St. Neots Chronicle (see
250n152, 321n186, 322n10 St. Neots, Annals of)
Alfred-Guthrum Treaty, 5, 28–30, 34, Anna, 24–5, 33, 60, 70, 71–2, 75–6,
128, 138, 141–52, 158, 162, 165, 166, 88, 94, 98, 251n11, 263n135,
168, 191, 194, 216 318n163
Andreas, 123, 240n28, 281n134 Annals of St. Gall (Annales
Angeln, 21, 39, 71 Alamannici), 285n43, 286n61
376 Index

anonymous queen of East Anglia, Æthelberht (king of Kent), 30, 31,

26, 32, 33, 41–49, 51–56, 63, 69, 70, 39–42, 47, 48, 49, 53, 58, 71, 191,
77, 89, 191, 211 217–8, 249n131
Antony, Saint, 72, 112 Æthelberht I (king of East Anglia),
Asser, 49, 152, 271n52, 285n42, 236n165
293nn143–4 Æthelberht II (king of East Anglia),
Augustine, Saint, De civitate Dei, 72, 125–6, 133, 137, 172, 174, 211,
268n25 236n165, 304n19
Æbbe, 74, 79–80, 81, 256n58 Æthelburh (abbess of Barking), 74,
Ælfric of Eynsham, 6, 9, 17, 24, 83
28, 127, 153, 170, 193, 196–209, Æthelburh of Faremoutiers, 318n163
210, 212, 214, 215, 218, 305n32, Æthelburh of Kent, 47
307n50, 312n101, 315n127, Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians,
315n129, 319n165; Catholic 167
Homilies, 317n148, 317n157, Æthelflæd of Damerham, 12, 14,
320n176, 321n187; De oratione 166–7
Moysi, 315n138; De populo Israhel, Æthelfrith, 41–4, 61, 77–8, 191
320n181; Homily on Judith, Æthelhere, 71, 251n12
277n101; Homily on Maccabees, Æthelmær, 196, 200, 318n162
320n181; Life of Æthelthryth, 87, Æthelred (ealdorman of Mercia), 167
204, 223n35, 257n67, 259n89, Æthelred (king of East Anglia),
277n101; Life of Edmund, 5, 7, 32, 236n165
34, 127, 170, 171–3, 178, 181, 193, Æthelred (king of Mercia), 72, 105,
197–209, 214, 216, 218, 297n183, 108, 124–5, 268n27
304n18, 307n50, 312n101, 313n117, Æthelred I (king of Wessex), 158,
319n168; Life of St. Swithun, 160, 198, 212, 322n10
315n127, 315n138, 320n178; Æthelred II (king of East Anglia),
Lives of Saints, 87, 196, 198, 199, 237n165
203, 204, 207, 277n101, 316n141, Æthelred II “the Unready” (king of
317n147, 317n157, 319n171; Prayer Wessex and of England), 195, 197–
of Moses, 108; Sermo de memoria 200, 204, 218, 307n50; II Athelred
sanctorum, 316n145; Sermon on the (peace treaty), 290n115
Assumption, 207 Æthelstan (king of England), 130,
Ælfthryth, 167 131, 164, 167, 174, 176, 181, 199–
Ælfwald, 6, 23, 33, 34, 95, 102, 105–9, 200, 201–2, 222n27, 298n191
112, 115, 116–20, 122–6, 185, 186, Æthelstan I (king of East Anglia),
191, 206, 211, 216, 228n79, 267n18; 236n165, 282n3
Letter to Archbishop Boniface, Æthelstan II (Scandinavian king of
107–8, 128 East Anglia). See Guthrum
Ælle, 39, 250n154 Æthelstan “Half-King” (ealdorman
Æthelbald, 33, 102–5, 106–9, 116–19, of East Anglia), 131, 132, 167, 186,
123–4, 216, 278n115 209, 310n76
 Index 377

Æthelthryth, Saint, 6, 7, 32–3, 47, 53, Commentary on Proverbs (Super

60, 65, 68, 69–101, 102, 104, 106, parabola Salomonis), 47, 65, 101,
111, 112, 118–19, 121, 124, 140, 242n54, 242n55, 245n78, 268n25;
143, 172, 174, 189, 191–2, 193–4, Commentary on 1 Samuel,
201, 202–5, 211, 222n26, 248n123, 242n54, 244n76; De templo, 246n94;
276n100, 321n8 Ecclesiastical History of the English
Æthelweard (author of Chronicon), People (Historia ecclesiastica gentis
133, 138, 146, 196, 198, 200–1, Anglorum), 5, 10, 11, 16, 17, 20, 21,
271n52, 285n42, 286n67, 316n141, 22, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 32–3, 35–68,
317n150 69–101, 102, 103, 106, 109, 111–12,
Æthelweard (king of East Anglia), 118–19, 124, 125, 128, 137, 143,
236n165 152, 163, 168, 174, 175–6, 179, 182,
Æthelwine “Dei Amicus,” 28, 183, 188, 189, 191, 194, 201, 208, 209,
185–6, 209, 311n86 211, 213, 215, 216, 220n9, 229n95,
Æthelwold, Saint, 100, 181, 189, 266n12, 266–7n15, 268n25, 270n40,
197, 198, 200, 316n146, 318n161, 273n69, 276n95, 285n45, 306n33,
318n165 316n143; History of the Abbots,
Æthelwold “Ætheling,” 130, 158–63, 254n36; In cantica canticorum,
164, 166, 216, 283n19, 284n24 251n158; Letter to Ecgbert, 44; Life
of St. Cuthbert, 53, 118, 245n90,
Baldwin, 192–3 258n72, 276n99. See also Old
Bartholomew, Saint, 105, 114, 115, English translation of Bede’s
117 Ecclesiastical History (Old English
Battle of Brunanburh, 176 Bede); Super parabola Salomonis
Battle of Maldon, 193, 306n35 Bedford, 142–3
Beccel, 105 Bedricesgueord/Bedricesweorth. See
Bede, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 16, 17, 20, Bury St. Edmunds
21–2, 24, 25, 26–8, 29, 30–1, 32–3, Benedict Biscop, 76, 254n36
35–68, 69–101, 102, 103, 106, 109, Benedictine Reform in England,
111–12, 118–19, 124, 125, 128, 137, 115, 170, 171–2, 173, 181–7, 190–1,
143, 152, 163, 168, 169, 170, 174, 195–8, 201, 204–5, 206, 208, 276n93,
175–6, 179, 180, 182, 188, 189, 294n153, 311n100, 316n140,
191, 194, 201, 203, 208, 209, 211, 318n161
213, 215, 216, 218, 220n9, 221n20, Benedict of Nursia, Saint, 179–80,
229n95, 266n12, 266–7n15, 268n25, 273n67
270n40, 273n69, 276n95, 276n99, Beonna, 236n165
285n45, 289n110, 306n33, 309n63, Beowulf, 8, 18–19, 123, 227–8n79,
316n143, 320n176; Chronica 229n95, 240n28, 254n40, 276n92,
maiora (included in De temporum 322n22
ratione), 260n103; Commentary Bernicia, 41, 43, 44, 61, 78, 130, 191,
on Acts of the Apostles, 64; 245n82
Commentary on Genesis, 51; Bertha, 47, 49
378 Index

Bible, 35, 207, 320n175; Acts, 54; 110–1, 118–20, 138–40, 156, 165,
Ecclesiasticus, 305n32; John, 215, 258n69, 272n60
246n96; Kings, 81, 223n35, Cambridgeshire, 5, 11, 17, 20, 84, 135,
247n106; Luke, 56–7, 65, 246n96, 160, 178, 185, 217, 220n9, 233n132
247n108; Mark, 246n96; Matthew, Canterbury, 9, 71, 100, 197, 297n186
207, 246n96; Proverbs, 47, 101; Catuvellauni, 122, 279n119
Psalms, 90, 120 Cædmon, Hymn, 11, 250n146, 258n76
Birinus, 244n77 Centwine, 125
Blythburgh, 24 Ceolred, 106
Boniface, Saint, 107–8, 125, 280n127 Ceolwulf, 79, 125, 255n48, 268n25
Boniface V, 47 Ceorleswyrth (Chelsworth), charter of
borders and border/frontier spaces, 962, 12–14, 93, 166–7, 190
16, 20, 27, 30, 54, 55, 85, 93, 103–4, Cerdic, 157, 224n49
145, 147, 150, 151–2, 178, 226n60, Cerdicings (West Saxon royal
275n85, 281n134, 290n115, 292n133 dynasty), 14, 28, 34, 127, 128,
Botwulf/Botolph, Saint, 60, 70, 72–3, 130–2, 136, 137, 144, 146, 148–9,
124, 172 152, 155, 156, 158–70, 171, 185–6,
Boudicca/Boadicea, 21 190, 201–2, 209, 224n49, 296n166,
Bran (or Heydon) Ditch, 20 298n191
Brent Ditch, 20 Cerne (Cerne Abbas), 171, 303n16,
Britons. See Romano-British cultures 318n162
Bures, 177–8 charters, 12–14, 69, 92–3, 98, 151,
Burrow Hill, 18 164, 166–7, 190, 226n60, 269n33,
Bury St. Edmunds (town), 171, 274n79, 281n134
234n132, 313n109, 313n112, 321n2 chorography, 8, 10–11, 16, 210
Bury St. Edmunds Abbey, 14, 34, civitatula, 84–5, 87, 97, 140
104, 166–7, 171, 184–5, 186–7, 190, Cnobheresburg (Burgh Castle?), 64,
192–3, 195, 196, 204, 212, 213–14, 71, 73–4, 86, 124
296n177, 310–11n81, 314n126, Cnut, 131, 132, 135, 184, 209, 244n71
321n8 Coenred, 120, 124, 278n115
Byrhtferth of Ramsey, 184, 271n52, Coifi, 55, 64, 241n44
309n64; Vita sancti Oswaldi, 174, Colchester, 21, 165, 170
183–4, 309n64 Coldingham, 74, 75, 79–82, 100, 112
Byrhtnoth, 193–4 Constantinople, Council of, 245n80
“Count of the Saxon Shore,” 21,
Cælin (or Ceawlin), 39 229n92
Caistor-by-Norwich/Caistor St. Cratendune, 71, 251n11
Edmund, 15, 89, 230n94 Crowland, 6, 53, 95, 103–4, 106, 111–
Caister-on-Sea, 18 12, 113–24, 186, 257n64, 257n68
Cam, 272n60 Cuthbert, Saint, 53, 198, 201, 202,
Cambridge (Grantacæstir, Granta/ 203, 316n143; anonymous Life of
Gronta, Grantabrycg), 20, 53, 84, 85, St. Cuthbert, 258n72; Bede’s Life
 Index 379

of St. Cuthbert (see Bede: Life of St. 211–15; kingdom (of the East
Cuthbert); monastic community in Angles), 6, 9, 15–34, 36–68, 69–83,
Bernicia, 132 85–96, 98–101, 102–12, 116, 118–20,
Cynefrith, 87, 89, 90 121–2, 124–6, 127–8, 130, 137–8,
Cynewulf (poet), 320n176; Elene, 172, 174, 178–80, 187–9, 191–2,
277n101, 281n134 195, 212–13, 217–18; region, 3–6, 9,
Cynewulf (king of Wessex) and 10–12, 14–15, 26, 32, 128, 141, 172,
Cyneheard, 299n217 176–8, 194, 196–7, 210–11, 214–18;
royal court, 45–9, 51–6, 73, 80, 94,
Danelaw, 34, 128, 130, 131, 156, 166, 104; royal genealogy, 59–60, 98;
222n23, 237n166, 284n28, 285n42, Scandinavian-held territory of the
300n225 East Anglians within southern
Deben, 19, 24, 25, 228n86 Danelaw, 6–7, 18, 29–30, 34, 127,
Deira, 41, 42, 61, 74, 130, 245n82 128–49, 150, 152–64, 168–70,
Devil’s Dyke, 20, 117, 178–80, 186, 195. See also gens Orientalium
191, 307n46 Anglorum
Domnoc/Dummoc (Walton Castle), 25, Ecga, 106
64, 69, 71, 124 Ecgberht (anchorite[?]; possible
Dorchester, 261n108, 267n16 miswriting of “Ecgburh”), 268n32
Dunstan, Saint, 174, 181, 196, 197, Ecgbert (missionary), 44
198, 199–200, 314n126, 316n146 Ecgburh, 102–3, 104, 106
dykes. See Devil’s Dyke, Fleam Ecgfrith, 75–81, 98, 101, 256n55
Dyke, Offa’s Dyke Ecgric, 58–9, 60, 61, 71
Eddius Stephanus. See Stephen of
Eadbald, 48, 243n62, 243n68 Ripon
Eadbert, 125 Edgar, 12, 14, 131–2, 166–7, 185, 189,
Eadgyth, 131, 132 197–8, 200, 201, 252n19, 283n23,
Eadwald (king of East Anglia), 298n191, 301n246, 303n11, 309n63,
237n165 319n165
Eadwald (possible real name of Edmund, Saint, 6, 23, 28, 29, 34, 61,
Felix), 269n36 127, 128, 130, 133, 134, 136–8, 153,
Eadwold (named in 962 Chelsworth 154–6, 166, 170, 171–4, 177–8, 179,
charter), 12, 14 181, 182, 184–209, 210, 211, 212–14,
ealdormanry, 28, 132, 284n34 216, 217, 236–7n165, 285n42,
Ealdwulf, 57, 80, 94, 103, 256nn52–3 298n191, 304n19, 307n50, 309n69,
East Anglia, bishopric, 6, 63–6, 69, 312n102, 312n103, 312n105,
71–2, 135, 193; client-kingdom 317n154, 321n2
of Mercia, 103–5, 109, 112, 123, Edmund I (king of England), 166–7
125–6; ealdormanry under West Edward the Elder, 28, 30, 129, 130,
Saxon control, 28, 34, 131, 132, 132, 152, 156, 158–60, 163–5, 167,
164–8, 170–1, 173, 182–3, 184–6, 170, 171, 179, 296n168, 296n178,
190–1, 195–209; earldom, 132, 298n191, 300n232, 307n47
380 Index

Edwin, 32, 40, 41–5, 46, 47, 48, 55, 56, Fens/Fenland, 3, 5, 7, 10, 16, 17, 20,
58, 61, 62, 79, 249n131 22, 28, 33, 53, 65, 71, 72, 75, 80, 84,
Edwold, Saint, 318n162 87, 88, 92–4, 101, 102–5, 110–24,
Ely, 10, 33, 68, 72, 77, 79–80, 84, 90–3, 159, 160, 171, 177–80, 183–6, 206,
103, 121, 256n53, 259n95, 261n105, 211, 216, 220n9, 233n132, 257n64,
267n16, 272n60, 311n100 267n24, 276n95, 277n101, 288n85,
Ely Abbey, 6, 7, 53, 68, 69, 70–2, 74, 308n60, 310n80, 311n82, 320n173,
75–8, 79–95, 97–100, 103, 111–12, 322n22
118–20, 124, 189, 192, 193–4, 202, Fleam Dyke, 20
204, 205, 253n32, 253n33, 256n53, foederati, 21, 229n94
259n94, 261n105, 267n16, 308n60, Folcard of Saint-Bertin, author of
311n86, 311n100, 318n161, 319n165, Vita sancti Botolphi, 73
321n8 Francia, 71, 74, 131, 156, 163
Eni, 25 freoðuwebbe (OE “peace-weaver”),
Eohric, 160, 296n178 254n40
Eorcenberht, 72, 99, 222n26 Fursey (Fursa), Saint, 6, 33, 36, 60,
Eormenhild, 72, 94, 99 61, 64–5, 70–4, 85, 86, 124, 172,
Eorpwald, 30, 33, 44–5, 58, 61, 70, 79, 211, 252–3n22; anonymous Vita
88, 247n115 virtutesque sancti Fursei, 36, 118,
Essex (kingdom of the East Saxons), 252n22, 273n65, 276n99
5, 14, 16, 21, 24, 26, 28, 32, 37, 48,
55, 130, 144, 146, 156, 164–5, 177, genealogies, royal, 17, 23, 25, 34, 51,
193, 194, 230n104, 232n118, 244– 59–60, 71, 137, 143, 177, 226n65,
5n77, 246n98, 285n45 232–3n122, 236–7n165, 239n21,
Ethandun (Edington), battle of, 129, 247n116, 248n123, 274n76, 306n39
140, 141, 143, 145, 146, 160 gens (“nation,” “people”), 27, 40, 41,
Evagrius, Vita sancti Antonii, 111 95, 98–9, 270n40, 316n141
Exning, 260n104 gens Anglorum, 35, 38–9, 41, 50–1, 95,
98–9, 121, 168, 211, 213, 221n21,
felicitas, 48, 64, 70, 82, 109, 249n136, 306n33
270–1n46 gens Orientalium Anglorum, 37–40,
Felix (bishop of East Anglia), 6, 33, 43–5, 76–7, 81, 82, 88, 93, 95, 107,
60, 63–6, 68, 69–71, 85, 124, 211, 109, 112, 122, 124, 127, 187–8, 189,
247n108 190, 192, 217
Felix (monk and author), 17, 20, 24, Geoffrey of Wells, 5, 177
33, 102–11, 118–19, 121, 123, 125, “germanic” as ethnonym, 21, 22, 24,
128, 143, 152, 170, 180, 206, 209, 26, 37, 46, 65, 70, 121, 175, 176–7,
269n36; Vita sancti Guthlaci, 5, 7, 220n7, 225n53, 227n75, 229n89,
10, 20, 33, 53, 102–25, 128, 178, 191, 229n93, 229–30n95, 231n107, 240n27,
206, 216, 228n79, 240n27, 250n154, 241n49, 241n50, 279n118, 306n35
257n64, 259n81, 308n55 Gesta Herwardi, 92, 257n68, 260n100,
Felixstowe, 64 274n75. See also Richard of Ely
 Index 381

Gildas, De excidio et conquestu Hatfield (Hertfordshire), Council

Britanniae, 22 of, 57
Goscelin of Saint-Bertin: Lectiones Hatfield Chase (S. Yorkshire), 240n42
in festiuitate Sanctae Sexburge, Hæglesdun (Hellesdon Wood), 192,
222n26, 263n134; Miracula sancte 313n109
Ætheldrethe, 253n32, 255n46; Headda, 106, 113, 267n20
Miracula sancti Eadmundi, 321n8; Henry of Huntingdon, Chronicle,
Vita sancte Werburge, 261n12, 257n68
263n135; Vita sancte Wihtburge, Herbert de Losinga, 304n19
263n135 Hereward (“the Wake”), 92, 133,
Granta/Gronta. See Cambridge 274n75
Grantabrycg. See Cambridge Herman the Archdeacon, Miracula
Grantacæstir. See Cambridge sancti Eadmundi, 212–14, 303n7,
Great Army, 128, 283n11, 287n76 305n32, 321n8
Great Ouse , 25–6, 142–3, 179, Heydon Ditch, 20
272n60, 299n208 “hides” (familiae), 12, 13, 14, 91, 93,
Great Summer Army, 128–9, 287n75 94, 112, 260n97, 273n63
Gregorian mission, 45, 48, 53, 54, 72 High Ditch, 20
Gregory I, “the Great,” 53, 55, 66–7, Hild, Saint, 11, 53, 74, 83, 264n141
85, 86, 241n51, 246n91; Regula Hincmar of Reims, De regis persona et
pastoralis, 194, 293n146 regio ministerio, 268n25
Gregory of Tours, 246n92 Historia Croylandensis, 269n33
Guthfrith/Guthred, 132 Holme, 160, 164, 170, 299n210
Guthlac, Saint. See Felix (monk and Honorius, 63, 244n77
author): Vita sancti Guthlaci Horace, Odes, 189, 311n99
Guthlac A, 115, 123, 181, 206, 240n28, Hoxne, 304n19
264n1, 268n30, 271n55, 272n57, Hoxne Hoard, 21
273n66, 273n67, 274n74, 274n79, Hugh Candidus, Chronicle of
274–5n81, 275n86, 275n92, 276n95, Peterborough Abbey, 180, 257n68,
278n115, 281n134, 308n61, 319n172 274n71, 308n55
Guthlac B, 123 Hulme, 184, 310–11n81
Guthlac, Life of, OE prose Humber, 7, 30, 31, 37–8, 40, 71, 109,
hagiography, 115, 264n1, 271n55, 131
275n83, 276n95, 280n123 Huntingdonshire, 160, 185, 220n9,
Guthrum, 129, 145, 155, 157, 297n186 299n210
Gyrwe, 75–6, 77, 80, 104, 118, 259– Hwætred, 106
60n95, 270n45, 276–7n100
Icanhoe (Iken), 72, 252n20
Hadleigh, 296n177 Icel, 114, 274n77
Hálfdan, 128–9, 132, 138, 283n11, Iceni, 20–1, 22, 23, 121–2
283n13, 284n24, Iclingas, 124
Harford Farm, 15, 89 Idle, 43
382 Index

imperium (“overlordship”), 37–41, manuscripts: Cambridge, Corpus

42, 45, 55, 63, 65, 67–8, 77, 94, 109, Christi College, MS. 308, 126;
123–4, 127, 152, 158, 168, 187–8, Cambridge, Corpus Christi
190, 204, 216, 234n140, 239n19, College, MS. 383, 142; Glasgow,
240n30, 311n97 Hunterian Library, MS. Hunter
imperium-list (in Bede), 32, 37–41, 42, 86, 250n153; London, British
60, 67–8, 137 Library, MS. Cotton Tiberius B.ii,
Ingulph, 269n33 312n106; London, British Library,
Isidore, Saint, 235n140 MS. Cotton Vespasian B.vi
Ívarr the Boneless, 128, 288n94 (“Anglian Collection”), 17, 23, 25,
Ixworth, 234n132, 286n51 59–60; London, British Library,
MS. Egerton 1993, 256n55;
John of Worcester, 177, 252n20 London, British Library, Harley
Jonas of Orléans, De institutione regia, Charter 43 C 3 (Chelsworth),
268n25 12–14, 166–7, 190, 223n37,
225n50; London, British Library,
Kyneburga, 74 MS Royal 13.A.xv, 250n154;
London, British Library, MS.
“Laws of Edward and Guthrum,” Royal 13.C.v, 250n154; Oxford,
237 Bodleian Library, MS. Hatton
Laƺamon, Brut, 322n21 43, 67; St. Petersburg, National
Lea, 142–3, 290n111 Library of Russia, Lat. Q.v.I.18 (St.
Leofstan, 194 Petersburg Bede), 66
Libellus Æthelwoldi, 263n138 Medehamstede. See Peterborough
Liber Eliensis, 24–5, 71–2, 80, Abbey
193–4, 239n26, 251–2n12, 253– Mercia (kingdom of the Mercians), 9,
4n33, 255n45, 256n52, 261n112, 16, 17–18, 20, 23, 24, 25, 28, 29, 33,
268–9n32, 308n55, 313n112, 37–8, 43, 58–9, 69–72, 74, 77, 85, 93,
314n120 98, 99, 102–26, 127–8, 131–3, 135,
Lichfield, 106, 266n14 138, 144, 152, 159, 171, 177, 178,
Life of St. Æthelwold, 7, 200 184–7, 206, 211, 216, 228n79, 251n8,
Life of St. Cuthbert, 258n72 261n108, 266n12, 266n14, 267n16,
Life of St. Edmund. See Abbo of 267n18, 268n27, 270n44, 270n45,
Fleury: Passio santi Eadmundi; 271n49, 274n77, 275n81, 276n95,
Ælfric of Eynsham 276–7n100, 277n10, 278n115,
Life of St. Erkenwald, 174 278n116, 279n112, 280n124,
Lincolnshire, 5, 185, 215, 220n9, 288n94, 294n154, 296n170
233n132 Middle Anglia (kingdom of the
Lindsey, 43, 119, 240n35 Middle Angles), 5, 25, 38, 43, 81,
locus amoenus, 92, 114, 179–83, 190, 101, 103–4, 108, 114, 118, 20, 187,
193, 274n74, 310n75, 310n80 212, 266n12, 266–7n15, 267n18,
lyres, 18 270n44, 277n110
 Index 383

Mildenhall Treasure, 21 Oswald, Saint (king of

Monk of Whitby, Earliest Life of Northumbria), 40, 62, 198, 201,
Gregory the Great, 238n14 249n131, 263n135, 268n27, 316n143
Oswiu, 40, 245n77
“Nennius,”, 22 Ouse. See Great Ouse
Norfolk, 3, 5, 8, 15, 18, 20, 25–7, 59,
89, 135, 184, 185, 215, 217, 219n1, Pachomius, Saint, 113
220n9, 228n87, 229n90, 233n125, Paulinus, 42, 45
248n119, 249n139, 259n95, 284n28, Pega, Saint, 106, 123
306n41 Penda, 25, 61–2, 66, 69, 70, 71–2, 74,
Norman Conquest, 4, 8, 74, 214 103, 118, 119, 201, 240n42, 242n61,
North Elmham, 15, 25 247n115, 251n11, 251n12, 252n20,
Northumbria (kingdom of the 266–7n15
Northumbrians), 6, 9, 16, 17, 24, Penwalh, 105, 270n44, 278n116
26, 32, 37–8, 40, 41, 43–5, 55, Peterborough Abbey, 74, 84, 103, 120,
75–81, 94, 98, 101, 109, 112, 125, 186, 308n60
127, 128–32, 138, 156, 157, 158, provincia (kingdom), 27–8, 30–1, 35,
159, 161–2, 163, 169, 198, 211, 47, 68, 71, 72, 90–1, 93, 98–9, 108,
222n27, 233n128, 238nn10–12, 137, 139, 144, 204, 209, 211, 212,
241n44, 242n61, 245n90, 246n98, 235n140, 236n160, 270n40
248n123, 252–3n22, 255n47, Pseudo-Ingulph, 269n33
256n51, 258n72, 263n135,
283n11, 283n19, 287n75, 288n94, Quadripartitus, 142
296n166
Norwich (diocese), 233n126 Ramsey Abbey, 28, 34, 103, 104,
Norwich (town), 156, 229n94 171, 174–5, 181, 183–7, 190–1, 196,
Notitia dignitatum, 21 204, 208, 257n68, 304n20, 304n21,
304n25, 305n29, 310n75, 310n80,
Ofa, 106 310n81, 311n86, 318n161, 321n185
Offa, 17, 72, 124, 125–6, 137, 140, Rædwald, 6, 23, 24, 25, 26, 32, 33,
281n132 36–49, 51–8, 59–61, 62, 63–8, 69–71,
Offa’s Dyke, 17 74, 75, 76, 77–9, 81, 82, 86–7, 89–90,
Old English translation of Bede’s 99, 124, 143, 163, 174, 179, 182, 185,
Ecclesiastical History (Old English 187, 191, 211, 216
Bede), 27, 28, 30–1, 208, 289n110 Rægenhere, 43, 44
Ordinance concerning the Dunsæte, regio (“region”/“district”), 91, 108,
290n115 135, 137, 139, 212, 213, 236n160,
Oswald (king of East Anglia), 270n40
237n165 regnal lists. See genealogies, royal
Oswald, Saint (archbishop of York), Rendlesham, 24, 55, 59, 73, 91,
28, 181, 183,197, 304n25, 318n161, 225n56, 228n83, 231n107, 232n116,
321n185 233n131, 246n100, 285n45
384 Index

Repton, 102, 104, 105, 112–13, 114, Speculum principis/Fürstenspiegel, 105,

119, 129, 138–9, 265n6, 265n7, 268n25
266n11, 266n14, 269n34, 273n67, spolia, 73–4, 82–8, 124, 258n79,
273n68, 287n75, 288n86 259n81
Ricberht, 58, 247n115, 247–8n117 Spong Hill, 15
Richard of Ely, Gesta Herwardi/De St. Benet’s Abbey, 184, 310–11n81
gestis Herwardi, 92, 180, 260n100 Stephen of Ripon, author of Vita
Richerus of Reims, Historiarum libri sancti Wilfridi, 32, 94
quatuor, 303n12 St. Neots, Annals of, 161–2, 177,
Romanitas, 23, 26, 73–4, 97, 118–19, 296n177, 300n219, 306–7n42
140, 192, 249n130, 258n72, 258n77, Stour, 14, 177, 306n42
258n79, 273n68 subregulus (subject king/client-king),
Romano-British cultures, 20–4, 35, 71, 105, 123, 125, 126, 137, 151,
39, 40, 53, 84–6, 118, 119, 120–2, 152, 213, 237n165, 251n12, 265n9,
175–6, 206, 229n89, 233n128, 268n26
242n57, 258n72, 278–9n116. See also Suffolk, 3, 5, 11–20, 24–6, 55, 59, 64,
Catuvellauni; Iceni; Trinovantes 72, 91, 135, 164, 171, 177, 185, 217,
Rome, 26, 41, 82, 85, 113, 119, 124, 220n9, 224n41, 224–5n50, 228n87,
192, 250n157, 254n36, 273n69 231n107, 232n114, 233n125,
233n129, 233n131, 248n119,
sarcophagi, 53, 82–8, 89, 90, 97, 249n139, 259n95, 260n104, 284n28,
118, 119, 258n72, 258n74, 258n77, 286n51, 286n51, 286n59, 296n177,
258n80 306n41, 306n42
Sæberht, 48, 243n62 Suidhelm, 55
Seafarer, 250n149 Sutton Hoo, 15, 17, 18, 19–20, 24, 50,
Seaxburh, 72, 74, 83–7, 94, 99, 100, 67, 73, 225n54, 226–7n66, 228n86,
204, 205, 222n26, 257n67, 259n94, 232n118, 233n131, 240n38, 244n71
263n133, 263n134, 263n135 Sweyn, 132, 213, 214
Sebbi, 125, 244n77 syncretism, 36, 39, 46–57, 59, 60, 67,
Secgan be þam Godes sanctum þe 90, 128, 216, 238n9, 243n65
on Engla lande ærost reston, OE
text (Resting Places of the English Tatwine, 113–14, 117
Saints), 72–3, 277n100 Tette, 105
ship-burials, 15, 18–20, 24, 50, 51, Thames, 142–3, 144, 146, 159
67 Thetford, 29, 133–6, 139, 140, 156,
Sigeberht (king of East Anglia), 6, 30, 201
33, 58, 60–4, 70, 71, 72, 73, 82, 88, Thietmar of Merseburg, 250–1n157
125, 133, 174, 187, 189, 247n115, Thorney Abbey, 186, 252n19, 257n68,
313n112, 318n163 277n110
Sigeberht (king of Essex), 245n77 Tiddingford, 163
Sihtric, 131–2 Tondberht, 76, 80, 82, 118, 251n11,
Snape, 18–19, 24, 225n56, 233n131 253–4n33, 256n53
 Index 385

Tribal Hidage, 25, 28, 91, 112, 266n12, Werburh (Waerburg; abbess of Ely),
266n14, 273n63 94
Trinovantes, 21, 22, 23 Wessex (kingdom of the West
Tytil, 59 Saxons), 7, 9, 12–14, 16, 17, 23,
28, 29–30, 37, 39, 48, 98, 125,
Ubba (called “Hubba” by Abbo of 127–70, 178, 190, 202, 212, 216,
Fleury), 128, 173 217, 236n163, 281n140, 293n147,
Ulfcytel, 134–5, 164 294–5n155, 296n168
Whittlesmere, 277n110
Vergil, 72, 86, 97, 280n129 Widukind of Corvey, 251n157
vikings, 6, 7, 21, 28, 34, 127, 128–70, Wigfrith, 113
172–3, 174, 176, 178, 182, 188–96, Wilfrid, 78, 79–80, 87, 256n53,
197–8, 201–4, 208–9, 216, 217, 262n119
220n12, 237n166, 288n86, 290n113, William of Malmesbury, 300n232;
291n119, 296n168, 306n35, Gesta pontificum Anglorum, 64, 172
313n110, 314n126, 317n150, Wimborne, 159
319n168, 320n179 Winwæd, battle of, 72, 251n12
Vitalis, Orderic, Ecclesiastical History, Witham, 164, 170
106, 269n33, 272n58 Wuffa, 25, 59, 192
Vita virtutesque Fursei, 249n139, Wuffings/Wuffingas, East Anglian
252n22 royal dynasty, 23, 25, 33, 36, 55,
58–9, 73, 80, 90–2, 105, 124, 127,
Walton Castle. See Domnoc/Dummoc 186, 192, 241n48, 296n177
Watling Street, 142–3, 144 Wulfhere, 72, 99
Wearmouth-Jarrow, 27, 53, 76, 79, 82, Wulfstan of Winchester (Vita sancti
252–3n22, 254n36, 254n37, 273n69 Æthelwoldi), 7, 200
Welland, 278n112 Wulfthryth, 158