Heirs of the Vikings: History and Identity in Normandy and England, c.950-c.1015

278 Pages·2018·51.15 MB·English

by  Katherine Cross

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X antors made unparalleled contributions to the way time O
was understood and history was remembered in the medieval F
Latin West. The men and women who held this office in
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cathedrals and monasteries were responsible for calculating the date of H
Easter and the feasts dependent on it, for formulating liturgical celebrations E
season by season, managing the library and preparing manuscripts and
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other sources necessary to sustain the liturgical framework of time, and
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promoting the cults of saints. Crucially, their duties also often included K
committing the past to writing, from simple annals and chronicles to I
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more fulsome histories, necrologies, and cartularies, thereby ensuring that
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towns, churches, families, and individuals could be commemorated for
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generations to come.
This volume seeks to address the fundamental question of how the
range of cantors’ activities can help us to understand the many different
ways in which the past was written and, in the liturgy, celebrated across the
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Middle Ages. Its essays are studies of constructions, both of the building A
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blocks of time and of the people who made and performed them, in acts
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of ritual remembrance and in written records; cantors, as this book makes
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clear, shaped the communal experience of the past in the Middle Ages. R
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KATIE ANN-MARIE BUGYIS is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
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at St. Martin’s University; A.B. KRAEBEL is Assistant Professor of English
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at Trinity University; MARGOT FASSLER is Kenough-Hesburgh Professor R
of Music History and Liturgy at the University of Notre Dame and Robert O
Tangeman Professor Emerita of Music History at Yale University. S
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CONTRIBUTORS: Cara Aspesi, Anna de Bakker, Alison I. Beach,
Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis, Margot E. Fassler, David Ganz, James Grier,
Paul Antony Hayward, Peter Jeffery, Claire Taylor Jones, A.B. Kraebel,
Lori Kruckenberg, Rosamond McKitterick, Henry Parkes, Susan Rankin,
C.C. Rozier, Sigbjorn Olsen Sonnesyn, Teresa Webber, Lauren Whitnah

Cover image: Miscellany on the life of St. Edmund, Bury St. Edmunds, England, ca. 1130.
Courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum. MS M.736, fol. 15r. Purchased by
J.P. Morgan (1867–1943) in 1927.
HEIRS OF THE VIKINGS
YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS
History and Identity in Normandy
and England, c.950–c.1015
An imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
YORK KATHERINE CROSS
PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and
668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620–2731 (US) MEDIEVAL
PRESS
Heirs of the Vikings
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YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS
York Medieval Press is published by the University of York’s Centre for
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Editorial Board (2018)
Professor Peter Biller (Dept of History): General Editor
Professor T. Ayers (Dept of History of Art)
Dr Henry Bainton (Dept of English and Related Literature)
Dr J. W. Binns (Dept of English and Related Literature)
Dr K. P. Clarke (Dept of English and Related Literature)
Dr K. F. Giles (Dept of Archaeology)
Dr Holly James-Maddocks (Dept of English and Related Literature)
Professor W. Mark Ormrod (Dept of History)
Professor Sarah Rees Jones (Dept of History): Director, Centre for Medieval
Studies
Dr L. J. Sackville (Dept of History)
Dr Hanna Vorholt (Dept of History of Art)
Professor J. G. Wogan-Browne (English Faculty, Fordham University)
Consultant on Manuscript Publications
Professor Linne Mooney (Dept of English and Related Literature)
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Details of other York Medieval Press volumes are available from Boydell &
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Heirs of the Vikings
History and Identity in Normandy
and England, c.950–c.1015
Katherine Cross
YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS
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© Katherine Cross 2018
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner
The right of Katherine Cross to be identified as
the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published 2018
A York Medieval Press publication
in association with The Boydell Press
an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA
website: www.boydellandbrewer.com
and with the
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York
ISBN 978 1 903153 79 6
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy
of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book,
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is,
or will remain, accurate or appropriate
This publication is printed on acid-free paper
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To my parents
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Contents
List of illustrations viii
Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations x
Note on terminology xii
Introduction: The Problem of Viking Identity 1
1 Genealogy: Building a Viking Age Dynasty 25
2 Origin Myths: A People for a Dynasty 61
3 Hagiography I: Ruin and Restoration 85
4 Hagiography II: Saintly Patronage 123
5 Charter Narratives: Normans, Northumbrians and Northmen 155
Conclusion: Viking Age Narratives and Ethnic Identities 201
Appendix 1: The Date of Fulbert’s Vita Romani 215
Appendix 2: The Dates of the Latin Vita Prima Sancti Neoti and
the Old English Life of St Neot 223
Bibliography 229
Index 255
vii
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Illustrations
Plate
Plate 1. Fragment of stone frieze from Winchester Old Minster:
Winchester Cathedral CG WS 98. Photo © Dr John Crook
(www.john-crook.com) / Winchester Excavations Committee. 74
Maps
Map 1. England, c. 1000 xiii
Map 2. Normandy, c. 1015 xiv
viii
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Acknowledgements
I am most grateful to the following people and organisations for their assis-
tance and support – given in varied but essential forms – in the research for
and preparation of this book. My thanks to Antonio Sennis, Haki Antonsson,
Sarah Foot, Susan Irvine, Lesley Abrams, Heather O’Donoghue, Sophie Page,
David d’Avray, Caroline Palmer, Peter Biller, the readers for Boydell and
Brewer, Jaś Elsner and the Empires of Faith team, colleagues at the British
Museum, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, University College
London, Wolfson College, Oxford, the Leverhulme Trust; and to my parents,
all my family, Steve Morgan and Lyra Morgan.
This book is produced with the generous assistance of the Leverhulme Trust,
Wolfson College and the Lorne Thyssen Research Fund for Ancient World Topics
ix