The Cults of Virgin Martyrs in Anglo-Saxon England

336 Pages·2017·2.09 MB·English

University of New Mexico
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English Language and Literature ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations
6-23-2015
God's Chosen: The Cults of Virgin Martyrs in
Anglo-Saxon England
Colleen Dunn
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Colleen Marie Dunn
Candidate

English
Department

This dissertation is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication:

Approved by the Dissertation Committee:

Dr. Jonathan Davis-Secord, Co-Chairperson

Dr. Helen Damico, emerita, Co-Chairperson

Dr. Anita Obermeier

Dr. Timothy Graham

i
GOD’S CHOSEN:
THE CULTS OF VIRGIN MARTYRS IN
ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND

by

COLLEEN MARIE DUNN

B.A., English, St. Michael’s College, 2007
M.A., Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, 2009

DISSERTATION

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy
English

The University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, New Mexico

May, 2015

ii
GOD’S CHOSEN:
THE CULTS OF VIRGIN MARTYRS
IN ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND

By

Colleen Marie Dunn

B.A., English, St. Michael’s College, 2007
M.A., Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, 2009
Ph.D., English, University of New Mexico, 2015

ABSTRACT

At the center of Anglo-Saxon life was a thriving religious culture, which—in one
of its most vibrant forms—was expressed in the cult of saints. The virgin martyr became
one of the most popular forms of sanctity, yet with hundreds of possible martyrs who
could have been venerated, the question becomes which ones ultimately thrived in
Anglo-Saxon England and why? Moreover, the very need for these two questions reveals
a troubling fact: when writing about female virgin martyrs, the hagiographers never chose
a native Anglo-Saxon woman as the focus of their passiones. In exploring both the
reasons for and the implications of the choice made by these hagiographers to forgo local
female virgin martyrs in favor of foreign models, I particularly investigate the appeal of
Saint Juliana of Nicomedia and St. Margaret of Antioch, as they represent not only two of
the earliest models of the virgin martyr brought to England, but also two of the models
that would survive to the end of the Anglo-Saxon era and continue on into the Anglo-
Norman one. The purpose of this dissertation is thus two-fold: firstly, to demonstrate that
viable options existed for Anglo-Saxon female martyrs and were intentionally ignored by
those who had the authority to promote their cults; and, secondly, to explore the specific
appeal the Mediterranean female martyrs held for Anglo-Saxons.
iii
Table of Contents

List of Figures ……………………………………...………………….………………vi

Abbreviations ………………………………………..……………..…………………vii

Introduction
Historical and Theoretical Background from the Conversion (597) to the
First Wave of Viking Attacks (793) ………….…..…………….……...…………...1
Female Sanctity in Anglo-Saxon England .……..……........……………………...9
Bringing the Saints to England .………………….………….…………………..15
Understanding the Virgin Martyr: Tradition and Theory …..……….…………..25
The Question of the Virgin Martyr in Anglo-Saxon England ...…………….......36

Chapter One:
Virginity, Martyrdom, and Political Supremacy, c. 793-c. 948 ...…...….........42
Keeping the Saints in England: Juliana and Margaret ...…………….…………..50
Silenced Women ..….……………………………………………………………69
Saints and National Identity …..…….……………………………………....…...85

Chapter Two:
The Appeal of Juliana and Margaret in Early Anglo-Saxon England: Legal,
Political, Social, and Theological Resonances……………………....………..…91
The Saint and Her Parents……………………….……………………………….93
Deaf and Dumb Idols…………………………………………………………...100
High Beams and Vessels of Liquid……………………….…………………….106
Saints under Siege: The Harrowing of Hell Motif………….…………………..112
A Voice in the Darkness: Pentecostal Images………………………………….136

Chapter Three:
(Re)Visions of Female Sanctity Following 948……………..….……………..150
Juliana and Margaret in Later Anglo-Saxon England………………….…..…..161
Female Sanctity and Silenced Women…..….…....…..….….….………………205

iv
Chapter Four:
Continuing the Tradition: The Appeal of Juliana and Margaret in Late
Anglo-Saxon England…………………………….………………….....…...….….219
The Saint and Her Parents…………………….……………………...…………222
Deaf and Dumb Idols…………………………………….……….…...………..227
High Beams and Vessels of Liquid………………………….……..….…….….234
Saints under Siege: The Harrowing of Hell Motif……………..….….………...241
A Voice in the Darkness: Pentecostal Images…………..…..……..…..……….270

Conclusion:
The Question of the Virgin Martyr in Anglo-Saxon England……......….….285

Appendix A: “Christ’s Descent into Hell”………………………….…………..289

Appendix B: “Pentecost”…………………………………………….………....…290

Appendix C: Nunneries in Late Anglo-Saxon England……….……………..291

Appendix D: Dubious Nunneries in Late Anglo-Saxon England……..…....300

Works Cited………………………………………………………..…..…………….304

v
List of Figures

Figure 1:
London, British Library, Harley 3020, fol. 111v…………………………….…………164

Figure 2:
Juliana in Later Anglo-Saxon Liturgical Calendars……...……………………….….182-3

Figure 3:
Margaret/Marina in Later Anglo-Saxon Liturgical Calendars….....…….……….…..184-5

Figure 4:
Later Anglo-Saxon Litanies………………………………….…...…………………..192-4

vi
Abbreviations
ASC Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
BEASE Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Lapidge,
Blair, Keynes, and Scragg (1999)
BL British Library
BNF Bibliothèque Nationale de France
CCCC Cambridge, Corpus Christi College
CH Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies
CSASE Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England
EETS Early English Text Society
EHD English Historical Documents, Vol. I: c. 500-1042, ed. Whitelock
(1968)
GN Gospel of Nicodemus
OEM Old English Martyrology
SASLC Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture, Vol. I: Abbo of Fleury,
Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and Acta Sanctorum, ed. Biggs,
Hill, Szarmach, and Whatley (2001)

vii
INTRODUCTION
HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND FROM THE CONVERSION (597) TO THE
FIRST WAVE OF VIKING ATTACKS (793)
Towering over the Thames is one of the most iconic sights associated with the
religious landscape of England: Westminster Abbey. Overlooking London with its
famous flying buttresses and rose windows, and serving as the site for both coronations
and royal burials,1 the abbey has become an image with which almost all in the Western
hemisphere are familiar. Yet lying forgotten in the shadows of this titan is St. Margaret’s
Church, only a few steps from Westminster itself. Built in the latter half of the eleventh
century as an effort to separate lay parishioners from the Benedictine monks who lived
and worshipped at Westminster, it was dedicated to St. Margaret of Antioch, a fourth-
century martyr.2 But how exactly did someone who died nearly 800 years earlier and
nowhere near England come to have so prominent a church dedicated in her honor? To
understand her story, and, indeed, the story of how other female virgin martyrs came to
England, we must begin with a closer look at the religious atmosphere that developed in
Anglo-Saxon England.
At the center of Anglo-Saxon life was a thriving religious culture marked by the
expressions of devotion performed by and for its Christian followers. While these
expressions permeated the various strata that comprised and defined Anglo-Saxon
England—one need only look at grave goods,3 artwork,4 and even place-names, like

1 John Blair, “Westminster,” in The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England (hereafter, BEASE),
ed. Michael Lapidge, John Blair, Simon Keynes, and Donald Scragg (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 471.
2 St. Margaret’s Church: A Souvenir Guide (London: Barnard and Westwood, 2006), 4.
3 Helen Geake, The Use of Grave-Goods in Conversion-Period England, c. 600-c.850, British
Archaeological Reports, British Series 261 (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1997); Sonja
Marzinzik, “Grave-Goods in ‘Conversion Period’ and Later Burials - a Case of Early Medieval Religious
1
Heavenfield,5 for evidence of this—religious devotion found one of its most vibrant
forms in the cult of saints, a form that has left vast literary and archeological evidence.
Serving as intercessors who could mediate directly between heaven and earth, saints—
both native and foreign—functioned as signs of the divine that could be readily accessed
on earth via their relics and their literary commemorations, particularly hagiographies.
“Hagiography”—a term derived from the Greek hagios, ‘holy,’ and graphē,
‘writing’—denotes a supposedly biographical account written about a saint that served to
edify its audience through the production of easily recognized figures of sanctity, most
notably the martyr, the virgin, and the holy bishop.6 The recorded lives of these figures
followed patterns that were readily identifiable to medieval Christian audiences

Double Standards?” in Double Standards in the Ancient and Medieval World, ed. Karla Pollmann,
Göttinger Forum für Altertumswissenschaft, Beiheft 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2000), 149-
66.
4 Jane Hawkes, “Statements in Stone: Anglo-Saxon Sculpture, Whitby and the Christianization of the
North,” in The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England: Basic Readings, ed. Catherine E. Karkov, Basic
Readings in Anglo-Saxon England 7 (New York: Garland, 1999), 403-21; David M. Wilson, “The Art and
Archaeology of Bedan Northumbria,” in Bede and Anglo-Saxon England: Papers in Honour of the 1300th
Anniversary of the Birth of Bede, Given at Cornell University in 1973 and 1974, ed. R. T. Farrell, British
Archaeological Reports, British Series 46 (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1978), 1-22; Carol A.
Farr, “Worthy Women on the Ruthwell Cross: Woman as Sign in Early Anglo-Saxon Monasticism,” in The
Insular Tradition, ed. Catherine Karkov, Michael Ryan, and Robert Farrell (Albany: State U of New York
P, 1997), 45-61.
5 Tom Corfe, “The Battle of Heavenfield,” in Before Wilfrid: Britons, Romans and Anglo-Saxons in
Tynedale, ed. Tom Corfe, Hexham Historian 7 (Hexham: Hexham Local History Society, 1997), 65-86;
Douglas MacLean, “King Oswald's Wooden Cross at Heavenfield in Context,” in Karkov, Ryan, and
Farrell, The Insular Tradition, 79-97.
6 There has been some scholarly disagreement about whether or not the audience was meant to emulate the
acts and attributes found in this genre. Leslie Donovan, for example, argues that hagiographies were meant
“not so much to provide exemplars of behavior to be emulated by individual Christians, but to edify the
faithful about salvation’s history and future,” and, further, that they could be used “to generate monastic
propaganda to encourage economic support for advancing the causes and ideology of the Christian faith”
(Leslie Donovan, Women Saints’ Lives in Old English Prose [Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999], 8-9). I
suggest that these contending theories about the purpose of hagiographies are not mutually exclusive; in
order for the audience to be moved towards any type of action (either for their own salvation or for the
Church’s causes) after hearing these stories, the saint must resonate with the audience. Her acts and
attributes must be something that the audience would find inspiring, and would, therefore, strive to emulate.
This is not to say, however, that the audience would ever be expected to rise to the level of the saint; rather,
that by learning from the saint’s example, they could begin to improve their own behavior.
2