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Sin in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England
  • A Study of West Saxon and East Anglian Cults
  • Susan J. Ridyard
  • Published online:
    11 May 2010
    Print publication:
    26 January 1989
  • Within Anglo-Saxon England there was a strong and enduring tradition of royal sanctity - of men and women of royal birth who, in an age before the development of papal canonisation, came to be venerated as saints by the regional church. This study, which focuses on some of the best-documented cults of the ancient kingdoms of Wessex and East Anglia, is a contribution towards understanding the growth and continuing importance of England's royal cults. The author examines contemporary and near-contemporary theoretical interpretations of the relationship between royal birth and sanctity, analyses in depth the historical process of cult-creation, and addresses the problem of continuity of cult in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest of 1066. An understanding therefore emerges of the place of the English royal saint not only in Anglo-Saxon society but also in that of the Anglo-Norman realm.

  • 3 - Royal birth and the foundations of sanctity: theoretical interpretations

  • Susan J. Ridyard
  • Book:
    The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England
    Published online:
    11 May 2010
    Print publication:
    26 January 1989, pp 74-95

  • Summary

    J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, in his masterly study of early Germanic kingship, concluded a brief examination of the Merovingian royal cults with the statement that ‘Frankish respect for the Merovingians never reached the point where it was possible to expect or assume royal sanctity.’ A random glance at Bede's Historia ecclesiastica might suggest that, in contrast, such a point was reached, and reached at a relatively early date, in Anglo-Saxon England. Indeed, William Chaney has noted of the Anglo-Saxon period that ‘the sacral nature of kingship, pagan and Christian, would lead the folk to expect God to honour the stirps regia. The recognised form of this in the new religion was sainthood.’ For Chaney the Christian saint king was the lineal descendant of the sacral ruler of the age of the migrations: sanctity simply was carried in the blood or went with the job of the Anglo-Saxon kings and, by extension, of their consorts and their offspring. It is the purpose of this chapter, first, to demonstrate that the reality was nothing like so simple and, second, to review the statements made about the relationship between royal birth and sanctity by the hagiographers of the royal saints.

    ASCRIBED OR ACHIEVED? SANCTITY AND THE ROYAL STATE IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

    Kingship, as every medieval churchman knew and as every medieval ruler was informed, was instituted by divine concession: it was exercised Dei gratia.

  • 2 - The sources

  • Susan J. Ridyard
  • Book:
    The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England
    Published online:
    11 May 2010
    Print publication:
    26 January 1989, pp 8-73

  • Summary

    THE LEGENDS OF THE SAINTS

    In the making of a cult the preservation or acquisition of relics and the establishment of a shrine was but a first step. The success of the shrine was dependent upon continuing effective publicity; and that dependence generated a specialised literature whose function was to document the earthly career of the individual and to demonstrate the authenticity and efficacy of the relics there venerated. Among sources for the history and interpretation of the cults of the saints that literature occupies a place of prime importance. For the great majority of cults hagiography provides the earliest and by far the most complete evidence; for some it provides the only evidence. More than this, because it was generally written in association with the promotion of a cult, hagiography was itself a product of the phenomenon which it describes: it opens a unique window on the meaning which the cult held for its promoters and for its clients. The problems inherent in the genre, however, have caused it to be viewed with deep suspicion by generations of historians: it is the purpose of the following pages to review some of those problems and to propose a working model for the constructive use of the legends of the saints.

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