Posts Tagged ‘Hagiography’

Philip of Harvengt’s Life of the Blessed Virgin Oda

Philip of Harvengt’s Life of the Blessed Virgin Oda

By Lynsey Robertson

Journal of Medieval History, Vol.36:1 (2010)

Abstract: For every famous author of the twelfth-century renaissance, there are numerous lesser-known writers. Despite being overshadowed by more brilliant scholars or those closer to the centre of important events, their voices add depth to the study of the intellectual and religious history of this period. A founding member of one of the earliest Premonstratensian houses, a highly-educated and prolific author, much in demand as a hagiographer, and a vigorous defender of the clerical order, Philip of Harvengt is one such writer, and a worthy subject for study. This article examines one of his hagiographical works, the Life of the Blessed Virgin Oda, a nun attached to his own house, whom he portrays as a martyr. It analyses the predominant and recurrent concerns and ideals expressed in the Life, particularly the claim to martyrdom, and the means by which this is expressed.

Introduction: Philip of Harvengt (c.1100–83) is not a well-known figure in the history of the middle ages, although he was an able and prolific author, and in his lifetime a sought-after writer of hagiographies. Alongside the ‘big names’ of the twelfth-century intellectual and religious ferment, such as St Bernard and Peter Abelard, it is easy for less controversial figures such as Philip to be overlooked. Yet he was one of the earliest members of a new religious order, corresponded with princes and bishops, and, as a vigorous defender of the clerical order, engaged in the passionate debate concerning the respective roles of clerks and monks. This is not to say that his work has gone unnoticed. There has been long-standing interest in Philip’s writings on the part of monastic historians, and in more recent years his profile has increasingly been raised. Articles have been published on aspects of Philip’s work, his treatise De institutione clericorum has been consulted in discussions on the spirituality of the regular canons, and his commentary In Cantica Canticorum has been studied alongside similar works by Rupert of Deutz and William of Newburgh. Yet there are still many aspects of his life and writings which are worthy of further examination, and his oeuvre as a hagiographer is one of these. This article investigates a portion of the last, by examining in detail his Life of the Blessed Virgin Oda.

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8 Mar 2010
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Inventing paganism in eighth-century Bavaria

Inventing paganism in eighth-century Bavaria

By Jonathan Couser

Early Medieval Europe, Vol18:1 (2010)

Abstract: This article examines the hagiographies of Saints Emmeram and Corbinian and the synod of Neuching from eighth-century Bavaria. It argues that the references to pagan survivals in these texts are misleading, in the absence of other evidence of paganism in the region. Rather, since these texts were composed in a narrow window of time from 769–774, this anxiety reflects concerns aroused by pagan uprisings in neighbouring Carantania, which were only suppressed in 772. Thus, the texts’ authors ‘invented’ paganism in their own culture as their perceptions of the dividing lines between Christianity and paganism grew sharper.

Introduction: Our vision of the Christianization of medieval Europe has changed drastically over the last generation. It was once possible to see early medieval Germany as a land of virgin paganism, into which missionaries like Amandus, Willibrord and Boniface boldly brought an alien Christian gospel. This vision was framed in terms derived from the missionary movements of western Christendom in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Recent scholarship has made this image untenable. The work of Lutz von Padberg, for instance, has stressed the cultural similarities between Christian and non-Christian peoples of Europe, which made possible the incorporation of the latter into Christendom. Ian Wood’s study of the hagiographies of missionary figures, our main sources of information on Christianization, has shown the extent to which these accounts are literary constructions, used by Christians to discuss missionary agendas, rather than direct reflections of actual activities. Archaeology and careful analysis of the written sources have shown evidence of the presence of Christianity in many ‘mission fields’ long pre-dating the arrival of missionaries themselves. Personalities like Columbanus or Boniface, once presented as exemplary early medieval missionaries, now appear more like ‘reformers’ and ‘consolidators’ of existing Christian communities.

Early medieval Bavaria is a striking example of the shift from narratives of mission and conversion to those of reform and organization. Scholarly opinion up to the mid-twentieth century generally thought that Christianity virtually disappeared from the former Roman provinces of Rhaetia and Noricum in the sixth and seventh centuries. Post-war historians, however, particularly following the lead of Friedrich Prinz, moved toward seeing a strong continuity of Christianity in the area. Thus, Bavaria’s re-entry into European Christendom in the eighth century now seems like a process of reorganization and reform rather than of mission and conversion.

The continuity paradigm has carried the field, but it leaves a lingering question: what to make of those sources which older scholarship took as evidence of paganism? If there was no great mission converting the Bavarians to Christianity, why did Bavarian authors sometimes write as though there had been? These sources betray an anxiety on the part of the Bavarian Christian leadership of the eighth century that their people had been entangled in actual paganism in the recent past, and that some current practices might still be tainted by demonic influences. These texts do not, in fact, reflect memories of actual militant paganism in the region. Significantly, all of them were written within a narrow time frame, between 768 and 772. This article will argue that such sources indicate a shift in the mentalities of the Bavarian clergy, particularly expressed by Bishop Arbeo of Freising, as the clergy developed a missionary agenda and encountered setbacks in the pursuit of that agenda. These setbacks caused Arbeo and the other clergy to re-imagine their own past and thus to invent a pagan past for their own people.

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3 Mar 2010
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Grand Princess Olga: Pagan Vengeance and Sainthood in Kievan Rus

Grand Princess Olga: Pagan Vengeance and Sainthood in Kievan Rus

By Heidi Sherman

World History Connected, Vol. 7.1 (2010)

Introduction: It is a strange historical twist that the first “Russian” woman to be canonized in the Orthodox Church was a Viking warrior princess who spent much of her life as a pagan. Olga earned her sainthood by becoming the first member of the house of Riurik, the dynasty that ruled European Russia and parts of Ukraine and Belorus for more than seven centuries (860s – 1598), to convert to Christianity. But the role of this battle maid in the spread of Christendom to the eastern Slavs is only part of her remarkable contribution to the history of Eastern Europe.

Olga is the only woman for whom we possess significant biographical details in the written sources for the Kievan Rus period of Russian history (860s – 1240). In contrast with Western Europe and the Byzantine Empire, medieval Russian women did not participate in literary culture aside from the occasional inscription or letter of the type found on birch bark in the excavations of medieval Novgorod. The laws of the period reveal that women enjoyed few legal protections compared with their male peers. Women could inherit property from their parents or husbands, but only in the absence of brothers and sons. If the sons were young, the widow managed the family’s estate until the sons reached their majority.

Olga is in this way typical of the free elite women of Kiev. For nearly two decades (945 to 962) Olga ruled the rapidly expanding kingdom of Kievan Rus, which received its name from its capital Kiev on the middle Dniepr River, as regent for her young son Sviatoslav. And she did so in stunning fashion despite significant obstacles. Olga assumed power at a time when the realm was shaken by tribal violence and administrative disorder. She bloodily pacified rebellious tribes and replaced tribute taking with a regular system of taxation. Olga’s decision to convert to eastern Christianity instead of Catholicism was also a fundamental step in the spiritual and political alliance of Kievan Rus with the Byzantine Orthodox world rather than with Latin Christendom. In short, it took the will and perspicacity of a barbarian widow to begin the transformation of the Rus lands from a loosely knit pagan chieftaincy into a more stable and centralized Christian kingdom.

Reconstructing Olga’s story is a complex matter because there was very little that was written down during her lifetime, when Kievan Rus was as yet a mainly pagan kingdom without a literary tradition. Chroniclers may have begun to record the actions of the dynasty after the official adoption of Christianity a generation after Olga’s death, but these early records unfortunately have not survived. The most important account of Olga’s life comes from a source written many generations after Olga’s lifetime, The Tale of Bygone Years, a chronicle that was completed by the monks Nestor and Silvester who lived at the Kievan Caves monastery, which was supported by the Riurikid princes of Kiev. As Riurikid dependants, the author-monks organized the narrative around the role of the ruling family’s ancestors in creating the Christian state. Because much of the chronicle covered events that took place many generations prior to its compilation, the authors appear to base the tale upon oral accounts, some clearly inspired by legend. The result is a rich and often dramatic history that is reflective of the multi-ethnic traditions, Eastern Slavic, Scandinavian, and Finnic, that made up the culture of Kievan Rus. Olga’s story as told in The Tale of Bygone Years is a product of this type of chronicle writing. We are fortunate that the chroniclers fashioned an exciting portrait of Olga, one that can be corroborated occasionally by contemporary sources from Western Europe and the Byzantine Empire. An examination of Olga, therefore, is in effect an exercise in early medieval source criticism.

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18 Feb 2010
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Gregory the Great as ‘Apostle of the English’ in Post-Conquest Canterbury

Gregory the Great as ‘Apostle of the English’ in Post-Conquest Canterbury

By Paul Antony Hayward

Journal of Ecclesiatical History, Vol.55:1 (2004)

Abstract:  This article re-examines the history of a saint’s cult that has been taken as a crucial test case in discussions of Norman attitudes towards Anglo-Saxon culture. The first study to offer a systematic survey of the liturgical, diplomatic and hagiographical evidence, it shows that the promotion of Gregory the Great as ‘Apostle of the English’ was not – as argued by the late Richard Southern – a concession to native ethnic sensibilities on the part of the Archbishop Anselm (1093-1109), but a contribution to the exemption dispute between the archbishopric of Canterbury and St Augustine’s Abbey. In so doing, the article draws attention to the ways in which ethnic rhetoric was constructed and manipulated to support claims to status and power in the context of medieval colonialism. A secondary theme is the intersections between local conflicts between churches over status and privilege, and the (inter)national issues of Church-State relations in the Middle Ages – especially the English version of the Investiture Contest.

Introduction: For anyone familiar with the once traditional characterisation of Archbishop Lanfranc (1070–89) as the arch-critic of English saints’ cults, one of the most intriguing features of his monastic statutes is the role played by the natal feast of St Gregory the Great – the anniversary of his death and rebirth in heaven on 12 March 604.

Lanfranc singles out for special treatment thirty-five feasts of the temporal and sanctoral cycles and divides them into three ranks: five, including Easter and Christmas, to be celebrated with the utmost grandeur, fifteen to be kept with almost as much magnificence and another fifteen to be observed with somewhat less splendour. Gregory’s natal feast is placed in the second group, together with that of Augustine, here designated the ‘archbishop of the English’.

Thus far the treatment given to Gregory’s cult is in keeping with that of Lanfranc’s Cluniac models, but the text then goes on to state that Gregory’s feast is to be accorded this distinguished rank because he is ‘our – that is, the English people’s – apostle’. With these words this authoritarian and sometimes oppressive Norman prelate would appear to have embraced a saint’s cult that was dear to his English subjects.

There is the possibility, of course, that they were interpolated into the text soon after the archbishop’s death, for all of the surviving manuscripts were produced after his pontificate. But even if we allow for this relatively unlikely scenario, this gloss will still have originated at Christ Church and has still to be seen as a reflection of the archbishopric’s intentions that demands explanation.

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16 Feb 2010
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Clare of Montefalco (1268-1308): the life of the soul is the love of God

Clare of Montefalco (1268-1308): the life of the soul is the love of God

By Margaret E. Klotz

PhD Dissertaton, University of Toronto, 2002

Abstract: this dissertation introduces St. Clare of Montefalco, a medieval mystic of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, to the English-speaking world. The thesis examines aspects of her theology emphasized in her spirituality as well as presenting her life in the context of her culture.

The background material contains the social, cultural, ecclesiastical, religious, and political background of the times in which she lived. Since there are no extant writings of Clare of Montefalco, the chief sources used in the thesis are ‘ Il Processo di Chiara da Montefalco‘, which was held in 1318 and the ‘ Vita S Clarae de Cruce‘, which was written before 1320.

The sources studied provide information about Clare and her relationship to her family, her culture, and her Church. They also provide information about Clare’s life as a religious and a mystic. The thesis is heavily dependent on non-autobiographical material. Therefore, conscious of the use of hagiography, the dissertation discusses what hagiography is and how Berengario, her initial biographer and the bishop who invoked the apostolic process of canonization, makes use of this particular genre.

The dissertation presents Clare as an alternative theology resource of the Middle Ages different from that provided by the scholastic and monastic teachers of the period. Using the expertise of Bernard McGinn and Jean LeClercq, the thesis presents a comparison among the three types of theology; namely, scholastic, monastic and vernacular.

Clare crosses the boundaries between the categories of vernacular and monastic theologian. Having developed a method for claiming Clare as a theologian, and using the words and deeds of Clare, as seen and heard by the people who lived with her or whom she encountered, the thesis gives a portrait of the relationship of Clare to God and Jesus Christ. Integrating her theology of God and Jesus Christ to how she lived her life in ‘imitatio Christi’ completes the presentation of Clare of Montefalco as theologian, teacher, contemplative, and mystic.

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9 Feb 2010
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Anorexia and the Holiness of Saint Catherine of Siena

Anorexia and the Holiness of Saint Catherine of Siena

By Mario Reda and Giuseppe Sacco

Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, Vol.8:1 (2001)

Introduction: In the medieval period, the control, renunciation, and torture of the body were understood not so much as a rejection of the physical, but as a way of achieving the divine. Gradually, the manifestations of this renunciation of the body came to apply peculiarly to women, for whom this state may be defined as “holy anorexia,” identified by the following features.

The Female Body as an Expression of Sexuality. The body of the woman was seen as an expression of sexuality, curvaceous with prominent breasts, and was thought to be the product of the woman herself, whereas the male body was formed by God. This supposition was confirmed by the extremely changeable nature of the female body, particularly in terms of control. Thus, the female easily slipped into a trance, into levitation, into catatonic states, leading rapidly to asceticism or anorexia. She displayed spontaneous lactation and bleeding, manifestations that sometimes were accompanied by stigmata. Indeed, at least fifteen medieval saints bled at the moment they received the Eucharist. In contrast, of saints in other periods of history, only Padre Pio and San Francesco displayed stigmata that were preserved on their bodies after death. If we are to consider specifically anorexia as a characteristic of sanctity, we must examine the periods of 1200 and the end of 1500 when Theresa of Avila (a Spanish saint who joined with a mystic force and spirit to reform Catholicism, resulting in the reinvigoration of all religious orders) began frequently to use twigs of olives to induce vomiting and completely empty her stomach. In this way she was able to truly take into herself the Host, which became her unique source of sustenance. From an investigation of the conduct of 170 Italian medieval saints by Rudolph Bell, fully one half of them exhibited symptoms of anorexia.

The Emotions of Women. Also, the lifestyles and emotional expressions of women have been assessed. The emotions were considered by medieval saints as mystical experiences, deriving from a meeting with God. Margaret of Faenza, Angela of Foligno, and Margaret of Oingt were likened to a slender bush with five branches representing the five senses, which were able to bloom only in a brook (representing Christ), bringing to life their feelings of sensation, including the awakening of sexuality.

Bodily Manifestations as Affirmation of Mystico-Religious Rules. Anorexia and other manifestations of the body provided the medieval woman a unique opportunity to affirm the true power of mystico-religious rules. A woman was destined to get married with whomever was designated according to family origin; otherwise, she entered a convent closed to the outside. In the latter case, however, the medieval woman was not allowed to study or acquire clerical power nor to speak in public or to preach. However, the complete renunciation of the body made it possible for a woman to foster, express, and experience her sensations and desires as manifestations of faith and religious expression. “Holy anorexia” was a confirmation of the role of mystical power, providing the woman with a way to convincingly affirm her sanctity to her confessors in whom she placed her trust and gave her charge. In fact, she placed her trust in her confessors in the same way that trust was placed in the family, which guaranteed in return to nurture her. Anorexia, together with flagellation and other bodily suffering, became the way for a woman to achieve holiness. Her body became the symbol of lust, of weakness, and irrationality.

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27 Jan 2010
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Margery Kempe: Madwoman or Mystic – A Narrative Approach to the Representation of Madness and Mysticism in Medieval England

Margery Kempe: Madwoman or Mystic – A Narrative Approach to the Representation of Madness and Mysticism in Medieval England

By Alison Torn

Narrative and Fiction: an Interdisciplinary Approach, edited by David Robinson et al. (University of Huddersfield, 2008)

Introduction: Historically, the boundaries between madness and mysticism have been characterised by fluidity. However, since the emergence of psychiatry in the 1800s, attempts have been made to place a firm distinction between the two experiences. In our increasingly Western, secularised society, experiences of mysticism have become marginalised outside of their religious context and in some cases, pathologised within the classificatory systems that construct mental illness. In this paper, I want to examine this contested boundary by discussing my analysis of a medieval woman’s experience of both madness and mysticism. I shall argue that rather than this text being interpreted as an early narrative of madness, it is primarily an attempted hagiography, that is a narrative of a saint’s life.

The Book of Margery Kempe tells the story of one woman’s spiritual journey in Medieval England over a twenty-five year period, describing her quest to establish spiritual authority as a result of her personal conversations with Jesus and God. Whilst the text is written in the third person, it is generally acknowledged to be the first autobiography written in the English language. It is also recognised as being the first autobiographical account of madness. The narrative begins around 1393, with the self-acknowledged onset of madness, which pre-empts for Margery, a spiritual crisis. This episode of madness is barely dealt with, taking up just two pages of a two hundred page book.

Throughout the remainder of the Book, Kempe describes not only conversations with Jesus, Mary, God and other religious figures, but also visitations, with the aforementioned figures appearing to Margery and also Margery herself, participating in biblical scenes such as the birth and crucifixion of Christ. Her religious fervour leads to prolonged public demonstrations of loud wailing, sobbing and writhing, much to the irritation of both commoners and clerics. Kempe’s story relates not only Margery’s struggle to achieve some form of divine spirituality, but also her polarised reception within society. Some, most notably religious authority figures, revered Margery as a holy mystic, whilst others, mainly commoners, rejected and slandered her as a devil worshiper. Whilst some authors have construed Margery’s religious visitations as part of her madness, I want to make a thematic distinction between these two experiences, as I believe, as Margery herself did, that they are inherently different.

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27 Jan 2010
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Interview with Frederick S. Paxton

Frederick S. Paxton, a Professor of History at Connecticut College. The main focus of his research has been about how medieval people approached sickness, healing and mortality. In this latest book, Anchoress and Abbess in Ninth-century Saxony: The Lives of Liutbirga of Wendhausen and Hathumoda of Gandersheim, Paxton provides an edition and translation of hagiographic texts about two important women in the early Christian church in Saxony. We interviewed him by email:

1. How did you become interested in researching Liutbirga of Wendhausen and Hathumoda of Gandersheim?

In Christianizing Death (1990), I argued that Latin Christian death rituals began to take definitive form in the later ninth century. After finishing that book, I wondered if there were any contemporary narrative accounts that might confirm my findings. The Life of Hathumoda seemed a perfect test case. Unlike many hagiographical sources, it was written shortly after the death of its subject by someone who knew her well and was present when she died. And I was not disappointed. The ritual accompaniment to Hathumoda’s death played out just as I had expected. To my surprise, though, the text passed over the formal deathbed rituals in a rather perfunctory manner. Much more time was spent on the visions that Hathumoda experienced during her terminal illness, the emotional and spiritual responses of the women who tended her in her dying, and their struggle to come to terms with her death. There was a bigger story there and I wanted to get to the bottom of it. The Life of Liutbirga got added to the mix at the suggestion of Tom Noble, who thought that the two lives made a good pair because they were roughly contemporary and from the same region. Analyzing and contextualizing them together thus helped expand the research to Saxony as a whole and to the larger fields of women’s spirituality and the history of the family.

2. Although the three works you translate revolve around Liutbirga and Hathumoda, the texts also detail a number of other ninth-century Saxon women. How do these depictions of other women help to reveal Christian life in this period?

These texts really do stand out for their focus on women. Men appear, of course, but only in supporting roles. This is because Gisla figures primarily as a widow, and Liutbirga never married, and also because Liutbirga’s cell was in the church of a house of canonesses and Hathumoda was abbess of a similar community of cloistered women. They thus reveal arenas of female activity that do not often appear in early medieval sources, one secular and two religious: the management of aristocratic households and their dispersed estates, teaching and dispensing spiritual guidance to the laity (if at the price of ritual enclosure), and leading a newly established women’s community. And they do it with a great deal of narrative power, especially in the descriptions of Hathumoda’s visions and Liutbirga’s struggles with the devil, and with added doses of naturalism and psychological acuity in the extraordinary accounts of Liutbirga and the women who came to see her, or just happened to be passing by her cell.

3. You also talk about how ninth-century Saxony was only recently converted to Christianity, and that the Saxons were able to “fashion their understanding of Christianity in their own image.” How do your texts help reveal some of the unique aspects of Christianity in Saxony?

Gender relations in Saxony seem to have been more balanced than in other places in Europe and ordinary families, like Hathumoda’s and Liutbirga’s, seem to have played as much of a role in the process of Christianization as missionary bishops and Benedictine monks. Both Gandersheim and Wendhausen were family foundations built on family land. They were blessed by the clergy, but otherwise independent. Moreover, as much as monks like Agius of Corvey wanted all cloistered women to become nuns, aristocratic Saxon families preferred the more flexible status of canonesses, who took no permanent vows, could own property and could leave the cloister at will. At least in the first generation or two, the abbesses were daughters of the founding couple. Other women of the family also lived there: some their whole lives, some until they were married, and others after they were widowed, like Hathumoda’s mother Oda, who spent the last decades of her life at Gandersheim. The firm establishment of this particular way of life in the later ninth century led to its blossoming in Ottonian Germany, where abbesses, queens and canonesses played key roles in the religious, cultural and even political life of the Reich.

4. Finally, going back to my undergraduate days, I found that hagiographic texts could sometimes be difficult to understand and to teach. How would you go about teaching students at an undergraduate level the Lives of Liutbirga of Wendhausen and Hathumoda of Gandersheim?

You’re right about that. Saints’ lives, especially if they are filled with miracle stories and stock figures, often elicit reactions from students along the lines of “Why would anyone believe this stuff?” Others find the blend of natural and supernatural interesting and challenging, though, and that mixture is very evident in these texts. There are visions and miracles, but the principal characters are also recognizably human, even flawed. Hathumoda and Liutbirga are presented as holy women, but they are also shown struggling with their faith, and acting within the context of real families and institutions. This opens up unusual opportunities for teaching. I was surprised when creating the index for the volume to see how many entries there were on topics like childhood and children, daughters, families, friendship, nobles and nobility, servants and servitude, virgins and virginity, widows and widowhood. There is also a myriad of information on abbesses and abbeys, care of the sick, responses to death and dying, dreams and visions, and other forms of piety for students interested in early medieval religion. Finally, enough translations of primary texts from the ninth and even the tenth centuries are now readily available that students can use these texts together with related ones for pretty focused comparative research, even without proficiency in Latin.

We thank Professor Paxton for answering our questions.

14 Jan 2010
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Among These Authors are the Men of Bec: Historical Writing among the Monks of Bec

Among These Authors are the Men of Bec: Historical Writing among the Monks of Bec

Vaughn, Sally N.

Essays in Medieval Studies, vol. 17 (2000)

Abstract

Looking back on the accomplishments of the monks of Bec about a century after the abbey’s foundation in 1034-7, an anonymous author wrote a “Praefatio” to Vita Herluini, the first of a whole set of biographies of Bec’s abbots. First, the “Praefatio” explained, it was customary among the ancients to “set up likenesses” and to commit to writing the outstanding deeds of their ancestors, thereby memorializing them for the instruction of future generations “as an example of virtue and an inducement to good living.” Likewise, it continues, the (early) writers of the Church commemorated the lives of the saints in writing to preserve for their followers “a clear path of uprightness.” But the “moderns” (of his own time) wrote for a different purpose: not, as the ancients, to capture the favor of the common people, but so that the readers might follow the example of good living put before them:

For this purpose therefore the vigorous acts and marvelous virtues of the saints are written and read, so that in them may be praise to God. . . . And let the descendants regard and follow the footprints of their ancestors, so that without stumbling they can run the life of salvation with the steps of good work towards glory and the prize of God’s heavenly calling. This the ancients did, this many men of this age still do, not wishing to pass over in silence those whom they have thought of some importance. Among these authors are the men of Bec, who have written about the first architects and builders of that place . . . (cols. 695-96, emphasis added).

Thus, in this little “history” of the commemoration of great men by statues; by art; by biographical writing of ancient Rome; by the hagiography of the early Christian Fathers; and by the continuance of the custom with a new purpose in their own age, the anonymous monk of Bec puts his abbey and its authors in a historical context.

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27 Dec 2009
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The Eccentric Hermit-Bishop: Bede, Cuthbert, and Farne Island

The Eccentric Hermit-Bishop:Bede, Cuthbert, and Farne Island

Aggeler, Christian

Essays in Medieval Studies, vol. 16 (1999)

Abstract

Cuthbert, the renowned saint of early Anglo-Saxon Northumbria, enjoyed a multifaceted career. After submitting to monastic discipline as a young man, he became successively a prior, a hermit, and a bishop. Modern historians have struggled to explain how, in one lifetime, this seventh-century saint managed to be an energetic evangelist in the Northumbrian countryside, an effective administrator both inside and outside the monastery, and a religious solitary on a small, rocky island in the North Sea. How, to use Clare Stancliffe’s phrase, did he negotiate the “polarity between pastor and solitary”? A related question involves the depiction of these separate roles by the saint’s famous biographer, the Venerable Bede. Recent studies of Bede’s prose Vita Cuthberti, written c. 721, uniformly suggest that he crafted his text in such a way as to highlight the pastoral elements of the saint’s career at the expense of the eremitic elements. One commentator, for example, flatly asserts that Bede’s Cuthbert “subordinated the solitary life to the demands of the church.” The present article challenges such readings by arguing that although Bede clearly emphasizes Cuthbert’s missionary and pastoral activities in his prose Vita Cuthberti, he does not diminish the eremitic aspect of the saint’s life in order to do so. Instead, Bede’s portrait of Cuthbert suggests that the saint, while connected to the ecclesiastical organization of pre-Viking Northumbria, ultimately resides outside the church leadership’s machinery. Put in slightly different terms, in his prose Vita Cuthberti Bede ultimately insists on the saint’s liminality.

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26 Dec 2009
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