Monasteries and the geography of power in the age of bede

Northern History

Volumn 45, Issue 1, 2008, Pages

  Wood, Ian ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Bernicia; Deira; Lower Tyne; Ryedale; Vale of Pickering

Indexed keywords

EID: 57749139018     PISSN: 0078172X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1179/174587008X256584     Document Type: Article

References (98)

1. E. g. , E. John, Reassessing Anglo-Saxon England (Manchester, 1996), p. 7, where Whitby is regarded as the ecclesiastical centre for Deira.
2. K. H. Jackson, Language and History in Early Britain (Edinburgh, 1953), pp. 419-21 (Deira), 701-05 (Bernicia).
3. P. Hunter-Blair, 'The boundary between Bernicia and Deira', Archaeologia Aeliana, 4th series, XXVII (1949), 46-59, reprinted in id. , Anglo-Saxon Northumbria (1984).
4. P. Hunter-Blair, 'The Northumbrians and their southern frontier', AA4, XXVI (1948), 98-126, at 98-104, reprinted in id. , Anglo-Saxon Northumbria.
5. F. Orton, I. N. Wood and C. Lees, Fragments of History: Rethinking the Ruthwell and Bewcastle Monuments (Manchester, 2007), p. 108.
6. Hunter-Blair, 'The Northumbrians and their southern frontier', p. 99.
7. P. Hunter-Blair, Northumbria in the Days of Bede (1976), p. 28.
8. John G. F. Hind, 'Elmet and Deira - forest names in Yorkshire', Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, XXVIII (1978-80), 541-52, at 547-52
9. see E. P. Hamp, 'On notable trees', Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, XXX (1982-83), 42-44.
10. D. Rollason, Northumbria, 500-1100: Creation and destruction of a Kingdom (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 202-7.
11. I. N. Wood, 'Bede's Jarrow', in A Place to Believe In, ed. C. Lees and G. Overing, (University Park, Pennsylvania, 2006), pp. 75-77.
12. C. Plummer, Baedae Opera Historica (Oxford, 1896), vol. 2, 164.
13. E. John, 'The social and political problems of the early English Church', in Land, Church and People: essays presented to Professor H. P. R. Finberg, ed. J. Thirsk (Reading, 1970), pp. 39-63.
14. For the process of memorialisation see P. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance (Princeton, 1994), esp. p. 7.
15. P. Wormald, Bede and the Conversion of England: the Charter Evidence (Jarrow, 1985).
16. Ed. Plummer, Baedae Opera Historica, vol. 1, pp. 405-23.
17. S. Foot, Monastic Life in Anglo-Saxon England, c. 600-900 (Cambridge, 2006), p. 76, questions the scale of land held by lesser monasteries. But if anything like as many Anglian monasteries as have been hypothesised from textual, sculptural and architectural evidence, we are still dealing with a considerable amount of property. But see also ibid. , pp. 87-88.
18. R. Abels, Lordship and military obligation in Anglo-Saxon England (1988), pp. 1-57.
19. The major attempt remains E. John, Land tenure in Early England (Leicester, 1964).
20. Despite the arguments put forward in J. Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society (Oxford, 2005)
21. and in Foot, Monastic Life in Anglo-Saxon England, for using the term 'minsters' rather than 'monasteries', I deliberately use the latter word in this article. Monasteries and monasticism were part of a Europe-wide phenomenon: the use of the English term 'minster' suggests that we can deal with the Anglo-Saxon material in isolation, which, for the seventh and eighth centuries at least, is simply not the case.
22. Bede, Epistola ad Ecgbertum episcopum, ch. 10
23. Plummer, Baedae Opera Historica, vol. 1, pp. 405-23.
24. In Francia kings had no monopoly of land, but there too a significant number of the major monastic foundations were established on royal land. I. N. Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms 450-751 (1994), pp. 183-84, 192-94.
25. Boniface, ep. 73.
26. Bede, Epistola ad Ecgbertum, ch. 13.
27. Aethelwulf, De Abbatibus, ed. A. Campbell (Oxford, 1967), II and II. 35-51.
28. W. Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History (Princeton, 1988), pp. 235-328.
29. M. Carver, 'Why that? Why there? Why then? The politics of early medieval monumentality', in Image and Power in the Archaeology of Early Medieval Britain. Essays in honour of Rosemary Cramp, ed. H. Hamerow and A. MacGregor (Oxford, 2001), pp. 1-22, puts rivalry at the centre of the erection of ecclesiastical monuments.
30. R. Bailey, Viking Age Sculpture (1980), p. 81.
31. E. Cambridge, 'The early church in County Durham: a reassessment', Journal of the British Archaeological Association, CXXXVII (1984), 65-85, at 75-6.
32. Alcuin, Vita Willibrordi, ch. 1
33. H. -J. Reischmann, Willibrord Apostel der Friesen (Darmstadt, 1989).
34. Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, IV 19
35. Plummer, Baedae Opera Historica.
36. Bede, Vita Cuthberti, ch. 24
37. B. Colgrave, Two Lives of Cuthbert (Cambridge, 1940).
38. The sites are conveniently mapped in J. Lang, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, vol. 3, York and Eastern Yorkshire (Oxford, 1991), 4
39. see the discussion of monumental sculpture in Carver, 'Why that? Why there? Why then? The Politics of Early Medieval Monumentality', p. 17.
40. Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, v 2, 6.
41. Stephanus, Vita Wilfridi, ch. 8, 17
42. B. Colgrave, The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus (Cambridge, 1927).
43. P. Hill, Whithorn and St Ninian (Stroud, 1997).
44. Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, III 23
45. K. H. Krüger, Königsgrabkirchen der Franken, Angelsachsen, und Langobarden bis zur Mitte des 8. Jahrhunderts: Ein historischer Katalog (Munich, 1971), pp. 300-4.
46. I am indebted to Richard Morris, Dominic Powlesland and David Stocker for this information.
47. Lang, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, vol. 3, p. 162.
48. P. A. Rahtz and L. Watts, 'Kirkdale Anglo-Saxon minster', Current Archaeology, XIII (1997), 419-22.
49. Vita Ceolfridi, ch. 29, ed. Plummer, Baedae Opera Historica: R. K. Morris, Journeys from Jarrow, Jarrow Lecture (forthcoming).
50. Vita Ceolfridi, ch. 2.
51. A. H. Smith, The Place-Names of the North Riding of Yorkshire, English Place-Name Society, V (Cambridge, 1928), pp. 53 (for Gilling in Ryedale) and 288. Smith, surely rightly, dismisses the identification of In Getlingum with Collingham, near Leeds, although the Anglian cross, with its intriguing inscription demands consideration within the history of Northumbrian traditions of remembrance.
52. Smith, The Place-Names of the North Riding of Yorkshire, p. 288.
53. J. Lang, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, vol. 6, Northern Yorkshire (Oxford, 2001), pp. 113-18.
54. Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, ch. 5, ed. T. Johnson South (Cambridge, 2002), p. 47.
55. Michael Lapidge, however, has suggested that Crayke should be seen as the site of Eanmund's monastery, described in Æthelwulf's De Abbatibus: 'Aediluulf and the School of York', in Lateinische Kultur im VIII. Jahrhundert. Traube-Gedenkschrift, ed. A. Lehner and W. Berschin (St Ottilien, 1990), pp. 161-78
56. reprinted in Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature, 600-899 (1996), pp. 381-98.
57. Certainly the assertions of the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto are open to question, but see Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, p. 222.
58. I am still, therefore, inclined to follow David Howlett, 'The Provenance, Date and Structure of De Abbatibus', AA5, III (1975), 121-30, in his identification of Bywell as the likely site of Eanmund's foundation. Whether one follows Lapidge or Howlett, Crayke remains an eighth-century monastery.
59. Paul I, ep. to Eadberht, A. W. Haddan and W. Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland, III (Oxford, 1879), 394-96.
60. Smith, The Place-Names of the North Riding of Yorkshire, p. 51:
61. E. Eckwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names, 4th edn (Oxford, 1960), p. 253.
62. id. , English Place-Name Elements, Part 1 (Cambridge, 1956), p. 256.
63. See the map in R. Morris, Churches in the Landscape (1989), p. 122.
64. Wood, 'Bede's Jarrow'.
65. Vita Ceolfridi, ch. 12.
66. M. S. Parker, 'An Anglo-Saxon monastery in the lower Don valley', Northern History, XXI (1985), 19-32:
67. W. Richardson, 'The Venerable Bede and a lost Saxon monastery in Yorkshire', Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, LVII (1985), 15-22.
68. Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius hoc est Dunelmis Ecclesie, II 5, ed. D. W. Rollason (Oxford, 2000), p. 89;
69. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, MSS D and E, s. a. 794: Plummer, Baedae Opera Historica, I, p. xi, n. 2.
70. J. Leland, De Rebus Britannicis Collectanea, IV, 43
71. 'Edwinus, rex Northumbrorum, sacellum erexit Tinemutae ex ligno, in quo Rosella, ejus filia, postea velum sacrum accepit. S. Oswaldus monasteriolum de Tinemuthe ex ligneo lapideum fecit. ' For the archaeology of Tynemouth, R. J. Cramp, 'Monastic sites', in The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. D. M. Wilson, paperback edn (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 217-20.
72. See Plummer, Baedae Opera Historica, vol. 2, p. 164.
73. Leland, De Rebus Britannicis Collectanea, IV, 42.
74. Liber Vitae Ecclesiae Dunelmensis, ed. J. Stevenson, Surtees Society, XIII (1841), 1-2.
75. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, MS E, s. a. 792. Could Osred, a king who, like Oswine, was murdered, have been mistaken for the martyr?
76. H. M. Taylor and J. Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, I (Cambridge, 1965), 121-26.
77. Howlett, 'The provenance, date and structure of the De Abbatibus'
78. the case is opposed by M. Lapidge. 'Aediluulf and the School of York'.
79. Taylor and Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, I, 172-76.
80. Cambridge, 'The early church in County Durham', 75-76.
81. Aethelwulf, De Abbatibus, II. 35-64.
82. Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, continuationes, ed. Plummer, p. 361.
83. For the topography of the Vale of Pickering, Ryedale and the Upper Derwent, see Morris, Journeys from Jarrow.
84. C. J. Dunn, P. S. Barnwell and L. Butler, 'The confusion of conversion: Streanæshalch, Strensall and Whitby and the Northumbrian Church', in The Cross Goes North, ed. M. Carver (York, 2003), pp. 311-26.
85. A. Thacker, 'Membra disiecta: the division of the body and the diffusion of the cult', in Oswald: Northumbrian king to European saint, ed. C. Stancliffe and E. Cambridge (Stamford, 1995), pp. 97-127,
86. at 110: Karkov, 'Whitby, Jarrow and the commemoration of death in Northumbria', pp. 130-32.
87. Vita Gregorii, ch. 18-19, ed. B. Colgrave, The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great by an anonymous monk of Whitby (Kansas City, 1968).
88. There has been some debate as to which Hatfield hosted the council: see C. Cubitt, Anglo-Saxon Church Councils c. 650-c. 850 (1995), pp. 301-2.
89. The fact that many of its concerns were northern, and indeed that Bede described it as taking place in campo Haethfeltha (Historia Ecclesiastica, V 24), suggests that the Nottinghamshire site is the more likely.
90. Vita Ceolfridi, ch. 2, 3: Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, IV 12.
91. P. Nora, Realms of Memory, I, Conflicts and Divisions (New York, 1996), 1.
92. See, for instance, E. Ó Carragáin's comment on the 'contemplative tranquility of Wearmouth-Jarrow', in id. , Ritual and the Rood (2005), p. 284.
93. Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, V 22;
94. Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History, p. 280.
95. Bede, Historia Abbatum, ch. 15, ed. Plummer, Baedae Opera Historica.
96. J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, Early Germanic Kingship in England and on the Continent (Oxford, 1971), pp. 76-78.
97. Alcuin, Versus de Patribus, Regibus et Sanctis Euboricensis Ecclesiae, ed. P. Godman
98. Alcuin, The Bishops, Kings and Saints of York (Oxford, 1982).