Writing the Wilton Women: Goscelin's Legend of Edith and Liber Confortatorius 2503514367, 9782503514369

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KATERN 1

WRITING THE WILTON WOMEN Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and Liber confortatorius __________________

MEDIEVAL WOMEN: TEXTS AND CONTEXTS Editorial Board under the auspices of the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Hull Juliette Dor (Université de Liège) Constant J. Mews (Monash University) Anneke Mulder-Bakker (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) Barbara Newman (Northwestern University) Nicholas Watson (Harvard University) Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Fordham University) Editorial Assistants Maryna Mews Edna Ruth Yahil

VOLUME 9

WRITING THE WILTON WOMEN Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and Liber confortatorius

Edited by

Stephanie Hollis with W. R. Barnes, Rebecca Hayward, Kathleen Loncar, and Michael Wright

F

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Writing the Wilton women : Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and Liber confortatorius. – (Medieval women : texts and contexts ; 9) 1.Goscelin of St Bertin. Liber confortatorius 2.Goscelin of St Bertin. Vita Edithae 3.Edith, Saint 4.Wilton Abbey 5.Monastic and religious life of women – England – Wiltshire – History – To 1500 6.Convents – England – Wiltshire – History – To 1500 7.Benedictine nuns – England – Wiltshire – History – To 1500 8.Monastic and religious life of women – Early works to 1800 9.Spiritual life – Early works to 1800 10.Hermits – Early works to 1800 I.Hollis, Stephanie II.Barnes, W.R. 248.8'943 ISBN 2503514367

© 2004, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2004/0095/61 ISBN: 2-503-51436-7 Printed in the EU on acid–free paper.

Contents Acknowledgements

vii

Abbreviations

ix

Contributors

xi

Introduction

1 STEPHANIE HOLLIS

Part 1—Goscelin’s Legend of Edith TRANSLATED BY MICHAEL WRIGHT AND KATHLEEN LONCAR

Note on the Translation of the Legend of Edith

17

MICHAEL WRIGHT

Chapter Headings in Rawlinson

21

The Vita of Edith

23

The Translatio of Edith

69

Part 2—Goscelin’s Liber confortatorius TRANSLATED BY W. R. BARNES AND REBECCA HAYWARD

Note on the Translation of the Liber confortatorius

97

W. R. BARNES AND REBECCA HAYWARD

Prologue

99

Book I

101

Book II

125

Book III

151

Book IV

175

Appendix: Textual Emendations

209

W. R. BARNES AND REBECCA HAYWARD

Part 3—The Wilton Women: Subjects and Audience Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women

217

STEPHANIE HOLLIS

St Edith and the Wilton Community

245

STEPHANIE HOLLIS

Edith as Contemplative and Bride of Christ

281

STEPHANIE HOLLIS

Wilton as a Centre of Learning

307

STEPHANIE HOLLIS

Part 4—The Liber confortatorius: The Writer and the Reader Spiritual Friendship and Gender Difference in the Liber confortatorius

341

REBECCA HAYWARD

Goscelin’s Liber confortatorius: Complaints and Consolations

355

REBECCA HAYWARD

The Anchorite’s Progress: Structure and Motif in the Liber confortatorius 369 REBECCA HAYWARD AND STEPHANIE HOLLIS

The Female Reader in the Liber confortatorius

385

REBECCA HAYWARD AND STEPHANIE HOLLIS

Goscelin’s Greeks and Romans

401

W. R. BARNES

Afterword

419 STEPHANIE HOLLIS

Works Cited

431

Index

443

Acknowledgements This project could not have been undertaken without the award of a University of Auckland Postdoctoral Fellowship. The authors wish to thank the University of Auckland Research Committee for this award, as well as for a subsequent travel grant for the Postdoctoral Fellow, Rebecca Hayward. We would also like to thank staff of the University of Auckland Library for their assistance, particularly Linda George and Christine Jackson. We are indebted to Giles Margetts for his generous assistance with microtexts. Acknowledgements are due to the British Library (for microfilm of British Library, Sloane MS 3103, fols 1–114), the National Library of Wales (for microfilm of Cardiff, Public Library, MS I. 381, fols 81–120), the Gotha Landesbibliothek (for photocopy of Gotha, Landesbibliothek, MS I. 81, fols 188v–203), and the Royal College of Physicians of London, for permission to reproduce fol. 76 of the Wilton Psalter. The editor wishes to thank Simon Forde, Constant Mews, and Jocelyn WoganBrowne for their advice and support, and Phillip Wheeler and Pamela Forde at the Library of the Royal College of Physicians for their assistance. Michael Wright wishes to acknowledge the assistance of staff at the Bodleian Library. Rebecca Hayward wishes to acknowledge the assistance of staff at the British Library, the Cambridge University Library, the Cardiff Public Library, the New York Public Library, the Robarts Library, University of Toronto, the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies Library, Toronto, the University of Sydney Library, and the Widener Library, Harvard University. Rebecca Hayward also wishes to acknowledge the advice and assistance of the following: Jill Mann (University of Notre Dame), George Rigg (University of Toronto), Alexandra Barratt (University of Waikato), Andrew Hughes (University of Toronto), Paul Hayward (University of Leicester), Margaret Edgcumbe (University of Auckland), Greti Dinkova-Bruun (University of Toronto), and the staff of the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, particularly David Howlett, Carolinne White, and Theo Christchev.

viii She would also like to thank Neil Wright, Alan and Vivienne Hayward, and Susan Carter for their personal support, and a number of others who kindly accommodated her during research trips: Philippa D’Eath, Claire Cowie and James Roth, Lucy Lewis, Sarah Tolmie and Scott Morgan Straker, Ruth Harvey, Beth and Wayne Mezitt, Jolisa Gracewood and Richard Easther, Justine Kirby, Kathleen O’Grady and Mey Rehemtulla, Simon Christmas, Ngaire Woods and Eugene Rogan, and Deborah and Steve Cannon.

Abbreviations C

Cardiff, Public Library, MS I. 381

CAO

Corpus antiphonalium officii, ed. by René-Jean Hesbert and René Prévost, 6 vols (Rome: Herder, 1963–79)

CCSA

Corpus Christianorum Brepols, 1990–)

CCSL

Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954–)

CCCM

Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis (Turnhout: Brepols, 1966–)

CSEL

Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (Vienna, 1866–)

G

Gotha, Landesbibliothek, MS I. 81

Liber confort

Ed. by C. H. Talbot, ‘The Liber confortatorius of Goscelin of Saint Bertin’, Analecta monastica, series 3, Studia Anselmiana, 37, ed. by M. M. Lebreton, J. Leclercq, and C. H. Talbot (Rome: Pontifical Institute of St Anselm, 1955), 1–117

PL

Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Latina, ed. by JacquesPaul Migne, 221 vols (Paris: Garnier, 1844–64)

R

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MS C938

(R)

Found only in the Rawlinson version of Vita Edithae, Chapters 2–24

Series

Apocryphorum

(Turnhout:

Translatio Edithae Ed. by A. Wilmart, ‘La légende de Ste Édith en prose et vers par le moine Goscelin’, Analecta Bollandiana, 56 (1938), 265–307 VCH

Victoria County History

Vita Edithae

Ed. by A. Wilmart, ‘La légende de Ste Édith en prose et vers par le moine Goscelin’, Analecta Bollandiana, 56 (1938), 5–101

x

Abbreviations of Biblical Books Am Bar Col Cor Dn Dt Eccl Ecclus Eph Esd Est Ex Ez Gal Gn Hb Heb Hg Is Jas Jb Jdt Jer Jgs Jl Jn Jo Kgs Lam Lk Lv Mal Mi Mk Mt Nm Phil Phlm Prv

Amos Baruch Colossians Corinthians Daniel Deuteronomy Ecclesiastes Ecclesiasticus Ephesians Esdras Esther Exodus Ezekiel Galatians Genesis Habukkuk Hebrews Haggai Isaiah James Job Judith Jeremiah Judges Joel John Joshua Kings (I, II Kings = I, II Samuel; III, IV Kings = I, II Kings) Lamentations Luke Leviticus Malachi Micah Mark Matthew Numbers Phillippians Philemon Proverbs

Ps(s) Pt Rom Ru Rv Sg Sir Tb Thes Ti Tm Wis Zec Zep

Psalm(s) Peter Romans Ruth Revelation Song of Songs Sirach Tobit Thessalonians Titus Timothy Wisdom (of Solomon) Zechariah (Zacharaiah) Zephaniah (Sophonias)

Contributors W. R. Barnes is Senior Lecturer in Classics and Associate Dean of Arts at The University of Auckland. His research interests are in Greek and Roman epic, especially Homer and Virgil, and ancient commentary on them. Rebecca Hayward completed a PhD at Cambridge University on representations of widows in medieval literature. She has published on the roles of widows in medieval romances. She was appointed as Postdoctoral Fellow for work on Writing the Wilton Women at The University of Auckland, where she is now an adjunct lecturer and tutor in the Department of English. She is currently researching medieval anchorites, and the lives and work of New Zealand medievalists during the twentieth century. Stephanie Hollis is Professor of English and Director of the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern European Studies at The University of Auckland. Her main interest is Anglo-Saxon women. She is currently working on a sequel to her AngloSaxon Women and the Church: Sharing a Common Fate (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1992), which focuses on the late Anglo-Saxon period, and a study of Goscelin’s Barking writings. Kathleen Loncar is a retired teacher of Latin. She completed an MA thesis at Massey University on John Selden’s History of Tithes, and is an active member of the Australia and New Zealand Law and History Society. Her publications include Legal Fiction: Law in the Novels of Nineteenth-Century Women Novelists (Montreaux, London, and Washington: Minerva, 1995). Michael Wright is Senior Lecturer in English at The University of Auckland. He co-authored with Stephanie Hollis Old English Prose of Secular Learning (Cambridge: Brewer, 1992). His publications on late Middle English literature include articles on the Book of Margery Kempe, and he is a contributor to the AngloSaxon Manuscripts in Microfiche series. He is currently working with Stephanie Hollis on Goscelin’s Barking writings.

Introduction STEPHANIE HOLLIS

T

his volume of translations and essays brings together two closely related works—companion pieces even—written by an important but relatively little studied late-eleventh-century hagiographer.1 Goscelin of Saint-Bertin (c. 1040–1114) emigrated to England as a young man c. 1060, where he joined the household of Bishop Herman. He was probably one of the chaplains at the Wilton nunnery. Pre-eminent among the Anglo-Saxon nunneries in its wealth and royal connections in the late tenth century, Wilton retained its status after the Norman Conquest as a centre of learning and an elite boarding school for daughters of the nobility who were educated there as lay members of the community. Like Benna of Trier and Radbod of Rheims, who were brought to England to educate St Edith by her father, King Edgar, when she was a member of the Wilton community (c. 963–84),2 Goscelin may have been employed as the tutor of Eve (c. 1

The only full-length study of Goscelin is still Thomas J. Hamilton, ‘Goscelin of Canterbury: A Critical Study of his Life, Works and Accomplishments’, 2 vols (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Virginia, 1973). Compare Wilhelm Levison, in 1946: ‘A modern edition and study of Goscelin’s writings, printed and unprinted, is a desideratum of more than literary history’; England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946), p. 199, n. 1. Hamilton’s survey of Goscelin’s reputation from the late eleventh century onwards (I, 1–48) reveals that interest in his life and work has been more notable for its longevity than its depth. However, important studies and editions of individual works, particularly those connected with St Augustine’s, Canterbury, have appeared since 1973, and others are in progress (see further below). 2

Vita Edithae, chap. 7; ed. by A. Wilmart, ‘La légende de Ste Édith en prose et vers par le moine Goscelin’, Analecta Bollandiana, 56 (1938), 5–101, 265–307. Page numbers in citations of the Vita and Translatio of Edith refer to Wilmart’s edition and are replicated in the translation by Michael Wright and Kathleen Loncar. ‘Vita Edithae (R)’ in citations of chaps 2–24 signifies that the passage is found only in Rawlinson, MS C938. Translations throughout are from Wright and Loncar.

2

STEPHANIE HOLLIS

1058–1120), for whom he wrote the Liber confortatorius. Eve was of noble family, the English-born daughter of a Danish father and a Lotharingian mother, and she may have been Bishop Herman’s niece.3 Eve was dedicated to the Wilton community c. 1065. She was thus educated at Wilton at the same time as Gunhild, daughter of Harold Godwinson (given to Wilton for safekeeping in her infancy c. 1069), with whom Archbishop Anselm corresponded when she left the nunnery to marry (c. 1093). Edward the Confessor’s niece, Margaret (resident in England from 1057 until her marriage to Malcolm of Scotland in 1069), may also have been educated at Wilton while Eve was there. Like Edward the Confessor’s queen, Edith Godwinson (educated at Wilton as a secular c. 1030–45), Queen Margaret was celebrated for her learning, in a Life commissioned by her daughter Matilda, wife of Henry I (educated at Wilton shortly after Eve’s departure, c. 1085–1100). Eve was a child when Goscelin met her; he won her over by his words, she conquered him with acts of kindness. She was the ideal audience for Goscelin, emotionally intense and ardently receptive; though very eloquent herself, she silently drank in his words. For about fifteen years—until Goscelin fell foul of Herman’s Norman successor and was banished from Wiltshire—he visited Eve frequently at Wilton, exchanging letters with her when he was prevented from seeing her. After Herman’s death in 1078, Goscelin’s visits to Eve became more frequent; they consoled one another for their mutual loss.4 Some time after his banishment from Wiltshire, Goscelin learnt that Eve had left Wilton to become an anchorite at SaintLaurent du Tertre in Angers—without a word of farewell, without so much as informing him of her plans: You departed beyond calling back. Why do I say you departed? Indeed you concealed all your counsels from such a special soul as if from an enemy, and when it was never imagining such pain you struck it with your precipitous and unannounced flight, assuredly in order that unexpected arrows would strike more destructively than 5 foreseen ones, lest any healing for the wound remain.

The Liber confortatorius (a ‘book of encouragement’) was written for Eve c. 1080, in the form of an extended letter. As Goscelin had always striven to encourage Eve’s 3 Liber confort., p. 41; ed. by C. H. Talbot, ‘The Liber confortatorius of Goscelin of Saint Bertin’, Analecta Monastica, series 3, Studia Anselmiana, 37, ed. by M. M. Lebreton, J. Leclercq, and C. H. Talbot (Rome: Pontifical Institute of St Anselm, 1955), 1–117. Page numbers in citations of Liber confort. refer to Talbot’s edition, and are replicated in the translation of W. R. Barnes and Rebecca Hayward. Translations of the Liber confortatorius throughout are from Barnes and Hayward. 4 5

Liber confort., pp. 28–29.

Liber confort., pp. 28–29; ‘tu irreuocabilis discessisti. Quid dico discessisti? Immo omnia consilia tua tam unice anime quasi hosti obserasti, nec unquam cogitantem tantos dolores precipitata et ignorata fuga percussisti, uidelicet ne non interniciosius ferirent insperata iacula quam preuisa, ne qua plage superesset medela’.

Introduction

3

spiritual progress as her mentor and teacher, the purpose of the Liber confortatorius is to further her progress in the higher vocation she has chosen—the epistolary book is consciously conceived as a continuation from a distance of their face-to-face encounters as teacher and pupil in which the words on the page will carry his voice to her. But their respective roles had been undeniably altered by his spiritual daughter’s unannounced departure for a higher way of life, and the Liber confortatorius is also an attempt to both reaffirm and reconfigure a relationship that had been suddenly severed, for reasons that Goscelin could only guess at. In Book I his advancement of his avowed purpose is impeded by his lamentations and reproaches as, irresistibly reminiscent of the dreamer in Pearl, he struggles (or enacts his struggle) to come to terms with his loss and to accept that he will only be united with her, if at all, in the kingdom of heaven. He had once hoped to cherish her in his bosom in the monastic paradise of Wilton; he retains only the hope that he may deserve to see her in the bosom of Abraham.6 The Liber confortatorius is the earliest known work of spiritual instruction for a female anchorite to have been written in England.7 It is in many respects untypical of the genre, not least because it is embedded in a close personal relationship between the writer and the reader, whose history Goscelin rehearses, cryptically.8 His extended letter is, indeed, according to Goscelin’s prologue, a private document intended specifically and exclusively for Eve, though he is aware of the likelihood that others will read it as it travels to Angers—and of how his expressions of love for Eve will appear to the world at large.9 To draw a comparison that is as inevitable as it is misleading, spiritual instruction does not mix with emotional self-revelation in the letters Abelard wrote to Heloise after she entered the Abbey of the Holy Paraclete. Yet the comparison is not inappropriate. The Liber confortatorius is a product of the ‘golden age of monastic friendship’, generically related to the epistolary exchanges between educated men and women on the continent, which include correspondence between male teachers and their female students who, unlike Abelard and Heloise in their youth, were members of religious communities.10 6

Liber confort., p. 45.

7

Ann K. Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons in Medieval England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), p. 294. 8

Liber confort., pp. 28–29.

9

‘Absint a puro susurrio sibilantes insidie, nequam oculus, uafer digitus, uentilator et cachinnator impurus. […] Quicquid tamen euenerit, maluimus alieno supercilio infatuari, quam non satis facere caritati’. (‘May hissing calumny, the wicked eye, the artful finger, the impure gossip-monger and cackler be far from our pure whispering. […] But whatever happens, I have preferred to be made an object of mockery by the superciliousness of strangers than to neglect what is owed to affection’.) Liber confort., p. 26. 10

See Constant J. Mews, The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 87–114.

4

STEPHANIE HOLLIS

Unlike these correspondents, Goscelin is innocent of the knowledge of Ovidian amor (though not of the scandal-raising potential of his caritas for a female kindred soul); in this respect at least, his cultural formation is English, please, not French, but, although less sensational than the correspondence of Heloise and Abelard, the Liber confortatorius deserves a place in the study of male-female relationships at the time of the emergence of ‘courtly’ love.11 As it is not even certain that Eve received the Liber confortatorius (although, fortunately, there are at least continental sources that vouch for her existence)12 the Liber confortatorius is a one-sided record of a relationship which seems always to have been verbally asymmetrical. But, assailed by uncertainties as Goscelin was when he wrote the Liber confortatorius, he did not doubt that she had, in the past, been as impatient for his presence as he was for hers. And she did reply to his earlier letters. Goscelin was also commissioned by the Wilton community to write a Life of St Edith (c. 961–84). Edith was the daughter of Abbess Wulfthryth (c. 940–1010?), a former wife of King Edgar. Like Eve, Edith was brought up at Wilton from her early childhood—she was about two when the marriage of Edgar and Wulfthryth was dissolved (c. 963). Wulfthryth had been educated at Wilton before her marriage as a lay member of the community, but she returned there to assume the abbacy, taking Edith with her.13 Edith too (it is argued in a later essay) was educated at Wilton as a lay member of the community.14 She died at the age of twenty-three (c. 984), much the same age as Eve was when she left for France (c. 1080). But whereas Eve left Wilton to become an anchorite (and whatever part her relationship with Goscelin may have played in this, Wilton, we may surmise, was not conducive to high spiritual aspirations), Edith, having grown up at Wilton in the bosom of her mother, refused to leave the paradise of its cloisters; not even when her father Edgar attempted to make her the abbess of three other nunneries, nor when, after the murder of her half-brother Edward, noblemen opposed to the succession of Æthelred begged her to be their queen.15 The Legend of Edith and the Liber confortatorius were written at much the same time (c. 1080). The Legend includes a Life of Abbess Wulfthryth, who, for some decades after her death, appears to have been more revered by the Wilton community than her daughter Edith. The Legend also gives an account of the 11

See further Rebecca Hayward, ‘Spiritual Friendship and Gender Difference in the Liber confortatorius’, pp. 347, 352-53. 12

See especially the metrical commemoration of Eve by Hilary of Orléans, ed. by N. M. Häring, ‘Die Gedichte und Mysterienspiele des Hilarius von Orléans’, Studi Medievali, 3rd Series, 17 (1976), 915–68 (pp. 925–30). 13

Vita Edithae, chaps 2–4.

14

Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, pp. 318-27.

15

Vita Edithae, chap. 6 (p. 47); chaps 16, 19.

Introduction

5

community’s posthumous relationship with St Edith up until the time that Goscelin began work on it. It thus offers both a portrait of the official saint of Eve’s convent and an account of the Wilton community which concludes with the period when Eve was resident there. For Goscelin, Eve and Edith were inextricably connected. He was evidently gathering material for his Legend of Edith during the time he was visiting Eve at Wilton. It was based on the oral traditions of the Wilton community.16 Presumably he had expected Eve to be among its readers. But by the time Goscelin completed the Legend, he had been cast out of Wiltshire by Bishop Osmund, and Eve had been lost. His portrait of Edith as a solitary contemplative seeking union with her heavenly bridegroom, a later essay suggests, is drawn with Eve in mind. It is an embodiment of his prayer for Eve at the time of her dedication to Wilton, that she might seek Christ only as her bridegroom with all her heart and soul;17 and a recollection, too, perhaps, of how she was, or how she might have been if she had remained, as he wished that she had, as a dove in the Wilton cloisters, or, if need must be, as solitary turtledove in her own native land.18 In the Liber confortatorius Edith and her community underpin Goscelin’s attempts to re-establish his connection with Eve. They are intertwined with his recollection of their former closeness and his hope of reunion with her in heaven. In the opening section he urges her to imagine, as she reads his work, that she is sitting with him at Wilton in the presence of St Edith.19 In the concluding section, he offers her a vision of heaven which is the ultimate goal of her quest—a return home to a perfected Wilton and reincorporation into St Edith as a member of her community; by this means, Eve will be married to Christ, through the final consummation of the mystic union of Edith and her heavenly bridegroom which is depicted in the Legend.20 The Legend of Edith and the Liber confortatorius are precious documents, providing unique insight into female religious in England in the late tenth and eleventh centuries. The importance of the Legend of Edith extends far beyond its portrait of Eve’s alma mater. With a single, notable exception—Goscelin’s accounts of the life and translation of Wulfthryth’s sister, Abbess Wulfhild of Barking (also educated at Wilton)—his Legend of Edith is the only surviving near-contemporary narrative account of female communities in the late Anglo-Saxon period (which, throughout this volume, signifies the period from the mid-tenth century to post-1100).

16

Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (pp. 37, 39).

17

Liber confort., p. 28. See ‘Edith as Contemplative’, pp. 291-306.

18

Liber confort., p. 36.

19

Liber confort., p. 27.

20

Liber confort., p. 115.

6

STEPHANIE HOLLIS

Though the Legend of Edith has of course been drawn upon by historians of the period, it has rarely been studied in its own right.21 Barbara Yorke’s recent study of the Anglo-Saxon nunneries represents the first extended consideration of its implications for their history.22 The significance of the Liber confortatorius, as the earliest work of spiritual instruction written in England for a female anchorite, has been recognised. Owing perhaps to its difficult Latinity, it has rarely received more than passing attention in published works.23 But Goscelin’s high estimation of Eve’s scholarly and intellectual capacities, implicit in the nature of the work he wrote for

21 A notable exception is Susan J. Ridyard, Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England: A Study of West Saxon and East Anglian Cults (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 140–75. Susan Millinger, ‘Humility and Power: Anglo-Saxon Nuns in Anglo-Norman Hagiography’, in Medieval Religious Women I: Distant Echoes, ed. by John A. Nichols and Lillian Thomas Shank (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1984), pp. 115–29, explores the Lives of Edith and Wulfhild of Barking. Georges Whalen, ‘Patronage Engendered: How Goscelin Allayed the Concerns of Nuns’ Discriminatory Publics’, Women, the Book and the Godly, ed. by Lucy Smith and Jane H. M. Taylor (Cambridge: Brewer, 1995), pp. 123–35, considers the prologue to the Life of Edith. For a recent study of the Translatio, see Paul Antony Hayward, ‘Translation-Narratives in Post-Conquest Hagiography and English Resistance to the Norman Conquest’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 21 (1998), 67–93 (pp. 77–79). 22

Barbara Yorke, Nunneries and the Anglo-Saxon Royal Houses (London: Continuum, 2003), unfortunately, did not become available until shortly before the present study went to press. 23

No translation of Liber confort. has appeared to date, but a translation by Monika Otter is forthcoming: Goscelin of St Bertin: The Book of Encouragement and Consolation (Liber Confortatorius) (Cambridge: Brewer, 2004). Unpublished studies include Irene van Rossum, ‘Adest meliori parte: A Portrait of Monastic Friendship in Exile in Goscelin’s Liber confortatorius’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of York, 1999); she gives a useful overview of scholarship from 1934 to 1995 (pp. 13–23). As she points out, ‘In the past few years, the Liber confortatorius has acquired a regular place in works on women’s history. Most of these works, however, do not discuss the text beyond a general description of contents’ (p. 23). Discussions of Liber confort. which have appeared since Hamilton, 1973, include: Sharon K. Elkins, Holy Women of Twelfth-Century England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), pp. 21–27; Brian Patrick McGuire, Friendship and Community: The Monastic Experience 350–1250 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1988), pp. 201–04; Gopa Roy, ‘“Sharpen your mind with the whetstone of Books”: The Female Recluse as Reader in Goscelin’s Liber Confortatorius, Aelred of Rievaulx’s De Institutione Inclusarum and the Ancrene Wisse’, in Women, the Book and the Godly, ed. by Lesley Smith and Jane H. M. Taylor (Cambridge: Brewer, 1995), pp. 113–23 (pp. 113–16); Therese Latzke, ‘Robert von Arbrissel, Ermengard und Eva’, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 19 (1984), 116–54; Linda Olson, ‘Did Medieval English Women Read Augustine’s Confessiones? Constructing Feminine Interiority and Literacy in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, in Learning and Literacy in Medieval England and Abroad, ed. by Sarah Rees Jones, Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), pp. 69–96 (pp. 69–80).

Introduction

7

her and explicit in the list of books he recommends for her to read, has not gone unnoticed.24 That the addressee of the Liber confortatorius was a former member of the Wilton community is not adventitious. Among the many gaps in our knowledge that the Legend of Edith fills, it is of central importance in establishing Wilton as an educational centre that pre-dated the lifetime of Edith. Both the Liber confortatorius and the Legend of Edith—written for the nuns of Wilton who commissioned it—are testimony to the existence in late tenth and eleventh-century English nunneries of highly educated women, comparable with the educated elite at male houses, who disappeared almost without trace in the course of the twelfth century. This is strikingly significant, because there are no known Latin works written either for or by monastic women in the late Anglo-Saxon period as it is usually defined.25 And monastic women are virtually absent from the documentary record. The documentary record of the early Anglo-Saxon period, by contrast, suggests that women at a number of double monasteries were keeping abreast of their brothers as they fronted the new knowledge wave, and Aldhelm’s De virginitate, an epistolary book addressed to the Barking nuns (c. 700), and the women who corresponded with Boniface and his circle, testify to that. In my 1992 study of the early Anglo-Saxon period I took the view that, with the enclosure and segregation of women in the single-sex houses of the late Anglo-Saxon period, the educational standard of monastic women declined, together with their social participation and the esteem they were accorded by ecclesiastics.26 I am glad to be able to say that I did remark that Wilton was an exception, but the point I am wanting to emphasise is that the widely prevalent belief that the Battle of Hastings ended in a decisive victory for cultural discontinuity is both pernicious and distorting.27 Goscelin’s writings for Latin-literate women, though they do much to fill the silences encountered elsewhere in the documentary record, modify but do not 24

See especially Bella Millett, ‘Women in No Man’s Land: English Recluses and the Development of Vernacular Literature in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, in Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500, ed. by Carol M. Meale, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 86–103 (p. 88). 25

For vernacular translations and Ælfric’s Judith, see ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, p.

308. 26

Stephanie Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church: Sharing a Common Fate (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1992). For Wilton see pp. 43, 250, n. 41. 27

See further my review of Claire A. Lees and Gillian R. Overing, Double Agents: Women and Clerical Culture in Anglo-Saxon England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), in The Medieval Review, 2002 [accessed 17 April 2004]. I am not alone in arguing for an extension of Old English and Anglo-Saxon studies beyond 1200, but see my review of Rewriting Old English in the Twelfth Century, ed. by Mary Swan and Elaine M. Treharne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) in JEGP, 101 (2002), 565–67 (p. 567).

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fundamentally alter my earlier position. It is queens rather than abbesses in the late Anglo-Saxon period who are representative of educated women. Armed with the realization that Edith was educated as a lay member of the Wilton community, it is possible to recognise that the existence of several Latin-literate noblewomen who left Wilton to marry (Queen Edith, Queen Matilda, Gunhild Godwinson, perhaps Margaret of Scotland—and St Edith’s mother before them), as well as other Wilton women who resisted an offer of marriage that would have made them a queen (Wulfthryth’s sister Wulfhild, and St Edith herself), is not an odd coincidence. They are characteristic products of a convent which served, from the early tenth century onward, as the guardian and educator of the aristocracy’s daughters, who might or might not decide, or be permitted, to leave the convent and marry. Bishop Æthelwold’s Benedictine Reform elevated the queen to the role of paramount abbess (c. 970), and in the late Anglo-Saxon period, it is queens, not abbesses who are the partners of bishops in the Christianization of society, and the visible commissioners of Latin literary works.28 Socially marginalised, the nunneries became a less attractive career option for royal women. Edith’s mother Wulfthryth, as a formerly married women exchanging a royal court for a monastic kingdom of her own, is a last echo of the abbesses of double monasteries. Cnut’s widow Emma continued to exercise power without retiring to a nunnery; even Queen Edith, Conquest notwithstanding, did not return to Wilton as its abbess, although the conclusion to be drawn from Goscelin’s noticeable failure to mention her may be that she tried to but was repulsed by the community.29 St Edith is an emblematically transitional figure, still able to exercise power at the royal court while a member of a monastic community.30 Goscelin is more broadly significant as a highly original author at the forefront of cultural change. He is a notable harbinger of the ‘twelfth-century Renaissance’, generally associated with the re-conception of the spiritual life as a dynamic quest instead of a static defensive battle; passionate desire for union with the godhead, figured as a marriage of the soul to its heavenly bridegroom; the rise of individualism, subjectivity and introspection, and the attraction of the solitary eremitical life; devotion to the suffering humanity of Christ; the rise of courtly love and devotion to Mary. It is important to bear in mind that the twelfth century built upon developments that had taken place in the eleventh century, which Phyllis Jestice describes as ‘one of the greatest periods of change in both spirituality and ecclesiastical organization that western Europe has known’.31 Even so, Goscelin appears remarkably forward-looking. 28

Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church, pp. 298–99, adumbrates this argument.

29

‘St Edith and the Wilton Community’, pp. 253-54.

30

Vita Edithae, chap. 10 (pp. 62–64).

31

Wayward Monks and the Religious Revolution of the Eleventh Century (Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 130–31.

Introduction

9

In both the Liber confortatorius and the Legend of Edith the spiritual life is conceived as a dynamic spiritual quest. This is all the more remarkable since, as Barbara Newman points out, works of spiritual formation of the eleventh and twelfth centuries written for women have an old-fashioned look because the authors’ central preoccupation with women’s preservation of their virginity inhibits the conception of spiritual progression and growth.32 In the Legend of Edith, the spiritual quest is conceived throughout in terms of bridal mysticism—so common in the thirteenth century that it needs an effort to recognise its extraordinary novelty at this date. Paradoxically, it is the Legend—commemorating a member of a monastic community and written for a community—that portrays a solitary contemplative withdrawn from the world to pursue a highly inward and individual relationship with the spiritual bridegroom. Aspiring ever onward and up, Edith achieves an ecstatic foretaste of heavenly union with her beloved and earthly union with his suffering humanity by her compassionate identification with the poor, the sick and the condemned prisoners, in whom Christ suffers.33 She embodies the ‘wounded love’ which is central to the Liber confortatorius, uniting the souls of Eve and Goscelin and their souls to Christ, and the same qualities of spirituality embodied in the portrait of Edith characterise Goscelin’s love of Eve and the love he urges her to have for Christ. Despite the bridal mysticism which frames the Liber confortatorius, culminating in Eve’s union with the heavenly bridegroom by means of her incorporation in Edith, Eve’s spiritual progress in the Liber confortatorius is not conceived in bridal terms; she is more of a spiritual warrior (though Goscelin does not presume to exhort her to defend her virginity). Her spiritual quest for the New Jerusalem, however, is to be pursued by reading and prayer. The spiralling upward path marked out for her in the Liber confortatorius requires her constructive engagement as a reader; its structure is a mimesis of the process of intellectual understanding, aided by meditation on the accumulating significances of its key images.34 In Goscelin, Eve and the Wilton community had an author and a teacher who was both spiritually avant garde and unusually well read; he cites a number of classical authors as well as a wide range of patristic works. Barlow thought it probable that he was ‘one of the most widely read men of his times’ (although W. R. Barnes’ examination of his classical allusions casts doubt on the extent of his direct knowledge of classical authors).35 His unusually wide knowledge of patristic works 32 Barbara Newman, ‘Flaws in the Golden Bowl: Gender and Spiritual Formation in the Twelfth Century’, in From Virile Woman to Woman Christ (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1995), pp. 19–45. 33

Vita Edithae, chap. 11 (pp. 64–69).

34

See further Hayward and Hollis, ‘The Anchorite’s Progress’, pp. 369-83.

35

Frank Barlow, ed. and trans., The Life of King Edward who rests at Westminster, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 143, n. 7; compare W. R. Barnes, ‘Goscelin’s Greeks and Romans’, pp. 401-15, and my ‘Afterword’, pp. 419-24.

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might seem to suggest the influence of Lanfranc (Archbishop of Canterbury 1070– 89), just as his spirituality might seem to suggest the influence of Anselm and his continental precursors. But, as far as is known, at the time he wrote the Liber confortatorius and the Legend c. 1080, his opportunities for familiarising himself with the literary developments associated with either Lanfranc or Anselm were limited.36 Further investigation into the details of his life might shed more light on his formative influences; clearly it makes a difference to the possibilities for continental influence if he arrived in England in c. 1064 rather than 1058. The invaluable identification of sources and analogues accompanying the translation of the Liber confortatorius by W. R. Barnes and Rebecca Hayward, however, has not yielded evidence of the influence of Anselm or his continental precursors. Goscelin was at the forefront of cultural change in England before the arrival of Anselm. So too was Eve, leaving her homeland to become an anchorite just as the eremitical life was undergoing a new wave of popularity, and making her way to Angers before the influence of Robert of Arbrissel had made itself felt. Her choice of a higher spiritual vocation, so much in keeping with the spiritual progress that Goscelin had desired for her since her childhood, and yet so entirely against his deepest desires, I attribute in a later essay to the formative influence of Goscelin; he had himself, he confides, often wished for a little cell like hers where he might dedicate his literary talents to the service of God.37 Goscelin’s early education at Saint-Bertin (a notable literary centre) was undoubtedly of seminal importance. Yet he cannot have read everything he cites in the Liber confortatorius before he left his homeland, nor (given his essentially progressive conception of experience) can he have arrived in England fully formed. Cultural changes such as the ‘twelfth-century Renaissance’ are initiated by original minds responding in new ways to what is familiar, and to new external circumstances (the passing of the millennium, for instance, as Rachel Fulton argues), triggered not only by texts but by visual images and other minds.38 As Southern pointed out, artists in late-tenth-century England, seemingly remote from centres of devotional innovation, depicted the human sufferings of Christ with moving realism.39 At Wilton the walls of the church that Edith built were still adorned in Goscelin’s time with ‘reminders of the Passion’—executed by a renowned artist from Trier (for Wilton’s royal connections gave it access to the same cultural

36 See further ‘Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women’, pp. 223-24, 236; ‘Edith as Contemplative’, pp. 284-85; ‘Afterword’, pp. 426-29. 37

Liber confort., p. 34. See ‘Edith as Contemplative’, pp. 281-306.

38

Rachel Fulton, From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), pp. 60–141. 39

R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (London: Arrow Books, 1959), pp. 246–47.

Introduction

11

contacts as the court), but designed by Edith herself.40 Edith was also an early exponent of devotional self-identification; in her embroidered portrait of Christ and his disciples, she depicted herself in the role of Mary Magdalene.41 So, too, the growth of personal prayer in Anglo-Saxon England, which is a contributory strand in the making of the twelfth-century Renaissance, is reflected in the prayers that Goscelin quotes from a Prayerbook written in Edith’s hand.42 As with Goscelin’s relationship with Eve, so with his relationship to Wilton; we are for the most part in a position to see only what he contributed. Might it be that the ethos of Wilton interacted creatively with Goscelin’s Saint-Bertin education? How much might he have been influenced by the ardent intensity of Eve, his kindred soul? I suggest, at any rate, that his emotional response to the sight of Eve at her dedication was seminal to the development of the bridal mysticism he expresses in the Legend of Edith.43 Further investigation of Goscelin’s sources might reveal knowledge of the writings of Anselm and his continental precursors. But the underlying explanation for Goscelin’s forward looking spirituality and Eve’s avant garde spiritual quest may be, as he remarked to Eve, that the stars that shone upon Anjou shone upon England too.44 The translation of the Legend of Edith in this volume, by Michael Wright and Kathleen Loncar, is based on the 1938 edition of André Wilmart, with one important exception. Wilmart took as his base text Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MS C938, which represents the version Goscelin dedicated to Archbishop Lanfranc, c. 1080. A revised version is found in Cardiff, Public Library, MS I. 381, consisting only of Chapters 2 to 24 of the Vita (the Translatio is lacking; so are Chapters 25 to 27 and the dedicatory prologue to Lanfranc). Wilmart argued persuasively that Cardiff represents Goscelin’s own revision of the version dedicated to Lanfranc. Wright and Loncar’s translation of Chapters 2 to 24 of the Vita is based on the Cardiff version, which Wilmart printed in the form of variants on his base text. The Cardiff version differs chiefly in including more specific details about Edith and her mother. I argue that Goscelin intended this version for the Wilton community. The Legend, as dedicated to Lanfranc, appears to have been conceived as a fulfilment of the Wilton community’s commissioning. Goscelin made adjustments for Lanfranc’s readership, chiefly by enhancing the role of Archbishop Dunstan in Edith’s life and her elevation to sainthood. He attempted to give an orthodox colouration to the irregular aspects of her life (irregular, that is, if she had been a professed nun), but he did not conceal them as any hagiographer might be 40

Vita Edithae, chap. 20 (p. 87); passionis […] monumenta.

41

Vita Edithae, chap. 16 (p. 79).

42

Vita Edithae, chap. 8 (pp. 55–56).

43

Liber confort., p. 28. See ‘Edith as Contemplative’, pp. 302-06.

44

Liber confort., p. 41.

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expected to do, and especially when recommending an Anglo-Saxon woman saint to a Norman bishop, because, as the work was also intended to be read by the Wilton community, it had to bear a recognizable relationship to the oral traditions they had reported to him. One of the reasons why Goscelin is a historically important figure is that he was foremost among the authors who recreated the Anglo-Saxon past for the Norman regime. But to regard the Legend of Edith in those terms is to distort its true nature and significance, even leaving aside the fact that, in my view, the dedication to Lanfranc was an opportunistic afterthought in the hope of recommending himself to Lanfranc’s services. The Legend of Edith is a rare instance of a Life of a female saint which is based on the oral traditions of the female community who owned her relics; it is an inside story, and the insight it provides into Wilton’s motives for commissioning the Legend provides a useful modification to the view that AngloSaxon communities’ commissioning of the lives of their saints was driven by their relationship to the new Norman hierarchy.45 The translation of the Liber confortatorius, by W. R. Barnes and Rebecca Hayward, is based on C. H. Talbot’s 1955 edition, collated with the sole surviving manuscript, British Library, Sloane MS 3103, which was copied on the continent in the late twelfth century, at least three decades after Eve’s death (c. 1120). The introductory essay in Part 3 addresses some of the biographical and textual issues raised above: the extent of Goscelin’s awareness of the politico-literary programmes of Lanfranc and Anselm; his relationship to Eve and her departure from Wilton; the Legend’s depiction of Wilton during the time that Eve was there and the role of Edith in the Liber confortatorius; the community’s commissioning of the Legend and Goscelin’s reasons for dedicating it to Lanfranc; his revision of the Legend for the Wilton community in Cardiff and the Legend’s relation to the Liber confortatorius. This forms the background to the essay on Goscelin’s depiction of the history of Wilton (‘St Edith and the Wilton Community’), which focuses first on the extent of the Benedictine reform’s impact on the nunnery; the subsequent consideration of the cults of Edith and her mother within the nunnery helps to explain why a Latin-literate community had no existing written life of its patron saint. The third essay examines Goscelin’s portrait of Edith as a contemplative bride of Christ and its relationship to the Liber confortatorius. The fourth presents the case for Wilton as an education centre for the daughters of the nobility, and considers whether Eve and Edith were typical of the educational standard of Wilton, and whether Wilton was typical of late Anglo-Saxon nunneries. Both of these essays, in considering Goscelin’s advanced spirituality and unusually wide range of reading as a formative influence on Eve and Wilton, explore the possibilities for a reciprocity of influence. 45

See ‘Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women’, pp. 222, 234-36; ‘St Edith and the Wilton Community’, pp. 252-53, 255, 267-76.

Introduction

13

The essays on the Liber confortatorius in Part 4 bear upon literary culture. In her two essays, Rebecca Hayward examines Goscelin’s emotional attachment to Eve in relation to the tradition of epistolary exchanges between men and women that runs from Jerome and his women friends to Abelard and Heloise, and explores the implications of Goscelin’s characterization of his work as both a letter and a book. Together, she and I consider its relationship to contemporary works of spiritual formation written for women. W. R. Barnes recurs to the study of Goscelin’s own formative education in an examination of his knowledge and use of classical literature.

Part 1 Goscelin’s Legend of Edith

Note on the Translation of the Legend of Edith MICHAEL WRIGHT

G

oscelin’s Legend of Edith was edited by A. Wilmart, ‘La légende de Ste Édith en prose et vers par le moine Goscelin’, Analecta Bollandiana, 56 (1938), 5–101, 265–307. The base text of his edition is Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson C 938, fols 1–29 (thirteenth century). Rawlinson contains both a Vita of the saint and an account of the miracles which followed her elevation to sainthood (the Translatio). A somewhat different version of the Vita is found in Cardiff, Public Library, MS I. 381, fols 81–120 (early twelfth century). Cardiff’s version of the Vita lacks the Prologue found in Rawlinson (in which Goscelin dedicates the work to Archbishop Lanfranc), as well as the last three chapters (Chapters 25 to 27). Cardiff does not include the Translatio. Wilmart argues that Cardiff represents a revision made by Goscelin; many metres are included in Cardiff, intended for inclusion in the version represented by Rawlinson. For a detailed discussion of the nature and purpose of these revisions, see Hollis, pp. 237–42. For this translation, Cardiff has been adopted as the base text for the Vita. This version was chosen both because it probably represents the author’s latest thoughts, and because it seems especially close to the Wilton community. The Prologue and concluding chapters from Rawlinson are printed in smaller type; Chapters 8 to 12, which are significantly differently organised in the two versions, are translated from Cardiff, and presented in their Rawlinson form as an appendix to the Vita. Other differences between the two versions that are material to the translation are recorded in the footnotes. In this way, it is hoped that readers will be able to gain a coherent sense of the two different versions with the minimum of inconvenience. The translation is keyed to Wilmart’s edition by the incorporation of page numbers in small, bold type, thus: 50. Since Cardiff is recorded in Wilmart in the form of

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MICHAEL WRIGHT

variations from Rawlinson, there are some vagaries in the sequence of page numbers: where a number does not point to the beginning of a page in Wilmart, it is enclosed in square brackets. A translation of the chapter headings in Rawlinson (not found in Cardiff) is printed at the end of this note; chapter numbers, in both versions, are assigned by Wilmart in his edition. The text, especially the Cardiff version, includes many poems, in metrical rather than rhythmic verse-forms. The metres are distinguished from the prose in the translation by being printed in italics. Personal names are given by Goscelin in Latinized forms. Where an English form is known, or can easily be conjectured, it is used in the translation; in other cases, including the names of the characters in the story of the Dancers of Colbek which were doubtless Germanic in origin, Goscelin’s Latin forms are preserved. It should be noted that the priest at Wilton who is named Benna in Rawlinson, is named Benno in Cardiff. Biblical references have been identified by Wilmart, and by Rosalind C. Love in Fontes Anglo-Saxonici: World Wide Web Register; these have been checked with the help of Living Stream Bible software and, with some revisions, are given here, inset within the text using the abbreviations recommended by the Chicago Manual of Style (abbreviations actually used in this volume are listed with other Abbreviations). References are to the Vulgate divisions of the biblical text, so that the books known as I, II Samuel and I, II Kings in modern Bibles are here referred to as I–IV Kings, and the Psalms are given their Vulgate numbering (broadly, one lower than the numbers in modern Bibles from Psalm 9 to 146). As Wilmart points out, in a number of cases biblical texts have been mediated through the liturgy. Wilmart’s liturgical references have been checked with the CANTUS on-line database at the University of Western Ontario , and cited by item number from Corpus Antiphonalium Officii (ed. by René-Jean Hesbert and René Prévost, 6 vols (Rome: Herder, 1963–79)). Wilmart’s texts have been collated against Rawlinson (by Wright) and Cardiff (by Hayward). The printed edition is fundamentally sound, and the few corrections material to meaning are recorded in the footnotes. Wilmart also prints variant readings from Gotha, Landesbibliothek, MS I. 81, fols 188v–203 (fourteenth century). In a few cases, recorded in the footnotes, readings from this source, regarded by Wilmart as certain, have been followed. Goscelin’s Latin is not easy. A translation, in such a case, will ideally serve two purposes: it should provide a way of reading the text to those without Latin, and also a guide through the sometimes tangled paths of Goscelin’s text to those who wish to read in the original. A stylistic compromise is therefore imposed; in some passages the translation stays closer to the syntax of the Latin than is consistent with the best current English. If the result is sometimes the translationese of a crib, it is at least hoped that it will convey something of the experience of reading Goscelin. One point of lexis should be noticed: Goscelin uses both caritas and dilectio for Christian

Note on the Translation

19

love. Although it was tempting to regard dilectio as denoting a sacral version of human affection, and caritas as a more purely spiritual bond, there is no compelling evidence to support this distinction, and both words have been translated as ‘love’. Biblical quotations are approximated to the language of the Douay translation of the Vulgate. The translation is based on a version by Loncar. This has been extensively revised by Wright. It may be said that the credit for the existence of the translation is Loncar’s, and the responsibility for infelicities, inaccuracies and frank errors is Wright’s. It is not to be hoped that a first published translation will be without errors, and there are passages where Goscelin’s text could be read variously. Points of especial uncertainty are indicated in the notes.

KATERN 2

Chapter Headings in Rawlinson Here begins the prologue of the monk Goscelin to the Life of the holy virgin Edith addressed to the Most Reverend Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury 2. Here begins the Life of Saint Edith, Virgin 3. A ray of light appears over the new-born 4. The conversion of her mother 5. How she was offered to God by the taking of the veil 6. How from infancy she was conspicuous for spiritual gifts 7. How her royal parents equipped this jewel of the church with learning 8. How she sought the love of Christ through the intercessions and examples of the saints 9. How the holy ones who exhorted her inflamed her towards heavenly desires 10. With what good will she was compliant to everyone 11. How by various exercises she dedicated her intellect to Christ 12. What reply she made to Saint Æthelwold, being conscious of her hair shirt 13. How her garments were not burned among the flames 14. How the mother, with her daughter, deserved the Lord’s nail, and the miracle by which she retained possession of it 15. About the beggar who disappeared from her almsgiving 16. How she was placed over three monasteries 17. About the death of her father, King Edgar 18. About Edward, who reigned in his father’s place and was quickly killed 19. How she refused the kingdom when it was offered to her 20. With what devotion she built a chapel for St Denis 21. The prayer Saint Dunstan offered, during the dedication, for the holy virgin devoted to the cross

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22. With what sobbing the same holy bishop predicted the imminent death of the virgin 23. That an ox seemed to sing ‘The Spirit breathes where it will’ 24. About the passing of the same holy virgin 25. How she showed her mother on the thirtieth day that she had been taken up to God 26. About Brihtgifu, the most recent abbess, born on Edith’s thirtieth day 27. About the girl fettered to her tomb by theft

The Vita of Edith Here begins the prologue of the monk Goscelin to the Life of the holy virgin Edith addressed to the Most Reverend Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury It is your part to accept the votive offerings of all those bringing gifts to the tabernacle of the Lord, O you who are our Bezaleel (Ex 36.1), 35 filled with complete wisdom from God, so that you may know for what uses of the Church the work of each individual is fit. As there are golden utensils in the house of the Lord, so also there are earthenware ones (II Tm 2.20), and the insignificant person glories in the Lord together with the great, and the small offerings of the poor are accepted in the treasury amongst the rich (Lk 21.1–3). The founder of the city of the new Jerusalem, who takes to himself the virgin daughter of Sion, brings in a new age from his bridal chamber: new heaven, new earth (Rv 21.1), new kingdom, new covenant, new Passover; and with his new bride he makes all things new (Rv 21.5), and invites everyone to his feast. His bulls and fattened animals are slaughtered, his food-stores are open, his table is set, and all things are ready (Mt 22.4). And the bride of the Lamb has prepared herself (Rv 19.7), flowing with delights (Sg 8.5), adorned with her jewels (Is 61.10). The vines flourish with these joys (Sg 2.13), the pomegranates put out buds (Sg 6.10), the balsam is fragrant (Sg 1.11), the myrrh is gathered (Sg 5.1), spices flow (Sg 4.16), frankincense of Lebanon gives forth its fragrance, the mountains drop down sweetness (Jl 3.18),1 rivers of milk and honey flow, the apples of the valleys have ripened (Sg 6.10), and the whole household of the world is filled with the scent of fragrant oils (Jn 12.3). The whole earth sings a new song (Ps 149.1); harmonies and choirs and psalteries and every kind of music resounds everywhere (Dn 3.5). New histories, new written works are dedicated to divine praise, stamped in the pure mint of truth with the image of the true king. No person is shut out; 36 we are all invited to the supper of the Lamb, we are all ordered to sing at the nuptials of Christ, the gifts of all are demanded at the table of the bridegroom. In the confidence so induced, or rather under this obligation, since I am, among those bringing offerings, sufficient for nothing except the goat’s hair of rustic ability or the reddened skin of modesty (Ex 25.4–5), I seek to offer a precious jewel, not so much indeed polished by the gold of talent, as rather fit to be approved for her brilliance, and by your favour, apostolic father. That gem is indeed the eminent leader of Wilton, famous throughout the whole land, the virgin of the Lord, Edith, who was born in royalty, like a city seated on a mountain (Mt 5.14), who from the nearness of the time—for indeed only yesterday we had as king Edward, 1

Compare antiphon for Advent, CAO 3244.

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the son of her brother, who today has handed on the rule to William—shines to the present day with such great evidence of signs, and offers such great benefits both to strangers and to native people, that even without the account of her life these should prove sufficient as evidence of her merits, such is the kindly power she is known to exert in the ear of her own Lord. Her pure character indeed, and her life, spreading sweetness far and wide through the land and the churches, but especially towards her own people, diffuse so immediate a fragrance of virtues as if she herself were still here today; and often in visions among the sisters she is seen as if still alive and embodied. Her own special places and her occupations are also well known: ‘Here she was accustomed to read, here to pray; she achieved such and such things in the Lord.’ But the most illustrious chief lady of her monastery, Godiva, who is now the fifth in line from her birth-mother of distinguished memory,2 and the other spiritual mothers of the present time, 37 as faithful as they are noble of birth, as well as the things which they saw with their own eyes, declare confidently, with other appropriate evidence, those things which they heard from the venerable senior nuns, who both saw the holy virgin herself and devotedly obeyed her; whose high birth and religious lives are recognised as being equal in credibility to books. Nor will their sex be a reason for detracting from the truth of their testimony—[that sex] which carried the word of the Lord; which by its faith convinced the incredulity of the Apostles and preached the Lord’s resurrection with an angel-borne message.3 Finally, the handmaids of the Lord prophesy as well as the men-servants, and speak in tongues in the same grace of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2.17–18). Herman himself, the Bishop of Wilton and my spiritual father of holy memory, who was my patron, urged me with paternal kindness that my insignificance 38 should not prevent me from writing these things, since the requests of the senior nuns were sufficient. For when he had just become bishop after serving as a monk in the house of the glorious father Bertin, a man with whom he was acquainted, called Sweyn, migrated from the Danes into England; he had been shackled as a spy, and Edith, the Lord’s virgin, freed him—the shackles burst with a great crash—and so made clear her own merit and his innocence. But after delaying until now through bashfulness or negligence, I have at length dedicated the first fruits of my hand to your excellence, indeed with threefold prerogative: because everyone’s cause is referred to you as the chief; because your metropolitan city was the birthplace and origin of so great a daughter; and finally because it possesses her most holy tutor in Christ, Dunstan, whom so many of our pages record, of whom you have shown yourself to be so effective a representative. For some time ago, at your arrival, the bell called ‘St Dunstan’s’ was unmistakably heard ringing throughout the region, proclaiming the glory of the people of Canterbury, and the new glory of the very noble cathedral raised up for the English world, restored by you from ashes and bare foundations to complete functionality in such a short period as five years; its burning down was fortunate, for it provided you a happy outcome, 39 you could give an example of both urgency and magnificence directed to the glory of the house of God. I offer to your care a pearl not to be trampled by swine (Mt 7.6), a lamb not to be mangled by wolves, a dove not to be torn apart by ravens. 2 3

That is, Edith’s birth-mother, Wulfthryth.

Compare the similar vindication of women’s testimony in the Life of Wulfhild, ed. by Marvin L. Colker, ‘Texts of Jocelyn of Canterbury which relate to the History of Barking Abbey’, Studia Monastica, 7 (1965), 383–460 (p. 418).

The Vita of Edith

25

I have narrated a few things out of the many which I have learned from the testimony of faithful people or from local books,4 with such confidence that, in place of the facts of history, we may rejoice to rhapsodize the wedding song. May that white dove which, coming from the breast of Christ, just now took its rest in this holy soul, be present with me, dictating my words in the spirit of truth; may it shut out the disagreeable and breathe into me thoughts which inspire love. Here ends the prologue.

4

patriis libris: presumably books Goscelin has found at Wilton (perhaps in the vernacular), rather than books handed down from the fathers; compare patrii ponderis (‘currency of their country’), chap. 14, below.

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2 Here begins the Life of Saint Edith, Virgin Edgar, the essence of royal piety, was then reigning, the king of the whole country of England, the most pure flower of his royal ancestors. When he was only a boy in age he was like Solomon, the Lord’s young man, but exceeding Solomon in wisdom, and reverencing the King of Kings, which is the beginning of wisdom (Ecclus 1.16). 40 The Lord who first united the earthly with the heavenly, humanity with the angels, at his incarnation, declared this boy to be the standard bearer of his peace which the angels formerly announced in song to the earth, with a similar proclamation at Edgar’s birth.5 At that very hour Dunstan, who waited on the voice of heaven, while keeping, at the monastery of Glastonbury, the night watches over his flock with the shepherds of Bethlehem, guardian with faithful Joseph of the sheepfold of Christ and of Mary of Glastonbury, amid the very incense of prayers, heard a clear voice falling6 from heaven, which announced peace to the English, who had been so long afflicted, in the birth of this boy. He was fortunate in his rule, more fortunate in the heavenly token, most fortunate in the renown of his offspring, on whom the grace of the Holy Trinity conferred the diadem of three children: the first the sceptre-bearer of chastity, to whom all this narrative is dedicated, Edith; the second the king and brother of the Bethlehem martyrs, Edward; the third the longer-lived heir to his father’s throne, Æthelred.7 Wulfthryth, the mother of the holy virgin, is known to be blessed, a descendant of princes and a nobly-born child of a royal duke,8 famous for beauty, wisdom and character, the image of nobility: worthy of a king, 41 worthy for kings to obey her, but more worthy in having been taken up by the heavenly king. The king loved her as Jacob loved Rachel; he had taken9 her, the splendid star of noble maidens, from the very schoolroom by divine dispensation, and united her with the kingdom by indissoluble vows;10 the love of Christ alone was able to dissolve these bonds. That angelic rose was born in her father’s kingdom in the country of Kent, in a royal manor11 named Kymesinthia;12 the jewel of her kingly ancestors, and the star

5

who first united [...] at Edgar’s birth, R: declared him to be the standard-bearer of his peace by which he once for all, at his incarnation, joined the earthly to the heavenly and humans to the rejoicing angels, and did so with a similar proclamation at Edgar’s birth. 6

R: pouring down.

7

Æthelred the Unready (978–1016) was the son of Ælfthryth. Edward the Martyr (975–78) is thought to have been the son of either Wulfthryth or Æthelflæd. 8

According to the Life of Wulfhild, chaps. 1, 4 (Colker, pp. 419–20, 424), Wulfthryth and Wulfhild were the daughters of Wulfhelm, brother of Edgar’s father. 9

R: received.

10

See Life of Wulfhild, chap. 4 (Colker, p. 424/11–17).

11

R: village (C regia mansio, R regio vico).

12

Kemsing.

The Vita of Edith

27

of the descendants who were to rule, shone out. Then having been received by the metropolitan of Canterbury, and the rest of the senior men and nobles, as was fitting, she was reborn into the kingdom of the heavenly king in the adoption of the children of God to his glory (Eph 1.5–6), whence, clothed in white like a bride, she rose like the morning (Sg 6.9), rising from the washing at the side of Christ (Sg 4.2, 6.5, Jn 19.34). 42 3 They say that a heavenly omen favoured the baby at that time; she cried, and a ray of sunlight shone out continuously13 from the crown of her head, and rose high, and clearly lit up the royal bedchamber. Already she seemed to be lighting her lamp, already she seemed to wish to run to meet her bridegroom and, like the morning star (Ecclus 50.6), to herald the day that was coming to her. Now the Sun of justice (Mal 4.2), who has placed his tabernacle in the sun, and like a bridegroom himself comes out of his bride-chamber (Ps 18.6), was approaching her bedchamber. O faith of believers, powerful in the presence of the heavenly grace! The most devout father engaged this son-in-law for himself, this spouse for his daughter. O divine love overcoming natural love! This was the first-born of her father and the only child of her mother, whom they would sacrifice to God like their own flesh. Deservedly this father had heirs for his kingdom, who offered on the altar of the exalted Abraham such sweet first-fruits of his offspring. 4 But the holy parent Wulfthryth—for she is proved to be holy both by her life and by her miracles—after the blessedness of giving birth to such a child did not any longer condescend to flesh and blood (Gal 1.16). And now more proud in Christ than Queen Vashti, she could not be held back either by the grace of the king or by the glory of royal power (Est 1.11–12). Who shall find a powerful woman? (Prv 31.10) Although she was a young woman, like Judith the valiant she cut through the sweet affection of the young king and her most flourishing glory, and fled from the midst of flame to the living water. With the intervention of Æthelwold, the holy bishop of Winchester, and with the interposition between them of the sword of Christ, which is strong as death (Sg 8.6), which divides parents from children, soul from spirit, and joints and marrow, and every intention of the heart (Heb 4.12),14 43 she left an earthly kingdom and bridal and came to the monastery of the virginal mother of God; in place of the gold-embroidered purple she was clothed in the black tunic of one who was a pilgrim of the Lord; in place of gold jewellery she was adorned with modesty; in place of a regal diadem she was covered with a dark veil, her head shaded with divine protection in the day of battle (Ps 139.8). She was strengthened by David’s 13

R: suddenly.

14

Hebrews 4. 12, omitting discretor […] intencionum, ‘discerner of the intentions’.

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MICHAEL WRIGHT AND KATHLEEN LONCAR

oracles: ‘The Lord will shelter you with his shoulders and beneath his wings you will hope; his truth will surround you with a shield, you will not be frightened by night fear nor by an arrow flying in the day nor by alarm walking about in the shadows, nor by the attack of the noonday devil’ (Ps 90.4–6); and ‘By day the sun will not harm you nor the moon at night, and the sun will not burn you’ (Ps 120.6).15 Now she set off at once after the chaste fruit of her womb, so that she might become the teacher of her chastity, and be placed over her as her spiritual mother, in the virginal community of Wilton where now, together with the dear offspring of her womb, she sleeps in the sleep of peace in hope of the blessed resurrection.16 5 Therefore that daughter of the saints was brought to this place, propagated from the holy root like a rod of frankincense and a beautiful olive tree (Ecclus 24.19), and already on her way to erect a noble temple of Christ. The king her father came with a multitude of lords, of senior men, of the court and of the people, as though to the court of Christ and the divine spousals. The whole city17 celebrated at the arrival of the king, embracing the father of the fatherland and the prince of peace (Is 9.6). He, as if about to give away his child at her wedding or to offer up his first-fruits, came into the presence of the Lord, 44 gave his hands to the divine judgement, became a Melchisedech in the combination of devotion with royalty, consulted the beauty of the Lord in performing this duty. A splendid robe was laid out at the steps of the true altar of the highest Mother of God, as if before the throne and feet of the divine majesty. Riches of different kinds were spread upon it, temporal and eternal. Royal dignity and women’s ambition placed there golden garlands, gold-embroidered cloaks, bejewelled purple,18 bracelets, rings, necklaces and the varied splendour of ornamental objects; her mother’s faith placed there the black veil of holiness, the chalice and paten, the dish of the Lord’s passion, the psalter of heavenly prophecy. The floor, shining with purple, glowed like the verdant veil of Tempe, like a pleasant meadow,19 like a votive vessel, like a table of offerings, like a market-place selling varied merchandise, like a wonder-cabinet of divine and secular objects, like varied delights to please human eyes and minds. The throng of leading citizens prayed with her parents, the congregation of sisters prayed, that the Godhead which foresees all things would deign to declare what life her untaught youth might be destined for by this present choice. So acted Abraham over the bargain with God about the ten just men (Gn 18.22–32), so did Abraham’s servant in finding Rebecca for his son and heir 15

See also Song of Songs 1. 5.

16

Wilton where now [...] blessed resurrection; R: the same monastery.

17

whole city, R: city.

18

R: robes.

19

amena virecta: used of paradise in Prudentius, Cathemerinon H. J. Thomson (London: Heinemann, 1949)).

III,

101 (ed. and trans. by

The Vita of Edith

29

(Gn 24) as a type of the spouse of Christ, so did Gideon over the dewy fleece (Jgs 6.36–40), type of him who came down on the virgin like moisture on the fleece,20 so David in conquering the Philistines (I Kgs 23.2–5), so did Ezechias in asking for the sun to go back ten hours (IV Kgs 20.1–11), so Peter in choosing Matthias by lot (Acts 1.26), so most of the saints have deserved, in various matters, either to consult God

or to receive replies from him. The little two-year old girl was put down therefore like a milk-white sacrificial victim in a flowery meadow, like a golden drachma on a divine pair of scales. She, 45 like the Ark of God turning aside neither to the right nor the left (I Kgs 6.12), with unwavering purpose picked out only the veil from the midst of the splendid colours and put it on her head as a crown. She seized only the pledges of holiness, chose Christ in his holy things, and in putting on the holy habit put on Christ; she left untouched for the foolish virgins (Mt 25.1–13) of this world the other emblems of the material. Offerings of thanks arose to God the inspirer, there were congratulations and joy for her father and mother, and for the whole congregation of the faithful. For what could be clearer than this prediction of divine acceptance when such an infant, whom brightness would attract and blackness would frighten away, chose a marriage portion of this appearance, amidst an abundance of varied beauty?21 Her future grace was brilliantly clear to those present; but for us who come after, the miracle-working glory accomplished in heaven confirms it more completely. Already then for her ‘the white privet falls, the dark blueberries are picked’;22 she put on the black garment of an exile in which she was to seek the robe and fatherland of immortality, showing beforehand that in the cultivation of chastity she was going to await the son of the Virgin, and as a solitary23 on earth was to seek her spouse in heaven. Already she prepared to sing her bridal song: ‘I am black but beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem (Sg 1.4).24 The king has loved me and brought me into his bedchamber.’ 46 Then the king, with the woman who had been his wife but was now his sister, gave their little child as a bride to the infant Christ in the assembly of angels and men; and so they were able to rejoice at having become the Lord’s parents-in-law. They offered their only child to the Saviour; or rather, the man offered her; the woman accepted the offering on behalf of her mother the Church of God. The king added lands, he added royal gifts and augmented pastures; he augmented the flock of the Lord with great increase. So in the blessed Edith the abundant blessing of God has overflowed on this place through the ages.25 20

See antiphon for the Purification of the Virgin, CAO 4441.

21

For what could [...] of varied beauty?: not in R.

22

Virgil, Eclogues II, 18 (a fifteenth-century hand has written ‘Virgilius’ in the margin of C); not in R. 23

R: pilgrim.

24

See antiphon for Office of Virgins, CAO 3878.

25

The king added [...] through the ages: not in R.

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MICHAEL WRIGHT AND KATHLEEN LONCAR

I Therefore cherish the hundred thousand little ones whom Herod’s madness slew, you sweet foster-brothers and foster-sisters of the loving bridegroom; as a suckling child he draws to himself a suckling spouse. Favour with a flowery cradle the flourishing child whom the Virgin suckles, having brought him forth by a chaste father, whom kings adore, the angels proclaim, the heavenly beings sing, the star as matron of honour26 marks out with a sign, the very ox marks out a place for the shepherd of the angels.27 47 A stable is offered to the king of heaven as a birth-chamber. Mary at the head of the virginal barracks and the flowery cohorts of chastity deems the beautiful one worthy to be her daughter-in-law, and gives away her son. Edith, the little child, weds the little king; let the flowery wedding chamber blossom with crocuses, privets, narcissi, blueberries, and cinnamon.28 Celebrate the pure nuptials with purity, and, virgins, bring virginal pine-torches, following in white robes the white lamb, who feeds on the lilies of celibacy (Sg 2.16, 6.2), among those singing glory on high, and amid the celebratory songs of those who recline at the feast in heaven. Pour out a new song in place of the Fescennine verses and bring the little child Edith to the little child Christ. 6 As her father withdrew with the members of his court, his little girl was left to God, and she, cut off from the enticements of the world in the bosom of her mother, could have sung with the prophetic voice of the psalmist: ‘My father and my mother have left me, but the Lord has taken me up.’ The rose garden of virgins29 embraced the flower of Christ and competed in cherishing the milk-white child, holding her in their arms and laps, and kissing her; worthily indeed, since both senior and junior nuns had deserved her30 as their everlasting guide to the heavens.31 So she was gathered into the bosom of the church, the college of virgins, the divine training school, the schools of virtue, into the bosom of her who was at the same time her 26

stella […] pronuba: the star is conceived as a female friend attending the marriage.

27

Quin angelorum pastorem bos collocat; C reads hos for bos. Very uncertain. Colloco means ‘I place’, ‘I situate’, and ‘I give away a woman in marriage’. Presumably angelorum pastorem refers to Jesus; if the passage is not corrupt, perhaps precise meaning is less important than the evocation of nuptial imagery together with the traditional associations of the nativity. It seems that C did not understand the R reading; could it be that when Goscelin wrote it, he and God knew what it meant, and Goscelin forgot? 28

Perhaps a recollection of Virgil Eclogues II, 18, 47–50, and similar passages.

29

Wilmart uirginem, C uirginum.

30

Or: ‘worthy indeed, as both mothers and daughters, to obtain her as their everlasting guide to the heavens’. 31

The rose garden [...] to the heavens; not in R.

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31

spiritual and natural mother; where the one who had brought her forth on earth might now give her heavenly birth, where among the Elysian blossoms she might be reared for the marriage-chamber of Christ, where from the divine embassy she might learn the marriage-commands of her spouse, 48 by such preaching as this: ‘Hear, O daughter, and see, and incline your ear, and forget your people and your father’s house, and the king shall desire your beauty, for he himself is the Lord your God.’ (Ps 44.11–12) She who was offered to God followed this word with such burning love that she did not assent to seek or desire anything else on earth. For, from her very infancy, Christ showed that he32 presided in the chamber of her virgin breast with a powerful radiation of grace like the risen sun. She was so honey-sweet, kind, beloved, so glowing with divine joy, so much did she give out a sweet fragrance to everyone from the storehouse of her holy heart, that amid the thorns of the world she gave out an odour of the joys of paradise, full of love in flower-beds and gardens of fragrance. The gardener of Mary (Jn 20.15), the vine-dresser of the virgin daughter of Judah, and the planter of the Paradise of delight, had planted all the seeds of the virtues in this very fertile breast: her heart was33 like Jerusalem the desired, like a land of milk and honey, like Lebanon the most fragrant, like the garden of the Lord at the height of spring, like the scent of a plentiful field which the Lord has blessed (Gn 27.27), like the chamber of the Lord’s repose, like the bosom of wisdom, like the nectar of the human race, like the censer of complete good will. In the gleaming garment of her body was clothed her soul, more gleaming still. In a beautiful court, a more beautiful queen resided.34 Her appearance was more like her father, her sense of reverence more like her mother. 49 She was of well-proportioned medium height, which she reached before she was an adult. Her holy modesty and the snow-white bird of Christ had given those stars, her eyes—which shone from her inner radiance—the likeness of doves’ eyes (Sg 4.1). Sweetness dropped down and kindness poured from her lips (Sg 4.11); honey and milk, received from the mouth of the Lord, gave their flavour. She protected the glory of her head and the rest of the harmonious work of her Creator from the Ethiopian sun, and not desiring the day of man, she reserved herself for the day of the resurrection and the revelation of the glory of the children of God (Rom 8.19–23), in which her lamp might shine out in ceaseless eternity. Indeed that beautiful daughter of the most beautiful Sun strove to please and to be fashioned in the likeness of her Creator alone.

32

Christ showed that he; R: For it seemed to her from her infancy that Christ.

33

She was so honey-sweet [...] her heart was; R: So all her life was love, kindness and heavenly joy, giving out fragrance to everyone like a delightful garden. 34

In the gleaming [...] beautiful queen resided; R: Also the beauty of her appearance, with her still more beautiful modesty, was in accordance with her most beautiful soul.

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7 Her mother did not desire to load her reddish hair with gold, nor to obscure the stronghold of the cross with a gold plate or jewels hanging over her forehead, nor to crown her with the finery of the married state,35 nor to add anything to her natural gracefulness; but she strove only for those things which were fitting for the marriage chamber of the Lord. In place of purple, in place of cosmetics for the face and eyes,36 she taught her modesty; in place of a range of adornments she preferred to adorn her with the splendour of learning by which she might gleam more brightly to the adornment of the Church.37 50 Furthermore, having a gift for the spiritual, Edgar loved the learned community, and as he was fastidious in all things, and like Daniel a man of desires (Dn 9.23, 10.11, 19), he maintained as the most welcome adornment of his reign any man, foreigner or citizen, who was of service by scholarship or the work of the hand.38 Among the priests of Wilton who went in procession before the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord (Jo 6.4), ministers of the Lord’s tabernacle, there were twin instructors39 who were of special weight by Edgar’s authority, venerable for their wisdom both in life and in scholarship, of whom one is remembered as Radbodo of Rheims, from St Remigius, the other as Benno,40 canon of Trier under the patronage of St Paulinus, and he is distinguished as the famous creator of painting and craft work; he embellished the church built by the virgin with a decorated ceiling, which is still radiant to this day.41 51 These men took turns to teach, with worthy reverence, this pupil of the Holy Spirit; these men brought to her feet the light of the word of God (Ps 118.105), so that by the light of the lamps of the scriptures and by choosing the steps of the virtues (Ps 83.6–8), she might advance towards the throne of the eternal king. She was the golden urn in the Ark of the Covenant, in which the heavenly manna was hidden (Heb 9.4); she continued to dwell in the paradise of the cloister, where her own place is still remembered. The chaste teacher instructed her from outside through a window and accustomed himself to being heard rather than being seen, as was appropriate for the young pupil with her holy modesty. Her mother within and her teacher from outside adorned her ears with heavenly pearls,42

35

nor to crown her with the finery of the married state; not in R.

36

Literally ‘white lead for the face, antimony for eyelashes’.

37

she preferred [...] of the Church; R: she arrayed her in the splendour of learning and virtues, so that she might shine more brightly to the glory of the Church. 38

Furthermore, having a gift [...] work of the hand; not in R.

39

twin instructors; R: two.

40

Benno: R Benna, in all occurrences.

41

and he is distinguished [...] radiant to this day; R: distinguished for painting as well as skilled craftwork. 42

Compare chant for the Office of St Agnes, CAO 6955b.

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33

but there was a most inward teacher of all, the Spirit, the Lord of knowledge, whose anointing instructed her in all things (I Jn 2.20). 8 Anointed with the Spirit’s oil of gladness (Ps 44.8), and following his sweet words with her own mouth (Ps 118.103), she was raised up towards the heavens and trod earthly dignity underfoot. Neither her ancestral cities, nor her royal inheritance, nor her family treasures from ancient kings nor the most extensive and prosperous rule of the British realm, neither the expectation that her sons would be kings, nor kingdoms as her marriage-portion, deflected her mind as it journeyed towards the heavens. Glory, honours, riches, power, public assemblies and shows, and whatever is considered of first importance among mortals, were empty indeed to the virgin whose home was in the heavens, and seemed of no account to the star-crowned queen. The little girl rejected and annihilated all these enticing bonds, as is shown above; so that, with maturer faith, she might all the more exchange the transient for eternal goods.43 52 The sweetness of the Lord, of which she had had a foretaste, and the light of his countenance (Ps 89.8), and the glory of the everlasting kingdom were supplanting even her former great enthusiasm as an academic student. From now on, as if the heavens were open and she had had the eyes of Stephen bestowed upon her (Acts 7.55), she was taken up in rapture to the festivals of the saints, the joys of the angels, to Christ himself, the glorious spouse illuminating everything; clinging to him with her whole mind and struck with the holy wound of his love, from the midst of her studies she hastened towards him with her entire affection and, taking to herself the wings of a dove, she ardently desired to fly to his sanctifying embraces and to be at rest there (Ps 54.7), crying out with the longings of the bride: ‘Your name is as perfume poured forth and your sweet smell is above all aromatical spices. Draw me after you, we will run to the odour of your ointments (Sg 1.2, 4.10, 1.3).’ So she used to strive to rise up to him, having gazed on the lamb standing upon Mount Sion (Rv 14.1), he who is very white and feeds among the lilies (Sg 2.16, 6.2) with one hundred thousand innocent virgins (Rv 14.1). Who ascends unto this mount of the Lord except the one who has hands pure of corruption and by whom God is seen with a clean heart? (Ps 23.3–4) With the queen of Sheba (III Kgs 10.1–13) she also sighed after that litter of mighty Solomon (Sg 3.9–10), that golden couch, that splendid bedchamber of the virginal bridegroom, that flowery bed where the king rests at midday (Sg 1.6). Hither only Virginity44 ascends, whom her sister Humility leads with royal embraces, and Love, her mother, supports.45 Hither she will ascend by the purple steps (Sg 3.10) 43

The little girl [...] eternal good; not in R.

44

Virginity; R: Queen Virginity.

45

Wilmart subnectit; read subvectit, a change which is little more than the reinterpretation of two minims.

34

MICHAEL WRIGHT AND KATHLEEN LONCAR

of modesty and with cheeks of unwedded delicacy blushing like pomegranate (Sg 4.3). She had no spiritual desire beyond the contemplation of such great majesty, saying to the Father in the spirit of ardent love: 53 ‘My soul has fainted after your salvation, my eyes have failed for your word (Ps 118.81–82), your word which created all things.’46 The tender maiden supported herself on the prayers of all those reigning with the Lord, crying out with deep desires: ‘Stay me up with flowers; compass me about with apples, because I languish with love (Sg 2.5). Angel messengers, apostles who are our governors, martyrs who have gone before, fellow virgins, daughters of Jerusalem, tell my beloved that I languish with love.’ (Sg 5.8) But she chose for herself as her plenipotentiary intercessors those senators in the starry regions, those members of the heavenly Upper House, the apostles, as being the fellow country-men and women and friends of God, and with the confidence and importunity of the Canaanite woman she harassed the Lord through them (Mt 15.22– 28). You indeed, famous Areopagite, 54 and apostolic standard-bearer of the Gauls, Denis, she compelled you to be her closest patron; she had clothed her empathetic heart in your kindness, which had been approved by the Lord; the benevolence of Jesus Christ, which you preached, promised and granted to your benevolence that you would obtain what you requested for anyone whatsoever. And so now, having been taken up into the grace of Christ, 55 she uses the apostolic power of binding and loosing (Mt 16.19, 18.18), she frees suppliants bound with iron and fetters the guilty without iron, she who is eminent as the pupil of the apostles, their daughter, their worshipper and their close imitator. There is kept in her monastery a manual of her devotions as a token of her memory,47 in which the apostolic precepts shine out, written in her virginal hand, with little prayers subjoined to them, among which is recorded this petition of the true Israelite woman without guile (Jn 1.47), praying from the pure wellspring of her mind: 56 ‘O Lord, father and ruler of my life, do not leave me in evil thoughts, do not give me pride of the eyes, and turn away evil desire from me, O Lord’, and other things which the faith of the Church sings.48 Sighing also with the daughter of Caleb for a land that is watered (Jo 15.19), she besought the Father in this prayer ascribed to her and often repeated: ‘Almighty and most merciful Lord, who brought forth for your thirsty people a spring of living water from the rock, bring forth from the hardness of my heart tears of contrition […]’ etc. 49 She went round in these ardours and offered up in the Lord’s tabernacle a sacrifice of jubilation (Ps 26.6), kindling the 46

She had no [...] created all things; not in R.

47

memorabili pignore: translation uncertain, the ablative being hard to construe.

48

See chant for Matins, de Sapientia, CAO 6503.

49

This collect is specified in Regularis Concordia for the third prayer of the Trina oratio, to be said after the last office of the day (Regularis Concordia, ed. and trans. by Thomas Symons (London: Nelson, 1953), p. 24).

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35

incense of prayers in the contrition of her heart, pouring out burning rivers of tears, sending holy sighs like incense to the Lord in the odour of sweetness (Eph 5.2), 57 breathing into the ear of Christ the holy desires of her mind, pouring out to the Lord golden vials full of the odours (Rv 5.8) of prayers, playing melodious harps of psalmody.50 9 She had Dunstan and Æthelwold as her principal gatekeepers and sacristans so that the king of glory might enter her gleaming inner court and most inward shrine; she set them before her face as two disciples and two shining candelabra so that they might adorn her habitation with all the furnishing of the virtues, might nourish the fire of divine love continually in the thurible of fragrant sighs with the inextinguishable tinder of exhortations. And these, like faithful servants, performing the function of love and an angelic embassy, eagerly invited towards her heavenly nuptials the Lord’s spouse, whom they had consecrated to the bridegroom, the king of virgins and of eternal chastity. Relying on these guides on her left hand and her right, she journeyed towards the heavenly kingdom, and they, with the Lord’s encouragement hastened her, as though her hand had already been given,51 towards the heavenly bridal chamber. Also52 there were at that time people who radiated illumination: Oswald, Archbishop of York, and the precious martyr Elphege, 58 who by the prophecy of holy Dunstan was to be a worthy successor to Saint Æthelwold, and Saint Æthelstan, bishop of the diocese of Wiltshire (who previously had been proven to such a extent in the path of obedience that, at the playful suggestion of his teacher, he lifted boiling hot flesh with his bare hand from the lowest depths of a boiling cauldron),53 and other leaders of the church and ministers of religion, of whom a large number 50

The last three paragraphs of chap. 8 (But she chose for herself [...] harps of psalmody) do not appear in R, which has in their place: ‘But among the many examples of the saints in books, which she read voraciously, and among the illumination which was at hand to her from saints and especially the religious persons related to her, she was kindled most nearly by the virginal palm of her most holy aunt Edith, the royal sister of the great Edgar, whose 54 name and virginity she had inherited together with the rest of her virtues, who was very famous in the monastery of Tamworth in Staffordshire for the tokens of her merits, just as she herself was in Wilton. Also her most blessed grandmother Queen Ælfgifu showed her by brilliant miracles with what piety and courage she led her life as the bedfellow of King Edmund, and that she is to be imitated in the golden cult in 55 heaven.’ 51

eagerly invited towards [...] already been given; not in R.

52

Also; R: Nevertheless.

53

This incident is described in Wulfstan of Winchester: The Life of St Æthelwold, chap. 14 (ed. and trans. by Michael Lapidge and Michael Winterbottom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 26–28).

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then flourished in England, through the encouragement of King Edgar, most devoted to God, and of Saint Dunstan. Such servants, of the utmost chastity, and intermediaries of the divine marriage kindled the soul of Edith, burning with desire for heaven, as if pouring oil onto flames, with the fiery words of the Lord, and sang to her songs of the Lord chosen from the songs of Sion. So much did those angelic fathers rejoice with the holy angels, considering it pleasant either to inflame her heavenly affections more highly or to give themselves up to her holy prayers. The divine champions also urged her venerable mother on to every virtue, the pious imitator of Anna in the gospel, who carefully preserved the doves from the watchful hawk. 59 So, with Edith outshining all with her star-like lamp,54 the fragrant vine of the Lord Sabaoth flourished (Sg 2.15), and also the plentiful olive tree, which the grace of the Creator called beautiful, fruitful, splendid (Jer 11.16). Then, following the example of the bees and ants, the swarms of virgins were eagerly industrious in building the heavenly Jerusalem, and like Christian Amazons they trained for the divine battle. The mother was a lesson in virtue, the daughter an example. Nor did that mother cease in her obedience after her only birth-giving, after this only daughter became the spouse of the Lord, whom he himself approved as the most choice. He said: ‘One is my dove, she is the only one of her mother, the chosen of her that bore her.’ (Sg 6.8) By the merit of one girl given to God, many daughters were born to this parent, the spouse herself rejoiced with her many companions and commended them to her Lord in unending love: ‘And young maidens have loved you (Sg 1.2); and let the daughters of Sion be joyful in their king, and let them praise his name in virgin choir.’ (Ps 149. 2–3) Whence the divine wisdom proclaims: ‘O how beautiful is the chaste generation with its splendour.’55 II Until the Virgin brought forth the purifying burden, chastity was a worthless fable to the world, all flesh was in the possession of flesh; 60 all the descendants of Eve belonged to death; being corruptible they provided fodder for the grave. Mary, you give the beginning of new light, you who, bringing forth life, a virgin giving birth, fill the world with life-giving offspring; as leader you gather56 together innumerable followers of the beauteous army of the unwed people. Fidelity in marriage celebrates Susanna: Judith the dove cuts down the bird of gloomy Jove. The moon outshines the stars, the daylight surpasses her. Virginity is the sun for brides and widows; virginity creates an immortal race. This generation does not know the work of death. Hail virginity, consort of the angelic choirs; nothing in the heavens is more brilliant than you. From now on Edith shines out, bearing your standards. The royal daughter follows the queen with the Tyrian daughters, and nearest to the mother. After you, 54

Or: ‘with Edith the star-like outshining all with her lamp’.

55

See antiphon for Office of St Agnes, and of Virgins, CAO 4069.

56

Wilmart congerit, C congeris.

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37

gleaming white, she leads forth the shining armies of Wilton from their ivory houses. Divine parent, lead your choirs, delivered from the sulphurous battle-front, to the river of life. May sobriety and deep love and devoted faith join these young handmaidens to you. May your Edith, brought forth and tended by these handmaidens under your leadership, ascend to the couch of her spouse. 10 But the glorious virgin, taught by the Lord to rise up in prudence towards the stars from a deep foundation, strives upward on the heaven-reaching ladder of humility.57 After58 the fat burnt-offerings (Ps 65.15) of psalmody and prayers 61 —for she sought first the kingdom of God (Mt 6.33), and the Lord on his arrival first took up his abode in her—she went forth to her exterior duties as if from the chamber of the Lord, like an eagle brought back to earth from the sun, a very bright lamp about to return from the sea. Now she did not remember that she had been born to the kingdom, choosing to show herself to be the handmaid of the handmaids of Christ.59 She did not claim for herself the long genealogy of the kings, nor the family of her mother, which was worthy to rule,60 preferring the grace and glory of the humble (Jas 4.6), coming from the Lord. Displaying her strength in obedience, she offered herself first to the service of all, last to her own dignity.61 Whatever her mother enjoined, she set herself to obey as if for a prize in the stadium (I Cor 9.24). She showed herself to her sisters as Martha, to Christ as Mary.62 She was subject with great devotion to every servant.63 In ministering to individuals she bowed down to the ground, as if indeed she were already being rewarded by the Lord her director, as if giving thanks because she was worthy to serve those more worthy than herself.64 That virginal and bridal family of Christ was brought together at that time, as is usual, from various families of worldly nobility, 62 the brilliant offspring of princes, nobles and people of high rank. The most brilliant jewel Edith, as she outshone these in nobility, so also she led them in humility. Among these she corrected by her zeal and example her kinswoman Wulfwen, who ministered very little with bowed head 57

Wilmart finds an almost certain allusion to the opening of chap. 7, De humilitate, of The Rule of St Benedict (ed. and trans. by Justin McCann (London: Burns Oates, 1952)). 58

R here has: the celebration of vigils, which put sleep to flight by the beams of eternal glory, after [...]. 59

Now she did not [...] handmaids of Christ; not in R.

60

nor the family [...] worthy to rule; not in R.

61

Wilmart suggests that se be understood; a reflexive construction seems to be required.

62

Luke 10. 38–42.

63

She was subject [...] every servant; not in R.

64

she was worthy [...] than herself; R: she was deemed worthy to be the handmaid of her handmaids [etc.].

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MICHAEL WRIGHT AND KATHLEEN LONCAR

and seemed to presume upon her royal pedigree, teaching her to glory not in the flesh but in the Lord. She was concerned for everyone, ready for each and every one, she was at hand for all in fulfilment of her vows.65 She encouraged her tablecompanions with holy cheerfulness and the kindest joyfulness,66 embracing all in the bowels of Christ (Phil 1.8), taking both her own abstinence and other people’s eating as great delicacies, abstaining herself as if she were feasting, feasting in such a way that frugality was preserved and love was spread around. 70 [Chapter 12 init.] The senior nuns who knew about it testify that she was afflicted by a hairshirt which gave a false appearance of inner delicacy by a purple exterior, although observance of the rule would have required black. Without doubt she made her humility more glorious by public elegance, so that together with the gold-clad Cecilia she might please the Father, who alone sees in secret (Mt 6.4), with her hidden pearl, and that visible frivolities might conceal hidden martyrdom. 11 68 Furthermore, by the many-faceted grace of God, she67 shone out in grace: a voice

like a swan, angelic singing, sweet eloquence, a noble intellect capable in all kinds of thought, a perceptive ardour in reading; hands as elegant as they were accomplished in painting and in writing as scribe or as author; the fingers of a goldsmith or jeweller or citharist, 69 celebrating with the cithara the angels’ harmonies and the nuptials of Christ, to whom all things are consecrated in eternal grace. These hands did not know how to serve the grand ceremonies of her parents, her brothers, and other kings and princes: they were dedicated only to the adornment of the supreme spouse; they gave attendance to the hall68 and table of the Lord, the altar and the high officials of the Church. Indeed, like the sister of Aaron (Ex 15.20) and the sister of the priests of God, she embroidered with flowers the pontifical vestments of Christ with all her skill and capacity to make splendid. Here purple, dyed with Punic red, with murex and Sidonian shellfish, and twice-dipped scarlet (Ex 25.4, 26.1 etc.) were interwoven with gold; chrysolite, topaz, onyx and beryl and precious stones were intertwined with gold; union pearls, the shells’ treasure,69 which only India produces in the east and Britain, the land of the English, in the west,70 were set like stars in 65 That virginal and bridal [...] of her vows; R: She also improved, by the example she gave, her royal kinswoman Wulfwen and the rest of the crowd of noble virgins, teaching them to glory not in the flesh but in the Lord (I Cor 1. 31), whose allegiance alone is noble. Who indeed is worthy to recall the memory of such great love? 66

R here has: those who lived with her as much as those who were guests.

67

R: this person beloved by God.

68

aula: normally the court of a king, but aula ecclesiae is the nave of a church.

69

Wilmart concharum preci‹osar›um uniones: both MSS read precium, with a possible resonance with the pearl of great price. 70

Bede mentions the production of pearls in Britain: Historia Ecclesiastica, chap. 1

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39

gold; the golden insignia of the cross, the golden images of the saints were outlined with a surround of pearls. Her whole thought was Christ and the worship of Christ.71 IV Christ was everything to her, and she entirely belonged to Christ. Christ was her glory, love, hope, riches and honour; praise, song, cithara, rest, work, leisure, business, joy, delight, glory and wealth. He was her theme in writing, ornament, painting, song and lyre; he was in her mind in weaving, the soaking of reeds, making baskets; in every movement of her mind and every action he was her theme: in the highest, the lowest, the most distinguished, the least. The all-conquering love of Christ cut her off from access to all things that were remote from him, and found deceitful when weighed in the hand. The holy funeral pyre liquidated all earthly matter. The better part of Mary is set above that of Martha (Lk 10.42). Queen Meditation surpassed the life of the handmaid, making the Sabbath last for ever in the embrace of her spouse. 70 She said, ‘May the pillow be placed under me by his left hand, and the right hand in its embrace (Sg 2.6, 8.3) give me a golden necklace.’ [62] Meanwhile the glorious virgin’s72 struggles with the flattery of the world and

the evidence of her virtues gave her new, more brilliant, accolades for humility. She flourished, the glory of her father, the crown of her mother, the most loving responsibility of her spiritual fathers and her distinguished kindred. The crowd of princes, nobles, distinguished ladies, and the entire nobility of her father’s kingdom venerated her as Lady; the whole of England was disposed to reverence her. Her father’s piety in power as well as her good will in service made her sweet to everyone. 63 Foreign kingdoms and principalities also gave her respect with greetings, letters and gifts; religious leaders begged her to act as a saving intercessor. Whatever ambassadors Gaul or Germany, the august and apostolic city of Rome or emperors themselves had sent to the most renowned prince Edgar, they took pride in commending themselves to her holy kindness. Who could escape so great a net? The virgin, more elevated in Christ, had said farewell to the kingdom of the world, to earthly eminence and favours; she devoted herself to the sick and destitute, she set the lepers of Christ before the sons of kings, she preferred to serve the leprous73 rather than have royal power; rather than ruling, she preferred to be beside ulcerated feet as if they were the footstool of Christ, and to tend them with bathing, and with her hair and kisses. The more anyone appeared to her deformed by disease, the more she offered herself to that person with empathy and kindness, full of service. She (Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. by Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 15). 71

Her whole [...] worship of Christ; not in R.

72

the glorious virgin’s; R: her.

73

elefantiosis: the sufferers from elephantiasis.

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MICHAEL WRIGHT AND KATHLEEN LONCAR

made herself an eye to the blind (Jb 29.15), a support to the weak, and a refuge and comfort for all the distressed. The more anyone was in need, the more she was ready to bring immediate attention. The ragged people did not fear the lady in purple, the festering crowds surrounded the daughter of cleanliness, old women stricken with horrifying disaster claimed and blessed her as their own daughter.74 She delighted more deeply in these courts, these families, these magnates; she gloried in being blessed by the goodwill of such people, and she respected women laden with lesions rather than those laden with jewels. At that time while the heavenly clemency of the most pious king promoted material prosperity by his laws, 64 that generosity poured out on the poor was nevertheless put to the test by a general famine. Then those who were in want came to recognize their special refuge: on all sides, from the whole province, people thronged to the monastery of her most distinguished mother Wulfthryth; indeed Edith made donations to everybody with the greatest charity, from her mother’s hand and her own, as if she would have been willing to give away all the chattels of the monastery, if it could be granted to her that by using rough haircloth and abstinence she could give to the poor soft clothing and alms.75 She was wounded by the pains of all; if anyone was scandalized, she was on fire (II Cor 11.29). She put on the bowels of mercy (Col 3.12), in him who bore our griefs in his conscious suffering (Is 53.4). The condemned knew her as their refuge, captives knew her as one who would redeem them. She suffered on behalf of thieves as much as if they were her brothers Edward or Æthelred. She interposed herself between the sword and the neck so that the executioner would have to strike an innocent woman, or spare the guilty. She broke through the adamantine decrees of the laws and judgements; she overcame ferocious throngs with prayers, tears, kindness, gifts; and the prey was snatched from the very jaws of death. Whatever she demanded from her pious father by delegates or by her own speaking, this was in her heart—that he should increase the number of churches, support them with riches, 65 extend the embrace of his mercy to all needs, and set free by his clemency those who were to be punished or sold into slavery. Her pity and concern did not seek any gifts for herself, but the well being of others.76 Nor was it difficult to obtain her requests from the indulgence of that father, whose throne had been prepared in mercy (Is 16.5), whose judgement preferred to pardon rather than to punish (provided only the people’s peace was preserved), so that the grace of his daughter would put aside his sword, even when it had been drawn. He, indeed was dominated by justice and mercy; she was driven forward by mercy alone, by which rather the whole law is fulfilled (Rom 13.8, Gal 5.14).

74

The more anyone [...] their own daughter; not in R.

75

At that time [...] soft clothing and alms; not in R.

76

Her pity [...] being of others; not in R.

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41

She also gathered together an innumerable household of wild animals, loving with compassion all those works of the Creator in the spirit of his love, who is kind to all things, and whose mercies are over all his works (Ps 144.9), who hates none of the things which he has made (Ws 11.25), and preserves both men and beasts (Ps 35.7), and fills with blessing every living creature (Ps 144.16); who is not only wonderful on high (Ps 92.4), in holy places and in the stars of heaven, but also in the very worms of the earth. Their courtyard was attached to the wall of the monastery on the southern side, and here in its wide embrace they had their territories and their district outside the walls. The virgin of the Lord, as untouched by the evils of the world as she was innocent of them, had here enclosed her exotics and natives, 66 the gifts of the mighty, and she, the pet lamb of Christ, looked after that wild sheepfold and untamed herd with daily provisioning; to prevent the jealousy of Judas (Jn 13.29) from snarling at these little enclosures, she was generous to the animals after attending to the Lord’s poor. The ravens fed Elijah; Benedict, you fed ravens. Edith feeds wild beasts outdoors, and doves indoors.77 Certainly whenever she was at leisure she visited these guests with the mind of a recluse, the friend of the solitude of Antony and Macarius, striving for the part of Mary (Lk 10.42). The blessed one fled from the uproar of the world, and mingled with the wild animals more safely than with human beings. Christ himself taught this when he spent his forty days with beasts (Mk 1.13). He was made a wilderness to Israel (Jer 2.31), and he was found in solitude by his own solitaries. Here in the choir of beasts he is adored as in the church by the virgin who is herself a temple,78 he is pleased by the incense of prayers, and the lyre of David, he is blessed by the lofty vows of the loving soul at all times without ceasing, and in every place of his dominion (Ps 102.22) and in all his creation.79 67 She kept uncontaminated those eyes which she was accustomed to lift up with a pure heart to him who dwells in heaven (Ps 122.1); with her outer eyes she used to look now towards the heavens, wounded with love, and now upon the beasts, having sympathy with the works of the Lord, high and low, as one who strove to raise to him the hymn of the reality of all things: ‘O heavens, bless the Lord; bless the Lord, all beasts and cattle; bless the Lord, all works and powers of the Lord (Dn 3.59, 81, 57, 61).’80 Standing within the open doorway of the enclosures, she would call by a pet name the ferocious, branchingantlered stag. He would spring forward at the well-known voice and laying aside his ferocity would accept with a gentle mouth bread from the hand of the virgin lady. The rest of the wild animals would run together for the blessing of the lady whose kindness they sensed. And by the wonderful grace of God, those animals which 77

These two verses seem to have been composed by Goscelin.

78

virgineo templo, understood in the light of I Corinthians 6. 19.

79

in omni creatura sua: alternatively, ‘in each of his creatures’.

80

Clauses from the Benedicite, sung at lauds.

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MICHAEL WRIGHT AND KATHLEEN LONCAR

strongly armed men would hesitate to confront, this lone unarmed girl—so confident is innocence—delighted to receive as they ran to her, and stroke with a gentle hand. The bear and the boar rather feared than frightened her, armed as she was only with faith. We believe that this woman, under the persecution of Nero and Decius, would have been able to smile at the attacks of wild beasts, and to tame tigers and lions, 68 since she knew how to quieten their fierce souls in a time of peace. But if anyone, too strict in justice, prefers to criticize rather than to praise this concern for this kind of animal as a product of her royal nature and totally pointless both in her doing it, and in our recollection, let him consider whether this offence might not be more holy than his virtues, when exalted love and holiness of life excuses and indeed adorns everything.81 III82 The virgin who could look forward to so much brilliance, so many titles, became less than or equal to the least of things. A gentle bird, she became similar to her own birds; a lamb consorting with wolves and acceptable to wild beasts, and with Job she is the sister of dragons, though under a law that keeps her safe (Jb 30.29). Then she put her co-pupils and sisters above herself, taking no pride in birth or merit, and so gaining greater glory. Just as the moon is brighter than the lesser stars, so she is more humble, in her virgin light, towards the others. So Edith, the most humble lamp in the starry choir, not like a daughter of yours, worthy and great King Edgar, deliberately made herself subject to all, as a dedicated servant-girl. Christ loves such a one, whom modesty and the humblest heart consecrate. 12 [70] But the blessed bishop Æthelwold once warned this pearl of such sweet

devotion, with her rather ornate habit, thus:83 ‘O daughter, not in these garments does one approach the marriage chamber of Christ, nor is the heavenly bridegroom pleased with exterior elegance’; she, conscious of her indwelling guest, and conscious perhaps of her harsh inner garment, is reported to have replied in these words: ‘Believe, reverend father,84 a mind by no means poorer in aspiring to God will live beneath this covering than beneath a goatskin. I possess my Lord, who pays 81

In place of this passage on her menagerie (She also gathered together [...] indeed adorns everything), R has: Untamed beasts laid aside their ferocity in the face of her affection, and when she called they ran to her tamely, and learned to be fed from the hands of their lady, so that if the peace of the church were to be summoned back to a time of persecution, she would be able to command the beasts of Thecla. 82

Metre III not in R.

83

But the blessed [...] ornate habit, thus; R: So when blessed Æthelwold warned her once about her rather ornate appearance. 84

R: O father in the church.

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attention to the mind, not to the clothing. Here the word of the Lord is declared: “According to your faith, be it done unto you.”’ (Mt 9.29) The man inspired by God recognized the authority of grace excelling in the virgin, 71 and not daring to distress the heavenly guardian within her, rejoiced rather at the Lord working in his saints all things according to his will. Recognizing also that it makes no difference whether a pure mind lives in purple or in sackcloth, nor is there any harm in keeping [a thing] in a golden vase, he yielded to the divine liberty, and took care to reverence the holy purpose of one who, we believe, loved the rush mat of the anchorite Paul better than the robe of her father’s royal power. 13 With playful reference to this pious striving to excel,85 the most serene grace of the Most High once took the part of his beloved with a great miracle. One of the serving women had let drop a wax candle that had been put out carelessly, and was smouldering at the tip of its still-burning wick, into a chest full of the virgin’s garments, and shut up the chest and went away. Soon the half-quenched flame rekindled, ‘as much as it was hidden, so much more the hidden fire grew greater’.86 The revived flame flared up and became self-sustaining, and in the closed room the destructive heat began to roar and rage inside the chest. Now the closest wall was burning, now the concealed bomb-shell87 had flared up from the inside, now the danger was threatening the whole place. It was night, and sleep had overcome everyone, when at last by the unsleeping providence of God the sisters were aroused; they did not try to open the burning building but smashed their way straight into it; they tried to throw out the clothes, which were almost consumed by fire, or to extinguish the blaze which threatened destruction to everyone. But Saint Edith, with her mind firmly grounded in Christ, laughed at her losses, and showed by her cheerful countenance how much the show and wealth of the world meant to her, and exulted with the same attitude, whether she really knew or did not know what had happened. When they unfolded the garments, made of skin or of purple, and examined them separately (holding the lights carefully), 72 by the marvellous grace of the everlasting guardian, all the things were found to be as they had been before the fire, unharmed by all the burning; just as, indeed, we are told by trustworthy testimony, the virgin herself was unaffected by any corruption. Our Samaritan did not lay aside his name, the faithful guardian who guards Israel, neither slumbering nor sleeping (Ps 120.4), for if he did not guard it, the guards would keep watch in vain (Ps 126.1). Truly the Lord guards those who love him (Ps 144.20); truly he who is great in great things also works his marvels in trivial things, for he not only 85

Huic alludens pie emulationi; the translation is speculative.

86

Ovid, Metamorphoses IV, 64.

87

machina: the word is frequently applied to siege artillery, and a metaphor from incendiary ammunition is assumed.

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preserves the souls of the saints that will reign with him for ever, but also deigns to preserve in a marvellous manner their possessions which will perish in this world. With what great protection, we consider, did the star-crowned king protect his bride, with what great love of the heavenly citizens was she guarded, whose clothing was thus protected in the midst of the flames. This is the gate of the city facing towards the east, which the true sun lights with undying day, and the names of the apostles, whom the virgin herself especially revered, and of the Lamb, are written over it, and the guard of angels is over its walls.88 It is possible to believe that she would have been preserved with the three young men in the furnace at Babylon,89 and with Agnes, equal to her in age, she would have been able to put out the flames rather than to feed them, and would have gone, not for burning,90 into the midst of the fire. Meanwhile, struck with awe by this great miracle, the throng of her sisters broke out in rejoicing in amazement and joy: ‘See, lady, see, blessed one, how great kindnesses shine upon you from God.’ She made it her concern91 with her whole being to praise the great acts of grace of the Lord. Indeed she seemed to fear human attention more than the flames; firmly grounded in true faith and humility upon the solid rock,92 she put no trust in any enticements of the world, serving the Lord in fear and rejoicing unto him with trembling (Ps 2.11). The chest itself, the proof of this miracle, 73 is preserved in the monastery and presents reliable evidence: it is charred on the inside, but the fire, threatening destruction to the clothes, burned them less, although, from the nature of their material, they ought to have been more inflammable.93 14 The kindness of the Lord also deigned to manifest a token of his grace surrounding mother and daughter by another miracle. At Trier there was the house of St Paulinus, famous as the treasure house of a nail of the Passion, bringing healing to the peoples. The venerable mother Wulfthryth was kindled with the same holy desire as Helena the mother of Constantine, and was drawn in her inmost heart, together with her blessed daughter, to the quest for so great a pearl, that she might be endowed with such a precious relic of the wounds of Christ.94 Benno, whom we have already mentioned, was with them, an indefatigable encourager of virtues, in whom, like another Paula daughter of another Eustochium,

88

Compare chant for the Octave of Easter, CAO 7877.

89

Daniel 3.

90

Compare antiphon for the Office of St Agnes, CAO 3784.

91

R: was busy about (compare Luke 10. 40, ‘Martha was busy about much serving’).

92

Compare chant for the Dedication of a Church, CAO 6801; see also Matthew 7. 26.

93

but the fire [...] been more inflammable; not in R.

94

that she might [...] wounds of Christ; not in R.

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they had as it were their own Jerome.95 By this respectable messenger, who made the voyage and represented the devotion of these illustrious ladies, they sent a hundred pounds by weight of silver coins of their country96 for a small particle of that nail which is always to be adored with the love due to a brother. With the assistance of the Lord in all things, the pious souls achieved possession of their desire, and they enriched the church and the county of Wiltshire 74 with the privilege of so great a treasure. Here the saving pledge of the human race is carried away and placed within a crystal reliquary in the shape of a trout,97 and in the sweet nail the sweet weight which it supported is adored.98 If the faith of the woman in the gospel who touched the Saviour’s garment is praised (Mt 9.20–22), if the sinful woman who poured oil on the feet of Christ (Lk 7.37–50) deserved not only pardon but even the glory of being remembered for ever, the service done by this woman should also be spoken about, who acquired for her native land relics of the Lord’s passion. She acquired, with such valuable gifts, such a small piece of iron, but one which, in the faith of the believers, is more valuable than worldly wealth, since on it was hung the price of our redemption. They did service to the redeemer with as many pounds of silver as Mary did with pounds of oil (Mt 26.7–13). Judas sold the son of God very cheap; she bought a small fragment from his salvation-bearing suffering very dear. The reverend Æthelwold, inflamed with holy avarice, involved himself with this token of grace, eager to take up what he had not laid down and to reap what he had not sowed (Lk 19.21). But there was no Esau here whom Jacob might supplant when Isaac could scarcely see (Gn 27.1–40). He begged in supplication to have a piece of this most holy token for himself. What then were these most kindly souls to do? They could not deny so great a father, but how could they give a piece of such a little thing? Piety, however, urged them to give what piety had caused them to possess. What brilliant art was found in a small thing! An attempt was made to divide with a sharp file the object which could scarcely be held by their slender fingers. In a small vessel of the Lord’s passion the nail, the instrument of the passion, was worthily received; the falling fragments of iron and iron dust were held in the holy chalice. These souls, worthy of the love of God, watched the holy memorial of the Lord’s wound being divided, and they seemed to suffer as if they had seen the Lord himself being pierced, or as if their own limbs were being cut apart. 75 Nightfall interrupted the work; the chalice which knew the blood of the Lord held the knowledge of his 95

Paula and Eustochium: a widowed Roman aristocrat and her daughter, who moved to the Holy Land in 385, co-workers with St Jerome. 96

By this respectable messenger [...] of their country; R: Through this most faithful messenger the illustrious ladies sent 2,000 shillings of the currency of their country. 97 98

in tructa pisce cristallino.

See Venantius Fortunatus, Pange lingua: ‘dulce lignum, dulce clauo, dulce pondus sustinens’ (ed. by Friedrich Leo, MGH, AA 4. 1 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1881), Carmina II. 2, l. 24).

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pain deposited in it. In the morning the priest sought his hope again; but O the delightful99 judgments of God; O how the grace of the Lord is always as wonderful as his omnipotence. He found his hope and panting100 desire scorned. They found that the holy iron of the transfixed Lord had joined together again as at the beginning, and as if it had been blown on by bellows and solidified by fire, it had been hardened again into one piece,101 and no traces remained102 of the iron dust and fragments, no sign remained of the division and the work of the file. Astounded, Æthelwold, the friend of God, regretted that he had been unworthy of so great a benefit, but his rejoicing in this joyful miracle of God outweighed his regret. For he saw that the Lord had shown favour to the merits of the holy mother and daughter,103 and with the judgement of the sword of Solomon (III Kgs 3.16–28) he had very particularly assigned these relics of his wounds to those women who had acquired them with very diligent labour and faith. 15 Wherever kindly Edith went, the cross of Christ was her companion; she showed forth the cross on her forehead, on her breast, in her journeying, in all her works; and the standard-bearer of the Lord crushed all the power of the enemy. On one occasion, when she was, according to her custom, carrying out food on a dish, which she would conceal in the bosom of the poor,104 a boy ran up from the side begging for alms. When the most kindly virgin reached105 out to him, making her accustomed sign of the cross, the beggar disappeared so that there was no one to be seen to receive it. Whatever may be the conclusion of one’s judgement, whether this appearance came by divine favour, like the similar example which Saint Gregory records in his Dialogue,106 76 or whether an illusion of the enemy vanished from the sight of the Lord’s standard, destroyed by that sacrifice, the holy faith of the blessed servant of God is manifested by this sign; whatever angel tried either to accept or to

99

R: favourable.

100

hope and panting; R: most holy.

101

and as if it [...] into one piece: not in R.

102

R: survived.

103

the holy mother and daughter; R: his holy women.

104

Abscondite elemosynam in sinu pauperis: Responsory for the first Sunday in Lent; see Ecclesiasticus 29.15. 105 106

R: held the dish.

There is no clear prototype for this story in Gregory the Great’s Life of Benedict (Dialogues, II, ed. by Adalbert de Vogüé, Sources Chrétiennes, 3 vols (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1978–80), v. II); Wilmart suggests the story in chap. 4 of the devil leading a monk astray in the form of a little black boy, visible only after much prayer, as a possible reference (pp. 150–52).

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overthrow her almsgiving, we believe that it was accepted by the Lord himself to whom she offered it. 16 It seemed to Saint Dunstan and the rest of the holy fathers that this daughter of Jerusalem, adorned with such jewels (Is 61.10), should now be able to bring forth spiritual children for the supernal Father, as her blossoming youth had already reached fruitful maturity in her way of life. O proof of one deserving of incorruption, that she should bring forth Christ in virgin offspring, and make the transition from spouse of Christ to mother. O unstained virginity, which possessed such a spouse. O virgin fertility, which brings forth so great a son. O privilege of purity, which follows the immaculate lamb whithersoever he goes (Rv 14.4). O specially chosen one, who sings that new song which no one except a virgin can utter (Rv 14.3). Scarcely had Edith, whose dowry in Christ was her own hand, progressed for fifteen years,107 when the paternal affection of Edgar, intending his daughter for the increase of the church rather than of his kingdom, placed her over three monasteries of nuns, with God’s dispensation.108 With what excuses she struggled against this! How she protested that she was unfit because of the immaturity of her life, her learning and her character! With what roses shame suffused her maidenly cheeks, which were even more radiant through the favour of her spouse. Beautiful are your cheeks as a piece of a pomegranate; your neck is as jewels (Sg 1.9, 4.3). However she was not able to put up uninhibited resistance against her reverence for such great teachers, and she assumed a position not of authority, but of obedience, like a she-lamb to the slaughter (Jer 51.40). The heavenly109 eagle Æthelwold consecrated her in the monastery of Winchester which is called Nunnaminster. She was entrusted with the protection of the monastery called Barking, 77 and also with a third house.110 However she could not be torn away from her loving mother nor transplanted from the home in which she had been given to God and had fixed her roots, intending by the providence of God to stay there forever. But she placed separate spiritual mothers as guardians over them, as they would be more effective, and she placed herself under her mother, as she still had more to learn and needed more training, preferring to be in subjection to her mother rather than to govern others; she chose to be in a lowly position in the house of her 107

Translation very uncertain: Vix ergo quindecennis processerat palmula in Christo dotalis Editha. 108

There is a pun: [Edgar] Deo dispensante dispensat Edith over the houses: the ablative absolute phrase clearly refers to ecclesiastical dispensation, and suggests that Edgar sought dispensation for Edith’s uncanonical appointment from no authority lower than God. 109

R celesti, C celestis; in R it is the monastery which is described as ‘heavenly’, not Æthelwold. 110

The third house is unknown.

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God (Ps 83.11), 78 rather than to live in the tabernacles of ambitious desire and rumour-bearing arrogance,111 learning from her Lord to be meek and humble of heart (Mt 11.29), and, carrying the cross, to imitate him who, descending from the majesty of his Father’s side, but remaining the Word and Wisdom of God, wanted to hear and question the Doctors (Lk 2.46) before teaching, and was subjected to his parents (Lk 2.51); he came not to be ministered to, but to minister (Mt 20.28). She considered it good to adhere to him alone and to place her hope in the Lord God (Ps 72.28). But it seemed appropriate that the sheepfolds had been committed to her. Since there ought to be no loss to the flock112 through her negligence, and they had been subjected to her humility rather than her authority, she taught them more by serving than by giving orders. Wherever she showed herself, whether rarely or frequently, she shone out to everyone anew; to everyone she was like a feast-day, sweet, pleasant, benign and gracious; so the grace of God was spread abroad.113 At Winchester there is her rod which blossoms by a figural mystery; a dove perches on it, and it brings forth a holy nut.114 79 There are also other relics of her kindly love. Among these there is an alb which she made out of the whitest cotton,115 a symbol of her innocence, very striking with its gold, gems, pearls, and little English pearls, woven around the yoke in keeping with her golden faith and gem-like sincerity; around the feet, the golden images of the Apostles surrounding the Lord, the Lord sitting in the midst, and Edith herself prostrated in the place of Mary the supplicant, kissing the Lord’s footprints. Her virginal hands worked this valuable piece with such mystical faith that it should give pleasure for its holiness as much as for its rich embellishment.116 V117 Descend from heaven, new Jerusalem, city which Christ has built, adorned like a bride for a husband (Rv 21.2) amidst thousands of saints. He who owns the heavens purified earthly things; let heavenly things sink down. The kingdom of the heavens comes to the earth-born; the highest things are wedded to the lowest. 80 The unwedded Edith is joined to the holy one, there are heavenly nuptials. Let not the 111

she chose to be [...] rumour-bearing arrogance; not in R.

112

The Rule of St Benedict (ed. by McCann), II, p. 22.

113

But it seemed appropriate [...] was spread abroad; R: But as often as her loving care drove her to visit the sheepfolds committed to her, she was present to them all as joy, love, reverence, a spirit of fragrance and a mirror of good. 114

In the Infancy Gospels, Joseph is designated as the husband of Mary by the miraculous flowering of a rod; for example, The Book of James, or Protevangelium, IX, 1 (Montague Rhodes James, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), p. 42). 115

bysso: cotton or possibly linen.

116

This paragraph (At Winchester [...] rich embellishment) is not in R.

117

Metre V not in R.

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bride of God be barren, the unmarried brings forth more than marriage. The virgin bears virginal offspring, and becomes more fertile than married women. Rejoice, daughters, born from heaven from incorruptible seed. Paradise is in you from this sweet mother with her protecting milk. Honey flows from stone; milk flows in rivers, grapes grow on brambles, oil comes from rocks. It shows how sweet is the yoke of the Lord, carrying all in his bosom. Never growing old, although she was a parent, she blossoms most beautifully. Her virginity will remain always fresh, and will be young through all the ages. The royal daughter stands as a queen at his right hand (Ps 44.10) where the king desired, dressed in many colours, from whose marriage chamber within come all glories. Here let myrrh, with drops of fragrance, flow from the golden clothing. Let virgins vowed and dedicated to the king be led after her. Following in purity, with her as leader, you will go into the golden temple of the king. 17 Meanwhile peace and prosperity reigned among the whole people, when behold! Edgar, the prince of peace, after filling Britain with monasteries, increasing the glory of the churches, rendering his people peaceful with excellent laws, and making every form of piety and justice effective, was called from his earthly rule to his heavenly crown, laid up for him by the judge of kings himself (II Tm 4.8). 81 He began to rule when he was a young man of sixteen years, and reigned for as many years in the British monarchy. But Edith, the soul beloved of God, wept not so much for her own father as for the common parent of the fatherland, not so much for her own orphaned state as for that of everyone, not so much for her individual grief as for the universal grief, not so much for her begetter as for his piety that had been taken away from the world. Although faith in immortal glory strengthened her, that filial piety, to be overcome by which is a victory, overcame her. But looking to her consoler and resting her weary head on her Saviour, she recognized unto whose ears she could pour herself forth, to whose soothing balm she could say these things: ‘According to the multitude of my sorrows in my heart, your comforts, O Lord, have given joy to my soul (Ps 93.19).’ Edgar is at rest in the rich church of Glastonbury, where divine grace has shown by tested signs how in the days of his earthly majesty he lived in the presence of the King of heaven. Since we refrain from saying more about him, we join together in this hymn to the glory of his great offspring. VI118 Live, you to whom kingdoms have yielded, great grace of kings, splendid and famous prince of the princes of Britain! You are David in being warlike, Solomon in 118

Metre VI is not in R, but a hand that wrote a small part of the MS has noted that there is an omission at this point (‘vacat’).

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being rich in gold, and you have been made like Josiah, Hezekiah and Josaphat. You bear the sceptre of divine law, the arms of justice, striving to equal divine laws, striking down harmful things with your sword, origin and sustainer of churches, peace and love of peoples, in the wide domain of whose kingdom holy tents stand, and many vines rejoice because of the good husbandman of Christ. May others bring forth something worthy of these blessed proclamations: we know you are more exalted because of the heavenly wedding,119 because you are the father of the bride of the Thunderer, because you are called the father-in-law of Christ, because your son-in-law is on Olympus, because your kindred is divine. Holiness has made you more holy than Zacharias,120 82 the father has deserved a gift greater than himself, greater than the world. So Paul became an apostle through the prayers of good Stephen; so the worthiness of the child increases the worthiness of parents. You are great in your rule, Edgar, but greater through your nurturing offspring. You are great in the citadel of your virtues, greater in the dowry of your daughter. Offer Edith to the Thunderer: so will you be more exalted. 18 Then by the choice and anointing of Dunstan, the foremost of the prelates, and the rest of the leading men, and the commendation of all the people, Edward, in the innocence of ten years of age was consecrated to his father’s throne; an immature boy and handsome in the bloom of his youth, and soon to be cut off in his bloom for the martyr’s crown of the Lord. An abundance of all good things prospered in his time, the beneficent right hand of the Lord blessing his people in his boy. Meanwhile Edith, in contemplation, dreamed that her right eye fell out. When she remembered this and immediately interpreted it to some of her sisters, she said, ‘It seems to me that this vision foretells some disaster to my brother Edward.’ She spoke, and the outcome of the event proved that this interpretation was a true prophecy. Edward, while out of pious affection he sought to see his brother Æthelred, came up against the sword wielded on behalf of his brother, and the assassinating dagger defeated the peaceful intentions of the two brothers; slain by the treachery of his stepmother,121 Edward was cut off like a flower122 in the fourteenth year of his innocent age and the fourth year of his reign as monarch. What a wound then the sisterly love of Saint123 Edith received, when the sudden news struck her like lightning: so great a boy slain, such great hope for the kingdom snuffed out. How she rushed to her brother’s 119

Wilmart gaudiis, C nuptiis.

120

Father of John the Baptist, Luke 1. 5–25.

121

Goscelin presents the brothers as meeting in good faith, and the assassination as engineered by Ælfthryth, mother of Æthelred the Unready. Edward may have been Edith’s half-brother; it is not certain whether he was the son of Wulfthryth or of Æthelflæd. 122

R: rose.

123

R: gentle (alma).

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funeral; with what a great struggle she strove 83 to overcome this family grief by her relationship to God and to rejoice in her own Jesus (Hb 3.18) like a daughter of Judah, ‘because of your judgements, O Lord!’ (Ps 47.12) But with how much greater joy she triumphed when she knew from clear miracles that he was reigning in heaven, and realized that through her brother she was the sister of a martyr. How great were the spirits she raised to heaven by this realization! He was translated to Shaftesbury because of this very clear revelation, where the most holy grandmother of both the brothers rested, Ælfgifu, the mother of King Edgar; in her days, no kinder woman lived in the world, and she showed by so many signs how she had pleased the divine majesty both in the marriage bed of King Edmund and in the royal robes.124 Then the sister on one side and the brother on the other touch one another in an adjacent constellation; he reaches out with his rose of martyrdom, she responds with the lily125 of virginity; together they lead the snow-white armies of virgins. VII126 The Boy who rose to heaven before you, consecrated you among the stars in your boyhood. Your royal power destroyed you, his royal power revived you. He gave you the sceptre and prize as a better exchange. You went about as a boy, governor of your elders and leading men, the love and flower of your people: you have a greater reign now that your death has happened. The blood that was shed has washed and adorned him for whom many a rose flourishes. Your holy sister accompanied by kind nymphs of Paradise brings to you flowers and fragrances, violets and sweet smelling shrubs, nard and balsam shrubs in ivory baskets, 84 and leads beautiful souls to you in dance. The flock of each is snow-white; under this joint leadership127 there is one household. In comradeship with your sister, lead on above the stars. 19 Meanwhile the judgement of the leaders and the people coincided and rejected Æthelred because of the murder of his brother; he should not rule, as the fount of Justice, whose right to reign had been bought with his brother’s blood, especially because he was not suitable because of his infancy and his position as youngest of the children, and a first-born daughter survived, more worthy of her father’s eminence. After discussions along these lines, they all agreed to take Saint Edith 124

where the most holy [...] the royal robes; R: as to the bosom of the holy grandmother of both the brothers, the mother of King Edgar, Ælfgifu, the place where she was famous for so many signs. 125

R: lilio; C: lilia; the reading of R is followed in the translation, but a possible translation of C would be: ‘he, the rose of martyrdom, she responds, the lily of virginity’, assuming that lilium has been transgendered to refer to Edith. 126

Metre VII not in R.

127

C luce iuncto, ‘joint light’; Wilmart emends to duce iuncto.

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from the monastery and elevate her to her father’s throne—for women rule among many nations—believing indeed that a lady of mature foresight could govern so great a kingdom better than childish ignorance. A very well-attended assembly of the nobles and the people was held at Wilton, and Ælfhere was the leader and head of the military. The Lord’s bride was invited, and asked to return to earthly dregs after the embraces of Christ. And so that the monastic profession should suffer no loss, all the leading statesmen and princes offered their daughters to be consecrated together—as if another’s crown could confer anything, while her own was imperilled. Gentle persuasions, made attractive as ‘spiritual obligation’, 85 were added in whispers—that she should come to the aid of so great a fatherland and people, and that such a great and universal need should be put before the requirements of the law, since the hope and well being of all were located in this one person. And so they surrounded her, urged her, begged her, raised their voices, finally indicated that they would use force. The faith of so many saints has been tested by torture and death; but the quality of blessed Edith, who was gracious to all, was tempted by the glory of the world; and although the world had been crucified to her, the world was not willing that she should be crucified to it.128 But in both ways the palm of victory was granted to her. Both honours and torments crown victors, and it is permitted to become famous either in peace or in war. Abstinence among delights and riches is also a martyrdom. Then indeed that soul most dedicated to God, certain already that neither principalities nor powers nor death nor life nor anything anywhere could separate her from the unconquerable love of Christ (Rom 8.38–39), free of care, smiled, untroubled, at the empty attempts of them all; and with such constancy and liberty in the spirit of the Lord did she reject their machinations, that they should have judged that it would be easier for rocks to be turned into lead, than that she should be diverted from her intent. So, as in the story of Hercules, she cut off with a single blow the multitude of heads hissing blandishments, and she stopped up her ears and passed through the singing sirens; she forced them to seek again the young king whom they had rejected. Indeed she imitated her Lord who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant (Phil 2.6–7); and when they came to seize him and make him a king, he fled into the mountain (Jn 6.15) of his majesty, and rejected all the kingdoms of the world with Satan (Mt 4.8), and, in the case of the statue of Nebuchadnezzar, the stone, cut out of a mountain without hands, shattered all earthly highness (Dn 2.34). 86 He came not to reign here, but to bring about his father’s kingdom, even as the cross was prepared for him, saying ‘My kingdom is not of this world’ (Jn 18.36). 128

Galatians 6.14, with variation. Goscelin is arguing that Edith is worthy of a martyr’s crown, even though she did not suffer a martyr’s torments (‘crucified to [the world]’), since she had completely rejected the goods of the world (‘the world had been crucified to her’).

KATERN 3

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20 For a long time Edith, herself the temple of God, had been eagerly planning for a church dedicated to her beloved patron Denis. She constructed it of wooden material, but fashioned it in the form of an elaborate and beautiful temple. She made it broad with a triple side-chapel in the form of a cross, strengthened the foundations with stone and upon these erected posts 87 and walls, covered them all with horsehide, and covered over the whole regal building with wooden vaulting. She had the whole church, arcades as well as walls, decorated129 with paintings using the full range of colours by the hand of the most learned130 Benno, the reminders of the Lord’s passion; as she had fashioned them in her heart, he brought forth the pictures.131 It was his desire to discover, like a bee, the thoughts of the flower-bearing virgin. She herself, in her purple sleeves, carried stones,132 was present beside the workmen, lightened their labour with food and cheerfulness, and urged them on with rewards rather than speeches. This house of her own laying to rest was completed: after so many years, through so many storms, unmoved by so many perils of fire, it is still so beautifully painted throughout the whole interior that it is more striking when seen than in any description.133 21 When the divine bridal chamber was altogether134 completed, 88 the most holy Archbishop Dunstan, always as prompt to every good wish of the virgin beloved in Christ, as to the divine command, came with other holy fathers to perform the dedication. A solemn and splendid dedication was organized, with crowds of people hastening together from all parts, and Christ above, crowned with glory and honour (Ps 8.6), making everything joyous with his approval. The most blessed Edith also, in joy of mind and with the voice of joy (Ps 46.2), with pure heart and unblemished faith, paid homage to her Lord, to whom she was inseparably attached by the inextinguishable fire of love. The friend of the bridegroom (Jn 3.29) reverently led the Lord’s spouse and heavenly queen by the hand, and directed her steps towards the

129

She constructed it [...] as well as walls, decorated; R: which she founded not so much out of royal magnificence as from divine devotion and love. She enlarged it with a triple sidechapel in the form of a cross, and decorated the completed royal building, both walls and upper storey [etc.]. 130

most learned; R: artist.

131

The distinction between Edith’s conception and Benna’s execution of the images is not explicitly marked in C, but is consistent with the general account of the relationship. 132

She herself, in her purple sleeves, carried stones; R: She herself brought materials.

133

This house [...] in any description; not in R.

134

Not in R.

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heavenly lamb and the mountain of the daughter of Sion (Rv 14.1);135 he immediately poured the Lord into her as a faithful messenger; indeed it was a holy sight to pure eyes, when a virgin breathed forth fragrance to a virgin, lily scent to lily scent, and a John was seen to pay reverence to a Mary (Jn 19.26–27). He136 also gave this spiritual example: as he led her by the hand, so he led her by heavenly exhortation. He had noticed also how, as she walked, she marked upon her forehead, with ceaseless perseverance, the triumphal sign of the cross of Christ which brings salvation, and taking her right hand with the blessing and authority of Isaac,137 he cried: ‘May this thumb, the standard-bearer of salvation, never see corruption.’ (Ps 15.10, Acts 2.27, 31) He spoke, and by the word of the Lord, who spoke and it was done, the virginal thumb, sanctified by the standard of the life-giving cross, remains whole and entire and, as the faith of believers assumes, will always remain so because the word of the Lord endures forever (Is 40.8). 89 VIII138 Here the white mysteries of Solomon’s temple glow brilliantly red. The sun, the eye of the Universe, has not seen a work of such craftsmanship through the ages. Nor does such workmanship of Rome in the West, which yields to Babylon, imitate this.139 How shall I measure out the foundations, how the spacious roofs? What shall I say of the hundred thousand workmen in their companies, mighty in their strength? What of the Tyrian treasures brought in a numerous fleet across the sea? Or the grove of Lebanon, or the building-wood, of the fir-tree which Ophir yields—or the great splendour of the singers with their lyres, in the building and on the sacred steps?— or the ivory or the Parian marble and the riches of all kinds of metal? It was not enough that the walls gleamed wonderfully white with polished stones; the whole palatial building was clothed with fragrant cedar pleasing to the senses. Columns of one hundred and twenty cubits divided the sky in half. A turreted colonnade went three times round these thirty, and threefold upper storeys rose up to the cedar roofs with winding stairs. Fruit-bearing palms stood out on the walls, marvellous to see. And cherubim were sculpted and splendid things were carved and stood out on the summit of the building, and many thousands of things made a display in carved images. But who shall enumerate such wealth, and the work and arts of Solomon? 135

Alternatively: ‘directed the steps of that daughter of Sion towards the heavenly lamb and the mountain’. 136

R: The apostolic leader.

137

See Genesis 27.

138

The description of Solomon’s Temple is found in III Kings 6 and II Chronicles 3 and 4: the dimensions are different in the two accounts, which also do not clarify all the details in this metre. 139

R: Tale nec Hesperie prestans Babilonia Rome Lusit opus; C: Tale nec Hesperium cedens Babilonia Rome Lusit opus; translation tentative.

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Honour adds to the effect of so much material beauty, so many wonders of craftsmanship. There was nothing in the temple which would not shine with the golden brightness of the morning star. The whole house gleamed with gold, the many utensils were golden and there were various golden dishes numbering more than a hundred thousand; there was also the bright radiance of all kinds of jewels among the riches, where they glowed red like one whole bright jewel and prize. The regal building was famous for its many windows, like eyes; the sun and daylight came into it through clear glass and pure sapphire, the shining wall and the glowing brightness of the forms inspired joy, the lofty timbers gleamed, and the flat paving stones made of pure gold shone back. The golden light touched with grace the faces of the people as they entered, 90 and all things rejoiced together, struck by the rays of Phoebus. The golden cedar which never experiences decay covered the golden roofs with unceasing glory. Here the people celebrated the consecration in joy with great festivities. The golden altars smoked with thousands of offerings, a thousand flocks. Nurturing faith will bring greater things than these if it looks to spiritual things. Here, in our place, was Christ and his life-giving temple, serene, perceptible, made of living, evident, eternal stones without disorder. Such did Wisdom, the virgin queen, give to her king; thus the virgin Edith shone out to her own virgin, Christ. Here the golden sun filled the golden court with jewels shining like stars, giving life at once to all the ornaments of shining virtues. The golden mind of the virgin, struck by the sun, shone out in answering gladness, and collected together everything for the sacrifice in the golden chapel every day. She offered on that altar also the sacred bread, celebrating perpetual festivals, kindling perpetual fragrance of heavenly love with tears, and here she offered the golden dishes of consecrated chastity with her flowers. Here the virgin greater than Solomon consecrated a temple greater than Solomon’s. 22 And so when the service of the holy dedication had been completed in a most splendid way with the praises of God and hymns, the nurturing bishop in his ceremonial vestments celebrated the sacrament of the mass, and offered up the sacrificial victim which redeems the world, for himself and for all humanity. Then, behold, being given over to divine contemplation with his most pure eyes, he wept in a flood of tears, not as he had been accustomed to before, gently, by the infusion and inward sprinkling of the dew of the Holy Spirit, but indeed he overflowed with a loud cry (Gn 27.38) and grieving. The bystanders were terrified, and wondered in fear what this grief of their prophetic father might foretell. Edith, 91 the pure receptacle of the heavenly guest, stood by,140 and accepted from the hand of the grieving father the life-giving nourishment of the angelic bread, so that, nourished by the sweetness 140

Compare chant for the season of Pentecost, CAO 6053.

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of the bridegroom, she could deserve to say with Saint Agnes: ‘Now his body is united with my body and his blood adorns my cheeks.’141 After the holy mass was completed, the monk who was assisting him humbly enquired from the bishop the cause of his grief. He sighed, and drew out his voice from the depth of his breast. ‘Now’, he said ‘this soul beloved of God, this stellar jewel, will be snatched away from its earthly defilement and from our dwelling in hardship to the land of the saints; for this wicked world is no longer worthy of the presence of so great a light. For on the forty-third142 day from today our most bright star will set. The light of the saints will be carried away from our prison, and we will remain in darkness and the shadow of death (Lk 1.79). Her extreme youth puts us slothful old men to shame; while we are asleep, she enters the marriage feast with her lamp charged with oil (Mt 25.5, 7), and before us seizes the honour of a crown. Now you will pass on to the better life, Edith, blessed fellow-citizen of Jerusalem, and, daughter, you will leave your father behind in sorrow.’ The holy priest grieved, but told his disciple to keep silent, since he was anxious about his own prediction and the tenderness of the virgin. O inestimable love of the saints, and affection exceeding that of a mother. O sweetness unknown to the impious world, which, captive to its own greed, does not understand spiritual riches, which regards the life of the saints as either madness (Ws 5.4) or stupidity. O love strong as death; with what urgency the messenger of God then addressed his beloved daughter whom he would not see much longer; what groans, 92 what sighs to Christ were exchanged between them. With what torches [of love] he urged on the heart of the virgin, ready to be penetrated by God as it was! He advised her that she should constantly be ready with lighted lamp to run to meet Christ, who was already summoning her, so that on the way to heaven she should not place anything worldly before her eyes, and should consider that she would not be remaining long in this earthly habitation. At last, having given his apostolic blessing to everyone, he departed, and the appointed day drew near. 23 And so on the seventh day before her death, the Lord was already knocking at the door (Lk 12.36) and inviting her with the sound of the marriage hymn: ‘Arise, make haste, my love, my dove, my beautiful one, and come. Now the winter has passed away, the rains have departed, the time of pruning has come.’ (Sg 2.10–12) Pain gripped her virginal body and wasted it away, so that her soul might come before the Lord refined like gold in the furnace (Ws 3.6), and shine among celestial beings with uncontaminated rays. On that night she had a vision: an ox went143 around the

141

See chants for the Office of St Agnes, and of Virgins, CAO 3468, 6084, 7029.

142

Counting inclusively, doubtless: that is, after forty-one days in our way of counting.

143

R: went three times.

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cauldron in which her bath used to be heated,144 and sang three times: ‘The Spirit breathes where he will, and you hear his voice, but you do not know whence he comes and whither he goes.’ (Jn 3.8) What shall we conclude from this vision, except that the Lord, who taught the prophet by an ass,145 forewarned her146 that her soul was about to depart? For in the same leaden vessel, refashioned into a casket, the body of the dead maiden was carried away from there. The doves, which she had fed as living beings like her in their purity and innocence, and had cherished with the regard of the Creator of all things,147 were suddenly found dead when their mistress fell into her fever, foretelling the sleep of their mistress, so that they seemed to anticipate her funeral rites. The blessed soul perceived her imminent dissolution; now indeed she trembled, felt weary, groaned, and as if not conscious of any good in herself, 93 and as if she had an empty lamp, feared to meet the bridegroom.148 What was she to do? To whom should she flee? Who would help? Where was her guide, where the sustenance for so long a journey? ‘O Lord, my helper and my redeemer (Ps 18.15), be not far from me (Ps 70.12), do not depart, for tribulation is very near and there is none to help me.’ (Ps 21.12) The whole choir of sisters turned to mourning. The heart of the mother, who had brought forth this, her sweet and only child, was tormented with grief. The mother was inseparable, remaining beside her daughter, fulfilling all the tasks of a handmaid, seeming to bury all her comfort and joy in life in this one daughter. Father Dunstan was there, not unmindful of his love, arming her for the journey with exhortations and prayers. Now the day of the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross had dawned upon the world, in which the virgin’s body was in a health-giving fever for the sacrifice of divine praise and the commemoration in grace of the Lord’s passion, which after that was to be resolved on the third day into the glory of the resurrection.149 Now as her weakness brought her nearer to her end, she was carried by the hands of the sisters, to be anointed with holy oil against the powers of the air, into her own basilica, which, as described above, she herself had built for her own Denis. Merciful Jesus, what groans, what lamentations interrupted the psalms and prayers! How often the mother said: ‘Who will grant me that I might die for you, my daughter?’ (II Kgs 18.33) How often she said ‘Why does a daughter pass on before her mother?’ Father Dunstan himself performed the holy service in a sobbing voice, and he who wished to prevent the sisters and mother from 144

R: heated over a fire.

145

Numbers 22. 22–34.

146

R: forewarned her by a beast.

147

affectu omnium conditoris: it is ambiguous whether she cherishes them with an attachment which mirrors that of the Creator towards them, or whether she cherishes them out of her attachment to their Creator. The ambiguity might be deliberate on Goscelin’s part. 148 149

Matthew 25.1–13.

The Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross is celebrated on 14 September; the third day after this, counting inclusively, is 16 September, Edith’s feast day.

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weeping was not able to restrain himself. Truly the blessed soul herself burned with desire, how eager and breathless, for her passage to eternity; she commended, with such great love,150 the souls of her sisters bent on the love of Christ, while she committed herself to the prayers of them all, with denunciations about her own life, lamenting that she had not fulfilled the desires she had vowed and set for herself! Do not fear, daughter of Sion, 94 for perfect love casts out fear (I Jn 4.18). Behold your king comes who is gentle (Mt 21.5) to you, desiring your beauty (Ps 44.12). You will pass over in your youth as if in a good old age, and full of days and perfect merits (I Chr 29.28). You, whose soul was pleasing to God, being made perfect in a short space, have fulfilled a long time (Ws 4.13–14). The crown of justice awaits you (II Tm 4.8): set out, proceed prosperously and reign (Ps 44.5). You will receive from the hand of the Lord a kingdom of glory and a crown of beauty (Ws 5.17); and you will be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God (Is 62.3). 24 On the third day after the Cross the day set out for the resurrection succeeded,151 and now the citizen of heaven battled as she went out from Egypt (Ps 113.1). Meanwhile one sister, running in fear into the convent, heard what sounded like a great number of people singing psalms in the choir, and as she stood still someone with a splendid face and glorious clothing met her, and said: ‘Do not come near to here, because the holy angels have met with the maiden Goda’—this is what she was called affectionately because in her native tongue it means ‘good’, but she is famous as Edith, after her holy aunt, also a worthy virgin of Christ, the royal sister of her father Edgar and daughter of her most blessed grandmother Ælfgifu152— 95 ‘to carry her away with them from here to eternal joys, so that she may enter the court of everlasting bliss accompanied by that harmonious singing of the heavenly host’. The hour came, and with her last words commending all that was hers to God her Saviour, uttering thanks to the Creator of all good things, she breathed forth her pure soul into the way of peace (Lk 1.79), the odour of sweetness (Eph 5.2), into the hands of the Redeemer, and153 took her flight to the place where, amidst the music of the saints, she might enter upon her eternal nuptials with her lamp shining brightly. Her 150

C reads caritate, where R has dilectione: clearly there is some difference between dilectio and caritas for Goscelin, but perhaps not one of denotation. 151

Edith’s death, which is an entry to heaven, occurring on the third day after the Exaltation of the Cross, is likened to the Resurrection, occurring on the third day after the Crucifixion. 152 153

but she is famous [...] blessed grandmother Ælfgifu; not in R.

Here R reads: with blessed Euphemia, Lucy and Geminianus, made holy to us the sixteenth day before the kalends of October [16 September] in the twenty-third year of her age; like a rose that has come into flower she [etc.].

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mother collapsed, the ranks of the sisters who were standing by collapsed, they poured out psalms and canticles mingled with sobs and laments. The old nuns mourned a daughter, younger ones a sister; the angels rejoicing led154 her with them to the heavens. The place155 where she offered her blessed soul like incense to her Father in the highest156 does not cease to this day to give forth fragrance and fill the whole chamber with sweet odours, and those places which the grace of God deigned to visit with this sweetness are suffused with this sanctity. When all the crowds and the church fathers and officials had come together to the royal funeral, the noble ceremonies were celebrated, nor would an accompaniment of greater ceremony have been fitting if the royal daughter of an earthly king had been led in procession to her marriage. When Saint Dunstan had performed the sacrament of the mass 96 and committed that acceptable gift to the Lord, she was buried157 in the church of Saint Denis, which she had built as a house for that great martyr, where she herself had chosen her sepulchre. For the virgin had often marked out this place with prophetic mind, and had said, ‘this is the place of my resting’ (Acts 7.49), and when she visited it had washed it with a frequent flood of tears. Happy the place which held as a treasure a pearl of such great price (Mt 13.46), such sweet manna, where she slept until the time pleasing to God and the heavenly revelation, and thenceforward, elevated as a proclamation of the resurrection that is to come, declares herself to be alive by daily signs. So the Lord Jesus sanctified the place of his passion and burial by frequent visitation and went there frequently. Thousands of the poor are fed, the rites of the mass are celebrated in churches everywhere. Her mother was ceaselessly diligent in procuring masses, offerings and alms. She built an almshouse in the front court of the monastery, where twelve poor persons are still fed today, in accordance with her foundation, and today a poor vicar receives the same stipend as one of the sisters. IX158 Go forth from the beautiful and famous bridal chamber, glorious Christ, make joyful the house of the whole heavens, befriend us with your serene countenance. Behold your Edith comes in triumph to you, going forth from earthly troubles, from this transient vale of tears, from so many thorns and briars of suffering. Thirsting for you from her long exile, summoned to you from the shades of cedar, she comes to your eternal tribunal. May you, the kindly, gentle and gladsome fountain of all good things, cherish her in the citadel of light. She carries many scents of sweet 154

R: conveyed.

155

Locus uero ubi beatam animam summo [R superno] Patri thurificauit: it is uncertain what is the subject of the verb; the translation assumes it is Edith. 156

R: above.

157

R: entombed properly.

158

Metre IX not in R.

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fragrances, from heavenly prayers and acts of love. 97 She is accompanied by many riches from her conquest of the world, and by great dignity; she shines out in manycoloured raiment of virtues, such as her own great Solomon might praise. O how sweetly the choirs above sing to their victorious Lord in new triumphs, and the angelic songs and the assembly of the fathers thunder the name of the beloved to her own Thunderer; and Mary with her virgin train delights the pious maiden with the heavenly Muses. She ascends to the stars, surmounting the clouds and the rays of the sun and the wheel of time. She smiles upon the sorrowful chaos of the deep earth, the cities and countries and lowest kingdoms. The kindly maiden looks upon her Wilton, and grieves at our errors, being freed from them. Climbing from here with breathless desires she soon raises her blessed eyes to you, following the sun of joy which calls her. Here she stands amazed at your everlasting building, the city of Jerusalem, new, beautiful, just as John saw it with clear mind: virgin, united with the virginal spouse, which surpasses all fame and all belief by as much as heavenly things surpass the earthly—rising higher and stretching wider than our ether, and more densely populated with countless stars, whose walls are onyx, beryl, jasper, chrysolite, sardonyx and whatever gemstone is more highly esteemed (Rv 21.18–21). Its towers gleam with virginal emeralds and its gates with shining pearls, with the twelve names of the Apostles (Rv 21.12);159 all its golden squares shine with golden houses in all its streets, choirs celebrate the feast with continuous melody. Glorious maidens, the offspring of kings, look out from the citadel of Sion through their windows. From their gem-bedecked bridal chambers the white garland of virgins calls their sister in Jesus. 98 Good Lord, for ever preserve Edith, whom you have summoned with the joy of heaven to your nuptials. X Autumn brings together the fruits of the year. Hoar frost drives all things within. Spring brings back flowers and joy in all things with the warm sunshine. Your autumn, Edith, cut you down with the sickle of God to be born among the stars. The winter of death shut you in the tomb; but the redeemer makes eternal the spring-like flowers of your merits and makes an everlasting summer day after your funereal night. You prophesy that Easter when the reunited flesh and bones of the pious will fly up from their tombs above the stars. 160 25 How she showed her mother on the thirtieth day that she had been taken up to God161 On the thirtieth day after her death the glorious Edith appeared to her mother, as beautiful and joyful, and clothed with light as with a garment (Ps 103.2), as if she came from the splendid glory of her heavenly bridal chamber; she soothed the bereaved heart of her mother with most 159

In Revelation, the gates bear the names of the tribes of Israel.

160

Precinis illud pasca: pasca is taken as = Pascha (f. or n.), Passover or Easter.

161

Chaps 25–27 are not present in C.

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joyful consolation; she told her that she had been welcomed by her king in eternal grace. And she said: ‘Satan accused me in the presence of my Lord; but I crushed his head (Gn 3.15) with the protection of the holy apostles, and, in the cross of my own Jesus, I triumphed over him, cast down and trampled him.’ After this vision her mother Wulfthryth, as though revived from a hell of pain, attended prayers and intercessions and masses on her behalf with increased faith, because, although she knew by the merits of her life as well as revelation that Edith was saved, 99 she had no closure on the inconsolability of motherly love. Many mothers almost expire at the death of their children, but once they are buried quickly forget them as if they were totally brought to nothing; but blessed Wulfthryth, once she had become a spiritual mother rather than an earthly one, used to send an embassy (Lk 14.32, 19.14) petitioning for the salvation of her daughter who had been, as it were, sent on ahead, who she knew, with untroubled faith, was not dead but sleeping, had not lost her life but had come into it, as the Lord of life himself said: ‘The girl is not dead, but sleeps’ (Mt 9.24), and the one ‘who keeps my word shall not taste death for ever’ (Jn 8.52). Now for as many years as before162 she had hoped Edith would be her successor, she now outlived her, and lived out a long martyrdom for her, dying daily for her glory (I Cor 15.31), which she had in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. 26 About Brihtgifu, the most recent abbess, born on Edith's thirtieth day On the thirtieth day after her passing, a little girl was born of very noble parents. The blessed Edith herself was asked, before the crisis of her passing, if she would accept this infant from the holy font when it was born; she said, ‘I will accept it in whatever way it pleases God’. But, as it turned out, Edith was born to heaven before the child was born on earth. And so when the little child was brought to the catholic bosom of Mother Church, Elphege, who has been mentioned above, the successor at Winchester to Saint Æthelwold and who was to be consecrated by a martyr’s crown, gave her a second birth in holy baptism. When he held out to her a burning wax taper according to church custom, saying ‘Accept, 100 daughter, the lamp with which you may enter the wedding feast of the Lord’, suddenly, as if nurturing Edith were standing in her presence and accepting her, the little girl reached out her hand and grasped the taper of her own accord and held it. Immediately the man inspired by God understood that this was a marvellous prediction of divine election, and straight away made this demand of her parents: ‘Bring up this child to be wedded to God alone, and after she is weaned hand her over to the monastery.’ This was done, and (for no one should be deceived in their faith in Saint Edith), it became so clear that she had accepted this little daughter that, after her education in the same monastery, she became the third abbess in succession to Edith’s mother Wulfthryth. She is, of course, the abbess Brihtgifu, who is very well-known to everyone at the present time, who died two years before [the accession of] today’s leader.163 It is believed also, through faith and visions, that her soul was carefully gathered in under the protection of her helper and conveyed to the Saviour.

162

R nate, which Wilmart silently corrects to ante, probably correctly; but nate could be translated, ‘for as many years as she had hoped for a successor in her daughter’. 163

That is, Godiva, who followed the two-year rule of Ælfgifu (c. 1065–67).

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27 About the girl fettered to her tomb by theft After this, Saint Edith began to make it clear by signs that she was alive in heaven and was at hand to help the vows of suppliants, and to give proof by miracles. There was a radiantly white votive linen cloth on her candle-lit tomb, made up into a scarf the width of the palm of a hand. A girl, left there alone and in her solitude becoming inclined to theft, took it and removed the spoils wrapped around her shin. 101 Suddenly a divine fetter bound her as she fled, and rooted the thieving foot to the spot; the sacred threshold did not permit her to escape with her sacrilegious booty. She struggled for a long time at the doorstep until a desire to empty her bowels overcame her, and drove her to go out; but the guilty woman was unable to extricate herself and stayed still; with pallor, trembling and groaning she revealed her crime. A marvellous event: at the same time as she unwound the stolen property from her shin, and gave it back, saying ‘This is what bound me’, she was freed to walk, and moved away, restored to herself. When she was brought into their presence as a proof of this, she aroused the hearts and voices of all to the praise of God. This same little pallium is treasured in the monastery to the present day as a memorable sign of Saint Edith, and is exhibited as the first sign after her death. The bereaved mother was cheered by this miracle, which she commended to God, but did not allow it to be made public through fear of presumption. From that time on she had two masses celebrated every day, that is, the mass ‘You have loved justice’ and ‘Eternal rest’:164 one which is in praise of the saints and the other the commendation of the souls of the dead. Then there was such a multiplication of splendid miracles, such troops of the blind, the lame and those shackled by various disasters were liberated, that in accordance with the prayers of the whole country the mother’s silence was overcome. Now that these events have been reckoned up to the Lord of all, this little book has as sequel, by the grace of the reader, the proclamation of the virgin’s elevation together with the most well-attested consequences of her virtues. Here ends the Life of Saint Edith, Virgin.

164

The masses are Dilexisti iusticiam and Requiem eternam.

APPENDIX

Chapters 8–12 as they appear in Oxford, Bodleian Ms Rawlinson C. 938 8 How she sought the love of Christ through the intercessions and examples of the saints Anointed with the Spirit’s oil of gladness, and following his sweet words with her own mouth, she was raised up towards the heavens and trod earthly dignity underfoot. Neither her ancestral cities, nor her royal inheritance, nor her family treasures from ancient kings, nor the most extensive and prosperous rule of the British realm, neither the expectation that her sons would be kings, nor kingdoms as her marriage-portion, deflected her mind as it journeyed towards the heavens. Glory, honours, riches, power, public assemblies and shows, and whatever is considered of first importance among mortals, were empty indeed to the virgin whose home was in the heavens, and seemed of no account to the star-crowned queen. 52 The sweetness of the Lord, of which she had had a foretaste, and the light of his countenance, and the glory of the everlasting kingdom were supplanting even her former great enthusiasm as an academic student. From now on, as if the heavens were open and she had had the eyes of Stephen bestowed upon her, she was taken up in rapture to the festivals of the saints, the joys of the angels, to Christ himself, the glorious spouse illuminating everything; clinging to him with her whole mind and struck with the holy wound of his love, from the midst of her studies she hastened towards him with her entire affection and, taking to herself the wings of a dove, she ardently desired to fly to his sanctifying embraces and to be at rest there, crying out with the longings of the bride: ‘Your name is as perfume poured forth and your sweet smell is above all aromatical spices. Draw me after you, we will run to the odour of your ointments.’ So she used to strive to rise up to him, having gazed on the lamb standing upon Mount Sion, he who is very white and feeds among the lilies with one hundred thousand innocent virgins. Who ascends unto this mount of the Lord except the one who has hands pure of corruption and by whom God is seen with a clean heart? With the queen of Sheba she also sighed after that litter of mighty Solomon, that golden couch, that splendid bedchamber of the virginal bridegroom, that flowery bed where the king rests at midday. Hither only Queen Virginity ascends, whom her sister Humility leads with royal embraces, and Love, her mother, supports. Hither she will ascend by the purple steps of modesty and with cheeks of unwedded delicacy blushing like pomegranate. 53 The tender maiden supported herself on the prayers of all those reigning with the Lord, crying out with deep desires: ‘Stay me up with flowers; compass me about with apples, because I languish with love. Angel messengers, apostles who are our governors, martyrs who have gone before, fellow virgins, daughters of Jerusalem, tell my beloved that I languish with love.’ But among the many examples of the saints in books, which she read voraciously, and among the illumination which was at hand to her from saints and especially the religious persons related to her, she was kindled most nearly by the virginal palm of her most holy aunt Edith, the royal sister of the great Edgar, whose 54 name and virginity she had inherited together with the rest of her virtues, who was very famous in the monastery of Tamworth in Staffordshire for the tokens of her merits, just as she herself was in Wilton. Also her most blessed grandmother Queen Ælfgifu showed her by brilliant miracles with what piety and courage she led her life as the bedfellow of king Edmund, and that she is to be imitated in the golden cult in 55 heaven.

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9 How the holy ones who exhorted her inflamed her towards heavenly desires She had Dunstan and Æthelwold as her principal gatekeepers and sacristans so that the king of glory might enter her gleaming inner court and most inward shrine; she set them before her face as two disciples and two shining candelabra so that they might adorn her habitation with all the furnishing of the virtues, might nourish the fire of divine love continually in the thurible of fragrant sighs with the inextinguishable tinder of exhortations. And these, like faithful servants, performing the function of love and an angelic embassy, giving their hands on the right and the left as agents of the Lord, hastened her onwards in her desire for the heavenly bridal chamber. Nevertheless there were at that time people who radiated illumination: Oswald, Archbishop of York, and the precious martyr Elphege, 58 who by the prophecy of Saint Dunstan was to succeed Saint Æthelwold; the venerable Ælfstan, bishop of the diocese of Wiltshire, very near to martyrdom in the ardour of his obedience, and other leaders of the church and ministers of religion, of whom a large number then flourished in England, through the encouragement of King Edgar, most devoted to God, and of Dunstan the restorer. Such divine messengers kindled the fervour of the virgin, as if pouring oil on flame, with the fiery words of the Lord, and sang to her the Lord’s songs, chosen from the songs of Sion, and the angelic fathers rejoiced with the holy angels, striving to have her either as a daughter in love, or a patroness in intercession. The divine champions also urged her venerable mother on to every virtue, the pious imitator of Anna in the gospel, who carefully preserved the doves from the watchful hawk. 59 So, with Edith outshining all with her star-like lamp, the fragrant vine of the Lord Sabaoth flourished, and also the plentiful olive tree, which the grace of the Creator called beautiful, fruitful, splendid. The mother was a lesson in virtue, the daughter an example. So the swarms of virgins emulated the bees and ants in their industry in building the heavenly Jerusalem, and like Christian Amazons they trained for the divine battle, as the divine herald of the Church proclaims: ‘O how beautiful is the chaste generation, beautiful like the moon, terrible as an army set up in array.’ II Until the Virgin brought forth the purifying burden, chastity was a worthless fable to the world, all flesh was in the possession of flesh; 60 all the descendants of Eve belonged to death; being corruptible they provided fodder for the grave. Mary, you give the beginning of new light, you who, bringing forth life, a virgin giving birth, fill the world with life-giving offspring. As leader she gathers together innumerable followers of the beauteous army of the unwed people. Fidelity in marriage celebrates Susanna: Judith the dove cuts down the bird of gloomy Jove. The moon outshines the stars, the daylight surpasses her. Virginity is the sun for brides and widows; virginity creates an immortal race. This generation does not know the work of death. Hail virginity, consort of the angelic choirs; nothing in the heavens is more brilliant than you. From now on Edith shines out, bearing your standards. The royal daughter follows the queen with the Tyrian daughters, and nearest to the mother. After you, gleaming white, she leads forth the shining armies of Wilton from their ivory houses. Divine parent, lead your choirs, delivered from the sulphurous battle-front, to the river of life. May sobriety and deep love and devoted faith join these young handmaidens to you. May your Edith, brought forth and tended by these handmaidens under your leadership, ascend to the couch of her spouse.

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10 With what good will she was compliant to everyone But the glorious virgin, taught by the Lord to rise up in prudence towards the stars from a deep foundation, strives upward on the heaven-reaching ladder of humility. After the celebration of vigils, which put sleep to flight by the beams of eternal glory, after the fat burnt-offerings of psalmody, prayers and tears 61 —for she sought first the kingdom of God, and the Lord on his arrival first took up his abode in her—she went forth to her exterior duties as if from the chamber of the Lord, like an eagle brought back to earth from the sun, a very bright lamp about to return from the sea. She did not claim for herself the long genealogy of kings, preferring the grace and glory of the humble, coming from the Lord. Displaying her strength in obedience, she offered herself first to the service of all, last to her own dignity. Whatever her mother enjoined, she set herself to obey as if for a prize in the stadium. She showed herself to her sisters as Martha, to Christ as Mary. In ministering to individuals she bowed down to the ground, as if indeed she were already being rewarded by the Lord her director, as if giving thanks because she was deemed worthy to be the handmaid of her handmaids. She also improved, by the example she gave, her royal kinswoman Wulfwen and the rest of the crowd of noble virgins, 62 teaching them to glory not in the flesh but in the Lord, whose allegiance alone is noble. Who indeed is worthy to recall the memory of such great love? She encouraged her table-companions with holy cheerfulness and the kindest joyfulness, those who lived with her as much as those who were guests, embracing all in the bowels of Christ, taking both her own abstinence and other people’s eating as great delicacies, abstaining herself as if she were feasting, feasting in such a way that frugality was preserved and love was spread around. Meanwhile her struggles with the flattery of the world and the evidence of her virtues gave her new, more brilliant, accolades for humility. She flourished, the glory of her father, the crown of her mother, the most loving responsibility of her spiritual fathers and her distinguished kindred. The crowd of princes, nobles, distinguished ladies, and the entire nobility of her father’s kingdom venerated her as Lady; the whole of England was disposed to reverence her. Her father’s piety in power as well as her good will in service made her sweet to everyone. Foreign kingdoms and principalities 63 also gave her respect with greetings, letters and gifts; religious leaders begged her to act as a saving intercessor. Whatever ambassadors Gaul or Germany, the august and apostolic city of Rome or Emperors themselves had sent to the most renowned prince Edgar, they took pride in commending themselves to her holy kindness. Who could escape so great a net? The virgin, more elevated in Christ, had already said farewell to the kingdom of the world, to earthly titles and favours; she devoted herself to the sick and destitute, she set the lepers of Christ before the sons of kings, she preferred to serve the leprous rather than have royal power; rather than ruling, she preferred to be beside ulcerated feet as if they were the footstool of Christ, and to tend them with bathing, and with her hair and kisses. The more anyone appeared to her deformed by disease, the more she offered herself to that person with empathy and kindness, full of service. She made herself an eye to the blind, a support to the weak, clothing and food to the poor, and a comfort to all the distressed. She delighted more deeply in these courts, these families, these magnates; she gloried in being blessed by the goodwill of such people, and she respected women laden with lesions rather than those laden with jewels. 64 So she was wounded by the pains of all; if anyone was scandalized, she was on fire. She put on the bowels of mercy, in him who bore our griefs in his conscious suffering. The condemned knew her as their refuge, captives knew her as one who would redeem them. She suffered on behalf of thieves as much as if they were her brothers Edward or Æthelred. She interposed herself between the sword and the neck so

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that the executioner would have to strike an innocent woman, or spare the guilty. She broke through the adamantine decrees of the laws and judgements; she overcame ferocious throngs with prayers, tears, kindness, gifts; and the prey was snatched from the very jaws of death. Whatever she demanded from her pious father by delegates or by her own speaking, this was in her heart—that he should increase the number of churches, support them with riches, 65 extend the embrace of his mercy to all needs, and set free by his clemency those who were to be punished or sold into slavery. Nor was it difficult to obtain her requests from the indulgence of that father, whose throne had been prepared in mercy, whose judgement preferred to pardon rather than to punish (provided only the people’s peace was preserved), so that the grace of his daughter would put aside his sword, even when it had been drawn. He, indeed was dominated by justice and mercy; she was driven forward by mercy alone, by which rather the whole law is fulfilled. Why should we wonder at such gentleness towards human society? 67 Untamed beasts laid aside their ferocity in the face of her affection, and when she called they ran to her tamely, and learned to be fed from the hands of their lady, so that if the peace of the Church were to be summoned back to a time of persecution, she would be able to command the beasts of Thecla. 11 How by various exercises she dedicated her intellect to Christ [68] Furthermore, by the many-faceted grace of God, this person beloved by God shone out in grace: a voice like a swan, angelic singing, sweet eloquence, a noble intellect capable in all kinds of thought, a perceptive ardour in reading; hands as elegant as they were accomplished in painting and in writing as scribe or as author; the fingers of a goldsmith or jeweller or citharist, 69 celebrating with the cithara the angels’ harmonies and the nuptials of Christ, to whom all things are consecrated in eternal grace. These hands did not know how to serve the grand ceremonies of her parents, her brothers, and other kings and princes: they were dedicated only to the adornment of the supreme spouse; they gave attendance to the hall165 and table of the Lord, the altar and the high officials of the Church. Indeed, like the sister of Aaron and the sister of the priests of God, she embroidered with flowers the pontifical vestments of Christ with all her skill and capacity to make splendid. Here purple, dyed with Punic red, with murex and Sidonian shellfish, and twice-dipped scarlet were interwoven with gold; chrysolite, topaz, onyx and beryl and precious stones were intertwined with gold; union pearls, the shells’ treasure, which only India produces in the east and Britain, the land of the English, in the west, were set like stars in gold; the golden insignia of the cross, the golden images of the saints were outlined with a surround of pearls. IV Christ was everything to her, and she entirely belonged to Christ. Christ was her glory, love, hope, riches and honour; praise, song, cithara, rest, work, leisure, business, joy, delight, glory and wealth. He was her theme in writing, ornament, painting, song and lyre; he was in her mind in weaving, the soaking of reeds, making baskets; in every movement of her mind and every action he was her theme: in the highest, the lowest, the most distinguished, the least. The all-conquering love of Christ cut her off from access to all things that were remote from him, and found deceitful when weighed in the hand. The holy funeral pyre liquidated all earthly matter. The better part of Mary is set above that of Martha. Queen Meditation 165

aula: normally the court of a king, but aula ecclesiae is the nave of a church.

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surpassed the life of the handmaid, making the Sabbath last for ever in the embrace of her spouse.70 She said, ‘May the pillow be placed under me by his left hand, and the right hand in its embrace give me a golden necklace.’ 12 What reply she made to Saint Æthelwold, being conscious of her hair shirt The senior nuns who knew about it testify that she was afflicted by a hair shirt which gave a false appearance of inner delicacy by a purple exterior, although observance of the rule would have required black. Without doubt she made her humility more glorious by public elegance, so that together with the gold-clad Cecilia she might please the Father, who alone sees in secret, with her hidden pearl, and visible frivolities might conceal hidden martyrdom. So when blessed Æthelwold warned her once about her rather ornate appearance: ‘O daughter, not in these garments does one approach the marriage chamber of Christ, nor is the heavenly bridegroom pleased with exterior elegance’, she, conscious of her indwelling guest, and conscious perhaps of her harsh inner garment, is reported to have replied in these words: ‘Believe, O reverend father, that a mind by no means poorer in aspiring to God will live beneath this covering than beneath a goatskin. I possess my Lord, who pays attention to the mind, not to the clothing. Here the word of the Lord is declared: “According to your faith, be it done unto you.”’ The man inspired by God recognized the authority of grace ruling in the virgin, and not daring to distress the heavenly 71 guardian within her, rejoiced rather at the Lord who performs all things in his saints according to his will. ‹Recognizing also that it makes no difference whether a pure mind lives in purple or in sackcloth, nor is there any harm in keeping [a thing] in a golden vase,›166 and yielding to the divine liberty, he took care to reverence the holy purpose of one who, we believe, loved the rush mat of the anchorite Paul better than the robe of her father’s royal power.

166

Accidentally omitted in R: see Wilmart’s edition.

The Translatio of Edith 1 Here begins her Translation with the signs that followed1 And now the thirteenth year since the death of the holy virgin had hidden in the earth that golden vessel of the divine presence, when at last it pleased the Lord to bring so precious a deposit of graces into the sight of many. From then on the miraculous visions and revelations shone out; Edith herself, the inhabitant of heaven, became in the Lord as free a messenger of her own glory as she was free of temptation by any worldly ambition. 266 She first shone her light upon her brother, King Æthelred, whose brotherly goodwill and royal authority gave him the most right to intercession. After that she appeared to the highest noble after the king, Lord Ordwulf, and similarly to another man of the highest rank, a pair who were celebrated for their emulation in heavenly things; she besought each of them to give their authority for her elevation. So having sent these three witnesses ahead in the faith of the Trinity, the resplendent virgin appeared to Dunstan, the most holy Archbishop of Canterbury, who was then still alive; in an angel’s place she brought the message of the Lord to this highest prelate. ‘The Lord’, she said, ‘remembering his mercies (Ps 24.6), has raised me up, and it is pleasing to his ineffable goodness, for the salvation of his faithful people, that I whom he has glorified among my fellow citizens the angels, should be made famous amongst humanity. Go therefore to Wilton, and carry out the divine commands that you should raise my body from the earth, to the praise of the Lord its possessor. So that you should not hesitate or think that you are being deceived by any apparition, this will be given to you as an authenticating sign: except for the organs of the body which I misused in girlish light-mindedness, that is my eyes, my hands, and my feet, you will find the rest of my body both unharmed and incorrupt. You will also see that the thumb of my right hand, with which I continually used to make the sign of the cross upon myself, is undamaged, so that the kindness of the Lord may be seen in the part which is preserved, and his fatherly chastisement in the part which is consumed. Our earthly remains, reaching upwards from the depth of the grave 267 as if already prepared to come out, will show their

1

Matthew 16.20.

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favour to those who obey this command. Wipe away the mists of all unbelief with the testimony of these signs.’ She finished speaking, and behold, the watchman of the heavens woke up (Ez 3.17, 33.7), and when he had rehearsed the vision to himself, did not delay in putting to the proof the signs which he had been shown. When the fifth transit of the sun had completed its journey, he took up residence at night in a place at Salisbury, about three miles away from Wilton. Because he had believed and obeyed the first vision, he gained merit to be told more. Put to sleep by the turmoil of the world, he watched with greater alertness in heavenly contemplation. He was carried in a vision to the church at Wilton, before the altar dedicated to the Holy Trinity, at the head of the virgin. He saw the glorious martyr Denis standing at the altar with angelic brightness and apostolic dignity; he saw the heaven-dwelling Edith standing beside him, brilliant in light and whiteness, and with these words of devotion she addressed her beloved patron: ‘You know, father, what is the Lord’s will for me; you know where I am laid, interpreter of the highest counsel and messenger of the divine will; explain to this visitor by what reliable authority I have invited him here.’ Then the heavenly archbishop seemed to speak thus to the earthly archbishop, still on his pilgrimage in the body: ‘Recognize, brother, from this present sign, the truth of the vision about the celebration of this beloved of the Lord, which you saw recently. She who has deserved to be crowned among the dwellers in heaven is worthy to be venerated by the dwellers on earth. This body is worthy of honour, this temple of virginal chastity in which the Lord, the lover of virginity, reigned as King of Glory, 268 in which lived the consciousness of the indwelling of God and a burning desire for all good. Believe my testimony on her behalf and hasten to obey the Lord’s command, so that she may be raised from her tomb as an image of the resurrection, and that this most brilliant lamp may shine in the house of the Lord. For her intercessions, which are acceptable and pleasing before Christ, are helpful for mortals.’ At this point the guest awoke, and laying aside with the night the night of doubt, he hastened to the appointed place. The testimony of the visions of the king and the greatest men, which has been mentioned above, gave him confidence. When the truth of the matter had been established, at the urging of the head of the episcopal order, together with the bishop of Wilton and Saint Elphege of Winchester, the other heads of churches and a great crowd of clergy and people, the incense-bearing tomb was opened up, and the wonder-working clay was revealed, exposed at the surface of the grave as if already striving to come forth; the fragrant perfumes, it seemed, gave off the breath of paradise. It was then the third day after the festival of All Saints, dedicated to the resurrection of the holy ones sleeping in Christ, the first begotten [amongst the dead] (Rv 1.5); this, the third day before the Nones of November [3 November], is kept as the festival of the translation of Saint Edith. The angelic harvest offering2 was taken up and raised with universal gladness and rejoicing; they lifted it up with the prophet’s song: ‘Arise, be enlightened, O 2

dragma (more commonly drachma): literally, a handful; normally, a small coin, but (in

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Jerusalem, for your light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you (Is 60.1). Rise, rise, be uplifted, be uplifted (Is 51.17, 52.1); shake off the dust, loose the yoke of captivity, daughter of Sion, rise up and put on the garments of your glory, daughter of Jerusalem (Is 52.1, 2), 269 in which even he who lies asleep in the midday (Sg 1.6) may be aroused. Rise up, O Lord, to your rest, you and the Ark which you have sanctified (Ps 131.8).’ Then indeed the most pious mother, surrounding the sweet child with the chorus of virgins, raised a hymn of praise to the stars. O inexhaustible goodness of God! how much light he brings after the darkness (Jb 17.12). O fatherly comfort of the Lord, greater than his punishment, which makes sorrow matter for rejoicing.3 She, who had been born from the womb, from the tomb was born again to her mother. She received back from the grave the daughter whom she had long ago buried. The earth gave back to the parent the child who had been interred; mourning was turned into joy (Jer 31.13), wailing into singing, death into life. The pledge of life was received with greater happiness after her death. The miracle of the finding of the body, just as Saint Edith herself had foretold, confirmed them all more strongly in the faith, gladdened them with hope, kindled them with love. Her extremities were destroyed, from the elbows and knees, and also her face; the rest of the body, together with the thumb, the standard-bearer of the holy cross, as it was called, was quick with firmness and beauty, so that the marvellous grace of God might be praised equally in her blooming and in her death, and that her heart and flesh might flourish again and rejoice in the living God (Ps 83.3). Then she was carried out into the Archangel Gabriel Chapel, on the south, and was placed on the archangel’s altar like a golden vessel of sacrifice. For a long time the gentle protector of suppliants rested there, and the virginal pearl was aptly placed before the one who announced the virgin birth, and like the ark, was preserved under the wings of cherubim (III Kgs 8.7). XI4 In the midst of the triumphs of the Philistines, the Ark that had been defeated and made captive slaughtered the victors, 270 and cut in pieces Dagon their god, and it went forth in a strong band like that of Pharaoh, having broken through the passes of the enemy; indeed, it carried back triumphal chariots and victory-bearing gifts with lofty praise (I Kgs 4–6). At length Solomon, the glory of kings, prepared a place in his golden temple and, gathering his kingdom together, transferred it there. A Greek) can mean ‘sheaf’. 3 4

tripudium: actually a sacred dance; ‘turns sorrow into the subject of a sacred dance’.

See Wilmart p. 269, n. 1: this poem appears in C as the continuation of Metre X in the Life: ‘but there is no doubt about its true place because the first line, in its very first word, recalls the last sentence of chap. 1 of the narrative, and likewise l. 22’ echoes the last line of the narration. ‘For this reason, Goscelin indeed did not think it necessary to give any clearer indication’ of the proper location of the verses.

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thousand generals and a thousand battalions surrounded it, and six legions of the assembly of the Levites; the priests, numerous and powerful, processed, adorned in red, purple and fine linen. Organs, harps, lyres, drums, songs, cymbals, cornets,5 and choirs, filled the starry sky, the mountains, the valleys and rivers with praises. One hundred thousand censers burned the odours of peace to the dwellers in heaven, and the whole road was filled with clouds of incense. With such rejoicing and triumph the ark was hidden under the wings of cherubim (III Kgs 8.1–7). But Edith, brought back by the light of God from the lordship of death which has been destroyed by death, brought forth from deep in the jaws of the tomb, does not lie hidden by the wings of the cherubim; but as the true light has put to flight the bushel (Mt 5.15), now she shines out before the red lamp; after the victorious palm of the cross has cut away the veils, all rites are fulfilled, now the Lord has thrown open everything to the light. 2 How a monk wished to cut off relics from the virginal clothing There followed a great miracle, affirmed by universal agreement. A monk of Glastonbury, Eadwulf by name, well-known here for his priestly devotion, went after relics from the clothing of the sacred body with fool-hardy faith. He cut off with a knife a fold of the tunic from the breast of the virgin’s body, 271 as it lay on the above-mentioned altar, and as he did it grazed the holy body with a slight touch of the blade. Immediately a torrent of blood6 gushed out, as though it were pouring from a living vein, and stained with its rosy colour the snow-white garments and the paved floor. The presumptuous man flung down in terror his knife and the sacred plunder, and as though he were guilty of the bloody murder of an innocent person he fell down on his face and tried to wash away the guilt of his presumption with his tears. Greater miracles confirmed these miraculous events. For when he got up after performing his penance no blood was seen, but it returned to its proper body as if restored by his penitence. In the same way, they testify that when one of the sisters was preparing to cut off a small portion of the head-band from the sacred head, that living head lifted itself against her and terrified the presumptuous woman with threatening anger, so that she might indeed know with what fear and reverence the holy remains of the saints who reign with God should be treated. 3 How her mother Wulfthryth restored sight to a blind man But meanwhile, postponing other matters, we here dedicate to the daughter the praises of her mother. For it is right that the same page should celebrate them both together since the same church embraces them. The daughter, the bride, brings her 5

sistra, ‘rattles, ratchets’: Douay translates as ‘cornets’ (II Kings 6. 5), RSV translates the Hebrew as ‘castanets’. 6

G adds uenerabilis: ‘a torrent of her sacred blood’.

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mother to the Lord as mother-in-law, who does not depart from the pattern of her own merits, in whose womb, in whose bosom, at whose breasts she was brought up in Christ. These notable miracles are related of her. A foreigner, a German, who had lost his sight, very privately approached Benna, whom we have mentioned above, his acquaintance and fellow-countryman, disclosing that he had had a vision that his sight was restored by being bathed by the hands of the lady Wulfthryth; he believed this and ardently desired that it should be brought about. Although blind in the body, he saw very well in his mind by what healing of faith he might drive away the exterior darkness. Benna, when he understood the matter and thought over to himself the well-known merits of the man’s pure life, presented the words and entreaty of the blind man to the venerable lady, and so that she would not refuse this remedy, 272 begged it earnestly for his neighbour. Then she cried out in amazement and said: ‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, what have I to do with these matters? From where could I get such presumption?’ ‘Do it’, said Benna, ‘like that, in those words you used: in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’ At last, persuaded with difficulty by the faith and wisdom of the priest, with prayers and trepidation she wet her hands with clear water. When the blind man had sprinkled this on his eyes, suddenly he drank in with his open eyes the unaccustomed daylight. Yet Benna urged her not to refuse to wash clean his clouded sight herself. Trembling, she repeated with a cry the name of the Trinity, and he also entreated, with the same invocation, that their request should be accomplished; finally she washed his feeble gaze with the sign of the cross which her daughter was accustomed to use, and thus poured into him the clearest light, all darkness being washed away. But then, denouncing herself all the more as unworthy, she gave the glory to the Lord’s omnipotence. 4 About the sheriff who treated priests unjustly The sheriff of Wilton, Ælfwine,7 threw into his gaol two priests of her monastery, Osmund and Athelman. The blessed lady called upon the Lord. There was no delay; in fear of the lady, indeed, he sent them back, but divine vengeance followed; suddenly biting out his own tongue, and tearing at his fingers with his teeth, he died, and paid the penalty incurred by his arrogance. 5 About the robber who fled to the church Similarly, when a robber fled for refuge to the monastery, the renowned lady, counting on the protection of the Lord and the intercession of her blessed daughter, ordered that the doors which had been closed behind him should be opened again. Immediately the royal officers, following him with audacity worthy of Pharaoh, 273 were condemned to perpetual blindness; Wulfthryth, through the favour of King 7

Ailuuinus: Wilmart, p. 272, n. 2, suggests Æthelwine as the English name intended.

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Æthelred, sent the robber away in peace. O constancy in faith, which did not shut out the pursuers, but rather admitted them and shut them in, or rather captured the enemy within the walls, and with a strong hand set free the prey from the hunters. Everlasting darkness8 fell upon those eyes that had been seeking blood, so that they could not see to lead away themselves or anyone else, nor could they destroy anyone, while they brought destruction on themselves. 6 How she obtained Saint Ywi from his own people when they were not able to carry him away In her days also some Pictish clergy, who were carrying the holy confessor Ywi around in a casket, fixed his abode in the blessed virgin’s holy town and royal habitation as firmly as iron in a rock of adamant. After they had been received with a solemn procession and the singing of the virgins, together with the kindly love of the church, they placed this casket of the holy remains—a light burden (Mt 11.30)—upon the altar of the dormition of blessed Edith, and, urged by some good spirit or other, offered him as an involuntary sacrifice.9 274 After they had received the pious hospitality of the venerable Wulfthryth, when they prepared to leave with their guardian—so wonderful is God in his saints (Ps 67.36)—Saint Ywi was fixed to the altar by such a weight that he could not be raised from there by any effort, so that it could clearly be understood that he was held by love of the place that belonged to Saint Edith and her devoted souls, and wished never to be taken away from there again. What were the wretched visitors to do, seeing themselves abandoned by their leader? They wept, cried out, ripped their garments, tore at their hair, wrung their hands, and struck the casket as Balaam did his ass (Nm 22.27); nevertheless the holy clay, like a massy rock, did not yield to strength nor to numbers; the blessing which had been removed from Esau by Jacob could not be restored by any tears (Gn 27.35– 38). They stayed, although they had intended to go, like the brothers of Joseph who wished to be held back with their brother when he had been detained (Gn 44.17–34). Why prolong the story? As they were now weary and desperate, the lady Wulfthryth, who was always most generous, recompensed them with two thousand shillings of the currency of her country.10 They, having received the silver like Esau’s lentils (Gn 25.29), went away satisfied with the compensation and yielded up the blessing of their incomparable treasure to the people who had it in their possession. Their holy things were to be an example, transferred from these unworthy men, who had treated them too carelessly, to worthy devotees. The mother rejoiced, distinguished by her 8

Wilmart prints uox; Loncar reads nox, rightly; R could be read as either. Uox could, perhaps, be understand in some such way as: ‘A constant utterance cried out upon their eyes that had been seeking blood’. 9

Psalm 49.14, wittily transformed.

10

patrie incudis: ‘from the mints of the country’: that is, 2,000 Saxon shillings, as opposed to Continental shillings.

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beautiful love (Ecclus 24.24), the star-like souls of the daughters of Sion rejoiced, because the diocese of Wilton had been enriched by so great a protector, because Edith who nurtured them had been endowed with so great a co-heir, and with him glory and wealth (Ps 111.3) would be increased in the house of the Lord. 7 About the passing of the lady Wulfthryth Among the other works she performed in her dutiful stewardship, this lady built a stone wall around sun-blessed Wilton; she put the church of the virgins on a foundation of faith, like the castle of Sion (II Kgs 5.7) and the tower of David (Sg 4.4), built it up in hope, enlarged it in love, surrounded it with the virtue of self-control, a better builder and warrior than Semiramis of Babylon. And now after a long pilgrimage, 275 after a long martyrdom of bereavement and heavenly desire, she passed to Jerusalem, the blessed city of the saints, to the Lord who receives the widow and the stranger (Ps 145.9), to the eternal embraces of her beloved daughter in Christ, with whom she rejoices in the immortal spouse himself. She passed over on the sixth day within the octave of the feast day of the same blessed child,11 so that her very passing was a family reunion. The church of the holy Mother of God received her body, and she is buried before the steps of the main altar, placed indeed in the presence of the gracious majesty of that Virgin of the Lord. The same place, as is fitting, preserves as a treasure the child of the same womb, though they are separated by a wall with a passage through it. Here she was indeed celebrated by the pious office for the dead; but she is proved, by our confidence in her merits and by the miracles that went before and followed her death, to have been raised to the blessed life, so that it seemed that an angel cried out over the funeral rites, ‘Why seek you the living with the dead?’ (Lk 24.5). For although pious suppliants came with the perfumes of their prayers, they were marked out as failing to express the reverence due to virtue and to distinguish the children of life from the people subject to death. But, leaving these matters to the judgement of God, let us recall some of the miracles attested at her tomb, excellently authenticated by the witness and declaration of the church. 8 About a lamb seen coming out of her tomb Among the senior nuns of the virgin band, one was pained by an especially sharp wound at the death of the beloved lady Wulfthryth; she was known by the name of Ælflæd. 276 At the funeral of the departed she declared how much she had loved her while she was alive. The survivor clung constantly to the buried woman, remaining at prayer in the choir of the church and daily offering for her the sacrifice of the whole Psalter (Ps 26.6, 49.14) without ceasing. Faithful perseverance always meets

11

21 September (Wilmart).

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with the reward of divine grace, and when the disciples withdrew,12 more was granted to Mary, who persevered. Easter day was approaching, lit up with the light of the true sun and the rays of the Lord’s resurrection. She nevertheless stayed alone in the church after the canonical hours and performed her accustomed duties, and preferred to celebrate the Paschal feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity (I Cor 5.8), in the temple with the Lord rather than in the refectory. Meanwhile the sepulchre of the venerable earthly remains was seen to shake, and the covering laid over it to billow up as if blown by the wind, and to the great amazement of the astonished woman a lamb whiter than snow suddenly came out of the top of the tomb. By shouting and giving a blow with the staff, with which she supported her weakness as an old woman, she urgently summoned the absent sisters to bear witness to such a great vision. ‘Look, behold the lamb,’ she said, ‘Behold the lamb.’ The lamb, leaping down on to the paved floor, and staying there for a short while, examined the whole royal building of the church with a placid gaze; then it ran three times round her tomb, so that it seemed to be protecting the sleeper who lay there with its threefold circuit of guardianship; and so it was received back into the bosom of the tomb from which it had come forth. This great miracle was quickly reported to everyone. This gave adequate evidence that the revered paschal lamb had shone upon his eager servant on the paschal day, and had given a notable proof that the most gentle paschal victim who was sacrificed for the world’s redemption (I Cor 5.7), who opened not his mouth as he was slain (Is 53.7, Acts 8.32), rested in the pure and gentle breast of the woman for whom Ælflæd was praying; he also deigned to approve by such a manifestation both the innocence of the one person and the perseverance of the other. 277 9 About the healing of a paralytic woman A certain well-known lady, paralysed for a whole year and enervated throughout her whole body by consuming weakness, so that she appeared to be only a dried-out soul, just breathing within bare bones, was advised in a vision that she should be carried for healing to the tomb of the lady Wulfthryth. So she was conveyed there in a carriage, and was laid beside her sepulchre, with her litter, like a corpse. Here in a few days she was restored to her former strength, and marvelled exultantly that she, who had not been able to be carried there by the hands of others without pain, was able to return on her own feet. So, scorning the litter she had used so long, she returned on horseback to her own place, not as a sick woman, but as a rich woman living in luxury. 10 About the cure of a sister with dysentery A sister, who is still alive under the nursing of the younger nuns, was in danger of death because of continuous and untreatable dysentery. For her, as she lay at this 12

See chant for the season of Easter, CAO 6323.

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wonder-working tomb, the unrestrained filthy discharge was soon stopped and her health restored. 11 About a handicapped child restored A small child, disabled in feet and eyes, rolled about at her tomb as if out of its mind, crying for its mother, when behold, in sight of the sisters in the choir, its sight and its ability to walk were restored. The ring of her pastoral office also often helped those who were suffering in the eyes, when looked at with faith. XII Joseph, second from the throne of the kingdom (Gn 41.40), relieved with his embrace the bereavement of his father. The Son of David, distinguished in the court, weighing the peoples13 in his Father’s celestial scale, grants to his mother the chief place among his companions; do you, O worthy virgin, associate your mother, who is united to you in the highest and lowest things, in your merits, your friends, your distinctions. 278 12 How King Canute, in danger at sea, had a vision of his helper Edith This part of our charge has been about the hidden treasure and the lamp hidden under a bushel; let us now follow up those other most famous events that relate to Edith, the glowing lamp, ever placed on a candlestick (Mt 5.15) in the house of the Lord. To King Æthelred, the brother of the holy virgin, there succeeded his sons, first Edmund, then Edward, and between these came Canute, king of the Danes; for thus the almighty governor of kingdoms determined; and Canute, a member of the royal family by adoption,14 gained the rule from Edmund, together with Edward’s mother Emma, just as king William succeeded Edward.15 And so this foreign king Canute, captivated by what he had learned of the piety of holy Edith and her frequent miracles, was as devoted to her in affection and reverence as if he had been her brother Æthelred or her nephew Edmund. Whenever he came to Wilton and visited the nuns under her protection, he did not presume to ride into the sacred courtyard, but in his reverence was accustomed to get down from his horse in front of the door

13

Wilmart populo, C populos.

14

At this point, R has suffered damage, and characters are missing at the beginning of lines 19–27 of fol. 20. The epithet [adop]tiuus applied to Canute is reconstructed by Wilmart from the Gotha manuscript, doubtless correctly; but Canute became a member of the royal family by marriage, if at all, and not by any process of adoption. 15

This sentence is not entirely clear, especially as Goscelin uses prior and posterior for the kings here identified as Edmund and Edward. Since Goscelin is minimising the extent of the Danish usurpation, as Wilmart remarks (p. 278, n. 2), the lack of clarity is perhaps intentional.

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and go on foot into the Lord’s shrine, together with his men, so that a layman might teach the distinction between holy and secular, between the sacred precincts of the church and stables for horses, and give an example to the priests themselves. 279 Such reverence for the virgin intercessor and the holy place possessed him that he appeared in the holy places neither avariciously nor without generosity, but with a propitiatory sacrifice. On one occasion, returning to his ancestral kingdom of Denmark, he was hurled about by fierce storms in that wide sea. Then, seeing that he was almost being overcome by the waves, he called out with frequent cries: ‘Saint Edith, help! Christ, free us by the merits of Saint Edith!’ Thereupon the glorious virgin, appearing joyfully to him as he was tossed by the storm, said: ‘Behold I am here for you, Edith, whom you have called upon; I have come to your aid when called; and behold, for you I have calmed this storm through Him whom the winds and the sea obey’ (Mt 8.27). At these words he looked round, and behold—a marvellous sight: all the storms of winds (Ps 10.7, 106.25) had quietened, and after the danger great peace and joy smiled on the scene. And there he was rescued, with all his fleet, and when he returned to England and came to Wilton, he repaid God through the holy mediator Edith by giving thanks with solemn gifts, and publicized this great miracle with prolific testimony. In a similar manner later on, Ealdred the Archbishop of York was travelling to Jerusalem,16 the city of the Redeemer, and was in danger of shipwreck in the Adriatic sea. When he called upon her, Edith, his fellow-citizen, immediately beamed upon him and said: ‘I am Edith,’ 280 and suddenly restored calm; he proclaimed this when he returned to his own country. 13 How the craftsmen of the shrine were struck with blindness The devout King Canute ordered a shrine to be made in gold for the wonderful body of the virgin, and with an open hand he paid out all the costs with a liberality as great as his enthusiasm. But the accursed hunger for gold—to what will it not compel mortals?17 Neither the fear of the jealously watching king, nor the hope of the promised reward, nor reverence for the standard-bearing virgin, nor respect for the highest judge, held back from sacrilege the workmen’s clawing hands. What they could have clothed entirely in pure gold on a generous scale, they skimped, contrary to the royal vow, and made with silver with a thin gilding. The royal bounty was overflowing, but their colossal avarice produced a niggardly job. But as the Lord was working zealously on behalf of his beloved maiden, they were punished with perpetual blindness of the eyes with which they had desired the gold, and because of their darkened minds they were sent out into the outer darkness. Together with the coveted light of the metal they lost the light of the world, and for their wicked 16

Ealdred’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem took place in 1058, while he was still Bishop of Worcester. 17

Compare Aeneid III, 56–7.

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avarice they were ignominiously condemned to begging, so that a public penalty should proclaim the crime of such great sacrilege. These were their names: Ælfmær, Winstan, and Wulfstan, formerly famous for their skill, afterwards notorious for their wickedness. The subject of that work was part of the business18 of the passion of the Lord; the angel, seated by the tomb, announced to the women the triumphant joy of the resurrection (Mt 28.5). In such a casket the virgin was offered to her Creator to be raised up, and in such a stronghold she is believed to rejoice in her sleep of peace, while the Lord of immortality watches over her 281 and proclaims: ‘The maid is not dead, but sleeps’ (Lk 8.52, Mt 9.24); and he arouses her with his life-giving voice: ‘Maid, arise’ (Lk 8.54). The casket is decorated with the Slaughter of the Holy Innocents, as though with so many roses of paradise, virgins whom she, a virgin, nourished in heaven and in her virginal lap and bosom.19 Furthermore, Queen Emma, distinguished as much by her goodness as by her noble birth and beauty, honoured her not only with a benefactor’s reverence, but also with that of a close kinswoman; marriage to her brother transformed her affection into that felt for a sister.20 14 About the fear of the virgin, by which the occupier of her land was stricken At that time one of the king’s thegns, Agamund by name, occupied a property of Saint Edith called Ferelanda, and was struck down by the arrival of death without having repented. A miracle is recorded, incredible but confirmed by the testimony of the kingdom and the clear statement of everyone. The lifeless corpse was lying in the midst of his friends, men and women, sitting in a circle,21 when suddenly the dead man rose up and turned all their mourning into amazement, and terrified them by a sudden shout. 282 ‘Help!’ he said, ‘Friends, help me, all you faithful people of God, and take pity on a man who is to be pitied rather than feared. Behold, the terrible majesty and unbearable anger of Saint Edith is shutting out this unhappy soul from every part of heaven and earth, and permits the occupier of what is rightfully hers to settle nowhere. Look at the severity and threatening power with which she, whom I was damned or irresponsible enough to dare to despise, has met me; she has driven back my soul at its departure, and will not allow me to stay in this body, nor to live, nor die. But in the name of the Lord and Judge of all, implore the lady Queen for

18

commercium: the translation ‘profit’ is tempting.

19

Presumably the nuns whom Edith has nourished (in the ‘heaven’ of Wilton?) are equated with the Holy Innocents through the image of the roses of paradise; the expression seems compressed.

R.

20

Emma married Edith’s half-brother, Æthelred the Unready.

21

A large part of these sentences, from ‘testimony’ to ‘circle’, is accidentally omitted from

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me’—for that was during the reign of Queen Emma22—‘that she would condescend to come to her wretched servant; and join me in entreating her, whoever of you have Christian piety, that with all speed Saint Edith’s land should be restored to her, and all of you, as a group, beg this gracious lady that this should be done for me.’ He created an uproar with frequent repetitions of such pleas, so the request was made to the Queen, but at first she shrank from visiting a corpse that had been brought back to life—such is human weakness; but at last she was persuaded and kindly showed herself to this man, poised on the point of death, and calmed the suppliant; and when the property had been returned to the holy virgin,23 he breathed his last, setting out to meet her as his helper, not avenger. A well-known dialogue of Gregory relates how terribly Saint Eutychius, when he was still burdened with an earthly dwelling, struck down with a single glance a man who, in his pride, despised him.24 Since he was so powerful as a captive, how much more powerful should we believe him to be, now that he has passed over into the liberty of the children of God? (Rom 8.21) And what then will blessed Edith not be able to do in her magnificence now that she is taken up into the kingdom of her Lord, who has promised his own throne to the conqueror? ‘To him that shall overcome’, he says, 283 ‘I will give to sit with me in my throne, just as I have overcome and am sat down in the throne of my Father’ (Rv 3.21). Now she is offered even the majesty of judgement, which is promised thus to the saints in the resurrection: ‘the just shall stand with great constancy against those that have afflicted them and taken away their labours; these seeing it shall be troubled with terrible fear’ (Ws 5.1–2). The God of Gods also appointed Moses, the holy, the God of Pharaoh (Ex 7.1), and has given the judgement of the world to those who have conquered the world (Rv 3.21) and has placed two-edged swords in their hands to execute vengeance upon the nations (Ps 149.6–7). We also add an event which has recently taken place, very similar to this one. 15 Likewise about a similar vision of another man There is among those distinguished nurslings of the virgins a sister, respected for her wisdom as much as for her noble birth. A kinsman of hers, by name Brihtric, ungratefully seized the ecclesiastical land of Saint Edith. His kinswoman, at the direction of the present Abbess of the convent,25 came to him when he was mortally ill to beg him, as a member of his family, to give back the church’s property. 22 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (E) 1036 reports that, following the death of Canute, Emma held Wessex as regent for her son Harthacnut; she was exiled to Flanders in 1037. 23

G reads uirginis: ‘when the property of the holy virgin had been returned’.

24

This is perhaps a misremembered reference to the story of Florent, who inadvertently killed with a curse four disciples of Eutychius, who had killed his companion bear (Gregory the Great, Dialogues, ed. by de Vogüé, III, 15, 3–8 (II, 316–20)). 25

Abbess Godiva.

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Scarcely had she begun when he, aroused to fury, swore that he would never give it back, and as the wretched man was about to leave the world he refused the aid of Saint Edith for himself and all his possessions. When, therefore, he died and was buried elsewhere, as he had ordered, that same holy sister saw herself in her sleep coming before Saint Edith, and people standing at prayer in a solemn rite. 284 Here, in that doorway in the corner which gives access to the altar in sight of the virgin’s earthly remains, she heard pitiful wailings, and saw that rebellious Brihtric, howling unbearably, filthy, wretched in face and clothing, hiding himself behind the door in unbearable fear; as she arrived he cried out to her with a horrifying groan: ‘Hide me, I beg, dear cousin, hide me, so that Saint Edith will not see me. Alas! where shall I flee, where shall I hide from her face? How terrible I see she is, how magnificent! And I, ill-fated man, did not fear to disrespect her as though she were dead. But help me, I beg, and ask for everyone’s prayers for me, to see if I may deserve to be reconciled by her forgiveness. And say the Lord’s Prayer for me, accompanied by everyone who is present.’ The previously mentioned arrogance of the man and the visible punishment of that arrogance makes it clear that the vision was not illusory. It is believed that the guilty soul entreated the remedy of the intercessions of the faithful. Here we may say of those for whom no end of possessions and treasure is sufficient unless they feast on the sustenance of the churches, unless they mangle, tear at, devour the house of God, unless they disinherit the sanctuary of the Lord and take possession of its inheritance: woe to them, when God shall make them like a wheel and as stubble before the wind, and as fire which burns in the mountains, so shall he pursue them with his tempest and trouble them in his wrath (Ps 82.14–16); woe, when the Judge of the ages exacts from them whatever loss the divine sheepfolds have suffered while the Lord’s flocks are daily diminished, while their pasture is taken away and the bread of the children is given to the dogs (Mt 15.26), and those who have become rich and overflowing from Christ’s churches leave Christ impoverished among his own people. What they seize today, tomorrow they will hand over to their enemies in defeat or death. And what else do they retain from the disinherited church, except the inheritance of torment? But indeed their sons and heirs shall succeed them, so that in the great yawning chasm below they may make themselves co-heirs of their fathers’ punishment. What more shall we call down upon them? May this accursed requital for their greed be to them like Daniel’s little morsels in the throat of the dragon (Dan 14.26). 285 XIII Abraham rolled out a people from a barren woman, Isaac the sacrificial victim was multiplied greatly; Jacob went forth [leaning] upon a staff and returned in a multitude; Joseph the slave-boy governed Egypt; David, discarding his shepherd’s role, reigned as king; Peter, after catching fish, caught peoples. The good grace of the inexhaustible fountain flows ever increasingly with prosperity. So after her death, after her funeral rites, Saint Edith pours out miraculous light. The virgin

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reveals her radiance more and more, just as the sun advances to the heights after the dawn. 16 About a stranger freed from a horrifying and continual dance So, now that these things have been faithfully related, let us follow up other events of our own time. I will be able to survey these more freely in that what is seen is more readily comprehended than what is heard. The Roman world knows, and people still young today remember, 286 the men struck down through a divine visitation with a new kind of disturbance of the body, wandering wherever in the world; four of them were seen by us, and some may survive to this day. First we dedicate the account of this great and unprecedented event to Edith, the virgin beloved of Christ, in whose presence one participant in this great catastrophe, Theoderic by name, was memorably healed. This man, having wandered around many lands and sacred chapels and crossed the sea, came, a strange spectacle, to the English part of Britain, to King Edward himself (naturally astonishing him), 287 and finally reached the church dedicated as Saint Edith’s resting place. Many ignorant people took it that he was shaking because he was mad; but the holy virgins themselves wept at the wretched man’s punishment. He himself, being notable for his wisdom, explained his situation, and took out of his bag a document as evidence, which Bruno, Bishop of Toul (who in his later identity as Pope Leo,26 shines out with a most holy light in our own times), had dictated, as a public act,27 on behalf of those dancers. The content, worthy of recording, of this description or narrative is as follows. ‘In the light-bearing night of the Lord’s nativity, in which the light of the ages dawned, we twelve companions came in frivolity and insanity to a place called Colbek, to a basilica dedicated to Saint Magnus the martyr and his holy sister Bussestris.28 Our leader was called Gerlevus, and the other twelve names should be included here for the sake of greater credibility; we were called Theoderic, Meinoldus, Odbertus, Bovo, Gerardus, Wetzelo, Azelinus, Folpoldus, Hildebrandus, Alvardus, Benna, Oderic. Why should I delay to explain our misfortune? The whole intention of our accursed coming-together was that we might seize a girl for one of our comrades to abuse in his pride (Ps 30.19); the girl was called Ava, the daughter of a parish priest called Rodbert. We were so shameless that neither the virgin birth of 26

Leo IX (1049–54).

27

in medio civitatis.

28

The dedication at Colbek seems to have been a local one: this Saint Magnus is not the well-known Magnus Martyr (of the Wren church dedication and T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, †1117). Of his sister, Bukcestre as Robert Mannyng of Brunne gives it, less is known (Handlyng Synne, ed. by Idelle Sullens (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1983) l. 9021; see also Kenneth Sisam, ed., Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), p. 205).

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the Lord, nor Christian recollection, nor the reverence of all the faithful people hastening to church, nor the celebration of divine praise which we heard, restrained us from such insolence. We sent a couple of girls, Merswindes and Wibecyna, so that they, as her peers, might entice the girl we were hunting as our prey to our depraved ring-dance. What is easier than such bird hunting? Ava was brought to us like a little bird trapped in a net; Bovo, more advanced in age and folly, 288 grabbed them as they approached. We joined hands and started an unruly dance in the churchyard. Gerlevus, the leader of our madness, set off, for fun, the doomed song: Bovo was riding a horse through the leafy wood; He led off to himself the beautiful Merswindes; Why are we standing still? Why don’t we go? This, begun as a joke, by the just judgment of God became a source of misery to us. For we repeated this song day and night, dancing round continuously for a whole year. Why prolong the story? When the night offices were finished, the first mass owed to the reverence of that great night was beginning; we were revelling wildly with a louder uproar as if we wanted to drown out the ministers of God and the praises of God with our damnable dance. When he heard this, the priest came from the altar to the door of the church, and raising his voice challenged us to give honour to divine things, and come in to the divine service like Christians. But since none of us, in the hardness of our hearts, was willing to be quiet or to listen, the priest in his holy zeal invoked the saint, Magnus the martyr, and called down the vengeance of God upon us, and said: “By God’s command, henceforth you shall not cease from this servitude.” He had spoken; and thus he bound us with the judgement he had pronounced, so that none of us was able to cease from what we had begun, or to be separated from one another. The priest sent his son, named Azonis, to take his sister Ava from our midst and lead her into the church; but the manacles he had fastened on us could not be broken like that; he had thought about his daughter’s safety too late. The son went as his father commanded, 289 and took his sister by the hand and dragged her away. There followed a wonder unheard-of through the ages; her whole arm went with him, the whole limb came away in his hand as he pulled it, while she with the rest of her body remained inseparable from her companions’ dance. To this was added a yet greater marvel: not a drop of blood dripped from the wrenched-off arm. The son brought back the doleful gift to his father, brought him back the limb of his daughter like the branch of a tree, while the rest of her body stayed behind, and said: “Behold father, take this: this is my sister, this is your daughter, whom you told me to fetch.” Then the father, grief-stricken and repenting too late the sentence he had passed, buried the severed arm of his still-living daughter. Miracle upon miracle! the following day he found the buried limb expelled to the surface. Again he buried it, again on the next day he found it unburied. A third time he buried it; on the third day nevertheless he came upon it ejected even further; fearing to try again he hid the arm in the church. We did not cease for one moment from dancing round, from beating the earth with our feet, from an exhibition of lamentable beating steps,

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and from repeating the same song. Indeed, the reiteration of the song ironically increased our punishment: Why are we standing still? Why don’t we go? For we were not able to stop nor to change our formation. But just as we were granted no limit to our affliction, so also we could not do or experience any of the human necessities. For truly in that whole year of our endless activity we did not eat or drink or sleep; but we did not feel hunger or thirst or sleepiness or any bodily sensation. Night, day, hot summer, icy winter, storms, floods, snowstorms, hailstorms and all the extremes of weather did not affect us at all; 290 nor did we become weary through our unending round-dancing. Our hair and nails did not grow; our garments did not wear out (Dt 29.5). So merciful was our punishment, so gently did the divine mercy torment us. To what lands did our story not reach? What people, what nation did not rush to view us? The most Christian Emperor Henry himself, when he heard it, let tears fall from his imperial face, like wax melting before the fire (Ps 67.3), and weeping copious tears he praised the true judgements of the Lord (Ps 18.10). Then in humane kindness he ordered that a roof should be built over us, to protect us from the storms of heaven; but the carpenters did their work in vain, because whatever was erected during the day was completely overthrown that night. The job was put in hand and destroyed once, twice and a third time. ‘When a whole year had come full circle, as we went round under the open sky, that fortunate and healing night of the Lord’s nativity returned to us and to the world. That night had bound us together, that night on its return released us. As that very hour came round again, in which we had begun our jesting and were bound together by the priest’s words, by a sudden blow, as in the blink of an eye, we were struck apart from each other, our hands separated, so that we could not hold one another. Under the same force we entered the church and were suddenly hurled onto the paved floor, and after our long wakefulness we slept, motionless, for three whole days. At length on the third day when, through the One who rose from the dead, we were risen and set upright (Ps 19.9), you, the companion of our long activity, you, the cause and exemplar of so great a punishment, who had lost your right hand, given to your companions in transgression, now you completed your labours and, given over to the sleep of perpetual peace, as we believe, you achieved your rest; Ava, maiden, struck with us by your father’s rod, when we rose up, you lay dead, becoming a cause of amazement and fear to all who saw these things. You were blessed, for one limb of yours perished, so that you should not perish wholly (Mt 18.9, Mk 9.47); you were preserved from corruption by divine scourging, and also liberated from death by dying. 291 The priest Rodbert himself soon followed his daughter in death. The emperor Henry ordered the girl’s arm, which could not be buried, to be hung up in the church, transformed by gold and silver into a demonstration of the mighty works of God. We, although we were separated from each other, made separately the same capers and spins which we had made together, and seemed by the spasm of our limbs to be raving by our selves. Numbers of people crowded round us and stared at us, as though we had just begun. They took note of our clothing, our hair, our nails, and

KATERN 4

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everything else worth looking at; they found everything in the same condition as it had been before the wild moment that had intervened; clean, shining, unharmed. So it is as if our liberation has been turned into another punishment; we are divided, so that we who previously could not be separated now can no longer gather together. We wander scattered about through all lands, so that we who formerly were not able to travel anywhere, now are not able to stay long anywhere. Wherever we flee, this turning of our bodies drives us and accompanies us, and now we are sentenced to more years of this compulsively agitated wandering. May merciful God be merciful to whoever takes pity on our lot through pious prayers.’ Theoderic, himself relating these matters by his speech, and validating them with his testimonial letters, and reinforcing it yet more by that very motion, his disturbing, beating leap, besought Edith to be propitious. The celebrated day of the annunciation of the Lord’s conception29 had dawned upon the world, and when everyone had gone outside, the remarkable stranger remained alone before the holy virgin. Behold, he fell asleep lying on the floor in her presence, and—O omnipotence of God, O favour of his beloved in God’s sight!—when the man awoke, he rose up completely cured. He saw that his agitation was gone, he was able to stand still; he saw that he had become fully master of himself; he crossed himself and marvelled at such a sudden change; he wondered at the removal of the irremovable judgement passed on him by the priest. People from all around ran together to see an even greater sight, and now they were more astonished that the man had been able to cease from his disturbed behaviour than they had been previously at his inability to be still. With what joy he was able to cry out to all those who came. ‘See’, he said, ‘this blessed lady, whom I scarcely knew how to call upon, scarcely knew how to name correctly—292 see what she has done for me, a man in deepest despair, how she has restored me to myself, and has completely taken away my reproach (Gn 30.23) which made me conspicuous in everyone’s eyes. I sought out so many saints; but it is clear that almighty God has granted my deliverance to this holy virgin.’ It was a great thing to see that man completely transformed, formerly unstable, now able to stand firm, in one day going from violent leaping to decorous stillness. The man who had been sentenced on the day of the Lord’s nativity was indeed appropriately freed through a virgin on the day of virginal joy, on the day of the conception of the Lord. These things were publicly described in the presence of the Abbess Brihtgifu, who is well remembered, and committed to writing in the vernacular. But having been expansive on this material because of its importance and novelty, let us now be succinct over the other matters which remain.

29

dominice annuntiationis.

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17 About a certain sister of the monastery cured in her infancy The above-mentioned and still surviving relative of the above-mentioned rebellious man,30 when in her infancy she was being cared for in this monastery by her nurse, seemed to be dying of fever. One of the leading sisters, seeing her gasping for breath on the point of expiring, said: ‘Take the dying child away from this cell; this is not a burial-cave, but it ought to be preserved as a shrine of the lady Wulfthryth, since here she returned her spirit to heaven.’ Whether this should be ascribed to error or to faith, the lady is known to be of remarkable virtue, whatever the merits of this action. But the woman ran31 and cast the half-dead child before Edith the aid bringer. When it had remained motionless there for three days as if dead, and the only alternative to death that was expected was the intervention of the holy virgin, 293 suddenly her health—despaired of, or hoped for—returned. The little girl began to breathe as if returned from death, to look upon the daylight with sparkling eyes; she began to wander about demanding food, and having eaten some curds she regained her strength for her future as an oblate of Saint Edith. If this is considered a small matter, here follows a greater. 18 About a disabled person made whole, and others freed from iron fetters A disabled man used to lie here, also, longing for health, connected by kinship as well as by the kindly custom of hospitality both to the lady who now presides over the pious church community, and to the rest of the congregation of the church. He had been so restricted in growth from his birth that, although he had the face of an adult, the rest of his body looked like a child’s. His hands and arms, feet and legs, were as twisted and thin as they had been in his boyhood. In the presence of the nursling of the apostles he was raised from his maimed condition to his full stature, his feet and soles were made firm (Acts 3.7), his legs were straightened, his arms and hands were stretched out; and he who while lying and crawling appeared very little, stood up in their presence suddenly transformed, a tall man; because of this the whole choir praised the Lord in the voice of exultation and with cymbals of joy (Ps 150.5). So also a prisoner of the king’s anger, admitted to the shelter of the holy intercessor, was struck free from his chains with such a sudden stroke that the shackles, flying apart, struck the walls of the church on either side and proclaimed by sound as well as by sight the virtue of her who lay there. These miraclewitnessing fragments hang above her, more noble than golden crowns, with other testimonials of her virtues. The iron chain of another man, struck off from the withered arm of the penitent, flew up over the shrine of the holy liberator.

30

That is, Brihtric, in chap. 15 (this reference suggests that the Dancers of Colebek episode is an addition made late in the process of composition). 31

G, after procurrens, adds limphata (= lymphata), ‘distracted, crazy’.

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Why should more of these miracles be recounted, which are so well-known and frequently perceived by the eyes, that they may be known more certainly by eyewitness experience than by written testimony? There is no need to relate more of these revelations which are so frequent. XIV Jacob standing by the heavenly ladder, Joseph ruling over his brethren, the famine about to come upon Pharaoh, Midian being conquered by Gideon, the gift of a wise mind to Solomon, these are true mysteries. Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar, the unbeliever and the believer, saw that Christ was to rise, and Joseph in the gospel took notice of angelic admonishments. So Edith appearing to her people keeps alive their watching love. 294 Not only in corporeal sights and external miracle working, but she is also radiantly visible to the spiritual eyes of pure minds, and is observed32 to pass among the sisters as if still present in her body. She declares in pious visions that she still keeps watch with maternal affection over the sleeping sisters pledged to her and, as a nursling of the eternal love and a messenger of the angelic peace, strives to invite everyone into the joys of the Lord (Mt 25.21, 23). The following account of events shows that these visions and dreams were not imaginary. 19 How she cured the eye of the abbess Ælfgifu in a vision Ælfgifu, the abbess of the monastery,33 whenever she drank in the most fragrant name of Saint Edith, overflowed with sweet tears, so much had she lit her own lamp with the virgin’s oil. This lady’s right eye was inflamed with the royal disease;34 not only her sight but even her life was in danger. The devoted giver of comfort came to her side as she slept, and while her corporeal eyes were sunk in sleep, she was able to see all the better with her spiritual eyes. The holy doctor blessed the endangered eye with her customary sign of the Saviour; 295 with her virginal thumb she traced the health-bearing cross; she touched the troubled one with heavenly gentleness. ‘And now’, she said, ‘do not be afraid: from this time you will know that you are getting better.’ Amidst these words the vision departed from Ælfgifu as she awoke; the love of the healer in the vision stayed constant; the healing which had been 32

Goscelin’s uidetur is ambiguous: ‘is seen’ or ‘seems’.

33

G reads: que praesentem matrem monasterii mater Aelfgyua antecesserat; ‘Ælgifu, the abbess who preceded the present abbess of the monastery’. 34 The ‘king’s evil’ is scrofula, a swelling of the lymphatic glands, cured by Edward the Confessor (The Life of King Edward who rests at Westminster, ed. and trans. by Frank Barlow, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), II, 2, pp. 92–94); see F. Barlow, ‘The King’s Evil’, English Historical Review, 95 (1980), 3–27. Dr Johnson’s very poor eyesight was perhaps caused by his scrofula, for which he was touched by Queen Anne.

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granted remained; the disease suddenly dropped away from the eye, and as the pain was wiped away, she offered to God the sacrifice of thanks (Ps 106.22, 115.17) and returned to health. 20 By what signs Edith foretold to Ælfgifu the order of her life and burial In the twenty-fifth year before this Ælfgifu became abbess, while she was still serving under her mother Brihtgifu, Ælfhild, a worthy and famous lady of Wilton, was given instruction about her in the following vision. She saw heavenly Edith descending the stairs from the bridal chamber of her dormition to the tomb of her mother, going on foot to a place on the right-hand side, where Ælfgifu stood in supplication; Saint Edith took the veil from her own head and put it on Ælfgifu’s and also put a ring on her finger, and addressed her thus: ‘Accept the blessing of this monastery and take faithful care of all this family; for you will be the ruler of this house in prosperity, but indeed you will last only a short time; however, when you die you will be buried in peace in this place which I have measured out beside my mother.’ After this pronouncement the vision of the virgin was seen to return to the same place from which she had come. Ælfgifu herself saw a similar vision: Saint Edith put her bracelets and armbands on her, and her own veil. It is said also that the lady Wulfthryth was seen by her, lying in the Gabriel Chapel35 above the altar, most splendidly dressed, and she invited Ælfgifu to lie beside her; and when she cried out that she was unworthy, Wulfthryth grasped her and placed her beside her. All these things in fact came to pass in due time. For Ælfgifu, 296 by the appointment of King Edward the nephew of Saint Edith, succeeded to the pastoral cure, and partly under that prince and partly under the present king, William, ruled that great monastery of Wilton, but only for two years;36 she was abounding in love, famous for her hospitality; she was the love of her daughters, the bond which held them in harmony, abounding in all things, rich in all good, and the votive censer of the blessed Edith herself. Then as she lay dying she requested that Edith, who had so long been the guide and light of her life, should be brought to her in the body, trusting that after the Lord had visited his servant, she would not disdain go to her suppliant, since Ælfgifu, lying in the prison of divine correction, could not approach Edith. The holy clay was brought to the sufferer on the shoulders of white-robed priests, like the Ark of the Covenant; she, from her bed, supported by the hands of the disciples, prostrated herself in supplication before her great visitor; the singing of the virgins was drowned in grief. The sick woman, from the depth of her well of tears, said, ‘Now, O Lady, now I need your intercession; help me in this hour of terror, and reconcile your handmaid to the mercy of the supreme judge.’ Meanwhile one of the sisters who was asleep seemed to hear these words: ‘Behold holy Mary, summoned 35

G adds archangeli: ‘the Archangel Gabriel Chapel’; the place where Edith’s relics were

kept. 36

1065–66.

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by the intercession of Saint Edith, is in the highest tower of her church, unseen,37 together with a great number of virgins, ready to receive the soul of the abbess, Ælfgifu.’ And let me not be silent about this: long before her death, she declared with many tears to her only sister, who was a nun, and to her only successor in piety as much as in office, who is now abbess of this church,38 that truly the three most holy virgins, Agatha, Cecilia and Lucy had appeared to her, and had promised her that she would dwell with them for ever. And so when she died some people wanted to bury her in the Gabriel Chapel, others elsewhere; but the problem with that shrine was that it had too little space for prayer, and the two abbesses who succeeded her had filled up the space on the left side of the lady Wulfthryth; but on the right there was space for one person between Wulfthryth and Abbess Brihtgifu. 297 And so here she was buried on the right of Saint Edith’s mother, and was close to her with whom the provident love of the virgin and the very suitability of the place had united her. Then the untiring helper, Edith, in a vision exhorted one of the sisters to implore her community of fellow sisters to pray very earnestly for her own Ælfgifu, and said: ‘My Lord, the most kind in his favours, has put into my hand all her offences except one, and I will not desist from the presence of him who is known as the father of mercies, until I obtain her a full pardon.’ We may wonder what this offence was, unless she had exceeded the bounds of virtue in the virtue of hospitality, which excess, however, hospitality itself excused. But by these and other examples Edith, the beloved of God, made clear what great benefits in heaven and earth she offers to those who seek her, and with what efficacy she brings to pass whatever she desires before God. 21 How she reproved sisters who were grumbling in their sickness When a debilitating epidemic was testing the Lord’s flock with the supernal rod, and was wasting away many of the sisters, they began to wonder and complain among themselves, diseased as they were in mind and body, that Saint Edith, who was so prompt to help any outsiders, on land and sea, seemed nevertheless so unbending towards her own household. In a vision on the following night she reproached the grumblers and said: ‘I have heard your complaint; it is our way to help all those who ask in the name of Christ, and to consider no one as an outsider in Christ; rather, each person is nearer to us in Christ as they are more ardent in faith and love. You, indeed, my children in Christ and my inward being (Phlm 12), are so much more my special care insofar as you cling to God in all things. I am always concerned with your needs in my inmost heart, and I bring your prayers very earnestly to that Lord who is most disposed to listen; and whether I come to your help or I delay, 298 I am mindful of your well-being, in the name of the Saviour, and I give the greatest care to aiding you in the long term, until the end of all and the day of eternity. For I strive 37

operitur, ‘is hidden’; perhaps read aperitur, ‘is revealed’.

38

Godiva.

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for this in all my highest prayers and desires, that no sheep of our flock shall be lost from the hand of the Saviour, but that you shall rejoice equally with me in the eternal kingdom of Christ. So therefore be constant, and hasten through these transient evils to the eternal rites, and yield this much to my feeling, so that I may show your souls to the spouse of glory, cleansed in the furnace of long-suffering or penitence, without spot or wrinkle (Eph 5.27), gleaming white.’ In this way the stellar virgin, exhorting them in a vision as if physically present, rendered their infirm souls more longsuffering and more full of faith. 22 How she soon revealed the misdemeanour of an absent sister to another It seems appropriate to add to this revelation one which was recently revealed and similarly confirmed recently in our presence. In the time of Bishop Herman, of pious memory, a sister of Wilton, called Ealdgyth, who at the time of writing is still in the springtime of her youth, was a guest at Salisbury. It was evening; she was grumbling to us about the erosion of the possessions of her monastery. In the course of this, either driven by zeal or weakened in her faith, she defamed Saint Edith: she had no power from God since she suffered so great a wrong without retaliation, and had not defended her own cause with the deserved intervention. That same night at Wilton a sister called Thola, who still flourishes in the rose-garden of the church, a blood-sister of the aforementioned Abbess Ælfgifu, had a vision of the following kind in her sleep: a circlet of virgins sounding out praises was singing in the accustomed way around Saint Edith, when behold, the voice of the king’s daughter herself called her by name out of her sleep, her virginal fluting soaring in descant above all the others: 299 ‘Thola’. At the call she came to her feet, trembling. The golden chapel of the holy clay opened at her feet; inside, the royal virgin was seen lying at rest as if on a glorious bridal bed, splendid with adornments, and a spectacle of shining beauty. Then she addressed the woman who looked at her. ‘Why’, she said, ‘did Ealdgyth say lately that I can do nothing? Look at my hands, and the services rendered by my virtues, what control I have, how efficacious, generous, energetic, and strong I am; indeed, whatever I wish I can do, by divine power.’ The visionary, having seen this mystery, went over it in her own mind, and on the next day when her sister returned to the monastery she required her, under great oaths, to tell her what she had lately said while she was absent. Ealdgyth, fearful and wondering what she wanted with this adjuration, at length recalled to mind and confessed that she had remarked on the impotence of Saint Edith: if she had had any power she would not have allowed her property to suffer loss without retaliation. Then her superior, who had been questioning her, considering carefully the same words now heard by her bodily ears which had been made known to her in spirit, and weighing in a true balance the agreement of the internal vision and the external account, related breathlessly how she had heard these same things from Saint Edith herself. Then indeed the guilty one, as one who had been found out, was deeply shaken, and humbly entreated the

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prayers of Thola and of the other sisters for her forgiveness from the most blessed lady. By these and other very numerous signs, the heavenly merits of Edith the bountiful shine out, and examples of her present protection are experienced wherever there are people who ask it from her. If anyone disparages her—may it not be so— through unbelieving obstinacy, they should fear the leprosy that afflicted Miriam for disparaging Moses (Nm 12.10); for indeed the Lord himself is despised when she is despised, and is received when she is received (Lk 10.16, Mt 10.40). For the rest, may she herself, who is the way and the goal of this prayer, always help those who reverence her, while they are still in this place of need, on pilgrimage far from their homeland, and afterwards may she share her own eternal glory with her glorious family, through the Spouse, who loves and crowns virgins, who reigns for ever. Amen. 300 23 Also about a certain mute man healed Among other works which our God and Lord has deigned to perform for the praise and glory of his name, I do not think it right to pass over in silence what he has commended to us, to make a remembrance of his wonderful works (Ps 90.4) in our times and in our lands, so that we may praise his greatness, make progress by praising and be found to be praiseworthy ourselves by the progress we have made. In the countryside around Wilton, in a village called Canning,39 a boy grew up not only mute but without a tongue, to the end that what nature had deficiently provided in the womb, the Author of nature would supply as a manifestation of his own excellence, and in commendation of the holy virgin Edith. This youth indeed, having passed through his childhood without a tongue, came to the age of puberty still tongueless. He used to attend the tabernacle where God dwells with men (Rv 21.3), and engaged in prayer, not with the motion of his lips and tongue but only in the meditation of his heart (Ps 18.15, 48.4). It happened, however, that in the building of the church which was being constructed in honour of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ and his most holy mother, and the aforementioned virgin Edith,40 he was given, by the manager of the tradesmen and director of the household, a position among the workmen whose job it was to carry the stones. When it pleased God to manifest the merits of his own holy virgin, about a fortnight before the nativity of the blessed John the Baptist, this same mute young man returning with his bullock rather late from doing his work, and having no fodder for the beast, went aside into the meadow of that same virgin, so that at least the bullock might graze there, because it was tired out from the labours of the day. There he fell asleep, and a vision appeared 39 40

Bishop Canning.

Wilmart identifies this as the rebuilding of the Wilton church undertaken by Queen Edith (Life of King Edward, ed. by Barlow, I, 6–7, pp. 70–74); the church rebuilt by her was dedicated by Goscelin’s patron, Bishop Herman, 3 October 1065.

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to him, inspiring reverence, of a certain lady, gently and quietly advising him to keep vigil on the night preceding the feast of the nativity of Saint John the Baptist, before the sepulchre in the chapel where the body of the holy virgin Edith lay. When morning came he got up and performed his accustomed work with great diligence. 301 But when the time of that celebration approached, on the night when he had been ordered to keep vigil, forgetful of the vision which had been revealed to him, he began to occupy his leisure, with a certain idleness of mind, in the boys’ games at night which are customarily celebrated on that festival in accordance with ancient tradition.41 But the loving and merciful God, who does not neglect to glorify his saints, did not send him away unsatisfied, because he had decided to make a proof of the holiness of his virgin in his own honour. For he visited the boy in mercy and seized him with headache, so that being subjected to this trial he might come to his senses again and assent to the healing advice of his vision. At length, repenting of his sport and buffoonery, he ran back to the monastery, and finding that the gates of the courtyard were shut, he climbed over the wall and got in. However, when he came to the aforementioned oratory and found no-one there, he began to keep vigil there alone without a candle, awaiting the favour of the mercy of God, and imploring the holy virgin Edith, not with words but with vows and desires. However in his anxiety he began to suffer with great pain in his head. Then, in order to lessen the pain by rest, he went to a corner of that oratory and lay down. When he had dropped off into a drowsy somnolence, in that sleep-induced out-of-body state it seemed to him that someone drew a hand over his sleeping face, from his neck up to his mouth. Waking up at once, he had a tongue, and, calling God to his aid, he had come to have a voice. Then, finding his mouth full of blood, he rushed out, holding his hand under it so that the blood would not spill into the chapel, and hastened to a spring-fed stream which flowed nearby, so that he could wash himself there. A priest of the monastery, called Brihtric, had hobbled his horse to walking pace and was leading it beside the same river, having had a premonition that he should take a walk that night. Seeing a man washing himself and not recognizing him, he enquired who he was. He said ‘I am Sigeric the mute man’. The priest we have named, thinking the answer was a joke, came nearer, 302 asking in a voice of authority who he was. But he said as before: ‘I am Sigeric the mute man’. When the priest recognized him, he was filled with wonder and joy and led him hastily to the doors of the monastery, and shouting very loudly called out the holy women who were keeping watch in the same monastery. They came there, opened the doors, saw Sigeric, whom they had known to be mute and without a tongue, and heard him speaking. There was great rejoicing; they aroused those who were sleeping and gathered together those who were keeping watch; the choir resounded with hymns and praises; the act of grace was celebrated, the people rejoiced with one mind; by everyone was God adored, who shows himself 41

The Nativity of John the Baptist is celebrated on 24 June, coinciding with extra-Christian solstice customs and games.

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glorious and wonderful in his saints (Ps 68.36), to whom is honour and glory throughout all ages. Amen.

Part 2 Goscelin’s Liber confortatorius

Note on the Translation of the Liber confortatorius W. R. BARNES AND REBECCA HAYWARD

T

he sole manuscript is London, British Library, MS Sloane 3103, fols 1–114 (described by Hollis, pp. 236-37). Extracts were printed by A. Wilmart, ‘Ève et Goscelin [II]’, Revue Bénédictine, 50 (1938), 42–83 (pp. 55–58, 82). The whole was edited by C. H. Talbot, ‘The Liber confortatorius of Goscelin of Saint Bertin’, Analecta monastica, series 3, Studia Anselmiana, 37, ed. by M. M. Lebreton, J. Leclercq, and C. H. Talbot (Rome: Pontifical Institute of St Anselm, 1955), 1–117; Talbot’s is the only edition published to date. That edition, collated with the manuscript, has been used for this translation. All instances in which we have translated a text other than that printed by Talbot have been noted in footnotes to the translation or in the Appendix to the Translation. They include: (a) emendations by the translators; (b) errors in Talbot’s transcription of the manuscript. In a number of places, the sense that the Latin seems to convey demands a punctuation other than that which Talbot prints. We have followed our judgement of that sense rather than Talbot’s punctuation. Where the text of a quotation presented by the manuscript differs from that printed in standard modern editions, the text presented by the manuscript has been translated, except where that text is unintelligible or appears very much inferior to that of modern editions for the purposes of Goscelin’s argument (indicated in the footnotes). The texts known to Goscelin will not have been identical with those printed in modern editions; and it seems likely that some adaptation and error should be attributed to Goscelin himself. Translations of quotations from the Bible have been adapted from the Douai-Rheims translation and modernized; translations of classical authors are the translators’ own.

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Goscelin frequently adapts and expands quotations from biblical and other sources. Because of the large number of quotations in the text, and the way in which they are woven into the text, sometimes one with another, we have not used quotation marks to indicate quotations. Quotation marks indicate direct speech; they may coincidentally correspond with quotations, but quotations as such are identified by references in the text and footnotes. Some footnotes from Talbot’s edition and Wilmart’s article have been included. We have footnoted biblical quotations more fully than Talbot, and we have footnoted recurring quotations each time they appear. References to other works indicate possible or probable sources from which Goscelin’s phraseology and theological ideas may have derived, directly or indirectly. In all but a few cases the sources (or analogues) suggested by Talbot (drawing on Wilmart) have been adopted; these have been substantially augmented by the translators. In identifying references, we have been greatly helped by Living Stream Bible software, and by the electronic Patrologia Latina; for this reason, citations are of the Patrologia Latina. Corpus Christianorum and Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum citations are also included for texts that have been edited in those series. The CANTUS on-line database has also been of great assistance in locating liturgical references. These are cited by item number from Corpus Antiphonalium Officii (ed. by René-Jean Hesbert and René Prevost, 6 vols (Rome: Herder, 1963–79)). The translation is keyed to Talbot’s edition by the inclusion of Talbot page numbers in the text, in small bold type, thus: 30. Biblical references are inset within the text using the abbreviations recommended by the Chicago Manual of Style. References are to the Vulgate divisions of the biblical text, so that the books known as I, II Samuel and I, II Kings in modern Bibles are here referred to as I–IV Kings, and the Psalms are given their Vulgate numbering (broadly, one lower than the numbers in modern Bibles from Psalm 9 to 146). The style of the work is formal and often also emotional; it is often forcefully, even aggressively, elaborate in features typical of formal Latin persuasion such as repetition of words, repetition, balance, and contrast of clause structure, and hypotactic sentence structure. Such features have not always been preserved in this translation, but by the translators’ choice they are more prominent than in most registers of current English.

Goscelin’s Liber confortatorius Prologue The first book expresses complaints and consolations. Wars are waged with desires and won by the second. The third expels discontent with impassioned prayers. From earthly things the fourth seeks the stars in a fourhorse chariot.1 26

To one shut in from one shut out; to one solitary from the world from one solitary in the world, who prays that Christ and love may know him; to a singular soul. She is Eve, the ward of Christ, left to God alone as a recluse in her dwelling. She has become an owl in the house (Ps 101.7), far from her homeland seeking the true homeland. Indeed she flees from the tumult of the world to the Lord of peace, and in flight from the pains of mortality, she strives for the eternal joy that is God. May the one who took up Mary take her up, as he gathers and enfolds all the souls who come to him in the tireless embrace of his kindness. May he take up his ward and guest, since the Lord has heard the poor and has not despised his prisoners (Ps 68.34). If, by chance, this pilgrim letter, which I give to the fickle winds but commend to God, falls into the hands of others, I entreat that it should be returned to her to whom alone it stands destined, and let no one snatch away in advance what is not made for them. It is a private document of two people, sealed with Christ as intermediary, touching first on the duty owed by virginal simplicity and pure affection. May hissing calumny, the wicked eye, the artful finger, the impure gossip-monger and cackler be far from our pure whispering. The tale is long and the language is awkward and weak; let him who does not love not read it (I Jn 4.7–8). Let him instead leave what was not written for him to those to whom it belongs. But whatever happens, I have preferred to be made an object of mockery by the superciliousness of 1

In the Latin original, these four lines are in hexameter verses.

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strangers than to neglect what is owed to affection. In any case this letter of exhortation, even as it exceeds the limit of a letter, is divided into four little books, so that as it runs with its charge it may take breath. Here ends the prologue. Here begins the book of encouragement of the monk Goscelin from England to Eve, enclosed at the house of St Laurent in the name of Christ, sent to Angers.

Goscelin’s Liber confortatorius Book I 27 O soul dearer than light, your Goscelin is with you in inseparable presence of

soul. He is with you in that better part of himself with which he could love you, one with you, from which no distance may separate you. He greets you in Christ with eternal greetings. Behold, he has touched us with his hand, and he has determined and allotted all those things with wisdom. Although he has separated us for the time being, he has also given us higher counsels, so that of course we will pant and hasten to be united in that homeland where we can never ever be separated. The more distance he has put between us physically, the more inseparably at some time he will join together again one soul of two people. Just so, formerly, the more bitterly the fountain of love himself wounded the feelings of his disciples by physical absence, the more sublimely he fired them in spiritual love. And so, because your soul-friend was not able and did not deserve to visit you in corporeal presence, he seeks you now with anxious letters and long complaints. The provident mercy of God has made this consolation for us, that although far distant in place, we can be present to one another in our faith and our writings. The letter that runs between us can bind up even these torments of separation, which were owing to my crimes, and heal us. And the page, which retains, will speak with more edification than the tongue, whose word flows away. And your affection will be able to see by reading the one whom it has left in the body, and will be able to drink in my voice and my sighing words with your eyes instead of your ears. So, lest you think that I have been cut off from you, as often as, mindful of me in Christ, you deign to look upon these remembrances of me, consider that I am seated with you at Wilton in the presence of our lady St Edith or even in this chaste order,1 that I speak to you, that I exhort you, that I console you, that I pour Christ into your heart with the sighs of the feelings of wounded love.

1

aut etiam in hac pudica serie: series seems difficult here, but we thank the staff of the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources for directing us to William of Malmesbury, History of the English Kings, II. 153, ed. by Mynors, pp. 250–51.

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But behold, even as I was writing, my suffering, running wild, could not be concealed. My hands have fallen2 and my writing skills have failed, and I have been overcome by wailing and lamenting. I fell down before the altar of your Laurence, as I was sitting in a quiet part of his church. I called out often in a flood of tears, as if under the blows and lashes of the Lord: ‘Have mercy, O Lord, have mercy.’ I grasped at the psalm: ‘Have mercy on me, O God’ (Ps 50.3), and with wailing I intoned that psalm and (in it) ‘a contrite and humble heart’ (Ps 50.19), and in another psalm, the verses appropriate to you: ‘I am like a pelican of the wilderness’ (Ps 101.7), and: ‘The Lord from heaven looked down on earth, so that he might hear the groans of prisoners (Ps 101.20–21).’ I bellowed loudly: ‘Holy Mary, succour the unhappy; help the faint-hearted.’3 Thus taking up again my discourse, that was interrupted by such an eruption of grief, as often, I say, as you deign to read my holy devotion again here, accept this consolation as if I were present, if the fervour of one who loves you moves you. Permit me now, for mutual comfort and memory, to go over again the unbroken history of our affection and strengthen our perpetual love. Do not be deterred by this volume in place of a letter, which although so large will not contain such great longing. Unless I am mistaken, however, insatiable fervour and anxious love will actually make the longest conversation the briefest for you. Pay attention to one who is speaking to you as if from a bed of pain. The birth of love 28 You remember, soul sweetest to me, how at first I provoked your childhood,

confident that I would easily correct such a pious soul. In just such a way the bees make more pleasant honey from ill-tasting plants. I won you over with talk, but you conquered me with kindnesses. You gave me books that I wished for; you praised my Bertin with the greatest eagerness; you hastened to perform all the duties of love. To this point, however, I was fond of you moderately and only outwardly in the good hope of Christ. But when indeed among fourteen maidens, with candles shining like stars and the heavenly torches, you approached your marriage with God nervously and second to last, and with a thronging crowd waiting with solemn expectancy, you put on the pledge of divine faith with your holy clothes, I was struck more deeply in my heart by your humble habit, your trembling approach, your face, blushing as if from the fiery throne of God sitting above the cherubim, wisely anxious, along with this wedding song of admirable grace: ‘I am betrothed to the one whom the angels

2

Compare Virgil, Aeneid, VI. 33; Jerome, Letter 108: To Eustochium on the Death of Paula, 32, PL 22, 906, CSEL 55, 350/4. 3

Antiphon used for services of the office for the Nativity, Annunciation and Assumption of Mary, CAO 4703.

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serve,4 and he has taken me as a bride with his ring.’5 I was touched by heavenly drops and I wept with an overflowing of fervour. My prayers were more greatly inflamed as well by your continued silence, your anxious modesty, frequent psalmsinging and the pious witness of your teacher. I brought it about that you, having been dedicated yourself, should be present at the dedication of the church following closely after,6 as I desired you to make progress by such great sacraments. Only carry out very carefully the advice that at that time I was pouring into your ears as if I were giving birth: ‘Cry out in the presence of the Lord (Ps 94.6)’. I recommended that you should make only one petition of the Lord, namely that you, wounded by love, should desire Christ alone, and that you should seek him only for your dower in the inclination of your heart and in your whole soul. I said: ‘So, soul dearest to me, so entreat your Lord by the privilege of eternal love: “Give yourself to me (Sg 8.1).”’ Behold the place of your single prayer. So that you may receive him alone, you have entered here alone. Call, wail, knock so that the door may be opened to you. Wrestle with the Lord until you overcome: do violence to the kingdom of heaven, so that you may enter. The grace of the Lord presents itself to you of its own accord; take care that it is not empty in you. Then when our bishop was bringing in the censer, scattering incense and singing: ‘Let my prayer be directed like incense in your sight’ (Ps 140.2), what then did I pour into your heart? I said: ‘According to such an example, you ought to enter the presence of the Lord not with cold feelings nor an empty heart, but with love’s incense burning fiercely, with the virtues’ perfume on fire. From this was given much incense to the angel who has the golden censer that is the innumerable vows and sighs of pious minds, which are presented by the angelic hand and ascend to the Lord like the smoke of perfumes from the welling up and overflowing of tears (Rv 8.3–4).’ When from the affection of your father you were present at the banquet with your mother, while sending a fish to you, I recommended with this maxim the mortification of the flesh: ‘Roast fish, Christ’s suffering.’7 We passed to the ceremonies of another dedication;8 again I earned you the right to be a Mary for

4 Antiphon for Vespers of St Agnes, also used for Trinity Sunday and the Common of Virgins, CAO 3407, 6992, 7029. 5

Antiphon for the Vespers of St Agnes, also used for Trinity Sunday and the Common of Virgins, CAO 6084. 6

Wilmart (‘Ève et Goscelin [II]’, Revue Bénédictine 50 (1938), 42–83, p. 58, n. 5) and Talbot identify this as the dedication of the church at Wilton, 3 October 1065. 7

This rhymes in Latin: Piscis assus, Christus passus. Augustine, On the Gospel of John, 123. 2, PL 35, 1966, CCSL 36, 676/20. 8

Wilmart (‘Ève et Goscelin [II]’, p. 58, n. 5) and Talbot identify this as the dedication of the church of St Peter at Westminster, 28 December 1065.

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three days from the grace of the Lord.9 I did not watch the groups of girls with robes of purple, 29 decked with gems and gold embroidery, outstanding in beauty, but you, with that beauty that the king of chastity has desired, like the daughter of Jerusalem, dressed in black but beautiful in faith (Ps 44.12; Sg 1.4). The gathering for the festivity broke up. The darts of love were fixed deeper and stuck fast; my wounded heart languished. Frequent sheets and pages from me brought Christ to you, nor did I lack chaste letters from you. By the impatience of your love as much as my own, I used to come often to conversations with you. Your heart, being full of the arrows of the Lord, knows the sighs, the weaknesses, the sick expectations, the empty days and nights, the love of your longed-for soul when I could not reach it, that I lamented; how sometimes, flying to healing conversation of divine legation, I returned frustrated. In mutual consolation, you, although very eloquent, used to drink in pious admonitions without speaking. Whatever I urged, I found done, not in your answers but in your acts. Do you remember that you dreamed that you were fed white bread by me before our spirits,10 and while eating you found bits of gold in your mouth, which gradually you collected in your bosom? Consider the bread of life, and the word of the Lord desirable beyond gold, and from this gold make an eternal necklace for yourself by toil, preserving like Mary all these words of the Lord and thinking them over in your heart (Lk 2.19). Whenever our bishop11 greeted you with his fatherly embrace and with these words: ‘Eve, mother of the living’ (Gn 3.20), I, playing with the name, said: ‘that Eve is the mother of the living; this Eve will be the daughter of the living.’ All your ways, places and studies from the grace of the Lord smelt of nectar and balsam to me. It would take a long time to go over all these things, and they are not lost even in a distant land, nor does your memory need to be refreshed. After the death of our father,12 I assuaged our shared orphanhood with you more frequently, until with the rise of a king13 who did not know Joseph (Ex 1.8), by serpent envy and a stepfather’s barbarity your devoted one was compelled to wander a long way away. The example of love From this point the manner of my speech is compelled to change, because reason approves of the path of virtue indeed, but love, that is set before us as the nurturer of the virtues, is being wounded. That mother soul, which with her womb panting 9

Iterum te merui triduanam Mariam ex domini gratia: the exact meaning of this clause in the context is obscure. We follow the suggestions of Wilmart and Barlow for the translation here: ‘Ève et Goscelin [II]’, pp. 58–59 and p. 59 n. 1; Life of King Edward, ed. by Barlow, p. 138. 10

Ante nostrum spiritum: the exact meaning of this phrase in the context is obscure.

11

Bishop Herman of Sherborne.

12

Bishop Herman died 20 February 1078.

13

Bishop Osmund, Herman’s successor.

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brought you to birth, which on your account feared her longed-for homeland as an exile, which dwelt in exile as in a homeland, which endured or did such great things in the hope of being brought together, laments now that it could have been deserted by you with as much cruelty as insolence, which it did not believe it was possible that your love could do. While the soul was held as a captive of the Lord, while it was eager to go to you through all difficulties with a gift that was especially desirable for you, you departed beyond calling back. Why do I say you departed? Indeed you concealed all your counsels from such a special soul as if from an enemy, and when it was never imagining such pain you struck it with your precipitous and unannounced flight, assuredly in order that unexpected arrows would strike more destructively than foreseen ones, 30 lest any healing for the wound remain. If God is love (I Jn 4.8), it would have seemed more holy that he be approached by one who demonstrated love, rather than one who rejected it. For he who has kept the whole law, but has offended against it in one thing, that is in the matter of love (Jas 2.8–10): see what follows. On account of this you are judged to have sinned against love. Indeed it praises the firmness of your vows, but laments the cruelty of your silence. You have become for it the slayer of your father in place of his daughter.14 Not so did St Martin or St Benedict and other begetters of wounded love allow themselves to be stolen from those who loved them, and those ones to be overcome by unforeseen pain.15 By announcing in advance their departure or death, they took care to fortify towards patience those who would be disturbed. Not so either did that author of all love leave his wards, he who on one hand gave instructions that the dead should be left to bury their dead (Mt 8.22; Lk 9.60), on the other hand gave the example that those who are breathed upon by his spirit are commended to God’s care. For knowing that those whom he had made drunk with the nectar of his sweetness and had pierced through with the sword of love would be shipwrecked with the pain of his being taken away, from early on and often he took care to announce in advance to them what was to come, whereby of course they should be better fortified by the shield of foreknowledge. And when, indeed, he was about to go to the father, since he had loved his own to the end (Jn 13.1) that was no end, and he was about to leave them behind in the world until the time of their mortality, he took part in a last banquet in a very solemn way. He bestowed the new covenant of his body and blood, in eternal remembrance of his passion and in an everlasting compact of love, by which they might remain in him and he in them. He relieved them in their danger by a very long and affectionate address, and when they were 14

We are unable to determine what ‘it’ refers to in this sentence and the last. We are inclined to think that it is either ‘the soul’ or ‘love’, which have been successively the focus of the preceding paragraph. 15

Compare Sulpicius Severus, Letter 2, PL 20, 178C–79C; Letter 3, PL 20, 181C–82B; Gregory the Great, Life of St Benedict, Dialogues, II. 37, PL 66, 201A–B, 202A–B.

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buried in despair he raised them again with the hope that his resurrection would happen very soon, as it says in the psalm: ‘By reason of the misery of the needy and the groans of the poor, now will I arise, says the Lord (Ps 11.6).’ He said: ‘It is time that I should return to the one who sent me, because of which sorrow has filled your hearts’; but ‘do not be sad, nor let your hearts be troubled (Jn 16.5–6; 14.27). I ask the Father on your behalf that he himself guard you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you (Jn 14.18).’ Now indeed, with his eyes raised to the heaven that is his own, as being about to return to the place from where he had descended, he commended those whom he was about to leave in bodily form very carefully to God the Father. He said: ‘Holy Father, keep in your name those whom you have given to me, that they may be one, as we also are one (Jn 17.11).’ And so that we, the other and latest of his members, may count on the same grace, he said: ‘And not for these only do I pray, but also for those who through their word shall believe in me. You in me, and I in you, and they in us. Father, I desire that where I am, they also may be with me, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them (Jn 17.20–21, 24, 26).’ 31 That matchless mother stood beside the cross, gazing with her eyes overflowing with tears at that one who was crucified for the sins of the world, a unique virgin mother by a birth as no other of that unique son, an immaculate mother of a holy son, a mother alone of a son alone, a once forever mother of a once forever son. Her eyes, like pools in Heshbon (Sg 7.4), poured out their flood from holy springs. Now indeed a sword had pierced her own soul (Lk 2.35), whose whole soul was transfixed by all the sufferings of such a great son, who cried out in the words of the prophets: ‘My spirit is in anguish within me (Ps 142.4); my heart is broken inside me; all my bones have trembled (Jer 23.9). My eyes are dim from weeping, because he who consoled me has been taken far from me. O all you that pass by the way of this age, see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow (Lam 1.12).’ And no one has ever borne such sorrow; no such one has seen such a one dying. Kind Jesus was compassionate to her as she wept, and for his own part would have taken her up as she fell, but he remained on the cross nailed through both palms. He did not want to cancel our redemption by descending, so he kept the pledges of his wounds to be kissed at the resurrection. And although Gabriel, as a member of her household, and all the angelic majesty watched over her without ceasing, as their lady, the mother of their Lord, nevertheless he commended his mother to the most beloved, and by the prerogative of virginity the most special, among the disciples, as if to another son. But her soul refused to be comforted, and although she loved the virginal substitute for her son, she longed only for the unique son of her virginity. From this, consider for a moment how sacredly and piously appropriate in churches are the three virgins, or a threefold virginity, by the cross: Lord, mother, disciple, or similarly: bridegroom, bride and friend of the bridegroom (Jn 3.29). How suitably does the Saviour, the very virginity of a virgin, in the middle embrace with each hand each sex of virginity! But when you hear three, do not assume that he is one of three, but a third of two. Do not compare the Lord of majesty in the middle to

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his companions, as when Peter made a mistake with the three tabernacles by not having distinguished the Lord from his servants (Mt 17.4–5; Mk 9.4–6; Lk 9.33–35). Then there is no need to recall that the Lord appeared after the resurrection to those who yearned for him with many proofs, for forty days (Acts 1.3). He offered himself to be seen and felt; he ate and drank with them; he did everything familiar to them, as his friends; he promised them the Holy Spirit, and finally, blessing and leaving the gifts of grace and his peace, as all looked up into the far distance he raised himself to heaven (Acts 1.9). But in considering such great grace I have almost gone beyond my point. Therefore, sweetest one, although this very sublime example of the Lord does not suit the lowly status of a worthless bondsman, yet he thought it worthy to offer himself as a model for imitation, from which you may see what you owed to the mother of love. There is a letter from the blessed souls Paula and Eustochium to the holy Marcella, which, however, has the flavour of the friendly hand of St Jerome, and begins: ‘Love has no measure, and its impatience does not know bounds, 32 and cannot bear desire for something that has been lost.’16 Who indeed would be able to tell how at the first news of your departure it was crushed? But for a time it kept itself alive with the more attractive food of some hope of your return, if the Lord would be compassionate to it. For a time it was alternating with hope and fear. Once indeed David, when his son was dying, fasted for him, hoping that by some means the Lord would give him back, but when he had died David feasted, so that he might temper his father’s grief to the Lord’s will. For the prophet close to the Lord knew the heart of his Lord very well. He knew that what the good Lord had done could not be evil for him, although according to the apostolic judgement David was guilty of a crime against majesty, because whoever defiles the flesh blasphemes against majesty. And that faith, whose presumption comes from the deepest piety! He dared to pray even on account of that son whom he had got by adultery and homicide, that son whom the divine judgement had condemned to death for the punishment of the crime. But soon from that same adulterous marriage he received a famous reward, namely Solomon, not only the heir to his rule but also the unique embodiment of the rule of wisdom. He did not even lose that punished son, whom the Lord took into his peace (II Kgs 11, 12.1–24). But I am a bruised reed (Is 42.3; Mt 12.20), as the text is, and I am not able to rise to such a great example, nor does Abraham in the case of Isaac console me sufficiently (Gn 22.1–18), nor Jacob in the case of Joseph (Gn 45.26–28), nor Job, who was after his losses more glorious in wealth and children (Jb 42.10–15), nor Tobias with Sara (Tb 8–11), nor a thousand well-known acts of compassion of the Lord. You have left many laments to your mother of Wilton, many to your sisters, many to your parents and to all of us. But you, pious soul, rejoice always in God your Saviour, and give no place to sadness. You have approached the fountain of joy, so that you may 16

Jerome, Letter 46: Paula and Eustochium to Marcella, 1, PL 22, 483, CSEL 54, 329/3.

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call with the faith of David: ‘But I have hoped in the Lord: I will be glad and rejoice in your mercy, for you have regarded my humility; you have saved my soul out of distresses, and you have not shut me up in the hands of the enemy; you have set my feet in a spacious place (Ps 30.7–9).’ He has set in a spacious place her whom he has saved from the dangers of worldly desires and from those that go down into the pit (Ps 29.4), one for whom hell has begun to close and heaven has begun to open, so that having entered upon the narrow way you may run with an exalted heart the path of the commands of the Lord, whose command is very broad in the widespread love of God and your neighbour. But those are more narrowly confined whom the world engulfs, whom the mortal tumult overwhelms, whom indeed freedom to sin plunges in debauchery, but the servitude of sin enslaves to the Stygian tyrant and the mouth of the pit of hell throws down to the captivity of pleasure. But for you it is good to adhere to your God, to place your hope in the Lord, and to hope in the shadow of his wings, before the staining sun (Sg 1.5), until the wickedness of the world and of the flesh should pass. ‘And I’, you say, ‘I will rejoice in the Lord, and I will joy in God my Jesus (Hb 3.18).17 The Lord God is my strength, and he will place my feet like the feet of harts as I run in the way of his commandments, until over the heights of Mount Olympus he, the conqueror, will lead me amid psalms and drums of Mary,18 singing the triumph of Christ (Hb 3.19; Ps 118.32).’ 33 Fruit of prayer But restore me with your prayers; I lament not your salvation but my desolation. Indeed I implore you, my lady, if you have ever loved my worthless self, offer my mourning with your tears to the highest kindness, through him for whom alone you have enclosed yourself. May you gain my pitiable soul for the most merciful redeemer himself. May you pray that this soul, which you will offer with special feeling, may be given to the Saviour for eternity, so that in place of the temporal sufferings that I endure in your absence, I may possess with you eternal joys. What star of the churches shines more brightly among the saints than Paul? Yet the prayer of the proto-martyr Stephen made a very great apostle of this man from a persecutor. The redeemer of the world himself not only prayed for mercy for his killers, but even gave them the kingdom of heaven, and for the very shedders of his blood he shed it. With how much confidence must we pray before this Lord for those who love him, this Lord who returned such inestimable benefits to those who killed him? The maker of a thousand books, the great Augustine, witnesses in his book of Confessions that he was given to the tears of his mother. She wept in holy love for her heretical son and interrupted a meeting of holy men who had come. Finally one

17 18

That is, ‘my Saviour’.

Goscelin implies a typological parallel here between Miriam (compare Exodus 15.20) and Mary.

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of them said to her: ‘May the son of these tears not perish’.19 O blessed tears, which produced such a great triumph for the mother and such a great light for the churches! O divine blessings, which exceed the range of all our vows and prayers! Not only did he abandon his heresy, which alone was what the maternal prayers had beseeched, but also, emerging from the Charybdis of lust and all the allurements of the world, he shone forth as a most splendid light of men. For so that we may learn to wait for the Lord with perseverance, so that we may receive his mercy so much the more richly as we have waited for it more expectantly, after a delay of ten years the Lord came and touched his heart. In his conversion he flowed forth wholly in tears, and like the leper cleansed by the divine touch, like the paralysed man about to carry his bed, he arose healed at the voice of the Lord. Gold was made suddenly from mud; from dirty wool was made scarlet cloth, double-dyed with the precious purple of the Holy Spirit; namely, he was totally infused with love for God and neighbour. Set on fire by these and innumerable other proofs of divine grace, arm yourself with unconquerable faith to gain everything that you have wished from the best of givers. Approach him in faith, I say, faith so much the more constant as you see that you have been heard with more effect in this which you have long desired. For that most inexhaustible spring of goodness gives what has been asked for this reason, so that he might be asked for greater things with more confidence. For he loves always to be asked, he who is unfailingly ready to give. ‘Ask’, he says, ‘and you shall receive (Jn 16.24)’. O tireless listener! How much he has given to the one who asks! By what merit? By the merit of prayer. For what payment? For the payment of assurance. Therefore, kindest one, when you are in the presence of such a great father of mercies, remember Goscelin, who was formerly yours. I indeed, since I am nothing, do not deserve your prayers, but may your love, as it is for one who does not deserve, so deserve more. 34 The aforesaid mother gained her son for God; let the daughter gain her father by the same piety. May you pray for this one thing with affectionate tears, that the kindness of our redeemer should make me his, that he may turn me to him with my whole heart, that he may give me a heart and a place for serving him in peace. Oh, how often I sighed for a little lodging like yours which, however, had a little door for the purposes of going out to services, so that I should not be without a very large church. There I should have deserved to pray, to read eagerly, to write often, to speak often; there I might escape the crowd that tears at my heart. There I might place a law on my stomach at my own little table, so that in a place of pasture (Ps 22.2) I might pay attention to books instead of feasts, and I might revive the dying little spark of my small talent, so that I, who am unable to bear fruit by doing good, should bear some fruit, however small, in the house of the Lord by writing. But the Lord has rejected me and has destroyed me (Ps 88.39), and my days have vanished like smoke (Ps 101.4), and he has made my soul to waste away like a spider 19

See Augustine, Confessions, III. 12 (21), PL 32, 692–93, CCSL 27, 39/21.

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(Ps 38.12), and he has torn my years to pieces like a spider’s web. And although I had wished to say with success ‘who has made my feet like the feet of harts’ (Ps 17.34), with the pen of a scribe writing quickly (Ps 44.2), I have become slower than a snail. But the Lord is my God, who does not need the good things that I have to give, and he can be compassionate freely, and he will save us for no return. So then it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God who shows mercy (Rom 9.16). Therefore bring it about, sweetest one, that the Lord may be between you and me, and may bind us together in himself in our hearts, whom for the time being he has separated in body. He said: ‘Where there are two or three gathered in my name, I am there in their midst. And if two of you shall consent upon earth, concerning anything whatsoever they shall ask, it shall be done for them by my father (Mt 18.19–20).’ The Lord alone with the Father wishes also that we too shall be one in him. We, though his meanest members, if only he thinks us worthy in his body, should expect of such beneficence that in the mediator himself, who has made us both one (Eph 2.14), we may deserve to be united in everlasting love. I entreat you, bring it about that although I now lament having lost someone, as if she were the delight of life, I shall rejoice at some time to have found her again, as one who intervenes for me, since the Lord is able to make out of our losses a profit of greater value. May I now have a patron in place of a daughter, of whose prior claim I am as unworthy as I am unequal to her in life. Therefore by this faith, this hope, this love, let me be commended to your love after the complaint of your departure; let me be admitted and received; look upon me sitting with you; hear me talking with you. But although the bride of Love says: ‘Set love in order in me’ (Sg 2.4), love itself, burning to say all things, does not know how to keep order; 35 it does not know moderation. And the blessed Paula also witnesses this in the previously mentioned letter.20 So I pour forth my words more freely in the assurance of your indulgence because love is not moved so much by control as by will, nor does it speak so much in an orderly way as in a passionate way, nor does it pay heed to anything so well as to being able to say many things, everything. How, I ask, will I console your solitude by exhortation, being myself more in need of consolation, or even inconsolable? How should I, who am cast down, lift you up when you are lifted up, and being sick help you who are healthy, and being troubled help you who are without care? But I have matter for comfort in you that I do not have in myself. You are in the harbour; I am tossing about. You are settled at home; I am shipwrecked. You have built a nest on a rock; I am dashed against the sands. Now you can glory, singing: ‘To you I have cried from the ends of the earth, O Lord; you have exalted me on a rock. You have conducted me for you have been my hope, a tower of strength against the face of the enemy. In your tabernacle I shall dwell forever; I shall be protected under the cover of your wings, for you, my God, have heard my prayer; you have given me an inheritance, that I might fear your

20

Jerome, Letter 46: Paula and Eustochium to Marcella, 1, PL 22, 483, CSEL 54, 329/3.

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name (Ps 60.3–6).’ So although I fail, there is one to whom you can call out: ‘Let your mercy, O Lord, be for my comfort’ (Ps 118.76), to whom the comfort may make you say in joy: ‘According to the multitude of sorrows in my heart, your comforts have given joy to my soul (Ps 93.19).’ ‘Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness’ (Jgs 14.14), as the riddle of Samson runs. And shall joy be able to burst forth from grief, and the sun from the clouds? You must rise to eternal glory Rejoice greatly, virgin daughter of Zion (Zec 9.9), rejoice and be glad, because the Lord is your Saviour and crown of joy, and a robe of eternal delight. He will tear your garment of sackcloth, and will surround you with joy, so that your glory may sing to him and you will not feel the pain (Ps 29. 12–13) of your earlier suffering, since earlier things have passed away (Rv 21.4). He will heap upon you a treasure of joy and gladness (Ecclus 15.6). He calls to you from the heights of his mercy: ‘Fear not, daughter of Zion, because I am with you (Is 43.5), your strength, your foundation, your refuge, protector and horn of your salvation, and your guardian (Ps 17.3). I will not abandon or forsake you (Heb 13.5) in your hope in me.’ ‘And Zion said: The Lord forsakes me, and the Lord has forgotten me (Is 49.14).’ O how many times do we say this in poverty of mind! But what does the Lord reply? ‘Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb? Even if she should forget, I will not forget you (Is 49.15). I have left you for a little, certainly, for an instant, and for eternity I have been compassionate to you. 36 As a mother consoles her sons, so I will console you, and you will see and your heart will rejoice (Is 66.13–14).’ There will be everlasting joy upon your head; you will obtain joy and gladness; sadness and groaning will flee (Is 35.10; 51.11), and God will wipe away all your tears (Rv 21.4) and will heal your every wound. Rise, therefore, Jerusalem, rise and stand on the heights, and behold the joy that will come to you from your God (Bar 5.5; 4.36). Arise from earthly desires, from a bed of pain, from the sleep of sloth, from the weakness of desolation: arise, stimulated with heavenly longings, inflamed with the torches of perpetual love. Treading the world underfoot,21 stand on the heights to wish for the things above, exalted on the rock that is Christ, held firm in holy Zion, which is understood to be a watchtower,22 from where you may contemplate the inestimable joys of the future age. Stand very perseveringly and expectantly, and see with the loftiness of faith, with the patience of hope, with the breadth of love spread out to all people. See the joy that will come to you from your God, who will come with a right hand full of rewards, to whom you may say now in hope, then in fact: ‘You shall fill me with joy with your countenance: at your right 21

Compare Jerome, Letter 39: To Paula on the Death of her Daughter Blaesilla, 3, PL 22, 468, CSEL 54, 299/12. 22

Compare I Peter 2. 6; Isaiah 28. 16; commentary in Smagdarus, Abbot of St Michael, Verdun, Collectiones in epistolas et evangelia, PL 102, 272B.

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hand are delights even to the end (Ps 15.11), for the poor man shall not be forgotten to the end: the patience of the poor shall not perish for ever (Ps 9A.19).’ Take these things as a remedy of consolation, so that you not only count as little all sorrow and toil and all the losses of mortal things, compared with the brilliance of the glory that is to come, but you also rejoice to embrace them as the price of the crown and eternal rewards. Thus consoling and exhorting I desire, sweetest one, to arm you for strength, although I myself am without arms and worthless, without any strength. For although the unwarlike singer or trumpeter does not fight, yet he brings much to those who do. He rouses the strong ones and strengthens them with the glory of victory, ready ‘to stir heroes with brass and to fire battle with music.’23 These arms and this bravery, to which you are called forth, are not dependent on sex, age, or physical strength, but on mettle, on constancy, on a soul unconquerable in the conquest of all things. I confess my benevolence is weak, and my love is soft. This truly I always wanted, and to this end I gave birth to you and loved you, that you should pass into the bowels of Christ, and become wholly a sacrifice to Christ. But I desired this elsewhere than where you are and by another path, namely that you might live holily and be a useful vessel in the house of the Lord,24 a dove in the cloister, not a solitary turtledove, or, if you preferred, you might become a turtledove in your homeland. And why? So that I might mourn my desolation less, if you were close to me. But the Lord founded the earth by wisdom and established the heavens by prudence (Prv 3.19), and each day continues by his ordinance (Ps 118.91), and he has done everything that he wished (Ps 113B.3; 134.6), and he has done all things well (Mk 7.37). And finally, to confess the truth even against my will, I see this refuge as so opportune for your salvation that I think it to have been prepared by divine beneficence. For which reason, even if it results in sufferings of desolation for me, now that you have been planted in this place, I am compelled to help you take root, you whom I should have preferred, if it could have been done in the will of God, to tear away. 37

23

Virgil, Aeneid, VI. 165.

24

Compare Augustine, Letter 166, 2, PL 33, 720, CSEL 44, 547/5.

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The salvation of wandering saints Therefore hear the voice of the Lord (I Kgs 15.1), ‘Hear, daughter, and see, and incline your ear, and forget your people and your father’s house’, etc. (Ps 44.11). You have gone out with Abraham from your land and your kin, so that you might come into the land that the Lord your God will give to you (Gn 12.1), a land flowing with milk and honey, so that you might see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living (Ps 26.13), and you might please the Lord in the regions of those who live (Ps 114.9). You have come to the door of the paradise of true pleasure; persist and knock with assiduous importunity, until you enter when the Lord comes, and let not the pleasures you have left behind call you back. For it regularly befalls sick souls that the things that seemed to be either agreeable or bitter when they were possessed recur to mind after they are gone in shining colours and deeper sweetness. Your homeland flowing with milk, your parents, sweet as honey, dear relations, crowds of friends, charming letters, the piety of your mother, the diligence of your teacher, the happy company of sisters, the multifarious beauty of the world and pleasantness of things pricks you. You have put off all these things for a short time, so that you might recover them for eternity, that you might recover a true mother, true sisters, true parents and friends inseparably in a true homeland (Mk 10.29–30). Whoever has left behind their goods for the Saviour has lost nothing. Whatever has ever perished for Christ has not perished, but has multiplied its gains. What falls for God is seed, goes to heaven and there returns with a hundred-fold fruit (Mt 19.29). Direction from above has borne on wanderings many of the saints. By what mystery? The Apostle said: ‘While we are in the body, we are absent from the Lord (II Cor 5.6).’ And: ‘We have not here a lasting city, but we seek out one that is to come (Heb 13.14).’ Augustine also, the clearest window of the scriptures, says: ‘All who belong to the heavenly city are travellers in this world’.25 Cain, as a type of those who live in the world, when now there were many thousands increasing in the human race, founded a city (Gn 4.17); Abel, as a type of those waiting for the kingdom of God, was a wanderer. To the earthly it is said: ‘You are earth, and you will return to the earth’ (Gn 3.19); to the heavenly: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Mt 5.3).’ The former lay up treasure on the earth, the latter in heaven (Mt 6.19–20). They say: ‘Our conversation is in heaven’ (Phil 3.20), and ‘May your kingdom come (Mt 6.10).’ Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, the children of Israel, also Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel and other prophets, also the apostles and the very large crowd of doctors of the church, all were borne away either in wandering or in captivity, like Denis from Athens to France, Martin, the gem of confessors, from Pannonia into those parts, Augustine from Rome to your Britain. But the Lord never abandons 25

Compare Augustine, On the Gospel of John, 28. 9, PL 35, 1627, CCSL 36, 282/32–34. But see also the saying of Prosper of Aquitaine attributed to Augustine: Sententiae ex Augustino delibatae, I. 17, PL 45, 1860 and PL 51, 430B, CCSL 68A, 261/(17) 1–2.

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those who are looking for him. From Abraham came a people as numerous as the stars in the sky (Gn 12.2, 18.18, 22.17), in whom all peoples are blessed (Gn 22.18) 38 with Christ’s birth. Rebecca, a type of the church, followed her husband, far from her kin. After being barren, she brought forth two peoples with one birth (Gn 25.21– 24). Jacob crossed the Jordan as a poor man with only a staff, and he returned with two very wealthy companies (Gn 32.10). He entered Egypt with seventy people (Gn 46.27) and he left with six hundred thousand descendants, not counting children and women (Ex 12.37). Joseph, having been made from a slave the sceptre of the king, ruled over all the kingdom of the Egyptians, whom he had served (Gn 41.39–43). Ruth, a Gentile woman, who left the gods of her homeland and followed the God of Israel, deserved not only to be taken into the race of Israel, but also to become the mother of kings by David, and to be counted in the ancestry and genealogy of the Saviour (Ru 1.16; Mt 1.5). Through the ages, the blessings of the Lord have been as innumerable as his works. You also, among all wanderers and poor people of the Lord, have left your land, not only in the spirit of poverty and in the renunciation of worldly desires, but also by physical distance, so that you may commend yourself to the ear of the Lord the more nearly as you are the more distant in exile: ‘Be not silent, for I am a stranger with you and a sojourner. Forgive me, that I may be refreshed (Ps 38.13–14) with you. O Lord my God, to you I have fled: teach me to do your will, for you are my God (Ps 142.9–10). Be you unto me a God, a protector and a house of refuge, to save me, for you are my strength and my refuge, and for your name’s sake you will lead me and nourish me (Ps 30.3–4). Lo, I have gone far off fleeing and have remained in the wilderness. I will wait for the one who will save me from weakness of spirit and a storm (Ps 54.8–9). Friend and neighbour you have put far from me (Ps 87.19): you have put away my acquaintance far from me: I was delivered up and came not forth (Ps 87.9). Protect me under the shadow of your wings from the face of the wicked who have afflicted me (Ps 16.8–9), from the face of the Ethiopian sun blackening souls, from the face of the fire that burns up the woods among the people, and from the flame that burns up the high mountains (Ps 82.15) in holy virtues. Snatch me from the hand of my enemies (Ps 30.16), from the snare of demons as they hunt (Ps 90.3, 123.7), from the mouth of the lion roaring to snatch his prey (Ps 21.14, 22), from the serpent that waits for food from you, which consists of vanquished souls.’ 39 Out of vanity, truth What is there, my soul, for you to desire in a world as worthy of being despised as you were able to despise it? All things that are in the world are vain, as the Apostle declared (I Jn 2.16). And Ecclesiastes said, ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity (Eccl 1.2).’ The Ecclesia is the congregation, and Ecclesiastes is the name of the leader in the assembly or congregation. You know he is the most wise Solomon himself. He produced three books: of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. The first book sets out the teaching of the fear of the Lord and the rule of living rightly. The second, in the assembly, attributes all things to the vanity of diverse desires, so that

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he might snatch us away to the third stage, to the Song of Songs, with the appetite for eternity, where, free from the slavery of vanity, the contemplative mind might continue in the peace of the Maker.26 Whatever the circle of the lands could show that was happier and more glorious passed to the kingdom and glory of Solomon. He did all things; he examined all things; he tested all things; he enjoyed all the pleasures of things. He penetrated all the arguments and the errors and stupidity of the world, and found nothing in the whole world except vanity. Who could tell of the powers, the riches, the pleasures of Solomon, kings and kingdoms, the revenues, unweighable gold, silver as cheap as equal to stone, unlimited treasures, cities, houses, palaces surpassing kingdoms, the most magnificent temple, wholly covered in gold inside and outside and built with an art beyond human talent, not narratable by tongue, nor fully comprehensible by the eye? The Queen of Sheba, a figure for the church, came from the ends of the earth, excited by the stories of such great miracles, and (so you ought to bear in mind here that the history of the kings27 is consecrated to us like every other divine page also, not on account of royal ambition, but on account of the wonderful sacrament of the love of Christ and the church), she saw ivory roofs, gilded couches, three hundred chambers of queens, standard-bearers of the true spouse in virginal souls, gilded tables, gilded dishes, a crowd of princes standing by, a host of servants, a multitude of nobles, an army of companions. She heard him proposing a thousand parables, or solving those proposed, disputing from the cedar to the hyssop, teaching all things, transcending all human intellect and knowledge. And she, who had presumed herself to be invincible in wealth or in learning and had come to hear or to test the king in puzzles, blushed at her rusticity, poverty and ignorance of things. Now she was left breathless in amazement, blessing all and saying with great admiration: ‘How much greater is your glory than the fame that I heard in my own land (III Kgs 4.30–33; 10.1– 7).’ So the church, and every blessed soul that will have deserved to come to the ceremonies of the true Solomon, who is Christ (Lk 11.31), will then wonder at and be amazed at everything that is now magnificently foretold about his inestimable glory, and which has now been said gloriously about you, O eternal city of Jerusalem (Ps 86.3), 40 snatched beyond herself by such brightness and joy beyond hope; and what the whole world now proclaims and the infinite series of books thunders about that blessedness she will then say was very small fame that she had heard in the world, in comparison with such a great truth of ineffable joys. King Solomon, therefore, the very special flower and beauty of earthly glory and worldly desire, is the witness of most expert knowledge, with the apostles themselves as despisers of this world, that all transitory things are vain, in as much as they pass away in the hands of those 26

Compare Origen, Prologue to the Commentary on the Song of Songs, Patrologia Graeca 13, 74A–B. 27

That is, the books of Kings.

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possessing them, and anything that comes about in the world except for the love of Christ and of the kingdom of heaven is nothing but vanity and vexation of spirit (Eccl 1.14). For the world passes away, and the desires of the world (I Jn 2.17). Fleshly and worldly love, also, as it is vain, so is also faithless. Either one who is present is treated with disdain by a sated heart, or one who is absent is forgotten. Whoever ceases to be seen, ceases to be loved, while the one who is present more often starts to be preferred. The interloper has strangled the husband: by this achievement he takes his place with the widow as husband. The murdered man is covered over with earth and trodden underfoot; the murderer is loved more and is taken up in embraces. The innocent one who has been overcome is profaned as if he were impious; the impious victor is cherished as if pious. Wealth, however criminal it is, has no blame; poverty, however innocent, has no forgiveness. A young man who is fortunate, handsome and charming is loved, as long as one who is younger, more fortunate, more handsome, more charming is not met with. When the one who has more takes his place, the one who has less is thrown out, and because he endures violence, is judged worthy not only of separation but also of hatred. What she had cherished earlier is a fable, what she had loved more than all is a dream: that thing alone is unique which is held, and unless it perishes first, the one who is abandoned is not wanted back. Haughty good fortune is loved; affectionate love is despised; manhood is driven out by youth. The one is worthier of respect, but the other is closer to the heart. Therefore youth, manhood and all the favour of the world, by the testimony of Ecclesiastes, are proved to be vain. Only that love that is in Christ is true. That can be changed by neither place, nor time, nor status, nor sex, nor age, nor beauty, nor is it diminished by abundance nor want.28 Although love in Christ is not envious, nevertheless it receives no one in the middle, except one who pleases each of those who love. Therefore the most learned leader of the assembly, after he had set down to the error of vanity such diverse desires for diverse things, drags us to the true joys of eternal life when he adds: ‘What has a man more of all his labour, that he carries out under the sun, but to go thither, where there is life? (Eccl 1.3, 6.8)’ And he at last concluded all his sayings with one key to salvation thus: ‘Let us all hear together the end of the discourse. Fear God and keep his commandments. This is the whole nature of man (Eccl 12.13).’ Therefore, my soul, what need is there for you to have anything to do with the snares of the world that you have left behind? 41 Things that remain and things that pass away Or indeed, when on the way to a homeland of eternal splendour, is one concerned with that homeland that is not so much of birth as of death? Daughters of kings and 28

Compare Sallust, Catilina, 11. 3 (of avarice); Jerome, Commentary on Ecclesiastes, PL 23, 1109A-B, CCSL 72, 295/129–30, Letter 108: To Eustochium on the Death of Paula, 19, PL 22, 897, CSEL 55, 335/24; Augustine, Letter 104, 1 (4), PL 33, 389, CSEL 34. 2, 584/11 (all of avarice).

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princes, brought up from the time of suckling in luxuries, knowing nothing except the glory and happiness of their native lands, marry into foreign peoples and strange kingdoms. They will have to learn barbarous customs and unknown languages and serve harsh lords and laws repugnant to natural usage, just like the daughter of the Count of Flanders, who recently married Canute, King of the Danes.29 Such ones say goodbye once and for all to parents and origins in their homeland, not able or willing to look again on their homeland, as marital affection works more strongly than all other things. How much more should the soul, following Christ with a single mind and perpetual love, forget her people and her father’s house, so that the king may desire her beauty (Ps 44.11–12), in which she will be clothed by the mother of beautiful love, beautiful that is from the beauty of the love of Christ? How many people for worldly gain transfer their families and offspring to distant lands, from France to Galatia and Spain, from England to Apulia and to Greece; they stake their souls for things destined to perish, and do we refuse to see that we are migrating to eternal bliss? Moreover peoples and kingdoms suffer migration, as Israel into Egypt, from Egypt into Canaan, from Canaan into Assyria and Babylon, so the Cuthites into Samaria, the Trojans into Italy and Rome, and today the Normans into England, Britain, in which it is agreed that you also were a foreigner among that English people: but it is also agreed that from a Danish father and a Lotharingian mother, a daughter grew from that noble birth who was English.30 But not only men, but also lands and seas themselves are exchanged, so that where formerly the signs of people and cities had flourished, now wide and deep seas reign, and all declare themselves to be as fleeting and transitory as they are unstable and mutable. So all things are disposed and ordained by the eternal counsel and wisdom of the majesty of God, as his balance disposes with very fine discrimination both pagans and Christians, both non-believers and believers, and at the same time the changes in things teach us that we have not here a lasting city, but we must seek one that is to come (Heb 13. 14). One sun lights all people; one heaven lies open to all; one bosom of the world nurtures all. The same stars shine on both Angevins and English, and there are the same kind of rivers, meadows and woods, and the same delights in things flourish as much here as there. If any things are lacking, then instead of these things that your land does not have, other things are present. Therefore Prosper says: ‘I do not fear exile; the world is one home to all.’31 Everywhere bad is mixed with good; everywhere there are bramble bushes and thorns; everywhere there are roses of Christ. Heaven and hell alone know their

29

Wilmart (‘Ève et Goscelin [II]’, p. 62, n. 1) and Talbot take this to be a reference to Adela, daughter of Robert, Count of Flanders, who married Canute IV. 30 31

Compare Hilary of Orleans’ commemoration of Eve, ed. by Häring, p. 926.

See Author uncertain (Prosper of Aquitaine?), Poema conjugis ad uxorem, 97, PL 51, 614B, CSEL 30, 344–48.

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locations, and they alone divide the inheritance; from which may the same redeemer and judge of the world take us to his own place. 42 The hope of the bereft But I believe, if I know well enough that heart of yours, the abode of love, that nothing is heavier for you to bear than separation from loved ones and friends. It is a part of martyrdom, to bear the cross of the Lord also in compassion for a neighbour. So the mooing cows carry the ark of the covenant of God and the yoke of the Lord (I Kgs 6.12). The more wounds you suffer in loving the true loved ones in God here, the more joy you will feel in meeting them in the eternal mansion. Finally, as to a certain person who was formerly special, against whom alone you have been able to harden yourself, who having been left so far behind, and as though dead, has been given to oblivion by your heart, why should I care that a heart is closed? Or shall I offer consolation for hardness and anoint flint with oil? Shall I add lead and equip hardness with its weight? Or shall I give passage to one who flies, and wings? Indeed, let the unction of Christ (I Jn 2.20, 27) comfort you in all things with the oil of gladness (Ps 44.8), and let him be propitious to one who has been abandoned, and who is as miserable as he was once inconsolable. But if ever your former love awakes and a panting storm of affections rises, there will be one to whom you may call from the depths of your marrow with a sealed heart: ‘Rise, Lord, command our sea and bring about tranquility. You rule the power of the sea and you appease the motion of its waves (Ps 88.10). Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed (Jer 17.14).’ All circumstances have their own time: there is a time of war and a time of peace, a time of separation and a time of joining, a time to weep and a time to laugh (Eccl 3.1–8). Those who went, went and wept, casting their seeds: but coming they shall come with joyfulness, carrying their sheaves (Ps 125.6). We also have had our times. We have seen each other and talked together enough; we have feasted together also and banqueted; we have participated in ceremonies and taken pleasure sufficiently in the mercy of the Lord, if only anything could be enough for love. Great thanks are owed to the giver of goods for so much mercy, by which he took us to himself so kindly and satisfied our pure desires for a time that pleased himself; and finally, by separating us for a brief period, he has called us to inseparable joy. Why does an unhappy man say ‘inseparable joy’, when he is separated much further from the way of good living than from bodily presence? What does the slave of worldly desires have to do with one who is putting them off? Oh, I blush at my lack of purpose, and would that I were blushing in such a way that those who wait for you, O Lord, might not blush over me (Ps 68.7). Now, I say, is the time of going to tears, to sowing, to wars, so that these excursions may be followed by harvest, dancing, the triumph of eternal joy. It is rare, moreover, that we have found even two souls filled with a single spirit who have lived together always. Who was more loving than David and Jonathan? Although many a son is shown to have started parricidal wars against his father, and many a brother against his brother, out of a terrible desire to rule, Jonathan opposed

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himself on David’s behalf to the fury that his father had unsheathed. His father feared David in a hostile way as the successor to his kingdom, on behalf his son who would be excluded, 43 but the son showed that he preferred to save the man dearer than any kingdom rather than to be king, believing that whoever of them ruled would rule as one in two persons. And indeed it was not permitted even to them to live together, of whom one was, so to speak, the life of the other, but Jonathan was not indignant, nor did David despair, that they were not able to meet in corporeal presence. So, to exhort you by even higher examples, who could have been more full of love than the holy apostles, whom the root of all love had propagated, to whom he had given this, so to speak, unique commission: ‘This is my commandment’, he said, ‘that you love one another’ (Jn 15.12), and on whom after the resurrection he also poured from the heart of his sweetness the spirit of loving one another, so that from mutual love they might deserve the Holy Spirit from heaven, with which they might love God with their whole soul. Even these, then, who were fused into one heart and soul, were divided through the whole world, carrying about in their hearts and bodies the cross and death of Christ (II Cor 4.10), and the wound of eternal love. Paul said: ‘I testify in Christ Jesus that I have great sadness and continual sorrow in my heart; for I wished myself to be an anathema from Jesus, for my Israelite brethren (Rom 9.1–4).’ O love! He calls those men brothers, who were continually thirsting for his blood. How much do you think he loved true brothers in Christ, who so loved enemies as brothers? (And indeed it was only temporarily that he was wishing to be an anathema to Jesus by dying for those who were going astray, not however to be separated perpetually from the Lord Jesus, which would have been most impious, since if anyone loves his father or mother or anything more, he is not worthy of God (Mt 10.37).) Indeed, even the disciple most beloved by the Lord, John, to whom the Lord had commended by virginal prerogative the virgin mother,32 whom John loved as ineffably as holily, left her in holy Zion, as to corporeal presence, and he departed even into Asia to accept from the Lord a kingdom and a bride. Only Peter and Paul remained together as twin consuls at Rome, and, glorious princes of the earth, as they loved each other in their life, so in their death also they were not separated (II Kgs 1.23).33 The blessed young brother and sister Sabinus and Sabina, entirely similar in name and piety, had bound themselves more strongly with the bond of divine love than with that of blood. Their pagan father Sabinianus urged his children with threats and punishments to sacrifice to idols. Sabinus fled. Sabina also after that, whether because of fraternal piety, or paternal impiety, fled by divine aid. Their father Sabinianus called upon Christ that if he were the true God, he should destroy the idols, which had taken his children away from him. At once the temple with the idols 32

Compare Jerome, Against Jovinian, I. 26, PL 23, 259C.

33

Antiphon for the Office of Peter and Paul, CAO 2960.

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was struck by lightening. Sabina, famous in Rome for miracles, at last among many sighs of fraternal love was advised by an angel that she should go across to Troyes because she would see her beloved brother there. She came, and found her brother already crowned with martyrdom, already buried. In the same hour, in hatred of this life, having made a prayer she rendered her soul to Christ.34 44 Where now was the angelic promise? She did not find what she had sought; she did not attain what she had hoped for, namely her brother in mortal presence, nor did she arrive even at his very funeral. But the heavenly promise must not be illusory but rather immortal, not temporary or about to pass away but eternal. There without doubt she saw her dearly-loved brother; there she attained her hoped-for desire, where no injury, no sadness of separation can come between them. For no pious desire will be able to be prevented from the hand of the very kind Saviour. Shall I put forward an example of friendship even from among those without faith? The story is told among the pagans of young and very beautiful twins, so like one another that they could not be distinguished by anyone except by name and clothing, so dear to one another that each preferred to be punished for the other. One of them was called Orestes. When a theft was committed in the temple of Diana, the responses of the idols named Orestes. When Orestes was sought from the two to be put to death, each of the two competed to hand himself over for the other; each called himself Orestes, nor could Orestes ever have been found from the two, while both were Orestes by appearance and spirit and by their own profession. It was necessary either that both should be killed as being the guilty one or that those responsible should be stained by the killing of doubtful innocence. So the judges either felt pity or were frustrated, and they were released together.35 Who therefore taught them the Lord’s saying: ‘Greater love has no one than this, that a man lays down his life for his friends? (Jn 15.13)’ Indeed no one is a better teacher than love. The friendship would have been blessed if it had had Christ in the middle, without whom all goodness is proved bad and all piety impious. But whatever the author of all things bestrewed of grace among those without faith, he has prepared as an example for his faithful ones, so that even if faith is not useful to the faithless, it might be useful to the faithful as a demonstration of faith. A certain abbess by the name of Modesta had loved St Gertrude, while she was still alive, most passionately on account of her reputation for sanctity. They say St Gertrude rests in the nearby monastery of St Sergius. To this abbess, as she prayed in the church, the glorious virgin appeared visibly at the same hour that she gave up her soul to heaven. From across a far distance, when she had died in the body, she showed herself present as if in the body, and spoke thus: ‘I am Gertrude, whom you have loved very much, whom you know more by affection than by my face. You 34 35

See Acta sanctorum, August VI, pp. 500, 503; Jan. III, pp. 559–60.

Compare Ambrose, De officiis, I. 41, PL 16, 85B–C (206), CCSL 15, 77/65–70 (207); Augustine, Confessions, IV. 6 (11), PL 32, 697, CCSL 27, 45/8–10.

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should know that at this hour I have crossed to the Lord from the bodily prison.’ The contemplative, reporting these things, heard from those who knew the saint that her face and stature were the same that she had seen; and it was found that the hour of her death was the same as the one when she had appeared.36 O Lord for whom all things live,37 who fulfils pious and faithful desires better after death and restores forever what had perished temporally! Very frequently he has even made the spirits of saints while they were still alive in their mortal form appear visibly, as if bodily, in remote lands, and speak with men, as we read concerning St Nicholas38 that he appeared to those calling out to him in peril on the sea, 45 saying: ‘Look, I am here: why have you called me?’ And immediately the storm ceased. And the sailors, when they arrived, recognized him from the vision they had seen, although they had never seen him before. So we read that St Martin and St Benedict worked miracles in the spirit.39 St Ambrose as well, falling asleep during the ceremonies of the mass at Milan, is said to have been present at the funeral of St Martin at Tours.40 Therefore no intervening region of country separates from his friend one who trusts in the omnipotent God, who makes all things present. Anyone who has a pure soul for seeing God sees further than the whole world. But as I have noted above, impatience knows no bounds and does not sustain longing. O how often I thought your Eagytha blessed, who as she loved you more closely, so by shared place and sex cherished you to herself in presence. But look, her observances have been changed into grief and loneliness, although she is even now more blessed in that she could say goodbye to you, when you were going away. So indeed, by some divine dispensation, often hearts growing into one are torn from sweet presence as if from their own limbs, but even if they remained together, death was going to divide them. But the Lord, the weigher of souls (Prv 16.2), will recall (his) beloved souls, and in building Jerusalem the Lord will gather together the dispersed ones of Israel, the Lord who heals the bruised in heart and binds up their bruises, and numbers one by one the multitude of stars (Ps 146.2–4) and of his souls. He says: ‘I will gather you together out of all the countries, and I will bring you into your own land (Ez 36.24).’ Consider yourself, soul sweetest to me, to be admonished by all these things to be kindled to perpetual love with your whole mind, and to steel yourself to all patience in this very short journey of mortality. Finally, be admonished never to forget in Christ the labour pangs and birthing of Goscelin, and if you ever feel any pity for such a painful separation to comfort yourself with the hope of eternity, although your love has been wounded; which comfort indeed I do not deserve by the unworthiness 36

See Acta sanctorum, Nov. II. i, p. 300.

37

Antiphon for the Office for the Dead, CAO 1131.

38

See Analecta bollandiana, 17 (1898), p. 207.

39

See Gregory the Great, Life of St Benedict, Dialogues, II. 22, PL 66, 173D to 76A.

40

See Gregory of Tours, On the Miracles of St Martin, I. 5, PL 71, 918C–19B.

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of my way of life, but may you obtain it by the kindness of your love and prayers. Now if by chance you ask anything about one who is so devoted, he is the same absent as he was present; his mind and face are the same; his vigour and constitution of body, his purity of faith and devotion, his force and fervour of love are all the same, but his pain is the sharper for being more lonely, and the sighs of his longings are the heavier for being more distant. Then if he lasts until he has grey hair and into old age and feebleness, he will persevere in the same integrity with the assistance of the Lord. But if ever the thought returns to you and asks thus ‘what is he, who was once dear, doing now?’, this page will always respond with this one verb in the active rather than the passive voice: he sighs. And whenever you seek him, you will find him here; you will either see him or hear him whispering with you here. At one time I presumed, if the Lord should forgive my sins, that I might be able to cherish you in my bosom in the paradise of God, but now I wish for this: that I may happily deserve to see you in the more worthy bosom of father Abraham. Why then be slow, when so free for the course, to run in the race that leads to the promises of Christ, when the tumults of the world are so much excluded from your enclosure? What are we doing, my soul?41 46 If we have renounced present happiness and we do not obtain eternal rewards because we are lazy, we are the most wretched of humans (I Cor 15.19). What good is it to have come out of Egypt and, dying in the desert, not to inherit the promised land? Therefore, my soul, turn into your rest, because the Lord has been bountiful to you (Ps 114.7). Turn to the Lord in your whole heart, with faith, with words, with deeds, saying: ‘With my whole heart I have sought you, O Lord. Let me not stray from your commandments (Ps 118.10). My heart has said to you, my face has sought you, that is, the intention of my heart; I will seek your most merciful face, O Lord, do not turn away your face from me (Ps 26.8–9). Uphold me according to your word and I will live, and do not confound me in my expectation. Help me and I will be saved, and I will meditate always on your justifications (Ps 118.116–117).’ So throw all your care upon the Lord, being still and seeing that the Lord himself is God (Ps 45.11), tasting and seeing that the Lord is sweet (Ps 33.9), persevering in him and saying: ‘But for me it is good to adhere to God, to put my hope in the Lord God (Ps 72.28).’ He himself invites us of his own accord, and of his own accord offers himself to us: ‘Come to me all who labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest (Mt 11.28).’ You have come to him: remain in him, as he says: ‘The one who abides in me and I in him, this one bears much fruit, because without me you can do nothing (Jn 15.5).’ Hurry from war with your adversaries to enter his peace, that peace of the saints where sadness has no place, where no joy can be absent, which in fleeing hell you have sought here in anxious desire. From where now, as, in the footsteps of your Jesus, you are about to pass through the midst of your enemies and overcome them, 41

Compare Jerome, Letter 108: To Eustochium on the Death of Paula, 27, PL 22, 903, CSEL 55, 345/20.

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recommend your inert and unwarlike encourager, just as you yourself won mercy from the God of your salvation (Ps 23.5). Here now, after shaking off the dominion of Pharaoh and crossing the sea, let camp be pitched and courage restored, so that tomorrow there might be a sounding of trumpets against Amalec (Ex 17.8–16), and tomorrow the warriors who will conquer their land might be equipped with divine arms. The first little book of exhortations is ended. 47

Goscelin’s Liber confortatorius Book II The trumpet of divine war Hear the voice of the Lord in power (Ps 28.4), the voice of the Lord as he shakes the desert (Ps 28.8), stirs up from the sleep of torpor and sounds with the prophetic and apostolic trumpet:1 ‘Awake in bravery, because the Lord has come with deliverance. Stand fast in faith, act manfully, all you who hope in the Lord (I Cor 16.13; Ps 30.25). Put on the armour of God (Eph 6.11), the breastplate of faith, the helmet of hope (I Thes 5.8), the arms and shield (Ps 34.2) of the soul trusting in the Lord.’ The Lord ordered Moses the lawgiver that after he had led them out of Egyptian servitude, he should register for the military service of the Lord all who were able to go forth to war from twenty years of age and upwards (Nm 1.2–3). This age, being more full of fervour, is more suitable for training, for spiritual as much as for material warfare. All men seek war; young men rage for arms.2 However, triumphs over vices and desires are more glorious. Come therefore, reassured soul, raise the standard of the most victorious cross, and do not be weakened, putting your trust in the Lord (Ps 25.1). The Lord says: ‘I take you by the hand and say to you: “Do not fear, because I am a strong warrior and helper with you (Is 41.13; Jer 20.11).”’ The greater the struggles, therefore, the stronger the divine assistance that will be at hand, and the more sublime the palm and the more copious the rewards that will follow the battle. The Lord led Israel through the places of horror and the emptiness of the desert (Dt 32.10), through trackless paths that were without water (Ps 62.3) and full of serpents, through hostile regions and harsh wars. Likewise, he brought them through heavenly refreshment and solace, as he gave them manna from heaven and water out of a rock,3 with a pillar of fire as a guide and victory as a continual companion. He led them into the 1

Compare Augustine, De continentia, 8, PL 40, 354, CSEL 41, 148/23.

2

Virgil, Aeneid, XI. 453; see also VII. 460.

3

Compare Glossa ordinaria, Liber Exodus, Prothemata, PL 113, 183A.

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kingdom flowing with milk and honey, teaching us that we must labour similarly to enter into his peace and joy. Paul said: ‘We must enter the kingdom of God through many tribulations (Acts 14.21).’ Virgil sounds forth something similar, but whereas the lamp of heaven calls us to higher things, the cauldron that has been kindled4 boils with earthly hope: ‘Through various chances, through so many turning points in our affairs, we are making for Latium, where the fates promise a peaceful settlement.5 There is the certain rest from your toils.’6 48 And our Boethius puts forward the tale of Hercules: ‘The hard labours made Hercules famous. In the last labour, he held up heaven with his neck straight. Go now in strength, where the high road of this great example leads; why do you sluggishly expose your backs? Victory over the earth gives you the stars.’7 Prudentius also: ‘And the road to the stars is through sorrows.’8 Indeed, Horace: ‘Life never gave anything to unhappy mortals without supreme labour.’9 Therefore sorrows buy joy, labours glory, wars victory, victories the crown. So let adversities, which are the services that earn rewards, be embraced as if they were the rewards themselves, as if they were heavenly payment. The repose will be as much the sweeter as the seeking is stormier. Finally, if they seek transitory things through various chances, through so many turning points in their affairs, when what has been gained in a long time slips away in a short time,10 why do we refuse to see that such a brief struggle will bring us eternal joy? When you have been fired by these things in addition,11 turn your heart towards eternal years and infinite ages, and meditate with all your intention on what kind of thing it is, that we must live through all and infinite ages without end, and that one infinity of immortality awaits for the glory of the saints and the punishments of the wicked, and how unimaginable that joy that the Lord will give, is, those rewards that surpass all desire, how inescapable on the other hand will be the straits of the damned, when they suffer intolerable torments perpetually, and they know that these are altogether interminable. O how much we fear in this mortality every small point of suffering, suffering that we may quickly 4

For ‘the cauldron that has been kindled’ (olla succensa) as a symbol of worldliness and sin, see Jeremiah 1. 13; Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, XVIII. 20 (32), PL 76, 54C–D, CCSL 143A, 906/9–13; Hildebert, Letters, 1. 20, PL 171, 192C. 5

See Virgil, Aeneid, I. 204–06.

6

Virgil, Aeneid, III. 393, VIII. 46 (in some manuscripts only).

7

Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, CCSL 94, 87/13, 88/29–30, 32–35.

IV.

vii, 13, 29–30, 32–35, PL 63, 826A to 30A,

8

Prudentius, Cathemerinon, ed. and trans. by H. J. Thomson (London: Heinemann, 1949) 2 vols, X. 92 (PL 59, 883A, CCSL 126, 56/92) I, pp. 90–91. 9 Horace, Satires, I. 9. 59–60: nil sine magno/vita labore dedit mortalibus (‘Life has given nothing to mortals without great labour’). 10

Disticha Catonis, ed. by Marcus Boas (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1952), II. 17, p.118.

11

Virgil, Aeneid, I. 29.

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treat or that may disappear of its own accord. What will an eternity of afflictions bring when they cannot be mitigated by any hope? From Adam until today, we can scarcely calculate six thousand years, and to us this fleeting time seems infinite. Even in good circumstances, we are scarcely able to tolerate the weariness of even a hundred, even sixty years. What if we are given a hundred thousand and a hundred times a hundred or a thousand times a thousand periods of years and ages? For certainly there will be one day eternally among the mortals who are blessed (Rv 21.23, 25) and one infinite night for those who are damned. Therefore rise, rise, put on strength, the arm of the Lord, who is strength for your weakness, that he might lead you to the mountain of his sanctuary, the mountain that his right hand purchased (Ps 77.54) on the cross. Put on strength of spirit, in love and contemplation of eternal joys, so that you believe all work to be as slight as it is brief in comparison with eternity. The Apostle said: ‘The sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared to the coming glory that will be revealed in us (Rom 8.18).’ 49 Therefore, having come into this place, you have advanced to a single combat, to wrench away your crown from the hands of the enemy with divine zeal. On one side rewards have been set for the victors; on the other punishments for the conquered. God has placed all in the middle of a field. We must conquer or die. Whenever we were sailing along the Thames with the bishop to London, when we came to the narrows where the fish gather, where the water, because it is more constricted, boils up with more violent force, then the sailors with shouting used to struggle as if for their lives. Some used to drag the boat with long ropes along the banks. Others drove it on with short and frequent blows of the oars, struggling with the water, because if they had relaxed their arms and had not acted manfully, the force of the river would have driven the boat back and would have plunged it into the depths.12 Then the reason of my heart used to say to me: ‘So anyone who goes on the way to heaven either will burst through by force, or will fall.’ At Burg,13 where until now I have been lodging as a guest, a young Dane long ago put on the monk’s habit, carefully concerned for his soul. When I spoke to him recently about spiritual warfare, among other things, saying that every enemy will be so much more afraid as he is defeated with more constancy, and ground is given with less resistance to the stronger warrior, my hearer made this reply to me: ‘In our Denmark, I saw in an assembly one of the judges, leaning on an axe, summon a robber for capital punishment. The robber, leaping on him, pulled away the axe and slaughtered him, fatally confident as he was in his law-court and in his weapon. The very dense ring of bystanders gave way before him as he struck on this side and that, and he escaped untouched, making a broad way by force.’ So audacity prospers; so strength spreads itself abroad from a narrow place. So you, strengthened by faith in place of audacity, will drive far away the swarms of your enemies. See yourself as a 12

Compare Virgil, Georgics, I. 201–03.

13

Talbot suggests that Burg refers to Peterborough.

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calf shut up with the dogs of the devil. They are toothed with bitter malignity, but they are without power; you, on the contrary, have been armed with the fearsome horns of the beams of the holy cross.14 With these marking your brow, you will dash all hostile attack under your feet more vigorously. The Lord said: ‘Behold, I have given you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and upon all the power of the enemy, and nothing will harm you (Lk 10.19).’15 The Lord stands by, an onlooker from above, with angels and archangels and the great court of powers, and as you fight back, he grinds the savage teeth of your enemies in their mouths with the spear of his cross.16 Even if the roaring lion goes about seeking whom he may devour (I Pt 5.8), the Lord will break the teeth of lions (Ps 57.7). The heavenly palm He also stands aloft, resting on the steps leading up to heaven. From there he has seen all the children of men; he has looked upon all who dwell on the earth, he who understands all their works, because he has made the hearts of every one of them (Ps 32.13–15). He accepts those rising from humility and constancy, and throws down those who are slipping because of pride and negligence. 50 Exemplum St Perpetua, when she was thrust back into prison with her felicitous sister Felicity because of her faith in Christ, at first was frightened of the darkness, to which she was not accustomed.17 Soon, after she had got used to it, she considered the prison as a palace, as she herself describes.18 A little one was hanging at her breast—O how little a martyr!—who from his mother in her martyrdom suckled martyrdom itself. Her fellow-prisoners and fellow-martyrs begged that as one who might be heard she seek from the Lord revelation as to whether they were going to have a struggle of suffering. When she prayed, she was shown in a dream a golden ladder reaching up to heaven, narrowed for humans to ascend one by one. From the earth up to the stars, both sides bristled with the points of all kinds of torments. Crosses, racks, lances, swords, hurdles, fires, claws, clubs, lead-lined scourges, scorpion instruments, beasts and all kinds of terrible punishments were threatening. A huge dragon was lying wakeful at the foot of the ladder’s steps, continually ready to ambush those who 14

Compare Rabanus Maurus, De laudibus sanctae crucis, 6, PL 107, 271A, CCCM 100, 239/7–8 (here called In honorem sanctae crucis). 15

Compare Genesis 3. 15.

16

Compare Peter Chrysologus, Sermon 171, PL 52, 648C, CCSL 24B, 1049/77 (6).

17

In this story Goscelin draws on the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity and the Acts of Perpetua and Felicity. See Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité, suivi des Actes, ed. by Jacqueline Amat, Sources chrétiennes, 417 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1996). 18

See Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, III. 9, pp. 110–13. In the original, Perpetua describes the prison as a palace only when she is reunited with her child.

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were ascending. Perpetua called on Christ and trampled on the dragon, which, fixed as stone by her faith, did not dare to move. She ascended, with saint Saturus, who triumphed before her, going ahead. She saw also a certain Ethiopian, who was about to wrestle against her. Opposite, there was an excellent man gloriously wreathed, who held out a leafy branch bearing golden fruit as a sign of victory. He said: ‘If this Ethiopian conquers you, he will kill you; if you conquer him, you will be presented with this honour.’ So she fought, conquered and took the honour of the palm. Likewise, she saw the soul of her dead brother, the boy Dinocrates, if I name him rightly, troubled and with an ulcerous face, striving to drink from the living fountain, but not succeeding. Waking, she prayed for him, and behold she saw him healed entirely from all trouble and sores, shining in bright light, rejoicing and playing a holy game. O Lord of all, who renders to each one what they need! After he was purged from the stain of childish folly, he was seen to play the games of holy boys as freely now as blamelessly. She contemplated this and the mysteries of other visions also, which she has described at greater length in her writing. Her pagan father disregarded duty to family in his savagery and duty to God in his regard for family.19 Although like a wild beast he had almost blinded her, soon he embraced her feet, and, disfiguring his white hair with dust,20 turned to such great laments, pleadings and prayers that, as she herself writes, you would have thought the whole world could be moved.21 ‘But who shall separate us from the love of Christ?’ the Apostle says (Rom 8.35). Although she felt for her father’s unhappiness, she was secure on a firm rock and could not ever be moved, and she trampled the devil underfoot as he both raged and appealed in her father. Her father snatched the infant. On that account her maternal feelings were distressed, but as God willed it neither did the infant want her breasts, as he had been accustomed, nor did she have the pain of the milk to cause her discomfort. On the other hand her sister Felicity, now eight months pregnant, was afraid she would be deprived of martyrdom, because it was not permitted for a pregnant woman to be punished. She won by prayer that she should be freed from her offspring by giving birth. Then they were set to stand for the glorious spectacle, for the wild beasts, for a prize. O Lord, glorious and amazing in your saints; O necessity of the saints, giving birth to crowns! As father Benedict says: 51 ‘Pleasure has punishment, and necessity brings forth the crown.’22 It was an astonishing spectacle for the people around them, how one for the other the very noble girls opposed themselves to the beasts. But most worthy of mention is how on the day before the perpetual faith of the blessed 19

The Latin words pius and impie refer to both duty to family and duty to the gods or to God. Goscelin uses these words to point to the contradiction in this case. 20

Compare Catullus 64. 224.

21

See Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, IX. 2, pp. 134–35.

22

Rule of St Benedict, 7, PL 66, 373A: Sloane 3103 has uoluptas (pleasure); Benedict has voluntas (will).

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Perpetua threw into confusion a great crowd of the populace. She said: ‘Note carefully what our faces are like, so that you may recognize us on the day of judgement.’23 But look, while my intention is to exhort you, I have almost described to you the passion of the martyrs. But what difference does it make from where we are inspired, whether with words or examples of courageous deeds? So, in fact, we pray in the case of the martyrs: ‘We rejoice in their triumphs; let us be inspired by their examples.’24 Although we do not have a gladiator, we shall not lack a persecutor as the material for victory, and all who wish piously to live in Christ shall suffer persecution (II Tm 3.12). If there are no physical struggles, there are spiritual ones. Those are external: these internal. In persecution we must lay down our lives; in the peace that is persecuted internally, we must declare wars against the armies of sins; we must conquer carnal desires; we must root out the sources of vices; we must dash the forces of thoughts and temptations against the rock (Ps 136.9); we must be vigilant in the arms25 of prayers and the defences of guardians against all arguments of treacheries and we must ascend by the steps of humility26 to the citadel of virtues.27 The enemy assails more strongly when he disguises his assault than when he attacks openly. In peace, in quiet, with blandishments he prepares snares, so that he may overcome any who are incautious. He fears greatly and flees the one who is circumspect and watchful. He will not dare to tempt more extravagantly the one whom he has not found to be off their guard. The Lord says: ‘The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent bear it away (Mt 11.12).’ Why does it suffer violence? Because since the time when man lost that kingdom by sin it is now no longer owed to him, and it is carried far away, unless it is snatched by the violence of his virtues. The powers of the air and princes of darkness have closed off the whole region of heaven with close-packed multitudes. They allow no one to approach unless they are overcome. Wherever you wish to go, the path must be opened up by the sword and you must break out through tightly-clustered wedges of enemies. If you have no sword of slaughter, let there be instead of the sword the zeal of fortitude. The Lord chose new wars (Jgs 5.8). The old wars are to prosecute anger with the sword, to subjugate men tyrannically and to submit necks to vices; but the

23

A similar speech is given to Saturus in the original (Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, pp. 162–63).

XVII. 2, 24

Compare mass collect, De liturgia gallicana, PL 72, 307C; post-communion prayer, Liber sacramentorum, PL 78, 166D. 25

Compare Prudentius, Psychomachia, 52, PL 60, 17A, CCSL 126, 151/52.

26

Compare Benedict, Rule, 7, PL 66, 371–76.

27

Compare Commentary on the Book of Kings, attrib. to St Eucherius. III. 6, PL 50, 1107C; same text in Bede, On the Temple of Solomon, 3, PL 91, 742D, CCSL 119A, 152/226.

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new wars are to pay back kindness and love to enemies, to submit to all suffering, to overcome all vices with all hostility. Let us be ashamed to slumber when so many thousands of holy men and women, amid weapons, swords, fires and diverse instruments of tortures, are flying to heaven or struggling up the narrow and barbed ladder that I have described. ‘And who’, you say, ‘will pass those things?’ Christ, the king of glory, the Lord of hosts, strong and mighty in battle (Ps 23.8, 10), has broken all the strength of the enemy army. He has captured their king, has bound him in an everlasting prison, and with great slaughter of the enemy has opened to his followers a way to his kingdom. 52 Anyone who follows so great a conqueror with true faith and love always conquers and is not conquered, and enlarges more and more with practice, in the narrow way that leads to the life (Mt 7.14) of virtue.28 Since the triumph of Christ, the adverse forces now have no vigour. Either the terrors they hold before us are empty, or their snares are timid. They are strengthened only by our transgressions and rise up against us as far as they find something of their own in us, but in the one in whom the prince of the world found nothing, they are hamstrung. Our leader says: ‘Have confidence, have confidence: I have overcome the world (Jn 16.33). I hold the prince of the world in chains, and I have taken all his arms and distributed the spoils (Lk 11.22). Giving Rome to Peter, Achaia to Andrew, Asia to John, Ethiopia to Matthew, Jerusalem to James, and India to Thomas, and having placed each of my ordained ones in charge of each land, I have made all into my state. If you want to be men, O my soldiers, I have given you not so much a war as a triumph over conquered enemies. I have allowed you to pursue forces in flight, to cut the backs of your adversaries. And I have given your enemies’ backs to you (II Kgs 22.41; Ps 17.41) in precipitous flight. A thousand shall fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand, but they shall not come near you (Ps 90.7). Take courage, you faint of heart, and do not fear: strengthen your weary hands and your weak knees (Is 35.3–4; Job 4.3). Fear me, because I come to break the yoke of your captivity; I come to lead the prisoner from prison (Is 42.7). And behold I am with you even to the end of the age (Mt 28.20).’ The reason for the Lord’s Passion29 Pause here a little, so that you may consider with what reasonable love the Lord, having formed humans marvellously, redeemed them more marvellously. Man, having been created with free rule of himself, had sold himself to the deceiver by the pride of his will, to that same deceiver to whose former place he would have risen if he had conquered. For this reason it was not the task of divine justice to free by 28

Compare Gregory the Great, On the First Book of Kings, 144, 330/1339 (70). 29

IV,

PL 79, 245C (17), CCSL

Compare Isidore of Seville, De ecclesiasticis officiis, I. 30. 2, PL 83, 765A, CCSL 113/13.

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violence one who was captive by his own will. When man was to be freed, it was necessary that a man should be given, such that he, clean from all contagion, would shake the palm from the enemy’s hand. But such a one our world could not give. For who, in this captive city of the whole human race, would have fought for the freeing of a criminal, when no one could ever be born or live without guilt? He had to shine from another place, one who should both be immune from all sin and pass through the penalty owed by sinners,30 on behalf of sinners. The holy Son of God came from his holy heaven; the true God became a true man.31 He engaged with our enemy, not in the majesty of his divinity, but in the frailty of our flesh. In that very weakness, the Lord was clothed in strength and girded himself with power (Ps 92.1),32 very strong to tolerate the sufferings, pains and torments of the body, the taunts, spittings, scourgings, 53 the cross, wounds with the bitterness of death, and the rites of burial. Divinity that could not suffer subjected a soul and a body, which were capable of suffering, to pains. And see how strong he was. He says: ‘You have made my arms like a bronze bow’ (Ps 17.35), stretched out on the cross. See what fortitude he had put on. He did not retreat before his adversaries when they sought him; he did not hide himself; he did not waver, but knowing all that was to come over him and that he himself had decided from the beginning, he came forward (Jn 18.4). To those whom with only a nod he could have struck with a thunderbolt, he gave himself up of his own accord, and he showed at the same time the fortitude of both power and patience.33 In his strength he strove with unconquered patience; in his power he overthrew all the force of the enemy with only a word. How will he be borne when he is about to judge, who could not be borne when he was about to be judged? At one word of him who was about to be crucified, ‘I am’ (Jn 18.6), armed lines could not stand, and how will they stand at the sentence of the judge: ‘Go, accursed ones, into the eternal flame’ (Mt 25.41)? The enemy had conquered the first Adam (I Cor 15.45) by gluttony, vainglory and avarice:34 by gluttony, showing the apple, beautiful in its appearance and pleasant to eat (Gn 2.9); by vainglory: ‘You shall be like gods’ (Gn 3.5); by avarice, ‘knowing good and evil’ (Gn 3.5). With these three suggestions seizing both him and us, all his descendants, the most arrogant victor, who was soon about to be deprived of his victory, attacked the second Adam similarly. With gluttony: ‘Command that these stones be made bread’; with vainglory: ‘Throw yourself down, because God has 30

Compare Augustine, Exposition on Certain Propositions from Romans, 21, PL 35, 2066, CSEL 84, 9/24. 31

Compare Augustine, Four Short Works: Sermon on the Circumcision of the Lord, PL 47, 1137C. 32

Compare Psalms 17. 33, 40; antiphon for the dedication of a church, CAO 3327.

33

Compare Author uncertain (Augustine?), Sermon to the Catechumens: On Symbols, (IV), 5, PL 40, 665, now attributed to Quodvultdeus, III, 5, CCSL 60, 358/68–69. 34

Compare Angelomus of Luxeuil, Commentary on Genesis, 3, PL 115, 137B–C.

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given his angels charge over you’; with avarice: ‘I will give all these to you (Mt 4.3– 11).’ But he who was free from all the passions of sin and unable to be tempted, broke the enemy by his answers, and by his answers taught us, whom the internal passions of vices and desires tempt, to conquer them. Gluttony: ‘Man does not live by bread alone (Mt 4.4).’ Vainglory, in the showing of powers or the presumption of signs: ‘Do not tempt the Lord your God (Mt 4.7).’ Avarice, which is the service of idols (Eph 5.5; Col 3.5): ‘You will love the Lord your God and you will serve him alone (Mt 4.10), not the mammon of iniquity. The earth and its plenty are the Lord’s (Ps 23.1).’ And ‘The Lord feeds me and I shall want nothing (Ps 22.1–2).’35 Therefore a man conquered the conqueror of man,36 and one who was not guilty,37 by suffering a charge of capital guilt, turned the guilt of the guilty against the striker-down of innocence and absolved the guilty. The serpent seduced man by malign cunning, and God, by benign wisdom, overthrew that seducer by means of a man. For while that insatiable maw of human perdition snatched more than he ought, that is, while he punished unjustly, 54 together with those subject to death, the holy one, in whom he found nothing of his own, he became liable to lose all whom he had justly. By attempting to seize the one without guilt, he lost the guilty, and, bound by one who could not be blamed and could not be bound, he paid the penalty of his presumption. For even according to human law, he who snatches what is not his loses also his own. A victim had to be sacrificed so that we could be reconciled to God, but as all had been confined under sin (Rom 11.32),38 no worthy victim could be found in the world. ‘You have not wanted an offering and a sacrifice’ (Ps 39.7), says the Psalmist in the character of the Saviour, because no victim could be acceptable for the human race, where no one was without stain. Then the only Son of God, he who was born of the Word, looking down from his high sanctuary, from his father’s throne to the earth, so that he might free the children of the slain (Ps 101.20–21), said, ‘Behold, I come (Ps 39.8).’ An appeasing and mediating victim, balanced on the scales of the cross,39 suspended between heaven and earth, he reconciled humans to God, earthly things to heavenly things. Also, in addition, God, deigning to show to the world his ineffable goodness on account of the exceeding affection with which he loved us (Eph 2.4), handed over on our behalf to the punishment of death not an angel, nor an archangel,40 but his own son, beloved like his own heart. He made us his sons and heirs, and co-heirs with his 35

Sloane 3103 has pascit (feeds); Vulgate regit (rules).

36

Compare Alcuin, De fide sanctae et individuae trinitatis, III, Prologue, PL 101, 38C.

37

Compare Marius Victorinus the African, De Physicis, 23, PL 8, 1308A.

38

Compare Pope Leo I, Sermon 33, 1, PL 54, 241A.

39

Compare Author uncertain (Augustine?), Sermon 153, 1, PL 39, 2042, now attributed to Eusebius ‘Gallicanus’, Sermones extravagantes, 5. 1, CCSL 101B, 853/5. 40

Compare Author uncertain (Augustine?), Sermon 136, 3, PL 39, 2014.

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only-begotten son, through the Son himself. What shall I render to the Lord for all his good things, which he has rendered for my bad ones (Ps 115.12)?41 It was not enough that he redeemed us with such a unique price, which surpasses all things that are in heaven and on earth by as much as the creator surpasses his whole creation, by as much as the sea is greater than all the vessels of the world, such that it could fill them all without diminution of itself. Nor was it enough that he transferred us, who are worthy of eternal crucifixion,42 into the kingdom of his splendour, and made the children of wrath the children of the grace of God;43 but even our slime and our flesh he took to himself and lodged on the right hand of the Father.44 He led that very human nature, to which he had said: ‘You are earth and you will go into the earth’ (Gn 3.19), in triumph above all the heavens.45 Who shall declare the powers of the Lord; who shall make all his praises heard (Ps 105.2)? The sinning angel, having tried through impious pride to ascend, fell into the utmost depths of Tartarus, but the lowliness of our condition reached the heights in God, and God made one body and one spirit in us as his members, with himself as the head. Hence the Apostle said: ‘You are not your own, but the body and members of Christ (I Cor 12.27).’ The body is the universal church and the unique spouse made up of all the elect, but the individual members are all the individual faithful belonging to God. With what great reverence must we preserve the members that are not now ours but Christ’s, lest, and may it not come to pass, he cut away from his body the members putrescent with sin! Soon, at the end of things, in the sight of all the powers of heaven and of all nations, that agent of pride and author of all iniquity, having been conquered and thrown down by our Michael, will learn, as St Gregory proclaims, 55 that he will never ascend through pride to be like God.46 The angel said to Daniel: ‘At that time, Michael your leader will rise and the time will come such as never was, from the age when nations began’ (Dn 12.1), nor have any ages ever seen war such as they will then see, with heaven burning and the pit gaping. Here, too, reflect that that battle of Michael with the dragon, who draws with his tail a third part of the stars (Rv 12.4), will be for the portion and the inheritance of Christ, because you must know that the whole kingdom of the just is more justly his, who redeemed

41

Compare Paulinus of Nola, Letter 23, 45, PL 61, 285B, CSEL 29, 199/25.

42

Compare Paul the Deacon, Homily for the Friday after Laetare Sunday (Fourth Sunday in Lent), PL 95, 1304D. 43 Compare Fulgentius, De veritate praedestinationis, 547/919–21. 44

III.

38, PL 65, 670D, CCSL 91A,

Compare Paulinus of Aquileia, Libellus sacrosyllabus contra Elipandum, 7, PL 99,

158B. 45 46

Compare antiphon for Ascension Thursday, CAO 4079.

Compare Gregory the Great, Homilies on the Gospels, II. 34. 9, PL 76, 1251B, CCSL 141, 307/210–12.

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us with his holy blood,47 than his, who deceived us with his malignity and lost in the death of the innocent Christ the guilty ones whom he had. Consider, I say, beloved one, what a great necessity of living rightly48 and doing well lies upon us, because if we are wicked (which he would notice, who created us good and bought us from evil by his goodness), we will not be those for whom Michael, who cannot be conquered, fights. So may the just Lord justify us, so that our warrior conquers for us as victoriously as the cause of Christ, for which he is armed, is just. Go therefore with all desire and all joy to those dances in which the victory of such a great king49 allowed all his soldiers to take part. That victory of one man filled the whole world with triumphs and crowns above the stars. Such uncountable forces of martyrs, such countless companies of confessors, such innumerable lines of virgins follow the Lord of hosts to the stars. The palm in Christ is denied to no sex, to no age, to no condition. And those who are earth-born and the children of men, all together as one, rich and poor (Ps 48.3), kings and princes, young men and virgins, old men with younger ones (Ps 148.12), boys, girls, those suckling too and squalling, are crowned by martyrdom, virginity or continence. Our Solomon is covered with roses, lilies, and violets, something that the earthly Solomon in all his glory could not experience (Mt 6.28–29).50 A grain of corn falling on the earth brought much fruit by its death (Jn 12.24–25), and raised up from the earth he drew all things to himself (Jn 12.32),51 to whom no one comes (Jn 6.66) unless the father who sent him (Jn 5.23) draws them through him. It is then, blessed Augustine says, that we are drawn by God, when we are delighted by righteousness, by happiness, by the eternal life that all together is Christ.52 Now if you are not drawn, pray that you may be drawn, because the kindness of the Saviour (Ti 3.4) loves most affectionately that cries are made to him: ‘Draw me after you’ (Sg 1.3), so that all the fibres of the heart and body call with long sighs: ‘Draw.’ And the bridegroom and the bride say: ‘Come’, so that the one who hears may also say: ‘I have come (Rv 22.17).’ ‘Now everything is ready, come to the marriage feast (Mt 22.4).’ Now the way to heaven lies open wide, cleared by such great slaughter of the enemy, by such great victories of the saints. For those who struggle feebly and languidly it is a narrow path but for the constant it is a broad and royal way. 56 47

Compare Liber antiphonarius, PL 78, 686C.

48

Compare Author uncertain (Augustine?), Liber soliloquiorum animae ad Deum, 14, PL 40, 876. 49

Compare blessing of Paschal Candle, Holy Saturday, De liturgia gallicana, 72, 268D. 50

III.

32, PL

Compare Haimo of Halberstadt, Homily 127, PL 118, 683B.

51

Compare Augustine, Contra Julianum Pelagianum, I. 3, PL 44, 644, quoting Irenaeus of Lyon, Adversus Haereses, IV. 2. 7. 52

Augustine, On the Gospel of John, 26. 4, PL 35, 1608, CCSL 36, 261/12–15.

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The slaughter of demons Always the share of God is increased and the share of the devil is diminished, and Christ’s gains are his adversary’s losses. The wing of heaven, Jerome, explains the Book of Joshua in twenty-six homilies;53 this Jesus54 presented the name and type of our Jesus the Saviour, and he completely destroyed all kings around about, together with their armies (Jo 10–12), that is, he extinguished utterly the vices together with their principal causes. He hamstrung horses and chariots (Jo 11.9), that is, he cut down the demons who are the inciters of evils or the passions of the body; he cut down lust, lasciviousness, pride, lightmindedness, vanities and lying follies (Ps 39.5), on which the unhappy soul, to introduce the actual words of the author, is carried as if it were riding and is brought to the precipice.55 When he had crushed his enemies, Joshua distributed the promised land to the victors, because, when he had extinguished demons and vices, he paid out the land of the living as an eternal inheritance to those who had conquered the flesh and the world, to each one according to their works (I Cor 3.8). Note moreover that, just as I have said above that the sacraments of Christ are prefigured as Solomon’s glory, so in all divine history external wars signify the interior wars of the soul. Accordingly, this Homily Fifteen begins in this way:56 ‘Unless those physical wars represented spiritual ones, never, as I believe, would the books of the Jewish histories have been handed down by the apostles to the disciples of Christ, who came to teach peace, to be read 57 in the churches. For which reason, the Apostle, like the captain of the army, delivered a precept to the soldiers of Christ, saying: “Put on the armour of God, in order that you may stand against the deceits of the devil. Stand moreover with your loins girded with truth, and your feet shod (Eph 6.11, 14–15), that is, mortify your members that are upon the earth: fornication, impurity, luxury etc. (Col 3.5). We do not have to struggle against flesh and blood, when there is fighting with a material sword and spear, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness (Eph 6.12), that is, the tempters of worldly attractions, rulers not in ruling but in leading astray the desires of their followers.”’ Jesus advised us to kill all enemies and leave none, that is, no vice, no spirit of the vices. For if anyone saves one of those for himself and lets it live, with the sin ruling 53

The homilies were written by Origen; the translation used by Goscelin was by Rufinus. The text of Rufinus, as edited by W. A. Baehrens, is reprinted in Homélies sur Josué, trans. by Annie Jaubert, Sources chrétiennes, 71 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2000). On the attribution to Jerome, see Jaubert, p. 89. 54

Goscelin is referring to Joshua, whom he names as ‘Jhesus Nave’ (Jesus, son of Nun).

55

Origen, Homilies on Joshua (Rufinus’ translation), XV. 3, pp. 338–39.

56

What follows, as far as ‘the deceits of the devil’, is from Homilies on Joshua, XV. 1, pp. 330–31, with some omissions. 57

Supplied from the text of Rufinus, ed. by Baehrens, as reprinted in Jaubert.

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in his mortal body (Rom 6.12) he will not be able to belong to the army of Jesus.58 But God hardened their hearts to go out to battle against Israel, so that they might be exterminated (Jo 11.20),59 because he gives to the demons, who are greedy for human destruction, the power and audacity to tempt, so that they might be completely conquered by the saints of God. He does this also so that the soldiers of Christ, victorious in him, might be crowned with glory and honour, and the conquered might be thrown down always into the pit, until the whole kingdom of the devil is completely exterminated. Believe this most learned author Jerome, that whichever evil spirits are overcome by the saints are always thrown down by the Lord Jesus into the pit; 57 nor do they obtain again for eternity the power of engaging with a human being, so great is the honour our Lord bestows on his conquerors. Thus always, as I mentioned briefly above, the share of God increases and that of Satan diminishes. Wherefore let every warrior of the Lord not count fighting as suffering, but as the glory of conquering. But I beg your patience, that it may not be tedious to you to insert here the opinion full of truth of Jerome himself, for the knowledge of such an incredible thing. In this train of thought he continues in this fifteenth homily. He says: ‘There seems to me to be what might be called an infinite number of contrary powers, according as there are some spirits in almost every single man stirring up different kinds of sins in them.60 For example, there is a spirit of fornication; there is also a spirit of anger. There is one spirit of avarice; there is another spirit of pride. And if it should turn out that there is some single man who is agitated by all these evils or even more, he must be thought to have all these or even more in himself as his enemies. Whence we must believe that there are very many spirits also among individual men, because individual men do not have individual vices or commit individual sins, but very many seem to be committed by each one. And again it must not be thought that one spirit of fornication seduces him who, for example, fornicates in Britain and the one who fornicates in India or in other places, nor that there is one spirit of anger who moves various people in various places. I think rather that there is a single prince indeed of fornication, but that there are innumerable spirits who obey him in this function, and serving under him as diverse spirits in each individual man encourage them to sins of this kind. Similarly, I judge that there is also one spirit of anger, who is the prince, but there are innumerable spirits acting under him, who inflame sins of this vice in each individual man. Again, I think that there is one prince of avarice, and so of pride and other evils. And 58

Compare Homilies on Joshua, XV. 4, pp. 344–45.

59

Compare Homilies on Joshua, XV. 5, pp. 348–49.

60

From this point the text of Sloane 3103 differs at a number of places from the text of Rufinus, as edited by Baehrens; in some places it is evidently corrupt. Where the text of Sloane is unintelligible or substantially inferior, the text of Rufinus by Baehrens, as it is reprinted by Jaubert, has been translated and printed in italics.

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therefore the Apostle does not say that there is one principality among the contrary powers, but that there are many, against which he says he, and all of us, must fight (Eph 6.12). ‘But there is’, he says ‘among all these princes one, so to speak, more eminent in vice and higher in crime, who alone as the leader, as it were, of all the princes and master of the whole wicked campaign stirs up the whole world, which they solicit to sins each, as individuals, through the kinds of sins that suit their ability best, whose figure I explained above in my earlier comments when I was discussing Jabin,61 in proportion to the understanding of my intelligence. I think that all the saints struggling against those spirits that incite to sin, and conquering them and overcoming each individual among them, diminish the army of demons and destroy, so to speak, very many of them. For example, if anyone by living chastely and modestly has overcome the spirit of fornication, it is not further possible for that spirit, which has been conquered by that holy one, to attack another man a second time. Just as in the case of the spirits that asked Jesus that they not be sent to hell (Lk 8.31), which at that time the Lord conceded according to the present dispensation, so it seems consistent that each of the individual wicked spirits, when they are conquered by the holy, should be led away either to hell or to outer darkness (Mt 8.12), 58 or to whatever place is worthy for them, by the just judge Christ presiding over the combat of this mortal life. ‘Hence it is that with a large number of demons having been killed, now the nations are set free to come to belief, who assuredly in no way would have been allowed to do it if the legions of demons had remained whole, as they were before. But if what I say seems to anyone to be difficult, that many demons spread themselves abroad through individual sinners, or he thinks it is a fable, let him return to the authority of the Gospel. He will find that that man who was living in the tombs suffering from a demon, when he was asked by the Saviour: “What is your name?”, replied: “Legion”. He said: “We are many demons (Mk 5.9; Lk 8.30).” Why therefore does it seem amazing if individual demons are ascribed through the range of individual kinds of sins, since it is written that a whole legion of demons was in one man? ‘But I remember that I said something similar also in those places in which I was expounding the verse of the psalm, in which it is written: “In the morning I put to death all the wicked of the land, that I might cut off all the evil-doers from the city of the Lord (Ps 100.8).” So finally it is said that there are two-edged swords in the hands (Ps 149.6) of the righteous, without doubt to kill the contrary powers.’62 Thus St Jerome. And after some things he says: ‘I said this in accordance with that which has been written: “The Lord hardened their hearts, so that they might go out to battle against Israel, so that they might be killed (Jo 11.20).” Therefore he is 61

King of Hazor: Joshua 11. 1.

62

Homilies on Joshua, XV. 5–6, pp. 348–53.

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blessed, who unceasingly holding the spiritual sword does not take it from the necks of these enemies, of whom I have spoken above. But those kinds of demons will be killed in us also, if, having heard these things, we do not do their works.’63 Jerome says this and more than this, but I am limited by lack of space. Here it also seems worth recording what is read in the Lives of the Fathers concerning Sara, that for many years she was infested with the spirit of fornication, and did not ask the Lord that it might be taken from her, but that she might be strengthened to virtue and might be saved from ruin by the hand of God, until that most unclean spirit himself, confounded, appearing to her of his own accord, confessed in these words that he had been conquered: ‘You have conquered me, Sara.’ But she, that she might conquer with the true conqueror, said: ‘Not I, but my Lord Jesus Christ.’64 Where, therefore, did that spirit have to go, unless straight to hell? But as to what follows in Joshua: ‘The land rested from battles’ (Jo 11.23, 14.15), our land, that is our flesh, rests then from battles, if we have mortified the deeds of the flesh, if we have crucified our flesh together with vices and desires (Gal 5.24). It rests if we have killed all passions and goads of the flesh, if we are crucified to the world and the world is crucified to us (Gal 6.14). It rests if we have cut off fornication, impurity, luxury, from our limbs, if we have exterminated anger, desire, joy, hope, the fears and sadnesses of the world from our minds. Do not be concerned when he says: ‘It seems’ and ‘I think’; for this belongs to the academic teaching of the philosophers, 59 that they do not arrogate to themselves the authority of agreement, but that they leave their opinion to the judgement of the learned. But more especially St Jerome, on account of the many enemies who were more ready to condemn everything in advance than to discuss or to understand, for the most part proposed teachings rather than determined them, and he reveals the truth more by argument than by determination. He is the more rightly to be believed, as we know no one more learned in the Holy Scriptures from having drunk at the well-springs of languages. The multitude of holy virtues But because you have heard of such an innumerable multitude with hostile power, it is necessary that you be strengthened with the more powerful allies of supernal virtues, which you have as your companions. For it is written that those who are with us are more numerous than those who are against us (IV Kgs 6.16). For if a legion of demons, that is, six thousand, could inhabit one man, how much more numerous will the army of the celestial service be, which will be able to set up its camp in that heart where Christ shall have made a dwelling for himself, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and to attack and expel every enemy of one who believes in the cross and the faith of Christ. But we can believe that in death each soul will have those spirits as 63

Homilies on Joshua, XV. 6, pp. 354–55.

64

See Verba seniorum, V. 10–11, PL 73, 876B–C.

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companions that it associated with itself while living in the body. For malignant occupants possess and accompany bad souls, and benignant ones, good souls. Just as divine majesty, with all the saints, rested in the humble, quiet and poor spirit of St Martin, so, when his spirit was passing to the stars, all the company of celestial powers took him up and escorted him.65 From this you may understand conformably, from this twentieth homily of St Jerome, how fortunately by praying, singing psalms, and understanding divine readings good souls strike a bargain for these holy defenders, with which they acquire victoriously the land of the living. He said: ‘If it is possible for anyone to climb to the holy and good land of the living, in which there is no death, if anyone through the Holy Spirit has deserved to ascend to see these things, he can know more truly the differences of the inheritances and places and names, which have been written about in these places. But because it is very difficult to find a soul so learned or full of the grace of the Holy Spirit, we try, for the sake of communal encouragement, to touch in the meantime on these things, from these kinds of readings. And indeed it will be best to pursue these things while we are in this life, where there is a just reward for our toil; but if not, after death they will perhaps become known to those who will deserve it. But I advise you of this also, that no small benefit is brought to our souls from the fact that the reading of divine speech comes to our ears, although it seems obscure. For if the pagans believe that there are certain songs, which they call enchantments—with which, as belongs to the art, in whispers they can compel by means of certain names, which not even those who make the invocation know, but serpents are lulled to sleep from the sound of the voice alone, or are even dragged forth from the depths of caves, and moreover often even in human bodies they are said also to suppress swellings or fevers or other things of this kind by the voice alone, 60 and sometimes even to inflict on the soul a certain stupor of feeling, if the faith of Christ does not resist—how much stronger and more powerful than all enchantments and songs do we believe that we must consider that utterance, whatever it is, of the discourse or the names of holy scripture? ‘For just as, among the pagans, the contrary powers, hearing this or that name articulated in their songs or in their enchantments, are present and show attendance and give their services in that for which they have perceived that they are invoked even from that name, since they have enslaved themselves as dependants to serve duties and mysteries in some way—so much the more at least the celestial powers and the angels of God, who are with us, as God says concerning the small ones of the church, “that their angels are always in the sight of God, seeing his face” (Mt 18.10), hear willingly and gladly, if we always bring forth from our mouths the words of scripture and the appellations of these good names like certain songs and incantations—because even if we do not understand what we offer from our mouths, nevertheless those virtues, which are present to us, understand and take pleasure in 65

See Gregory of Tours, On the Miracles of St Martin, I. 4, PL 71, 918A–C.

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accompanying us and bringing help in power by a certain true charm. Moreover, the Psalmist shows that there are many divine virtues not only around us, but also within us: “Bless the Lord, my soul, and let my inward parts bless his holy name”, that is, all things that are within me (Ps 102.1). Therefore it stands to reason that many virtues are inside us, to which the guardianship of our souls and our bodies has been entrusted, who at any rate are delighted when the holy scriptures are read by us, and they become stronger in their love of us, although our conscious understanding is without fruit, just as there is that which is written: “If I speak in tongues (I Cor 13.1) and my spirit prays, but my conscious mind is without reward (I Cor 14.14).” For the holy Apostle said this also, and he brought forth to human ears what is a kind of amazing mystery, saying that at some times it can happen that the Spirit, which is in us, prays, and our conscious mind is without fruit. ‘Understand therefore this also, that our thoughts sometimes do not bear fruit, but our spirits, that is, those powers that were given to our souls as aid, are fed and refreshed from the hearing of holy scripture, just as if from divine and rational food. Why do I say that divine virtues are fed and feasted in us, if we offer the words of divine scripture from our mouths? Our Lord Jesus Christ, if he finds us giving time to these things and paying attention to studies and exercises of this kind, will not only deign to be fed and refreshed in us, but also, if he sees these feasts prepared in us, think it worthy to bring his father with him. But because this seems to be quite excessive and above what men deserve, let these things be proven to you not by my words, but by those of the Saviour Lord himself, when he said: “Amen, I say to you that I and the Father will come to him, and will make our abode with him and will dine with him.” With whom? With that one assuredly who keeps his commands (Jn 14.23; Rv 3.20). 61 But as I have said, because we call forth the partnership and service of the divine powers towards us by incantations of this sort, so on the other hand we banish the traps of malignant powers and the incursions of the worst demons by the utterance of discourse and names of this kind. ‘Let us suppose, for example—as, if any of you at any time have seen a serpent suddenly put to sleep by enchantment, and being carried by men’s hands or being dragged from caverns, not at all able to harm with his poisons because they have no effect with the power of the incantation, so also by the power of divine reading, if there is any serpent within us of the contrary power, if any snake hides to ambush us, if you hear the reading patiently, if you are not fatigued by weariness and fail to listen, the snake will be driven away with the songs of scripture and the assiduity of divine utterance. For if you see, O listener, that sometimes scripture is read in your hearing, which you do not understand, and its meaning seems obscure to you, in the meantime take this first benefit, that by the hearing alone as though by some enchantment it puts to flight and drives away the poison of the noxious powers that besiege you and lie in ambush for you. Only take care that you are not made like the deaf snakes stopping their ears so that they do not hear the voice of the charmer and the spell that is said by the wise (Ps 57.5–6)—for example, there is a song that is chanted and is sung by all wise prophets. I have said these things for this purpose,

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that we should not become bored listening to the scriptures, even if we do not understand, so that it should happen for us according to our faith (Mt 9.29), believing that all scripture, having been divinely inspired, is useful (II Tm 3.16). Even if we do not perceive the use, yet we ought to believe that it is useful. ‘Doctors are accustomed sometimes to offer some food, sometimes also to give a drink, for example, for the purpose of breaking up a darkening of the vision, and yet we do not perceive in eating that food or in drinking that it is useful and is beneficial to the eye, but when one day has gone past and another and a third, the consumption of that food or drink, which is relayed in its own time to the vision by certain hidden pathways, little by little purges the heart, and then at last we begin to perceive that that food or drink has benefited the eyes. But the same things regularly happen by a similar process in the other parts of the body also. In this way, therefore, we must believe also of holy scripture that it is useful and beneficial to the soul, even if our minds do not grasp an understanding of it, since, as I said, the good powers that are in us are refreshed in these utterances and nourished, and the opposite powers lose their strength with these meditations and are put to flight.’ 66 By such teaching of the illustrious Jerome and by such enchantments of psalmody and divine reading, putting to sleep the serpents in the wilderness that lie in wait on the road of righteousness, and trampling the lion and the dragon underfoot (Ps 90.13), hasten, O soul full of desire, to the promise of the excellent land of eternal immortality. Go to that mountain where those who walk without blemish, speak truth in their hearts and bring evil-doers to nothing will live (Ps 14.1–4), conquering in the Lord. Those who are strong in faith and have been freed from base emotions spring at this mountain and seize it with violence. So the very strong Caleb did, who, after entering the land of the promise alone with Joshua out of six hundred thousand armed men rescued out of Egypt (Ex 12.37; Dt 1.35–36),67 sought from Joshua himself the inheritance worthy of his greatness, which had to be seized by arms from the hand of a very strong enemy. There was a mountain that was as richly endowed as it was powerful in its population and strong in its fortifications, 62 on which the towered capital of Hebron stood prominent, destined to be endowed with the hundred cities of the tribe of Judah. The warrior of the Lord said: ‘Give me that mountain.’ Joshua gave it, congratulating him and giving thanks for such great strength. Caleb, having wiped out the king together with his very strong forces, occupied the city and all the region that lay far and wide around it (Jo 14.12–14; 15.13–14, 20–62). So every soul that has conquered its spiritual enemy will inherit his ancient happiness. Therefore it is necessary that each one persist in the struggle with the more determination as they desire the more outstanding glory, knowing that great things 66 67

Homilies on Joshua, XX. 1–2, pp. 404–17.

For the story of Joshua and Caleb entering the Promised Land for the first time, see Numbers 13, 14.

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are not given without very great effort.68 While the crowd with their earthly desires remained on the lowest ground, Moses, wasted by fasting for forty days, ascended the mountain to the Lord of majesty (Ex 34.4, 28). Elijah also, having suffered persecution for righteousness, came to Horeb, the mountain of God, by a journey and an abstinence of as many days (III Kgs 19.8). Our Saviour himself also went up a mountain with his disciples, while the people remained on the plain of oppressive desire, so that on high he might call those on high to heavenly things, and in a very high place give the high examples of the beatitudes (Mt 5–7). To them he says elsewhere: ‘To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God, but to others in parables (Lk 8.10).’ Therefore, if anyone wishes to ascend the true mountain with the Lord, and to build a tower to heaven, not to the pride of Babylon, but from the valley of humility, let them be clothed in virtue from on high, and let them prepare the necessary provisions of all endurance and long-suffering (Lk 14.28). Hence St Gregory, encouraging us to a desire for the eternal and a contempt for the fleeting, explains to us the following things from the Gospels, namely: ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother’ (Lk 14.26), and the rest, with this teaching: ‘If we consider, dear brothers, what things are promised to us in heaven and how great they are, all things that are possessed on earth become worthless to the soul. For worldly goods are a burden, not a support, compared with celestial bliss. Temporal life must be called death rather than life, compared with eternal life. For what else is our daily fading in corruption, but a certain prolongation of death? But whose tongue can tell or whose understanding grasp how great those joys of the heavenly city are, namely to be with the choirs of angels, to be before the glory of the Creator with the blessed spirits, to see the infinite light, to be affected by no fear of death, to be gladdened by the gift of perpetual incorruption? But when the soul hears of these things, it burns for them, and now it desires to be there, where it hopes to rejoice without end. But we cannot come to great joys except through great labours. Hence the distinguished preacher says: “Only the one who has struggled duly will be crowned” (II Tm 2.5), that is, no one receives a prize in the games unless he runs so as to seize it, abstaining from all things and contending as in games. Therefore, let your mind be pleased by the greatness of the rewards, but let it not be deterred by the struggle of the labours. Moreover, we are instructed to hate our neighbour, to hate even our own souls. For then we do well to hate our souls, when we do not assent to their carnal desires, 63 when we subdue their appetites, when we resist their inclinations.’69 So the soul must be hated in such a way, and it must be destroyed for the Saviour in such a way, that the individual will is hated or destroyed in a temporal sense, and the soul is preserved perpetually in eternal life. Such also is the hatred of one’s neighbour, which does not follow from hate but from love; he 68 69

See Avianus, Fables, ed. by Robinson Ellis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1887) 2. 14, p.5.

Gregory the Great, Homilies on the Gospels, II. 37. 1–2, PL 76, 1275A–76A, CCSL 141, 348/1–349/44.

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who hates his neighbour in the same way that he hates himself, his own soul, loves him well.70 O soul burning in God, do not be deterred by such long or such tumultuous clamour of war, but be animated with greater confidence in glory. Base spirits are proved by fear,71 as I perceive myself to be while I read that Abraham offered his only son (Gn 22.1–12), Jeptha sacrificed his only daughter (Jgs 11.30–40), David conquered his thirst by pouring out water as a sacrifice to the Lord (I Chr 11.17–19) and Stephen proclaimed Christ amid the stones (Acts 7.58). Your Laurence, when he was being roasted on the gridiron, insulted those putting the coals underneath;72 Agnes, a young child, derided the prefect with the same constancy, both as he wooed and as he terrified her, and plunged a sword into her throat and embraced that, shutting out the fornicator.73 Daniel, indeed, accustomed himself to angelic visions and never ate desirable food (Dn 10.3). Our holy protector Silvinus, bishop of the city of Toulouse, who lies alongside St Bertin, content with mere vegetables and water, abstained altogether from bread and wine for forty years, the time during which the Lord had rained manna onto the children of Israel.74 Germanus of Auxerre lived on bread made with drainwater;75 the most holy virgin Genevieve, from her fifteenth to her fiftieth year, never tasted any food or drink except for Sundays and Thursdays, and then it was peas or beans put away after cooking for about a fortnight.76 While, I say, I learn of these and innumerable other struggles of the saints, I am terrified by the trumpet as if by an arrow, ‘and a chill trembling ran through my inmost bones’.77 But I believe your mind to be stronger than that of your horn-blower, who is so unwarlike, and all my exhortation to be weaker than your fervour. But although these things seem inappropriate to your intelligence, yet allow me to express my feeling, so that if it does not benefit your abundance and sufficiency, it might be of benefit that I am able to satisfy love and speak with you as long as this letter lasts. But you must take everything like one who eats what suffices from a loaded table. Among these and other exhortations and examples that you will read anywhere, take according to your mind and your strength, 64 just as the Lord has favoured you, what you will perform. And indeed reach out with all your desire to the supernal things that have been promised, with the seriousness indeed and modesty of fear of the

70

Compare St Columba, Instructiones variae sive sermones, X. 3, PL 80, 249A.

71

Virgil, Aeneid, IV. 13.

72

See Ambrose, De officiis, I. 41, PL 16, 85C–86A (206), CCSL 15, 77/70–78/73 (207).

73

See Ambrose, De virginibus, I. 2 (9), PL 16, 189C–91B.

74

See Acta sanctorum, February III, pp. 30–31.

75

See Acta sanctorum, July VII, p. 204.

76

See Acta sanctorum Jan I, p. 139.

77

Virgil, Aeneid, II. 120–21; XII. 447–48.

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Lord, and with such harmony of bravery and humility, that you neither fall nor fail on the path. Nor indeed should you fear the enemy, when you fear God and hope in the protection of his wings (Ps 35.8), because the enemy will never be able to tempt you, except to the degree that the Lord, in whose hand you are, will permit. Without his nod, neither a fly perishes nor a leaf of a tree falls; for him not even a hair of our heads perishes (Lk 12.6–7). Moreover the Apostle says that God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond your powers, but will bring about with the temptation the outcome that you are able to sustain it (I Cor 10.13). The greater the temptation of whatever tribulation, the greater the strength that he who is a helper in due time, in tribulation (Ps 9.10), will supply. Hence be fortified by a small example. About St Blandina The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius of Caesarea hands down the story that, when the holy martyrs were tested by various torments, a certain lady with a whole army of martyrs was anxious for her maid, Blandina, lest she might fall away from her faith among the tortures, and they prayed together for mighty works from the Lord.78 Need I say more? She was found to be of such great bravery and endurance that she surpassed the strongest men and soldiers of Christ in constancy. The insane rage of the torturers stretched to its full force fell upon her; the clamour, the fury, the violence, the anger of the whole population ran amok. She was torn apart, ripped to pieces, pulled apart and mangled like prey between wild beasts. For a whole day, she suffered torture greater than the savagery of executioners could have inflicted. The torturers grew tired, but she did not grow tired. She was attacked by new strikers and new wounds and, while the butchers were reduced almost to exhaustion, she grew stronger and stronger. They collapsed; she endured. They roared; she laughed. The sufferer was stronger than the torturer; the one receiving wounds was stronger than the one inflicting them, and the punishments which hold sway over all were trampled underfoot and crushed by one of the weaker sex. She cried out only one thing between the torments: ‘I am a Christian.’ Moreover, she reported, to the amazement of the Christians, that as often as she had called out: ‘I am a Christian’, she was restored with ever-renewed strength. At last the sword made the palm complete. So Almighty God triumphs not only through regal heroes and soldiers, but also through the lowliest slaves of men. God chooses those creatures who are the weak, obscure and contemptible of the world, so that he might confound the strong, and being great in great things he works miracles in the smallest things, just as also through the women Deborah, Jael, and Judith he destroyed proud princes and enemy armies (Jgs 4; Jdt 13).

78

See Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History (Rufinus’ translation), ed. by E. Schwartz and T. Mommsen, Eusebius’ Werke II: Die Kirchengeschichte, Griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller, 9 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1903-1908) V. 1, 17–19, p. 409.

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And now I wish to teach you in addition, from the same history, for the exercise of faith, how the Lord Jesus, the morning star, who wished to come forth to the world through a woman, deigned to be revealed among a people to whom the rays of the apostolic legation had not yet come, through even a slave woman. Through that woman, he took the kingdom that held her. Here, only so that I may inform you, I put in this account, in the historian’s own words, not in mine. 65 The strength of the slave woman He says: ‘At the same time also a nation among the Hiberes, which lies under the Pontic sky, accepted the covenant of the word of the Lord and faith in the coming kingdom. But this great good also was brought about by a slave woman who was found among them. Since she led her life with great faith, sobriety and modesty, and staying awake for whole days and nights offered prayers to God, the novelty of the thing itself began to be a matter of astonishment to the barbarians, and they asked with some curiosity what this thing meant. She, as the case was, openly witnessed that she worshipped Christ, that is, God, in this manner. After this, the barbarians were not further surprised except by the novelty of the name. But, as usually happens, her perseverance itself caused a certain curiosity among the womenfolk, to see if any benefit should be gained from such great devotion. It is said to be the custom among them that if a little one falls sick, it is taken around by its mother to each house, so that if anyone knows some trustworthy remedy they may offer it to the one who is ailing. And when one of the women had taken her little one around to all, according to the custom, and in going around all the houses had not received any cure, she came even to the slave woman, so that she might tell anything she knew. She said that she herself knew no human cures, but she confirmed that God, that is, her Christ, whom she worshipped, gave her the safety that is despaired of by humans. When she had put the child on her hair shirt and herself had poured out a prayer above it to the Lord, she returned the child to the mother, cured. ‘Many heard the story, and the tale of her magnificent deed came as far as the ears of the queen, who, afflicted by a certain very serious illness of the body, was in the greatest desperation. She asked for the slave woman to be brought to her. The woman refused to go, lest she seem to presume something more than her sex allowed. The queen herself ordered that she be brought to the slave woman’s little cell, and in a similar way she was placed on the other’s hairshirt, the name of Christ was invoked, and immediately after the prayer the slave woman raised her up, now healthy and vigorous. The woman taught her that Christ, who was responsible for this health, is God and the Son of the highest God, and she advised that he, whom she knew to be the source of her well-being and life, must be called upon, for he is the one who distributes both kingdoms to kings and life to mortals. So the queen returned home in joy, and when her husband asked the cause of such sudden good health, she revealed it to him. And when he, happy on account of the health of his wife, ordered that gifts be sent to the woman, the queen said: “O King, she, although a slave woman, thinks none of these things worthy. She despises gold. She spits back

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silver. She is fed by fasting as if by food. The only gift we owe her is if we worship the one who healed me at her invocation, Christ, that is, God.” ‘At that time the king was slow to do this and in the meantime delayed, although often reminded by his wife, until it happened that one day, when he was hunting in the woods with his companions, daylight was darkened by very thick shadows and through the horror of the hideous night his blind steps were denied a path. His companions had gone in different directions, one one way, one another. He himself, alone, surrounded by very dense darkness, did not know what he was to do, to where he was to turn. Suddenly, in his mind, anxious in desperation of safety, 66 the thought arose that if that Christ was truly God, whom the slave woman had previously mentioned to his wife, he would now free him from these shadows, on the understanding that he would worship him from this time, giving up all other gods. As soon as he had vowed this, not yet in words but only in his mind, the daylight was returned to the world and led the king to the city unharmed, and he explained the event to the queen, exactly as it happened. He demanded that the slave woman be summoned immediately and that she pass on to him the ritual of worship, and he confirmed that he would not venerate in future any god other than Christ. The slave woman came. She taught that Christ is God and she revealed the rite of prayer and the manner of worship, as far as it was right for a woman to disclose these things. She also advised him to build a church, and she described the form. ‘Therefore the king, having called the people of the whole nation together, explained the matter from the beginning, the things that had happened to himself and the queen, and he expounded the faith. Although not yet baptized in religion, he became an apostle to his people. The men believed through the king, the women through the queen, and as all wished the same thing, the church was constructed with urgency. When the circumference of the walls had been swiftly raised, it was time to put in the columns. And when they had raised the first and second, they came to the third. After they used all the machinery and the strength of men and oxen, they had erected it now halfway at an angle, and no machine could stand it upright. Although they made repeated efforts, a second and third time and more often, it could not even be moved from its place, despite the fact that all were worn out. All the people were amazed; the enthusiasm of the king was growing faint; none of them could see what ought to be done. But when at nightfall everybody had departed, and all humans and those works were at rest, the slave woman passing the night alone in prayer remained inside. ‘Behold, in the morning, when the king entered anxiously with all his people, he saw the column, which all the machines and all the people had not been able to move, erect and suspended in equilibrium above its base—not however placed on it, but hanging in the air a foot above it. Then indeed all the people, singing and glorifying God, said that the faith of the king and the religion of the slave woman were true by the testimony of the present miracle. And behold, with all still amazed and stupefied, before their eyes the column was gradually deposited on its base with no one touching it, and settled with perfect balance. After this the remaining columns

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were put up with such great ease that all that remained were set up that very day. But after the church had been constructed with great magnificence, and the people were craving the faith of God with greater ardour, by the advice of the slave woman emissaries of the whole people were sent to the emperor Constantine. They explained what had happened and begged him to send priests who might complete the gift of God that had begun to be offered to them. When he had sent those priests with all rejoicing and honour, he felt much more pleasure in this than if they had joined unknown nations and kingdoms to the Roman empire. That these things happened in this way was expounded to us by the faithful Bacurius, the king of that people and a count among us of the domestics, who had the highest care for religion and truth, when he was living with us with much accord in Jerusalem as the commander of the military district of Palestine.’ 79 67 The strength of an anchorite In addition I shall give you also a recent example of strength from your England. The thing is as well-known as it is new. The witness who was present is Dom Eilsius,80 consecrated from a boy, who is now well-disposed towards me. He, recently detained by a royal decision in a certain stronghold nearly fifteen stades distant from St Edmund,81 was constantly in the company of an anchorite in his small wooden cell attached to a church. That simple and upright man, who wished to know nothing except Jesus and his crucifixion, repeated continually what he had learned in lay ignorance, that is, the Lord’s prayer and the first verse of Psalm 50, with ‘glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.’ The enemy of human salvation, not being able to bear this vehemence, one night accosted this man by his own name, with a human voice: ‘Brihtric, do you grant no rest at all to God or men? Or do you think that God is deaf and lacking in understanding, whom you assail so ignorantly and so incessantly with one phrase? Do you think him foolish, so that he does not know what he should do, unless he is asked? Or do you not know, ignorant one, that by your importunity you provoke him more than you placate him, for Scripture says: “Do not repeat words in prayer” (Mt 6.7)? Now be quiet and still, lest God should be angry with you rather than have pity on you in your restlessness.’ The simple man, driven by such deceits, for a time imposed silence on his mouth. But on the following day, when the cause had been explained to Eilsius and he had taught the hermit the devil’s deceits, like a soldier more resolute from a wound he got up even more passionate in repeating and continuing prayers without intermission. Again on the following night the enemy, now that the hermit had risen up against him, contradicted him more bitterly, and threatened him and his deceiver, that monk, 79

Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History (Rufinus’ translation), X. 11, pp. 973–76.

80

Wilmart (‘Ève et Goscelin [II]’, p. 66, n. 7) and Talbot suggest that this is perhaps the Abbot of Ramsey (1080–1087). 81

Wilmart (‘Ève et Goscelin [II]’, p. 66, n. 7) identifies this as Bury St Edmunds.

KATERN 6

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with God’s anger, unless he set a limit to the temerity of his prayer. But he in his simplicity, loving the light more than the shadows, rejected his tempter to idleness with fervid zeal, and made the sign of the cross, driving him far off. And now when pirates attacked the small fortress with flame and sword, Eilsius, his companion in conversations, asked the anchorite to leave the place because of the danger. Then he cried out in reply: ‘Look, brother, Christ of his own accord suffered a death that was not due to him. Shall I be able to flee one that is due to me? What he suffered in his innocence voluntarily, shall I, a sinner, not suffer by necessity? I did not enter here on the condition that I should yield to any adversity. Know, therefore, brother, that I will not be frightened away from here, but I will be burned to ashes here as a sacrifice to the Lord. Here I will stretch myself out in the form of the cross in prayer, and so I will accept the hand of the Lord coming over me. Such will be the position in which you will find me destroyed. A rain of lead overflowing from above, from the church, will strike my back as I lie there with a burning torrent, but the stronger it is, the quicker the end will be. Depart now and look after yourselves, and leaving me, escape death, which is inescapable, for the time being.’ 68 Need I say more? After the fortress and the church with the little cell had been burned and the fire was scarcely yet put out after a week, that warrior of God was found with his body and arms stretched out as he had predicted, burned and with a lot of lead poured into his back, with which his stomach, which he had accustomed to fasting, had been burned, or filled. Eilsius indeed swears, testifying to this, that when the others ran up with him the hermit was enveloped with such great fragrance of perfume as if a large quantity of incense was being burned there: appropriately indeed when his own incense was flaming in the burning of a sacrifice to God. The blessed soul enjoys a martyr’s rest; his body is buried in peace. But that soul that before you, O sweetest one, had suffered in this place, on the occasion when this church was burned, survived intact in the middle of the flames, as was lately related to me.82 How many of the saints have been consumed by animals, fires, water? How many, like Daniel, like the boys singing hymns, like Peter, has God saved unharmed? When they have escaped dangers uninjured, the beneficence of divine grace has been amazing. But when they have fought it out in martyrdoms, the prize of divine power has been great. The story is beautiful to relate, that the slave woman mentioned above erected the huge mass of the column, which was resistant to all the strength of the kingdom, by the wings of her prayers, when everyone had gone, and for a long time balanced it in suspension, and at last set it firmly on its base, but it is a more powerful thing that Stephen died from the stones and that he brought forth

82

Wilmart thought that this referred to a recluse who had lived in the same place, near Bury St Edmunds (‘Ève et Goscelin [II]’, p. 67), but it is also possible that Goscelin had heard a story about a woman who survived a fire in a church near where Eve was living in Angers.

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Paul from Saul, and that man being tested by fire was proved to be not less by the power of miracles. Therefore, armed by these examples of either courage or grace, having destroyed Amalec with his army and having cut down every hostile obstacle (I Kgs 15.3), go, beloved one, to a share and portion of the eternal inheritance. As a soul desiring God, the living fountain, and thirsting like a hart for springs of water, cross over the Jordan of your tears with your soul poured out in you, and enter by your desire the place of the wonderful tabernacle, even to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise and with the sound of feasting. If you ever ask yourself, when your love has been wounded: ‘why are you sad, my soul, and why do you trouble me?’, answer yourself with the single remedy: ‘Hope in God, for I will still give praise to him, the salvation of my countenance and my God (Ps 41.2, 5–7).’ Here ends the second little book of exhortations. 69

Goscelin’s Liber confortatorius Book III Against weariness Moses, as a type of Christ, prepared a tabernacle by the order and command of the Lord of majesty, where the Godhead gave him commands for the people and loving responses. It was a tent as big as a very large temple; its walls were of purple and it was stretched out over a large area on columns and door-posts of gold. Of all the glorious things on earth, there had never been anything more beautiful, more carefully constructed or made with greater art up to that time. I should scarcely believe that any king today could match an instrument of such dignity. As heaven is adorned by the stars, the earth by flowers and the world by the ornamentation of various things, so that moveable palace shone with the splendors of all things. The whole construction was made of the whitest cloth, and it was decorated with purple, twice-dyed scarlet and gold embroidery (Ex 26.1). There was more beauty in elaborate pictures, not only of all the colours but also of all kinds of subjects. You would have believed that the earth and the sea and the very ornament of the universe had been gathered there (Gn 2.1).1 Then the golden joy of the sun shone with its rays through that utterly translucent tent, as if through a temple made wholly of glass of all colours, and adorned the immense quantity of gold and the images of all kinds of figures with its light,2 as if it were recreating another heaven with the transparent building; it illuminated the ark, which was golden even inside, and the utensils of the divine rites, which were all of gold (Ex 25.10–40). Although this work of dignity, which was so beautiful, shone forth with the majesty of the divine and ecclesiastical sacrament, yet it offered great solace to a then solitary people, and lightened the labours and weariness of such prolonged loneliness. They were favoured from heaven by a column of light and from the wilderness by this beauty, rich in meaning. So you, therefore, O my sweet pledge, if you have not yet entered with the vigour of your mind the land the living shall inherit, if at any time, forgetful of the 1

Compare Bede, On the Tabernacle, II. 8, PL 91, 446A, CCSL 119A, 71/1150–57.

2

Compare Bede, On the Tabernacle, III. 1, PL 91, 461D, CCSL 119A, 93/6.

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homeland you are seeking, you should become weary with solitude, captivity and the cell, you, I say, raise a column of faith for yourself, a tent of hope, and, as if in a tabernacle so decorated in all the colours, take pleasure in the law of the Lord, exercising and meditating on it day and night (Ps 1.2), with the manifold beauty of the examples of the saints. Then in your mind compare eternal light and eternal night, and expel weariness with such great hope or fear. Delight in the Lord (Ps 36.4): now you will cease to feel repugnance. Be with the Lord: now you will not be solitary. Freed from the slavery of sin, as a freed woman among the children of the adoption of God, now you will not be a captive. We are fickle creatures. Now we are raised by hope; now we are broken by failure. Peter walked steadfastly over the waves, but soon his faith weakened and he was submerged (Mt 14.29–31). When we are cherished by the Lord, we think of standing forever; when we are left for a moment, we are overthrown from our very foundation. Neither do we rise unless we are raised by the hand of the Lord; nor do we stand unless we are held in the same place. ‘I said in my abundance: I shall never be moved. O Lord, in your favour you gave strength to my beauty (Ps 29.7–8).’ 70 Behold our standing forever. What follows? ‘You turned your face away from me and I became troubled (Ps 29.8).’ I shall never be moved: what stands more securely? I became troubled: what is more overthrown? Night drives on day, day night, and we experience the alternation of calm and storm. And our path is now level, now rough. And man is changed with the world, unless he is made firm in the Lord. So, if your constancy grows weak, if your lamp flickers, be refreshed in him who is your courage, your light and your salvation. That snake, the seducer of the old Eve, whispers with a flattering voice. The Lord says of him in Job that his voice is like pipes of bronze (Jb 40.13).3 He may tempt you with resonant persuasion: ‘Why have you done this? Why have you cut off such splendid things from your nature? Ah, a green branch, transplanted from your vernal grace, you have withered before your time. You are a girl; you are in your first youth; in the very flower of life you have suddenly perished. Will you remain here from the youthful age of twenty to your fiftieth or your hundredth year, to old age and feebleness (Ps 70.18), to a long-lived and distant end, to such long days, such dark nights, to such long labours, such perpetual prison, such continual deaths of desolation?’ To counter those exhalations of the tortuous serpent, think that you are every day about to pass away, that you are always only of today, that you are not of tomorrow, not long-lived, that every day has come as your last. Horace says this: ‘Believe that every day has dawned as your last.’4 But the giver and receiver of life rouses us more vigorously: ‘Watch, therefore, for you do not know the day or the hour in which the Lord will come (Mt 24.42, 25.13)’, so that at every hour you should suspect what at 3

Compare Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, XXXII. 17 (29–30), PL 76, 654, CCSL 143B, 1652/1–1653/34. 4

Epistles, I. 4. 13.

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every hour is uncertain. For death is as certain for every mortal as the hour is uncertain.5 ‘Why’, you will say, ‘O author of death, do you promise us long life? Death spares no age; it snatches old men with young ones; it cuts down those who are suckling and the decrepit (Dt 32.25) with a single scythe. “May I die, O Lord, so that I may not die”, the great Augustine says,6 that is: “may I die to the world and sin, and may I live for the Lord of life.” And Paul: “For you are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God (Col 3.3).” And: “It is now not I who live, but Christ who lives in me (Gal 2.20).” Now from death I will begin to live for my God and from the failure of life to endure unfailingly. After childhood, young adulthood and the very flower of life, man, living for a short time in many miseries, is suddenly destroyed and flees like a shadow (Jb 14.1–2), and his days pass away like a shadow (Ps 143.4). But I, trusting in the Lord, will not grow weak (Ps 25.1); dying in the Lord I will not die, but live (Ps 117.17). For blessed are the dead who die in the Lord (Rv 14.13); to die for him is to live, and to live without him is to die; 71 such ones when they die will not praise you, O Lord, nor all who go down to hell, but we who live for the Lord bless the Lord (Ps 113B.17), we whose life is hidden with Christ in God, who says: “Anyone who believes in me will not die eternally” (Jn 11.26), and: “Whoever keeps my word will not taste death eternally (Jn 8.52), but will pass from death to life (Jn 5.24).” The only ones who die perpetually from all good, whom the sad chaos of hell will absorb, are those who believe your flatteries, O enemy of the human race! You make them drunk with the nectareous poisons of your temptations, and you delight them in their drunkenness and blindness with innumerable bitternesses, until you may bury them in the sulphurous mouth of hell, where they will see no light for eternity. ‘But I will delight in the Lord, and I will rejoice in God my Jesus7 (Hb 3.18), who has saved me from the mouth of the lion (Ps 21.22), who has redeemed my life from ruin (Ps 102.4) and has delivered my soul from hell (Ps 114.8). I will wait for the Lord himself, my Saviour (Mi 7.7), and if he delays I will expect him, and every day of my life until the end I will await him, because he will surely come (Hb 2.3), and will never abandon those waiting for him. I will sing to my God for as long as I shall live (Ps 145.2), in whose hands my needs are. He is at my right hand so that I may not be moved (Ps 15.8), and he is like a strong warrior with me (Jer 20.11); nor will he forsake me for a long time (Lam 5.20), and he will be with me until old age and feebleness (Ps 70.18) and until the consummation of the world (Mt 28.20). Now if we live, we live for the Lord; if we die, we die for the Lord; but whether we live or die, we are of the Lord (Rom 14.8).’ Be fired with the faith and warmth of such words as these when the king lies down in the middle of the day (Sg.1.6, 11), and repel cold, 5 Talbot suggests Cicero, On Old Age, 74; compare also Anselm, Meditations, 7. 1, PL 158, 741A. 6

Confessions, I. 5 (5), PL 32, 663, CCSL 27, 3/10–11.

7

That is, ‘my Saviour’.

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sluggishness and weariness sent by the evil angel sitting in the north (Is 14. 12–13), and if your soul sleep from weariness, call out: ‘Strengthen me, O Lord, with your words and rescue me (Ps 118.28).’ But if from ambush the devil tries to terrify you face to face, which will never prevail against the will of God, you will raise the torch of faith and the cross and will cry out: ‘The Lord is my light, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? If forces stand against me my heart will not fear. If battle rises against me I will trust in this sign of the cross. I have sought one thing from the Lord; I will ask this one request, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life (Ps 26.1, 3–4). If I walk in the middle of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for you are with me (Ps 22.4).’ Now if you should be of little faith, which caused Peter to doubt and sink, and be reproved by our faithful Lord (Mt 14.29–31), who is near to all who call upon him in truth (Ps 144.18), and if the eyes of faith are clouded and you fear that you have been left alone, 72 because you do not see the Lord present, who says: ‘Have I become a wilderness to Israel?’ (Jer 2.31), if, therefore, the peace of Christ does not heal your aversion, remember in any event what we read in the Lives of the Fathers, where when the solitary asked why he should suffer weariness in his cell, the opinion of the veteran warrior in response was this: ‘You do not know the torments of hell. For if you knew, your cell would not weary you, even if it was full of snakes, even if you had been submerged up to the neck in this punishment.’8 The felicity of scarcity O if you only consider, dearest one, how happy your lot is! The Lord your God has led you here to a place of certainty. There is the certain rest from your toils.9 Each person’s desire, love, possession is their portion. One strives after land, another a house, another friendship, some money, some fame. Each person is dragged by their own desire.10 Your portion is the Lord in the land of the living (Ps 141.6); your portion is to keep the law of the Lord, which is all love and is wholly fulfilled in loving God and your neighbour (Rom 13.8). Your small portion is also this, your little home of pilgrimage and pasture, this little house eight feet long, like the sum of the ark of eight souls (I Pt 3.20),11 secluded from the onset of the world, and hidden away from worldly seas as if in the ark itself, where you may be fattened as a sacrifice to the Lord like a fattening fowl in a cage: not in the flesh, but in the soul, not with the temptations of food, but with divine reading. There is no reason for you to fear human waves of bitter, salt desires dashing themselves against you and from opposing wishes at odds in every company, where 8

See Lives of the Fathers, V. 7. 28, PL 73, 900C.

9

Virgil, Aeneid, III. 393, VIII. 46 (in some manuscripts only).

10

Virgil, Eclogues, 2. 65.

11

Compare Bede, Hexaemeron, II, PL 91, 86C.

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anger, quarrels, dissensions, contentions, emulations, envies, jealousies, scandals, murders (Gal 5.19–21), and the Charybdis of lusts and fury of wars confound good and evil. Just as it is madness to seek these ills, so it is prudence to flee them. ‘Arsenius, flee men and you will be saved.’12 Jesus turned aside from the crowd, and was found in the temple (Jn 5.13–14). The true solitary becomes a countryman of God and a companion of the angels. The book that contains the lives of the fathers and different pursuits of the saints, like a cell smelling of different kinds of spices, among the different saints tells of three who pursued different kinds of lives. One chose to minister to the sick and strangers, another to reconcile people who quarrelled, the third the peace of the contemplative life and the best part, which Mary chose (Lk 10.42). The other two, abandoning the turbulence of the world in the ministry of Martha, went of one mind to consult the one who dwelt in peace. He put before them a small vessel of water. When the liquid was disturbed they saw nothing in it, but when it was in a calm state they recognized their faces. The one explaining said: ‘So, in the tumult of many people, I did not know myself. 73 But now I see my deformity in this mirror of divine peace, and I perceive how wretched I am in this pleasantness.’13 So the purer and the nearer to God anyone is in freedom from the affairs of life, the more unworthy he seems to himself as he is reflected back by the rays of divine purity. The holy father Benedict, although he was so great that he could summon a dead man back from hell, put the faith of a country man before his own merits. He said: ‘O Lord, do not look on my sins, but on the faith of this man, who asks that his son be raised from the dead.’14 The philosophy of the pagans Even those who are wise in the world, who do not know either the Lord of hosts or the requiter of deserts, from a desire for nothing more than peace, or from the love of exercising wisdom, flee the crowd. They condemn luxury, strive for continence and have located in moderation in things the life that is as happy as it is secure. Hence Horace: ‘Happy the man who, far from cares, like mortals of former times, works his ancestral fields with his own oxen, free from all debt, and is not roused in war by the fierce battle trumpet, and is not afraid of the angry sea, and avoids the Forum and the proud doors of more powerful citizens.’15 And what reward will this flight from Babylonian pleasures bring? Peace of mind and body, that is, peace that is temporal. These things too our Boethius said, following the opinion of earlier men: ‘The earlier age was extremely happy, content with faithful fields and not lost to lazy luxury; hunger came in the evening and it was

12

See Lives of the Fathers, III. 190, PL 73, 801A.

13

See Lives of the Fathers, V. 2. 15–16, PL 73, 860A–B.

14

Gregory the Great, Life of St Benedict, Dialogues, II. 32, PL 66, 191D, 192C.

15

Horace, Epodes, 2. 1–8.

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easy to satisfy it with acorns. Grass gave healthful sleep and the smooth river supplied drink.’16 Many, such as the Brahmins and other peoples, chose such a life, not on account of the kingdom of God, about which they knew nothing, but for the sake of present peace, than which they judged nothing to be happier; using the natural benefit that the free kindness of the Creator has implanted in all they set the mind free from the lacerating cares of riches, and exercised it with the liberal arts, and restrained the body from luxury, lest it overwhelm the mind with the burden of abundance in its striving for the heights. Hence the Romans, because they had subjected their bodies to labours and abstinence, subjugated the whole world to their rule, but by divine disposition; 74 to them it was a matter of glory to suffer half-naked the heats of summer and frosts of winter, so turning custom into nature. Socrates, disdaining to be stung by the cares of riches and to be impeded from philosophy, threw into the sea a huge weight of gold, the price of his fields and of all his own property, saying: ‘Into the depths, evil desires! I will sink you, lest I be sunk by you.’17 Pythagoras, contemptuous of luxury, gloried in the bean. And St Jerome said: ‘What is the pleasure of producing excrement from expensive feasts? I fill my stomach with beans.’18 Diogenes the Cynic, for whom a bag was his larder, jars his dwelling-place,19 is celebrated in an epitaph in these terms: A little peeled barley, a three-legged stool, a staff, a cup, scanty household equipment: these were the things the Cynic owned, but he thinks these too 20 much.

One, when he saw someone drink water with cupped hands, broke the cup that he was carrying, saying: ‘Shall I carry three flasks for one hole in my stomach, when I have two in my hands?’21 Others, abominating slavery to desire, have cut off their very instruments of wickedness. Some, having gone further into madness, have even cast out their eyes,22 thinking that the sight of the heart, if it were shut away and did 16

Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, II. v. 1–5, 10–11, PL 63, 696A to 98A, CCSL 94, 28/1–3, 29/4–5, 10–11. The quotation as it appears in Sloane and is transcribed by Talbot is corrupt. We have translated the text of CCSL. 17

Compare Jerome, Against Jovinian, II. 9, PL 23, 312A; Jerome names not Socrates but Crates the Theban. 18

See Jerome, Letter 45: To Asella, 5, PL 22, 482, CSEL 54, 326/14.

19

Compare Jerome, Against Jovinian, II. 14, PL 23, 318B.

20

Compare Ausonius, Epigrams, The Works of Ausonius, ed. by R. P. H. Green (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 55. 1–2, p. 80. 21

Compare Ausonius, Epigrams, 55. 3–4, p. 80, and Jerome, Against Jovinian, II. 14, PL 23, 318C. 22

See Jerome, Against Jovinian, II. 9, PL 23, 312A.

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not stray outside, could direct its force inwardly with more purity toward philosophy. So miserable and so bitter are the pleasures of this life, that many used to think that the highest happiness was only to lack these things, and the more they lacked them, (the more) they rejoiced to escape these things as if they were poison. What will the Christian, invited to heavenly banquets, do with these things, which a pagan could contemn without any better hope? What are they to do, the sons of the adoption and the sons of the kingdom of God, the heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ (Rom 8.15–17), when the sons of darkness, whose fruit is food for the eternal fire, have undertaken such efforts before them? For they, arrogating to themselves wisdom and understanding, which the Creator of all gave to them, and claiming the free benefits of God for their own virtue without God, without whom there is nothing, paid the penalty for their robbery, and the greater their learning and righteousness that led them beyond their place in the world, the further from saving they were in their folly. If, therefore, they without Christ gloried that they exercised virtues, why should we as Christians not strive rather to pursue those virtues in the glory of Christ, so that the one who glories, glories in the Lord (Jer 9.23–24; II Cor 10.17)? Why do we not seek in Christ the peace that they sought in a worldly way in flight from the world, so that we observe as a day of rest his ‘Sabbath’, who describes his own nature to us by saying: ‘Learn, because I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls; for my yoke is pleasant’ (Mt 11.29–30)?23 For if we begin to love divine tranquillity and cease to seek worldly society, assuredly we will cease to dislike solitude. And indeed the law of Christ is not so terrible that we should tear out our eyes, but lest they see vanity, we should turn them aside (Ps 118.37). Nor does it order that we mutilate our limbs, but that we cut vices off, and that we are to be cut off from vices and desires, that we are to be circumscribed, crucified (Gal 5.24); it orders what is richer than human philosophy, that his paupers may be paupers in spirit, enduring with most humble and devoted minds in the injustice of the world, expecting all things from his mercy alone, in whom we live, move and have our being (Acts 17.28), showing ourselves such as his teaching requires of us. 75 He says: ‘On whom will I rest, except on the humble and quiet and those who tremble at my word?’24 It is on such a donkey that the Lord rides on his way to Jerusalem, that is a simple, subject and mild soul. David says: ‘I have become as a beast of burden before you, and I am always with you (Ps 72.23).’ The patience of the saints John, the precursor of the Lord, was a burning and shining light (Jn 5.35), calling in the wilderness as a voice preceding the Word of God (Jn 1.1, 14): ‘Make straight the way of the Lord (Jn 1.23).’ In his household you have begun to be enrolled as an 23

We assume that Goscelin understands Mt. 11. 29 in the same sense as the Douai-Rheims translators. 24

Isaiah 66. 2 (Septuagint version).

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anchorite, to whom the church sings a hymn thus: ‘Fleeing the crowds of your fellow citizens, you sought out caves in the desert in your tender years, so that you could not stain your life even with light talk. The camel provided a rough covering for holy limbs, sheep a belt; your drink was honey, accompanying food drawn from locusts. O very happy one of the highest merit, not knowing any stain on snowy modesty, a very powerful martyr, inhabitant of the desert, greatest among the prophets! Garlands enlarged with thrice ten increases crown some, the same garlands doubled crown others, triple garlands increased with a hundred-fold fruit adorn you, holy one.’25 After him Paul the Hermit, raising high the divine banners, a man alone in the world, endured solitude for more than sixty years, sequestered from the whole human race. The palm clothed and fed him; the spring gave drink to his cupped hands. Goodness does not fly from camel’s hair clothing, but the poverty that was heir to the kingdom of heaven did not have any.26 Mary of Egypt, a woman who must be venerated by virgins and admired by men, lived for about forty-six winters and summers as a solitary under the sky. No house, tree, tunic or cave sheltered her. She bore all the shafts of the burning sun, all the weapons of winter, all the excesses of weather, the burning of long days, the storms of dark nights with a naked body and a bare head. In such a long day of her years, she waited patiently for the Lord, 76 and bore fruit in patience,27 looking on nothing from the universe of created things except the vast desert: no man, no wild beast, no bird, no living thing. Her sustenance was abstinence; her clothing nakedness; her covering was her skin, blackened from exposure to sun and frost, and her roof was heaven. She crushed the head of the serpent (Gn 3.15), appropriately naked in her struggle with his nakedness, and winning a robe of triumph from the victor over Eve.28 Moreover, it was not only after the ascension of the Lord that the world shone out with the stars of the saints, but many also before his coming had gone before his face: of such the Apostle Paul says: ‘Saints through faith have conquered kingdoms, like Moses, Samuel and Elijah, and others who have resisted kings. They have gone around in sheepskins, in goatskins, being in want, distressed, afflicted, those of whom the world was not worthy: wandering in deserts, in mountains, caves and the caverns of the earth (Heb 11.33, 37–38).’ The Lord himself, long-suffering, patient and very merciful, who will never be angry for ever (Ps 102.8–9), says: ‘Your strength will be in long-suffering and hope (Is 30.15)’ and ‘In your patience you will possess your souls (Lk 21.19).’ And the Apostle says: ‘In much patience’ (II Cor 6.4) and ‘in all 25

Hymn for the office of St John the Baptist, CAO 8406, Analecta hymnica 50, pp. 120–

26

See Jerome, The Life of Paul the First Hermit, PL 23, 17–30.

27

Compare Life of St Augustine, II. 2, PL 32, 146.

28

See Paul the Deacon, The Life of Mary of Egypt, PL 73, 671–90, esp. 19, 684–85A.

21.

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patience’ (Col 1.11). And in suffering bear up (Ecclus 2.4), exerting your soul to tolerate all things. And be patient until the coming of the Lord. Behold, the farmer waits for the precious fruits of the earth, until he receives the earlier and the later rain (Jas 5.7).29 And take as an example of labour and patience the prophets (Jas 5.10), who longed for the coming of the redeemer with exceeding desire, as in these words: ‘O that you would rend the heavens and come (Is 64.1).’ And: ‘O Lord, bow down your heavens and descend (Ps 143.5).’ And: ‘Come, O Lord, and do not delay.’30 And: ‘Make haste and do not delay (Ps 69.2, 6).’ And: ‘Let your mercies speedily come to meet us (Ps 78.8).’ And: ‘O Lord, save me; O Lord, give good success. Blessed is the one who shall come in the name of the Lord (Ps 117.25–26).’ And what patience such great impatience of holy desires could have! The holy patriarchs also, who were going to go down to hell, lived patiently among the evils of the world, and, hoping for the distant coming of the redeemer, died patiently. From Adam until the death of Christ, through ages amounting to almost five thousand years, sitting in darkness (Is 42.7) and the shadow of death (Is 9.2), they waited for the salvation of the Lord, the Saviour. At last they called out to him together in tearful words: ‘Your coming has been desired; we have been waiting for you for such a long time in darkness.’31 But now the blood of Christ has opened heaven to his followers to such effect that every saint who has trampled the world underfoot completely and has put nothing before the love of Christ, 77 as soon as they have passed over from this world, without doubt ascends into heaven to Christ, who says: ‘I wish that where I am, my servant may be there also’ (Jn 12.26), since he goes in such purity, that not even the fire of purgatory finds anything to burn.32 After such certain achievement, then, of rewards for victory, who, if they are in command of their soul, would not perform not only valiantly but even exultantly such a brief struggle, to attain from it such immense and infinite glory? Contentment with small things But: ‘How narrow my cell is!’ you may say. But the court of heaven is very spacious. Why are you afraid to go the narrow way to the boundless kingdom? How many thousands of the human race suffer worse things! Sons of kings, of dukes, and of nobles, and the glorious ones of the earth, are bound in fetters, in iron manacles (Ps 149.8), in gaol, in a work-prison. How many either by the sword or by disease 29

Goscelin’s text, like the Vulgate, does not include ‘rain’; we have followed DouaiRheims. 30

Responsory for Sundays in Advent and the fourth week of Advent, CAO 6728A and 7824; antiphon used on some Fridays in Advent, especially in the fourth week, CAO 5320. 31

Antiphon for the Benedictus canticle, used particularly on Fridays and Saturdays throughout the year, CAO 4856. See also text cited in De rebus liturgicis, ‘In resurrectione Domini’, PL 74, 921C. 32

Compare Author uncertain (Augustine?), Sermon 104, 4, PL 39, 1947.

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have their limbs cut off, their eyes put out? And so they are released from prison, when for them the whole light of the world is now a prison, and while still living are dead, because for them now that sun, which is the greatest joy of human life, has set. Blessed are those who are consoled by eternal hope, and unhappy the unbelievers for whom punishment is begun here, who are both deprived of these good things, and do not gain the highest things. That sun too in presence shines on all, but is seen only by those who can see. How much more Christ, the true sun of righteousness,33 never setting, is present always for all, but is seen only by hearts that are without stain and understand him with pure faith! This is the response that we sing sweetly for my father St Omer, of whose household I am: ‘For the increase of his own merit, the holy man Omer for many years before his death lacked the light of physical eyes, who contemplated the Lord constantly with the purity of his inner sight.’ The verse: ‘And so, outwardly blind but inwardly illuminated for good, he contemplated the Lord.’34 When St Vaast, the glory of Artois, was translated, Omer was present with my gracious father Bertin. And he, giving thanks for divine regard and sighing with eternal desire, said: ‘O Lord Jesus, I did not ask you for that vain light, common to brute creatures, that attracts many to stray from you. Turn this light rather from me, lest it turn me from you; turn aside my eyes lest they see the vanity (Ps 118.37) of the world, because its light is as its darkness (Ps 138.12),35 and lest death enter through my windows, as another prophet puts it (Jer 9.21). But I ask that you illumine those eyes of mine (Ps 12.4), so that with them I may look with a pure and attentive vision at you, my light, by whom the whole household of angels is fed.’ He prayed; and his outer eyes were lulled to sleep from the darkness of the world as he wished, and he raised his inner eyes to the fountain of light;36 wounded by love of that, he held this light in contempt.37 Will you then be constrained more narrowly than those for whom external blindness makes a prison of the whole world? Only compare this cave of yours with the empire of Octavian, the Augustus of the whole world. 78 It is a ship for you to board from the vastness of that sea, an asylum from the storm of the world, a house of refuge from the hurricane of evils. The grandeur of things was captivity for him; for you the littleness of things is freedom. For him pursuit of power was slavery of toil; for you contempt for these things is 33

Compare hymn for Sundays in Lent, CAO 8325, Analecta hymnica 51, p. 59.

34

Response for the Office of St Omer in the Breviary of St Bertin, London, British Library, MS Add. 36672, fol. 192r –192v; compare Acta sanctorum, September III, p. 404. 35

The sense of the words in the Psalm seems quite different.

36

Compare Augustine, Sermon 126, 9 (12), PL 38, 703.

37

Compare Acta sanctorum, September III, pp. 390, 410: this source includes the legend that Omer’s blindness was cured by a miracle at the translation of St Vaast, but that he asked to have it reimposed for the sake of contemplation. It names Aubert rather than Bertin as being present.

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dominion. He was slave to the impulses of his mind and had surrendered his freedom to lust, and, although master of the world, was not able to master himself; master desires, and you will be more august than him. He was restricted equally by the chains of cares and the privileges of his power: you, stripped of everything, will be magnified more royally. He was constrained in such greatness; you, in a small place, be great in freedom from care. The world did not suffice for his greed; let this cave suffice you, striving for nothing further. He used to go from house to house, from kingdom to kingdom for the punishment of restlessness; you, a single self, possess a single little home for the solidity of peace. Seneca says: ‘Why many beds? You lie in one.’38 Horace: ‘So, since perpetual use is given to no one, and an heir succeeds the heir of another as wave succeeds wave, what good are villages or granaries? Why combine Calabrian woodlands with Lucanian, if Death harvests the great with the humble, beyond persuasion by gold?’39 Not even Caesar, therefore, in the magnitude of all the world could occupy with the extent of all his body a more ample space than this little cell of yours, nor, from such uncountable wealth, did he have more than he could obtain with the measure of his body. Indeed, you possess more happily all your domestic offices with one key. You have obtained all your rooms in one: here is your sanctuary, your oratory, your refectory, your dormitory, hall, bedchamber, entrance hall, pantry, sitting room. You have all your treasures, all your household goods with you. A couch of stone, a litter of earth, a hair shirt as a toga, a thick hide to keep out the cold, sober bread, pure vegetables, clear water, with a clean conscience and the grace of Christ; these are your resources, safer than those of emperors. The bodies of the rich enjoy the comfort of beds of purple and the softest coverings of down, but the pricking thorns of riches keep off sleep and rest. For them, even when everything is safe, it is always an object of fear, because it is exposed to treachery and thieves. How much more gently Mother Earth will lull to sleep on her sweet bosom limbs weary with vigils, and will refresh with pleasant sleep the mind freed from the worms of cares. Or is the life of shepherds and country-people softer? They bear the rains, snowfalls, hailstorms, icy weather and storms of winter with bare neck and bare head and, as Virgil teaches: ‘Plough bare, sow bare’;40 they laugh full in the face of the weapons of heat and cold; they take pleasure in food from barley and clean water. Is it harder for the soldiers of Christ to suffer these things for eternal reward, 79 than for temporal necessity? So, those who wait for tiredness, hunger, thirst,41 are refreshed with beans, water, the earth more pleasantly than with the delights of kings. Seneca tells the story that when one evening he came to his house rather late, his baker did not have bread; the cook had some, but it was poor for the pleasures of the rich. 38

Seneca, Letters, 89. 21.

39

Horace, Epistles, II. 2. 175–79.

40

Virgil, Georgics, I. 299.

41

Compare Sallust, Catilina, 13. 3.

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What is he to do then with bad food when he has been accustomed to good? He says: ‘Wait: it will be good. Hunger will make good what satiety thought bad.’ 42 The nourishment of the scriptures What if you should think yourself entombed here, or consider this bedroom a tomb? By bearing the cross after Christ, you will rise again from the tomb. Entombment does not harm those who are going to rise again. In such a way we have seen a vine, old and worn out by long age, reborn to give fruit. It is torn up from its root, and is not transplanted, like a tree, but buried along its whole body, together with the long arms of its branches: only its ends and the breathing passages of its shoots are extended upwards in its fingers. Hereupon, suddenly, amazing to see, new shoots and new offspring burst forth, and the tree, which previously was dying or unfruitful in its roots, comes to life again from burial to produce many offspring. So the grain of wheat, by which the redeemer signifies himself, by falling on the earth has borne much fruit, in dying for the world (Jn 12.24–25). Paul said: ‘As dying, and behold we live: as chastised and not killed, as having nothing and possessing all things (II Cor 6.9–10).’ So you have been buried in humility and the mortification of desires, but, raising breathing passages of perpetual hope to heaven, you will give birth with pain, sadness and tears to eternal rejoicing, and you will bear fruit in patience.43 Prudentius says that humility of mind had made hope a companion for itself.44 Thus it is necessary to be balanced with both hope and fear, so that a mind that is broken does not fall and one that is elated does not tumble down.45 Now shun idleness: for idleness breeds disgust, and as St Benedict witnesses: ‘idleness is the enemy of the soul’,46 and ‘the idle man has desires’, and ‘long rest offers food to vices.’47 Prayer and sighs to God without intermission (I Th 5.17) and, as the Lord has given, tears forbid the soul to be weary. But can we, our teacher Augustine says, always pray? 48 Or always read? Or always keep watch? But let prayer be before all things, and let the face of the Lord always be sought above all things, 80 and let the Lord have prior place in all things, and whatever you do, let all things be done in his name, and all things be consecrated to the Lord: that is to pray every hour. After the offerings we owe of prayers, after your breast is weakened with tiredness, restore yourself with holy reading; sharpen your blunted mind with the 42

See Seneca, Letters, 123. 2.

43

Compare Life of St Augustine, II. 2, PL 32, 146

44

Prudentius, Psychomachia, 199, 201, PL 60, 38A, 39A, CCSL 126, 158/199, 201.

45

From the hymn Magnae Deus potentiae, used on Thursdays at vespers throughout the year, CAO 8341, Analecta hymnica 51, p. 37. 46

Benedict, Rule, 48, PL 66, 703A.

47

Cato, Distichs, I. 2, p. 35.

48

See Enarratio in Psalmum 37, 14, PL 36, 404, CCSL 38, 392/8–9.

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whetstone of books; from there add matter to the flame when it fails. The Lord says: ‘The fire on my altar shall always burn, which the priest shall feed, putting on wood’ and other fuel (Lv 6.12). Be yourself a priest for God, by sacrificing yourself, and let the fire of divine love burn always on the altar of your heart, which you will nourish with the food of holy writings and works, whence you may send up to the Lord the perfumes of holy desires. Hence the Seraphim, because they are inflamed the more ardently with the love of God the more nearly they are joined, are properly called ‘burning’. Let there be no gatherings of detractors; hedge your ear with thorns and guard it devoutly. May the windows of your cell, tongue and ear be closed against stories and idle talk, or rather malign talk.49 May no cat, no bird, no little animal, no irrational being of any sort share your home, nor make your fleeting time empty. As a solitary, be solitary with the Lord. In praying, speak with the Lord; in reading, hear the Lord speaking with you.50 And thus I pray, beseech and implore this: that you take possession of the holy banquet of sacred volumes with avidity and praiseworthy gluttony, and hunger for it as for the bread of life and thirst for it as for the fountain of life, to sharpen your little intellect, to draw it on with nectar, to fill your lamp with oil and to kindle it more and more to heavenly love. You will find there the life of the soul, for man does not live by bread alone, but by every word from the mouth of God (Mt 4.4), and whatever has been written has been written for our instruction, so that we may have hope patiently through the comfort of the Scriptures (Rom 15.4). This I inculcated in you, if you recall, as if giving a key for understanding, very frequently, both when I was present, with words, and when I was absent, in writing. There you will find the treasure and the pearl that you may acquire by selling all the desires of the world (Mt 13.46). Read the expositions of the holy fathers Jerome, Augustine and Gregory, and the other teachers of virtue, and set your heart (Ez 40.4, 44.5) to the understanding of the Scriptures, which contain also the mystery of the church and of spiritual wars in various allegories. I should wish that the window of this cell of yours is large, to admit such an extensive library itself to be by you, or that you can read it through the window if it is brought up to it from outside. Recite the lives and the various writings of the fathers, indeed the Life of St Antony, to protect you against the arguments of the devil, and to teach you how weak all his army is against those believing in Christ. Nor should you neglect, among other things, the book of Augustine’s Confessions, to instil divine affection in you more deeply. You should love also the

49

Compare Jerome, Letter 22: To Eustochium, 26, 29, PL 22, 411–12, 415–16, CSEL 54, 181/1–182/8, 186/15–189/7. 50

Compare Ambrose, De officiis, I. 3 (9), PL 16, 26B–C, CCSL 15, 4/1–12.

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three-fold book of ecclesiastical history,51 together with the history of Eusebius, to narrate to you both of the struggles of the saints 81 and of the victory of faith founded in Christ and unconquered by all storms. Look at Augustine’s City of God, Orosius’ De Ormesta Mundi,52 Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy, and you will understand that nothing is more miserable than the whirlpool of the world, nothing happier than the peace of Christ. Boredom will be put to flight by these exercises and the time will seem short; your solitude will delight you, and, now replete, you will lose your appetite for these insipid encouragements of mine. Nor indeed should you give up if anywhere you cannot follow the sense, but take hold, return, read again, until you understand abundantly, because nothing is so difficult that it cannot be found by seeking, and persistent effort conquers all,53 and the Lord will open to one seeking and knocking (Mt 7.7–8), and the gracious spirit of wisdom (Ws 1.6) will enter into you. St Gregory of Nazianzus, a very pure and beautiful dwelling-place of wisdom, saw in a dream very beautiful twin girls sitting one on either side of him, and they were cherishing him between them with chaste love. And the champion of chastity, indignant that women should have entered, heard them say this sweetly to him: ‘We are your dearest friends, your ever-inseparable companions and comrades, for we are, that is to say, wisdom and chastity, your sisters, whom you love especially and who love you.’54 Someone wise says: ‘I have loved wisdom above health and all beauty (Ws 7.10)’, and I have said to wisdom: ‘You are my sister (Prv 7.4).’55 Follow the example of blessed Paula also and holy Eustochium and likewise Blaesilla, whom her teacher and admirer, Jerome, calls a library of Christ,56 and, as Daniel prophesies that the learned will shine like the stars of heaven (Dn 12.3), catch fire: moreover, ask of Jerome what difference there is between holy rusticity and learned holiness.57 St Peter praises studious readers: he says: ‘You have a more certain word of prophecy, to which you do well to attend, until the day dawns and the day star rises in your hearts (II Pt 1.19).’ The Lord, too, castigates the ignorant in the Gospel: he says: ‘You err when you do not know the Scriptures (Mt 22.29).’ Nor 51

That is, Historia ecclesiastica tripartita, a continuation of Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, consisting of extracts from Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomenos, and Theodoretos, translated by Epiphanius Scholasticus under the direction of Cassiodorus. 52

That is, Orosius’ History Against the Pagans.

53

Virgil, Georgics, I. 145–46.

54

See Mournful Poem on the Calamities of his Soul, 201–58, Patrologia Graeca 37, 1367– 72; Aldhelm, In Praise of Virgins, PL 89, 251A–B. 55

These phrases are used in a responsory and verse for the Summer Histories, from Wisdom, CAO 7727. 56

For ‘library of Christ’, compare Jerome, Letter 60, To Heliodorus, 10, PL 22, 595, CSEL 54, 561/18 (expressing a similar sentiment about Nepotian). 57

Jerome, Letter 53, To Paulinus, 3, PL 22, 542, CSEL 54, 448/10–12.

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could the holy apostles understand the resurrection of the Lord, until he opened their perception so that they might understand the Scriptures (Lk 24.45). But the first thing is to fear God and obey God. ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Ps 110.10).’ And: ‘You have desired wisdom: keep the commandments and the Lord will give her to you (Ecclus 1.33).’ ‘Wisdom seeks one who is humble and quiet and trembles at the word of God.’58 For swollen knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. 82 But wisdom, the mother of the humble, tramples on the necks of the proud and lofty (Ecclus 24.11).59 They err who forbid learning on account of the suspicion of pride, since the more learned someone is, the more humble they can be. For as Solomon attests: ‘whoever increases knowledge increases pain’ (Eccl 1.18), because he finds out what he should fear, to make him repress the character of arrogance. It is the same madness if they condemn continence, abstinence, vigils and other virtues, which are the matter of pride. Rather indeed let them learn through erudition how they can guard humility, the guard of all virtues, and trample on the barbarism of pride and the arrogance of those who are uneducated. We see the unlearned deride and despise the learned, and think ignorance of literature to be knowledge of the world and purity of life. Is it surprising if they neglect what they do not know, if they prefer what they do know, if being blind they despise those who see, if being ignorant of the cultivation of humility they are proud? Therefore allot fixed times to prayer and reading, or rather give your first and last attention to prayer, as if always seeking the face of the Lord. Amid darkness and lack of light, let the true light, Christ, be made to shine by prayer; in the helpful daylight, let a lamp be sought for your feet by reading the word of the Lord (Ps 118.105). When you weave anew the web of the psalter, sing as if you were in the sight of the angels, and as if you were singing the very words of the Saviour in the presence of the Lord of majesty himself. The Saviour Lord himself intercedes for us (Rom 8.34) through the dispensation of humanity60 in the sacrament of psalm-singing, and because our voice deserves to be heard by God only through his own mediation, we have him as an advocate with the Father (I Jn 2.1), praying for us his members as if for himself: ‘O God, deliver my soul, that is, my church, from the sword, and my only one, that is, my spouse, redeemed by my blood, from the power of the dog (Ps 21.21). Save me from the lion’s mouth (Ps 21.22), me, that is, my body, all my elect, of whom I am the head.’ I have taken this light from the smoke of fables, where in Homer Thetis is represented as having prayed thus for her son, Achilles: ‘Avenge me and my flesh’,61 that is: ‘my son’.

58

Isaiah 66. 2 (Septuagint version).

59

Compare a responsory for the Summer Histories, from Wisdom, CAO 6793.

60

Compare Augustine, On the Gospel of John, 23. 13, PL 35, 1591, CCSL 36, 242/12–13.

61

Baebius Italicus (?), Ilias Latina, ed. and trans. by Marco Scaffai (Bologna: Pàtron, 1982), 89–90, pp. 90–91.

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Therefore, stand in the presence of the Lord to sing psalms in such a way that mind is in harmony with voice, following the teaching of our father Benedict.62 Run through the psalms, as you sing them with an upright heart (Ps 118.7); but where you come to an expression of greater feeling, such as is: ‘O Lord your name in eternity’, and ‘your memorial’ (Ps 134.13), by which you handed yourself over for us, and ‘Bless the Lord, my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name’ (Ps 102.1), and others of this kind, such that you are held by them with celestial love, there, feeling remorse by divine providence, you should pause, with long sighs. As St Gregory teaches us to sigh with frequent repetitions in offering words: ‘That it may see good, that it may see good, good, 83 good’,63 those inestimable things, so pour out your soul to the Lord in high desire and sigh. And may it suffice for you to seek all things with one phrase from your inmost heart: ‘Let your mercies come to me and I will live (Ps 118.77). Let my soul live and it will praise you (Ps 118.175).’ And for someone who is your friend: ‘Deal with your servant, Lord, according to your mercy (Ps 118.124).’ Say more things from your heart and from desires to which you give voice. The holy day of redemption Consecrate all hours to the sufferings of Christ. In the middle of the night reverence him as he was captured and imprisoned, in the morning as he was flagellated, at terce as he was handed over to the cross; by calling out: ‘Let him be crucified’ (Mt 27.23), they crucified him with their tongues. At sext reverence him as he was hung on the cross, at nones as he died, at vespers as he was buried. Again from early dawn, and as the morning star rises, with matutinal praise greet the resurrection of the Lord, at terce the coming of the Holy Spirit, at sext the Lord in the sixth age of the world visiting us, sitting at the fountain, consecrating baptism for us, at nones his ascension to heaven, so that as all the hours passed, by the divine ordination by which he was abased in death, he was glorified in his ascension. And see the order of the Lord’s disposition, which was prescribed before the ages. On the sixth day man was created; on the sixth day he was redeemed.64 On the sixth day the redeemer was conceived, and on the same day he died and was buried. On a Sunday he was born; on a Sunday he was raised again to life. He came forth then from an enclosed womb, now from a sealed tomb. I have heard from a certain monk, who is not unlearned, that when that virgin, unique among all, who was going to give birth to God, rose according to holy 62 63

Benedict, Rule, 19, PL 66, 476A.

Compare verse 4 of offertory, week XXI after the octave of Pentecost, Liber antiphonarius, PL 78, 720C. Goscelin’s quotation is taken directly from Job 7. 7, et non revertetur oculus meus ut videat bona, ‘and my eye shall not return to see good things’, but in the sense he follows the adaptation of the verse for the offertory: Quoniam, quoniam, quoniam non revertetur oculus meus, ut videam bona, ut videam bona (ut videam bona is repeated another seven times): ‘since my eye shall not return, may I see good things, may I see good things.’

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custom in the middle of the night (to sing) divine hymns, and as she rose sang a song of ascents, at this verse when she said: ‘May the Lord keep your coming-in and going-out’ (Ps 120.8), the archangel Gabriel entered with celestial splendour, so that the virgin seemed to receive him with such greeting, and indeed also that one whose birth from her the messenger was announcing, whose coming-in at his conception and going-out at his birth would be, he said, in the Lord’s keeping, and thus with her spirit rejoicing in God her Saviour (Lk 1.47) at the angel’s message, she entered the synagogue with the song of the following psalm: ‘I rejoiced at the things that were said to me: We shall go into the house of the Lord (Ps 121.1).’ Note also that in the middle of the day, 84 when the sun was occupying the middle of the sky, that true sun,65 from whose injury the material sun fled darkened, was suspended on the balance of the cross,66 namely in the centre of heaven and in the middle of the earth, he who made the heaven holy with his head, the earth with his feet, and the sides of the world with the embrace of his arms. For as David says, the place of the Lord’s passion is reckoned in the middle of the earth: ‘But God is our king before ages: he has wrought salvation in the midst of the earth (Ps 73.12).’ It is said also that on the same day of the conception and the passion, in the same month, will be the day of judgement; whence it is written: ‘My husband is not at home; he has gone on a long journey’ to heaven; ‘on the day of the full moon’, which is the church of all the elect made perfect, ‘he will return’ (Prv 7.19–20) for judgement. With what great reverence, therefore, is this day of redemption to be observed, which knows the redeemer and is the herald of the judge. So I exhort you, whatever you do on other days, to observe this day with the highest devotion in prayers and weeping, and with a contrite heart give over especially that time from sext to nones, as if to the Lord hanging on the cross. Someone very humble, who was formerly most devoted to you, chose, according as the Lord had appointed in that hour of salvation, to repeat often these five psalms67 for the five wounds of hands, feet and side, with prostrations: ‘O God, my God, look on me’ (Ps 21.2) up to ‘The Lord is my light (Ps 26.1)’. And so, after the Lord’s prayer, he worships his birth, temptation, crucifixion, death and burial, his descent into hell, his rising from the dead, his ascent to heaven, his sitting on the right hand of the Father and his future coming from there as a judge.68 I have read in a book of miracles that the very holy glory of Tours, Martin, prayed at the tomb of the blessed virgin Vitaliana, when she had been recently buried, and addressed her thus with a holy greeting: ‘How are you, blessed virgin? Have you come yet before 64

That is, on Friday.

65

Compare Cyprian, On the Lord’s Prayer, 35, PL 4, 542A, CCSL 3A, 112/661.

66

Compare Author uncertain (Augustine?), Sermon 153, 1, PL 39, 2042, now attributed to Eusebius ‘Gallicanus’, Sermones extravagantes, 5, CCSL 101B, 853/5. 67

Psalms 21–25 (22–26).

68

Compare the Nicene Creed.

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the face of the Lord, and have you seen Christ, your spouse in glory?’ With a sudden utterance she responded thus to him from the grave: ‘No, most holy father, for this guilt alone stands in the way, that I used to wash my head on Fridays, not celebrating the memorial of the Lord’s passion with due reverence.’ Then St Martin said to his followers: ‘What shall we sinners do, if such a holy soul is kept away from the glory of the Lord’s face for such a light offence? For who understands sins? (Ps 18.13)’ But when he had offered acceptable sacrifices to God on her behalf, afterwards he returned to her place of sleeping and said exultantly: ‘Rejoice, blessed virgin, that now after three days you will see the Lord for eternity.’ When he had said this, after three days St Vitaliana shone forth in miracles, by which she declared herself that she had reached the face and grace of the Lord.69 O how true is that truth that is attested in the Gospel: ‘The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, is not the God of the dead, but of the living. 85 For all live to him (Lk 20.37–38).’ Read in the life of St John of Alms how much faith and perseverance deserve also. A certain poor woman wanted to confess her sins to this patriarch, but she could not in any way, because shame had obstructed her whole mouth. Then the bishop said: ‘Are you able to write and seal it and to entrust it to me to keep it without opening it?’ And she said: ‘Father, I can do this, and I can trust you not to read it.’ She went away, wrote it, sealed it and placed it in the very faithful hands of her protector. No long time afterwards the bishop went to the Lord, and while heaven held his spirit, a sepulchre received his body. The woman ran there in a frenzy, but she could not find where to seek what she had deposited with him. She feared that she was now known to all, where she could find nobody who knew of it. Woman, why do you tremble? Even if a contradictory mind deceives you, the sincerity of John will never deceive you. Take breath and endure, so that your great faith may find what it seeks. So for three days continually she prostrated herself at the grave of the saint, demanding with infinite cries and laments what she had entrusted to him. On the third day towards evening, when she had collapsed with her limbs worn out by vigils and fasting, behold she saw plainly and with her own eyes St John, and with him two bishops, between whom he was lying, together leaving their graves with episcopal staffs and clothing, and he was speaking to her thus: ‘Why do you disturb us, woman, with your laments, and do not spare at least these brothers of mine with your weeping? Now we are inundated with your tears.’ And offering the sealed tablets: ‘Do you recognize these?’ he said. ‘They have been preserved exactly as you entrusted them to me. Unseal them and read them.’ She recognized them, snatched them, unsealed them, opened them and found all her sins erased and only this writing: ‘On account of my servant John, your sin is forgiven.’

69

See Gregory of Tours, Book of the Glory of the Confessors, 5, PL 71, 833–34B. The saint is named there as Vitalina.

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And having been soothingly consoled by these things, she saw them re-enter their graves together.70 She deserved such things by perseverance, and Mary, by persevering, deserved to be first to see the risen Lord. The life of Basil the Great also hands down something similar, where a woman who had written down her sins found after the death of the saint when she received back the tablets that they had been erased by divine providence.71 The riches of the creator of the universe But further, so that you do not fail in the poverty and solitude of Christ, wonder at the great works of the Lord and the riches of things. Why need I say how huge the whole world is, when we, all the human race, possess scarcely a fifth part of all of it? The two outermost circles are uninhabitable from cold; the middle puts all to flight with burning heat; (only) the two regions in between are habitable, because of a balance of heat and cold. We earthly living beings dwell only in one, for who could cross through the torrid zone to the other? So here we human beings, the whole population of the world, are a fifth part 86 of the whole mass. Here are all living beings, all multitudes of nations, immense seas, innumerable rivers, very vast areas of the lands without inhabitants, mountains, valleys, crags, rocks, impassable heights and depths, infinite extents of woods, cornfields, plains, pastures, shores and banks, and multitudes of buildings, cultivated fields and (works of) all the arts; for of course dwellings are gathered all together especially in the fifth region, and yet that part extends so far, that it is never constricted by any quantity of citizens and things. When this circle is so great in part, how great shall it be reckoned as a whole? If this little portion that is your cell were compared to the whole magnitude of this, what would something so small be to something so immense? But when all the immensity of lands is compared with the heavenly sphere, how much smaller it will seem in relation to that home of the stars, than your cave seems in relation to this very kingdom of lands. And indeed the globe of the sun, which flies across heaven and earth between them with incalculable speed, is determined as being far greater than the whole mass of lands, although to us on earth it seems able to be measured with the palm of the hand. What will be the limit of the ether as a whole, when the eye, which is larger than all the earth, appears so small? But the single stars are thought to be bigger (to put it thus) than all Europe, which is reckoned as a third part of our world. So when one considers the heavens, what are earthly kingdoms but caves of mice and a cause of laughter at those who wish to rule in them? What are the tops of cities, of castles and of buildings, but ditches, lumps of earth and dusty mounds of moles? These and all the constructions of human presumption are less to angelic majesty than the 70

The Life of St John of Alms, 51, Lives of the Fathers, I, PL 73, 380D–82B.

71

The Life of St Basil, 10, Lives of the Fathers, I, PL 73, 307B–309C.

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struggles of bees, ants and minute insects are to us. Where, I ask, shall man, a worm, hide himself from the Creator, when he by his feeble pride displeases the higher creation so much, that those whom they considered worthy to be (fellow) citizens for their humility, they execrate in their pride? Hence Isaiah, seeing the Lord face to face, confounds earthly pride from such vainglory: he says: ‘All nations are before him as if they have no being at all, and are counted to him as nothing, or as a little dust or a drop in a bucket (Is 40.15, 17).’ The interpreter of Isaiah, Jerome, expounds this passage by saying that all nations of the whole human race, compared to the multitude of angels, are like a drop in a bucket.72 But the Creator of things, who made all things and all matter from nothing, fashioned man from the matter contemptible to the highest spirits and made him in his own image, and having become one of our race he ennobled us to such a degree, that he made us the price of his blood. The number of tongues among men is recorded for us as seventy-two, by the number of the disciples of Christ (Lk 10.1). But among these are counted more than seventy thousand peoples and nations. In India alone we read that five thousand great cities and nine thousand peoples exist. But many nations are known to belong to one tongue, as Athens, Mycenae, Thebes, the Grai, the Argives, the Argolici, the Achaeans, the Danai, the Myrmidons, the Dolopes, the Cecropidae, the Inachians, Corinthians and Galatians73 to the Greeks; as the Franks, Genevans,74 those from the Auvergne, those of Bourges, the Normans, those from Le Mans, Angevins, Poitevins, Basques and Barzellones75 to the Gauls; as the Alemanni, those from Bayern, the East Franks, Danes, Saxons, Thuringians, Lotharingians, those of Brabant, 87 the Flemish, and the Angles to the Germans, and very many other peoples to still others. So from such great harvest, which is indeed compared with a drop in a bucket or a little dust with reference to the supernal multitude, huge sheaves are gathered from the world into the heavenly storehouses, because much fruit has been borne by the grain of wheat, Christ, falling on the earth in death (Jn 12.24–25). Thence the incomparable army of nine orders of angels is made up, and as those born on the earth ascend to the place whence the heavenly spirits had fallen, the tenth order is restored with men. For from the first man until the end of the age, as much before the flood as after it, under the patriarchs, under the law of Moses, under the prophets, under the grace of Christian seed, always the heavenly population is increased and multiplied, and the multitude that ascends to 72

Commentary on Isaiah, XI (40. 15), PL 24, 407A, CCSL 73, 461/69–75.

73

Athens, Mycenae and Thebes are cities of Greece. Grai is a poetic name for the Greeks generally, and the names from ‘the Argives’ to ‘the Inachians’ are poetic names for peoples among the Greeks (as well as the Greeks generally). The Corinthians and Galatians are the peoples of Paul’s letters. 74

Or possibly those from Aix-le-Bains. Geneva was known as Allobrogum colonia and Aix-le-Bains as Allobrogum aquae. 75

We have not been able to identify this people.

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that place will be, it is hoped, as much purer than those who fell, as the redeemer knows how to repair the losses to his kingdom more sublimely. John says in the Apocalypse: ‘I saw a great multitude, which no one could number, of all nations, and tribes, and peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne, in sight of the Lamb, clothed with white robes’ of celebration and eternal joy ‘and palms in their hands’ (Rv 7.9) of victories. Who then would be able to imagine how vast these visible palaces of heaven and earth are, how various and how innumerable in their glory these perceptible works of God are? If, therefore, these things, which are destined to pass away in transience, are so great, how great and how far above all height of visible things and how surpassing all understanding are those things that the eye has not seen and the ear has not heard, and which have not risen in the heart of man, which God has prepared for those who love him (I Cor 2.9), and which you, God, in your sweetness have provided for the poor (Ps 67.11)? How many are the dwellings in the house of Christ’s father (Jn 14.2)? How distinct and joined are the orders and rewards of the patriarchs, the prophets, apostles, martyrs, confessors, virgins, widows and all the elect? How far is it from men to angels, from angels to archangels, from archangels to thrones, from thrones to dominations, from dominations to principalities, from principalities to powers, from powers to virtues, from virtues to cherubim, from cherubim to seraphim, and from there to the king himself, the Lord, the emperor, the augustus of all, pre-eminent over all his creation without end, ruling justly, affectionately, kindly, helping all, filling all, holding the heights and depths in equilibrium with his boundaries, and offering himself very sufficiently to small and great for ever and ever? And although the individual members are distributed to their rewards and places, from the lowest to the most excellent there is one kingdom of perpetual love and concord, one city, people, house, church, spouse, one body and soul, that is, one consonance of eternal love among all. For just as there is one bread from many grains of wheat, one robe from many threads, one temple from many stones, one body from many members, so there is one building of the court of God from many. 88 Therefore, O most beloved one, do not faint from poverty in the service of Christ, who fills the heavens and the earth with such great abundance, who is richly possessed of such a great household of servants. Do not think yourself to be solitary, you who have the company of such a great multitude of heavenly fellow-citizens. Let the regular enjoyment of such great pleasures shut out slumber, torpor, sorrow, disgust. Do not regret that you have contemned these contemptible things, which idolaters, and even those who are contemptuous of our God, have been able to contemn. Think it shame that their vanity should have been more patient of toils than the faith of the soldiers of Christ, to whom the kingdom is promised. Consult holy father Benedict as to how small all things are in the contemplation of the Creator, which seem very great to us. This whole heaven and earth, and whatever is in them, he saw gathered together; sun, stars, seas, peoples, cities, kingdoms, divine grace showed all things to his eyes, just as if he were saying something such as this: ‘Look how small these things are that you have contemned for me, compared

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with the greatness of the rewards that I have provided for you, which now you see in part and in darkness, but then you will see face to face, when you have come to that perfection (I Cor 13.10, 12).’ Hence St Gregory, as a witness of this contemplation, says: ‘For the soul seeing God, every created thing is small.’76 His dialogue itself will teach you better. But O, how large his heart had been made, who saw such great things as small! Not for him now was the path to life narrow (Mt 7.14), as he ran by the path of Christ to the life of Christ (Jn 14.6).77 He says: ‘I have run the way of your commandments, when you made large my heart (Ps 118.32).’ Count all your life as one day with eternity, saying with the Psalmist: ‘You are God my Saviour, and I have waited on you all the day (Ps 24.5) of my wanderings.’ Do not abandon the road as long, by which the way is opened for you to an eternal homeland. Let every finite thing be short (for you), as you make your way to the infinite. Do not let the multitude of the enemy frighten you: ‘for more are with us than against us’ (IV Kgs 6.16), by apostolic witness. When Elijah was prophesying and revealing hostile ambushes, and the king of Syria with his great army sought him to kill him, Elijah asked God to open the eyes of his servant, who was fearful, and he saw that all around the mountains were filled far and wide with divine chariots and horses, so that he knew that Elijah could not fear even a great host, for he was defended by a greater multitude (IV Kgs 6.17). Do not think yourself to be constrained by place. They are more greatly constrained who have no place on the vast sea of the world where they may escape the waves of storms, and the dove of Noah did not have anywhere outside the ark where she could betake herself,78 and the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head (Mt 8.20; Lk 9.58). In every tribulation, it is great rest for the soul to have a place and abode of certainty. The daughter of Zion lived among the nations and did not find rest (Lam 1.3); but the Lord our God will lead those hoping in him to a place of certainty. Aeneas, after long wanderings and uncertain settlements on lands and seas, at last found a certain home for his needs; he founded a city, but from the perils of the seas he entered the dire perils of wars. ‘Is that the certain rest from your toils?’79 89 Clearly, in comparison with instability, there was rest in a war for a place to stand still, where he might hope now even for a grave for his weary bones. But he is tossed by all the waves, who has nowhere that he may fix his foot. Therefore, dearest one, you owe untiring thanks to the ineffable mercy of the Lord, because he, who is powerful, has done great things for you (Lk 1.49); he has heard your desire and has given a house of refuge to himself, where no one could have hoped, and he has brought you hence into his bedchamber. Now, hoping in the Lord, you will be able to resist weakness, and live secure, and die more secure, and 76

Gregory, Life of St Benedict, Dialogues, II. 35, PL 66, 199A, 200A.

77

Compare Author uncertain, On Visiting the Sick, I. 2, PL 40, 1148.

78

Compare Odo of Cluny, Life of St Gerald, II. 16, PL 133, 679C.

79

Aeneid, III. 393, VIII. 46 (in some manuscripts only).

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every day dying to the world and living for God, you will now be able not to fear death, which is an object of fear like the pit of hell to those who are unprepared, but to desire it as rest and the entry to life. I did well, when formerly you were wavering, to encourage you amid your sighs with this verse, and to respond with it in writing, so that you would consider it more carefully: ‘Expect the Lord, act manfully, and let your heart take courage, and wait for the Lord (Ps 26.14).’ Now he has looked on you; now he has visited you; now he has come to you in a better way than you were expecting; only act so that the grace that he has given may not be empty in you. With how much more confidence, patience and long-suffering you will wait until, when he comes with the reward for labours and long hunger, your desires are satisfied amid the good things of Jerusalem, when you have been led out into Zion from this prison-house. Job says: ‘Who has sent out the wild ass free (Jb 39.5)?’ The wild ass is the donkey of the forest, in which the anchorite is signified.80 The Lord sends out the wild ass free when he releases the soul from external cares, calling it to the freedom of contemplation of himself, saying to those he has freed: ‘Be still and see that I am God (Ps 45.11).’ How many, either in monasteries or in the world, sigh after this part, to whom the defender of Mary seems to say: ‘Martha, Martha, you are troubled about many things: you about many things, Mary about one. For one thing is necessary, that you come from many things to one person, in whom all things are, because Mary has chosen the best part (Lk 10.41–42).’ Now if you suffer adversity, if weariness possesses you, recover always with the hope of better things, because by adversity strength is exercized for achievements, so that the success of victory may follow. We have passed through fire and water and you have brought us out into refreshment (Ps 65.12). Faint hearts usually grow heavier as the evening and the night come on, and in the morning light are refreshed, as if renewed after the darkness. Darkness must be endured with the hope of light. Job says: ‘And after darkness I hope for light again (Jb 17.12).’ In the evening weeping will have place, and in the morning joy (Ps 29.6). Evening is the failing light of this life and morning eternal brightness. Day follows night, summer winter, calmness the storm, Easter Lent, joy sadness. The earth, having been struck with ice, snow, hail, rainstorms and all the harshness of winter, suddenly bursts forth in foliage, in flowers, in shoots, in the birth of all things and flourishing crops, 90 in all the joy of human felicity. So temporary straits give birth to eternal rejoicing, as on the other hand joys that will pass away beget eternal laments. Therefore persevere in the Lord and be strengthened, and, if it can be done, take up the daily provision of heavenly sustenance, to lighten the struggles of the earthly journey, so that your soul, abiding in the salvation of the Lord, cannot fail, for he himself, the bread of life, says: ‘The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him (Jn 6.57).’ Seek this bread of life, this bread of the angels 80

Compare Eucherius of Lyon, Liber formularum spiritalis intelligentiae, PL 50, 751D– 52A (5), CSEL 31, 26/7 (4).

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(Ps 77.25), every day. ‘Give us today our daily bread (Lk 11.3).’ The great sacrament (Eph 5.32): just as the one who joins with a prostitute is made one body (with her), so the one who joins with the Lord is made one spirit (I Cor 6.16–17). And the one who

partakes of the body and blood of the Lord, what does he do but be incorporated in the Lord, so that he is joined not only in the spirit, but also in the body? For just as Eve was made from the side of Adam, so the church has been redeemed and has grown from the side of Christ.81 And by taking his body into itself, it also becomes itself the body of Christ by an inseparable mixing. ‘He says: “And they will be two in one flesh (I Cor 6.16).”’ Thus now they are not two, but one flesh (Mt 19.6). See, dearest one, how necessary it is for us to live purely and chastely, in order to participate in such great mysteries. The precious teacher and martyr Cyprian praises daily communion: ‘so that I’, he says, ‘who sin daily, may seek the remedy daily.’82 Others approach more rarely, according to their faith and reverence. But you, according to what the Lord allots you, see that you are refreshed more frequently by this quickening food, which is so perfect83 that, as we read about manna, he who takes less does not have less, nor does he who takes more amply have more (Ex 16.18), but he alone gets more benefit, who takes with more devoted faith and sincerity. For if the corruptible body flourishes again with daily sustenance, how much more greatly will the soul flourish again from angelic bread, and will even the flesh (Ps 27.7) of one who takes it flourish again with the vigour of modesty?84 The Lord says: ‘Behold, I stand at the gate and knock; if anyone opens the door to me, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with me (Rv 3.20).’ With such food you will have Christ, with the holy angels, as your dinner-companion, and not wandering in the outside world in your thoughts, but in the company of the Lord intent on your own world, you will not now be solitary, nor will you suffer mortal tedium, but in the fortitude of heavenly food (III Kings 19.8) you will pass joyfully to the feast of eternal peace. The third little book of exhortations ends. 91

81

Compare Author uncertain (Jerome?), Exposition of the Four Gospels: Matthew, PL 30, 557C; Author uncertain (Augustine?), Sermon 231, 1, PL 39, 2171. 82

See Cyprian, On the Lord’s Prayer, 12, PL 4, 527A, CCSL 3A, 96/200–202.

83

Text uncertain: this seems to be the sense required.

84

Compare Breviarium Gothicum, prayer at nones, second Sunday of Lent, PL 86, 340D; Liber sacramentorum, prayer after communion from mass against temptation of flesh, 5, PL 101, 453C; prayer from an eleventh-century mass against temptation of the flesh, PL 151, 940D.

Goscelin’s Liber confortatorius Book IV On humility Your streets, Jerusalem, are paved with pure gold and clear glass (Rv 21.21). So says the witness of the divine mysteries, John, in his book of theology. The pure gold tested in the furnace of poverty1 and patience and the clear glass of a pure mind light up the streets they pave, so that by them humility, after Egypt and deserts, and the trampling down of her enemies, may run the way of God’s commandments, and may rise to the city of heavenly peace with heart enlarged (Ps 118.32), where both walls of gold and turrets of gems rise above the stars from a humble foundation. To this place, O special soul, I wish you to be led through the streets of humility, and although I know that in your devoted conscience you are zealous of your own accord for lowliness, and say in supplication: ‘My soul has cleaved to the pavement; revive me according to your word, O Lord’ (Ps 118.25), yet I take care to make you cautious against the hazard of human fickleness. For because we are vessels of clay, we are impatient of the blessings of God, and we are the more ready to slip into insolence from our small estimation of his good, the more we are unaccustomed to virtues; and this is robbery, that we claim the credit for the free gifts of God for ourselves. For just as we do not subsist from our own resources alone, so we have nothing from ourselves except sin. But the ignobility of the flesh and the unworthiness of our earthy corruption, being inflated with an unclean spirit of pride, has this quality, that the more mercifully it is punished by the Lord, the more insolently it is raised up. Wherefore we read on the contrary: ‘Whoever thinks himself to be something, although he is nothing, deceives himself (Gal 6.3).’ And thus pride is the occasion of all ruin. Whence David: ‘Let not the foot of pride come to me, and let not the hand of the sinner move me. There the workers of iniquity are fallen; they are cast out and could not stand (Ps 35.12–13).’ And: ‘When they were lifted up, you have cast them

1

Compare Isaiah 48. 10 (Septuagint version).

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down (Ps 72.18).’ Humility is the guardian of the virtues;2 whoever has lost it has lost the virtues, and he has given up his vineyard unguarded to plunderers (Mt 21.33–43, Mk 12.1–11, Lk 20.9–17). But when someone is beginning to live piously and is, so to speak, rising from his own land to the promised land, the impious Pharaoh, the king of the secular Egypt, is accustomed to pursue them. He mounts his chariot and incites his horses, that is, puffed-up souls, against such a one; he arms them with mockeries and rebukes, and with them he hurries to tread underfoot the growing crops. ‘Oh, how he prays, how he fasts, how he pays out alms, that now the servant of God, the holy one of God may leave us men, may go to heaven.’ So a certain scorner spoke, when he saw St Trudgaudus3 only as an adult study the alphabet for the first time; he said then: ‘I hope the toothache will strike me, when you know the psalter.’ And indeed the holy one learned the psalter within a year, and toothache attacked the attacker to the point of killing him. 92 But if the recruit of Christ persists in her determination, then that winding Leviathan (Is 27.1), that Prometheus4 transformable into all things, [ … ]5 whispers deceptive blandishments, so that he might (subvert) the mind that persecution had not broken, and the soul, which had been victor in the open field, might be killed inside the walls, as it were, of a good conscience: ‘Little one, you are blessed, you are a saint, you are very close to heaven.’ But on the other hand let the voice of the Lord be heard: ‘Daughter, those who call you blessed deceive you (Is 3.12).’ But the fact that this people welcomes you, O sweetest one, the fact that the affection of this very pious mother and all the sisters overflows on you, the fact that the dignity of fathers and bishops visits you, the fact that this blessed lady, who obtained this place for you, who followed Christ, and who is now more truly a very close companion, loves you and has affection for you, to whom may the Lord make the recompense of piety in the eternal kingdom—indeed I believe all these things to be the breath of God’s kindness, who, taking you up as an exile, brings consolation in all these things. So often he benefited even heathen kings themselves for his elect; so he has glorified Abraham, Isaac and Jacob under foreign princes, so Joseph under Pharaoh, so Daniel under Nebuchadnezzar or Darius, so the children of Israel under Cyrus, under Ahaesuerus, under Ptolemy, and with other tyrants their own captives, because the heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord (Prv 21.1), who has formed each single thing, and the Lord will give grace and glory to his own (Ps 83.12). How much more 2 Author uncertain, formerly ascribed to Rufinus, Commentary on 75 Psalms, Ps 74, 1, PL 21, 953C. 3

Talbot identifies him as the abbot of St Bertin, 996–1000, citing Gallia christiana, 493 (Trudgrandus).

III,

4

p.

Proteus seems more likely here, since by virtue of his transformative powers he became a type of Satan. See Augustine, City of God, X. 10, PL 41, 288, CCSL 47, 283/35–284/41. 5

per quos instigando seruiebat: we are unable to translate the text of Sloane 3103 here.

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mercifully the piety of the faithful of God, breathed from heaven, will refresh you! But when it has been necessary, the Lord has hardened Pharaoh’s heart (Ex 9.12); he has hardened it because he has not freed it from hardness, and he has turned their hearts to hate his people, and to deal deceitfully with his servants (Ps 104.25); he turned it so that they hated, because he did not turn it so that they loved, so that the elect might advance in faith by persecutions, and the persecutors perish. Therefore see to this, that there be no detraction from your devotion, that in the peace of Christ you establish yourself on a foundation of humility, and that amid either exterior or interior temptation you arm yourself with fortitude, and, lest you abuse the compassion of God, that the tricks of the enemy are always suspected. The top must be made firm from the bottom Therefore humility is both the foundation and the fortification of good works (I Tm 6.18–19). The wisdom of Solomon, intending to raise the top of the temple very high, sank down the foundations to very deep depths. And the Lord said in the Gospel: ‘The one who hears my words and does them, I will compare to a wise man building a house, who digs down deep, which house all the attack of storms cannot ever move, because it has been founded on firm rock (Mt 7.24–25; Lk 6.48).’ A lofty tree is raised from deep roots to the heights. Grains are broken for bread; grapes are pressed for wine; seed put underground springs into fruit. Rome was founded as the least of all cities; she advanced to be the greatest of all. The church came from a small beginning with twelve apostles and has spread to all the ends of the earth. By military action, Rome took possession of the citadel of the world; by the patience of the martyrs, the church subjugated both the world and Rome itself. 93 For by God’s disposition of all things, this earthly monarchy was prepared for the apostles and Christianity. So true it is that scarcity has grown into greatness, humility has transcended eminence, endurance has conquered the strong. Benedict, the teacher of the virtues, erects for you the twelve steps of humility.6 Now I will set out for you some arrangements of divine dispensation, which must be both feared by those who are whole and embraced by those who have been injured, on account of which no righteousness should presume, no guilt lack faith, no innocence is safe, no jetsam is abandoned to the waves. The one who created all things (Eph 3.9; Heb 3.4) rules all things justly and faithfully and, scrutinizing the affections and hearts of all (Ps 7.10; Jer 17.10; Rv 2.23), he distributes individually to individuals,7 and according to his true and hidden judgements, which from eternity provide for all things, he tests the various weights of various qualities and minds in his scales. Unmoved himself, he moves all things; unchanged himself, he changes all things, but he does not change his opinion or his counsel. Most tranquil himself, he disturbs and mixes all things; most stable, he turns and overturns all things; he gives 6

See Benedict, Rule, 7, PL 66, 371–76.

7

Compare Isidore of Seville, Sententiae, I. 15. 5, PL 83, 569B, CCSL 111, 53/24–25.

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now the highest greater weight than the lowest, now the lowest greater weight than the highest. He throws down those who are standing; he raises up those who have fallen; he afflicts the vigorous; he heals the broken; he weakens the strong, strengthens the weak, blames the righteous, justifies the wicked, brings the exalted low, raises up the humble. The virgin falls; the prostitute rises; the modest woman is dishonoured; the harlot is made pure. Why is this? So that no flesh shall glory in the sight of the Lord (I Cor 1.29) of majesty, and one who is nothing without the blessing of the Creator claims nothing for his own strength. He himself destroys and scatters, plucks out and tears down, so that he may build and plant (Jer 1.10). Many fall by the amazing dispensation of such a great Maker, either because they were proud or lest they should be proud and, having been raised from their condition, fall lower, or even so that they may rise more gloriously. For after the Fall of the first man, the redeemer raised up the human race so much higher than it had stood before the Fall, that that fault is justly called fortunate, which deserved the honour of such a great redeemer,8 through whom it triumphed in a nobler victory. He does well to destroy, who builds better. I, a mere little man, who only occupy the earth, usually disdain small buildings, and without resources as I am conceive great ideas, so that if I had been given the power, I would not suffer temples to stand, however respected, unless, namely, they were glorious in accordance with my wishes, magnificent, lofty, full of space and light and beauty. What will that very elegant architect of the eternal palace do, who builds his houses only with pure gold or silver tried in the furnace, and raises up the walls and towers of his Jerusalem with gems and precious stones? How much more readily will he overthrow useless and ruined things and things less worthy of himself, and will restore them to a fitting state for his glory, where his seat may be prepared, because what befits his house is holiness that will remain for length of days (Ps 92.5)? A master had ordered an unfruitful tree to be cut down; a stay of execution was requested, dung was sent, and from the richness of dung sterility was fertilized (Lk 13.6–8). So the good cultivator makes the neglectful soul grow rich from the dung of sins and bear fruit. So he turns our sins to arms of virtue for us, and from our evils makes health or remedy for us. 94 St Gregory asks, in the matter of the adultery and murder committed by David, why the omnipotent God subjects to such great disgrace those whom he has decided to glorify for eternal ages:9 clearly, so that they should be greatly humbled who will be greatly exalted, and the vileness of their abjection is the occasion of their sublimity. Peter said: ‘O Lord, why can I not follow you? I lay down my life for you (Jn 13.37).’ O the presumption of one who was a man! Will you come before him who came to redeem the world? Or will you redeem it when it is lost? If the 8

Compare Blessing of Paschal Candle, Holy Saturday, De liturgia gallicana III. 32, PL 72, 269C. 9

See Moralia in Job, XXXIII. 12 (25), PL 76, 688, CCSL 143B, 1694/94–98.

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redeemer had taken your advice that he should not die, neither you nor the world would have been redeemed. Why are you in haste, Peter?10 You will not lay down your life for the Lord unless he himself has first laid down his for you. Before that, you will know who you are, what you can do without that one who said: ‘Without me you can do nothing (Jn 15.5).’ Before that, you will deny him three times, a denier before you are a martyr. There are sick ones who consider themselves healthy, but the doctors see them to be in danger of death. Hence these words in the verse of St Augustine: ‘The sick man believed himself to be in health, but the doctor was feeling the pulse.’11 He therefore knows how each is ailing, what is harming each, what medicine he needs. What wonder if truth (Jn 14.6) has spoken truth and lying man (Ps 115.11; Rom 3.4) has fallen from his own place? Night came, and he who had presumed denied the one for whom he had promised to die so that he should not die, and the cock crowed and refuted the denier (Mt 26.69–75, Mk 14.66–72, Lk 22.55–62, Jn 18.15–18, 25–27). Thence the prince of the faith learned from his fall to stand more strongly, so that he could raise up others also, and on him the foundations of the church (Mt 16.18)12 might be made firm. Paul, after his rapture to the third heaven, was tested, but did not fall in temptation, and a sting of the flesh was given to him, an angel of Satan. Why? He says: ‘Lest the greatness of the revelations should exalt me (II Cor 12.2, 7).’ And the Lord, who says to his hearers: ‘Before you call me, I will say “Behold, I am here”’ (Is 58.9),13 when his very faithful martyr, who was carrying about in his body Christ’s sufferings also, asked in tribulation of spirit a third time, did not accede, but said: ‘My grace, Paul, is sufficient for you (II Cor 12.9). For I know what you seek, what you want, and I know what is better for you.’ This disease expels a greater disease; that weakness brings about health in you, for power is made perfect in weakness (II Cor 12.9). An antidote is made from snakes, which is called theriac. The bite of the snakes drives out even the deadly draughts, and in an amazing way the poison draws out the poison. So, in Paul, the poison of the sting drove out the poison of pride.14 Moreover, in the division of his graces he so shares out his gifts, that each may see in another what he may admire, in himself what may make him humble. John revered in Peter the rule of the apostles and of the church, Peter in John the privileges of virginity and the love of Christ. 95 The first called blessed him who loved the Lord more than the rest (Jn 21.15), the second, in turn, him who lay on the breast of the

10

Compare Augustine, On the Gospel of John, 66. 1, PL 35, 1810, CCSL 36, 493/11.

11

Compare Enarratio in Psalmum 140, 24, PL 37, 1831, CCSL 40, 2043/14–15.

12

Compare prayer for the Mass of Peter’s Chair, De liturgia gallicana, III. 20, PL 72, 256C.

13

Benedict, Rule, Prologue, PL 66, 217B.

14

Compare Augustine, Contra duas epistolas Pelagianorum, III. 18, PL 44, 601–602, CSEL 60, 507/28; Sermon 163, 8, PL 38, 893. Augustine is commenting on the passage from Corinthians previously cited.

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Lord (Jn 13.23, 25, 21.20), by the grace of a greater familiarity. John honoured the key-bearer of heaven, Peter the one drawing the gospel from the heart of Christ. One put before himself him who went after Christ by the cross (Jn 21.19), the other the grace of prerogative that spared him who was beloved (Jn 21.23). ‘So I will have him remain; you follow me (Jn 21.22).’ Paul admired Peter presiding over all; Peter admired Paul working more than all.15 One honoured him who was first; the other honoured him who was more learned. I have read also about the pious strife between John and Andrew, when John put before himself the one who was chosen earlier by the Lord, while Andrew put before himself the one who was loved more greatly by the Lord.16 And to speak briefly, the Lord made the denier a ruler, the persecutor a teacher,17 the tax-collector an evangelist,18 the prostitute his friend.19 Many possessed of innocence, integrity of life and the greatest fame for their gifts he has ennobled with the greatest humility also. Just as the proud note in others what they may despise, in themselves that in which they may take pride, so the purity of the humble, putting all the variety of virtues before itself, is put in the last place (Lk 14.10) in its own estimation. David, after he had overcome the lion and the bear, after he had laid low Goliath, as a fugitive from Saul compared himself to a flea. He remembered that he had been raised to the throne from among his sheep, and amid the great fame of his virtues, he humbled himself to such a degree before the majesty of God that he was despised by his wife as if he were one of the buffoons (II Kgs 6.20). When all the sick were healed by the shadow of Peter (Acts 5.15), he did not forget whence earlier he fell, how he rose from the nets to the apostolate. Whenever the Roman generals returned victorious, a crowd of people meeting them filled the earth with choirs, the stars with songs as they made triumph. As the victor triumphed in his golden chariot with vain glory, someone used to sit beside him to admonish him (and) at each expression of praise from the crowds he would disturb him by striking him with a golden rod. He would say: ‘Remember that you are a man and a beast.’20 Therefore it was brought about that he thought he could be conquered and made subject, just as he had conquered, lest human light-mindedness forget its condition, and by the tyranny of pride fall headlong. But it is said more purely to the Christian: ‘Remember that you are dust and you will return to dust (Gn 3.19).’ Man was created for freedom of his own will; from freedom he slipped into the vice of

15

Compare Life of St Isidore, 8, PL 82, 26C.

16

Compare Gregory of Tours, Life of Andrew, 20, CCSA 6, pp. 614–17.

17

Compare Author uncertain (Augustine?), Sermon 189, 1, PL 39, 2098.

18

Compare Gregory the Great, Homilies on the Gospels, II. 30. 8, PL 76, 1225D–26A, CCSL 141, 265/241–45. 19 20

Compare Author uncertain (Chrysostom?), In Pentecosten, I, Patrologia Graeca 52, 803.

See Tertullian, Apologeticus adversus gentes pro Christianis, 33, PL 1, 449A, CCSL 1, 143/15–144/17.

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arrogance and fell through himself, so that, lifted from abasement through his Creator, he should learn to stand. The reward of pride and the reward of humility But the foulness of earthly exaltation, in the sight of God on high, is always evident from its fall. Hence the Lord threatens, through the prophet, souls which abuse their condition of freedom. He says: ‘Because the daughters of Zion were haughty, and have walked with stretched-out necks, and wanton glances of their eyes, and clapped their hands, and moved in a stately tread with their feet, the Lord will make bald the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will strip their hair. In that day the Lord will take away the ornaments of shoes, 96 and little moons, and chains, and necklaces, and bracelets, and head-dresses, and anklets, and tablets, and scentbottles, and earrings, and rings, and jewels hanging on the forehead, and changes of apparel, and short cloaks, and fine linen, and pins, and looking-glasses, and lawns, and headbands, and fine veils. And instead of a sweet smell there shall be stench, and instead of a girdle, a cord, and instead of curled hair, baldness, and instead of a stomacher, hair-cloth. And her gates shall lament and mourn, and she shall sit desolate on the ground (Is 3.16–24, 26).’ All these things were fulfilled in the captivity of Jerusalem under King Nebuchadnezzar, as Judea migrated to Babylon. These things still happen generally when the daughters of Zion, that is, virginal souls, which by innocence and natural integrity were daughters, and were adorned and ordered with the beauty of purity, not bearing their felicity nor revering the majesty of the Creator, playing, clapping, moving with necks stretched out in a type of pride, fall headlong into the snare, and are shorn of their hair, when they lose their chastity and are stripped of the ornaments of virtues. For the feminine ornaments that the prophet numbers are the outward signs of virtues. Then there is, instead of the sweet smell of good estimation and reputation, the stench of ignominy and infamy, and the matter of pride is taken away, and bald, confused, and desolate she sits humbly on the ground, remembering that she is ashes, lamenting and mourning in place of empty joy. In her arrogance, she would have been punished by the Lord’s anger; now, better, when she is prostrate she is taken up by the Lord’s pity, which is better than life, so that he might console the unhappy and make the mourner rejoice, he who looks upon the humble (Ps 112.6) and does not despise the contrite and humble heart (Ps 50.19), and his place of rest is the humble and quiet and the one who fears him (Is 66.2), as he lifts up the poor from the dust (I Kgs 2.8) and raises the pauper from the dunghill (Ps 112.7). Concerning this captivity, Jeremiah also makes this lament among many: ‘The Lord has thrown down Jerusalem; he has thrown down all her walls (Lam 2.5). She is wonderfully cast down, not having a comforter (Lam 1.9). And from the daughter of Zion all her beauty is departed (Lam 1.6)’, etc. But the Lord will console Jerusalem, and all her destruction will be consoled (Is 51.3), and the destruction will be restored (Ez 36.10). Again, just as through Isaiah the Lord frightens her in her pride, so, when she is ruined, he consoles her in her humility. The Lord says: ‘Fear not, for you shall

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not be confounded nor blush, for you shall not be put to shame, because you shall forget the shame of your youth, and furthermore you shall remember no more the reproach of your widowhood. For he who made you shall rule over you, the Lord of Hosts is his name, and your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, shall be called the God of all the earth. For the Lord will call you as a woman forsaken and mourning in spirit, and as a wife cast off from her youth, said the Lord your God. In a moment of indignation I have hid my face from you for a little while, but with everlasting kindness I have had mercy on you. For the mountains shall be moved and the hills shall tremble; but my mercy shall not depart, and the covenant of my peace shall not be moved, said the Lord, who has mercy on you. O poor little one, tossed by a tempest without any comfort, behold I will lay 97 your stones in order and will lay your foundations with sapphires, and I will make your bulwarks of jasper and your gates of graven stones and all your borders of desirable stones (Is 54.4–6, 8, 10–12).’ So the grace of the Lord raises higher those who have been thrown down (Ps 145.8), having compassion after the punishment of the prostration of their pride. So the temple of Solomon after four hundred and thirty years was burned down to ashes by Nebuchadnezzar, which signifies modesty burned by the devil, but then after seventy years it was rebuilt much more magnificently (IV Kgs 25.9–18; II Chr 36.19; Ez 1). O pride, which overthrows such greatness! O humility, which guards such greatness or restores it! For that reason David, from royal pre-eminence, was willingly humbled as a little one: he says: ‘The Lord is the keeper of little ones; I was humbled, and he delivered me (Ps 114.6). Before I was humbled, I offended, having fallen from the windy chariot into the abyss that awaits pride, therefore I have kept your word (Ps 118.67), having learned by humility to go more cautiously. For that reason it is good for me, O Lord, that you have humbled me, so that I may learn your commandments (Ps 118.71), which are: “Unless you are converted and become like little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven”, and: “Whoever humbles himself like this little child is great in the kingdom of heaven (Mt 18.3–4).”’ Therefore whoever glories, let him glory in the Lord (I Cor 1.31), and let him be humbled in himself, because no one can receive anything, unless it has been given to them from heaven (Jn 3.27). The Lord says: ‘And no one can come to me, unless it has been given to them by my father (Jn 6.66).’ But if you have received, why do you glory as if you have not received it (I Cor 4.7), but as if you have the divine gift from yourself?21 No one can have what the Lord has not given; no one can preserve what the Lord has not preserved. Unless the Lord builds and unless the Lord guards what has been built, the builders labour in vain, and the guardians watch in vain (Ps 126.1). The good Lord has made all things good,22 and has done all things well (Mk 7.37), but good perishes for them for whom the giver has not preserved it. But he has given it 21 22

Compare Augustine, Enarratio in Psalmum 51, 17, PL 36, 611, CCSL 39, 636/9–10.

Compare Prosper of Aquitaine, Epigrammata, 102, PL 51, 530A; Leo the Great, Sermon 27, 6, PL 54, 221B, CCSL 138, 137/137.

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to all to be born as virgins; he has given perseverance (in virginity) to those for whom he has preserved it for the merit of humility. As he has anticipated all things from eternity, many, wanting to persevere, have not obtained it even by prayers, and many, not wanting, have been saved either by whips or by rule. Others, either by the ignorance of their age or the curiosity of Dinah (Gn 34.1–2), have run upon the bite of the serpent, but with the Lord’s healing have soon shaken off the poison, who are more able to be healed the more quickly they recover their senses. So some, seeking martyrdom, have not found it, while others, fleeing from it, have taken it on themselves. So man cannot become an angel, but, through the Creator who took human form, can be made a companion of the angels. 98 One who has not borne a persecutor is not called a martyr, but he takes part with martyrs, who has lived as a martyr. A widow is joined also with virgins23 if she has emulated virginal chastity, even after her loss. John Chrysostom, which is ‘golden mouth’, says: ‘The Lord found a shepherd and made a prophet (Am 7.14–15). He found a lute-player and made a king. He found a fisherman and made an apostle. He found a tax-collector and made an evangelist. He found a prostitute and made her equal with virgins.’24 Again, others have preserved virginity among all the persecutors of chastity, and quite amazingly have escaped intact from the very jaws of perdition. So the splendid Agnes, so the glorious Lucy, so the valiant Potamiana have taken the palm from the pit of the maw of lions and lechers. Potamiana, after all kinds of torments, was given over to a brothel, as we see in the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius.25 Young men, the devil’s bird-catchers, gather quickly for the prey. Basilides, who was in charge of the torturers, drove them back, zealous for the dignity of the virgin, as the Lord brought help to his loved one from her enemies themselves. The virgin, welcoming that very much, said: ‘Believe, Basilides, that you will not lose the reward for this service.’ Thus Potamiana, drenched with burning pitch, triumphed with the twin palms of virginity and martyrdom. After this, she appeared to Basilides in a vision and placed a crown on his head, with these words: ‘Christ says “Whoever receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive the reward of a prophet” (Mt 10.41); so you, having defended my chastity, shall share my crown.’ Soon, he was woken from sleep and from error; he confessed Christ and was even crowned by beheading. Here also it seems pious to remind you of what St Ambrose attests concerning the glory of virgins.26 But as I am without that book and without such worthy eloquence, I touch on such a worthy subject in an unpolished narrative. A certain virgin, for her faith in Christ, was destined for a brothel, since neither torturer nor butcher nor 23

Compare Author uncertain (Jerome?), Letter 9: To Paula and Eustochium, 17, PL 30, 141D–42A. 24

Compare Author uncertain (Chrysostom?), In Pentecosten, 1, Patrologia Graeca 52,

803. 25

Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, VI. 5.

26

On Virgins, II. 4, PL 16, 212C–216B.

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examiner pitied her enough to burn her, to tear her apart, to cut her down, nor did the executioner allow her to be killed in innocence, more merciful than to be violated, nor did the killer have that respect to snatch her from the ravisher. Groaning very deeply about this, she broke out in these laments: ‘Two crowns, Lord Jesus, were owed to me, one for virginity, one for martyrdom. If virginity must be exposed as the price of martyrdom, and one crown must be bought by the loss of the other, your liberating mercy will see to it, O Lord, on whose account this injury is prepared. Whatever must be borne for your holy name, it is certain that I will not be able to deny you, O Lord God, because in such a terrible choice between two very great evils, it is better to die in the body than in faith. But the enemy denies martyrdom, and prefers to destroy me by dishonour rather than the sword, prefers that I live as a harlot rather than die as a martyr. But it is for you, O Lord, both to preserve virginity and to give martyrdom. And if I am not worthy to be either your spouse or your martyr, I will remain even as your harlot in your confession.’ As she made such laments, they threw her into the brothel. A pig-like herd of debauchers grunted for her around about; the victim of the Lord stands inside, like a dove beset by ravens, like a lamb beset by wolves. 99 How much more grievously she feared defilement than torture! How much greater the danger to her chastity than to her life! O Lord, a helper in due time, in tribulation (Ps 9A.10)! A very young man still beardless, who surpassed the others in his still-soft beauty and in influence, than whom no one seemed more lustful, entered first as if to attack her. But the Lord was looking upon this man in his wolf’s form as a lamb, by whom he might preserve his lamb. Now he said: ‘Do not fear, my lady, I have come to save you, not to destroy you; only obey my advice. We are of the same age, stature and appearance; only let us exchange clothes, and be dressed, you as a man, I as a woman; so go out in my place and escape, while I remain in your place and deceive the fornicators. You will not be detected easily, because from such a place you will go out shamefacedly, with your head covered.’ By such a trick, the virgin escaped through the middle of her enemies. And when with the next fornicator that deception, that was so holy, was discovered, a cry was raised; the young man was dragged off to slaughter in the virgin’s clothes. The girl, clothed in a man’s garb and spirit, ran to meet them in their rage and called out, ‘Strike me, me. I am the one who is guilty of this deed: the innocent ought not to be punished for the guilty.’ On the other side the young man contended to be killed for the virgin, arguing that he was the deviser of this plan. In this struggle of goodwill, on their way to adorn the heavenly choir of virgins with their own roses and lilies, they were cut down together, sacrificed for Christ together. O in what inseparable love, in what blessed embraces they were then going to cling to one another in heaven eternally! Who, O gracious Jesus, glorious in your saints, will sing your praises worthily? She had feared being shipwrecked by wickedness: you have not only caused her to triumph gloriously without corruption, but you have given her also a companion of the same age and worth forever. Hence, as mediator of the two,

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you bind together each of them, joined most closely in your love, on your right and left hand. Blessed be your mercy forever. It is by humility that we must rise What more do you sigh for, you who are human? Is it not enough for you that you will be received by the grace of God and given as a citizen to the supernal homeland, unless you are also first in the order? Or are the riches of divine goodness not enough for your condition? Will you be indignant that you are human, and that you cannot receive the angelic nature, when Christ did not disdain to profess that he was the Son of Man, and feasted even with sinners? First go and compare your virtuousness with the tax-collectors who were evangelists. Tears for guilt will be more righteous than vaunting of righteousness. Or will you ascend above the height of the clouds, and will you be like the Most High (Is 14.14)? But ascend by descending, lest by ascending you fall. Be the image and similitude of the one who said: ‘Learn from me, because I am gentle and humble of heart (Mt 11.29).’ Is it your ambition to sit on the right hand or the left hand of Christ? This seat is not for ambition, but for love, which is not puffed up. Make yourself like those for whom preparations have been made by the father of Christ, not those whom at that time he refused when they advanced themselves above others (Mt 20.20–23). He said: ‘It is not for me 100 to give to the proud what has been prepared for the very humble. Therefore, whoever wishes to be first, must be last of all by his abjection of himself, so that he believes with his whole heart that he is inferior to all (Mt 20.26–27).’27 So the last will be first (Mt 20.16), because no one can be worthy of the fellowship of heaven, unless he has believed himself unworthy, as St Augustine writes.28 Winnoc, the renowned champion of God, was serving under my holy father Bertin, and when he was now very far advanced my father had put him at the head of brothers in a certain cell. And although he was distinguished for his royal pedigree, exalted in the purity of his modesty, worthy to be glorified for obedience, thrift and all sanctity, the Lord had given him such great grace of humility, as we read, that he believed himself less in value than all men. He used to turn the millstone with his own hands, and he used to work for all in this rustic duty, after the Lord, who had come to serve, not to be served (Mt 20.28). But by the will and favour of God, the millstone used to run by itself continually, and used to complete the labours of many, but he himself, as we sing, ‘fixed on heaven, holding up eyes and hands, was singing psalms and praying’.29 When someone covertly spied that out, the running wheel was stopped, and he was struck by blindness and a tremor of his whole body, but 27

See Benedict, Rule, 7, PL 66, 374A.

28

Compare Enarratio in Psalmum 18, 2. 3, PL 36, 159, CCSL 38, 107/26–37.

29

Response IV from the Office of St Winnoc, ed. by P. Bayart, ‘Les offices de Saint Winnoc et de Saint Oswald’, Annales du Comité Flamand de France, 35 (1926), 1–132, pp. 43–44.

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was healed by the mercy of that holy man, and the running of the millstone was restored.30 This grace was earned by the purity of humility, because God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble (Jas 4.6; I Pt 5.5). So if even his spouse grows insolent, she will not go unpunished. Immediately the spouse who took her up will be angry, and he will cast her from himself with fulminations like these: ‘Go away, go away after the footsteps of the flocks’ (Sg 1.7), after the extravagance of worldly things, ‘feed your goats’ (Sg 1.7), that is, the wanton delights of desire. The queen is thrown out of the bedchamber of the king, and the handmaiden is taken up. The righteous must fear, and the fallen must hope In the face of such great judgements and mercies of Him who rules above, let the innocent fear, the fallen be refreshed, the virgin be afraid, the married woman trust, the spouse beseech in supplication: ‘Cast me not away from your face, O Lord, and take not your Holy Spirit, that is, your love, from me’ (Ps 50.13), for the one who discerns the intentions of the heart and examines the marrow of the thoughts (Heb 4.12; Ps 7.10) brings one low and raises another, for in the hand of the Lord there is a cup of strong wine full of mixture (Ps 74.8–9). Humility alone, as it is fearful, thereby is safe under such a great examiner. 101 Let no one be puffed up; let no one be forsaken. Before the redeemer of all, we can all be saved by believing: both the righteous and the guilty, both celibate and married. Mary conceived him; Anna took him up; the virgin bore him; the widow carried him; of the married couple, Zacariah and Elizabeth, one prophesied of him, the other welcomed him at his conception with a blessing. I will say more: when he was now a mature man, now declared to be God by miracles, the prostitute took him, washed his feet with her tears, dried them with her hair, cherished them with her kisses (Lk 7.37–38), and in these feet, as she wept, dried, kissed, she pierced through all her sins, washed them away, blotted them out. At that the Pharisee, who deceived himself that he was righteous, was indignant, saying: ‘If this man were a prophet, he would know who and what kind of woman this is who touches him, that she is a sinner’ (Lk 7.39); but even she deserved to be praised, by preference, by her very kind protector, and to be put before pharisaical righteousness, because she was more ardently zealous to follow. The Lord said: ‘Many sins have been forgiven her, because she has loved much’ (Lk 7.47), because love covers a multitude of sins (I Pt 4.8). She was healed by the word of the Lord from all the wounds of her sins, she who had given herself over to him as a doctor (Mt 9.12), with a tax-collector in the Gospel as well (Mt 9.9, 10.3), while that one was ill,31 who had arrogated to himself the soundness of righteousness out of the malady 30

Life of St Winnoc, 24–25, in Passiones vitaeque sanctorum, Aevi Merovingici, ed. by B. Krusch and W. Levison, MGH, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, 5 (Hanover and Leipzig: Hahn, 1910), pp. 771–73. 31

The Pharisee, mentioned above.

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of an unsound mind. Then she advanced to such great grace and familiarity with the Lord32 that she cherished even his very sweet head with most pleasing ointments. Who will understand the mercies of the Lord (Ps 106.43)? Event worthy of wonder, worthy to be a spectacle not so much for humans as for all the celestial powers! The Baptist, than whom no greater has risen among those born of women (Mt 11.11), trembles, and does not dare to touch the holy head of God (Mt 3.14–15),33 and that sinful woman, whose touch the unclean Pharisees abhorred as if it were uncleanness, not only touches the feet of the Lord but also anoints his head with nard34 from the greater fragrance of her heart; she anoints him from full hands. She covers his hair with very sweet odours; she pours; she strokes; she pleases him; she combs; she arranges, and the sweetness spread out from the head of the Saviour and filled the whole house (Jn 12.3). O how great you are, O Lord, and how small,35 how powerful and how mild, how exalted and how humble!36 The most holy among men, your Baptist and more than prophet (Mt 11.9), does not dare to touch you, and an evil-doing woman dares to confidently! Dominations adore, powers and all the hierarchy of heaven tremble,37 and this head is embraced boldly by a mere prostitute! O Lord, so lofty over all, so gentle to the lowest! He, incomprehensible to the high, is comprehended by the lowest, and transcends the highest and condescends to the lowest, feels with them, yields to them. Nor did these hands, which had served for obscenity, stain the Lord of purity, but made entirely holy by the touch of him, who makes holy all things, she followed him in holy love, not now contaminated, but holy. And what wonder if the very devoted handmaid poured very pleasing ointment on that head, which the wicked struck with blood-stained hands and crowned with wounding thorns? Where was the holy one, where the righteous, where the innocent, where the virgin, where the beauty of the spotless life? 102 Behold, one who was the pit of seven demons (Mk 16.9; Lk 8.2), the lurking-place of that many chief vices with their armies, had the demons cast out and was made the sacred place of sevenfold grace,38 filled with the 32

Compare Odo of Cluny, Five Sermons: Sermon Magdalene, PL 133, 716C. 33

II,

On the Veneration of St Mary

Compare antiphon for the Octave of Epiphany, CAO 1552.

34

In accordance with the medieval tradition that identified the sinful woman of Luke 7. 37, Mary Magdalene and Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus as one and the same person, Goscelin conflates the Gospel accounts here: compare Matthew 26. 7; Mark 14. 3; John 11. 2; Rabanus Maurus, Commentary on Matthew, VIII, PL 107, 1100B (26. 2), CCSL 174A, 681/12– 15 (26.7). 35

Compare Augustine, Sermon 370, 3, PL 39, 1658.

36

Compare Augustine, Confessions, XI. 31 (41), PL 32, 826, CCSL 27, 216/20–21.

37

From the Sanctus in the Roman mass (for example, Liber sacramentorum, PL 78, 25B).

38

Compare Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, Preface, 8 (17), PL 75, 526C, CCSL 143,

22/9.

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spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord (Is 11.2–3). In dens in which dragons lived earlier, the verdure of the reed and bullrush sprang up (Is 35.7), so that when the devil had been expelled, the law of the Lord might be written by a divine pen in her purified heart, on which she might meditate day and night (Ps 1.2), with perseverance to bear fruit in its time (Ps 1.3), and upright rectitude, and, as discipline was diminished, the holiness of the Lord might grow green in her castigated body, and the flesh might flourish again (Ps 27.7) with the vigour of modesty.39 And when the filth of the enemy has been exterminated, let the habitation of God be adorned. When I first came to the bishop at Pottern or Canning as a very young man, when you were only a little girl, the lodging assigned to me was so deserted, dirty, filthy and fetid that it seemed to be a wallowing-place for pigs rather than a habitation of men. Although I did not say anything, I considered it unworthy, and I did not think I would be able to enter it. Suddenly, all the filth was cleared away; the dirty walls and ceilings were cleaned; it was made pleasant with leafy branches, green reeds and fragrant herbs; the walls and ceiling were covered with curtains and hangings and the benches with tapestries, and when all had been duly prepared, I was installed as a guest. I did not think it was the same house I had seen earlier. It differed as much from the earlier house as beauty does from ugliness, loveliness from repulsiveness, splendour from frightfulness, adornment from squalor, incense from stench. What I had recoiled from earlier, I loved; what I had fled from, I dwelled in willingly. Therefore, corruptible man hates deformity and loves things changed into beauty. Is it not much more likely that the omnipotent one will deign to inhabit what he has formed as an image of himself, or what, even when it has been defiled, he has reformed more worthily? When human beauty is fashioned from the trunk of a tree, this beautification is achieved by human genius; when the image of the divine is rendered from one who from impiety has been made holy, this change is achieved by the hand of God on high. Let him who does not believe that what has been made well can be remade better, take care that he does not detract from his Maker’s goodness.40 God is not a regarder of persons (Acts 10.34). Jew and Greek, Barbarian and Scythian, slave and free, virgin and prostitute are distinguished not by condition, nor person, but by the merits of faith, of love, of humility: and Christ is all and is in all (Col 3.11). Have you been called a slave? Care not for it, but even, if you are able, set

39

Compare Breviarium Gothicum, prayer at nones, second Sunday of Lent, PL 86, 340D; Liber sacramentorum, prayer after communion for mass against temptation of the flesh, 5, PL 101, 453C; prayer from an eleventh-century mass against temptation of the flesh, PL 151, 940D. 40

Compare Author uncertain (Augustine?), Sermon 153, 1, PL 39, 2042, now attributed to Eusebius ‘Gallicanus’, Sermones extravagantes, 5, CCSL 101B, 853/5–11.

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yourself free (I Cor 7.21): a slave, that is one serving in conjugal chains;41 free, that is one released from marriage. In that blessed kingdom of Christ and the saints there will be no sadness, no repentance, no penalty, no loss or reproach for past sins. David said: ‘So that my glory may sing to you, and I may not be pricked (Ps 29.13) by the thorn of conscience (Ps 31.4),42 receiving perfect joy.’ Nor will anyone desire more than he will have amid such plenitude of all good things,43 such satisfaction of all desires. Nor will it be possible for anything to be lacking even to the least among them all, because, although there will be different rewards of merits, yet everything belonging to individuals will belong to all, because just as one joining of members makes one body, 103 so one love will make what belongs to individuals belong to all. O if I should deserve to be the least at that feast, now I will not seek anything further, because I will possess all things with all, for God will be all in all (I Cor 15.28). Give me, O Lord, in the place of my lack of virtues the virtue of humility, so that I may presume from your beneficence what I cannot from my merits, that you will deign to enrol me together with the least among those who are yours. I truly have no merit, but that redemption of the world, of more value than the whole glory of the world, has very much more merit than that a sinner should be redeemed. Would that my sins may be weighed in the balance (Jb 6.2) of the cross with this victim worth more than all the value of the redemption;44 superabundant grace will outweigh my sins, although they are very great; that goodness will be greater than all wickedness. Satan with his accusation will be confounded and thrown out. And when he undertakes to accuse the guilty he will condemn himself, before that one who has not sinned and who has conquered our sin. The intervention of his benignity can forgive more than the world can sin. Therefore, O Lord, let me worship your cross, my redeemer; let me worship your mercy, my sustainer; let me fall at the feet of all your saints, so that those whom I cannot imitate by virtue, I may obtain as patrons for myself by veneration. With these exhortations, not polished, indeed, by art, but excellent in faith, I have laboured to construct for you, O very sweet pledge of my soul, a bulwark of all virtue. Humility itself is accompanied by hope,45 so that confident in fear, and fearful in hope, it remains always unshaken, that which neither the pleasant breeze may raise and toss about, nor the storm break and undermine. In everyone let that mercy 41

Compare Ambrose, Letter 42, 3, PL 16, 1124C; Augustine, De sancta virginitate, 54, PL 40, 428, CSEL 41, 300/9; City of God, I. 9. 2, PL 41, 22, CCSL 47, 9/52–53. 42

Compare Augustine, Enarratio II in Psalmum 31, 15, PL 36, 267, CCSL 38, 235/5–6.

43

Compare Author uncertain (Augustine?), Liber de cognitione verae vitae, PL 40, 1030.

44

Compare Author uncertain (Augustine?), Sermon 153, 1, PL 39, 2042, now attributed to Eusebius ‘Gallicanus’, Sermones extravagantes, 5, CCSL 101B, 853/5–6. 45

201.

Compare Prudentius, Psychomachia 199, 201, PL 60, 38A, 39A, CCSL 126, 158/199,

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of infinite kindness of the Lord be honoured and loved, as much in the case of those whom he has saved amazingly as in the case of those whom he has revived powerfully from a fall and has renewed to the youth of an eagle (Ps 102.5). If one to whom much is forgiven loves much, how much ought one to love for whom much is preserved! If you are tempted by the breeze of human favour, for the life of man on earth is temptation (Jb 7.1), whether in prosperity or in adversity, put your sins in the way, for no innocence lacks sins. For who understands sins? ‘Cleanse me from my secret sins, O Lord, and spare your servant from those of others, which ensnare me through flatterers, and let me be purified from the greatest sin of pride (Ps 18.13–14). O God, you know my folly, and my sins are not hidden from you. May those who wait for you, O Lord, not blush for me (Ps 68.6–7). Since I am able to see no heart except for my own, let me think that all others are better.’46 Just as in a fleet on the sea, or in a race at a race-course, now the one who was behind comes before the one who was ahead, now the one who was running ahead yields exhausted, so in the campaign of this life the one who is constantly overcome is victorious over the one who constantly overcomes, and the evening worker takes the rewards ahead of the one who had come in the morning (Mt 20.1–16). A wise man does not observe to whom he is preferred, but what sort of people are preferred to himself for their merits. When the temple of Solomon was built, no hammer, axe nor any iron tool was heard there, because, of course, the stones were hewed and cut beforehand (III Kgs 6.7). Think, then, that those who are now prepared through monastic discipline under another’s rule47 are stones to be set in the celestial building48 without the breaking of a second purgatory; think that you are a useless creature, fed by the alms of the world, and that you owe 104 prayers for all; yet you should not turn aside from the part of Mary. Once, you thought it unworthy to be called a nun; do not disdain now to be called an enclosed one, and the pauper of Christ, and the almswoman of Christ. But so that you have confidence in supernal goodness, not in your own constancy, just as I told above about innocence miraculously preserved, so read here about holiness undermined by temptation, made good by falling. What I tell, I have learned by song and report, not by reading.49 St Alexander was living as a solitary anchorite in a vast wood. Now he was great; now with his virtues he could reach heaven. The old serpent (Rv 12.9) looked on with malice, and see at what a long range he stretched out his snare to entangle the

46

Through his use of the feminine form serua (‘servant’), Goscelin indicates that these words are to be spoken by Eve. 47

Compare Sulpicius Severus, Dialogue I, 10, PL 20, 190B, CSEL 1, 162/4.

48

Compare Author uncertain (Bede?), Homily 65, PL 94, 437B.

49

The story that follows is a previously unnoticed example of the ‘hairy anchorite’ story.

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man.50 He stole secretly from her cradle by divine dispensation a squalling baby girl, the daughter, as the outcome established, of a provincial king, and, putting on the form of a monk, entrusted her to the hermit with the following story: ‘This is the daughter of my sister, who has been deprived of both parents, and I took her in out of compassion for her in her danger. For this reason I have anguish in my soul, that it is both irregular to keep her in the cloister under my abbot, and entirely impious to abandon her. You, in your fraternal holiness and famous solitude, are her sole refuge, (her only hope is) that you, out of pity, should act as her foster father and take and nurture her, until she is able to provide for herself.’ I shall be brief. He took her, brought her up, and when she was now old enough, debauched her and made her pregnant. As she bore the crime in her swelling womb, the devil, the author and inciter of evil, presented himself in his previous form, and asked how his charge was. The hermit, groaning very deeply from the suffering of his conscience, confessed his dire crime to the evil betrayer. And why delay with many words? The enemy, pretending to feel compassion for such a great calamity, persuaded that miserable man to commit a greater crime: he was famous for sanctity and advanced in age; nothing was worse than an elderly man who turned from his faith; if such foul disgrace were to burst upon the people, from the former odour of sanctity, immediately everything would be disturbed with uproar and scandals; the whole world would be armed with hatreds, detractions, curses, mockeries, and reproaches, not so much against him as against all holy men; everything holy would be cursed by all; he would be guilty of the perdition of many others, more than of his own crime; there remained for him one remedy, that by one evil he might extinguish so many evils: let him kill the unhappy woman, and bury her with the crime in the earth, away from the sight of heaven and all human notice; he could more easily be penitent and satisfy divine mercy, than human madness. After he, relying on that excellent teacher of perdition,51 had perpetrated everything, and had killed his spouse and buried her, then suddenly, with hair-raising shock, the seducer appeared and seized him, and trying to oppress him with this terror, said: ‘Ah, most evil of men, now you have become entirely mine; no one has obeyed my suggestions more cruelly. Well, lost one, was it not enough for you to have engaged in defilement, without also staining your brothel with blood?’ In terror the man called out to Christ, and the enemy, not bearing that great name, abandoned his prey and vanished, and the one whom he was intending to destroy by terror fled from terror to the Saviour. Casting himself on the ground, for three days continuously he overflowed with such violent tears that blood ran from the weeping. At last standing up, he had before his eyes an oak-tree, open and shining from within as if with a golden metal. He approached with the desire of trying it, and when he put 50

Compare Athanasius, Life of St Antony (Evagrius of Antioch’s translation), 20, in Lives of the Fathers, I, PL 73, 144D. 51

Compare Cyprian, Liber de zelo et livore, 4, PL 4, 641A, CCSL 3A, 77/63.

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both hands into it, the tree closed itself up and held the sinner against God bound. There, not to make a long story of it, for fifteen years he is said to have stood, 105 content with no other food or drink than the falling nuts and leaves, than the dew and rain gave. When the time of tribulation (Ps 36.39) had passed, and the time of supernal mercy came, it happened that King Gundofor, who was the father of the girl who was killed, was hunting in the same wood, and, wandering from the company of those who were with him, came to the place where the captive of the Lord was standing and had endured long days of summers and stormy nights of winters. At first the king was astonished, as if at something out of nature, but the old man, a loyal subject, reassured him in humble tones, and set out all the narrative of his life and of the deception, and showed with a nod the grave of the murdered woman. The king reckoned the years and did not doubt, from the agreement of time and the story, that it had been his daughter, whom he had lost as a baby. When he dug the woman up with a sword or a stake, he found a great miracle of supernal grace: for after so many years she shone forth all whole, as she had been when living. When the murderer saw it, he asked the king with great sorrow that he might obtain forgiveness for himself from his daughter. The father, praying, placed the rod of forgiveness in the uncorrupted fingers of his daughter; she, having taken it, cast it from her in the manner of forgiveness. At the same moment the oak, parting, set the captive free, and having been released from the guilt and the long grip, St Alexander sprang forth at liberty. In the same way the Lord first forgave the paralysed man in the gospel his sins, which had caused his sickness, then loosened the chains of bodily infirmity (Mt 9.2–8; Mk 2.3–12; Lk 5.18–26). So, whatever adversity we suffer, let us ask first that the debt of the penalty be remitted by the Lord, and so let the penalty be relaxed, and let outer salvation follow inner salvation. For one who has been desperate, salvation comes with greater grace, and the mercy of the Lord follows as much more copiously, as it follows more slowly. Blessed Alexander rejoiced that, from the crime of a corrupter and murderer, he had made the fruit of a martyr, and that she would triumph in heaven for him, in the inseparable bond of love. Therefore the king built on this spot a huge monastery; he adorned it with royal wealth; he distinguished it with a college of three hundred monks, and further he himself, having given up his throne, struggled for God in monastic sanctity in that same place. Therefore the holy hermit, the holy girl and the holy king are celebrated, and a very numerous fruit of the holy life was produced, and where the devil went about the perdition of one, Christ gained that very one too with many more. So the Lord makes his mercies marvellous (Ps 16.7), and shapes again his good from our evil.52 You, also, say with the Psalmist: ‘I will exult and rejoice in your mercy, O Lord (Ps 30.8), not in my own strength.’ The palm of victory over the vices and the inviolate crown of the virtues suffer greater wars of vainglory than the 52

Compare Alcuin, Letter 169, PL 100, 441A.

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sinner, whom the very cause of his humility oppresses. Good conscience is an enemy inside the walls and an internal dagger, and it is more greatly threatened because it does not know that God has more and better. But the prophet Elijah, who was worthy to be snatched up to the heavens in a fiery chariot (IV Kgs 2.11), when he thought himself to be the only worshipper of God, immediately heard from God: ‘I have left to me seven thousand men who have not bowed their knees before Baal (III Kgs 19.18).’ When St Antony, among most excellent matter for praise in his merits and signs of miracles, 106 judged himself to be the best or the first hermit in the world, he was ordered by a divine voice to seek Paul, whom he would find to be his predecessor and better than himself.53 Zozimas, a veteran in the war-service of Christ from infancy to his hundredth year, finally thinking that no one had lived more holily, no one had filled every rule of life more perfectly, received this response from heaven: ‘O Zozimas, indeed you have fought well, for a man; but never have you met with a greater contest than lately, in which you must struggle with a boastful conscience as with an inner enemy.’54 So by the heavenly command he left his monastic family,55 and he found the sinful woman, to whom he did not dare to compare himself as well as the world.56 What remains, O sweetest soul, but that, fired by examples, how many indeed more instructive, you trample the vanity of the world beneath your feet and you are snatched by eternal love to the eternal joys of Christ? Therefore coming here as the hart panting after the streams of water (Ps 41.2), pour out your heart like water in the sight of the Lord (Lam 2.19). Be like the watered garden of the Lord,57 whose waters do not fail (Is 58.11; Jer 31.12), from which the true gardener may make his young trees bud forth. Dig for yourself the wells of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Gn 21.25–32, 26.15–33, 29.2–11),58 throwing away the mass of earthly desire with all earthly hope, thinking always over past and future, the new and the old, purifying very carefully your inmost being, until you find the Lord, the vein of living waters (Jer 17.13), so that from the depths of your heart and from the abyss of heavenly desires, in all kinds of compunction59 you may make an aqueduct of tears, in which you may wash and whiten your clothing, and you may bless the Lord from the

53

See Jerome, Life of Paul the First Hermit, 7, PL 23, 22A–B.

54

See Paul of Naples, Life of Mary of Egypt, 2, PL 73, 674A–B.

55

Goscelin alludes to the reference in the Life of Mary of Egypt, 2 (see previous footnote) to Genesis 12. 1, where Abraham is told by God to leave his kindred (cognatione). 56

See Paul of Naples, Life of Mary of Egypt, 22, 24, PL 73, 687A–B, 688A.

57

Compare Bede, In cantica canticorum allegorica expositio, IV, PL 91, 1145, CCSL 119B, 263/748–264/775. 58

Compare Jerome, Commentary on Ezekiel, XIV, PL 25, 477C, CCSL 75, 722/1350–51; Blessing of a well, Sacramentarium gallicanum, PL 72, 571C. 59

Compare Gregory the Great, Dialogues, III. 34, PL 77, 299B–D, 300B–C.

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fountains of Israel (Ps 67.27), seeing God. For Israel is understood as ‘seeing God’.60 You will sigh with the daughter of Caleb, seeking the watered land (Jo 15.16–19; Jgs 1.12–15) from your heavenly father, so that he may give tears of compunction from the fountain of mercy,61 he who, from the rock that prefigured Christ (I Cor 10.4), produced a fountain of living water (Ex 17.6; Nm 20.7–11).62 You will say: ‘Will you feed us the bread of tears, and will you give us for our drink tears in measure (Ps 79.6)? And let my eyes shed tears night and day, and let them not cease (Jer 14.17).’ You have great matter for tears. Every worldly joy has been shut out; the crowd of your neighbours and friends has been put far away; you have been left to Christ as a ward, so that in him you may rejoice in being a fellow-citizen and companion of the holy angels. Hence, in a humble spirit and with a contrite heart (Dn 3.39), offer yourself as a sacrifice to God, because an afflicted spirit is a sacrifice to God (Ps 50.19). In a humble spirit and with a contrite heart, I say, serving the Lord in fear, and exulting to him with trembling, with all the sighs of desire pour out your heart to God your salvation, desire him in your very marrow, take hold of him, embrace him. Think how sweet he is, how pleasant, how kind, how meek, how mild, how yielding, how loveable, furthermore how beautiful, how rich, how delightful, how glorious, how lively, how agreeable, how joyful, how easily entreated, 107 and gladdening all things with his countenance, how full he is of an infinite treasury of all good things.63 In loving uniquely one so worthy of love conceive him, carry him, give birth to him, feed him. Let him deign in you from infancy to be born and to grow to the fullness of love. If, from humility, in the presence of his beauty you blush for your deformity, in loving him in his very great beauty you will be adorned. No woman of Ethiopia is so black, none so ugly, so foul, if she love him purely, that she does not draw grace and splendour from his beauty. When the Lord looked on Moses, his face became horned from splendour, with rays shining all around as from the sun. Moreover, himself surpassing human grace in beauty, he had as a type of Christ and the church an Ethiopian as his wife (Ex 2.15–21; Nm 12.1),64 a queen of Ethiopia,

60 Compare Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah, VIII, PL 24, 285B, CCSL 73, 320/34–35; Augustine, Enarratio in Psalmum 49, 14, PL 36, 575, CCSL 38, 587/12; City of God, XVI. 39, PL 41, 518, CCSL 48, 545/9–10. 61

Compare Gregory the Great, Homilies on Ezechiel, I. 2. 19, II. 8. 21, PL 76, 804A, 1040B–

C, CCSL 142, 28/379, 352/589–95. 62

Compare responsory for Matins of St Vaast, CAO 7476; Alcuin, Life of St Vaast, 2 (11), PL 101, 671B. 63 64

Compare Author uncertain (Jerome?), Letter 19, 15, PL 30, 203C.

Compare Ambrose, Letter 63, 57, PL 16, 1204A; Author uncertain (Augustine?), Sermo 18, 2, PL 39, 1777; Isidore, Allegoriae quaedam scripturae sacrae, 62, PL 83, 109B.

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which is to say black, but when Christ makes her fair,65 beautiful (Sg 1.4): ‘O Lord, turn away your face from my sins’ (Ps 50.11), and ‘Make your face shine’ (Ps 118.135), and ‘May the Lord cause his countenance to shine upon us’ (Ps 66.2), and ‘Look upon me’ (Ps 21.2; 24.16; 85.16), and ‘The light of your countenance is a sign upon us, O Lord’, and ‘Give gladness in my heart (Ps 4.7).’ See therefore how he stretches out loving arms on the cross, inviting us to himself with that kindness by which he redeemed us, prepared as we come to take us up of his own will, to gather, embrace, cherish us. He says: ‘Come to me, all who labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you (Mt 11.28).’ He will expend himself for you, in great or small measure, in proportion to your faith and love. He says: ‘As you have believed, let it be so for you (Mt 8.13).’ For one trusting in the Lord, nothing is difficult. Recollect what I was accustomed to sound in your ear: ‘The things that are impossible with men, are possible with God’ (Lk 18.27), and ‘All things are possible to the one who believes (Mk 9.22).’ Hear and dare. He spoke, and in speaking he acted. The one who sits above the cherubim (Ps 98.1) can also be held as a child by those who desire him, in their arms and in their bosom.66 Speyer is a place of fame and opulence, the seat of a bishop.67 There a statue of the holy Mother of God with her Infant is adored, which is so placed at a low level that it is accessible to children. Here a certain little one, while his mother was praying at a distance, approached, carrying a slice of bread in his hand, and breaking off a morsel, he offered it to the statue of the wailing Christ, and with these words, such as German children babble, he began to implore: ‘Eat, child, eat, child.’ And when the holy statue was not moved at all, the host began to urge his guest with embraces and anxious tears, and to repeat often: ‘Eat, child.’ At last, the statue of the all-powerful little one is said to have embraced him in return as he was insistent with him, and to have addressed him with these words: ‘Don’t cry, child, after three days you will eat with me.’ His mother heard and trembled, and when a senior cleric appeared, she told him of the miracle. He, understanding the thing wisely, said: ‘Observe, now you will not have your child from the aforesaid day.’ 108 Immediately the child was seized by fever and died within three days, so that there was no doubt that he dined with the little promise-maker among the innocents of Bethlehem. I heard these things from learned bishops of the church, which innumerable miracles of this kind of the mercy of the Lord encourage us to believe. 65

Compare Augustine, On the Gospel of John, 65. 3, PL 35, 1809, CCSL 36, 492/14; Author uncertain (Augustine?), De symbolo, sermo ad catechumenos, (IV), 13, PL 40, 668, now attributed to Quodvultdeus, III, 13, CCSL 60, 363/7. 66 67

Compare Augustine, Sermon 370, 3, PL 39, 1658.

Talbot, following a reference in Wilmart, ‘Ève et Goscelin [II]’, pp. 79–80, directs the reader to A. Poncelet’s ‘Miraculorum B. V. Mariae […] index’, AB, 21 (1902), 241–360, p. 350, no. 1671. Comparison with the references given there reveals that this story has close analogues, but they are all later than Liber confort.

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O happy purchase of the kingdom of heaven under such a great giver! It is bought with a mite; it is bought with a cup of cold water (Mt 10.42);68 it is bought with a morsel of bread; it is bought with a prayer of good will. When he offers himself in such simplicity to those who love him in simplicity, embrace him with all the purity of a loving heart. And consider in this further example how blessed also it is to come to him. A Christian Jew, when he was dying, said to his two brothers, whom he had often invited to faith, that on the third night after his death he would appear to them, so that they might believe. When he had died, then, after three years and three days, when they were now entirely disbelieving, he appeared to them, and thus, full of the joy of heaven, with a serene face he spoke to both through the apparition: ‘I did promise that I would appear to you three days after my death, and behold I come at last after three years and three days. Nor have I deceived you, although I was quite slow in coming. For note this as the third day after my third anniversary. For I am in such great glory with my Christ, that before this I was unable to turn my sight to you, and for happiness this period of three years seemed briefer to me than three days are to the world. But now I have come to you by necessity. Therefore if you wish to be blessed forever with me, hurry to believe in Christ and to be baptized, knowing certainly that you will die in fifteen days time.’ In the morning, reporting the same vision to one another, encouraged by such a certain sign, they were baptized together, and together, on the predicted day, in a riot, had the good fortune to be slain. Blessed are those whom you have chosen, O Lord (Ps 64.5). And so, sweetest one, hurry to such a good God with all your heart, run, fly,69 and in longing for him rage, be mad, rave, die, with the impatience of holy love, yet with fear and with rational reverence, growing with use and with most humble devotion. Now the world with its desires passes away (I Jn 2.17); now it flies; now it vanishes. Lift your eyes and see (Gn 13.14): now the Lord comes in his majesty. From fear of him, the burning heavens will be dissolved with great violence; the elements will melt (II Pt 3.10, 12); the stars will fall (Mt 24.29); the earth will split open;70 hell will roar in lament, rendering back the dead to the terrible judgement (Rv 20.13). Then from Zion will come the splendour of the beauty of the Lord, and our God will come openly (Ps 49.2–3; Rom 11.26) to judge, who had come secretly to be judged. The splendour of his beauty, without diminishing the pre-eminence of his divinity, is the company and the powers of all the heavens: angels, archangels, thrones, dominations, principalities, powers, virtues, cherubim and seraphim, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, confessors, virgins, monks, hermits and the infinite multitude of all the elect. The angelic army, with the valiant Michael as the 68

Compare Augustine, Enarratio in Psalmum 111, 3, PL 37, 1468, CCSL 40, 1627/8–9.

69

Compare Author uncertain (Alcuin?), Ad candidum Romam abeuntem, 6, PL 101, 1167C.

70

See the ‘Sibylline Prophecy’, in Augustine, City of God, XVIII. 23. 1, PL 41, 579, CCSL 48, 614/41.

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leader in war, will carry before them the cross of the Lord, that triumphal sign of their commander-in-chief, and it will shine even over the whole world. Then the sun will be seven times greater in size, and seven times brighter in light (Is 30.26), but with the standard of the holy cross shining in heaven, such great power of the splendour of the sun will be completely overshadowed by the majesty of such great light, and it will be obscured as now the brightness of the stars is in the splendour of midday. If the sign of our king will be so magnificent, who will stand to see (Mal 3.2) the king of glory himself? 109 The whole firmament of heaven also will shine with the radiance of the sun, as David says in the voice of the father about the son: ‘His throne will be as the sun before me, and as the moon perfect for ever (Ps 88.37–38), which will not be diminished (Is 60.20).’ At the very onset then of the supernal advent, we, the whole mass of the whole human race from Adam to the last of men, will rise together in the blink of an eye (I Cor 15.51–52). Whatever fire has consumed, whatever the wave has dragged off, whatever the wind has scattered, whatever the fury of beasts has devoured71 and has been absorbed or digested into another creature’s body, whatever, in short, has disappeared from the human body into nothing, will return whole with ineffable speed,72 and that which was distant even from one end of the earth as far as the other will reassemble in an instant, nor will a hair or a nail cut away perish for anyone (Lk 21.18). Whoever had more than human symmetry will not have anything taken away, but from the whole mass a beautiful man will be reformed; but if anyone lacked something, it will be supplied from the gift of the Creator. We read that there was someone who was born and grew with double limbs, having two backs joined together, four hands, four feet. This double man possessed only one soul. On the other hand it is asserted that in recent memory there was one woman with two souls. She was one up to the navel; higher she was made double, and with backs grown together, she rose as twins. From this side and that they spoke in turn to one another, and together and as individuals they ate, spun, sang, and with great affection these two souls grew together as one, and indeed when one died the survivor carried the body, which had been born into herself.73 Therefore bodies with doubled limbs that have one soul will be made up into one fine body from the whole mass, while for two souls there will be from their single body one body each made complete. We will all be restored to our own stature and appearance, to the vigorous age of thirty years, that is, to the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ (Eph 4.13).

71

Compare Ambrose, De excessu fratris sui Satyri, II. 58, PL 16, 1330C, CSEL 73, 280/1– 9; Augustine, City of God, XXII. 20. 1, PL 41, 782, CCSL 48, 839/2–3; Author uncertain (Augustine?), De rectitudine catholicae conversationis, 23, PL 40, 1185. 72 73

Compare Augustine, Enchiridion, 89, PL 40, 273, CCSL 46, 97/73.

Compare William of Malmesbury, History of the English Kings, ed. by Mynors, II. 207, pp. 384–85.

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Little ones also who have died will rise again in that stature that they would have achieved if they had reached the full age. No shortness, tallness, fatness, corpulence, or thinness will deform anyone, but all things will be so much in full vigour, perfected by the hand of our maker, all things will be so much in harmony and in concord with one another, that nothing is ever lacking to their glory and honour, nothing better can be desired. If anyone was weak, blind, or lame, then they will now not be any more; but then the eyes of the blind will be opened, then the one who is lame will leap like a hart, and the tongues of the mute will be freed (Is 35.5–6). The Lord said: ‘And I will save the one who limps (Zep 3.19), and I will heal what was in poor health, and I will make solid what was broken, and I will bind up what was weak (Ez 34.16). Bring here the blind and the lame (Lk 14.21), and bring the poor and the wanderers into my house (Is 58.7).’ The Lord has spoken and, although heaven and earth pass away, his word will endure forever (Is 40.8). But who will be able to imagine the glory of the blessed bodies, when each face will shine like the sun? So the author himself of the resurrection witnesses: ‘Then the righteous shall shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father (Mt 13.43).’ All the harmony of their bodies will be full with celestial splendours and rays, 110 and all that is within them will be cleansed utterly and will be filled again with eternal brightness, and all will be clearer than all crystal and glass, so that we will call in perpetual exultation: ‘Bless the Lord, my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name (Ps 102.1).’ And through all the windows of the body in its glory and through all the limbs, the sun’s rays will shine, so that even all our bones will say: ‘O Lord, who is like you (Ps 34.10)? The bones that have been humbled will rejoice, O Lord (Ps 50.10), and my flesh will flourish again (Ps 27.7), and my heart and my flesh will rejoice in the living God (Ps 83.3), and the God of the living.’ Red blood, too, will flow through bright veins and shining limbs very beautifully, just as now we see in a splendid cloud the pink colours of the sun when it is reflected. Indeed how great the fragrance, how sweet the breath of the mouth that will emanate on all, what sense would suffice to comprehend? For when now the bodies of the saints, still subject to decay, often breathe forth with the sweetness of such an amazing odour from their graves, what will they do when they will rise again without any corruption? But how gloriously will be visible in perpetuity the scars of the holy martyrs, of all the wounds which they have borne for Christ; how sweet and lovely a spectacle they will present without any deformity!74 Indeed, we will see also the wounds of the hands, feet and side of the Lord himself, redeemers of the five senses, so that we live with him in love of him and in the giving of thanks. Therefore such as these will be prepared with well-trimmed lamps (Mt 25.7) to meet the Lord (Am 4.12), and we will be taken up in the clouds to meet Christ, into the air (I Thes 4.16). We read in the explanation of the gospel account of the ten virgins that all that multitude of holy ones, who rose with the Lord as he rose and 74

Compare Augustine, City of God, XXII. 19. 3, PL 41, 782, CCSL 48, 839/66–71.

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opened the way of rising again to us, as is declared in his passion, also ascended together with him into heaven as he ascended. For they say it is fitting that the glory of one celebrating such a great triumph should include many in his triumph, and they would not be true witnesses of the perpetual resurrection, unless they had been raised in perpetuity, and that they themselves too, incorporated with the Lord, will come to judgement, while we who will rise again then will come hence to meet them, and this is what we read: ‘They went out to meet the bridegroom and the bride’ (Mt 25.1): the bridegroom, Christ; the bride, that church of the holy raised again with Christ, or even the angelic multitude; and thus only then, when all have been raised again, there will be one bride made perfect from all. But the nations of the earth who will be then in mortal flesh will not so much die as change suddenly with the dead in resurrection (I Cor 15.52). Hence: ‘we who are alive, who remain’ (I Thes 4.14); we, that is, that part which is ours, which will then be in mortal existence. In judgement there will be four orders, two of the elect and two of the wicked. The first order 111 will consist of the saints with judicial dignity, sitting with the Lord and judging the world, those who have left all for Christ, and who have followed the Lord in various tribulations with perfect righteousness and love. The second order will be the less perfect of the elect; of such the Psalmist says: ‘Your eyes have seen my imperfection, and yet all will be written in your book (Ps 138.16).’ Such are good and faithful married people, abstaining from illicit things, and sharing their earthly possessions by alms and hospitality, who will be saved either here through the fire of suffering, or there through the fire of purgatory, or such as are the greatest part of our order, who, content with an ordinary life, and not able to ascend the mountain with the Lord (Ps 23.3; Is 2.3), do not rise to the height of virtues. These, being such as I say, are taken up by the mercy of the judge, and are invited into the kingdom as the blessed of his father (Mt 25.34). But on the left, the order of evil Christians is condemned by judgement, while the other order of godless pagans is not even worthy of judgement, but just as it happens in the earthly realm that one who has been judged an enemy or an outlaw is subject only to execution, so for the pagan enemies of Christ there will be not so much a judgement as a prescribed condemnation, because the one who does not believe has already been judged (Jn 3.18).75 Then indeed the righteous will stand with great constancy against those who have afflicted them. They who see it will be troubled with terrible fear (Ws 5.1–2), etc. Then the martyrs will rise against their persecutors, and the orthodox against the heretical who have conducted civil war, and whoever has suffered injury will demand punishment from those who inflicted it. Then the horns of the righteous will be exalted, and all the horns of the sinners will be broken (Ps 74.11). The horns are kingdoms, powers, magnificence and pride, as the visions of Daniel signify (Dn 7). 75

Compare Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, CCSL 143B, 1304/18–1306/102.

XXVI.

27 (50–51), PL 76, 378C–380C,

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Then the Maccabees will denounce Antiochus, the Innocents Herod, Stephen the stoners, Peter Nero, John Domitian, Laurence Decius, and singly and all at once they will punish their enemies. Here the kings will be made to appear all together in the presence of the Lord,76 and all will see that glorious one (Is 62.2), at whom the kings will shut their mouth (Is 52.15) and their tongue that speaks proud things (Ps 11.4). Then the Lord will judge between nations and nations, between kingdoms and kingdoms, between Assyrians and Hebrews, Romans and subjugated peoples, Gauls and Britons, cities and houses, fathers and children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, friends and companions, superiors and subjects, all professions and human duties. Then all will be manifest to all, whatever has been done, said or thought. But blessed are those whose sins are covered (Ps 31.1). Then all breasts will lie open. The cross of the suffering of the Lord will stand by, the lance of the piercing of the Lord will stand by, the nails of the transfixing of the Lord will be there, and that crown of thorns, the swords, the clubs and all the weapons of his injuries. They will see the side, hands and feet that they transfixed, and they will look on him whom they pierced (Zec 12.10; Jn 19.37). On him, that is: on the great Lord of majesty. The torments of the martyrs will also appear; the chains and upsidedown cross of Peter, the sword of Paul, 112 the stones of Stephen, the gridiron of Laurence, the whips, torture racks, hot plates, scourges, wheels and all the devices of tortures will be exhibited, and all the taunts against the saints will be read out, to the glory of the saints, to the eternal confusion of the wicked. After all these things, that judge of the saints will separate the multitudes on this side and on that and determine his followers with one infinite division, gathering so those on the right: ‘Come, blessed of my father, receive the kingdom’; casting out so those on the left: ‘Depart from me, cursed ones, into everlasting fire (Mt 25.34, 41).’ Then take pity on us with your Eve, Jesus, Saviour of the world, and set us as yours on your right hand in the truth of your salvation (Ps 68.14), and do not cast us out from your face, us whom you have distinguished with the faith of your cross. So the devil, the seducer, accuser and disturber of the whole world, with his angels and with his whole body, will go to the lake of eternal fire (Rv 21.8), and Christ with his whole body will triumph, going on to reign in heaven, and he will lead his people in gladness and his elect in joy (Ps 104.43), singing a new song to the Lord (Ps 32.2; 39.4; 95.1; 97.1; Rv 5.9; 14.3) through all ages. Then there will be new heavens and a new earth (Is 66.22; II Pt 3.13; Rv 21.1), the elements not other, indeed, but changed into another glory, just as our human bodies will be of another felicity, not other. O how blessed, true, full, perfect that joy will be, that celebration, that splendour, peace, safety, where death will be no more, nor will there be mourning nor crying, no sorrow (Rv 21.4), care, fear, no enemy, tricks of demons, night, shadows, no heat nor cold: but temperateness, as happy as it is 76

From the ‘Sibylline Prophecy’, in Augustine, City of God, CCSL 48, 614/42.

XVIII.

23. 1, PL 41, 579,

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inestimable, never any adversity, no weariness of an unending day, because that blessedness is so true that although it is always had to full satiety, it is always sought with infinite longing. Now the whole age is passing in seven days; in that infinite day will be the eighth.77 Then, when all the members of Christ have been raised up again in glory, there will be an Easter as perfect as it is never transitory, which that title of the psalm enduringly signifies: ‘To the end for the octave’ (Ps 11.1), and the psalm that says: ‘In the evening weeping shall have place, and in the morning joy’ (Ps 29.6): it uses the term evening for the prisons of mortality, the term morning for the paschal joys of resurrection. Then with what great glorying will we tread down death,78 and trample it underfoot: ‘Death, where is your sting? Death, where is your victory (I Cor 15.55)?’ In everyone there will be a face and rays as of the sun, inconceivable splendour everywhere, not of this sun, but a thousand times brighter79 even than those sevenfold rays, and as far beyond comparison with this one as day is with night. Nor indeed will this sun be necessary in that homeland of the saints; what would be the effect of a spark, in comparison with the true sun? He himself, the sole maker even of light, an unfailing sun and day, will beam there, and he will shine everywhere and in all things.80 Wherever you turn, wherever you wish to go, you will see Christ everywhere and in all things. Then therefore the Lord, mindful of his mercies, will gird himself, preparing 113 for the eternal reward, and will place them at the feast in eternal satisfaction of all desires of those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, and, passing from judgement to the kingdom,81 he will serve them (Lk 12.37), as of course they have been his servants, who will be rewarded with immeasurable generosity. He will place them and will set his households there like sheep (Ps 77.52), nations and kingdoms, cities and rural estates, homes and households, distinguishing them in their orders and uniting Adam, Eve, the patriarchs with their descendants, Moses, Joshua, Samuel and the prophets with their tribes, the apostles with the nations and tongues made fruitful to God, St Denis with the Gauls and the Parisians, St Martin with those of Tours, St Hilary with the Poitevins, St Augustine with the Britons, St Bertin with those of his monastery, St Edith with those of Wilton, and other teachers and propagators of the churches with their flocks and herds in great joy, and he will glorify them with very generous possessions and mansions. The kings also and the 77

Compare Eucherius of Lyon, Liber formularum spiritalis intelligentiae, 11. 8, PL 50, 770D, CSEL 31, 60/11; Author uncertain (Eucherius?), Commentary on the Book of Kings, III. 19, PL 50, 1136A; Bede, Homily 22, PL 94, 120B. 78

Compare Augustine, Enarratio in Psalmum 123, 4, PL 37, 1642, CCSL 40, 1827/9–12.

79

Compare Augustine, De Trinitate, 8. 2 (3), PL 42, 948, CCSL 50, 271/19–22.

80

Compare Augustine, Sermon 337, 2, PL 38, 1477.

81

Compare Bede, In Lucam evangelium expositio, 257/1037.

IV,

PL 92, 496B, CCSL 120, 256/1026–

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princes, judges and presiders who have administered well the business and campaigns of the Lord, as David, Ezechiel, Josiah, Constantine, the greatest of emperors and best propagator of Christianity, who boasts that he was chosen by God as his servant from the Britons to the East, and other Caesars and consuls of the Roman empire, and also the holy kings of Britain, Oswald, Edmund, Kenelm, Æthelbert, Edgar, Edward, and with them an order a thousand strong of earthly kings, will be crowned with distinction and, as sons among fathers, they will stand by the Lord more richly and regally than they had reigned. It happened once, on the Eve of St Matthew the Apostle, that bad clergy had neglected the service that they were obliged to conduct. On that night the sacristan saw, as it is told, the holy apostle himself being led into the church by two archbishops with apostolic honour, and many crowned kings following, with a huge crowd of people and clergy, but one of the kings was standing outside under interdict, and through one of the bishops was imploring mercy from the apostle by appeal to his holy honours; next he saw that the apostle, having called the king to himself, had absolved him, and had placed on him his royal crown in his absolution, and had joined him ceremonially with the others; thus, when heaven’s honours had been paid in celebration of the apostle in glorious harmony, all withdrew in the order in which they had come, but those responsible for the negligence were threatened and punished. So many kings and nobles, then, were following one apostle; how many do you think there will be in that plenitude of the kingdom of God? Therefore as Joshua, as a type of our true Jesus, having led the migration of the children of Israel divided the promised land, so our Lord will distribute the kingdom to each one severally, according to the distinction of merits and according to the capacity and desires of their hearts. But in that unanimity of peace the distinctions of diverse qualities will not be for division or dissonance, but for the very beautiful consonance82 of varied adornment, as meadows are decorated with varied flowers,83 pictures with varied colours,84 a necklace with different gemstones.85Moreover, as there is one brightness of the sun, another of the moon, another of the stars, but one star differs from another in brightness, so, the Apostle says, will be the resurrection of the dead also (I Cor 15.41–42). Each one will be as much brighter there as they were cleaner here, as much more translucent as they were more chaste, as much more beautiful as they were more loving of God and their neighbour, as much purer as they were more simple, as much more familiar with God as they were more learned in him, 114 as the bride says: ‘The king has led me into his bedchamber’ (Sg 1.3), as much more sublime as they had been more trodden upon, as much more 82

Compare Jerome, Letter 96, From Theophilus, 17, PL 22, 787, now in Letters to Jerome, CSEL 55, 177/11. 83

Compare Rabanus Maurus, Commentary on Exodus, III. 13, PL 108, 158B.

84

Compare Gregory the Great, Super cantica canticorum expositio, 8. 13, PL 79, 544D.

85

Compare Gregory VII, Concilium Romanum, I. 26, PL 148, 773B.

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honoured as they had been more despised, as much more free as they had been more constrained, as much more at rest as they had worked more, as much richer as they had been more impoverished, as much more joyful as they had been more sad, as much more secure as they had been more troubled, as much more consoled among the angels as they had been more desolate here, as much more closely joined with the martyrs as they had been more patient and indulgent here, finally, with all good things heaped about them as much higher as they had been brought lower by evils here. There will be no desire for precedence amid such different honours, and as there will be no transgression, so there will be no correction, yoke, bridle, no judgement of superiors, nor cause of fault for those subject to them. There will be no slave, but indeed good slaves will rule over wicked masters. Madness, anger, terror, indignation will be far off; all ambition to rule will be extinguished. Tyrannies, pride, cruelty will have departed to deepest hell. The greater will not oppress the lesser, but will cherish them in the sweetest embraces, as true fathers their sons,86 together with love as their mother.87 The least of all will join with the great as joints with greater limbs, as one soul of one body of all. Love will make all equal. For each one the law will be freedom of intention, and the highest independence of their own will, and all power of free judgement, where there will be no pleasure in wickedness, for they will be gods and the children of God, according to the pronouncement of the psalm in prophecy: ‘I have said: “You are gods, and all the sons of the Most High”’ (Ps 81.6), and as much more truly sons as you will not now die evermore, but you will be like the angels of God (Mt 22.30). From all desires indeed there will follow the very quickest accomplishment,88 where no impulse will be irrational or guilty, but each will be entirely holy and divine. For those glorified bodies will be as mobile as their wills: I mean not wills in the flux of variableness, but in very powerful efficacy. Or as the teacher Augustine has defined it: ‘That mobility of bodies will be as great as their happiness.’ 89 He says: ‘Certainly, wherever the spirit has willed, the body too will be there immediately.’90 Whence you should believe, O desiring soul, that wherever you wish to go then, you will be able to go the more freely, as you are confined now more narrowly. And that I may also tinge with human feeling the benefits of the love of Christ, surpassing all understanding, which have not entered into the heart of man (I Cor 2.9): with your holy lady Edith and all the choirs of sisters, all whom their place has formed for Christ, you will revisit from heaven your Wilton, or this cell of yours, now not a cell but a distinguished palace, if only, by despising your own self as 86

Compare Augustine, City of God XIX. 16, PL 41, 644, CCSL 48, 683/8–10.

87

Compare Augustine, Enarratio in Psalmum 147, 14, PL 37, 1923, CCSL 40, 2149/5.

88

Compare Augustine, Letter 130, 9 (18), PL 33, 501, CSEL 44, 60/10.

89

Source unknown.

90

Compare Augustine, City of God, XXII. 30. 1, PL 41, 801, CCSL 48, 862/19.

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unworthy, you deserve this through the grace of the Lord. For then heaven and earth and Christ himself, and every possession of his, will belong to all his elect, who for love of him have condemned worldly things willingly, or whom wicked possessors have shut out. But the wicked will be borne from the earth and will inherit the torments of hell. For in vain do they snatch at other people’s possessions with insatiable rapacity, and boast about their property and their importance, because all wickedness will be eradicated and the holy and righteous will possess the earth also by inheritance, since the kind Lord does not allow them to lose even what they have abandoned for his name. 115 For what will they lack who have accepted Christ as an inheritance, or have deserved to be the co-heirs of Christ? The Apostle said: ‘How has the father not also, with him, given all things to us (Rom 8.32)?’ But when the plunderers have been cast out: ‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth (Mt 5.4).’ But the new earth with the new heaven will not be such as it is now: dirty, thorny, poisonous, but such as is fitting for those very splendid bodies: the very blessed land of the living, full of light, healthy, sunny, pleasant, adorned with living flowers and all beauty, and full of all odours of sweetness and all the delights of the paradise of God. It will flow with milk and honey and the nectar of all sweetness. The rivers and the seas themselves will become as milk, and, with the stopping of all storms, they will be calmed in perpetual tranquillity. Then your Wilton will be a huge and broad city, lit far and wide with a golden wall, with a citadel shining with turrets of gems, raised up not for battle, but as a watch-tower of glory, from where the daughters of Zion may see more broadly all their England. Its gates will be of pearl (Rv 21.21), and all its houses golden. The temple will shine with jasper, chrysolite, beryl, amethyst, and all precious gem-stones (Rv 21.19–20), as far exceeding the glory of the old Solomon, as it is more finely constructed by the new art of our new Solomon. Here, as often as she wishes, your queen Edith will descend in power, proud in the chamber of the great Christ. Here she will lead her beloved spouse with her very great friends, the angels and archangels, apostles and martyrs, with Roman and English kings and counsellors, with her father Edgar and her brother Edward, with Thecla, Agnes, Cecilia, and Argina, Catherine, and a great crowd of virgins, and all her household of the people of Wilton, as many as the Lord made worthy in their lot. Nor will the greatest mother in marriage, Mary, disdain to be present at the nuptials of her son, and there she will celebrate the festal day with her daughter in marriage, and all will celebrate it who love the Lord with her, singing to the Lord in joy and eternal gladness, with whom may you also sing a new song in the church of the saints (Ps 149.1). So the saints will rejoice in glory; they will be joyful in their beds (Ps 149.5), and the cities of Judah will be built up (Ps 68.36), and each good will belong to each and

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all goods will belong to all.91 Everywhere there will be choirs, songs, ceremonies, applause, shouts, dances, heavenly feasts, marriage songs of immaculate nuptials, everywhere the glorious assembly of angels and men, everywhere the closest companionship of heaven’s inhabitants with men; nowhere solitude, nowhere silence upon rejoicing, not anywhere the absence of any good thing; all things will be present everywhere, so that although one is wiser than another,92 all will be wise, just as all will be holy, all righteous, all chaste, all children of God (Jb 38.7). All will know all languages,93 but they will speak more commonly using one, the mother of tongues, Hebrew,94 so that there is one city by harmony of all. There will be a great joining of angels and virgins, inseparable company, inestimable love, unspeakable sanctity of holy embraces and kisses. The gathering together of young men and virgins, men and women, the married and the celibate, will be as perfect and inoffensive as it is holy and blessed in their celibacy, as it is exempt from all desire for corruption, free from all contagion of sin.95 The Lord says through the prophet: ‘the young man shall dwell with the virgin’ (Is 62.5), and young men and virgins, old men 116 with younger ones will praise the name of the Lord alone (Ps 148.12–13), for the Lord alone will be exalted on that day (Is 2.17), and will be the sole king of all. The thoughts and hearts of all will be clear to all. Then everyone will speak their secret thoughts, and God will unlock hearts to the light,96 and they will speak and answer very sweet pledges of affection one to another, nor will any cloud come between them of any wicked thought, because all temptations to stumble and offend will have been submerged in hell. Whence it is necessary for us to live now with the sort of purity in which we wish to appear there before the whole majesty of heaven and earth. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Mt 5.8).’ Therefore everywhere, both in heaven and on earth and in all hearts, God will be seen. Wherever you turn,97 wherever you go, you will find the joy of the divine vision, and you will perceive the Lord both with your eyes closed and with them open.98 Nor on that day will anyone teach his neighbour, saying: ‘Know the Lord’, ‘because’, the 91

Compare Augustine, Confesssions, VI. 14 (24), PL 32, 731, CCSL 27, 89/7; De consensu evangelistarum, III. 7 (30), PL 34, 1175, CSEL 43, 305/17; Quaestionum evangeliorum, II. 33, PL 35, 1348, CCSL 44B, 82/187–88. 92

Compare Augustine, On the Gospel of John, 67. 2, PL 35, 1812, CCSL 36, 495/11–12.

93

Compare Augustine, Enarratio in Psalmum 147, 19, PL 37, 1929, CCSL 40, 2156/18– 23, 26–30. 94

Compare Isidore, Etymologies, I. 4, PL 82, 75A.

95

Compare Author uncertain (Augustine?), De rectitudine catholicae conversationis, 27, PL 40, 1190. 96 From the ‘Sibylline Prophecy’, Augustine, City of God, 48, 613/29–30.

XVIII.

23. 1, PL 41, 579, CCSL

97

Compare Augustine, Enarratio II in Psalmum 21, 30, PL 36, 180, CCSL 38, 132/39–40.

98

A line of hexameter verse: author uncertain.

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Lord says, ‘you all, from the least to the greatest, shall see me (Jer 31.34).’ Let not those mysterious words frighten you, which seem sometimes inconsistent to those who do not understand them. For the same one who says: ‘No one has ever seen God’ (Jn 1.18; I Jn 4.12), says ‘We shall see him as he is’ (I Jn 3.2), not as great as he is, of which no creature will be capable, but as great as will be enough for the capacity of each individual. ‘And no one has ascended into heaven, except the one who has descended from heaven’ (Jn 3.13), that is, no one except the head and body, except Christ and Christians, his members. And: ‘flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God’ (I Cor 15.50), that is, until it is freed from the servitude of sin and corruption, and this corruptible body puts on incorruption, and this mortal body immortality (I Cor 15.53). If therefore that earthly sun can fill with its rays all the world, together with all houses, as the sea can fill all vessels, [...]99 how much more greatly is that author of universal light and sun of eternal joy able to shine everywhere whole and complete through all things. He says: ‘I fill heaven and earth (Jer 23.24).’ To the vision of this joy, then, O sweet offspring of my soul,100 sigh, pant, strive, with the highest humility, with inextinguishable love, with unwearying labour, with unceasing prayer, so that, washed with perpetual springs of tears,101 as soon as you have laid down this corporeal garment to receive something happier, you may be worthy to appear to him without spot or wrinkle (Eph 5.27), and perpetually to see him, your Saviour, now in the soul, then in the double robe of body and soul,102 on whom the angels desire to look (I Pt 1.12), whom they long to see as much more eagerly as they see him more profoundly, abundance of whom never 117 brings about weariness,103 but increases desire eternally, to see whom is life, salvation, abundance, joy, peace, and the infinite end of all desires.104 And because love has compelled me to be fluent with such large matters and the time has come now finally to make an end of such prolix garrulity, if you have care for your own (Phil 2.1; Col 3.12),105 have pity for the bereavement of Goscelin, whom you have loved as the home of your soul in Christ, but whom by your departure you have shaken completely from his foundations, and whom you have overturned from comfort in this present life;106 and, lest I stain the light of joys held out before us 99

A word in this clause is illegible in Sloane 3103.

100

Compare Ambrose, De Cain et Abel, II. 1. 1, PL 14, 339B–C, CSEL 32. 1, 377/20, 378/7.

101

Compare The Life of St Pachomius, 38, Lives of the Fathers, I, PL 73, 256C.

102

Compare Cassiodorus, Expositio in Cantica Canticorum, 4, PL 70, 1076A.

103

Compare Author uncertain (Augustine?), Liber meditationum, 27, PL 40, 921.

104

Compare Augustine, Sermo 168, 2, PL 38, 912; Author uncertain (Augustine?), Liber de diligendo Deo, 10, PL 40, 855; Gregory the Great, Dialogues, IV. 45, PL 77, 405B, 406B. 105

Compare Gregory the Great, Homily 28/376. 106

II

on Ezechiel, I. 19, PL 76, 804A, CCSL 142,

Compare Sulpicius Severus, Letter 2, PL 20, 179C.

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with the mist of a greater complaint, beg for me, I beseech you, the mercy of the Lord that is ready to be appeased for eternity, and forgiveness for my sins, so that although you are very far removed from my unworthiness, I may have the happiness of seeing you in your highest happiness, in the blessed light. So may you have all the desires of your soul.

Appendix: Departures from Talbot’s text adopted for this translation of the Liber confortatorius W. R. BARNES AND REBECCA HAYWARD

Our emendations of the text We have not included here emendations of Goscelin’s quotations from Origen-Rufinus, Homilies on the Book of Joshua, in which we have followed Baehrens’ text of Rufinus (as printed by Jaubert), as indicated in the notes to that section. Reading in Talbot’s edition (page and line no.) and Sloane 3103:

Our emendation:

31/34 32/32 36/23 40/1–2 41/1 42/24 42/36 49/26 54/21 62/1

caritatis addicit uincendi inseparabili manentia ammisit successore uobis quae dotanda

1

caritati adicit uicendi insperabili manenti amisit successorem uos quam dotande

1

We offer this emendation to avoid an apposition of noun with noun that is semantically awkward; but Goscelin apparently uses the same apposition (in a different case) at Talbot, p. 114, line 14 (matre caritate), for which there is a precedent in Augustine, Enarratio in Psalmum 147, 14, PL 37, 1923.

Textual Appendix

209

67/2 67/14 67/21 67/26 69/26 75/14 79/2 79/3

Anglica eo ereptum Hen inde picto trophium operitur quadam uespere

79/4 81/19–20 86/5 90/21 92/3 96/35–36 101/6 101/22 102/16 105/7–8 105/12 108/22 110/11 111/9 111/14 111/15 112/12 114/12 115/12

et ascendere aratorum quod ut mentem in ea oculis flagrantia flagrantibus reformat Quod iudicio flagrantia contempti internectioni proscripta regnaturos abierunt tota Anglica sua

†Anglica2 eum erectum En in depicto 3 strophium 4 opperitur quadam uespera or quodam uespere? at accendere 5 aratorum (?) omit lacuna posited here mea osculis fragrantia fragrantibus refirmat Quo indicio fragrantia contenti internecioni praescripta regnaturus abierint 6 †tota Anglica sua

2

We have not found the word in this form (feminine singular) as a noun elsewhere; if it is an adjective, a noun must have dropped out. 3

See Analecta hymnica, 50, 120–22.

4

As in Sallust, Catilina 13. 3.

5

We cannot suggest an alternative to aratorum, but note that ‘cultivated fields’ seem out of place at this point, which may indicate some degree of textual corruption. 6

We have not found Anglica in this form (apparently neuter plural) in this sense (apparently ‘England’) elsewhere.

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Corrections of Talbot’s edition against Sloane 3103 Text in Talbot’s edition: 26 26 28/27 30/7 30/16 30/16 33/5 34/21 35/19 35/22–23 38/15 39/7 39/27 39/29–30 40/4 40/11 41/11 41/25 41/33 42/33 44/32, 33 47/3 47/12 48/15 48/27 48/31 49/15 49/34 50/4 50/7 52/5 53/24 56/16 57/15 57/21 57/23 57/23 58/5 59/19 59/27 60/19 60/30

Pella cum demonibus Edictis sumptis me di‹l›ectoribus quod relictus animan quacunque gloria compunga‹be›ris peregrinus Cantica Audi‹ui›t trarscendentem que quique que prudentia mita David eamdem concutiens confortabilis mercemonia fe‹r›ret seculorum imbecillis finxit quia Ad unius deliciis non in mammone spiritualum commit tunt Similiter peccatu succedant peccantium migrante quia difficile corpus rationabilibus

Text in Sloane 3103: 1r 1r 4v 6v 6v 6v 10r 12v 13v 13v 17r 18r 18v 18v 19r 19v 20v 21r 21v 22v 25v 28r 28v 29r 29v 29v 30v 31r 31r 31v 34r 36r 39r 40v 40v 40v 40v 41v 43r 43v 44v 45r

2 4 2 1 16 17 17 2 8 13 16 2 13 17 13 3 15 16–17 8 20 4, 5–6 8 1 12 10 16 5 11 19 4–5 12 8 17 6 15 18 18 8 16-17 8 9 1

Bella cupidinibus Ex humili sumptis mea dilectoribus quos relicturus animam quamcumque glorie compungaris peregrina cantici Audiuit transcendentem quem quoque quem providentia mixta David et eandem concutientis anima confortabilis mercimonia feret seculorum dabitur inbecillius finxit singula qui a Ad unius et unius delictis non manmone spiritualium committunt Similiter et peccata succendant peccantum migrantem quia ualde difficile corporum rationalibus

Textual Appendix 61/8 61/17 62/22 63/4 63/14 63/17 64/15 64/23 64/29 64/38 65/31 65/34 66/24 66/24–25 67/21 70/33 71/1-2 72/23 72/29 74/16 74/33 74/33-34 75/35 78/29 78/38 79/22 80/29 81/17 82/5 82/17 83/10 83/27 84/8 87/1 89/8 89/24 89/29 91/9 91/31 92/23 94/7 94/17 94/19 96/8 7

quis (first quis) cantatur et quanta que desiderabile qua anxiebatur ac pene uiribus quam deferri iterum suspensum suppositam deceptori est, sine descendunt in infernum caridbis infimis epertiores se vitia ed a vitiis patientem plurarum pari liberari Ipsa necnon reliquasue retexeris oriente im pleno popupli imperatis patieris spelucis perstrata addicere subripiant moriretur moriretur soliderentur trasmigrante

211 45v 45v 47v 48r 48r 48v 49v 49v 50r 50r 51r 51v 52v 52v 53v 57v 57v 59r 59v 61r 61v 61v 62v 67r 67r 65r7 68r 69r 69v 70r 71r 71v 71v 75v 78v 79r 79v 81r 82r 82v 85r 85v 85v 87v

2 15 1 7 20 3 1 13 1 13 17 2 2 2 12 6 7 17 6 14 16–17 17 15 4 15 6 15 10 13 6 2 5 17 10 14 18 6 12 4 20 9 2 5 7

qui canitur que et quanta quem desiderabilem aqua anxiabatur et pene semper uiribus qua munera deferri interim suspensam superpositam et deceptori est et sine descendunt infernum caribdis infirmis expertiores sed vitia et a vitiis patienter plumarum pati librari Ipsam necnon et reliquasque retexis et oriente in plene populi imparatis pateris spe lucis per strata addiscere subripiat moreretur moreretur solidarentur transmigrante

Fols 65 and 67 were out of order when numbered; originally, 65 followed 67.

212 98/5 98/22

W. R. BARNES AND REBECCA HAYWARD

Inuenti in De laude

98/25 misere‹re›tur 100/9 omnibus 100/27 cogitationum 101/17 fuerit 101/36 ungentis 102/16 flagrantibus 105/11 sucle 106/14 deficiat 107/32 uerbi 108/20 meum 108/23 elegistis 109/12 conditionis 109/17 singillatim 111/8 ibi 112/22 in occidui 113/4 numerandis 113/31 plenitude 115/10–11 muro uitreo Talbot omits

89v 90r

13 Inuenit 16 de laude ( Hand 1) marg. in laude (Hand 2) 90r 20 miseretur 92v 7-8 omnibus hominibus 93r 12 cogitatuum 93v 18 fouerit 94v 4 unguentis 95r 8–9 fragrantibus 99r 11 sude 100v 8 deficiant 102v 3 uerbis 103r 13 mecum 103r 18 elegisti 104v 3 conditoris 104v 10 et singillatim 106v 12 aut ibi 108v 1 inoccidui 109r 10 munerandis 110r 5 plenitudine 112r 9 muro aureo 114v 6 Iste liber est de abbatia sancti saluatoris uicecomitis constantiensis diocesis

KATERN 8

Part 3 The Wilton Women: Subjects and Audience

Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women STEPHANIE HOLLIS

Goscelin and his Literary Career

W

illiam of Malmesbury described Goscelin (c. 1040–1114) as the author of innumerable saints lives, second only to Bede in the celebration of English saints.1 Over thirty hagiographical and polemical works are currently attributed to him, with varying degrees of certainty, including about a dozen lives of Anglo-Saxon women saints.2 The Legend of Edith and the Liber confortatorius were almost certainly the first two works that he completed. The Legend was commissioned by the Wilton community but, as Goscelin explains, he 1

Gesta Regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings, ed. by R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), I, 592 (IV. 342). 2

Well-authenticated works are listed by Barlow, pp. 146–47. Attributions are listed by Barlow, pp. 148–49, based on Talbot, p. 13. See also Hamilton, I, 123–24, II, 83. Barlow, pp. xliv–xlix, also considered Goscelin a strong claimant to authorship of the Life of Edward the Confessor. Since the appearance of Barlow’s work, Goscelin’s authorship of a Life of Kenelm (tentatively proposed by Talbot, p. 13) has received support from Rosalind C. Love, ed., Three Eleventh-Century Anglo-Latin Saints’ Lives (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. xc–xci. As she observes: ‘Patently, the canon of Goscelin’s works has still to be established once and for all, and a detailed analysis of his vocabulary and style is urgently required’ (p. xl). See also Richard Sharpe, A Handlist of the Latin Writers of Great Britain and Ireland before 1540, Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), pp. 151–54, and the Additions and Corrections to this work, separately published in 2001. For recently identified epitomes of longer saints lives in Harley 652, fols 208r–216v, see J. E. Cross and Thomas N. Hall, ‘Fragments of Alanus of Farfa’s Roman Homiliary and Abridgements of Saints’ Lives by Goscelin in London, BL Harley 652’, in Bright is the Ring of Words, ed. by Clausdirk Pollner, Helmut Rohlfing, and Frank-Rutger Hausmann (Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag, 1996), pp. 49–61.

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procrastinated, either out of diffidence or negligence.3 He did not complete it until c. 1080, and he dedicated it to Archbishop Lanfranc. His later revision of the Legend, however, was probably intended for Wilton. The Liber confortatorius is also dated c. 1080, shortly after Eve’s departure from Wilton.4 In Book I of the Liber confortatorius Goscelin laments that he has no completed work to his credit; when he dedicated the Legend to Lanfranc he described it as his ‘first fruit’.5 There is some textual evidence, though slight, that the Legend was completed before the Liber confortatorius; the meaning of Goscelin’s statements may be that he was working on them simultaneously, the Legend being incomplete when he began the Liber confortatorius but finished before it. Goscelin arrived in England before 1065, perhaps as early as 1058, but probably a few years later.6 He was young at the time (an adolescentulus).7 He came from the monastery of Saint-Bertin, where he had made his profession as a monk.8 SaintBertin was a highly cultured and literary monastery with a well established tradition of hagiography.9 He was closely associated with Herman, bishop of Sherborne and Ramsbury from 1058 until his death in 1078; it has been suggested that he was employed by Herman as a secretary-companion.10 Through his association with Herman, Goscelin was in a position to learn something of developments at 3

Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 38).

4

Both the Legend and Liber confort. post-date Herman’s death; see Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 37); Liber confort., p. 29. The terminus a quem for the Legend is the death of William the Conqueror, 1087 (Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 36)). Wilmart, ‘La légende de Ste Édith’, p.18, dated it to c. 1080 on the basis of Goscelin’s reference to Lanfranc’s building programme, and Goscelin’s identification of it as his first completed work supports this dating; see further below. From this it follows that attributions to Goscelin of works prior to c. 1080 are doubtful (that is, the Lives of Amelburg, Kenelm, Edward the Confessor and Edward the Martyr). 5

Liber confort., Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 38).

6

For a full bibliography of the numerous summaries of Goscelin’s life and work, see Marvin L. Colker, ‘Texts of Jocelyn of Canterbury which relate to the History of Barking Abbey’, Studia Monastica, 7 (1965), 383–460 (p. 383, n. 1). The standard account is Barlow, pp. 133–49, who gives a critical summary of the conclusions drawn in the seminal articles of A. Wilmart, ‘Ève et Goscelin [I]’, Revue Bénédictine, 46 (1934), 414–38; ‘Ève et Goscelin [II]’, Revue Bénédictine, 50 (1938), 42–83, as well as Hamilton, I, 130–93, and Talbot, pp. 1– 23. Barlow, p. 134, n. 5, dates Goscelin’s arrival in England to 1061x1064. 7

Liber confort., p. 102.

8

Barlow, p. 133, n. 4.

9

See A. Wilmart, ‘Les Livres de l’abbé Odbert’, Bulletin historique de la Société des Antiquaries de la Morinie, 14 (1929), 169–88. 10

R. C. Love, ‘Goscelin of Saint-Bertin’, in The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. by Michael Lapidge and others (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), p. 213. In Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 37), and in other works, Goscelin describes himself as a companion of Herman (Hermannus, cui adherebamus).

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Canterbury in the 1070s, perhaps even to meet Lanfranc (Archbishop of Canterbury 1070–89); the dedicatory prologue reveals that he knew something of Lanfranc’s rebuilding programme.11 William of Malmesbury reported that Goscelin accompanied Herman when he returned to England from Saint-Bertin (1058).12 Goscelin’s own account of his arrival in Wiltshire in the Liber confortatorius conveys, rather, that he joined the bishop at a later date, seemingly at his invitation.13 He evidently knew and liked Abbess Ælfgifu, whose rule at Wilton straddled the Conquest (c. 1065–67).14 By contrast, his knowledge of her predecessor Brihtgifu is distant, and it is not certain that he is claiming to have seen the men who purported to be the dancers of Colbek when they arrived at Wilton during her rule (c. 1040–65).15 Between c. 1064 and 1078 Goscelin visited Eve at Wilton, gathering material for his Legend of Edith from the reports of the senior nuns.16 The role of spiritual mentor to Eve that Goscelin adopts in the Liber confortatorius was one he had assumed since her childhood.17 This is scarcely explicable unless we assume that he 11

Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 38). Herman attended Lanfranc’s consecration in 1070, and was present at his councils. He was also involved in negotiations with him when he attempted (unsuccessfully) to obtain permission to retire in 1071, and when he gained permission to move his seat to Salisbury in 1075. See The Letters of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. and trans. by Helen Clover and Margaret Gibson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 36, 74. 12

Gesta Regum Anglorum, IV. 342 (p. 592). Herman, who originally arrived in England in 1045, spent three years as a monk at Saint-Bertin, following an argument with Edward the Confessor. 13

Liber confort., p. 102.

14

See Translatio Edithae, chap. 20 (p. 297). For a tenuous identification of Goscelin and the Abbess of Wilton with the unus clericus and Ælfgifu who figure on the Bayeux Tapestry, see John Gosling, ‘The Identity of the Lady Ælfgyva in the Bayeux Tapestry and Some Speculation Regarding the Hagiographer Goscelin’, Analecta Bollandiana, 108 (1990), 71–79. 15

Compare Barlow, p. 135, n. 16: ‘He was there before 1065, because he saw one of the epileptic dancers of Colbek in Abbess Brihtgifu’s time’. However, his statement at the beginning of Translatio Edithae, chap. 16 (p. 285), could equally well mean that he is embarking on an account of an event seen, not by him, but by his informants. Of the Colbek dancers, he remarks (p. 286) that they wandered through many countries, and that ‘ex quibus quatuor nobis conspecti et adhuc superesse possunt aliqui’ (‘four of them were seen by us, and some may survive to this day’). This could be an instance of Goscelin’s use of the plural to refer to himself, but, in context, the referent seems to be people in either England or Wiltshire. Concerning Brihtgifu, Goscelin says only that she is well-known to everyone at the present time (Vita Edithae, chap. 26 (p. 100)). 16

Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 37), Goscelin also states (p. 38), that he made use of written sources. See further ‘St Edith and the Wilton Community’, pp. 269–79. 17

Liber confort., p. 28.

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served as a chaplain to the Wilton community; he may also, or alternatively, have been employed as Eve’s tutor.18 Eve appears to have been dedicated to the Wilton community during the rule of Abbess Ælfgifu (c. 1065–67). It was, however, chiefly during the long reign of her successor, Godiva (c. 1067–90), that Goscelin was visiting Eve at Wilton. But, whereas, in the Legend of Edith, Goscelin reveals firsthand knowledge of Abbess Ælfgifu, and inside knowledge of the Wilton community in the years immediately before and after the Conquest, only one of the events he recounts that took place during the rule of Godiva can be dated later than 1075.19 This might suggest that Goscelin’s employment at Wilton community, whether as chaplain or tutor, did not extend beyond the early years of Godiva’s rule.20 Goscelin was compelled to leave Wiltshire after the death of Herman in 1078 because of the hostility of his successor, Bishop Osmund.21 He then discovered that Eve had left Wilton to become an anchorite in Angers. Having felt himself to be an orphan when Herman died, and having been made a homeless exile by Osmund’s hostility, Eve’s departure, without warning or farewell, left him entirely bereft. Even at the end of the Liber confortatorius, written as much to comfort himself as to give encouragement to Eve, he describes himself as completely shaken to the foundations by her departure.22 These experiences, together with his position as an immigrant in 18

Barlow, pp. 135, 138–39, following Wilmart, ‘Ève et Goscelin [II]’, p. 46, concluded that Goscelin was a chaplain at Wilton ‘for a time at least’. Canterbury sources generally describe him as a monk (Goscelinus monachus), but one of the obits cited by Barlow, p. 142, n. 76, identifies him as a priest also (monachus et sacerdos). As Barlow points out, he shows a detailed knowledge of the church at Wilton. Barlow also considers (p. 136, n. 18) that the female companions of Edith named in the apocalyptic image in Liber confort., p. 115 (Thecla, Agnes, Argina, Cecilia, and Catherine) were nuns at Wilton. 19

The penultimate chapter of the Translatio, chap. 22, relates a vision of Edith which coincided with the complaints of a nun who was visiting Salisbury in the time of Bishop Herman, and therefore presumably post-dates Herman’s removal of his seat to Salisbury in 1075. Barlow, p. 137, n. 37, is probably correct in assuming that the events described in chap. 23 took place during Queen Edith’s rebuilding of the church (c. 1065). Goscelin signals that he is not always observing chronological sequence in the Translatio. The miracle of healing recounted in chap. 23 forms a more fitting conclusion to the celebration of the saint than the vision of her provoked by the criticisms of the nun Ealdgyth, and Goscelin’s description of Ealdgyth as a sister who at the present time flourishes as a young woman (p. 298) lends support to a post-1075 dating of the events in chap. 22. 20

See Barlow, pp. 135, 138–39. But the explanation may be that Goscelin made the decision not to extend his account beyond the early years of Godiva’s rule, either because he was hurrying to complete the work, or because he saw no way of bringing an account of her rule to a satisfactory conclusion. 21 22

Liber confort., p. 29.

Liber confort., p. 117. For an extended discussion of Goscelin’s composition of Liber confort. as a ‘cathartic’ activity, see van Rossum, pp. 180–212.

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a foreign country,23 doubtless underlie his continued identification of himself as a member of the community of St Bertin, and his enduring loyalty to the patron saint of the monastery he had left behind, which he assumed that Eve continued to feel for St Edith of Wilton.24 For a decade or so after Herman’s death, until c. 1090, Goscelin led a peripatetic existence, resident at a number of religious houses, where he wrote the majority of the works attributed to him, finally achieving reintegration into community at St Augustine’s, Canterbury, a year or two after Lanfranc’s death.25 Strictly speaking, he was a gyrovagus (‘monastic vagrant’), whose position lacked authorization once Herman died. Lanfranc ruled repeatedly that wandering monks must be compelled to return to the cloisters; Osmund may have shared his views.26 Goscelin, however, seems to have felt that Osmund had been turned against him by the malicious envy of others (he ‘knew not Joseph’), and it is tempting to speculate that the scandalous potential of his relationship with Eve, to which Goscelin alludes in the prologue to the Liber confortatorius, played some part in Osmund’s hostility. As the nature of Goscelin’s itinerary c. 1078–90 is uncertain, so too is the chronology of his writings. Goscelin was at Burg (Peterborough, or perhaps Bury St Edmunds) when he began the Liber confortatorius.27 He had been there since his discovery of Eve’s departure; in fact, although he evokes the grief that Eve’s abbess and the Wilton community are suffering from having lost her, it is not clear that he did learn of Eve’s departure by returning to Wilton, and he may mean that he had been at Burg since his forced departure from Wiltshire.28 From Burg he appears to have gone to Barking (London), Ely, and then Ramsey.29 23

Barlow, p. 144.

24

Liber confort., p. 28. Even after his death (in a Christ Church, Canterbury, obituary) he was remembered as monachus S. Bertini (see Barlow, p. 143, n. 76). 25 His talents as a poet and musician, and his personal qualities are warmly commended by a fellow monk, Reginald, in ‘Gozelino monacho suo suus, amico amicus Raginaldus’: ed. by F. Liebermann, ‘Raginald von Canterbury’, Archiv, 13 (1887), 519–56 (pp. 542–44). 26 See Margaret Gibson, Lanfranc of Bec (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), p. 143; Letters of Lanfranc, pp. 76, 152, 168–70. The Bishop of Thetford was instructed to banish the monk Herman from his society and his household; if he refused to live according to the rule in an observant monastery, he was to depart from England (p. 152). 27

Liber confort., p. 49. Barlow, p. 140, n. 63, observes that, judging by the people and places mentioned in the context of Burg, it is more likely to mean Peterborough than Bury St Edmunds. But compare Liber confort., p. 67, where Goscelin states that he is on familiar terms with Eilsius, who related to him the fate of a hermit whose cell was in the vicinity of St Edmunds. 28

Liber confort., p. 49: ‘Burgis, ubi adhuc hospitor’ (‘At Burg where until now I have been lodging as a guest’.) At p. 29, he intimates that he learnt of Eve’s departure while he was attempting to return to Wilton. ‘Dum tenetur captiua Domini, dum totis angustiis te adire properat cum munere tibi specialius optabili, tu irreuocabilis discessisti’. (‘While the soul was

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To the period shortly after Herman’s death (c. 1078–82) may also belong the Life of Wulfsige of Sherborne, dedicated to Bishop Osmund. Like the Legend of Edith, the Life of Wulfsige was commissioned by the monks of Sherborne, and based on their oral traditions, but, despite encouragement from Herman, remained incomplete at the time of his death.30 Somewhat similarly, the Life of Wulfhild of Barking, based on the oral report of the nuns, was dedicated to Maurice, bishop of London, as were his Life of Æthelburg and his accounts of the translation of Æthelburg, Hildelith, and Wulfhild.31 Goscelin’s prologue dedicating the Legend of Edith to Lanfranc expresses, fairly transparently, the hope of finding employment as a hagiographer in the service of Lanfranc. The same motive may well underlie the dedications to Osmund and Maurice. There is no reason to doubt that Goscelin was, simultaneously, advancing the interests of the commissioning communities by commending their native saints to the attention of the Norman hierarchy, but it is possible that these three dedications give a somewhat exaggerated impression of the extent to which Anglo-Saxon communities, in commissioning lives of their saints, were motivated by a desire to gain the favour of Norman bishops.32 held as a captive of the Lord, while it was eager to go to you through all difficulties with a gift that was especially desirable for you, you departed beyond calling back’.) His allusion to the grief of the abbess, the Wilton community, and Eve’s best friend may thus represent a rhetorical strategy for projecting his own grief (pp. 31, 45). 29 The itinerary suggested by Barlow, pp. 140–41, is: Winchester (‘immediate refuge’); Peterborough (1080–82); London/Barking (1086–87); Ely (1087–88); Ramsey (1089–91). The evidence for his residence at Winchester is weak, as Barlow concedes (p. 140). 30 Vita sancti Wulsini, ed. by C. H. Talbot, ‘The Life of Saint Wulsin of Sherborne by Goscelin’, Revue Bénédictine, 69 (1959), 68–85 (p. 73). The dedication refers to Osmund only as Herman’s successor; see Barlow, p. 140. 31 Colker, ‘Texts of Jocelyn of Canterbury’, pp. 383–460. In his Life of Æthelburg (which, like the Life of Wulfhild, was dedicated to Maurice, bishop of London), as well as in his long and short accounts of the translation of Æthelburg, Hildelith, and Wulfhild, Goscelin states that he is writing at the request of Abbess Ælfgifu, but there is no comparable statement in his Life of Wulfhild (Colker, pp. 398–452). The Life of Wulfhild has also been edited by M. Esposito, ‘La vie de Sainte Vulhfilde par Goscelin de Cantorbéry’, Analecta Bollandiana, 32 (1913), 10–26. Translation of extracts from Goscelin’s Barking works are included in Guidance for Women in Twelfth-Century Convents, trans. by Vera Morton and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Cambridge: Brewer, 2003), pp. 144–55. 32

This established view of the role of post-Conquest hagiographic celebration of AngloSaxon saints is challenged by S. J. Ridyard, ‘Condigna Veneratio: Post-Conquest Attitudes to the Saints of the Anglo-Saxons’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 9 (1987), 179–206. She argues that Norman bishops were not generally antagonistic towards the cults of Anglo-Saxon saints and that the inspiration for post-Conquest hagiography ‘lay with the Norman churchmen who perceived the usefulness of the English saints and realised that those saints could be successfully utilised only if their history was fully documented and their function effectively publicised’ (pp. 205–06). Goscelin’s hagiography lies outside the scope of her study. Compare

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Most of the saints whose lives Goscelin celebrated flourished in the early AngloSaxon period and were commemorated by Bede in his Historia. The notable exception is his life of a late-tenth-century Abbess of Barking, Wulfhild (St Edith’s aunt), and his two accounts of her translation by an early eleventh-century abbess of Barking.33 Of particular interest among his lives of early Anglo-Saxon female saints is his Legend of Mildrith.34 In the Liber confortatorius, Goscelin represents himself as the ‘mother’ of Eve, and his Legend of Mildrith depicts the close relationship of a monastic mother and daughter which echoes that of Edith and her mother, Abbess Wulfthryth, in his Legend of Edith.35 By c. 1090 he was permanently resident at St Augustine’s, Canterbury, where completion of the rebuilding programme begun by Lanfranc (d. 1089) made it possible to translate the relics of its many saints, thus creating an ideal situation for

Paul Hayward, pp. 89–93, who concludes that the saints’ cults examined in his article (including that of Edith) may have been ‘the most formidable weapon left to the English in their resistance to Norman attempts to deprive them of their offices’, but that the Normans increasingly attempted, from the 1090s, to convert English cults into symbols of their own legitimacy (p. 93). 33

Colker, pp. 398–458. He also wrote for the Barking nuns a Life of the founder abbess, Æthelburg (d. 675), and lectiones for her successor Hildelith. 34

Vita Deo delectae virginis Mildrethae, ed. by D. W. Rollason, The Mildrith Legend: A Study in Early Medieval Hagiography in England (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1982), pp. 106–65. On the relation of Goscelin’s writings to the vernacular tradition, see Stephanie Hollis, ‘The Minster-in-Thanet Foundation Story’, Anglo-Saxon England, 27 (1998), 41–64; ‘The Old English “Ritual of the Admission of Mildrith” (London, Lambeth Palace 427, fol. 210)’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 97 (1998), 311–21. Related texts are edited by D. W. Rollason, ‘Goscelin of Canterbury’s Account of the Translation and Miracles of St Mildrith (BHL 5961/4): An Edition with Notes’, Mediaeval Studies, 48 (1986), 139–210; Marvin L. Colker, ‘A Hagiographic Polemic’, Mediaeval Studies, 39 (1977), 60–108. See further, Richard Sharpe, ‘Goscelin’s St Augustine and St Mildrith: Hagiography and Liturgy in Context’, Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 41 (1990), 502–16. There is no published edition of his Life of Mildrith’s sister Mildburg; Sharpe, Handlist, p. 152, lists J. M. Edwards (unpublished masters’ dissertation, University of London, 1960). 35 His Lives of Æthelthryth and the royal women saints related to her (Eormenhild, Seaxburg, Werburg, and Wihtburg) were presumably all written while he was at Ely. For study of these, see Ridyard, Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 176–210. There is a forthcoming edition; Goscelin of Saint-Bertin: The Hagiography of the Female Saints of Ely, ed. and trans. by Rosalind C. Love (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). This edition (not yet sighted) does not include the Life of Eorcongota which is attributed to Goscelin. For Goscelin’s ‘motherhood’ of Eve, see Liber confort., pp. 29, 31, 45.

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the employment of Goscelin’s talents.36 His account of the translation of St Augustine, completed c. 1099, was dedicated to Anselm (archbishop from 1093).37 Barlow regarded Goscelin as ‘probably [...] one of the most widely read men of his times’.38 For this, as for his forward looking spirituality, his early education at Saint-Bertin offers a not wholly satisfactory explanation, as I have indicated in the Introduction. If he left Saint-Bertin around 1064 rather than in 1058, there is a much greater possibility that he was in touch there with Anselm, or his ideas, as Sally Vaughn postulates.39 He was, to some extent, in touch with developments at Canterbury under Lanfranc in the 1070s, as the dedicatory prologue reveals, presumably through his association with Herman. But from c. 1078–1090, as far as is known, his opportunities for finding out about the new cultural ethos at Canterbury, and of meeting Anselm when he visited England c. 1080, depended on the contacts available to him at the monasteries he stayed at. The Legend of Edith and the Liber confortatorius, written c. 1080, are too early for him to have benefited from Lanfranc’s encouragement to a wider reading of patristic authors.40 It should be noted, however, that his first-hand knowledge of the clergy at Speyer may indicate travel on the continent before or after he emigrated to England.41 I suggest below that he knew something of Lanfranc’s evolving attitudes to Anglo-Saxon saints, but that he was not well informed about his views on either sainthood or monastic orthodoxy. This is very fortunate; Edith, regarded as a professed nun (which she was not) was downright irregular, and if Goscelin had been more conscious of Lanfranc’s conceptions of orthodoxy he would have toned down the oral traditions of the Wilton nuns—their recollections of Edith’s habit of dressing in royal finery and the influence she exercised at King Edgar’s court, for instance—much more thoroughly than he has done. 36

An edition of Goscelin’s Canterbury Lives by Richard Sharpe is in progress.

37

Goscelin’s dates of birth and death are unrecorded, but he was still alive in 1107 (Barlow, p. 142, n. 75); 1114 is now generally accepted as the date of his death. 38

Barlow, p. 143, n. 7.

39

Sally N. Vaughn, St Anselm and the Handmaidens of God: A Study of Anselm’s Correspondence with Women, Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, 7 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), pp. 173–81. Anselm did not arrive at Bec until 1060; his earliest works are dated to the 1070s. His childhood friend, Countess Ida of Bologna, was at Saint-Bertin in the 1060s. See further ‘Edith as Contemplative’, pp. 284-85; ‘Introduction’, p. 10; ‘Afterword’, pp. 428–29. 40 Teresa Webber, ‘The Diffusion of Augustine’s Confessions in England During the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, in The Cloister and the World: Essays in Honour of Barbara Harvey, ed. by John Blair and Brian Golding (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 29–45 (p. 30), points out that ‘the 1080s mark the very early stages of efforts of several religious communities in England to form thorough collections of patristic texts to support [the] programme of reading’ that Goscelin recommends to Eve in Liber confort., pp. 80–81. She traces his unusual knowledge of Augustine’s Confessions to Saint-Bertin. 41

Liber confort., p. 107.

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Goscelin and Eve Goscelin gives an account of his relationship with Eve in a rather enigmatic passage near the beginning of the Liber confortatorius in a chapter entitled ‘The birth of love’ (Partus dilectionis).42 Before Eve’s dedication to the Wilton community, while she was still a child, Goscelin had assumed responsibility for her instruction and spiritual progress, a role which he continues to adopt in the Liber confortatorius. He recalls that she was a notably devout child whom he expected to be responsive to his teaching; he won her over by his conversation, she in return obtained books he wanted and praised ‘his’ St Bertin. He was present when she was dedicated with thirteen others. This dedication was followed by Bishop Herman’s dedication of a church, which Goscelin obtained permission for her to attend (identified by Barlow, following Talbot and Wilmart, as the dedication of the Wilton church, rebuilt by Queen Edith, in October 1065).43 It was, however, by virtue of the affection of her father (that is, her spiritual father, Bishop Herman) that she was allowed to attend a banquet with her mother (either the abbess or her actual mother); at this banquet, which was presumably associated with the dedication of the church, Goscelin sent her a fish accompanied by a didactic message. Another dedication ceremony followed; this was attended by many women in royal finery, but Goscelin had eyes only for Eve in her black habit. Barlow, like Talbot and Wilmart, considers that Goscelin is referring here to the dedication of the Westminster church, rebuilt by Edward the Confessor, in December 1065.44 It was the sight of Eve at her dedication which pierced Goscelin’s heart, turning his hitherto moderate love for her to fervour; the sight of her at the ceremony which Talbot and Barlow take to be the dedication of Edward the Confessor’s church fixed the arrows of love more deeply in his heart. It was after this that he wrote her frequent letters, to which she made modest replies. He visited her often at Wilton, and was sometimes denied access to her.45 When Herman died in 1078, he visited her more frequently; they consoled one another until the hostility of Herman’s successor Osmund forced him to leave the neighbourhood of Wilton. Some time later—he does not say how long it was or how he found out—he discovered she had 42

Liber confort., pp. 28–29. The seminal study of this relationship is Wilmart, ‘Ève et Goscelin [II]’, pp. 42–83, drawn on by Talbot, pp. 1–23. 43

Barlow, p. 138, n. 44; Talbot, p. 28, n. 9; Wilmart, ‘Ève et Goscelin [II]’, p. 58, n. 5.

44

Barlow, p. 138; Talbot, p. 28, n. 11; Wilmart, ‘Ève et Goscelin [II]’, p. 58, n. 5. This is an attractive possibility, although it is possible that a royal nunnery like Wilton had more than one church dedication attended by richly dressed women while Eve was resident there. It is also possible that Goscelin had eyes only for Eve on this occasion because the other dedication ceremony he refers to (alterius dedicationis solemnia) was Eve’s mature profession as a nun. See ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, pp. 318–27. 45

Liber confort., pp. 29, 45.

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left Wilton to become an anchorite at Angers, without having told him of her plans and without a word of farewell.46 When Goscelin joined Bishop Herman in Wiltshire, he was an adolescentulus and Eve was in her infancy (an infantula).47 At the time she left—in or shortly after 1078—she was in her first youth; Goscelin describes her as an adolescentula, and intimates that she was twenty.48 She may, of course, have been a little older than that, but if (as is generally accepted) she was dedicated to Wilton in 1065, it follows that she was not much more than seven at the time of her dedication. Barlow hazards that the age difference between them was some thirty years.49 But when Goscelin wrote the Liber confortatorius he regarded himself as far from old. If we accept that he arrived in England after Herman returned in 1058, perhaps as late as 1064, and that he describes himself as adolescentulus because he was not much older than twenty, he would have been only in his mid- to late thirties at the time of Eve’s departure.50 Goscelin’s role as the spiritual mentor of Eve from her early childhood recalls the two continental scholars who, he relates, in his Legend of Edith, were among the priests at Wilton in the time of Abbess Wulfthryth, Benna of Trier and Radbod of Rheims, having been employed by Edith’s father, King Edgar, to educate her when she was a child at Wilton.51 It is not inconceivable that Goscelin was invited to England by Herman specifically for the purpose of educating Eve, since she was not merely exceptionally eager to learn, but a particular favourite with Herman. Goscelin remarks that the bishop was in the habit of embracing her, and, evidently less struck by her unusual piety than Goscelin, of greeting her as ‘Eve, mother of the living’; and it was because of his affection for Eve that she was permitted to attend a banquet 46

Liber confort., pp. 29–30, 45.

47

Liber confort., p. 102.

48

Goscelin imagines the serpent tempting Eve, and saying: ‘Pupa es, adolescentula es, flos ipse uite repente peristi. An hic uicenna etatula in quinquagesimum uel centesimum sedebis annum?’ (‘You are a girl, you are in your first youth; in the very flower of life you have suddenly perished. Will you remain here from the youthful age of twenty to your fiftieth or your one hundredth year?’), Liber confort., p. 70. 49

Barlow, p. 138.

50

Liber confort., p. 45: ‘Iam si quid forte, si quid de tam deuoto requires, idem est absens quod erat presens, mens et facies, uigor et habitudo eadem [...] Tum si ad canos et in senectam et senium durauerit […]’. (‘Now if, by chance, you ask anything about one who is so devoted, he is the same absent as he was present, his mind and face are the same, his vigour and constitution of body [...]. Then if he lasts until he has grey hair and into old age and feebleness […]’.) 51

Vita Edithae, chap. 7. Goscelin mentions a priest of Wilton called Beorhtric in Translatio Edithae, chap. 23, p. 301, datable to c. 1065. Goscelin might have succeeded him, but, during the rule of Wulfthryth, Wilton had two priests, Adelman and Osmund, whose names show that they also were of continental origin (Translatio Edithae, chap. 4).

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with her mother.52 Conceivably, Eve was Herman’s niece—like Herman, her mother was a Lotharingian, and a nephew of Herman’s held land in Wiltshire in 1086.53 Goscelin’s privileged relationship with Eve—his role as her spiritual mentor and frequent visitor until the time of her departure in c. 1078—may in fact have depended not so much upon his position as a chaplain at Wilton as his close relationship to Herman, whose role as the binding force between them is evident from Goscelin’s recollection of how he and Eve consoled one another at his death (‘after the death of our father, I assuaged our shared orphanhood with you more frequently’).54 But could Eve be regarded as having been left as much of an orphan as Goscelin—as much alone in the world—by the death of her bishop, even if that bishop was also her uncle? This may, of course, be merely another instance of Goscelin’s tendency to projection, but as there is no record of her father’s activities later than 1066 it is possible that he died before Bishop Herman.55 If, in other words, Herman effectively occupied the role of Eve’s actual father, Goscelin’s claims on Eve as a daughter extended beyond the spiritual bond created by his role as a priest. Eve, then, Goscelin implies in his ‘history of their love’, was still a child when his moderate love of her was turned to fervour by the sight of her dedication as a bride of Christ—perhaps no more than seven years old. Any attempt by a modern reader to construe the nature of this relationship is obviously fraught with the potential for misunderstanding, inevitably compounded by the translation of the work into English. There are, however, clear indications in the Liber confortatorius that Goscelin was aware that his relationship with Eve was liable to be construed by his contemporaries as something other than fervent caritas, particularly in the prologue when he contemplates the possibility of his work falling into the hands of someone other than Eve.56 His recollection of having on occasions been denied access to Eve 52 Liber confort., pp. 28–29. Having been dedicated to the Wilton community, she would not have needed the permission of her natural father to attend an ecclesiastical celebration. 53

R. R. Darlington, ‘Anglo-Saxon Wiltshire’, VCH, Wiltshire, II, 121. Liber confort., p. 41, describes Eve as the daughter of a Lotharingian mother and a Danish father, and of noble birth. The names of her parents, Oliva and Api, are recorded by Hilary of Orléans in his metrical commemoration of Eve (Häring, p. 926 (lines 33–40)). 54 Liber confort., p. 29: ‘Post decessum patris nostri, consolabar tecum frequentior communen orbitatem’. 55

The only record of a man named Api (Ape) that Wilmart, ‘Ève et Goscelin [I]’, p. 423, was able to find is in the Domesday Book, where he is twice mentioned as having held land before 1066. Against this speculation is Goscelin’s inclusion of parents among the relations whom she has left behind (Liber confort, pp. 32, 37), although this might be a scriptural echo. 56 Liber confort., p. 26: ‘Absint a puro susurrio sibilantes insidie, nequam oculus, uafer digitus, uentilator et cachinnator impurus’. (‘May hissing calumny, the wicked eye, the artful finger, the impure gossip-monger and cackler be far from our pure whispering’). The relationship of Goscelin and Eve, and modern readers’ constructions of it, are examined by Rebecca Hayward in two essays in this volume; see pp. 341–67.

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when he visited her, suggests that Eve’s superiors, or Eve herself, were uneasy about the frequency of his visits, which became even more frequent after the death of Herman.57 There is, too, the possibility, mentioned above, that Goscelin’s relationship with Eve played a part in Osmund’s hostility—particularly as Goscelin was not merely refused employment in his household but obliged to leave Wiltshire.58 The most telling sign of unease, however, is Eve’s departure without a word of warning or farewell to Goscelin, despite the closeness of their relationship and habitual correspondence.59 In a later, more orthodox age she would have required the permission of her bishop to become an anchorite, and would have been fortunate to have received permission to do so outside the walls of her convent. It is not impossible that Bishop Osmund was consulted at some stage before Eve’s departure. Goscelin gives the impression that she fled from Wilton suddenly and without warning.60 To have set off for the continent alone, unaided, and without any clear destination in mind, however, would have required an astonishing degree of heroism. This, as a spiritual quester, she may have had, but, if she sought help at all in getting to France, a Norman bishop was better placed to help her than an English abbess.61 Goscelin acknowledged, reluctantly, that Eve’s departure to Angers left him with no choice but to support her decision to live as an anchorite: ‘Now that you have been planted in this place, I am compelled to help you take root, you whom I should have preferred, if it could have been done in the will of God, to tear away’.62 It is difficult to imagine that he would have encouraged her in her decision to become an anchorite if she had consulted him. It had always been his desire, he explains, that she should be a nun; if she preferred to be an anchorite, she might at least have done so in her native land so that the grief of his separation from her would have been less.63 The occasions on which he visited and was not permitted to see Eve may, 57

Liber confort., p. 29. Hilary of Orléans gives the impression that Eve was already living as a recluse before she left Wilton; ‘Sic in cella diu mansit ad dei seruicium’. (‘Thus for a while she served God in a cell’.) Häring, p. 926 (line 53). 58

Liber confort., p. 29.

59

Liber confort., pp. 29–30, 45.

60

He describes her departure as ‘precipitous and unannounced flight’ (‘precipitate et ignorata fuga’), Liber confort., p. 29. 61 It is also of interest in this context that the Bishop of Bayeux held land in Wiltshire in 1086 (which had belonged to Wilton); Elizabeth Crittall, ‘The Abbey of Wilton’, VCH, Wiltshire, III, 233. Goscelin appears to have learnt that Eve had been assisted by a ‘blessed lady’ who was now her close companion at Angers (Liber confort., p. 92). 62

Liber confort., p. 36: ‘hic te plantatam cogor radicare, quam mallem, si fieri posset, in uoluntate Dei auellere’. 63 Liber confort., p. 36: ‘sed hoc alibi quam hic et alia cupiebam uia, ut scilicet sancta uiueres et utile uas esses in domo Domini, cenobialis columba, non turtur solitaria, aut, si

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indeed, suggest an attempted withdrawal to a more solitary lifestyle before she left Wilton.64 It is not certain that the Liber confortatorius ever reached Eve. There is little sign that he knew anything of her life as an anchorite beyond her whereabouts.65 His image of her inhabiting a cell eight feet square is based on numerological principles, and, perhaps, on his knowledge of hermits’ cells in England.66 At Angers Eve joined a small community of recluses attached to the church of Saint-Laurent; it was a cemetery church, dependent on the nunnery of Le Ronceray.67 Some time later— perhaps twenty years later—she moved to the church of Saint-Eutrope, where she was joined by her niece Ravenissa.68 Hilary of Orléans, who wrote a verse malles, turtur fieres in patria. Et quare? Vt nos minus desolationem plangeremus, te proxima’. (‘But I desired this elsewhere than where you are and by another path, namely, that you might live holily and be a useful vessel in the house of the Lord, a dove in the cloister, not a solitary turtledove, or, if you preferred, you might become a turtledove in your homeland. And why? So that I might mourn my desolation less, if you were close to me’.) As late Anglo-Saxon nunneries are poorly documented, no significance can be attached to the fact that evidence of solitary enclosure within nunneries is lacking. Relatively well-attested, and perhaps more common, were the vowed women, often widows, who were not members of communities but lived secluded lives as solitaries or in small groups, either in their own homes or in the neighbourhood of monastic churches; see Sarah Foot, Veiled Women, 2 vols (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), I, 111–208. The only English anchorite mentioned by Goscelin is Brihtric, who was personally known to a monk of Goscelin’s acquaintance; he is described as an illiterate man who occupied a small wooden cell attached to a church (Liber confort., pp. 67– 68). Goscelin, however, does not regard Eve’s choice of an anchoritic life as in any way unusual, and claims to have contemplated it for himself; his account of this, and his assumption that reading will figure prominently in Eve’s life, make it clear that illiteracy was not characteristic of anchorites in his experience (Liber confort., pp. 34, 79–82). 64

See n. 57, above.

65

He mentions that Eve has been welcomed by her new community, is visited by clergymen and bishops and had found a place at Angers with the help of a woman who is now her close companion, Liber confort., p. 92. His comment on Brihtric, Liber confort., p. 68, may suggest that he had heard about an anchorite who had been burnt to death in Angers. 66 Liber confort., p. 72. This familiarity presumably underlies the explanation that he had often longed for a cell like hers but provided with a door so that he could go out to attend mass in a church (Liber confort., p. 34). 67 68

Van Rossum, pp. 47, 64.

Wilmart, ‘Ève et Goscelin [I]’, p. 437. For the autographs of Eve and her niece in a Gospel Book once belonging to the abbey of La Trinité de Vendôme, see Penelope D. Johnson, Prayer, Patronage, and Power: The Abbey of La Trinité, Vendôme 1032–1187 (New York: New York University Press, 1981), pp. 164, 168, n. 58. Saint-Eutrope was a dependency of a priory of La Trinité de Vendôme, which was founded by Count Geoffrey Martel in the mid eleventh century. La Ronceray was founded by Count Fulk Nerra and Countess Hildegard in the early eleventh century (van Rossum, p. 64).

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commemoration of Eve shortly after her death, attested to her reputation for sanctity and asceticism and her avid readership of holy books.69 Ironically, she is commemorated also as the close friend of a former monk who was an anchorite at Saint-Eutrope, Hervé of Vendôme.70 Inevitably, the Liber confortatorius encourages us to view Eve’s removal to Angers within the context of her relationship to Goscelin, and it offers, obliquely, support for the hypothesis that Eve sought to distance herself from Goscelin. But what were Eve’s motives, and did Goscelin figure significantly—or even at all—in her decision? A number of other reasons why Eve might have wanted to leave Wilton have been advanced.71 By far the most plausible of these, as van Rossum argues, is that Wilton was not conducive to the kind of spiritual life she wished to pursue because it included a number of women and children who remained resident there, having originally taken refuge or been placed there for safekeeping during the Norman invasion.72 Lay membership of the community appears, in fact, to have been characteristic of Wilton from the time of its foundation.73 Hilary of Orléans lends support to the view that Eve found the ethos of Wilton uncongenial when he relates that Eve left the women she had lived with ‘abhorring that multitude like the offence of sin’.74 I suggest in a later essay that Goscelin himself, having encouraged Eve from childhood to cultivate the kind of emotionally fervent and inward spirituality that he espoused, can be regarded as having contributed to her desire for a more intense and solitary form of religious vocation.75 But why did she choose to become an anchorite on the continent when, as Goscelin reflects, she could have become an anchorite at 69

Häring, p. 928 (lines 113–20).

70

Häring, p. 928 (lines 97–112). Hilary is at pains to assert the innocence of this relationship, which was sanctioned by Hervé’s former abbot, Geoffrey, who wrote three letters to him, the first of which was also addressed to Eve; Letters 48–50, Goffridi abbatis vindocinensis: Opera omnia, PL, 157, 184–88. Liber confort. is discussed in the context of Robert of Arbrissel’s eremitic movement in Anjou by Latzke, pp. 116–54; van Rossum, pp. 35–41. Wilmart, ‘Ève et Goscelin [I]’, p. 438, dates her death to before 1125; a date of before 1120 is suggested by Nicholas Häring, ‘Hilary of Orléans and his Letter Collection’, Studi Medievali, 3rd Series, 14 (1973), 1068–1122 (pp. 1077–80). 71

Suggestions include the threat of an arranged marriage, resentment of her privileged position by other members of the convent, and disaffection with the Norman hierarchy; see van Rossum, pp. 60–62. 72

Van Rossum, pp. 61–65; Elkins, pp. 2–3.

73

See ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, pp. 318–27.

74

‘Quod abhorrens Eua multum uelud noxam criminis/ Quibus primo conuiuebat secessit a feminis’; Häring, p. 927 (lines 71–72). Hilary might merely mean that Eve found Wilton too secular. 75

‘Edith as Contemplative’, pp. 281–306.

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Wilton?76 And why Angers? That, presumably, was determined by the contacts available to her and her circle, but it may be that the contacts with Angers which enabled her to join the community there also relayed to her the first stirrings of the new eremiticism in France.77

Eve, Edith, and the Abbesses of Wilton St Edith (c. 961–84) was the daughter of Wulfthryth and King Edgar. Wulfthryth, who was Edgar’s first cousin, had been educated at Wilton as a lay member of the community before her marriage to Edgar. The marriage was dissolved when Edith was about two years old. Wulfthryth returned to Wilton, taking Edith with her, and assumed the role of abbess (c. 963–1010?).78 Her two immediate successors are not named by Goscelin.79 They were followed by Brihtgifu, who was dedicated to the community shortly after Edith’s death, and ruled from c. 1040–65.80 The Wilton community was still, in Goscelin’s time, notably high born, and its close connections with the royal house, continuing through from the reign of King Edgar to that of Edward the Confessor, but especially close in the lifetime of Edith, are reflected in Goscelin’s account of the influence Edith wielded at her father’s court.81 Edith was elevated to sainthood by her half-brother, King Æthelred, with episcopal support,82 and her cult does not seem to have really taken root within the Wilton community until c. 1040 when Ælfgifu and Ælfhild had almost identical 76

Liber confort., p. 36.

77

Van Rossum, p. 57, regards it as unlikely that Eve was involved in the movement associated with Robert of Arbrissel until after 1096. But compare Jestice, pp. 130–31, who argues that ‘the origins of the wandering preaching movements began, not with Robert of Arbrissel or at the earliest with Gregorian preachers such as the monks of Hirsau’, but with monks of the eleventh century. There may evidence of direct contact between Wilton and Angers at the turn of the twelfth century through the poet Muriel; she was based at Le Ronceray in Angers, of which Eve’s community was a dependency, but is reported as having been buried at Wilton; see J. S. P. Tatlock, ‘Muriel: The Earliest English Poetess’, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 48 (1933), 317–21. However, Gabriela Signora, ‘Muriel and the Others … Or Poems as Pledges of Friendship’, in Friendship in Medieval Europe, ed. by Julian Haseldine (Stroud: Sutton, 1999), pp. 199–212 (p. 200), denies Muriel’s presence at Wilton; see further ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, p. 337. 78

Vita Edithae, chaps 1–4.

79

Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 37), chap. 26 (p. 100); Translatio Edithae, chap. 20 (p. 296).

80

Vita Edithae, chap. 26; Translatio Edithae, chap. 20 (pp. 295–96).

81

Vita Edithae, chap. 10 (pp. 62–64), chap. 11 (pp. 62–64).

82

Translatio Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 266).

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dreams in which Edith prophesied that Ælfgifu would become abbess of Wilton.83 This was fulfilled when Ælfgifu succeeded Brihtgifu, but her reign, as Edith had predicted, was short (c. 1065–67). Goscelin had evidently enjoyed her hospitality; in his opinion, over-lavish hospitality was the only fault of which she could possibly have been accused.84 Eve’s dedication to the Wilton community at around the age of seven in 1065 was roughly contemporaneous with Ælfgifu’s accession. In her Wilton had, for the first time, an abbess who was personally devoted to Edith. She was succeeded by Godiva (c. 1067–90), who, as she was still abbess of Wilton when Eve left, was presumably informed of her plans, though this is not the impression that Goscelin gives in the Liber confortatorius.85 Whether Eve had made a formal profession as a nun is, however, open to doubt.86 In the years following Eve’s dedication, several members of the community reported visions of Edith. Her appearance in a dream, shortly after Ælfgifu’s death, announcing that she had not wholly succeeded in gaining salvation for Ælfgifu’s soul, reflects conflict over the succession between Godiva and Ælfgifu’s sister Thola.87 Edith also defended herself when the community complained about her failure to protect them during a plague, and again when she was derided for having no power to help the community to recover its lost lands.88 In the wake of the Conquest, it appears, the community’s fortunes had declined, and so too had faith in Edith. Though Goscelin later commemorated a number of Anglo-Saxon saints, they do not appear to have played any significant part in his own devotional life. Edith is the only one who figures in the Liber confortatorius, and of the saints of the early church who figure there, he appears to have been personally attached only to the founder saint of his own monastery, St Bertin (together with his companion, St

83

Translatio Edithae, chap. 20.

84

Translatio Edithae, chap. 20 (p. 297); p. 296 records that she was famous for her hospitality. 85

Goscelin refers twice to Eve’s abbess in passing, without naming her. She is mentioned among the desirable things Eve has left behind (Liber confort., p. 37); at p. 32 she figures among all those left lamenting by Eve’s departure, and at p. 45 he singles out only Eve’s best friend Eagytha as being happier than he in having been able to say goodbye to her. This too appears to be a rhetorical strategy, whereby Goscelin associates himself with the grief of Eve’s community and the desirable things that she has sacrificed which will, in eternity, be restored to her. 86 In Liber confort., p. 104, Goscelin describes her as a monacha; see further ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, pp. 318–27. 87

Translatio Edithae, chap. 20. See ‘St Edith and the Wilton Community’, pp. 273–76.

88

Translatio Edithae, chaps 21–22.

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Omer).89 St Edith mattered to him because, as the patron saint of Eve’s convent, she was a unifying link (‘Consider I am seated with you at Wilton in the presence of our lady St Edith’, he writes).90 The culminating role Edith holds in the Liber confortatorius as the goal of Eve’s spiritual quest—incorporation within Edith who, as often as she wishes, will consummate her mystic marriage with her heavenly bridegroom in the church that she built at Wilton, transfigured into an eternal mansion within the New Jerusalem—is the means by which Goscelin finds an image for Eve’s final union with Christ. Simultaneously, the image fulfils Goscelin’s thematic insistence that all the earthly joys that she has left behind in her native land will be restored to her in the heavenly homeland. This culmination of course— restoring Eve to the place that she (and, more importantly, Goscelin himself) had lost—very nearly elides altogether the fact that Eve had deliberately chosen to leave her monastic home (and her spiritual father) and to make a solitary and independent home for herself.91 Her dying words, it is worth noting, as recorded by Hilary of Orléans, alluded to the joys of the heavenly homeland.92 Goscelin’s strategy assumes that, as the other half of his soul, Eve shared his devotion to her monastery’s saint. As remembered in the oral traditions of Wilton that Goscelin records in the Legend of Edith, Edith (like Wilton itself) looks much too secular to have appealed to a woman who left the community to become an anchorite; Goscelin’s invented portrait of Edith as a solitary contemplative withdrawn from the world to seek union with Christ might have been more to Eve’s taste. It is unlikely that the Wilton community recognised in this portrait the gorgeously-dressed princess with a private zoo and a heated bath tub who figured in the stories about Abbess Wulfthryth’s daughter that Abbess Brihtgifu (c. 997–1065) and her contemporaries had handed down to them; Goscelin may, however, have supposed correctly that his radically fashionable recasting of Edith as a bride of Christ would appeal to their tastes. What Lanfranc might have made of the Legend of Edith—supposing that Goscelin’s opening promise that it had a lot to say about Archbishop Dunstan was enough to persuade him to read it—is another matter.93

89

Liber confort., pp. 28, 63, 77, 100, 113.

90

Liber confort., p. 27.

91

Liber confort., pp. 114–115.

92

‘She began to sing the psalms to God with rejoicing and these two lines from the sequence of St Augustine: “Blessed is that homeland which knows nothing but joy, for the citizens of this homeland never cease singing praise”’: ‘Decantare deo cepit psalmos cum leticia / Et hos duos Augustini uersus de sequentia: / “Beata illa patria que nescit nisi gaudia! / Nam ciues huius patrie non cessant laudes canere”’: Häring, p. 929 (lines 127–28). 93

Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 38).

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The Commissioning of the Legend of Edith and the Dedication to Lanfranc In his prologue to the Legend, Goscelin explains that Bishop Herman had urged him not to allow his sense of inadequacy to prevent him from undertaking the work when the matres of Wilton were so eager to have it. This could, perhaps, suggest that the work was originally commissioned by Abbess Ælfgifu (c. 1065–67). It is, however, her successor, Abbess Godiva (c. 1067–90) who is named in the prologue, and there is no need to assume that Goscelin means that the work was commissioned by successive abbesses, since matres is used elsewhere in the work to denote senior members of the community.94 Godiva’s pragmatic motives for commissioning the Legend of Edith are apparent in the Translatio; the community was unable to recover lost lands, and without the backing of the English monarchy who had been generous patrons since before the time of Edgar, it needed the assistance of a powerful supporter.95 The fact that Edith’s cult was at a low ebb in the convent following the Conquest, owing to her failure to aid the convent in the recovery of its lands and when it was struck by plague (and also, it appears, in consequence of the successional conflict between Godiva and Ælfgifu’s sister), may also have been a consideration.96 Goscelin, however, had reasons of his own for dedicating the earliest version of the Legend to Archbishop Lanfranc (preserved in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MS C938). He then revised it; there is reason to believe (see below) that the revised version (found in Cardiff, Public Library, MS I. 381) was intended for the Wilton community. His reasons for dedicating the Legend to Lanfranc are apparent in the prologue to the Rawlinson version. Hailing Lanfranc as the bridegroom who has instituted the New Jerusalem by embracing the English church as his bride, Goscelin assays a strategic confusion of certainty in the universality of Christ’s salvation and confidence in Lanfranc’s willingness to accept the services of all talented hagiographers: ‘No person is shut out; we are all invited to the supper of the Lamb, we are all ordered to sing at the nuptials of Christ, the gifts of all are demanded at the table of the bridegroom’.97 Goscelin had been decisively shut out by Herman’s Norman successor. Lanfranc’s doubts about the authenticity of Anglo-Saxon saints are well-known, but his reservations concerning the cults of Elphege and Dunstan were short-lived.98 By 94

Vita Edithae, chap. 10 (p. 70).

95

Translatio Edithae, chaps 15, 22.

96

See further, ‘St Edith and the Wilton Community’, pp. 267–76.

97

Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (pp. 35–36): ‘Nulla persona excluditur; omnes inuitamur ad cenam agni, omnes cantare iubemur ad nupcias Christi, omnium dona postulantur ad mensam sponsi’. 98

Ridyard, ‘Condigna Veneratio’, pp. 201–04. It is also strongly argued that Lanfranc’s

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1079, Lanfranc had heard Anselm’s arguments in favour of Elphege, and Osbern of Canterbury was subsequently commissioned to write a new Life of Elphege.99 Goscelin’s dedication is, accordingly, a bid for the position he finally succeeded in obtaining in c. 1091, that of hagiographer in residence at Canterbury, rewriting the lives of Anglo-Saxon saints for the Norman regime; or as he put it in his prologue: ‘The whole earth sings a new song; harmonies and choirs and psalteries and every kind of music resounds everywhere. New histories, new written works are dedicated to divine praise, stamped in the pure mint of truth with the image of the true king’.100 Goscelin goes to considerable lengths to establish Edith’s connection with Archbishop Dunstan (including an erroneous identification of Dunstan as the bishop who translated Edith’s remains).101 This suggests that he was aware, from his contacts with Canterbury, that Lanfranc was moving towards positive endorsement of Dunstan’s sainthood, and even perhaps that he might have an interest in employing someone to write a Life of Dunstan. Osbern of Canterbury’s Life of Dunstan reports that Lanfranc was assisted in his reforms by the miraculous intervention of Dunstan and that the saint miraculously cured Lanfranc of a lifethreatening illness.102 Osbern’s testimony to Lanfranc’s ‘appreciation of the usefulness of the community’s patron saint’, as Ridyard argues, cannot be ignored,103 but precisely when this usefulness became apparent to Lanfranc is unclear, since Osbern’s Life may date to the years immediately following Lanfranc’s death in

negative attitude to Anglo-Saxon saints has been exaggerated by modern scholars; see Richard W. Pfaff, ‘Lanfranc’s Supposed Purge of the Anglo-Saxon Calendar’, in Liturgical Calendars, Saints and Services in Medieval England, Variorum Collected Studies Series, 610 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), pp. 95–108. 99 See Eadmer’s Vita Sancti Anselmi, in The Life of St Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. and trans. by R. W. Southern (London: Nelson, 1962), pp. 50–54. 1079 was the year of Anselm’s visit to Canterbury: R. W. Southern, St Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 315–17. 100

Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 35): ‘Cantat canticum nouum omnis terra; symphonie et chori et psalteria atque omnigena ubique resultat musica. Tum noue hystorie, noua scriptorum diuinis laudibus sacrantur studia, que modo ueri regis forma ac pura ueritatis signantur moneta’. 101

See especially Vita Edithae, chap. 1; chaps 21–24, Translatio Edithae, chap. 1. See further ‘St Edith and the Wilton Community’, pp. 258–60. 102

Vita sancti Dunstani auctore Osberno, in Memorials of Saint Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. by William H. Stubbs, RS, 63 (London: Stationery Office, 1874; repr. [Wiesbaden]: Kraus, 1965), pp. 69–161 (pp. 143–53, 155–56). See further, Nigel Ramsay and Margaret Sparks, ‘The Cult of St Dunstan at Christ Church, Canterbury’, in St Dunstan: His Life, Times and Cult, ed. by Nigel Ramsay, Margaret Sparks, and Tim Tatton-Brown (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1992), pp. 311–24 (pp. 313–16). 103

Ridyard, ‘Condigna Veneratio’, p. 203.

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1089.104 But, whatever doubts Lanfranc may have harboured about Dunstan’s sanctity, they did not alter the fact that he was a worthy predecessor of Lanfranc and renowned for his implementation of the Benedictine Reform—sufficient for the purposes of recommending Edith and her community to Lanfranc’s protection—and, as Goscelin knew, Lanfranc had already, before 1079, restored the bell made by Dunstan to its pride of place at Canterbury.105 Although the evidence that Lanfranc embraced the cult of Dunstan at some time during his life time may post-date 1089, then, Goscelin’s strategic foregrounding of Edith’s connection with Dunstan does not necessitate dating the Legend to the last years of Lanfranc’s life. I differ in my reading of the dedicatory prologue from Sally Vaughn, who deduces a close alliance between Lanfranc, Herman and Goscelin, and suggests that Goscelin, encouraged perhaps by Anselm when he visited England c. 1080, was arguing in his dedication, as Anselm was to do ten years later, ‘that the Conquest can only be secured by incorporating Anglo-Saxon saints and heroes into the new AngloNorman culture this generation is about to create. But Goscelin’s heroes differ in that they will be heroines’.106 The effect of her argument is, unfortunately, to elide the role of the Wilton community. The dedication to Lanfranc, it seems to me, was opportunistic. Goscelin does look to have got wind of the fact that Lanfranc was becoming more receptive to the cults of Anglo-Saxon saints, particularly Dunstan and Elphege. But the Legend of Edith is not a work that he would have written if he had been fully informed of Lanfranc’s conceptions of sainthood and monastic orthodoxy, not if his primary purpose had been to persuade Lanfranc to embrace the cult of Edith. The Legend of Edith, I suggest in ‘St Edith and the Wilton Community’, was conceived as a work intended to be read by the Wilton nuns, necessarily incorporating their oral traditions, and was loosely adapted, perhaps rather hastily, to what he rightly guessed were the more orthodox expectations of Archbishop Lanfranc and his emerging interest in his predecessor Dunstan.107

The Manuscripts of the Liber confortatorius and the Legend of Edith The Liber confortatorius survives in a single manuscript, British Library, Sloane MS 3103, fols 1–114 (late twelfth century).108 The manuscript belonged to the Abbey of 104

Ramsay and Sparks, pp. 315–16, date Osbern’s Life of Dunstan to the last few years of Lanfranc’s life or the four and a half year interim before Anselm’s arrival in 1093. 105

Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 38). Anselm was apprised by Osbern, during his exile at Bec, of Dunstan’s reforming role, and asked Lanfranc for a copy of Dunstan’s rule of life for monks (Regularis Concordia); Southern, Portrait in a Landscape, p. 315. 106

Vaughn, pp. 174–81 (p. 179).

107

See also ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, pp. 247–50, 257–64.

108

Described by Talbot, pp. 24–25. The abbey’s ex libris is on fols 80v, 114v and 116r.

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Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte in the diocese of Coutances in Normandy, and was probably written there.109 An indeterminate number of folios have been lost. In addition to the Liber confortatorius, the manuscript contains incomplete accounts of Thomas á Becket and St Katherine, an antiphon in honour of St Bartholomew, a hymn to St Katherine, the incipit to a short history of William of Normandy, a list of the kings of England, and a letter from Bernard of Clairvaux to Pope Eugene III (1145–51). There are variations in the hand throughout the manuscript; Talbot thought it possible that these were due to interruptions in the copying rather than the intervention of a different copyist, but the manuscript does not appear to be the work of a single scribe. It is not known whether Eve ever received the work, or indeed whether it was ever sent, although the existence of a continental copy makes the latter, at least, a reasonable presumption. Goscelin’s prologue, ostensibly concerned to assert the text’s status as a private document intended only for Eve, may, equally, be taken as indicative of his expectation that it would be more widely read, particularly when coupled with his defensive remarks against misinterpretation of the nature of their relationship.110 This is a possibility when one considers his evident attempts to secure episcopal patronage through his hagiographical compositions. His remarks may, however, merely reflect his awareness that a document entrusted to a messenger was likely to be read by others or fall into the wrong hands. The survival of the work in a single manuscript suggests, further, that it did not have wide circulation. There is no evidence that it was known to Goscelin’s contemporaries or to later generations.111 The existence of a late twelfth-century continental copy made some decades after Eve’s death (c. 1120) nevertheless suggests some kind of continuing interest in its contents. Copies of the Legend of Edith are preserved in three manuscripts. The Vita and Translatio of Edith are the sole contents of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MS C938, fols 1–29 (early thirteenth century).112 The dedicatory prologue addressed to Lanfranc is found only in Rawlinson. Cardiff, Public Library, MS I. 381, fols 81– 120 (early twelfth century) contains the Vita only (fols 102v–120); it does not contain the Translatio, and the last three chapters of the Vita are lacking. The manuscript is 109

For the later transmission of the manuscript, see Wilmart, ‘Ève et Goscelin [II]’, pp. 51–

55. 110

Liber confort., p. 26. See further Rebecca Hayward, ‘Complaints and Consolations’, pp. 355–60. 111

Nor does Hilary of Orléans appear to have been aware of its existence (Häring, pp. 925–

30). 112 William D. Macray, Catalogi codicum manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Bodleianae partes quintae fasciculus secundus, viri munificentissimi Ricardi Rawlinson […] (Oxford: [n. pub.], 1878), III, 509. The manuscript is the work of two scribes; the second begins at fol. 25r. Corrections to the work of the first scribe appear to have been made by the second; Wilmart, ‘La légende de Ste Édith’, p. 8, n. 3.

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the work of two scribes; the Legend of Edith is in the same hand as the Passio of Edith’s half-brother Edward, with whose cult she is associated in the Legend.113 The manuscript also contains Goscelin’s Life of Æthelburg of Barking, and a unique copy of his lectiones for the feast of Hildelith; there is evidence that it was in the possession of Barking from c. 1500.114 Cardiff’s copy of the Vita lacks Chapters 25 to 27, and the metrical composition which concludes Chapter 24 is followed by the four metrical compositions which belong in the Translatio (XI–XIV). There are also substantive differences between the Cardiff and Rawlinson versions of the Vita. Gotha, Landesbibliothek, MS I. 81 (late fourteenth century) is an extensive collection of Lives of some fifty British and Anglo-Saxon saints.115 It preserves both the Vita and the Translatio (fols 188v–203), but all of the metrical compositions are omitted. Gotha belongs to the same tradition as Rawlinson; there are few significant variant readings.116

Goscelin’s Revision of the Legend of Edith: Its Relationship to the Liber confortatorius Wilmart argued that Cardiff represents a revision begun by Goscelin with the intention of adding in new metres, and that, in the process of doing this, he took the opportunity to make revisions to the text; but, having reached Chapter 24, he broke 113

Vita Edithae, chap. 18, and Metre VII.

114

N. R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries II, Abbotsford-Keele (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 348–49, states that Cardiff, Public Library, MS I. 381, fols 1–146, is a composite manuscript which appears to have taken its present form while in the possession of Sir Robert Cotton. Fols 121–46 date to the mid thirteenth century. Fols 81– 146 were annotated and foliated c. 1500; the notes and foliation are in a hand that appears in a Barking manuscript (p. 371). Wilmart, ‘La légende de Ste Édith’, p. 24, n. 4, dated fols 81– 120 to the second half of the twelfth century; Ker’s dating is s. xiiin . 115 The contents are tabled by Cornelia Hopf, Die abendländischen Handschriften der Forschungs- und Landesbibliothek Gotha (Gotha: Forschungs- und Landesbibliothek, 1994), pp. 58–61. Studies include Paul Grossjean, ‘De codice hagiographico Gothano’, Analecta Bollandiana, 58 (1940), 90–103; Marvin L. Colker, ‘A Gotha Codex dealing with the Saints of Barking Abbey’, Studia Monastica, 10 (1968), 321–24. It was written in England by a single scribe and is of unknown provenance; it is dated to the second half or third quarter of the fourteenth century. See Love, Three Anglo-Norman Lives, pp. lxxvii, cxxvii. 116

Wilmart, ‘La légende de Ste Édith’, pp. 302–03. Gotha did not become available to Wilmart until his edition of Rawlinson, collated with Cardiff, was in the proof stage. He made only four, brief, substantive alterations to his edition on the basis on Gotha, which he took to be accidental omissions. Gotha also contains a unique addition, which Wilmart regarded as authentic; as it could not conveniently be inserted into its proper place (Vita Edithae, chap. 18), he printed it in his summary collation of Gotha (pp. 303–07).

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off, and added the remaining metres with instructions for their insertion in the remainder of the text.117 The Cardiff version, however, may have been intended for the Wilton community; in the translation by Michael Wright and Kathleen Loncar included in this volume, the translation of the Vita, Chapters 2 to 24, is based on Cardiff. Cardiff is an amplification of Rawlinson, mostly in the form of short passages, but there are also several lengthy additions. The most extensive revision of the text occurs at Chapters 8 to 12 of Rawlinson; the revisions here include Cardiff’s only significant reorganization of material. (Chapters 8 to 12 of Rawlinson are translated by Wright and Loncar in the Appendix to their translation of the Vita.) Where Rawlinson relates Edith’s devotion to the cult of her relatives, Edith of Tamworth and Ælfgifu of Shaftesbury, Cardiff relates her devotion to St Denis, and it adds a description of her manual of devotions (not mentioned in Rawlinson).118 Both versions continue with an account of Dunstan and Æthelwold as Edith’s spiritual mentors (Cardiff’s additions include a passage, towards the end of this chapter, elaborating on the relationship of Edith and her mother).119 Both versions then have an account of Edith’s humility (Cardiff’s brief additions include the information that the Wilton community was drawn from the highest social rank).120 After this account, Cardiff (Chapter 10) inserts material which occurs later in Rawlinson: a passage which relates that Edith wore a hair shirt under her purple garments and compares her to Cecilia (the opening of Chapter 12 in Rawlinson), and an account of how she employed her many talents in celebrating the Lord.121 Cardiff then continues, in parallel with Rawlinson, with an account of Edith’s activities at the court of her father (with short additions in Cardiff which include an account of how Edith and her mother fed the poor during a famine).122 In Cardiff, this account is followed by an extended account of Edith’s menagerie and her feeding of the

117

Wilmart, ‘La légende de Ste Édith’, pp. 24–31. The Rawlinson copy of the Vita preserves five metres (Metres I, II, IV, VIII, and X). A near-contemporary hand notes the omission of a sixth (Metre VI). Metre VIII is displaced to the end of the Vita; Wilmart considered that this might have been an accidental omission, but that a case could be made that Rawlinson records the beginnings of the process of revision represented by Cardiff. Cardiff incorporates the five metres found in Rawlinson, as well as Metre VI (presumably omitted accidentally from Rawlinson), and four others (Metres III, V, VII and IX); four more metres, which belong in the Translatio (Metres XI–XIV) are added at the end of the Vita, after Metre X, with instructions for their insertion. 118

Vita Edithae, chap. 8 (pp. 53–56); compare Vita Edithae (R), chap. 8 (pp. 53–55).

119

Vita Edithae, chap. 9 (p. 59).

120

Vita Edithae, chap. 10 (pp. 61–62).

121

In both Cardiff and Rawlinson, chap. 11.

122

Vita Edithae, chap. 11 (p. 64).

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animals kept there, and a metre (III) which echoes this account.123 Rawlinson merely alludes briefly to this menagerie; it also contains no trace of Metre III. Rawlinson at this point continues with a chapter describing how Edith employed her many talents in celebrating the Lord, found earlier in Cardiff. Both versions then continue from this point in parallel. This revision occurs at the point at which Goscelin is finessing Edith’s adoption of secular clothing; this, it is suggested, marked her as a secular member of the community, not a professed nun.124 Cardiff represents a clearer and more structured handling of this problematic transition. As can been seen from the above, the most substantial additions in Cardiff are concrete and specific accounts of the details of Edith’s life (very plausibly derived from traditions current at Wilton), most notably the accounts of her manual of devotions and her menagerie. The only other substantial addition in Cardiff is an account of relics of Edith preserved at Winchester (her alb and staff), attached to an account of how her father wanted to make her abbess of three monasteries (Chapter 16). Small additions throughout Cardiff also give more specific and concrete details pertaining to Edith and her church; others give greater prominence to Wulfthryth (as do some of the revisions to Chapters 8 to 11 of Rawlinson).125 There are also a number of revisions which represent fuller development of the imagery of Rawlinson. In Chapter 6, for instance, Cardiff gives more prominence to the paradisal figuring of the convent, as well as to the Wilton community, by adding that the rose garden of virgins embraced the flower of Christ, holding her in their arms and laps and kissing her.126 Other revisions give rhetorical or didactic emphasis. The initial motive for the revision may have been the insertion of the metres, as Wilmart believed. But the character of the revisions to Cardiff strongly suggest that Goscelin revised the version dedicated to Lanfranc for the Wilton community, incorporating traditions reported to him by the nuns, which, owing to considerations 123

Vita Edithae, chap. 11 (pp. 65–68).

124

See ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, pp. 318–27.

125

Cardiff additions relating to Wulfthryth include a passage at the end of chap. 4. Chap. 10 adds that Edith did not glory in her mother’s birth, even though she was worthy to rule; chap. 14 heightens her pious desire for the nail of the True Cross. Additional passages on Edith are found in chaps 5, 6, 8, 10 and 16; chap. 20 includes mention of the fine clothes she wore while assisting in the building of her church. Additions in chaps 7 and 20 include mention that Benna’s paintings on the walls of her church can still be seen, and more description of Edith’s church is added at the beginning of chap. 20. The additions in chap. 5 include reference to the donations and lands given by Edgar and his instrumentality in increasing the size of the community. Chap. 10 expands upon Edith’s exemplary instruction of her kinswoman Wulfwen; in chap. 24, only Rawlinson gives the date of Edith’s death and her age at death. 126

Vita Edithae, chap. 6 (p. 47).

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of length (and perhaps haste), he had omitted from the version dedicated to Lanfranc. It is unlikely that he had omitted them because he thought that Lanfranc would find them unacceptable—the material found only in Cardiff was less likely to give offence to orthodoxy than his account, for instance, of Edith’s involvement in the governance of her father’s kingdom, and Edith’s assumption of secular costume after having worn the habit of a nun in her childhood.127 The one aspect of the revision which seems to conflict with this view is that it is Rawlinson which reports that Edith’s devotion to the cults of her female relatives (her father’s sister, Edith, and his mother, Ælfgifu) whereas Cardiff relates her devotion to St Denis, to whom she subsequently dedicated the church she built.128 This is anomalous, because Edith’s connection with the cult of her aunt and grandmother were evidently of sufficient importance to require the insertion of subsequent reference to them in Cardiff (a reference to Edgar’s sister Edith is inserted rather awkwardly into an account of a miraculous event which took place at the time of Edith’s death; the eulogy of Ælfgifu of Shaftesbury is transferred to the chapter that relates the translation of Edward the Martyr to her monastery).129 One would expect it to be the version for Lanfranc which represented St Denis as the object of Edith’s devotion, not merely because he was Lanfranc’s countryman and an undoubtedly authentic saint, but because Goscelin subsequently relates that Edith dedicated the church she built to St Denis, and also that the saint appeared to Dunstan in a vision, in the company of Edith, commanding him to translate her remains.130 These are circumstances so fortuitously supportive of Goscelin’s aim of recommending Edith and her community to Lanfranc, as to raise the suspicion that, like the claim that it was Dunstan who presided over the translation of Edith, Edith’s connections with St Denis are Goscelin’s invention.131 Be that as it may, the only explanation for this particular revision seems to be that it was not until after Goscelin completed the version for Lanfranc that it occurred to him that, in view of the subsequent role played by St Denis, it would be altogether more apt to represent 127

Vita Edithae, chaps 10, 12.

128

Vita Edithae, chap. 8 (pp. 53–54).

129

Vita Edithae, chaps 24 (p. 94), 18 (p. 83). Ælfgifu (d. 944) was the first wife of King Edmund; for testimony to her veneration as a saint in the tenth century, see Foot, II, 169, n. 69. For the difficulties of disentangling Edith of Tamworth from Edith of Polesworth, see Foot, II, 190–94. Only in Rawlinson is Edgar’s sister Edith associated with the foundation of Tamworth; but given the apparent importance of St Edith’s devotion to the cults of her female relatives, it seems unlikely that Goscelin omitted this detail from his revision because he ‘realised he had made a mistake in associating [Edgar’s sister Edith] with Tamworth’ (p. 192). 130

Vita Edithae, chaps 20, 23; Translatio Edithae, chap. 1. For Lanfranc’s scepticism of local, as opposed to universal saints, see Gibson, p. 171. 131

For the role of Dunstan in the Legend, and the rededication of the Wilton church to St Benedict, see ‘St Edith and the Wilton Community’, pp. 254, 258–60.

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Edith as devoted to his cult (a conclusion which can only cast doubts on the veracity of this devotion, if not on Edith’s dedication of her church to him, and his visionary connection with her translation). Wilmart concluded that later abridgements of Goscelin’s Legend show that subsequent knowledge of it derived from Rawlinson. He was wrong, however, in claiming that the Wilton Chronicle shows no knowledge of material found only in the Cardiff version.132 This Middle English metrical composition, c. 1420, is believed to have been based on Goscelin’s Legend, amplified from other sources. The Wilton Chronicle’s account of Edith and her menagerie echoes material found only in Cardiff.133 It thus offers support for the view that Cardiff represents a revision made for the Wilton community. Four of the metres added in Cardiff are connected with the depiction of Edith in the concluding pages of the Liber confortatorius. In the Liber confortatorius, Goscelin envisages the goal of Eve’s spiritual quest in an apocalyptic image of Edith as the bride of Christ and leader of the Wilton community consummating her mystic marriage with her bridegroom; as a member of Edith’s community, Eve will be incorporated into this union with the deity.134 In Goscelin’s kingdom of heaven there will be many mansions. Into the bedchamber of a transfigured Wilton, now remade in the image of the New Jerusalem, Edith, as often as she wishes, will lead her divine spouse, with angels and archangels and a great company of heaven, together with her father Edgar and brother Edward and those of the community of Wilton found worthy. Mary, the supreme mother-in-law, will attend the marriage of her son and 132

Wilmart, ‘La légende de Ste Édith’, pp. 18–19. It is therefore unlikely that Cardiff was a revision made for the St Augustine’s community with the intention of promoting Edith’s cult there—if that were so, subsequent knowledge of the Legend of Edith would depend on Cardiff. 133

See S Editha, sive Chronicon Vilodunense, ed. by C. Horstmann (Leipzig: [n. pub.], 1883). Compare the account of Edith feeding her animals, found only in the Cardiff version (Vita Edithae, chap. 11 (p. 66)), and Wilton Chronicle, p. 26 (lines 1125–52), especially ‘Heliam corui; coruos Benedicte, cibaste; /Pascit Eadgitha feras, foris has infusque columbas’, with: ‘Also for loue of Helie þe prophet, y-wys,/ Rafenys he wolde kepe & oft hem fede’. The Wilton Chronicle also elaborates on Edith’s fondness for doves, which are not mentioned in Rawlinson’s brief account. The Cardiff manuscript is thought to have been in the possession of Barking, at least from c. 1500 (Ker, p. 371). But although the preservation of the Legend with a Life of Æthelburg and lectiones for Hildelith suggests compilation at Barking, the appearance of the Passio of Edith’s half-brother Edward in this manuscript, reflecting the Legend’s close association of Edith with the cult of Edward (Vita Edithae, chap. 18, and Metre VII), and written in the same hand as the Legend of Edith, could suggest that these two items originated at Wilton. 134

Liber confort., pp. 113, 115, p. 114. At p. 114, however, he recognises that Eve may wish to look down upon her transfigured cell, rather than on Wilton. Compare the vision of Edith as a bride of Christ which took place at Wilton either shortly before or after Eve was dedicated at Wilton (Translatio Edithae, chap. 22, p. 298).

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celebrate the festal day with her daughter-in-law. Edith thus appears in the concluding vision of the Liber confortatorius to have displaced Mary as the bride of Christ. In one of the metres included in Rawlinson (Metre II, which follows on from a eulogy of Wulfthryth and Edith as monastic mother and daughter), Edith appears, in the process of ascending to her mystical marriage, leading the shining armies of Wilton from their ivory dwellings. Here, however, Edith, although foremost of Mary’s followers, is presented as advancing under the leadership of the Virgin.135 The apocalyptic vision of Edith is more fully evoked in two of the metres added in Cardiff (Metres V and IX); these celebrate Edith’s nuptial union with the divine bridegroom in the city of the New Jerusalem, without any reference to the leadership of Mary. Metre V ends with the assurance that those who follow Edith’s leadership will enter with her into the marriage chamber of the heavenly king. The image of Edith in Metre IX looking benignly down upon Wilton, recalls the description of Edith and her retinue descending from heaven to Wilton in the Liber confortatorius.136 Two other metres added in Cardiff, Metres VI and VII, commemorate Edith’s father, Edgar, and her brother, Edward; these offer a possible rationale for their inclusion in the company led by Edith, since Edgar was not generally regarded as a saint. Wilmart suggested that Metre VIII, because of its displacement in Rawlinson to the end of the Vita, might represent the initial phase of the revision preserved in Cardiff. Metre VIII celebrates the church that Edith built, hailing her dedication of this as an achievement that transcended Solomon’s dedication of his temple (‘Here the virgin greater than Solomon consecrated a temple greater than Solomon’s). The claim rests on a figurative equation between the church she built to consummate her earthly union with her heavenly bridegroom and the virginal being (both body and mind) that she dedicated to him.137 The concluding vision of Edith in the Liber confortatorius thus represents a typological fulfilment of the Legend’s depiction of her church. Its full resonance seems to depend on Metre VIII, and it is only in the light of Metre VIII that the reference to the new Solomon in the concluding vision of Edith’s apocalyptic union with Christ in the marriage chamber of a transfigured Wilton in the Liber confortatorius (though most obviously a reference to Christ) is recognizable as an allusion to Edith herself. 138 135

Wulfthryth’s role in Metre II is obscure, perhaps deliberately so; that is, there is a degree of confusion or conflation in the identities of Wulfthryth and Mary. 136

Liber confort., p. 115.

137

See further ‘Edith as Contemplative’, pp. 293-94.

138

Compare Liber confort., p. 115, ‘Templum iaspide, crisolitis, berillis, amethistis cunctisque lapidibus preciosis perlucidum, ueteris Salomonis dignitate tanto precellentius, quanto noui Salomonis nostri noua arte constructius’. (‘The temple will shine with jasper, chrysolite, beryl, amethyst, and all precious gem-stones, as far exceeding the glory of the old Solomon, as it is more finely constructed by the new art of our new Solomon’); Vita Edithae,

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There is, then, reason (though not very compelling) for thinking that the completion of the Liber confortatorius post-date the completion of the Rawlinson version of the Legend. The metres added in the Cardiff revision were evidently made with Edith’s role in the Liber confortatorius in mind, but there appears to be no means of determining whether or not the completion of the Cardiff revision postdates the completion of the Liber confortatorius. It is tempting to speculate that Cardiff was a version intended for Eve at Angers as well as for the Wilton community. In any event, given the fact that St Edith served to unite Goscelin to Eve, the undertaking of the Cardiff revision in itself was for Goscelin a means of perpetuating his closeness to Eve.

Metre VIII (lines 1, 18, 46): ‘Hic Salomoniaci misteria candida templi Prerutilant. […] Sed tanta quis opes et opus Salomonis et artes Enumeret? […] Hic Salomone magis, magis hic templo Salomonis Virgo sacrat’ (‘Here the mysteries of Solomon’s temple glow brilliantly red. [….] But who shall enumerate such wealth, and the work and art of Solomon? […] Here the virgin greater than Solomon consecrated a temple greater than Solomon’s’.)

KATERN 9

St Edith and the Wilton Community STEPHANIE HOLLIS

Introduction: History and Hagiography

L

ess than a dozen nunneries are known to have existed in the late Anglo-Saxon period.1 Goscelin’s accounts of Wilton and Barking represent the only nearcontemporary narrative record of these monasteries. Most, perhaps all, of the late Anglo-Saxon nunneries were connected by kinship ties to the royal house, and benefited from its patronage. Wilton was conspicuously wealthy and well-connected during the rule of Edith’s mother, Wulfthryth, who was Abbess of Wilton from c. 963–1010?—and it remained so, vicissitudes notwithstanding, until the dissolution of the monasteries. Inevitably, in view of its connections to the royal house, the history of Wilton in the late tenth century is inextricably bound up with dynastic politics. A brief opening summary of these may be of use. Goscelin relates that Edith (c. 961–984) was taken to Wilton in her infancy by Wulfthryth when her marriage to King Edgar was dissolved (c. 963). From the beginning of the tenth century until at least the end of the eleventh, Wilton fulfilled the role of an upper-class boarding school;2 Wulfthryth, who was Edgar’s cousin, had been a pupil there at the time of her marriage, and, on her return to Wilton, she was installed as abbess. Edgar’s subsequent marriage to Ælfthryth (d. 1000) is generally regarded as the underlying reason for the dissolution of his marriage to Wulfthryth. Edgar (whose regnal dates are 959–75) was closely associated with the Benedictine reform movement led by Bishop Æthelwold (c. 904–84) and Archbishop Dunstan (c. 910–88). Æthelwold was a strong supporter of the office of the queen, and probably of Ælfthryth personally; he was responsible both for her coronation (so 1

The late Anglo-Saxon nunneries, all but the last two in Wessex, were: Amesbury, Horton, Romsey, Shaftesbury (and its cell at Bradford-on-Avon), Wherwell, Wilton, Nunnaminster at Winchester, Barking, and Chatteris. 2

See ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, pp. 308–09.

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far as is known for certain, she was the first tenth-century queen to have been consecrated) and for her elevation to the role of protector of the nunneries. Ælfthryth’s interference in the affairs of the nunneries evidently did not endear her to them. Edgar was succeeded in 975 by Edward (‘the Martyr’), who is presumed to have been the son of his first wife (Wulfthryth’s predecessor). Contemporary accounts claimed that the murder of Edward (in 978) was instigated by Ælfthryth in order to put her own son, Æthelred (‘the Unready’), on the throne; most of these accounts (including Goscelin’s Legend of Edith) originated in the nunneries.3 Goscelin also relates that, following the murder of Edward, an attempt was made by the opponents of Æthelred to persuade Edith to take the throne. Edith died young, in c. 984 (at the age of twenty-three). Thirteen years later, according to Goscelin, she was elevated to sainthood at the instigation of Æthelred (d. 1016), with the support of Archbishop Dunstan. Judging from Goscelin’s account, however, it does not appear that her cult had much support within the Wilton community until c. 1040. Nor does she appear, from his account, to have been chiefly remembered at Wilton for the sanctity of her life or her miraculous powers, but for her habit of dressing like a princess and her private zoo, the political influence she wielded at her father’s court, her literary and artistic talents, and the church that she had built and decorated to her own design. As the only surviving near-contemporary accounts of female communities in the late Anglo-Saxon period, Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and his accounts of the Life and Translation of Wulfhild of Barking are important historical documents.4 The generic unreliability of hagiography from the point of view of modern historians is ably reviewed by Susan Ridyard.5 She does not, however, consider the effect of Goscelin’s intended audiences, which are of central bearing. On the one hand, dedication of the Legend to Archbishop Lanfranc carries a high potential for orthodox rewriting of the material by Goscelin. On the other hand, the fact that the Legend was also a tardy fulfilment of the Wilton community’s commissioning represents a countervailing force, inhibiting the extent to which Goscelin reshaped

3 See Pauline Stafford, ‘Queens, Nunneries and Reforming Churchmen: Gender, Religious Status and Reform in Tenth- and Eleventh-Century England’, Past and Present, 163 (1999), 3–35 (pp. 24–32). 4 Goscelin’s Life and Translation of Wulfhild, and his long and short accounts of the subsequent translation of her relics in the early eleventh century by Abbess Ælfgifu (together with the relics of the founder abbesses of Barking, Æthelburg and Hildelith) are edited by Colker, ‘Texts of Jocelyn of Canterbury’, pp. 418–54. 5

Royal Saints of Anglo Saxon England, pp. 8–16; for specific consideration of the reliability of the Legend of Edith, see pp. 37–44. Questions of audience are examined by David Townsend, ‘Anglo-Latin Hagiography and the Norman Transition’, Exemplaria, 3 (1991), 385–433.

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the oral traditions of Wilton on which the Legend was based, without precluding a degree of invention on his part, or the omission of some material.6 Owing to the longevity of the abbesses of Wilton, the chain of oral testimony that connected the late eleventh-century community to the lifetime of Edith was short and strong. Abbess Brihtgifu joined Wulfthryth’s community shortly after Edith’s death (c. 984). She died in 1065, when Abbess Ælfgifu succeeded.7 Ælfgifu died two years later and was succeeded by Godiva, who was still Abbess of Wilton when Goscelin completed the Legend c. 1080. Brihtgifu was therefore in a position to communicate events that took place in the time of Wulfthryth (and during the rule of Wulfthryth’s two unnamed successors) to nuns who were still members of Godiva’s community in c. 1080.8 Unlike her mother, Abbess Wulfthryth, Edith does not appear to have rapidly assumed the status of a saint in the eyes of the Wilton community. Edith’s cult, I suggest below, was not the creation of the Wilton community, and was slow to take root there.9 Only two miraculous occurrences are associated with Edith during her lifetime in the Vita.10 Neither of these involved her direct agency; so, too, in the episode of the relic of the True Cross purchased by Wulfthryth, Edith is merely associated, through her relationship with her mother, with an event that is more centrally a part of Wulfthryth’s life story.11 The memories of those who knew Edith during her lifetime do not appear, then, to have been much subjected to hagiolatrous transformations and inventions. I am inclined to accept that, for the most part, the specific details of Edith’s life reported in the Legend represent authentic Wilton traditions, although in most, if not all cases, Goscelin places his own interpretive construction on these, and sometimes elaborates freely in the process. Ridyard is in agreement with Hamilton on 6

Goscelin made use of written sources, as well as the oral traditions of the Wilton community (Vita Edithae, chap. 1, p. 39); see further below. For the argument that Goscelin’s revision of the Legend represented by Cardiff was intended for the Wilton community, see ‘Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women’, pp. 238–42. For a consideration of Goscelin’s concern to establish the reliability of female witnesses in the dedicatory prologues to his Legend of Edith and Life of Wulfhild, see Whalen, pp. 123–35. 7

Vita Edithae, chap. 6 (p. 100); Translatio Edithae, chap. 20 (pp. 295–96).

8

For the two unnamed abbesses who ruled between Wulfthryth and Brihtgifu, see Vita Edithae, chap. 26, Translatio Edithae, chap. 20 (p. 296). 9

In this, I disagree with Ridyard, who argues persuasively that Edith’s cult was appropriated and promoted by Æthelred and his circle, but, in line with her emphasis on Edith’s role as the intermediary of royal patronage to the convent, she regards Wulfthryth and the Wilton community as the creators of her cult (pp. 146–54). 10

See Vita Edithae, chap. 13 (the miraculous preservation of Edith’s wardrobe during a fire), and chap. 15 (the mysterious disappearance of a boy while Edith was feeding the poor; Goscelin’s account of this suggests that its significance was contested at Wilton). 11

Vita Edithae, chap. 14; Goscelin incorporates a Life of Wulfthryth into the Translatio Edithae, chaps 3–11.

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Goscelin’s general reliability in the transmission of his sources; whether the traditions reported to Goscelin were themselves reliable is a different question, but it is one that applies equally to all documentary sources.12 Ridyard points out, however, that the bishop who translated Edith’s remains thirteen years after her death (c. 997) cannot have been Dunstan, since he died in 988.13 She dismisses as a hagiographical invention Goscelin’s account of Edith being offered the throne, after the murder of her half-brother Edward, by a party of noblemen opposed to the accession of Æthelred.14 In her view, ‘the principal themes of the monastic life— those of castitas, obedientia and paupertas—are delineated with continuous reference to the antithetical assumptions of the royal state’, and the report of Edith’s rejection of an offer of the throne owes its existence to Goscelin’s concern to establish Edith’s sanctity by means of ‘a conventional antithesis between the uirgo regia and the sponsa regis’.15 Ridyard also thinks it likely that the episode concerning Edith’s reluctance to be consecrated as the abbess of three nunneries in accordance with the wishes of her father, King Edgar, was invented by Goscelin as a means of illustrating the humility of the royal saint.16 In my view, Goscelin’s principal accommodation to Lanfranc’s readership was to present both Edith herself and her cult as having the support of Archbishop Dunstan; hence his erroneous identification of Dunstan as the bishop who presided over Edith’s translation.17 I am therefore sceptical of the close relationship he claims 12

Ridyard, p. 40; Hamilton, I, 194–375. See, likewise, Yorke, p. 170.

13

See Translatio Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 266); Ridyard, pp. 40–41. She disposes of the alternative possibility, that the relative dating is wrong, by showing that translation of Edith c. 997 is consistent with the politics of Æthelred’s reign (pp. 158–71); see also Yorke, p. 173, who suggests that Æthelred’s support for the cults of Edith and his half-brother Edward marks his reconciliation with Wulfthryth and her family. 14

Vita Edithae, chap. 19.

15

Ridyard, pp. 84, 140. This conventional antithesis, she argues ‘seriously obscures the historical role of a saint whose posthumous reputation was founded less upon the pleasant theory of royal piety than upon the hard fact of royal patronage’. Within a community closely associated with the royal house of Wessex ‘there could be no real renunciation of secular status and no real antithesis between uirgo regia and sponsa summi regis: the path to the heavenly bridal chamber lay not through the renunciation of the attributes of royalty but through their redeployment within the monastic context’ (p. 140). 16

Vita Edithae, chap. 16; see Ridyard, pp. 41–42, 87–88. She also observes (pp. 42–44) that Goscelin’s depiction of the union of Edgar and Wulfthryth as bound by indissoluble vows which could be broken by Wulfthryth’s entry to a nunnery contrasts with the irregularities imputed by William of Malmesbury; and that whereas the Translatio depicts Cnut as a devotee of Edith’s cult, William of Malmesbury claims that he regarded it with derision. 17

See further below. I also regard the claim that Edith was devoted to the cult of St Denis as an accommodation to the views of Lanfranc; for the possibility that Goscelin’s knew of Lanfranc’s attitude to the cult of Dunstan, see ‘Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women’,

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existed between Edith and Dunstan, though I see no reason to disbelieve the sole concrete instance of their association found in the Legend, Dunstan’s dedication of the chapel built by Edith.18 I am likewise doubtful of the unsubstantiated claim of a close relationship between Edith and Bishop Æthelwold, particularly as it can be inferred from the two reported examples of his putatively frequent visits to Wilton that he was not well regarded there.19 Elsewhere Æthelwold appears to me to have been inserted by Goscelin to provide ecclesiastic sanction for irregular behaviour on Edgar’s part,20 so that, although I do not share Ridyard’s belief that the report of an attempt to make Edith abbess of three nunneries is an invention, I am doubtful about the claim that Æthelwold duly consecrated her, particularly as the effective outcome of this episode (notwithstanding Goscelin’s claim that her reverence for both Æthelwold and her father made it difficult for her to oppose them) is that Edith appointed substitutes to rule over the three nunneries and remained a member of her mother’s community.21 That Goscelin did not omit all mention of aspects of Edith’s conduct incompatible with orthodox views of monastic enclosure I attribute to the pressure of the Wilton community as an audience. Goscelin shows signs of being at least partially informed of Lanfranc’s sceptical view of Anglo-Saxon saints, but he may have been unaware of the extent to which Anglo-Saxon monastic customs diverged from the rigorous standards espoused by some members of the Norman hierarchy; he does, however, clearly attempt to gloss over Edith’s habitual wearing of secular costume whose finery befitted her royal status, and to temper his account of her involvement in the governance of her father’s kingdom with reports of her charitable care of the poor and the sick.22 As I argue in a later essay in this volume, Edith’s status as a member of the Wilton community was ambiguous. She appears to have been a secular pp. 235–36. The Legend’s association of Edith with Dunstan was noticed by Hamilton, I, 255– 71. 18

Vita Edithae, chaps 21–22.

19

Vita Edithae, chap. 12. Æthelwold’s support of Ælfthryth, who supplanted Wulfthryth as Edgar’s wife, and expelled her sister, Abbess Wulfhild, from Barking, is unlikely to have made him popular at Wilton; see Yorke, p. 169. 20

In particular, Æthelwold is said to have sanctioned the separation of Wulfthryth and King Edgar (Vita Edithae, chap. 4, p. 42); compare Ridyard, pp. 42–43. 21 Vita Edithae, chap. 16; an addition in Cardiff relates that her staff of office and an alb embroidered by her were preserved at Winchester (pp. 78–79). A possible reason for Edgar’s desire to install Edith as abbess of Winchester, Barking, and a third monastery, presumably Horton, which was a dependency of Barking, might be found in Goscelin’s Vita sanctae Wulfhildae, chap. 9 (pp. 418–34). This relates that Abbess Wulfhild was expelled from Barking by Edgar’s wife Ælfthryth; she took up residence at Horton, and did not return to Barking until twenty years later. 22

Vita Edithae, chaps 10, 12.

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member of the Wilton community rather than a professed nun, so that the attempt to persuade her, after the murder of her half-brother Edward, to marry the preferred candidate of those who opposed the accession of Æthelred, and thereby legitimate his claim to the throne, does not seem inherently impossible.23 Goscelin might have been mistaken in identifying the leader of the faction that approached Edith as Ælfhere, but it is easy to understand how he might have made such a mistake, since Edward’s Passio relates that his body was taken to Shaftesbury for burial by a nobleman called Ælfhere.24 Goscelin explains in his dedicatory prologue that he has narrated a few things out of the many he had learned; his repeated generalised references to multitudinous instances of visions of Edith and manifestations of her power give the impression (perhaps erroneously) that his omissions included a number of reported miracles.25 His chief identifiable invention is his depiction of Edith as a contemplative recluse, withdrawn from the world by her intensive pursuit of union with her spiritual bridegroom. It is constructed entirely of generalities—although he found support for it by artfully transforming the report of her custom of feeding the tame animals she kept in an enclosure—and it is scarcely reconcilable with his reports of Edith’s visits to her father’s court (presumably at Wilton) and the influence she exerted on his rule.26 In his account of events from the time of Abbess Brihtgifu and beyond, however, he is unlikely to have added significantly to what he was told, since the events of this period were within the living memory of some members of the Wilton community. In a number of ways, Goscelin’s account is in keeping with what is known or can be surmised from other sources. Goscelin’s informants were evidently aware that the foundation of Wilton pre-dated the abbacy of Wulfthryth.27 His explicit reference to

23

See ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, pp. 324–27.

24

Edward, King and Martyr, ed. by Christine Fell, Leeds Texts and Monographs, n.s. 3 (Leeds: Leeds University Press, 1971), p. 8. 25

See, for instance, Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (pp. 36–37); Translatio Edithae, chap. 18 (p. 294), chap. 21 (p. 299). That the Legend is not over-burdened with miracles, however, gives room for doubt concerning the claim that Wilton was an important centre of pilgrimage in the tenth and eleventh centuries; compare Crittall, p. 232. See further n. 127 below. 26

Vita Edithae, chap. 10. See further below; see also ‘Edith as Contemplative’, pp. 295– 99. A royal palace was located near the Wilton nunnery; see Jeremy Haslam, ‘The Towns of Wiltshire’, in Anglo-Saxon Towns in Southern England, ed. by Jeremy Haslam (Chichester: Phillimore, 1984), pp. 87–147 (p. 123). 27 Vita Edithae, chap. 2 (p. 41). The earliest surviving post-Conquest references to a religious house at Wilton date from the 930s; see Foot, Veiled Women, II, 221–23. According to the Wilton Chronicle, the community was founded in the late eighth century, and refounded in the reign of Alfred (Horstmann, pp. 1–23). Life of King Edward, I, 6 (p. 70), describes the Wilton convent as being of great antiquity.

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the high status of members of the Wilton community,28 and to the patronage bestowed on Wilton by Edgar and succeeding kings, is consistent with the information that can be gleaned from surviving charters.29 Goscelin presents Wulfthryth and her family as no less royal than Edgar himself,30 and it is implicit in his narrative that Wulfthryth was possessed of a substantial fortune, which was presumably used to finance the rebuilding of the convent carried out by Wulfthryth and Edith, as well as their charitable activities and Wulfthryth’s acquisition of relics.31 Even allowing for hagiographic exaggeration, the splendour of the chapel designed and built by Edith, the finery of her clothing, as well as the ecclesiastical vestments made by her, suggest that Wilton in the time of Wulfthryth might have rivalled a royal court in its display of affluence; so, too, does Edith’s possession of a metal casket for heating her bath water and her menagerie of native and imported animals.32 The report of her possession of exotic animals, which were among the gifts given to her by foreign ambassadors seeking her favour, confirms Goscelin’s implication that she held a position of power and influence at her father’s court, and also, very probably, at the courts of her half-brothers, Edward and Æthelred; the inscription on the Wilton Abbey seal depicting St Edith, believed to have originated as her personal seal, describes her as regalis adelpha (‘royal sister’).33 Goscelin’s Translatio reveals, however, that this high level of affluence and influence at court was not maintained. 28

Vita Edithae, chap. 10 (pp. 61–62).

29

Registrum Wiltunense, ed. by R. C. Hoare (London: [n. pub.], 1827). For recent studies of Wilton’s charters and royal patronage, see: Julia Crick, ‘The Wealth, Patronage, and Connections of Women’s Houses in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, Revue Bénédictine, 109 (1999), 154–68; Foot, II, 223–25. 30

In Vita Edithae, chap. 2 (p. 40) Wulfthryth is described as the daughter of a royal duke; in Vita Edithae, chap. 10 (p. 61), her family is described as ‘worthy to rule’. In Vita sanctae Wulfhilda, Prefatio and chap. 4 (pp. 418, 424), Goscelin identifies Wulfthryth and her sister Wulhild as the daughters of Edgar’s uncle, who was descended from a royal foundling adopted by King Alfred. Yorke, p. 168, suggests that Wulfthryth’s wealth derived from a settlement made by Edgar when he repudiated her in favour of Ælfthryth. 31 For their building projects, see Vita Edithae, chap. 20, Translatio Edithae, chap. 7 (p. 274); acquisition of relics, Vita, chap. 14 (p. 73), Translatio, chap. 6 (p. 274); charity to the laity, Vita, chap. 11 (p. 64). 32 See Vita Edithae, chaps 11 (p. 69), 12 (p. 69), 23 (p. 92), and, only in Cardiff, chaps 11 (pp. 65–68), 16 (p. 79); see also Metre VIII. Yorke, p. 80, compares Wilton to the rich, cultured, and politically involved royal nunneries of the Ottonian empire, such as Quedlinburg. 33

See T. A. Heslop, ‘English Seals from the Mid Ninth Century to 1100’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 133 (1980), 1–16 (p. 4); P. D. A. Harvey and Andrew McGuinness, A Guide to British Medieval Seals (London: British Library and Public Record Office, 1996), pp. 3–4.

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Elizabeth Crittall concluded that, at the time of the Domesday survey, Wilton had the highest gross income of any nunnery in England, and that it had lost very little of its land.34 This gives the impression that the community had not suffered much ill effect from the Norman Conquest. The Translatio, conversely, gives the impression that, in the period immediately following the conquest, the community was suffering from financial difficulties and low morale. The plague that followed in the wake of the Conquest claimed the lives of many members of the community and weakened faith in the protective powers of Edith.35 The community was evidently unable to recover land to which it laid claim. Goscelin records an unsuccessful attempt by the convent to regain land taken by a brother of one of the nuns which took place some time after Godiva’s accession in c. 1067; the same chapter includes a lengthy diatribe against the theft of monastic land.36 Goscelin also relates that he was present when one of the nuns of Wilton (perhaps as late as 1075x1078) called the efficacy of St Edith into question because of her failure to assist the community in its attempts to recover its lands.37 There is reason to believe that the community’s financial difficulties pre-dated the Conquest. Queen Edith’s rebuilding of the Wilton church was completed in 1065, and in the Life of Edward the Confessor, commissioned by Edith, the author explains that the poverty of Wilton was one of the reasons why the queen chose to bestow her patronage on the community.38 Its unsuccessful attempts to recover lands also appear to pre-date the Conquest. Among the lands claimed by Wilton in 1086 was an estate originally appropriated by Queen Edith’s father, Earl Godwine; it had also lost two manors in Sussex, which may have been initially confiscated by her brother Harold.39 An influx of impoverished aristocratic women and children seeking refuge from the Norman invaders, which doubtless took place, although it is nowhere touched upon in Goscelin’s account, would have placed an 34

Crittall, pp. 232–33. Ridyard, pp. 172–73, observes that loss of land had very probably occurred, but considers that Wilton was cushioned against the impact of the Conquest, particularly by Bishop Herman. 35

Translatio Edithae, chap. 21 (p. 297).

36

Translatio Edithae, chap. 15.

37

Translatio Edithae, chap. 22 (p. 298).

38

Life of King Edward, I. 6 (p. 70). Wilton’s relative wealth is not in doubt; the conclusion to be drawn, perhaps, is that modern scholars evaluating the assets or income of monastic communities generally do not have reliable information concerning the size of the community it had to support and the full extent of its expenditure; doubtless lifestyle expectations were also a factor. 39 In addition, the Bishop of Bayeux held land in Wiltshire in 1086 which had belonged to the convent; see Crittall, p. 233. For the history of Wilton’s endowments in the late eleventh century, see Marc Anthony Meyer, ‘Patronage of the West Saxon Royal Nunneries in late Anglo-Saxon England’, Revue Bénédictine, 91 (1981), 332–58 (pp. 355–56); summarised by Ridyard, p. 173, n. 132, and p. 174, n. 134.

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additional strain on the monastery’s resources.40 Against this background, the lavish hospitality of Abbess Ælfgifu (c. 1065–67), though indulgently regarded by Goscelin, might well have been regarded by some members of her community as a serious offence.41 It is not the case, then, that the Translatio gives an ‘overriding impression that the Norman Conquest had made not the slightest impact upon the day-to-day existence of Wilton’,42 although is certainly true that Goscelin’s narrative registers this impact very obliquely; conceivably he judged it undiplomatic, in view of the dedication to Lanfranc, to attribute the community’s difficulties directly to the Norman invasion. Set against the testimony of other sources, the most conspicuous silence in Goscelin’s account is not the absence of any reference to the impact of the Conquest,43 but his omission of any reference to Queen Edith’s patronage of Wilton. According to the Life Edward the Confessor, Queen Edith also had the Wilton church rebuilt in stone because she had been educated at Wilton from her childhood, and this act of patronage was evidently intended to affirm her association with her saintly namesake, who is celebrated in the Legend for the building of the original wooden church.44 Yet Goscelin was almost certainly present with Eve at the dedication of the church rebuilt by Edith in 1065.45 The dedication ceremony was carried out by his patron, Bishop Herman, and the miracle recounted in the concluding chapter of the Translatio appears to have taken place during Queen Edith’s rebuilding of the Wilton church.46 Queen Edith is thought to have spent part of her retirement at Wilton, and it has been suggested that it was through her influence that the nunnery’s Anglo-Saxon abbess was not replaced by a Norman.47 Queen Edith was certainly present at Wilton with her retinue in 1072 when she witnessed a sale of land in the upper room of the

40

See further ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, pp. 319–20, 321.

41

See Translatio Edithae, chap. 20 (p. 297).

42

Ridyard, p. 172.

43

Compare Ridyard, p. 172; the same silence, as she notes, also characterises the Passio of Edward the Martyr. 44

Life of King Edward, I. 6 (p. 70). She is also said (p. 36) to have been at Wilton during the period when Edward contemplated a divorce (1051), although the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (E), 1048, locates her at Wherwell. Goscelin’s authorship of the Life of Edward is not now generally accepted. 45

Liber confort., p. 28.

46

Life of King Edward, I. 6 (p. 72); Translatio Edithae, chap. 23.

47

See Pauline Stafford, Queen Edith and Queen Emma: Queenship and Women’s Power in Eleventh-Century England (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1997), p. 275. A close relationship between Queen Edith and Abbess Ælfgifu, in whose reign Queen Edith’s rebuilding took place, is claimed by Gosling, pp. 71–79.

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Wilton church.48 Her niece Gunhild, daughter of her brother Harold, having been placed in the care of the Wilton community shortly after Harold’s defeat at Hastings, probably by Edith herself, remained at Wilton until 1093; either as a visitor or as a permanent resident, then, Queen Edith was at Wilton during the years that Goscelin was visiting Eve there.49 All this strongly suggests that Goscelin had reason to believe that the Wilton community had no wish to commemorate Queen Edith’s connections with Wilton and its patron saint.50 Nor, it seems, did it wish to solicit her influence, despite its evident need of a powerful patron to protect its lands, which was doubtless one of its motives in commissioning Goscelin’s Legend. Queen Edith had some degree of influence at the Norman court; unlike Wilton, she had managed to retain her extensive pre-Conquest land holdings.51 The appropriation of Wilton’s lands by members of Edith’s family may be sufficient to explain Goscelin’s marked silence. But antagonism to queens at Wilton, I suggest below, dated back to the Benedictine reform, when Ælfthryth (who supplanted Wulfthryth as Edgar’s wife) was accorded oversight of the nunneries by Bishop Æthelwold and caused resentment by interfering in their affairs (as, for instance, by expelling Wulfthryth’s sister, Abbess Wulfhild, from Barking). The portrait of Queen Edith in the Life of Edward the Confessor is in keeping with Æthelwold’s elevation of the role of the queen to that of a Marian partner in the rule of the Christ-King, and a desire on Queen Edith’s part to exercise oversight of the nunneries by bringing them into line with reformist orthodoxy is suggest by the rededication to St Benedict of the church that she rebuilt, of which Goscelin also makes no mention.52 In other respects, Goscelin’s Legend of Edith, and his accounts of the life and translation of Wulfhild of Barking, afford unique insight into the nature of late Anglo-Saxon royal nunneries, particularly because they are the earliest surviving accounts of the lives of late Anglo-Saxon female saints and their relationship with the communities who possessed their relics, which were, moreover, based on the communities’ own oral traditions and commissioned by them.53 In the first of the 48 See F. H. Dickinson, ‘The Sale of Combe’, Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society Proceedings, 22 (1876), 106–13. 49

For the Godwinsons’ post-Conquest flight to the continent, see Frank Barlow, The Godwins: The Rise and Fall of a Noble Dynasty (Harlow: Longman, 2002), pp. 112–22. 50

By contrast, he regarded St Edith’s connections with the cult of her female relatives and Edward the Martyr as too important to omit; see ‘Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women’, p. 241. 51

See Stafford, Queen Edith and Queen Emma, pp. 274–79.

52

See Life of King Edward, I. 7 (p. 74).

53

The nearest approximation is Osbert of Clare’s early or mid-twelfth-century Life of Eadburg of Nunnaminster, which is believed to have been based on earlier written sources from Nunnaminster; Osbert, however, wrote for the Pershore monks, who had gained possession of relics of her. For edition and commentary see Ridyard, pp. 23–37, 253–308.

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two sections below I examine the light cast by the Legend of Edith on the debate over the impact of the Benedictine reform on female communities. Wilton appears to have been hostile to intervention on the part of both Bishop Æthelwold and Queen Ælfthryth, and I conclude that the Legend does not show that Wilton was in the process of reform during the abbacy of Edith’s mother, Wulfthryth.54 It suggests, rather, that the lack of contemporary accounts of the reform of women’s houses may reflect their success in maintaining their autonomy. The second section below examines the Legend’s depiction of the development of Edith’s cult within the community. I argue that the cult of Edith was not the creation of the Wilton community; it was Edith’s mother, Abbess Wulfthryth, who was venerated as the convent’s saint, and the cult of Edith did not achieve prominence within the community until the rule of Abbess Ælfgifu (c. 1065–67). Her cult does not appear to have begun to take root in the community until c. 1040,55 when its usefulness in supporting claims to the abbatical succession was realised. It was subsequent employed in the service of competing claims to the role of abbess shortly after the Conquest, and this may have contributed to the post-Conquest loss of faith in Edith’s power to protect the convent which arose from its inability to recover its lost lands and the loss of life suffered in the plague that followed on the heels of the Norman invasion. Commissioning of the lives of Anglo-Saxon saints in the post-Conquest period is generally attributed to a desire on the part of religious communities to recommend their saints, and themselves, to the Norman hierarchy; the Wilton community’s loss of faith in its patron saint which is evident in the concluding chapters of the Translatio raises the possibility that an attempt to restore the community’s own faith might underlie the commissioning of other lives by AngloSaxon communities in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Exploration of both of these topics reveals tensions arising from the dual audience of the Legend. Goscelin’s decision to recommend Edith and her community to Lanfranc by the creation of a close and life-long association between Edith and Dunstan, culminating in Dunstan’s translation of her remains, lends an appearance of orthodox approval to the life of Edith and her elevation to sainthood. This is undercut by the oral traditions of the Wilton community, whose readership of the Legend prevented Goscelin from wholly excising or radically transforming remembered aspects of Edith’s life which were not in accordance with the Benedictine Rule. There is a conflict, too, between the portrait Goscelin created of Edith as a contemplative bride of Christ, and Wilton’s memories of her royal clothing, influence at court, and an attempt to install her as queen by the faction opposed to the succession of Æthelred which, as I argue in a later essay in this volume, are consistent with her status as a secular member of the community (‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’). The late development of Edith’s cult is consistent 54

Compare Ridyard, pp. 142–46, especially p. 142, n. 5.

55

Compare Ridyard, p. 152.

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with the fact that the community remembered Edith as a historical personage rather than a saint. The late development of Edith’s cult may also help to explain why, despite evidence that Wilton had a tradition of Latin literacy that endured from at least the life-time of Edith until the late eleventh century, Goscelin knew of no existing life of the convent’s patron saint.

Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and the Benedictine Reform The reform of men’s houses in the late Anglo-Saxon period can be traced in contemporary narrative records. In the absence of any contemporary narrative record of reform of the nunneries, their involvement has been widely assumed, chiefly on the basis of the repeated reference to abbots and abbesses, monks and nuns, in Regularis Concordia and associated documents.56 In particular, Regularis Concordia elevated Queen Ælfthryth to partnership with her husband by according her the role of protector of the nunneries, adding the explanation that, with Edgar helping the men, and his consort helping the women, there would be no cause for any breath of scandal.57 The reformed character of late Anglo-Saxon nunneries has also been premised upon royal endowment and their close connections with the royal dynasty; this is more doubtful because it assumes the king’s personal commitment to reformist ideals.58 Wilton’s connections with the royal dynasty were particularly, indeed uncomfortably, close. Wulfthryth was the former wife (or concubine) of Edgar, and was installed as abbess of Wilton shortly before Edgar’s marriage to 56

For an overview of studies of the effect of the reform on late Anglo-Saxon nunneries, see Foot, I, 85–110. Æthelwold’s translation of the Benedictine Rule into OE for use by women, and the fragmentary survival of an Old English translation of Regularis Concordia adapted for female use, is consistent with the intentionally inclusive scope of reform documents. See Mechthild Gretsch, ‘Die Winteney-Version der Regula Sancti Benedicti: Eine frühmittelenglische Bearbeitung der Altenglischen Prosaübersetzung der Benediktinerregel’, Anglia, 96 (1978), 310–48; Joyce Hill, ‘The “Regularis Concordia” and its Latin and Old English Reflexes’, Revue Bénédictine, 101 (1991), 299–315 (pp. 310–11). 57

Regularis Concordia: The Monastic Agreement of the Monks and Nuns of the English Nation, ed. and trans. by Thomas Symons (London: Nelson, 1953), chap. 3 (p. 2). This is echoed in Æthelwold’s vernacular prologue to his translation of the Rule of St Benedict, which states that Edgar was ever inquiring about the welfare of the monks, and kindly exhorted Ælfthryth to take thought for the nuns in the same way: ‘An Account of King Edgar’s Establishment of the Monasteries’, Councils and Synods, with Other Documents Relating to the English Church: Part I, 871–1066, ed. by Dorothy Whitelock, M. Brett, and C. N. L. Brook, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), I, 142–54 (p. 150). 58

See Pauline Stafford, Unification and Conquest: A Political and Social History of England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (London: Arnold, 1989), p. 191. For the location of the nunneries, see n. 1 above. For their connections with and endowment by the Wessex royal house, see Crick, pp. 154–85.

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Ælfthryth in 965. According to Goscelin, Edgar had ‘taken Wulfthryth from the schoolroom at Wilton’ (which was, presumably, at least one element of the lingering breath of scandal that Regularis Concordia sought to dispel by giving Queen Ælfthryth oversight of the nunneries).59 According to Goscelin, the separation of Wulfthryth and Edgar was sanctioned by Bishop Æthelwold.60 Wulfthryth took with her their daughter Edith, who was dedicated to the convent at the age of two; Edith died young (c. 984) and was translated thirteen years later at the instigation of her half-brother, King Æthelred.61 Susan Ridyard instances several features of Goscelin’s narrative which ‘strongly suggest’ that Wilton during the time of Edith and her mother was ‘in the process of reform’: the close connection asserted between Wilton and the leading reformers, Dunstan and Æthelwold; the extensive construction of new buildings; the erection of a surrounding stone wall by Wulfthryth (‘which calls to mind the importance attached at Winchester to the enclosure of the newly reformed communities’); and the acquisition of relics, ‘paralleling the activities of other reformed houses’.62 (Clearly this raises questions about the meaning of ‘reformed’, since visible activities like building and relic collecting need not be an index of a regular manner of life.) I will examine two of the ‘lifestyle’ issues in Goscelin’s narration, the role of Dunstan and Æthelwold, and the related topics of claustration and clothing. To Ridyard’s list, others could be added, such as Edgar’s employment of two continental clerics to educate his daughter, which is consistent with reformist desires to improve educational standards, and could also represent an intention to ensure conformity with standards of continental orthodoxy.63 Sarah Foot, on the other hand, arguing that, with respect to the nunneries, there was a gap between reformist rhetoric and implementation, draws attention to the lack of conformity to the Benedictine Rule in the lives of Wulfthryth and Edith as depicted by Goscelin, instancing their ownership of personal wealth.64 Here, too, examples could be multiplied, particularly Edith’s wearing of royal finery and her involvement in the governance of her father’s reign, which I discuss in this essay. Leaving aside the larger questions involved in evaluating the historicity of hagiography which are touched on above,65 Goscelin’s testimony needs to be 59

Vita Edithae, chap. 2 (p. 41). Edgar’s attempted forcible seduction of another Wilton nun, Wulfthryth’s sister Wulfhild, is related in Goscelin’s Vita sanctae Wulfhildae, chaps 2–3. 60

Vita Edithae, chap. 4 (p. 42).

61

Vita Edithae, chap. 5 (p. 44); Translatio Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 267).

62

Ridyard, p. 141, n. 5.

63

Vita Edithae, chap. 7. Goscelin’s subsequent likening of the relationship between Wulfthryth, Edith, and Benna to that of Jerome, Eustochium, and her daughter Paula, lends some support to this (chap. 14, p. 73). 64

Foot, II, 228–29; see also Ridyard, p. 145, n. 45.

65

See also Ridyard, pp. 8–16, 37–44.

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considered in relation to his intended audience. As his prologue explains, the Legend that he dedicated to Archbishop Lanfranc had been commissioned by the Wilton community and was also a tardy fulfilment of their request. Goscelin’s only hope of gaining Lanfranc’s approval of Edith and her community was to present them in an orthodox light and Edith herself as a nationally acclaimed saint with orthodox sanction.66 Tensions, contradictions even, inevitably arise from Goscelin’s attempt to recommend Edith and her community to the protection of Lanfranc while, at the same time, presenting a portrait that was acceptable to the community—he could scarcely have omitted entirely or revised out of all recognition the oral traditions of the nuns, even though their memories of Edith’s life were distinctly unorthodox.67 In the last resort, Lanfranc could simply dismiss anything he found unacceptable as women’s words, notwithstanding the assurance Goscelin offers in his prologue for the reliability of female witnesses.68 Goscelin’s case for the acceptance of Edith as a bona fide saint does not rest on the oral traditions of the Wilton nuns. It rests above all on the claim that her remains were translated by Dunstan and that she was closely associated with him throughout her life. Whatever lingering doubts Lanfranc may have had about Dunstan’s sanctity, it was beyond doubt that he was a worthy predecessor to Lanfranc and the architect of the reform, and, as Goscelin pointed out in his prologue, St Dunstan’s bell still retained its place of honour in Lanfranc’s church.69 Even in the prologue, then, Goscelin draws attention to Edith’s close association with Dunstan, and hence with Lanfranc himself. He has, he explains, dedicated his work to Lanfranc because his metropolitan city was the birthplace of 66

Whatever the element of ethnic prejudice in Norman scepticism of Anglo-Saxon saints, its justification was the purely local nature of their cults and their informal canonization. See ‘Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women’, pp. 222, n. 32; 234–36; 241, n. 130. 67

See ‘Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women’, pp. 224, 233, 236, 238–42.

68

Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 37): ‘Neque uero is sexus a testimonio ueritatis refellendus erit, qui Domini uerbum portauit, qui sua fide apostolorum incredulitatem arguit et angelica legatione dominicam resurectionem predicavit. Postremo tam ancille Domini prophetant quam serui, et linguis loquuntur in eadem gratia Spiritus sancti’. (‘Nor will their sex be a reason for detracting from the truth of their testimony—[that sex] which carried the word of the Lord; which by its faith convinced the incredulity of the apostles and preached the Lord’s resurrection with an angel-borne message. Finally, the handmaids of the Lord prophesy as well as the men-servants, and speak in tongues in the same grace of the Holy Spirit’.) In Vita sanctae Wulfhildae, Prefatio (p. 418), which Goscelin dedicated to Bishop Maurice, he advances a similar defence anticipating prejudice against the testimony of women. For study of this, see Whalen, pp. 123–35. 69 In the last four and a half years of Lanfranc’s life, or in the early years of Anselm’s archiepiscopate, Osbern of Canterbury wrote a Life of Dunstan, which, as it records Dunstan’s assistance to Lanfranc, shows that Lanfranc must have been promoting his cult; see Ramsay and Sparks, pp. 313–16. See further ‘Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women’, pp. 235-36.

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Edith, and because it possesses the relics of her holy tutor in Christ, Dunstan, to whom Lanfranc has shown himself a worthy successor. Concerning Dunstan, Goscelin adds—perhaps in the belief that Dunstan would engage Lanfranc’s attention, even if Edith did not—the ensuing pages have much to say.70 Dunstan is invoked on a number of occasions in the Vita. Chapter 2 records his vision at the time of the birth of Edith’s father Edgar, and his baptism of Edith. Chapter 9 introduces Dunstan and Æthelwold as her spiritual mentors; it also recalls that it was by the prophecy of Dunstan that Elphege succeeded Bishop Æthelwold, and it refers to the monastic reform instituted by Edgar in conjunction with Dunstan. In Chapter 16, Dunstan is mentioned in connection with Edgar’s desire to make Edith abbess of three monasteries, although it is Æthelwold who is said to have consecrated her. Chapter 18 mentions that Dunstan consecrated Edgar’s son Edward as his successor. Subsequent chapters relate how Dunstan dedicated the church built by Edith and prophesied her incorruption and imminent death; he is also present at her death bed and presides over her burial.71 His part in the Legend ends with his translation of Edith.72 Ridyard concludes that the presence of Dunstan and Æthelwold in Edith’s lifestory confirms Wilton’s status as a community in the process of reform.73 That, I think, is the calculated purpose of their prominence in Goscelin’s narrative—they vouch for the overall orthodoxy of Edith’s setting, neutralising the effect of the irregularities in her life. Their alleged status as frequent visitors to Wilton may seem to recall the description of Æthelwold, in Ælfric’s Life, as ‘a father of monks and nuns’ who went about the monasteries establishing best practice by admonishing the obedient and correcting the foolish with rods.74 Goscelin presents them, more poetically, as spiritual mentors; in keeping with his extended depiction of Edith as a mystical bride of Christ yearning for union with her beloved, Dunstan and Æthelwold figure as friends of the bridegroom, who raise her upwards to the 70

Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 37). Edgar’s relatively prominent part in the Legend (Vita Edithae, chaps 2, 7, 10, 16, 17, and Metre VI) thus emphasises his close connection with Dunstan’s reform. 71

Vita Edithae, chaps 21–23.

72

Translatio Edithae, chap. 1. Compare Paul Hayward, p. 79: ‘One could argue that Goscelin is appealing to the respect which he imagines Lanfranc must have held for St Dunstan. But it seems more likely that he is attempting, with the veiled aggression that typifies his work, to “fashion” the Norman archbishop as an “impresario of things English”. It follows that the celestial archbishop’s appeal to Dunstan before the elevation of Edith’s body should be read as a direct command to Lanfranc to support the cult’. 73 74

Ridyard, p. 141, n. 5.

Ælfric’s Vita sancti Æthelwoldi, chaps 18–19, in Wulfstan of Winchester: The Life of St Æthelwold, ed. by Michael Lapidge and Michael Winterbottom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 70–80 (pp. 76–77); see also Wulfstan of Winchester’s Life, chaps 22, 27 (pp. 36– 38, 42–44).

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heavenly bridal chamber.75 The early Lives of Dunstan and Æthelwold record their friendship with a number of devout women, but there is no independent verification of this relationship. Dunstan, in fact, has no specific role in Edith’s life story (except for her baptism) until shortly before her death, when he dedicates the church she built; it is at this ceremony that he foresees her imminent death and prophecies that the thumb with which Edith (idiosyncratically and repeatedly) crossed herself, will never decay. It is, then, altogether fitting that it should be Dunstan, prompted by visions, who presides over the translation of Edith, where the truth of his prophecy is, of course, made manifest. Nothing that Lanfranc could require in the way of national acclaim and orthodox backing is wanting at this translation. Visions of Edith calling for her translation, in accordance with the divine will, appear also to Æthelred and to his leading men, and the translation is witnessed by the bishop of Wilton and Elphege of Winchester, together with other heads of the churches, and a great crowd of clergy and people.76 The difficulty is that Dunstan died in 988, so that if Edith was translated by an archbishop thirteen years after her death, that archbishop was the unfortunate Elphege, whom Goscelin (seemingly unaware of any prejudice against Elphege on Lanfranc’s part) describes in the Vita as a precious martyr who succeeded Æthelwold in accordance with the prophesy of Dunstan.77 The conclusion to be drawn, I think, is not that Goscelin erred in the relative chronology of Edith’s translation; rather, only Archbishop Dunstan, as the acknowledged leader of the monastic reform, could give Edith’s cult the authoritative sanction that Lanfranc required.78 Even so, Edith’s translation is sanctioned by an even higher authority than Dunstan. The call for Edith’s translation is relayed in Dunstan’s vision by Lanfranc’s own national saint, St Denis of Gaul, to whom Edith, whether fortuitously or fictively, dedicated her church.79 75

Vita Edithae, chap. 9 (p. 58).

76

Translatio Edithae, chap. 1.

77

Vita Edithae, chap. 9 (p. 58). Lanfranc had already (1079) accepted the case for Elphege’s sanctity before Goscelin dedicated his Legend to him in c. 1080. For Lanfranc’s initial doubts about the cult of Elphege, see ‘Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women’, pp. 234–35. 78 Ridyard, pp. 40–41, 158–71, shows Goscelin to have erred in the identification of Dunstan as the bishop who translated Edith, rather than in his statement that Edith was translated thirteen years after her death, by demonstrating that Edith’s translation c. 997 is consistent with the politics of Æthelred’s reign. See also Yorke, pp. 171–74. 79

For the argument (based on Goscelin’s revision of the Legend represented by the Cardiff manuscript) that Edith’s devotion to the cult of St Denis, and hence the dedication of her church to him, is Goscelin’s invention, see ‘Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women’, pp. 241–42. Tenth and eleventh-century calendars do not suggest that the cult of St Denis was widespread in Anglo-Saxon England. It may be surmised that the Wilton community retained no memory of the saint to whom Edith dedicated her church. The main church at Wilton was

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Just as the extended account of Dunstan’s role in Edith’s translation sanctions King Æthelred’s instigation of this event (a fact unconcealed by Goscelin, possibly because that was the chief thing the Wilton nuns remembered about it),80 so too Æthelwold authorises the irregularities of Edgar’s behaviour. He sanctions his separation from Wulfthryth, and he consecrates Edith when Edgar decides to make her abbess of three other nunneries; Goscelin also claims that it was Dunstan who initiated the move to have Edith made an abbess.81 Given that Æthelwold serves to give an orthodox gloss to Wulfthryth’s separation from Edgar, there is no need to infer that Æthelwold’s role in these events signifies reformist oversight of the Wilton community, or to conclude that Wulfthryth was appointed Abbess of Wilton with the express purpose of promoting the reform there.82 It is indeed noticeable that Goscelin does not say that Æthelwold consecrated Wulfthryth as abbess; her installation is depicted entirely in terms of her exchange of royal clothing for a nun’s habit.83 Whether or not Æthelwold consecrated Edith as abbess of three other nunneries, the episode reveals the same independence of spirit that Edith shows in her reply to Æthelwold’s criticism of her clothing. Notwithstanding Goscelin’s claim that she was reluctant to oppose the wishes of her esteemed father and such revered ecclesiastics, Edith refused to take up the position of abbess of Nunnaminster, Barking, and another, unnamed, monastery; she appointed substitutes to rule in her place and remained at Wilton with her mother.84 Neither of the two episodes involving Æthelwold suggest that Edith or her community held him in deferential regard. The first is the episode in which Æthelwold reproaches her (quite mildly) for dressing in royal finery. Accusations of worldliness and high-living were used to justify reformist intervention in the monasteries, but to read this story as evidence that Wilton was in the process of rededicated to St Benedict after being rebuilt in stone by Queen Edith (Life of King Edward, I. 6, p. 74). 80

The inscription on the Wilton abbey seal which depicts Edith, and is thought to derive from her personal seal, describes her as regalis adelpha (‘royal sister’); see Heslop, pp. 2–7. Yorke, p. 170, thinks it likely that this referred to Edward the Martyr (975–78), but it might testify to Edith’s association during her lifetime with Æthelred (978–1016); Goscelin’s Legend offers no confirmation of this, but this may be because the king he wished to associate her with was her father Edgar (see n. 70 above). 81

Vita Edithae, chaps 4 (p. 42), 16 (p. 76). A possible underlying reason for wishing to make Edith abbess of Winchester, Barking, and a third monastery (probably Horton) is suggested by Goscelin’s Vita sanctae Wulfhildae, chap. 9. This relates that Abbess Wulfthryth was expelled from Barking by Edgar’s wife Ælfthryth; she took up residence at Horton, and did not return to Barking until twenty years later. 82

Compare Ridyard, p. 142, n. 9.

83

Vita Edithae, chap. 4. See further ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, pp. 323–24.

84

Ridyard, pp. 41–42, regards this episode in its entirety as Goscelin’s invention: see above; see also ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, p. 326.

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reform under Æthelwold’s supervision would be to read it against the grain. It commemorates resistance to Æthelwold’s oversight. For a putative spiritual mentor, Æthelwold is not well-informed. Goscelin begins his account by explaining that the senior nuns knew that Edith wore a hair shirt underneath her royal clothing. Edith replies to his reproach to the effect that the lord she serves has regard to the inner disposition, not what one wears. Æthelwold, as Goscelin puts it, recognised the authority of grace in her, and also that it makes no difference whether the pure of heart wear purple or sackcloth. 85 Edith’s victory over Æthelwold is followed by divine vindication. A candle, accidentally dropped into a chest containing Edith’s purple garments and her furs, set fire to the nunnery; Edith’s royal finery, however, survived unscathed, to the great rejoicing of the nuns. The chest itself, somewhat scorched, remained in the convent as a continuing reminder that, in this encounter between Edith and Æthelwold, God was on Edith’s side.86 A more overtly critical view of Æthelwold appears in the account of how he asked for a share of the minute fragment of a nail from the True Cross that Wulfthryth and Edith had acquired, at enormous expense. A sacrilegious dimension is added to his request by Goscelin’s description of the emotions of Wulfthryth and Edith as they watched the metal fragment being filed in two: they seemed to suffer as if they had seen the Lord himself being pierced. Here, divine intervention alone brings about Æthelwold’s discomfiture and his recognition of the superior standing of Edith, and her mother. The two metal fragments are discovered the following morning to have reunited. (If it wasn’t divine intervention it was certainly a shrewd application of glue.) Æthelwold, Goscelin relates, regretted that he had been found not worthy to possess the relic, but rejoiced that God had shown favour to Wulfthryth and her daughter.87 Edith’s royal manner of dress, on which the first of these episodes turns, undoubtedly blurred the separation between the religious orders and the laity that reformers sought to enforce, most evidently by the walls that enclosed reformed communities, but distinctive clothing was fundamental to this separation. Ælfric, for instance, considered that the difference between the religious orders and the laity should be as strongly marked by clothing as the difference between men and women.88 This episode runs counter to Goscelin’s thematic insistence on Edith’s 85

Vita Edithae, chap. 12.

86

Vita Edithae, chap. 13 (pp. 72–73).

87

Vita Edithae, chap. 14. Æthelwold’s reputation as relic collector verged upon notoriety. Alan Thacker, ‘Cults at Canterbury: Relics and Reform under Dunstan and his Successors’, in St Dunstan: His Life, Times and Cult, ed. by Nigel Ramsay, Margaret Sparks and Tim TattonBrown (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1992), pp. 221-46, shows that his acquisition of relics involved an element of force. 88

‘Ælfric’s Pastoral Letter for Wulfsige III’, in Councils and Synods, I, 219; see also his ‘First English Letter for Wulfstan’, p. 300.

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rejection of royal status, earthly marriage and secular attractions from the age of two, when she reached for the black veil of religion in preference to the royal robes and jewellery laid out before her, showing that she had, already, put on the garment of exile in which she would seek immortality.89 Goscelin attempts to smooth over the contradiction, by implying that Edith’s royal status obliged her, reluctantly, to wear royal clothing, and also by invoking the example of St Cecilia, who, by wearing fine clothing, made her humility more glorious because it was visible only to God.90 Edith’s royal manner of dress was evidently habitual. In his revised version of the Legend (Cardiff), which appears to have been intended for the Wilton community,91 Goscelin added to his account of Edith assisting the workmen who built her church, that Edith herself carried stones in the sleeves of her purple garment.92 So also in Chapter 10, which evokes (in a relatively high degree of circumstantial detail) Edith’s involvement in royal politics and frequent visits to her father’s court, he added, in the Cardiff version, that the awe inspired by her purple clothing did not inhibit the common people from approaching her.93 These reports, which presumably figured in the oral traditions of Wilton, conflict with Goscelin’s invented portrait of Edith as a reclusive hermit withdrawn from the world to seek spiritual union with her bridegroom.94 They also conflict with a concrete detail that implies extreme claustration. Edith received her education from Benna concealed behind a curtained window. This lends support to the view that the continental priests employed at Wilton introduced ideas of orthodoxy far more rigorous than were customary in England either in the late tenth century (or, as far as can be discerned in the Liber confortatorius, during the time that Goscelin was visiting Eve at Wilton), but Edith’s adult life was evidently not spent in seclusion.95 Wulfthryth’s erection of a stone 89

Vita Edithae, chap. 5 (p. 45).

90

Vita Edithae, chap. 10 (p. 70): ‘que tamen religioni pareret nigra. Gloriosiorem nimirum humilitatem fecerat publica eligantia, ut cum aurotexta Cecilia soli patri uidenti in abscondito abscondita placeret margarita, et spectate facecie archana conderent martyria’ (‘although observance of the rule would have required black. Without doubt she made her humility more glorious by public elegance, so that together with Cecilia clothed in gold she might please the Father, who alone sees in secret, with her hidden pearl, and visible frivolities might conceal hidden martyrdom’.) 91

See ‘Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women’, pp. 238–42.

92

Vita Edithae, chap. 20 (p. 87).

93

Vita Edithae, chap. 11 (p. 63).

94

See ‘Edith as Contemplative’, pp. 295–99.

95

Vita Edithae, chap. 7. Already in the late ninth century concealment behind a curtained window was a defining sign of orthodox behaviour for female religious: see Vita Leobbae Abbatissae Biscofesheimensis auctore Rudolfo Fuldensi, chap. 1 (MGH SS, 15.1, 118–31). In Liber confort., p. 29, Goscelin represents himself as the teacher and frequent visitor of Eve while she was at Wilton, but makes no reference to a curtained window, nor does he in referring to the window of Eve’s cell at Angers (p. 80).

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wall around the convent presumably signified a demarcation of the boundary between the convent and the world outside that was not purely symbolic; but the building of this wall is placed at the end of her long reign, which extended for some two decades after Edith’s death.96 Edith herself appears to have negotiated her dual existence by the hair shirt beneath the royal robes; acceptable to those in possession of true spiritual insight (the nuns of Wilton, and, less certainly, the occasional reforming bishop). But members of the laity might well have been confused, and the offer of the throne to Edith by noblemen seeking to avert the accession of Æthelred demonstrates that for them, as for Edgar when he snatched her mother from the Wilton schoolroom, entry to a convent did not place royal women definitively beyond marriage.97 The historicity of this offer of the throne has been doubted; but it is consistent with Edith’s manner of dress, and with her close involvement in royal politics, which Goscelin reports in Chapter 10.98 Edith’s involvement with the court has further implications for what I regard as Wilton’s resistance to reformist intervention. To read Chapter 10 as a demonstration of the way in which Edith redeployed her royal status to gain the king’s protection and patronage for her community is to miss the point.99 Benefit to the convent is incidental. Goscelin relates, in sum, that Edith was highly regarded by the nobility of England and abroad; foreign kings and their ambassadors sought her favour by letters and gifts, and high-ranking ecclesiastics sought her intercession.100 He continues with an account of Edith’ success in mitigating the severity of her father’s judgements by securing the release of prisoners condemned to punishment or exile. This concludes: Nor was it difficult to obtain her requests from the indulgence of that father, whose throne had been prepared in mercy, whose judgement preferred to pardon rather than to punish (provided only the people’s peace was preserved), so that the grace of his daughter would put aside his sword, even when it had been drawn. He, indeed, was

96

Translatio Edithae, chap. 7 (p. 274). Even so, Translatio, chap. 23 (p. 301), reports that the village boy miraculously cured by Edith was able to gain entry to the convent church by scaling the convent wall. 97

Edith’s ambiguous status was not unique, and may have been common at Wilton; see further, ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, pp. 318–27, where it is argued that Edith was not a professed nun but a secular member of the community. 98

Compare Ridyard, pp. 41–42, 87–88. More recently, Yorke, p. 170, who draws attention to the fluid boundaries between conventual communities and secular society, does find this report credible. 99

Compare Ridyard, pp. 140–48.

100

Vita Edithae, chap. 10, (p. 63); these gifts included the native and exotic animals in Edith’s menagerie (Vita Edithae, chap. 11, p. 66).

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dominated by justice and mercy; she was driven forward by mercy alone, by which rather the whole law is fulfilled.101

Edith, in other words, appropriated the role that Æthelwold sought to bestow upon Queen Ælfthryth, which is adumbrated in Regularis Concordia and developed in the coronation ordo—that of earthly representative of the Queen of Heaven and partner in her husband’s Christ-like rule of the kingdom.102 The last sentence quoted above from Chapter 10 (‘He, indeed, was dominated by justice and mercy; she was driven forward by mercy alone, by which rather the whole law is fulfilled’) doubtless represents Goscelin’s construction of Edith’s activities, but the accumulated details establish Edith’s effective reversal of Æthelwold’s Grand-But-Not-Terribly-Bright Idea; whereas Regularis Concordia licensed the queen to share in the king’s rule by interfering in the affairs of the nunneries, Edith utilised her proximity to the king to intervene in governance of the realm—the way that bishops did. I would conclude, then, that any intervention by Ælfthryth, reforming or otherwise, would have been firmly resisted by Wilton. It had no need to court her patronage and protection; or her successors’, either. Queen Emma figures chiefly for her complicity in an unsuccessful attempt to appropriate the community’s lands;103 Queen Edith rates no mention at all, not even for her rebuilding of the Wilton church which, the Life of Edward the Confessor reports, was dedicated by Goscelin’s patron, Bishop Herman.104 As Pauline Stafford points out, episcopal elevation of Ælfthryth to the role of conventual protector is in striking contrast to the proliferation of stories maligning her character, all of which originated in nunneries.105 In the Legend of Edith, Ælfthryth figures only as the instigator of the murder of Edith’s half-brother Edward which brought her son Æthelred to the throne.106 More is implied by Chapter 10, I think, than willing implementation of the reform on the part of the nunneries because they saw the opportunity to resist all forms of lay ownership, including that of the queen.107 Exclusion of royal nuns from the governance of the realm might conceivably have been among the ends sought by Æthelwold in elevating Ælfthryth to the role of supreme abbess.108 As Barbara 101

Vita Edithae, chap. 10 (p. 65): ‘Nec difficulter impetrabatur illius patris indulgentia, cuius solium preparatum erat in misericordia, cuius (salua modo pace populi) ignoscere quam punire malebat censura, cuius et strictos enses excuteret filie gratia. Ille quidem equitate et misericordia debellatur; hec sola misericordia inuehitur, qua magis tota lex impletur’. 102

See Stafford, Queen Edith and Queen Emma, pp. 165–85.

103

Translatio Edithae, chap. 14 (p. 282).

104

Life of King Edward, I. 6 (p. 75). For Goscelin’s silence concerning Queen Edith, see above. 105

Stafford, ‘Religious Status and Reform’, pp. 24–32.

106

Vita Edithae, chap. 19 (p. 82).

107

This view is advanced by Stafford, ‘Religious Status and Reform’, pp. 3–35.

108

His explicit motive was the suppression of lay ownership: ‘Account of Edgar’s

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Yorke points out, Æthelwold’s elevation of the role of the queen gave a significant boost to the status of Ælfthryth and the successional claims of her sons. She suggests that, in granting to Ælfthryth oversight of the nunneries, he may have been according her a role which had been held by Abbess Wulfhild (who was Wulfthryth’s sister) until Ælfthryth expelled her from Barking.109 This suggestion lends an additional dimension of interest to Edith’s effective encroachment on the role of the queen, and the report of Edith’s promotion to the role of abbess of Barking, Nunnaminster, and another nunnery (probably Horton), may indicate an attempt to encroach also on Ælfthryth’s oversight of the nunneries. Irrespective of any personal hostility to Ælfthryth as the reigning queen who had supplanted Wulfthryth, or factional involvement in opposing the succession of her son, it is hard to imagine that a nunnery as royal and as rich as Wilton would accept without resistance a position of marginalised exclusion from royal power, subordinate dependence on the patronage and protection of the queen instead of direct access to the king. Nor does it appear from the depiction of Æthelwold that the intervention of reforming bishops would have been welcome at Wilton. This comes as no surprise in the light of the addition attributed to Dunstan in Regularis Concordia. This includes the exhortation that those who have spiritual authority over nuns should use their powers not as worldly tyrants but in the interests of good discipline.110 In other words, female communities had sufficient influence to make Dunstan the mouthpiece of their reservations about episcopal oversight. Was Wilton in the time of Edith in the process of reform? The neat answer would be: like Edith, not to outward appearances, but its inward state was pure as the driven. But this does not really fit—to outward appearances, it was participating in the same culture as reformed monasteries (such as building, Latin literacy, and relic collecting). Its inward state is more difficult to gauge now than it was in Æthelwold’s time; resistance to reformers’ intervention might not imply resistance to Establishment of the Monasteries’, Councils and Synods, I, 142–54 (pp. 153–54). For the political involvement of royal abbesses in the early Anglo-Saxon period, see Hollis, AngloSaxon Women and the Church, pp. 180–85. 109

Yorke, p. 169. When Edgar abandoned his attempt to seduce Wulfhild and gave her the defunct monastery at Barking, he also granted her a house and church at five adjacent towns, Horton, Wareham, Hampton, Wilton, and Shaftesbury (Vita sanctae Wulfhildae, chap. 4).The role of paramount abbess had been held in the early Anglo-Saxon period by particularly eminent abbesses, usually related to the royal family; see further ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, p. 332. 110

Regularis Concordia, chap. 7 (p. 4). Goscelin’s Vita sanctae Wulfhildae, chap. 6, suggests other kinds of reasons why bishops might not have been welcome at nunneries. When Æthelwold arrived at Barking with a great crowd of followers, a servant complained (notwithstanding Æthelwold’s reputation elsewhere for abstinence) that the convent had insufficient alcohol for the visitors; the problem was overcome only by Wulfhild’s performance of a Wedding at Canaa miracle. See also above, n. 87.

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the ideals of reform. But Goscelin’s Legend of Edith does perhaps shed light on the absence of any narrative record of the nunneries’ involvement—or otherwise—in reform. Were complaints of conventual laxity suppressed, as Foot speculates, for fear that noblemen would be unwilling to entrust their daughters to nunneries?111 Or does this silence mean that reforms were willingly carried out by female communities, either because they were obediently compliant or, because, as Stafford argues, they saw advantages for themselves in the reform?112 It cannot mean that the nunneries were too marginal and too insignificant for bishops to trouble themselves about them—the repeated references to monks and nuns suggest that they were too important to overlook. But it might mean that they had so much power, wealth, and educated capacity for answering back that bishop preferred to allow them autonomy.

Getting a Life of Their Own: The Cult of St Edith and the Abbesses of Wilton In commending Edith to the protection of Lanfranc in the dedicatory prologue to his Legend, Goscelin affirms that her benefits are felt to this day throughout the land, available to strangers as well as native inhabitants, but that her presence is particularly felt among the Wilton community, where she is seen in visions, as if still alive and embodied.113 It was only as a nationally acclaimed saint with powerful orthodox sanction that Goscelin had any hope of recommending Edith to Lanfranc.114 But, as the Translatio reveals, the Wilton nuns expected Edith to serve the convent’s interests. In the absence of that, devotion to Edith within the convent had declined sharply by the time Goscelin wrote his Legend during the rule of Abbess Godiva, following a surprisingly late flowering of Edith’s cult during the brief rule of Abbess Ælfgifu (c. 1065–67). Struck down by plague in the aftermath of the Conquest, Goscelin records towards the end of the Translatio, many nuns complained that Edith, so prompt to help anyone by land and sea who was an outsider, was indifferent to the suffering of her own community. Edith, replying in an unattributed dream vision, countered the convent’s expectations by asserting her obligations as a universal saint: it was her duty to give help to everyone who asked it in the name of Christ, she informed them, and, from her point of view, no-one was an outsider.115 Edith nevertheless affirmed her special relationship with the community; she was labouring to intercede for their eternal welfare, and they must accept their temporal sufferings as a means of 111

Foot, I, 94.

112

Stafford, ‘Religious Status and Reform’, pp. 3–35.

113

Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 37).

114

See Gibson, Lanfranc of Bec, p. 171.

115

Translatio Edithae, chap. 21 (p. 292).

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becoming spotless brides of the Lord. Ealdgyth of Wilton, while visiting Bishop Herman, perhaps between 1075 and 1078,116 went further with her complaints. The next chapter of the Legend records that she stated, in Goscelin’s presence, that Edith could have no power at all when she allowed appropriation of the convent’s lands to go unavenged. Simultaneously, Edith appeared in a dream to Thola (Abbess Ælfgifu’s sister). Reclining on a wedding bed, gloriously adorned, and resplendent in her beauty, Edith exhibited her power: ‘Why’, she said, ‘did Ealdgyth say lately that I can do nothing? Look at my hands, and the services rendered by my virtues, what control I have, how efficacious, generous, energetic, and strong I am; indeed, whatever I wish, I can do, by divine power’.117

This, too, offered no satisfactory answer to those who expected Edith to protect her own community. It wasn’t that she couldn’t help them, apparently, but that she wouldn’t; either that or she was the laziest saint in England. Nor had she exerted herself on behalf of the material needs of the convent by the time Goscelin left Wiltshire in c. 1078; he ends on a high note with a miracle of healing, but to do this he appears to have had to reach back into the past, to events that took place c. 1065; and the beneficiary of the miracle is a layman.118 Goscelin’s presentation of Edith as a national saint, all-inclusive in her assistance, and also as the special saint of her own community by virtue of her perpetual presence there, is thus not merely an appropriate means of commending her to Lanfranc, but also offers support for the community’s flagging faith in its patron saint.119 No less striking than the community’s dissatisfaction with Edith expressed in the concluding chapters of the Translatio is the fact that Edith’s posthumous relationship with the community does not appear to have begun until c. 1040. The reason for this, I suggest below, is that promotion of Edith’s cult by kings for their purposes did not make her the community’s saint. There is little sign of promotion of her cult within the convent until the accession of Ælfgifu, in whom the convent had, for the first time, an abbess personally devoted to the saint; Ælfgifu, Goscelin relates, was the love of her daughters, the bond that held them in harmony, and the 116

For dating see ‘Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women’, p. 220, n. 19.

117

Translatio Edithae, chap. 22 (p. 299): ‘Quare, inquit, sero dixit Alditha me nichil posse? En aspice manus meas et uirtutum officia, quam sim michi compos, quam efficax, libera, uiuida et ualida; et sane, quicquid uolo diuina possum potencia’. 118 Translatio Edithae, chap. 23. For dating, see ‘Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women’, p. 220, n. 19. 119

Elsewhere in the Legend, Goscelin counters the convent’s expectations of the saint along the same lines as the Edith’s visionary speech in Translatio Edithae, chap. 20; Wulfthryth obtained the relic of the True Cross not just for Wilton but for the good of the nation (Vita Edithae, chap. 14); Edith would willingly have given away the possessions of the monastery to feed the poor during a famine (chap. 11); when Edgar died, Edith did not weep so much for her own loss as for that of the whole nation (chap. 17).

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votive incense-bearer of the blessed Edith.120 The culture of convents was abbesscentred, and Edith, dying long before her mother Wulfthryth, at the age of twentythree, never became Abbess of Wilton.121 It was Wulfthryth, not Edith, who was the benefactor and protector of the late tenth-century community, and Edith’s channelling of King Edgar’s patronage to the convent, which Ridyard regards as central to her cult within the community, pales to insignificance compared with the resources available to Wulfthryth, who was no less royal than Edith’s father.122 Their relative importance to the community is marked by the burial of Wulfthryth and her successors at the high altar, Edith’s translation to the south porch, so small that there was not room to bury Abbess Ælfgifu beside her.123 Consideration of the history of Edith’s cult narrated by Goscelin reveals that, within the community, Edith first assumed significance by virtue of the endorsement she provided for Ælfgifu’s claim to the abbatical succession. When Ælfgifu died, Edith was again employed in advancing claims to the succession. As all this occurs in the form of dream visions, we are, perhaps, witnessing the operation of purely sub-conscious motives. The motives for Edith’s translation (instigated by her half-brother Æthelred with episcopal backing) are persuasively explained by Susan Ridyard;124 and only such high-level support can explain why Edith is one of the few women saints of the Benedictine reform period whose feast is entered in eleventh-century calendars.125 120

Translatio Edithae, chap. 20 (p. 296).

121

Vita Edithae, chap. 16, claims that Edith was an absentee abbess of three other monasteries; see further above. 122

Compare Ridyard, pp. 142–48. Wulfthryth is described, Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 40), as the descendent of princes and the nobly born child of a royal duke. Vita sanctae Wulfhildae, Prefatio, and chap. 4 (pp. 418, 424), identify her as the daughter of Edgar’s uncle, who was descended from a royal foundling adopted by King Alfred. For Wulfthryth’s financial resources and enhancement of the convent, see her acquisition of relics (Vita Edithae, chap. 14, Translatio Edithae, chap. 6), building programme (Translatio, chap. 7), and famine relief (Vita, chap. 10). 123

Translatio Edithae, chaps 1 (p. 269), 7 (p. 235), 20 (p. 265).

124

Ridyard, pp. 154–71. I differ from her, however, in so far as she regards the cult of Edith as the creation of Wulfthryth and the Wilton community (pp. 147–48, 152–53), although she does observe that, in Goscelin’s account, the Wilton nuns have no role in Edith’s translation (p. 153). 125

Edith’s deposition is commemorated in six eleventh-century calendars, two of which date from the first half of the century. Her translation is entered in two other calendars. In two of these calendars, her name was erased in the twelfth century. (It needs to be borne in mind that few calendars survive for the late tenth or early eleventh century.) No less significantly, Edith is one of the very few female saints of the late Anglo-Saxon period to have been included in the early eleventh-century list of saints’ resting-places; see David Rollason, Saints and Relics in Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), p. 140. For a reconstructed calendar of Wilton, which reveals that she was highly venerated there from the twelfth century

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But although Wulfthryth expressed her grief for Edith with commemorative masses and by building an alms-house, she resisted publicization of the sole miraculous event reported as having followed Edith’s death (an attempted relic theft by a young woman, who is not identified as a nun).126 Possession of a saint was a mixed blessing, and the wall that Wulfthryth built around the convent was not necessarily intended to keep the nuns in.127 Dunstan’s prophecy, prior to Edith’s death, that the thumb with which she crossed herself would remain uncorrupted, might have prepared the nuns to see miracles, as Ridyard believes,128 but Edith’s translation is followed only by two attempted relic thefts (one of them by a Wilton nun, and another, much more spectacular, involving a Glastonbury monk).129 Subsequently, Cnut, wishing to associate himself with the house of Æthelred, gave her a magnificent shrine; through divine intervention on Edith’s behalf, the craftsmen who attempted to steal the gold were punished.130 The interval between these two events is filled by a Life of Wulfthryth.131 The miracles attributed to her, both posthumously and during her lifetime, gave her a much stronger claim to sanctity than her daughter. Even when living, she was a far more effective protector of the convent than Edith was after her death. The prefect of Wilton who imprisoned two of her priests freed them out of fear of Wulfthryth when she called upon the Lord, but he still died raving, biting out his own tongue and tearing at his fingers with his teeth.

onward, see G. Benoît-Castelli, ‘Un Processional anglais du XIVe siècle’, Ephemerides Liturgicae, 75 (1961), 281–326 (pp. 286–88). 126 Vita Edithae, chap. 27; the young woman had been left alone in Edith’s chapel. The nunnery did, however, in Goscelin’s time, exhibit a small pallium believed to have been recovered by the power of Edith from the young woman. Wulfthryth’s dream of Edith’s salvation and Brihtgifu’s snatching of the baptismal taper (chaps 25–26) scarcely count as miraculous events. 127

Translatio Edithae, chap. 7 (p. 274). Among the inconveniences attendant on possessing a saint were criminals seeking sanctuary; interestingly, in one such reported incident, Wulfthryth’s reaction was to open the doors to let in the king’s men who were in pursuit (chap. 5). Whether the cult of Edith was ever actually ‘popular’ is open to doubt. Although Goscelin gives the impression he has omitted numerous miracles (see, for instance, chap. 18), the number included in the Legend is by no means unusually high, and except for the village boy in the closing chapter of the Translatio (chap. 23), who got in by climbing over the wall, all the identifiable beneficiaries of the miracles of both Edith and her mother mentioned by Goscelin are of high status. 128

Vita Edithae, chap. 21; Ridyard, p. 147.

129

Translatio Edithae, chap. 2.

130

Translatio Edithae, chaps 12–13. Cnut is said (p. 279) to have been saved from shipwreck by the intervention of Edith, as Ealdred, Archbishop of York, later was (in the reign of Edward the Confessor). 131

Translatio Edithae, chaps 3–11.

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The king’s retainers who pursued a robber into her monastery were struck blind.132 Goscelin attempts to attribute two of Wulfthryth’s miracles to her faith in Edith, but only the convent’s acquisition of the relics of Ywi (which stuck fast to Edith’s altar) could have inclined nuns who venerated Wulfthryth to discern the power of Edith.133 There is not, then, much sign of Edith manifesting her power between her translation in c. 997 and the death of Cnut in 1035 (although we do learn in later chapters of the miraculous healing of two nuns by Edith which might have taken place during his reign).134 A visionary appearance of Edith as the protector of the convent’s lands occurred during the regency of Queen Emma (1035–1037). It testifies to fear of Edith among the laity, provoked by Cnut’s punishment of the craftsmen. A nobleman who had stolen land belonging to Wilton was tormented on his death-bed by a vision of Edith barring his entry to heaven, and was unable to die in peace until Emma returned the land to the convent.135 It was not long after this (in c. 1040) that Ælfgifu and Ælfhild had almost identical dream visions of Edith prophesying the accession of Ælfgifu as abbess (which took place twenty-five years later). These visions occurred during the rule of Brihtgifu, Goscelin states.136 Subsequent events suggest that these visions reflect conflict over succession to the role of abbess between Ælfgifu and Brihtgifu. Their effect is to give Ælfgifu a claim to succeed as the unambiguous choice of Edith. Brihtgifu also had a successional claim through Edith, but it was somewhat more tenuous. Brihtgifu was baptised thirty days after Edith’s death, and she snatched the lighted candle from the officiating bishop; this was held to fulfil Edith’s enigmatic response when she was asked by Brihtgifu’s parents, shortly before her death, to act as godmother to their child.137 Actually, it manifests Brihtgifu’s vocation as a nun (as the bishop exclaims), but the claim that Brihtgifu’s enthusiastic snatching of the candle manifested Edith’s posthumous acceptance of the role of godmother establishes Brihtgifu as Wulfthryth’s spiritual granddaughter and an appropriate substitute for the daughter and heir-apparent that Wulfthryth had lost.138 132

Translatio Edithae, chaps 4–5.

133

Translatio Edithae, chap. 6; see also chap. 3, where Wulfthryth crosses herself in the manner of Edith, and chap. 5, where she relies on the intercession of Edith (p. 272). 134

Translatio Edithae, chaps 17, 19.

135

Translatio Edithae, chap. 14.

136

Translatio Edithae, chap. 20 (p. 295).

137

Vita Edithae, chap. 26 (p. 99). Edith replied that she would accept the child in whatever way it pleased God. 138 Joseph H. Lynch, Christianizing Kinship: Ritual Sponsorship in Anglo-Saxon England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), p. 93, observes that ‘some Anglo-Saxons did interpret sponsorship as adoption into the sponsor’s family’. The thirtieth day after a death occurred was the day on which the last of three masses for the soul of the departed was celebrated.

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In the visions of Ælfgifu and Ælfhild, Edith invested Ælfgifu with her own veil and ring (without having ever been Abbess of Wilton herself);139 but validation derives from Wulfthryth. Edith performed this investiture standing at the high altar at the right hand of her mother’s tomb (thus prefiguring episcopal consecration), and she also prophesied that Ælfgifu would be buried beside Wulfthryth at that spot. And when Ælfgifu protested her unworthiness, Wulfthryth, seen reclining above the altar dedicated to Gabriel, reached out and grasped her and placed her beside her. This recalls the Virgin lying-in with her immaculately conceived child. What the successional claims of Brihtgifu and Ælfgifu represent is a non-biological means of creating a female monastic dynasty, at a time when the passing on of ownership and rule of the monastery from mother to daughter (which characterised early double monasteries such as Minster-in-Thanet) was disappearing as—with the higher value placed on virginity—abbesses tended more generally to be unmarried women instead of widows and the formerly married.140 Ælfgifu’s highly conspicuous devotion to Edith (she wept every time she thought of her) originated with a dream vision in which Edith healed her of an eye disease. This vision, uniquely, contains a trace of knowledge of Edith’s life, since Edith, as had been her custom, made the sign of the cross with her thumb.141 The miraculous cure of the unnamed sister of Brihtsige which was attributed to Edith (of uncertain date because it is related out chronological sequence) testifies more markedly to the veneration accorded Wulfthryth. A nun, objecting to the presence of a dying child in the room where Wulfthryth died, and therefore regarded by her as a holy place, told the nurse to take the child to Wulfthryth’s tomb. ‘Whether this should be ascribed to

139

The visions differ slightly in that, in Ælfhild’s, Edith invested Ælfgifu with her veil and ring; in Ælfgifu’s vision, Edith invested her with her veil, bracelets and armband. 140

See Hollis, ‘The Minster-in-Thanet Foundation Story’, pp. 41–64; ‘The Old English “Ritual of the Admission of Mildrith”’, pp. 311–21. 141

Translatio Edithae, chap. 19. This unusual signing with the thumb may, conceivably, have been a custom which Edith adopted from her mother (in Translatio Edithae, chap. 3, Goscelin relates that Wulfthryth, when she cured the blindness of a fellow-countryman of the priest Benna, made the sign of the cross which her daughter was accustomed to use). Translatio Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 269), reports that, in accordance with Dunstan’s prophecy before Edith’s death, Edith’s hands, feet and eyes were discovered to have corrupted at the time of her translation, but the thumb with which she crossed herself remained intact. Possibly, Edith’s remains could still be seen in the shrine donated by Cnut (chap. 13); in Thola’s dream of Edith lying on a wedding bed (chap. 22), the shrine opens to reveal her. The miraculous healing of Ælfgifu might represent a transference of Wulfthryth’s powers to Edith. Translatio Edithae, chap. 11, reports that Wulfthryth’s ring of office often cured eye diseases (compare chap. 3); but the coincidence could have arisen from the widely attested belief that royal women had the power to cure diseases of the eyes.

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error or faith’ the nurse took her to Edith’s shrine, where she recovered after three days.142 Despite Brihtgifu’s baptismal association with Edith, then, neither she nor the two unnamed abbesses who ruled between her and Wulfthryth appear to have promoted Edith’s cult within the convent. The conclusion I would draw is that Brihtgifu regarded Wulfthryth rather than Edith as the convent’s saint; Brihtgifu joined Wulfthryth’s community as a child shortly after Edith’s death (c. 984),143 and was, presumably, the ultimate source of Goscelin’s account of Wulfthryth’s life, and also of the relatively few oral traditions concerning Edith in the Vita, which reveal that Edith was remembered in the community, not as a saint possessed of supernatural powers and remarkable for her devotion and virtue but as a historical person, the daughter of Wulfthryth.144 In the last years of her long rule, however, Brihtgifu (d. 1065) promoted the cult of Edith by having a vernacular account made of the cure of one of the dancers of Colbek at Edith’s shrine.145 Following this, for the first time since the reign of Cnut, miracles involving members of the laity are reported.146 Ælfgifu thus succeeded at a time when the convent had evidence of Edith’s power among the laity.147 Ælfgifu’s devotion to Edith is further shown by her deathbed request for the relics of Edith and her prayer for Edith’s intercession. Two visions occurred relating to Edith’s intercession for Ælfgifu’s soul. As Ælfgifu lay dying, one unnamed nun received a verbal communication in her sleep that Mary, through the intercession of Edith, was waiting with a choir of virgin saints to receive her soul. But, after Ælfgifu’s burial, another unnamed nun dreamt that Edith herself had exhorted the whole community to pray for Ælfgifu’s soul; Edith explained in this dream that she had obtained forgiveness from the Lord for all but one of Ælfgifu’s offences, and that she would not cease to intercede for Ælfgifu until she obtained pardon for this offence. Goscelin, who evidently knew and liked Ælfgifu, protests that he cannot imagine 142

Translatio Edithae, chap. 17 (p. 292).

143

Vita Edithae, chap. 26 (p. 99).

144

Goscelin does, however, mention in Vita Edithae, chap. 24 (p. 94), that Edith was known as Goda (‘good’). 145

Translatio Edithae, chap. 16 (p. 292).

146

Translatio Edithae, chap. 18. This reports two miraculous instances of liberation from shackles (including one involving a Dane called Svein, which attracted the interest of Goscelin’s patron, Bishop Herman, Vita Edithae, chap. 1, p. 38), and also the healing of a crippled man who was a relative of Brihtgifu, or possibly Godiva. Also belonging to the time of Brihtgifu is Edith’s assistance to Ealdred, Archbishop of York, when he was shipwrecked on his way to Jerusalem, reported in Translatio Edithae, chap. 12 (p. 278). 147

Vita Edithae, chap. 26 (p. 100), gestures, with suspicious vagueness, towards the existence of reports at the time of Brihtgifu’s death, of visions of her salvation through the intercession of Edith.

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what this offence could be, unless she had exceeded the bounds of the virtue of hospitality.148 These two visions, reflecting different evaluations of Ælfgifu and of Edith’s intercessory powers, have bearing on the competing successional claims of Ælfgifu’s sister and Godiva. (As in the case of Ælfgifu versus Brihtgifu, the competition is non-confrontational.) Long before her death, Goscelin relates, Ælfgifu had confided to her sister (Thola) and to Godiva (who succeeded her) that she had had a vision of St Agatha, St Cecilia and St Lucy, who promised that she would dwell with them for ever.149 Ælfgifu’s communication of her own visionary knowledge of her fate after death, like the conflicting visions of the fate of her soul, belong to a tradition of soulfriend visions which figures in early hagiography. Intimacy is attested by knowledge of the eternal fate of the departed soul-friend (or of the time of death); these signs of closeness to the deceased could (but did not invariably) mark his or her choice of successor, whether to office, to powers and virtues, or general charisma.150 The soulfriend tradition is also reflected in the account of Wulfthryth’s death, where the vigil of Wulfthryth’s dearest friend is rewarded by the appearance of a snow-white lamb emerging from Wulfthryth’s tomb.151 Related to the soul-friend tradition is the ability of royal women to foresee the death of the king (and, occasionally, to predict his successor); there is an instance of this in Edith’s Vita, in her prophetic vision of the murder of her brother, King Edward (even more strikingly, leading noblemen subsequently urged her to accept the throne as his successor).152 Prescience was a characteristic attribute of Germanic royal woman; communities made up of women related to the royal line (as Wilton notably was) not unnaturally developed a visionary tradition with bearing on the abbatical succession.153 148

Translatio Edithae, chap. 20 (p. 297).

149

Translatio Edithae, chap. 20 (p. 296).

150

Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church, pp. 13–14, 116, n. 13, 123, 185–88, 197, 198, 202, 289–300. In Bede’s account of female communities, the soul-friend tradition is more prominent in his account of Barking, which he based on the community’s own Libellus than it is in his account of Whitby and Ely, but the successional implications are difficult to detect because, like Goscelin, he tends not to name the visionaries; see Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. by Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), IV. 6–10, 19, 23 (pp. 354–64, 390–96, 404–14). 151

Translatio Edithae, chap. 8 (p. 95); see also Vita Edithae, chap. 24, which reports that at the time of Edith’s death a certain sister met with a radiant being who told her that angels were with Edith and were waiting to carry Edith to the everlasting court. 152

Vita Edithae, chaps 17–19; for discussion see Hollis, pp. 190–99. Edith’s prophetic dream is reminiscent of the prophetic dream of Edgar interpreted by his mother Ælfgifu of Shaftesbury (whose Life Edith read with such devotion) related by William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, II. 154 (pp. 250–54). 153 See, for instance, the prophetic intimations of disaster attributed to Queen Edith before the Conquest, in Life of King Edward, I. 7 (p. 80). Successional implications may also explain

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Ælfgifu, as I read the account of her imparting her knowledge of the posthumous fate of her soul to her sister and to Godiva, was mindful of the fact that, according to the Benedictine Rule, the abbess’s successor is determined by election of the community (or, to paraphrase Monty Python and the Holy Grail, supreme executive power did not, according the Rule, derive from nocturnal carryings on with the founder abbess and her daughter).154 Ælfgifu, then, did not nominate her own kinswoman as her successor but, as it were, offered the convent her short-list; either her sister Thola or Godiva. Successional manoeuvring followed in the form of conflicting intimations of her posthumous state. Thola’s claim to succeed by virtue of closeness to Ælfgifu depended on kinship and also on sharing her devotion to Edith. (It is Thola who later has the vision of Edith reclining in her wedding bed when Ealdgyth denounces her as powerless.)155 So the unnamed nun who received visionary knowledge of Ælfgifu’s impending salvation through Edith’s intercession was pretty certainly Thola furthering her claims. And as Thola is a by-name, I am inclined to identify her with Ælfhild, who earlier shared Ælfgifu’s vision of her succession; unbeatable qualifications, one would have thought. But in the event, Godiva succeeded—having no visible links with Edith, and connected to Ælfgifu only by being told of the promise of salvation made to her by Sts Agatha, Cecilia and Lucy. But if the unnamed nun who dreamed that Edith urged the convent to pray for Ælfgifu because she still had not gained complete forgiveness for her wasn’t Godiva, it was probably Godiva’s soul-friend. This vision, of course, gives the lie to the claim (Thola’s?) that through Edith’s intercession Mary was waiting with a choir of virgin saints to receive Ælfgifu’s soul at the instant of her death. So if the nuns wished to believe that Ælfgifu was now, already, living eternally among the virgin saints, as Ælfgifu herself had foreseen, she owed it not to Edith but to Agatha, Cecilia and Lucy.156 No lasting harm was done by having, incidentally, cast doubts on the saintworthiness of Thola’s kinswoman. But the incidental undermining of Edith’s intercessory power was unfortunate; Edith’s justification of her failure to protect the convent from the plague, in the unattributed vision recorded in the next chapter, depends on her claim that she is busy interceding for their eternal salvation. And it must be admitted that there was reason to doubt the efficacy of Edith’s intercessory the interaction between Wulfhild’s successor, Leofflæd, and Wulfhild’s pupil, WulfrunaJudith, concerning the posthumous communication from Wulfhild at the time of her translation, which is related in Goscelin’s Vita sanctae Wulfhildae, chaps 13, 15. 154

In addition, Regularis Concordia, chap. 9 (p. 6), ruled that abbatical appointments were to take place with the king’s advice and consent, as Goscelin was aware: see Translatio Edithae, chap. 20 (p. 296). 155 156

Translatio Edithae, chap. 22.

Vita Edithae, chap. 24 (p. 95), mentions that Edith’s death day coincided with the feast of St Lucy (and also Sts Euphemia and Geminianus).

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powers, in her failure, evident at the time of her translation, to prevent her own body from suffering partial corruption.157 This is not to say that the convent’s doubts about Edith after the Conquest arose purely from the exigencies of internal politics. The effects of the Norman Conquest (both plague and loss of land) clearly underlie these doubts; the defeat of the Anglo-Saxon army at Hastings may also have contributed to the community’s loss of faith in its native saint. The request for a life of Edith might originally have come from Ælfgifu, but, if so, Godiva presumably repeated her request, since Goscelin hails her, in very flattering terms, in the prologue.158 In the post-Conquest years, Godiva’s best move was to employ Edith again in the service of the convent, by commissioning a Legend from Goscelin, with a view to attracting powerful patronage in defence of the monastery’s lands, and also perhaps with a view to restoring the convent’s faith in Edith. By the time Goscelin completed the Legend, Godiva had instigated an unsuccessful attempt to recover land appropriated by Brihtsige, which was clearly modelled on the report of Edith’s role in the recovery of land in the reign of Queen Emma. Goscelin reports, as a recent event, that, when Brihtsige was dying, Godiva sent his sister (the unnamed nun healed in her infancy by Edith) to appeal to him, but Edith’s cult was evidently in decline among the laity as well—the threat of Edith’s retribution held no terrors for Brihtsige, nor is there anything to suggest that the nun’s subsequent vision of Brihtsige cowering in terror of Edith in the afterlife prompted his heirs to return the land.159 The late emergence of Edith as the convent’s saint helps to illuminate the character of Goscelin’s Vita. One might expect that writing for the nuns on the basis of their oral testimony would have inhibited fabrication, but Goscelin evidently felt he could create his own portrait of the saint as long as he did not alter the essential nature of Wilton’s memories of her. The community’s memories of the living Edith were few, and were of Edith as a historical person not as a saint. Its oral traditions conflicted radically with Goscelin’s portrait of Edith as a reclusive mystic seeking union with her spiritual bridegroom. It is a superb lyrical artefact, but virtually unsupported by specific, concrete memories of Edith, and seems very likely to have been either modelled on, or created for Eve, who left the Wilton community to become a recluse at Angers in c. 1078 when she was much the same age as Edith 157

Translatio Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 269). William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, 218 (p. 404), claims that the partially incorrupt state of her body gave rise to talk at the time of her translation. II.

158

In Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 38), Goscelin states that, despite the request of the mothers (matres) of Wilton, he had delayed; this might perhaps mean that the request was originally made by Ælfgifu and then by Godiva; but elsewhere in the Legend matres is used to mean ‘senior nuns’ (see, for instance, Vita Edithae, chap. 12, p. 70); as Goscelin addresses Godiva in chap. 1, commissioning by her and her community seems more likely. 159

Vita Edithae, chap. 17. For lands appropriated by the Godwinsons, see above.

KATERN 10

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was at her death.160 As I have remarked above, the conflict between Goscelin’s portrait of Edith as a reclusive spiritual bride and the community’s memories is particularly noticeable when Goscelin reports the encounter between Edith and Bishop Æthelwold in which he reproached her for wearing royal finery, since Goscelin has previously presented Edith, in accordance with his own conception of her, as having renounced all worldly adornment, from the age of two, for the black tunic of exile.161 But the encounter with Bishop Æthelwold could not be omitted, since the memory of the miraculous preservation of her entire wardrobe during a fire, vindicating her rejection of Æthelwold’s criticism,162 was kept alive by the chest in which Edith had kept her clothes—still preserved at the convent in Goscelin’s time, and an ever-present reminder to the community, one hopes, that he had been given the material for a much more robust and independent-minded portrait of Edith pursuing the dictates of her inner life than the one that he chose to present. Goscelin’s dedicatory prologue gives particular emphasis to his reliance on the oral testimony of the Wilton nuns because he is at pains to assert the reliability of female witnesses.163 It is surprising that the community should have had no written life of its own saint, given that the entries for her feast in eleventh-century calendars imply the existence of lections,164 but Goscelin appears to be ruling out the existence of any kind of Life of Edith when he remarks that the miracles wrought by her, even to this day, should be sufficient as evidence of her merits without a written account.165 It is even more surprising in view of the fact that Edgar’s employment of two continental scholars to educate Edith is one of a number of indications that Wilton had a tradition of Latin literacy.166 The extent to which late Anglo-Saxon communities in general had written lives of the saints whose relics they possessed is difficult to gauge, particularly because there has been no comprehensive study of

160

See further ‘Edith as Contemplative’, pp. 291–306.

161

Vita Edithae, chap. 12 (p. 70), compare chap. 5 (p. 45).

162

Vita Edithae, chap. 13.

163

Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 37): ‘Neque uero is sexus a testimonio ueritatis refellendus erit, qui Domini uerbum portauit, qui sua fide apostolorum incredulitatem arguit et angelica legatione dominicam resurectionem predicavit. Postremo tam ancille Domini prophetant quam serui, et linguis loquuntur in eadem gratia Spiritus sancti’. (‘Nor will their sex be a reason for detracting from the truth of their testimony—[that sex] which carried the word of the Lord; which by its faith convinced the incredulity of the apostles and preached the Lord’s resurrection from angel-borne message. Finally, the handmaids of the Lord prophesy as well as the men-servants, and speak in tongues in the same grace of the Holy Spirit’.) 164

For calendars, see above, n. 125.

165

Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 36).

166

Vita Edithae, chap. 7. For further discussion of Wilton as an educational centre and the absence of a pre-existing Life of Edith, see ‘Wilton as a Centre of Education’, pp. 307–38.

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documentary references to late Anglo-Saxon lives which have not survived.167 In his report of Edith’s devotion to the cult of two of her female relatives (her aunt, Edith of Tamworth, and her grandmother, Ælfgifu of Shaftesbury) Goscelin clearly states that she read about them in written lives.168 He also appears to be saying, in the prologue to his Life of Wulfhild of Barking, that there were already written accounts of her life, although here, too, he says he has made use of the oral testimony of members of the community.169 Towards the end of his prologue to the Legend of Edith, however, Goscelin mentions that he has also made use of patriis libris. This may refer to patristic writings or similarly authoritative ecclesiastical sources, but the only written source he mentions in the Legend is the vernacular account of the Colbek dancers that was made at the instruction of Abbess Brihtgifu, so that it is possible that patriis libris 167

There are, however, surviving lives of some male saints who were translated in the Benedictine Reform period, such as Æthelwold, who was commemorated by members of his community not long after his translation. With respect to surviving lives, there appears to have been a brief burst of activity in the late tenth century (after the death of the principal reformers), and a more pronounced flurry in the second half of the eleventh century, particularly after the Conquest, with a period of inactivity in between of some fifty years. This is generally thought to reflect the disinclination of Anglo-Saxons to record the lives of their saints in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries; see, for instance, Love, pp. xxvii–xxxix. The part played by foreigners in the hagiographical commemoration of Anglo-Saxons in this period does offer substantiation for this view. But, in the current state of knowledge of lost lives, a disproportionately high loss of late tenth and early eleventh-century lives should not be ruled out; it seems likely, with the arrival of the Normans, that lives of late Anglo-Saxon saints written in the vernacular or in inferior Latin were particularly prone to destruction. 168

Vita Edithae (R), chap. 8 (pp. 53–55): ‘Inter multa autem sanctorum exempla que libris legebat anhela, interque presentia sanctorum et maxime propinquorum religiosorum lumina, uicinius accendebatur uirginali palma sanctissime amite sue, summi Edgari regie germane, Edgyde. [...] Beatissima quoque eius auia regina Alfgyua claris miraculis illi ostendit qua pietate et fortitudine in thoro regis Edmundi et aureo cultu celo imitabilis extiterit’. (‘But among the many examples of the saints in books, which she read voraciously, and among the illumination that was at hand to her from saints and especially the religious persons related to her, she was kindled most nearly by the virginal palm of her most holy aunt Edith. […] Also her most blessed grandmother Queen Ælfgifu showed her by brilliant miracles with what piety and courage she led her life as the bedfellow of King Edmund and that she is to be imitated in the golden cult in heaven’.) William of Malmesbury looks to be drawing upon a written account of Ælfgifu in his account of her: Gesta Regum Anglorum, II. 154 (pp. 250–54). See also Osbert’s Life of Eadburg of Nunnaminster, n. 53 above. 169 Vita sanctae Wulfhildae, Prefatio (p. 418): ‘Vita sacratissimae uirginis Vulfildae late refulget et in populo et in eclesiis et maxime in suis popularibus locis atque in ore multorum recitatur ut in libris’. (‘The life of the most holy virgin Wulfhild shines forth far and wide both among the people and in the churches, and especially in the regions of her own people, and it is spoken of as much in the mouths of the many as in books’.)

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means locally written books, or even vernacular sources.170 What Wilton may have had is chronicle accounts of its history, which appear, in the early Anglo-Saxon period, to have been more common than hagiographical accounts.171 The apparent lack of either chronicle or hagiographical accounts of Edith is, however, consistent with Edith not having established herself as the convent’s saint until the rule of Ælfgifu shortly before the Conquest. Had the Wilton nuns retained the ability of female communities in the early Anglo-Saxon period to make their own saints, they would, fairly certainly, have elevated Wulfthryth; in effect, they did, and the absence of a written Life of Edith does not rule out the possibility that the account of the life of Wulfthryth which Goscelin incorporates was based on a written source.172 Goscelin, however, is representative of his time in regarding a formerly married abbess of the late Anglo-Saxon period as unsuitable for liturgical commemoration, even though her claims to sainthood exceeded those of her virgin daughter. In the Cardiff version of the Vita he adds metres in honour of Edith’s father as well as her ‘martyred’ brother, but the brief verse that concludes the account of Wulfthryth’s life glances only obliquely at her merits, by hailing Edith as the companion of her mother.173 Just as Wulfthryth’s immortality depends in this metre on her relationship to Edith, so, too, in the account of Wulfthryth’s death, Goscelin presents her as attaining union with the deity only indirectly through Edith; whereas Edith ascends at death as a bride of Christ into the wedding chamber of the Lord, Goscelin describes Wulfthryth as having passed into the embrace of her daughter in Christ, and thereby rejoicing with her in the immortal spouse.174 A more general mismatch between the tendency of bishops and kings to elevate virgin daughters with the right royal connections, on the one hand, and, on the other, the tendency of female

170

Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 39).

171

Hollis, ‘Minster-in-Thanet Foundation Story’, pp. 55–58.

172

Translatio Edithae, chap. 12, p. 278, is perhaps suggestive: ‘Hec de abscondito thesauro et lucerna commendantur sub modio clausa’. (‘This part of our charge has been about the hidden treasure and the lamp hidden under a bushel’.) 173

Translatio Edithae, Metre XII; Vita Edithae, Metres VI, VII. Compare, in the early Anglo-Saxon period, the formerly married Hild of Whitby, and the greater esteem accorded Æthelthryth, also formerly married but having episcopal testimony to the preservation of her virginity through marriage (Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church, pp. 243–70). See also the displacement of the cult of Æbbe of Minster-in-Thanet by that of her virginal daughter Mildrith, a process in which Goscelin played a part (Hollis, ‘Minster-in-Thanet Foundation Story’, pp. 41–64). 174 Translatio Edithae, chap. 7 (p. 275). Similarly, the formulae for blessing female religious and their clothing in the Pontifical of Egbert (c. 1000) employ conspicuous bridal imagery for virgins, but not for widows: Two Anglo-Saxon Pontificals (the Egbert and Sidney Sussex Pontificals), ed. by H. M. J. Banting, HBS, 104 (Woodbridge: Brewer, 1989), pp. 117– 23.

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communities to embrace their spiritual mothers, might help to account for the absence of contemporary lives of late Anglo-Saxon women saints.175

175

See further ‘ Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, pp. 329–30, 335–37.

Edith as Contemplative and Bride of Christ STEPHANIE HOLLIS

Introduction

G

oscelin’s Legend of Edith is striking in its anticipation of the bridal mysticism associated with twelfth-century Cistercian writings, which gave new prominence to the exegetical interpretation of the Song of Songs as an expression of the relationship between God and the individual soul. The individual soul’s quest for union with Christ the bridegroom was for Origen only a secondary meaning in his interpretation of the Song of Songs as a celebration of the union of God and the Church, and it remained ‘a minor mode from Gregory onwards’ until it became paramount in the twelfth century.1 In the Legend of Edith, every major event in her life story is configured in terms of her individual quest as a bride of Christ seeking union with her heavenly spouse. No less striking is Goscelin’s configuring of a deeply inward and individual relationship with the deity in these terms—Edith herself is depicted as inwardly seeking and attaining a foretaste of union with her divine bridegroom. Edith is not, then, as in earlier, heroic conceptions of Christianity, a spiritual warrior fending off the attacks of the powers of darkness, and her life pilgrimage is not an exile’s penitential return to the homeland; her life is conceived as the journey of a betrothed women who hastens towards marital consummation with the king of a foreign land in a fervent ecstasy of anticipation. Her progress towards union with her divine bridegroom is a process of remaking herself in his image, in which she achieves compassionate identification with the human suffering of Christ and those in whom he suffers; she is wounded by the pains of everyone.2 1

E. Ann Matter, The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), pp. 14, 38, 106. 2

Vita Edithae, chap. 10 (p. 64).

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As Southern explained when he set forth the identifying features of the twelfthcentury Renaissance in his classic essay ‘Epic to Romance’: [Men] think of themselves less as stationary objects of attack by spiritual foes, and more as pilgrims and seekers. […] It was not until the twelfth century that the imagery of journeying became a popular expression of a spiritual quest. Then indeed it meets us on all sides—in the Arthurian Romances, in allegories of love, in descriptions of the ascent of the soul towards God. […] [The life prescribed by the Benedictine Rule] is static in another sense: it promised no excitements of mind or body. It was a laborious and penitential life. […] Then […] in the second half of the eleventh century there appeared signs of uneasiness within the monastic order. [...] The life of solitude, the religious life divested of those corporate ties which had stamped the old monasticism, began to appear with a new attractiveness. Not only did hermits multiply, but new corporate organizations also appear which sought to introduce a greater degree of solitariness, a greater intensity and a more acute spiritual strife into the religious life. These aims had their echo within the Benedictine Order itself. […] St Anselm taught a reaching forward to the knowledge of God by a rousing of the mind: Excita mentem tuam, he wrote. […] It was in the innermost recesses of the conscious and awakened soul that God was to be found. […] ‘Enter into the chamber of your mind and exclude all else but God and those things which help you in finding Him; close the door and seek Him’. We enter here into an inner world of movement and struggle, in which attack has taken the place of resistance as a predominate mood. […] The urge towards a greater measure of solitude, of introspection and self-knowledge which is exemplified by St Anselm in the bosom of the Benedictine order in the eleventh century ran like fire through Europe in the generation after his death and produced an 3 outburst of meditations and spiritual soliloquies.

This movement towards an individual relationship with the divine, inward, emotional and dynamic, was intimately connected with the development of affective devotion. Tenderness and compassion for the human sufferings of Christ were widely shared feelings in the mid-eleventh century. Anselm gave these feelings a fuller and more poignant expression than they had ever had before. But it was the Cistercians, in the twelfth century, who were ‘the chief agents in turning the thin stream of compassion and tenderness which comes from the eleventh century into the flood which, in the later centuries of the Middle Ages, obliterated the traces of an older severity and reticence’.4 Anselm, however, provided the theological underpinning which prepared the way for this, by rejecting the ‘Devil’s Rights’ 3

Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages, pp. 230–36. For an extended critique of Southern’s essay, see Fulton, From Judgment to Passion; she aims ‘to understand not only how but why this devotion to Christ came into being both when and where it did, along with its corollary devotions to the Eucharist and to Mary; […] to understand, in other words, both the making and the meaning of this new thing—if in fact it was a new thing and not simply a becoming visible of something already there (as Southern suggested it might be)’, p. 2. 4

Southern, pp. 240–42.

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conception of the redemption for a theology in which the humanity of Christ was central: He did not of course reject it because it failed to satisfy the emotional needs of his generation. Nevertheless, it is a striking thing that the intellectual shortcomings of this picture of Man’s salvation only became clear at the moment when the heroic view of human life being lived between the mighty opposites of external powers was dissolving before a new romanticism, and when an intense compassion for the sufferings of the Son of God was becoming a central fact in the religious experience of 5 the time.

In this, too, Goscelin is at the frontiers with Anselm. The theology of the redemption he formulates in the Liber confortatorius, though echoing in part the theory of the ‘Devil’s Right’s’, coincides with that of Cur Deus Homo (1098) in the central role he gives to the humanity of Christ.6 The dominance of the individual soul’s union with the heavenly bridegroom in exegesis of the Song of Songs in the twelfth century also has its roots in the eleventh century.7 Peter Damian, for instance, in a letter written to Countess Blanche after she became a nun (dated 1059x60) celebrates the union with the heavenly bridegroom on which she has embarked. Phyllis Jestice, indeed, in her recent study, argues that the eleventh century was ‘one of the greatest periods of change in both spirituality and ecclesiastical organization that western Europe has known’.8 As Rachel Fulton shows, in calling into question the view that the origins of the ‘new devotion to Christ in his suffering humanity’ are solely attributable to the influence of Anselm, John of Fécamp (d. 1072) anticipates Anselm in a number of respects, but in his invocation of the soul’s desire for union with the body of Christ in the Libellus he wrote for Agnes of Poitou he employs only briefly the image of marital union with Christ. As Fulton observes: The image of Christ as the longed-for bridegroom was even in John’s day very ancient. It had been a staple of Christian mystical writings, particularly through exegesis of the Song of Songs, since Origen. It was, however (or rather, as best I have been able to determine), wholly alien to the immediate tradition of prayer in which John was writing—a novelty so remarkable as to be almost incredible, outweighed only by the rapidity with which within a century it would become—through the 9 writings of Bernard of Clairvaux, for example—the norm.

5

Southern, pp. 244–45.

6

See Liber confort., pp. 52–54.

7

Matter, pp. 106–11; Letter 66, Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. by Kurt Reindel, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Die Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit, 4, 4 vols (Munich: MGH, 1983–93), II, 247–79. 8

Jestice, pp. 130–31.

9

Fulton, p. 164.

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Goscelin, then, is remarkably advanced in his integrated exemplification of ‘the fundamental changes of attitude, or shifts of emphasis’ which came to fruition in the twelfth century. Because he was educated at the monastery of Saint-Bertin it is natural to suppose that his spirituality was formed by continental teachers and writers.10 It is at Saint-Bertin that he seems to have acquired familiarity with the Confessions of Augustine, which were not much read, particularly in England, before the twelfth century.11 This was evidently a formative text for Goscelin, and he includes it among his list of the books that Eve should read because of its power to instil ‘divine affection’ (divinum affectum).12 The identification of Goscelin’s sources has not to date, however, yielded evidence that he was familiar with the work of his eminent contemporary Anselm, or with the earlier eleventh-century continental writers who paved the way for twelfth-century developments.13 That Anselm does not figure among the sources named by Goscelin is not surprising if we recall that Goscelin emigrated to England no later than 1064 and perhaps as early as 1058, and that he was at that time an adolescentulus (which normally means not older than twenty).14 Direct contact with either Anselm or his writings therefore seems unlikely, since Anselm did not make the move from Italy to Bec until 1059, and his earliest works are dated to the 1070s; he visited Canterbury c. 1080, but Goscelin, as far as is known, led a peripatetic existence from the time

10

For Saint-Bertin as a flourishing literary centre, see Wilmart, ‘Les Livres de l’abbé Odbert’, pp. 169–88. Goscelin’s report of a miracle he heard directly from the clergy of Speyer may indicate that he travelled on the continent beyond Flanders, either before or after his arrival in England (Liber confort., p. 108). 11

See Teresa Webber, ‘The Diffusion of Augustine’s Confessions’, p. 43. She argues that dissemination of the Confessions in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries reflects an increased interest in the writings of the Latin fathers in general; no text is known to have been present in England in the century and a half before the Conquest, and she suggests that Goscelin’s knowledge derived from a copy at Saint-Bertin, which may have been the source of the continental exemplar that lies behind one branch of the transmission of the Confessions in England. 12

Liber confort., p. 80.

13

See, however, W. R. Barnes’ remark on the similarity of a phrase in Liber confort. to a saying in one of Anselm’s Meditations, in ‘Goscelin’s Greeks and Romans’, p. 417. I am indebted to Rebecca Hayward, Michael Wright, and W. R. Barnes for the identification of the sources of Liber confortatorius and the Legend of Edith accompanying their translations, and also to Rosalind Love’s entries in Fontes Anglo-Saxonici: World Wide Web Register for the following works by Goscelin: the Vitae of Edith, Wulfsige, Wulfhild, Kenelm, Mildrith; the Vita and Visio of Ethelburg; the Translatio of Ethelburg, Hildelith and Wulfhild; and the Historia maior de adventu S. Augustini. 14

Liber confort., p. 102.

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that he was exiled from Wiltshire by Bishop Osmund in c. 1078, and did not take up residence at Canterbury until c. 1090.15 It is possible that his early education was indirectly influenced by some of Anselm’s older contemporaries (such as his fellow-countryman, John Fécamp, who arrived in northern France some time before 1017). But the inter-related and accumulative changes in the spirituality of the eleventh century were not generated simply by the transmission of literary texts. As Southern observed, there were already artists in tenth-century England who expressed the sufferings of Christ with moving realism; the artist who executed the Crucifixion portrait in the Gospels of Countess Judith, working in a monastery ‘far removed from any strong theological impetus—and remote (it would seem) from the centres of devotional innovation— had reached the same position as St Anselm was led to by his monastic experiences and theological speculations’.16 Until such time as Goscelin’s sources are found to include identifiable borrowings from eleventh-century texts, he may be regarded as a highly receptive and intelligent expositor of the emotional and intellectual Zeitgeist that produced Anselm, whose harbingers were to be found in England as well as on the continent.17 The essay which follows examines Goscelin’s portrait of Edith as an embodiment of a forward-looking spirituality. Doubtless, it was intended to impress Lanfranc.18 It was, presumably, also intended to appeal to the Wilton community.19 More significantly, the inward and emotionally fervent spiritual life that Goscelin depicts in the Legend of Edith exemplifies the ideal to which he urges Eve in the Liber confortatorius. It also suggests that Goscelin’s spirituality, as a formative educational influence on Eve, may, ironically, have contributed to her decision to leave Wilton to become an anchorite.

15

See further ‘Introduction’, p. 10; ‘Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women’, pp. 224, 236; ‘Afterword’, pp. 428-29. 16

Southern, pp. 246–47.

17

Fulton (see n. 3 above) demonstrates persuasively that the literary texts which are representative of and influential in the eleventh- and twelfth-century changes in devotional attitudes were responses to a shared imaginative and emotional climate, and to ‘pressures brought to bear on the [Christian] tradition from outside, whether cognitive, political, material or social’ (p. 5). 18

The Legend’s sophisticated employment of exegesis of the Song of Songs is heralded in the dedicatory prologue, where Goscelin hails Lanfranc as a type of Christ the bridegroom, who by embracing the English church has established a New Jerusalem (Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (pp. 35–36)). 19

For their commissioning of the Legend, and the possibility that Goscelin’s revision of the version dedicated to Lanfranc (Cardiff) was intended for the Wilton community, see ‘Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women’, pp. 234, 238–42.

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Soldiers of Christ and Brides of the Lamb: The Legend and the Liber confortatorius Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs, addressed to adult monks, encouraged them to develop contrasexual affective powers in themselves, to identify their bridal self, using feminine figurae as a way of evoking, expressing, and directing the emotional domain within themselves.20 The obvious aptness of ‘brides of Christ’ as a term for female religious was recognised from earliest times, and gained currency in patristic treatises on virginity addressed to devout women, following Jerome’s letter to Eustochium.21 Typically, these treatises employed the conception of female religious as brides of Christ to inveigh against secular clothing and adornment, exhorting their audiences to forsake the self-glamorization of earthly brides for the ascetic dress and demeanour appropriate to their religious vocation. Aldhelm, in his prose De virginitate, written c. 700 for the nuns of Barking, echoes this tradition, but like his patristic predecessors, he otherwise makes only sporadic use of the nuptial metaphor. The nuns of Barking are presented, much more pervasively, in the same metaphorical terms as male religious are in the early AngloSaxon period—as spiritual warriors locked in combat and athletes competing for a heavenly prize. In Aldhelm’s view, knowledge of God and the pursuit of learning were synonymous, and he pictures the nuns of Barking being taught by Abbess Hildelith in the monastic school as athletes sweating and wrestling in the gymnasium under the eye of an experienced instructor, and as an army of bees swarming after its leader to plunder the honey of contemplation from the flowering fields of scripture.22 He also images the religious life as the penitential pilgrimage of exiles seeking with frequent sighs of remorse drawn from the deepest recesses of their hearts to return to the heavenly homeland,23 but it is learning, not penitential remorse that he applauds. For him the study of books, both sacred and secular, is the essence of the contemplative life, and the quest for knowledge is the route that leads back to the heavenly homeland, open to monastic women as well as to men.24 20

Ann W. Astell, The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), p. 9. 21

Matter, p. 36. She points out that in Letter 22, to Eustochium (which shows the influence of the translation of Origen’s Homilies on the Song of Songs, and was probably written at the same time), Jerome cites the Song of Songs twenty-five times in referring to the spiritual marriage expected of a virgin dedicated to Christ. Nuptial imagery attached at an early date to St Agnes and St Catherine of Alexandria. 22

De virginitate, chaps 2–3, in Aldhelmi Opera, ed. by Rudolf Ehwald, MGH AA, 15 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1919; repr. 1961), pp. 228–323 (pp. 229–31). This imagery is echoed in the account of Wulfthryth’s leadership of her community in Vita Edithae, chap. 9 (p. 59). 23

De virginitate, chap. 14 (p. 243).

24

See Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church, pp. 75–112.

Edith as Contemplative

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Not until the early thirteenth century in England—in the collections of texts written for women known as the Wooing Group and the Katherine Group—do we find the metaphorical conception of female religious as brides of Christ fully developed and elaborated.25 Symptomatically, whereas Aldhelm and Goscelin wrote for their female audiences in Latin (as did Aelred in the mid-twelfth century in the rule for recluses written for his sister), the early thirteenth-century texts are in the vernacular. The appearance of vernacular works written for women which encourage the cultivation of an emotionally fervent relationship with Christ the loverbridegroom is the corollary of declining educational standards.26 A strong belief in the essential role of Latin learning in the religious life, combined with a willingness to regard women religious as participants in a common cause, which is reflected in Aldhelm’s figuring of the Barking nuns as fellow soldiers of Christ, underlies the relatively high educational standard of female communities in the early Anglo-Saxon period. The rise to prominence of the distinctively gendered conception of female religious as brides of Christ paralleled an increasingly strict segregation and enclosure which diminished their opportunities to participate in the learned culture of male monastics; affective piety came to be seen as the appropriate form of devotional practice for women, and the vernacular literature written for them offered food for the emotions and the imagination rather than nourishment for the life of the mind. Men as well as women were of course encouraged to think of themselves as brides of Christ, and they too were readers of vernacular literature which encouraged a fervently emotional relationship with Christ;27 what is missing in England from the 25

Medieval English Prose for Women: Selections from the ‘Katherine Group’ and Ancrene Wisse, ed. by Bella Millett and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). Bridal imagery also appears sporadically in the mid-twelfth-century Latin treatise written by Aelred for a female recluse (his sister), which was subsequently translated into the vernacular: Aelred of Rievaulx’s De Inclusarum: Two English Versions, ed. by John Ayto and Alexandra Barratt, EETS, OS 287 (London: Oxford University Press, 1984). 26

Alexandra Barratt, ‘Small Latin? The Post-Conquest Learning of English Religious Women’, in Anglo-Latin and its Heritage: Essays in Honour of A.G. Rigg on his 64th Birthday, ed. by Siân Echard and Gernot R. Wieland, Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin, 4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), pp. 51–65, concludes that ‘Aelred’s sister would not have been exceptional in her ability to read Latin in the mid-twelfth century, while the three sisters to whom Ancrene Wisse was addressed in the early thirteenth might well, in a more structured religious community or in a different part of the country, have had a greater opportunity to learn Latin. […] There does seem to have been a change in the knowledge that women religious had of Latin but this seems to have occurred well into the thirteenth rather than the twelfth century’ (p. 65). See also David N. Bell, What Nuns Read: Books and Libraries in Medieval English Nunneries, Cistercian Studies Series, 158 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1995), pp. 57–96; Millett, pp. 86–103. 27

See Newman, pp. 19–45. Although both men and women were encouraged to regard themselves as brides of Christ, the effects of male, trans-gendered identification were, of course, significantly different.

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thirteenth century onward is that female equivalent of the educated male elite for which Goscelin and Aelred wrote. Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and the Liber confortatorius are poised between the heroic-age figuring of female religious as soldiers of Christ and an era in which both devotional and secular literature is dominated by heterosexuality. The Liber confortatorius is a late flowering of the tradition represented by Aldhelm’s De virginitate. Although Goscelin presents incorporation into the union of St Edith with the bridegroom Christ as the culminating goal of Eve’s pilgrimage to the heavenly homeland,28 marital metaphors occur only occasionally throughout the Liber confortatorius. Goscelin depicts Eve as a soldier of Christ.29 For him, as for Aldhelm, the study of Latin books is synonymous with contemplation and fundamental to the pursuit of the religious life. Eve, in her tiny cell, is to regard herself as a fowl in a cage being fattened on spiritual food, and he recommends so many books for her to read that he doubts they will all fit through the window of her cell.30 His extended justification of learning suggests, however, that in his time, the centrality of learning in the religious life was contested, and unlike Aldhelm, he states that prayer is an even higher activity than reading.31 Goscelin, moreover, believed that reading should kindle emotional fervour, which he prizes above all in religious experience,32 and he recommends several affective practices to Eve, including his own special devotion to the wounds of Christ.33 He also exhorts her to meditate on Christ on the cross, to embrace him as a lover and observe how he stretches out his arms in invitation: With all sighs of desire pour out your heart to God your salvation, desire him in your very marrow, take hold of him, embrace him. Think how sweet he is, how pleasant, how kind, how meek, how mild, how yielding, how lovable, furthermore how beautiful, how rich, how delightful, how glorious, how lively, how agreeable, how joyful, how easily entreated, and gladdening all things with his countenance, how full he is of an infinite treasury of all good things. [...] See therefore how he stretches out

28

Liber confort., p. 115.

29

The conception of the spiritual life in terms of warfare and athletic exertion is particularly marked in Book II of Liber confort. See further Hayward and Hollis, ‘The Anchorite’s Progress’, pp. 370–74, 377–78. 30

Liber confort., p. 80.

31

Liber confort., p. 82; for his defence of learning, see Liber confort., pp. 81–82.

32

See especially Liber confort., p. 80, where Augustine’s Confessions are recommended because they will instil emotional fervour. So, likewise, Edith devoured and was kindled by the lives of saints (Vita Edithae (R), chap. 8, pp. 53–54), and read with perceptive ardour (chap. 11, p. 68). 33

Liber confort., p. 84.

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loving arms on the cross, inviting us to himself with that kindness by which he redeemed us.34

But reminiscent as this is of the later depiction of Christ as the supremely desirable husband and the depiction of him on the cross as a lover who extends his arms to embrace his beloved, as if asking for a kiss, Goscelin’s movement into the firstperson plural towards the conclusion of this passage affirms the universality of the allegorically female soul rather than Eve’s specifically female status as a bride of Christ.35 In the Legend of Edith, the education of the saint, including her instruction by two continental scholars brought in by her father, King Edgar, is an important stage in her life story.36 Edith’s literary accomplishments, however, though lauded, are not central to her spiritual life, but one among the many talents that she dedicated to the celebration of her heavenly bridegroom; she celebrated him in song and music, in painting and embroidery, as well as in the composition and copying of written works.37 Goscelin’s portrait of Edith, as I have observed, is remarkable in its anticipation of the dominant role that marital union assumes as a constituting metaphor from the twelfth century onward. Not only does Goscelin configure every major event of Edith’s life story as a journey towards marital union with her spouse in his kingdom (which was closely analogous to the actual experience of royal brides, since, as Goscelin reminds Eve in the Liber confortatorius, exogamous custom required them to travel far to alien lands).38 Edith herself is given a deeply inward and private relationship with her promised bridegroom, inwardly seeking and attaining a foretaste of heavenly union with him. Lavishly adorned with the exotic and erotic imagery of the Song of Songs and associated scriptural episodes (the meeting of Solomon and Sheba, the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, and the apocalyptic vision of the mystic marriage in the Book of Revelation), Goscelin’s account of Edith ravished by love-longing and hastening impetuously onwards and upwards in her life journey to union with her bridegroom is invested with an ecstatic lyricism that can aptly be described as mystical.39 (In this too, Goscelin is ahead of 34

Liber confort., pp. 106–07: ‘totis desideriorum suspiriis cor tuum in Deo salutari tuo effunde, totis uisceribus illum concupisce, illum concipe, illum amplectere. Cogita quam dulcis, quam suauis, quam benignus, quam mitis, quam mansuetus, quam tractabilis, quam amabalis, porro quam speciosus, quam diuitiosus, quam deliciosus, quam gloriosus, quam festiuus, quam iocundus, quam letus, quam exorabilis, et omnia exhilarans uultu suo, quam plenus sit infinito omnium bonorum thesauro. […] Aspice ergo ut affectuosa brachia extendat in cruce, ea benignitate, qua nos redemit, inuitans ad se’. 35

Compare the meditation on Christ the Lover in Ancrene Wisse, Part 7: Medieval English Prose for Women, p. 122. 36

Vita Edithae, chap. 7 (pp. 50–51).

37

Vita Edithae, chap. 11 (p. 68); see also Metre IV.

38

Liber confort., p. 41.

39

The word ‘mystical’ did not become common until the late Middle Ages and is now

290

STEPHANIE HOLLIS

his time—the authors of Ancrene Wisse and the Wooing of Our Lord give little encouragement to ecstatic and visionary states.)40 Paradoxically, then, although the solitary religious life is generally regarded as a prime locus for the historical development of the inner life, it is not Goscelin’s treatise for a female recluse that offers a model for a fervently individualistic relationship with the deity but his portrait of a saint who belonged to a female community. Owing to the particular circumstances of Edith’s life, however, she is presented as a representative of the mixed life, a type of both the contemplative Mary and the active Martha.41 Martha’s sister Mary was identified with Mary Magdalene from the time of Gregory the Great,42 and it is she, much more than the Virgin Mary, whom Goscelin identifies as the supreme exemplar of the bride of Christ in the Legend of Edith, notwithstanding traditional exegetical interpretation of the female speaker in the Song of Songs as the Virgin Mary.43 Even Bernard, following Augustine and Gregory, accorded highest place to the ‘mixed life’, but Goscelin had no doubt that ‘Mary has chosen the better part’; Edith, prolonging the Sabbath in the embrace of her spouse, surpassed the life of the handmaiden.44

generally used in connection with the ecstatic states of that period, in contrast to the ‘contemplation’ of the period 550–1150; Cuthbert Butler, Western Mysticism: The Teaching of Augustine, Gregory and Bernard on Contemplation and the Contemplative Life, 2nd edn (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), pp. 4, 130. 40 See, for instance, Geoffrey Shepherd, ed., Ancrene Wisse, Parts Six and Seven (London: Nelson, 1959), p. lvii. As he points out, the author’s teaching on contemplation is prescholastic and pre-Dionysian: ‘Throughout Part 7 love is thought of as a humble, creaturely communion with God, the outcome of the fulfilment of duty and obligations. Union with God in this life—the goal of the mystic—is never mentioned in terms which are to be taken otherwise than as metaphors’. 41

See Giles Constable, ‘The Interpretation of Mary and Martha’, in Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 1–142 (pp. 3–43). 42

Homily 33 (PL 76, 1239); see Susan Haskins, Mary Magdalene: Myth and Metaphor (New York: Harper Collins, 1993), pp. 20–26. 43

Fulton, p. 249, points out that the Song of Songs was an important source for Marian sermons from the eighth century, but the Sigillum sanctae Mariae of Honorius (1103x1107) represented the first consistent commentary from a Marian perspective. Goscelin’s devotion to Mary, as she observes (p. 227), is significantly less well developed than his devotion to the humanity of Christ. 44

Vita Edithae, Metre IV, p. 69 (Luke 10. 42).

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Edith: The Mystic Bride Goscelin’s configuration of the events of Edith’s life as developmental stages of her compulsive drive towards the ultimate consummation of her union with her heavenly bridegroom is wittily ingenious and richly allusive in its compression of imagery. Even her baptism is couched as a nuptial event. As husband and wife are one flesh, Edith emerges from the waters of the font like a new Eve created from the flesh of the new Adam; clothed in white as a bride, she rose from the side of Christ like the rising dawn.45 The miraculous light that shone from the crown of her head at birth marks her out at birth as a chosen bride of Christ by its equation with the lamps of the wise virgins (already she seemed to be lighting her lamp, Goscelin narrates, already she seemed to wish to run to meet her bridegroom).46 Metre I celebrates her as the infant bride of the Christ Child at his nativity; ‘as a suckling child he draws to himself a suckling spouse’.47 The ‘divine spousals’ (diuina sponsalia) of her dedication to the Wilton community take the form of a choice between earthly and heavenly marriage, and, by extension, between temporal and eternal riches, which are respectively gendered male and female. Edith is placed between the symbolic attributes of her royal father and her monastic mother laid out before the altar, gold and bejewelled robes and adornments versus the black veil of holiness, the chalice and paten, and the psalm book of heavenly prophecy.48 Edith chose the black veil and put it on her head like a crown, thus showing that she was already putting on the garment of an exile and that as a pilgrim on earth she would in chastity seek her spouse in heaven. By an ingenious twist to the words of the woman speaker in the Song of Songs, the nun’s habit chosen by Edith becomes a wedding dress that befits a bride of Christ: Edith was already preparing to sing her bridal song, ‘I am black but beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem’.49 Thus betrothed in infancy, Edith is educated according to the wishes of her future husband; she was reared for the marriage chamber of Christ in accordance with his commands.50 First Wulfthryth, both her natural and her spiritual mother, reinforcing Edith’s untutored preference for the garments of a heavenly bride, adorns her not with cosmetics and jewels but with the splendour of learning and virtues. Learned scholars procured by her father advance her steps towards the throne of her king.51 45

Vita Edithae, chap. 2, p. 41 (John 19. 34), echoing exegesis of the blood and water that flowed from the side of Christ as the creation of the Church and its sacraments. 46

Vita Edithae, chap. 3 (p. 41).

47

Vita Edithae, Metre I, line 4 (p. 46): ‘lactens sponsam duxit lacteam’.

48

Edith’s choice reiterates Wulfthryth’s rejection of her marriage to Edgar for a spiritual marriage, Vita Edithae, chap. 4 (p. 43). 49

Vita Edithae, chap. 5, p. 45 (Song of Songs 1. 4).

50

Vita Edithae, chap. 6 (pp. 47–48).

51

Vita Edithae, chap. 7 (p. 51).

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Edith now hastens single-mindedly towards her heavenly husband, striving to rise upward; taking to herself the wings of a dove she ardently desired to fly to his sanctifying embraces.52 Bishops next appear to aid her ascent. Dunstan and Æthelwold, as friends of the bridegroom, elevate her by their teaching towards consummation; relying on these guides on her left and right, she journeyed towards the heavenly kingdom, and they, encouraging her as though her hand had already been given in marriage, hastened her towards her heavenly bridal chamber.53 At the age of fifteen Dunstan deems her ready to bring forth spiritual children and to make the transition from spouse of Christ to mother. In accordance with the wish of her father, Æthelwold consecrates her as the abbess of three monasteries. But Edith, overwhelmed by maidenly modesty, insists that she is not ready for maternity and refuses to leave her mother; blushing, she protested her immaturity and unreadiness.54 The offer of the throne by leading men opposed to the accession of Edith’s halfbrother Æthelred becomes an occasion for Edith to re-enact her infant choice between marriage in the (masculine) sphere of earthly riches and royal power and the divine spousal in the (feminine) sphere of spiritual reward and humble service: the bride of the Lord was asked to ‘return to earthly dregs after the embraces of Christ’.55 Edith demonstrates that she has become one with Christ by choosing the way of martyrdom (since, Goscelin explains, abstinence among delights and riches is also a form of martyrdom): she imitated Christ, who did not choose to reign here, but said, even as the cross was prepared for him, ‘My kingdom is not of this world’.56 Immediately after this, Edith builds a magnificent chapel as her bridal chamber. Dunstan reappears as the friend of the bridegroom to celebrate the nuptial: he reverently led the Lord’s spouse and heavenly queen by the hand, and directed her steps towards the heavenly lamb and the mountain of the daughter of Syon, and Edith is united with the body of her spouse by eating the bread of the mass.57 But as the dedication of Edith’s church is the occasion of Dunstan’s intimation of her imminent death, the eschatological dimension of the mystic marriage of the human soul to God now dominates. The lover’s reverdie in the Song of Songs is recontextualised and becomes a summons from earthly life; on the seventh day before her death, the Lord was already knocking at the door and inviting her with the sound of the marriage hymn: ‘Arise, hasten my love, my dove, my beautiful one, and come. Now the winter has passed away, the rains have departed, the time of pruning 52

Vita Edithae, chap. 8 (p. 52).

53

Vita Edithae, chap. 9 (p. 57).

54

Vita Edithae, chap. 16 (p. 76).

55

Vita Edithae, chap. 19 (p. 84): ‘post Christi amplexus ad mundialem fecem reposcitur’.

56

Vita Edithae, chap. 19, pp. 85–86 (John 18. 36).

57

Vita Edithae, chaps 21, 22 (p. 91).

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has come’.58 Edith, fearful of this culminating encounter with her bridegroom is reassured: the king who comes to her desiring her beauty is gentle. Finally, as Edith enters upon her eternal nuptials, the polarization of earthly pomp and spiritual humility dissolves: Edith was buried with as much ceremony as would have befitted the wedding of a royal daughter of an earthly king.59 The inwardness of Edith’s spiritual life is invoked by a nexus of images which define her both as physically enclosed within the convent and figuratively an enclosure in which her beloved dwells. The figurative conception of Edith as a holy dwelling place of her beloved is, finally, given external and actual embodiment when Edith builds her chapel as a site for the consummation of her union with her bridegroom. Even at her dedication at the age of two, Edith is, metaphorically, ‘already on her way to erect a noble temple of Christ’.60 She is gathered into the bosom of the church, and into the bosom of her mother. She is the golden urn within the Ark of the Covenant in which the holy manna was hidden.61 She is both a flower within the paradisal garden of the convent, and herself a garden whose virtues give forth paradisal fragrances. The Cardiff revision elaborates this further, describing the nuns who embrace the child Edith in their arms as a rose-garden of virgins, and Edith herself as a paradise of delights in whose fertile breast the gardener of Mary had planted all the seeds of virtues.62 She is like Jerusalem the desired and the chamber of the Lord’s repose. Cardiff also elaborates on this: the radiant garment of her body, clothing her even more radiant soul, is likened to a beautiful court which contains a yet more beautiful queen.63 Harking back to his description of a ray of sunlight that shone from Edith’s head at her birth, Goscelin relates that it seemed to her from her infancy that Christ presided in her virgin breast like the risen sun with the powerful radiation of grace, and, in Cardiff only, he makes explicit her striving towards marital union by means of refashioning herself in the likeness of her creator; the light of the Holy Spirit shone from her eyes and words received from the Lord poured forth from her lips.64 Though Edith is educated within the convent by her mother (and from without by the priests employed for this purpose by her father) the Holy Spirit was her most inward teacher of all.65 Dunstan and Æthelwold, who appear in Chapter 9 to inspire 58

Vita Edithae, chap. 23, p. 93 (Song of Songs 2. 10–12).

59

Vita Edithae, chap. 24 (p. 95).

60

Vita Edithae, chap. 5 (p. 43): ‘nobile Christi templum iamiamque surrectura’.

61

Vita Edithae, chap. 7 (p. 51).

62

Vita Edithae, chap. 6 (pp. 47–48). The last of these images depends on exegesis of the garden as the BVM in the Song of Songs, but also recalls Magdalene and Christ the gardener (John 20. 15). 63

Vita Edithae, chap. 6 (p. 48).

64

Vita Edithae, chap. 6 (p. 49).

65

Vita Edithae, chap. 7 (p. 51).

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Edith to greater heights as she strives to ascend heavenward, are, therefore, not the instigators of the ecstatic love-longing and visionary yearning ascribed to her by Goscelin in Chapter 8. Their role is to kindle and inflame a passion made innate by the Spirit, as the pubescent Edith abandons her former enthusiasm for scholarly pursuits, having had an intimation of the radiance of her husband-to-be and the glory of his kingdom. In striving to become like her bridegroom she develops a visionary capacity to see the light of eternity and seeks to rise up towards it: From now on, as if the heavens were open and she had had the eyes of Stephen bestowed upon her, she was taken in rapture to the festivals of the saints, the joys of the angels, to Christ himself, the glorious spouse illuminating everything; clinging to him with her whole mind and struck with the holy wound of his love, from the midst of her studies she hastened towards him with her entire affection and, taking to herself the wings of a dove, she ardently desired to fly to his sanctifying embraces and to be at 66 rest there, crying out with the longings of the Bride.

Clinging to him with her whole mind, she sighed with the Queen of Sheba for the splendid bedchamber of the virginal bridegroom, that ‘flowery bed where the king rests at midday’.67 Wounded as the female lover in the Song of Songs, she languishes with the same love-sickness: ‘Stay me up with flowers; compass me about with apples, because I languish with love’.68 The celebration of the mass for the chapel built by Edith is the culmination of her striving towards union, prefiguring her union in death. As the spirit within her has conformed her being to the likeness of her bridegroom, she here becomes one with him in the flesh by partaking of his consecrated body. As a ‘pure receptacle of the heavenly guest’, she was nourished by the sweetness of the bridegroom and could deservedly say with blessed Agnes: ‘Now his body is united with my body and his blood adorns my cheeks’.69

66

Vita Edithae, chap. 8 (p. 52): ‘Hinc quasi apertis celis, Stephani loculis donata, affatim rapitur ad sanctorum sollemnia, ad angelorum gaudia, ad ipsum sponsum glorie Christum illustrantem omnia; hunc tota concipiens mente et eius sancto amoris icta uulnere, de medio studiorum tota ad ipsum contendit affectione, assumptisque pennis columbe in eius sanctificos amplexus uolare estuat et requiescere, clamans desideriis sponse’. 67

Song of Songs 1. 6.

68

Song of Songs 2. 5.

69

Vita Edithae, chap. 22 (pp. 90–91): ‘receptaculum mundum superni conuiue[…] “Iam corpus eius corpori meo sociatum est, et sanguis eius ornauit genas meas”’. By comparison, Eve’s union with Christ through the mass is depicted in far less erotic terms in Liber confort., p. 90.

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Mary and Martha Edith’s reply to Bishop Æthelwold, in the encounter reported in Chapter 12, turns upon her affirmation of her inward (and hidden) individual relationship with God. But this episode represents a radical departure from Goscelin’s portrait of her in the first nine chapters of the Vita. Goscelin presents the black garments of the bride of Christ which she instinctively put on at the age of two as the material sign of her progressive attainment of the conformity of her whole being to the likeness of her heavenly bridegroom.70 Wilton’s memories of Edith, however, included an encounter with Bishop Æthelwold in which he criticised her for wearing royal finery, as well as a fire in which an entire wardrobe of splendid clothes owned by Edith, kept in a chest that was still preserved at Wilton, survived unscathed.71 As reported by Goscelin, Æthelwold, unaware that she wore a hair shirt beneath it, criticised her manner of dress, in terms which echo Goscelin’s own pervasive dichotomization of earthly and heavenly marriage: ‘O daughter, not in these garments does one approach the marriage chamber of Christ, nor is the heavenly bridegroom pleased with exterior elegance’. Edith, ‘conscious of her indwelling guest, and conscious perhaps of her harsh inner garment’, is reported to have replied that God attends to the mind within, not to the clothing.72 Edith’s reply makes explicit the fundamental misconception that underlies, not only Æthelwold’s rebuke, but a long clerical tradition of hortatory addresses to female religious on the clothing appropriate to brides of Christ. Christianity asserts the supremacy of the immaterial and invisible, and places the disposition of hearts and minds above outward appearances and shows. So Aldhelm in De virginitate, affirming that virgin purity resides within the mind not the body, acknowledges that his attack on the wearing of fine clothing by the religious orders is ‘almost superfluous’.73 The education of Edith, it appears, far from making her an obedient handmaiden to the ‘friends of the bridegroom’, had led her to an understanding of the individual as the ultimate authority on her own inner state and relationship with the deity. Æthelwold, however, in keeping with Goscelin’s depiction of Edith, is obliged to acknowledge not the force of her argument but her special status as a dwelling place of the Lord: he ‘recognised the authority of grace excelling in the virgin’.74 70

Closely paralleling her mother’s rejection of earthly marriage for the convent in Vita Edithae, chap. 4 (p. 43). 71

Vita Edithae, chaps 12, 13.

72

Vita Edithae, 12 (p. 70): ‘“O filia, non his itur ad talamum Christi induuiis, nec exteriori cultu delectatur sponsus celestis”, illa interni conscia habitatoris, conscia forte asperioris interule, tali memoratur elogio respondisse: “[…] Habeo Dominum meum, qui non uestem, sed mentem attendit […]”’. 73

De virginitate, chap. 58 (p. 319).

74

Vita Edithae, chap. 12 (p. 70): ‘Sensit […] presidentis in uirgine gratie auctoritatem’.

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Just as Wilton’s oral tradition conflicted with Goscelin’s depiction of Edith from the age of two definitively rejecting all engagement with the world in choosing the garb of a bride of Christ, there is, similarly, a conflict between his depiction of Edith as a contemplative withdrawn from the world and the specific details of her life. She and her mother fed the poor and cared for the sick and acquired a relic of the True Cross from overseas at enormous cost.75 She owned and fed a menagerie of native and exotic animals.76 She embroidered ecclesiastical vestments for clergymen and for herself, covered in gold and costly gems, and built a magnificently adorned chapel.77 She refused an offer of marriage when noblemen opposed to Æthelred sought to legitimate the accession of their preferred candidate by making her his queen.78 Her bathwater was heated in a metal container, which subsequently served as her coffin.79 Like her clothing, her activities imply not a renunciation of royal wealth and power but continued access to it, particularly in Chapter 10, where Goscelin reports that she was a frequent visitor at the court of her father Edgar, and, evidently, politically influential; foreign ambassadors sought her favour (and added to her collection of exotic animals), and she interceded successfully on behalf of those condemned to punishment by her father’s justice.80 Nor is Goscelin’s depiction of her as an ecstatic visionary borne out by any reports of heavenly revelations and prophetic insight. Only two prophetic dreams are attributed to her; one concerns her own death, and the other, in keeping with her involvement in royal politics, is interpreted as an intimation of the murder of the reigning king, her half-brother Edward.81 Goscelin’s depiction of Edith’s dedication to the Wilton community as a renunciation of earthly marriage and all forms of worldliness was at odds with historical actuality. Just as the convent and the royal palace were physically proximate at Wilton, Edith inhabited both worlds.82 As a later essay in this collection shows, the Wilton community included women who were not professed nuns, who were, as Goscelin describes Wulfthryth in his Life of Wulfhild of Barking, being ‘educated in secular clothing’.83 Edith herself appears to have been a secular member 75

Vita Edithae, chap. 11 (p. 64); chap. 14 (p. 73).

76

Vita Edithae, chap. 11 (pp. 65–66).

77

Vita Edithae, chaps 11, 16, 20, Metre VIII.

78

Vita, Edithae, chap. 19.

79

Vita Edithae, chap. 23 (p. 92).

80

Vita Edithae, chap. 10 (pp. 62–63, 64). Compare Ridyard, Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 140–48, who regards Edith as redeploying her royal wealth and influence in the service of her convent. 81

Vita Edithae, chaps 19 (p. 82), 23 (p. 92).

82

Haslam, p. 123.

83

Vita sanctae Wulfhildae, chap. 4, ‘in seculari habito […] educatam’ (Colker, p. 424).

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of the community. For many women at Wilton—as the offer of marriage made to Edith illustrates—joining the community did not represent a definitive rejection of earthly marriage or a once-only choice of perpetual virginity. It was, rather, the entry to a liminal state wherein they might be called upon to marry to advance the interests of their families for as long as they were of marriageable age—or, in the case of Gunhild Godwinson and Matilda of Scotland, until the opportunity presented itself to marry in accordance with their own wishes.84 Goscelin attempts to harmonise Wilton traditions concerning Edith with the contemplative of his hagiographical imagination by depicting her as an exponent of the mixed life. She was, he intimates, a type of the contemplative Mary in her childhood who was obliged as she grew up to busy herself like Martha. Chapter 10 shifts the nature of her heavenward progress from divinely inspired flight to a more laboured ascent by means of the ladder of humility, and in passage reminiscent of the Romantic idealization of childhood (‘Heaven lies about us in our infancy! […] At length the man perceives it die away/ And fade into the light of common day’),85 Goscelin portrays Edith as a bride emerging from the ecstasy of her wedding chamber to assume the mundane household duties of a wife; after the rich offerings of psalmody, prayers and tears, he writes, she went forth to her more external duties as if from the chamber of the Lord, like an eagle brought back to earth from the sun.86 In her obedience to her mother and in ministering to her fellow nuns, she showed herself as a Martha to her sisters and a Mary to Christ. Goscelin also prepares the way for his report of Edith’s encounter with Æthelwold by claiming that her habit of wearing clothing in accordance with her royal rank was, in fact, a further example of her humility, since, as she wore a hair shirt beneath it, she deliberately concealed from public view her inward martyrdom. Her relationship with God was therefore even more inward and private, because he alone could see the inner beauty of her soul: The senior nuns who knew about it testify that she was afflicted by a hair shirt which gave a false appearance of inner delicacy by a purple exterior, although observance of the rule would have required black. Without doubt she made her humility more glorious by public elegance, so that together with the gold-clad Cecilia she might please the Father, who alone sees in secret, with her hidden pearl, and visible frivolities might conceal hidden martyrdom.87

84

See ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, pp. 318–27.

85

William Wordsworth, ‘Recollections of Childhood’, from Intimations of Immortality.

86

Vita Edithae, chap. 10 (p. 61).

87

Vita Edithae, chap. 10 (p. 70): ‘Cilicio testantur conscie matres asperatam, quod delicata interula et exteriori dissimulauerat purpura, que tamen religioni pareret nigra. Gloriosiorem nimirum humilitatem fecerat publica eligantia, ut cum aurotexta Cecilia soli patri uidenti in abscondito abscondita placeret margarita, et spectate facecie archana conderent martyria’.

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This seems to imply that Edith did not dress in fine array of her own free will (‘although observance of the rule would have required black’). The nature of the compulsion is left entirely vague, but, in the context of the account of Edith’s visits to court, the implication is, presumably, that she could not altogether escape the responsibilities of her royal rank. In his account of Edith at her father’s court, Goscelin mingles reports of her political influentiality with Martha-like acts of charity and self-abasement, in which her busy care of the poor of the sick echoes her humble service of the Wilton community as the handmaid of the handmaids of Christ.88 In this she demonstrates also her growing likeness with her bridegroom by her compassionate identity with those in whom Christ suffers: Edith was ‘wounded by the pains of all’, and was inwardly moved by the mercy of Christ who ‘bore our griefs in his conscious suffering’.89 Implicitly, her works of mercy are, like her involvement in her father’s governance, a Martha-like engagement with the active life, a suffering service of the world, but even in the account of her visits to her father’s court she is reminiscent also of the contemplative Mary (Magdalene). She bathed the ulcerous feet of lepers, as if at the footstool of Christ, and dried them with her hair and kisses, and, in another passage found only in Cardiff, Goscelin heightens her humility and the carelessness of her royal status entailed in her identification with the lowliest of her father’s subjects by adverting to her royal clothing: the poor and the sick, he reports, were not deterred by her purple clothing from approaching her for help.90 Edith’s possession of a menagerie, barely touched upon in the version Goscelin dedicated to Lanfranc, possibly because he felt that it might be regarded as behaviour more characteristic of a princess than a nun,91 is reconfigured in the Cardiff version as her place of refuge from a world that was too much with her, a locus for her resumption of her role as a contemplative. Here she appears as an elegantly feminine hermit in a tame wilderness. Likening her to Antony and Macarius, Goscelin relates that, whenever she was at leisure she visited her animals ‘with the mind of a recluse’ (mente anachoritica), fleeing from the uproar of the world and mingling with wild beasts more safely than with human beings.92 Paralleling the depiction of Edith herself as a dwelling place of the Lord within the 88

Vita Edithae, chap. 10 (p. 61).

89

Vita Edithae, chap. 10 (p. 64): ‘Adeo omnium doloribus uulneratur […]. Ea uiscera misericordie sibi induerat in eo qui dolores nostros conscia passione tulerat’. 90

Vita Edithae, chap. 11 (p. 63).

91

Menageries in the West were a display of royal power, exhibiting exotic animals given as gifts by foreign dignitaries. The earliest known in England is Henry I’s menagerie at Woodstock; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, V. 409 (p. 740). Edith’s collection presumably reflects a continental practice deriving from Charlemagne. Compare Goscelin’s prohibition against companion animals for anchorites in Liber confort., p. 80. 92

Vita Edithae, chap. 11 (p. 65).

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sanctuary of the cloister, a pearl-like soul concealed within the garment of her body, Edith’s menagerie is an enclosure within an enclosure, a wilderness of unfallen nature within the rose garden of the cloister, where Edith, withdrawing in solitude to contemplate the works of the Lord, retains her original innocence, her paradise within: she kept uncontaminated the eyes of the soul which she was accustomed to raise with a pure heart to him who dwells in heaven. Conscious that Edith was open to criticism for lavishing care and food on mere animals, Goscelin presents this as a demonstration of her universal compassion. Just as, at her father’s royal court, she empathised with the poor, the sick, and the condemned, recognising in them the suffering of Christ, she discerns even in wild beasts his love for everything that he has created.

Goscelin, Wilton, and Eve The quality of spirituality that Goscelin evokes in the Legend of Edith, and in the Liber confortatorius is, doubtless, his own. It is scarcely possible to detect what relation it might bear to the spirituality of Edith, or that of the Wilton community in the eleventh century. In Goscelin’s view, the single-minded pursuit of a fervently interior spiritual life and an individual relationship with the deity was to be desired above all things.93 In Metre IV he describes Edith as a meditative queen who surpassed the life of the handmaid, making the Sabbath last for ever in the embrace of her spouse. Like Eve, Goscelin was among those for whom, as Southern puts it, ‘the life of solitude, the religious life divested of those corporate ties which had stamped the old monasticism, began to appear with a new attractiveness’.94 Although Goscelin laments his condition as a solitary exile in the world in the opening pages of the Liber confortatorius, having lost first Herman and then Eve, he was conscious of the conflicting pressures exerted by communality on the individual inner life. To Eve he confides that he has often longed for a cell like hers where, free from the distraction of crowds, he might at last find the solitude to write books worthy of God.95 Even after he joined the community of St Augustine at Canterbury, he held himself apart from its factional strife.96

93 See especially Liber confort., p. 28, for his interpretation of Herman’s censing at the dedication of a church as an example of how one should enter the presence of the Lord burning with love, and his prayer at the dedication of Eve, that she would desire only Christ in marriage with her whole soul, which he reiterates at p. 46. 94

Southern, p. 234.

95

Liber confort., p. 34.

96

Liebermann, ‘Raginald von Canterbury’, pp. 542–44.

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Many of those who live in monasteries, he remarks in the Liber confortatorius, as well as those who live in the world, long for the role of the contemplative Mary.97 Perhaps they did—the development of individualism within the Benedictine monasteries can be traced back beyond the eleventh century in England. Regularis Concordia (c. 970) was over-ridingly concerned to enforce conformity in corporate devotional practices upon all the religious communities in England and selfless submergence of the individual will. It nevertheless appears to be catering to a deeply felt need by leaving occasional spaces for private prayer and solitary contemplation.98 Goscelin’s decision to portray Edith as a contemplative seeking solitude to pursue her inward and ecstatically visionary individual relationship with God might, conceivably, reflect his knowledge of the tastes and ethos of the Wilton community. The idiosyncratic habit of crossing themselves with a thumb, shared by Edith and her mother—of which Bishop Æthelwold as the author of Regularis Concordia would not have approved—might have been an outward sign of an individualistic inner life.99 Then, too, it was Dunstan, seemingly acting as a spokesman for the female communities, who caused it to be written into the exhortations of Regularis Concordia that ecclesiastics visiting the dwelling places of nuns should take care not to disrupt their services.100 And as Edith rejected Bishop Æthelwold’s criticism on the basis of her confidence in her individual relationship with the deity, so, too, we might surmise that the later refusal of Gunhild and Matilda to accept as definitive Archbishop Anselm’s objection to their marriages owed something to their education in an ethos favourable to the authority of the individual conscience.101 But it is nevertheless tempting to see Goscelin’s depiction of Edith as a withdrawn contemplative as a portrait influenced by his memory of Eve, or an image of how she might have been when she was ‘a dove in the cloister’ (cenobialis columba) in her own native land whom, he had presumed to hope, he might be able to ‘cherish in his bosom in the paradise of God’.102 Goscelin, perhaps, found either inspiration or authority for his depiction of Edith as a contemplative in the alb embroidered by Edith with mystic faith (mistica fide), on which she portrayed herself in the image of Mary Magdalene. Around the lower 97

Liber confort., p. 89.

98

See, for instance, Regularis Concordia, chap. 6 (Symons, p. 4), which states that provided uniform observance of the Rule is maintained, all are free to pray privately in the secret places of the oratory as God inspires them. 99

Regularis Concordia, chaps 21 (p. 17), 56 (p. 55).

100

Regularis Concordia, chap. 10 (p. 7).

101

See ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, pp. 321–22. To the independent-mindedness of members of the Wilton community may also be attributed the signs of theological controversy in the Vita surrounding Edith’s zoo (chap. 11), the putative miracle of the disappearance of the beggar (chap. 15), and the doubts about her efficacy as a saint (Translatio, chaps 20–22). 102

Liber confort., p. 36: ‘in paradise Dei gremio possem refouere’.

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border were golden images of the apostles surrounding the Lord, and Edith as Magdalene kissing the Lord’s footprints.103 But the Magdalene is also a symbol of penitence, and it is in this aspect, presumably, that Edith appeared on the alb, since Goscelin describes her as prostrated as a supplicant.104 And the prayers Goscelin quotes from the prayer-book written in Edith’s own hand are of a fairly commonplace penitential type, although it is notable, in the light of Goscelin’s depiction of her relationship with the deity as individual and interior that the prayers he quotes employ the first-person singular, which was rare in the late tenth century.105 (Interestingly, too, these penitential prayers, like the alb, entail identification with women in the scriptures, and are thus in keeping with her particular devotion to female saints related to her, her aunt, Edith of Tamworth, and her grandmother, Ælfgifu of Shaftesbury.)106 The paintings of the Passion that adorned Edith’s chapel, which Benna executed to her design, however, do give reason to believed that contemplation of the sufferings of Christ was part of the spiritual ethos of Wilton.107 This is the only narrative pictorial cycle known to have existed in Anglo-Saxon England, but the fact that the conception of this was Edith’s, not Benna’s, suggests that, although Benna doubtless relayed to Wilton the artistic and devotional styles of Trier, his subsequent career (following his return there sometime before 993) reflected the English influences he encountered at Wilton.108 But there is nothing in Goscelin’s Legend to suggest that Edith conceived herself as a bride of Christ. He gives a nuptial colouration to Wulfthryth’s vision of the posthumous fate of Edith’s soul (Edith appeared to Wulfthryth clothed in light, as if she had come from the glory of her heavenly bridal chamber). But the words that Edith speaks to her are those of a soldier of Christ, echoing an image commonly applied to the Virgin Mary (she 103

Vita Edithae, chap. 16 (p. 79).

104

Goscelin’s dedicatory prologue (Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 37)) bases the defence of women’s testimony on Magdalene’s role as apostle to the apostles. 105

See Colin Morris, The Discovery of the Individual (London: SPCK, 1972), pp. 71–72, who notes that the use of the first-person singular in penitential prayers is related to feasts of the Magdalene. 106

Vita Edithae, chap. 8 (pp. 53–54); the prayers associate Edith with the Israelite woman and the daughter of Caleb. Her devotion to the cult of her female relatives is recorded in Vita Edithae (R), chap. 8 (pp. 55–56). 107

Vita Edithae, chap. 20. Barbara C. Raw, Anglo-Saxon Crucifixion Iconography and the Art of the Monastic Revival (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 15–16, points out that the description of Benna, fashioning reminders of the Lord’s Passion in his heart, having perceived like a bee the thoughts of the flower-bearing virgin, suggests that the paintings were intended to serve a devotional purpose. 108

Veronica Ortenberg, The English Church and the Continent in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 79–82.

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explains to Wulfthryth that Satan accused her but that she crushed his head, cast him down, and trampled on him).109 Members of the Wilton community also seem to have cultivated their visionary life, particularly during the life of Abbess Ælfgifu. Like Wulfthryth’s vision of Edith, these visions are in the same tradition as those reported by Bede in his account of Barking in the early eighth century—that is, they are visions or intimations of the posthumous fate of persons closely connected to the visionary, in which category Edith’s visitations as patron saint can be placed.110 Of these visions, only the postConquest vision of Edith in which Thola sees her lying on a bed dressed like a bride suggests that the mystic marriage had currency at Wilton—this is the vision which countered the outburst of the young nun who, on a visit to Bishop Herman at which Goscelin was present, cast doubt on the protective power of Edith.111 There is, too, a trace of the conception of female religious as brides of Christ in another of the postConquest visions, in which Edith explains that she is labouring to ensure that all of the members of the Wilton community will be presented after death to their glorious spouse ‘without spot or wrinkle’.112 Goscelin himself makes little use of nuptial imagery outside his Legend of Edith. In his Life of Wulfhild, for instance, it appears only fleetingly, in his account of her making her profession as a nun and in his account of her death. It also occurs when Wulfhild advises a woman reluctant to marry in accordance with her parents’ wishes to remain with her in the monastery and await the bridegroom Christ.113 He makes more extensive use of the figure in the Legend of Mildrith, which, like his Legend of Edith is a much more highly wrought literary composition than the Life of Wulfhild, since the Legend of Mildrith was written for St Augustine’s, Canterbury, but his depiction of Mildrith as a bride of Christ is not pervasively elaborated as it is in the Legend of Edith.114 In his Legend of Edith, designed to evoke in its audience the fervour and ecstatic love-longing attributed to Edith, Goscelin was, in effect, prompting the Wilton 109

Vita Edithae, chap. 25 (p. 98).

110

See ‘St Edith and the Wilton Community’, p. 274.

111

Translatio Edithae, chap. 22 (p. 298).

112

Translatio Edithae, chap. 21, p. 298 (Ephesians 5. 27). The shrine that Cnut donated to Edith had depicted on it the Holy Innocents (Translatio, chap. 12 (p. 281)), whose prefiguration of the 144,000 brides of the Lamb in the Book of Revelation is elaborated in Metre XI. 113

Vita sanctae Wulfhildae, chaps 4 (p. 424), 7 (p. 427), 10 (p. 430). By the late tenth century, nuptial imagery was commonly invoked in relation to the profession of nuns; see, for instance, the formulae for the consecration of virgins in the Pontifical of Egbert (c. 1000); Banting, pp. 115–18. 114

141).

Vita Deo delectae virginis Mildrethae, chaps 6, 21, 27 (Rollason, pp. 119, 134–36,

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community towards a form of devotional experience which is generally regarded as having been pioneered by Anselm and Bernard of Clairvaux. It is evident from the Liber confortatorius that he was familiar with patristic commentary on the Song of Songs. Particularly in view of Thola’s vision of Edith,115 it is not perhaps surprising that Goscelin, finding himself in the rather unusual position of writing the life of a female saint for a female community, chose to portray Edith as a bride of Christ. But the depiction of Edith as a bride of Christ, even granted the inextricable association of this figure with the Song of Songs, did not inevitably generate a portrait of Edith as a contemplative possessed of an individual spiritual life that was deeply inward and fervently ardent. In this, he ascribes to Edith the qualities of his own spiritual life which, he believed, were also shared by Eve. If there is one literary work which can be said with some confidence to have exerted a formative influence on Goscelin’s unusually developed sense of individual relationship with God and his emotionally ardent spirituality, it is, as Teresa Webber has suggested, the Confessions of St Augustine, which was not widely disseminated until the twelfth century. As she points out: The most explicit expression of the personal and emotional nature of the text’s impact upon those who read it is found in Walter Daniel’s biography of Ailred, in which we are told that Ailred use to read ‘edifying books whose words are wont to bring tears, and in particular he generally had in his hands the Confessions of Augustine, for it was 116 these which had been his guide when he was converted from the world’.

Goscelin describes Augustine in the Confessions, following his conversion, as ‘totally infused with love’, and, in listing the Confessions among the books that Eve should read, he commends its power to heighten spiritual emotions.117 But the imaginative and emotional nexus of Goscelin’s depiction, it seems to me, is to be found in one of the few passages in the Liber confortatorius in which the mystic marriage is explicitly evoked, in Goscelin’s account of his deeply emotional and empathetic identification with Eve when she was dedicated to the Wilton community. It was from this event that Goscelin dated the birth of his love for Eve. It transformed his affection for her into an inward fervour that overflowed in tears: But when indeed among fourteen maidens, with candles shining like stars and the heavenly torches, you approached your marriage with God nervously and second to last, and with a thronging crowd waiting with solemn expectancy, you put on the pledge of divine faith with your holy clothes, I was struck more deeply in my heart by your humble habit, your trembling approach, your face, blushing as if from the fiery throne of God sitting above the cherubim, wisely anxious, along with this wedding song of admirable grace: ‘I am betrothed to the one whom the angels serve, and he has taken me as a bride with his ring’. I was touched by heavenly drops and I wept with an 115

Translatio Edithae, chap. 22.

116

Webber, p. 43. See also Olson, pp. 69–80.

117

Liber confort., pp. 33, 80.

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overflowing of fervour. […] Only carry out very carefully the advice that at that time I was pouring into your ears as if I were giving birth: ‘Cry out in the presence of the Lord’. I recommended that you should make only one petition of the Lord, namely that you, wounded by love, should desire Christ alone, and that you should seek him only for your dower in the inclination of your heart and in your whole soul. I said, ‘So, soul dearest to me, so entreat your Lord by the privilege of eternal love: “Give yourself to me”’. 118

Psycho-historical interpretations aside, Goscelin’s portrait of Edith is recognizably a concrete embodiment of the single-minded, ardent and inward seeking of mystic marriage by a bride-soul ‘wounded with love’ that he prayed that Eve would undertake. Goscelin’s emotional response in this passage will bear easily the construction that he displaced his own desire for possession of Eve onto Eve’s relationship with Christ, though the fact that Eve was a child at the time of her dedication—probably aged seven—makes this a troubling reading.119 Caroline Bynum argues that the increased feminization of religious language by the Cistercians does not tell us about their relationship to women but about their relationship to contrasexual affective powers in themselves.120 As Astell explains: Redeeming the affectus of instinctive powers of the soul, in particular the affectus of love, means for [the Cistercian] Isaac and his contemporaries a reclaiming of the feminine within themselves. […] For both sexes salvation is achieved through the feminine powers of the soul (anima or affectus) because love is the beginning and end of perfection. The reversal of the Fall depends metaphorically on the action of a new Eve, the woman within, the bride of God. […] Twelfth-century exegetes encouraged

118

Liber confort., p. 28: ‘Adhuc tamen de tolerabiliter forinsecus tantum in spe bona Christi dilexi. Vbi uero inter quattuordecim uirgines, coruscantibus cereis tanquam syderibus et lampadibus supernis, ad dominicas nuptias trepida et penultima accessisti ac, populosa caterua sollemniter expectante, pignus fidei diuine cum sacrata ueste induisti, ille humilis habitus, ille tremebundus accessus, ille suffusus uultus, tanquam ab igneo throno Dei sedentis super cherubim, sapienter metuentis, altius uiscera me percussere cum hoc epithalamico carmine admirabilis gratie: Ipsi sum desponsata, cui angeli seruiunt, et an(n)ulo suo subarrauit me. Tactus sum rore celesti et feruore irriguo fleui. […] Modo exerce attentissime, quod tunc ut parturiens instillabam auri tue: “Plora coram Domino”, utque unam tantum petitionem peteres a domino id est, ut solum Christum uulnerata caritate concupisceres, ipsumque solum in directione cordis et in tota anima tua in dotem expeteres: “Sic”, inquam, “anima mi carissima, sic Dominum tuum eterne caritatis priuilegio implora: Da te mihi”’. 119

Goscelin’s account of his emotions might, however, be a retrospective one, since the childhood of Eve both vouches for the innocence of his feelings for her, and makes her a more apt symbol of the soul. 120

Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).

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their auditors to identify their bridal self with the Bride, using feminine figura as a way of expressing and directing the emotional domain within themselves.121

In Jungian terms, Goscelin’s account of his response to Eve at her dedication is an account of the constellation of his own bride-soul, which he explores both in his portrait of Edith and his celebration of her relationship to her mother.

Conclusion Goscelin’s depiction of Edith’s fervently inward and individual quest for consummation with her heavenly bridegroom and her achievement of earthly union with him by compassionate empathy with his human sufferings and those in whom he suffers is a striking anticipation of twelfth-century developments. His portrayal of Edith as a contemplative bride of Christ ardently seeking solitary and interior communion with her spouse was at odds with the Wilton community’s memories of her; she appears to have been a secular member of the community, and to have retained her access to both royal power and wealth. He harmonises the two aspects of his portrait by presenting her as both a Martha and a Mary, reluctantly abandoning contemplation in the embraces of her divine lover for suffering service of the world through acts of mercy. In her reported possession of an enclosure in which she fed tamed animals, Goscelin found a concrete setting for his depiction of her as a contemplative solitary seeking refuge from the world. The alb preserved at Winchester embroidered with a self-portrait of Edith in the role of Mary Magdalene lends authority to his depiction of her as a type of the Magdalene, but is more suggestive of identification with the Magdalene’s penitential aspects than her contemplative signification. Edith’s choice of a Passion sequence to adorn her church gives some substance to his depiction of her devotion to the suffering humanity of Christ. Conceived as a bridal chamber, the church she built and dedicated just in time for it to serve as her own last resting place provided a fitting culmination to the quest for union with the heavenly bridegroom that he attributed to her; but there is nothing tangible in her life story or her relics that seems likely to have given rise to this conception of her. The ardent pursuit of an inward and individual relationship with the deity that Goscelin attributes to Edith reflects the nature of his own spirituality, as well as his own leanings to affective piety.122 It was the emotional intensity of Eve that pierced him to the heart at her dedication;123 it is this that he has encouraged in her, as he 121

Astell, pp. 6–7, 10.

122

His devotion to the cult of the five wounds which he recommends to Eve (Liber confort., p. 84) is further evinced, for instance, in his inclusion of the image of Christ Crucified in his apocalyptic conclusion (Liber confort., p. 111). 123

Liber confort., p. 28.

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continues to encourage it in the Liber confortatorius, together with the silent, meditative inwardness that has characterised her since childhood (silently she drank in his admonitions, and dreamt that he was feeding her on white bread in which she found pieces of gold which she gathered into her bosom, preserving like Mary the words of God and thinking them over in her heart).124 The identifiable formative influence on Goscelin’s spirituality was the Confessions of Augustine. As a formative influence on Eve since her childhood he can be regarded as having played a part in her choice of a contemplative vocation. The bridal mysticism of the Legend of Edith gives an overarching and purposive focus to religious ardour. Though pervasive here, it is not characteristic of Goscelin’s hagiography of female saints. Edith’s appearance as a bride of Christ in a vision of one of nuns of Wilton during the period that Goscelin was visiting Eve there suggests that Goscelin’s conception of the saint in these terms was designed to appeal to the Wilton community. But its generative source may be found in his emotionally heightened, and undoubtedly complex reaction to Eve’s dedication. The portrait of Edith is an embodiment of the single-minded, ardent and inward seeking of union with the divine bridegroom that he prayed Eve would undertake at the time of her dedication, and an image of Eve as he would have wished her to be—as perhaps she may have been before her departure to Angers; not a solitary recluse in a foreign land but a contemplative within the cloister whom he might ‘cherish in his bosom in the paradise of God’, as Wulfthryth cherished the daughter who refused to leave Wilton within her heart in the bosom of the church.125

124 125

Liber confort., p. 29.

Vita Edithae, chap. 6 (p. 47); Liber confort., p. 36: ‘sed hoc alibi quam hic et alia cupiebam uia, ut scilicet sancta uiueres et utile uas esses in domo Domini, cenobialis columba, non turtur solitaria, aut, si malles, turtur fieres in patria’. (‘But I desired this elsewhere than where you are and by another path, namely that you might live holily and be a useful vessel in the house of the Lord, a dove in the cloister, not a solitary turtledove, or, if you preferred, you might become a turtledove in your homeland’.) For Goscelin’s assumption of the role of the mother of Eve, see Liber confort., pp. 29–31.

Wilton as a Centre of Learning STEPHANIE HOLLIS

Introduction

A

s a Latin work commissioned by a female community, Goscelin’s Legend of Edith offers, belatedly, the closest parallel the late Anglo-Saxon period affords to Aldhelm’s De virginitate, which he wrote c. 700 in response to letters sent to him by Abbess Hildelith and some of the nuns who were studying grammar, metrics, scriptural exegesis, and chronicle histories at the monastic school at Barking under Hildelith’s instruction.1 The documentary record of the early Anglo-Saxon period reveals the existence of centres of learning at a number of other double monasteries, such as the Wessex monasteries which housed women who were capable of writing letters and verses in Latin, and of copying manuscripts for the Anglo-Saxon missionaries on the continent.2 There is direct evidence, then, that female religious in the early Anglo-Saxon period participated in the literary culture introduced by Christian missionaries to England. There is also reason to believe that the extent of their participation is significantly under-represented in the documentary record. Bede, whose Historia is the primary narrative source for the early period, was much less favourably disposed than Aldhelm towards female religious and their pursuit of learning.3 There is, for instance, no trace of the monastic school celebrated 1

De virginitate, chap. 4, Ehwald, p. 232.

2

See Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church, pp. 113–50, 271–300; Patrick SimsWilliams, Religion and Literature in Western England, 600–800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 211–42; Christine Fell, ‘Some Implications of the Boniface Correspondence’, in New Readings on Women in Old English Literature, ed. by Helen Damico and Alexandra H. Olsen (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 29–43. 3

There is also a disproportionate loss of archival material, since although some male communities survived the first wave of Viking invasions, no double monastery appears to have done so.

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by Aldhelm in Bede’s account of Barking in the time of Abbess Hildelith, and in his account of Whitby in the time Abbess Hild, he reports that five bishops and many priests were educated there, while leaving it open to doubt as to whether Hild taught them, and without mentioning the education of female religious at Whitby.4 In the much fuller documentary record of the late Anglo-Saxon period, however, monastic women scarcely figure at all. With the exception of Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and his Liber confortatorius (together with his Barking works) there are no surviving Latin texts known to have been written either by or for monastic women during the tenth and eleventh centuries, although two pre-Conquest queens, Emma and Edith, commissioned Latin eulogies, as did Matilda, the wife of Henry I, in c. 1104.5 More extensive use was made of the vernacular in the late Anglo-Saxon period, and this is reflected in the translations of the Benedictine Rule made specifically for women (as well as for men), and in the Old English tract by Bishop Æthelwold (‘An Account of King Edgar’s Establishment of the Monasteries’), which concludes with a direct address to abbesses.6 But the only vernacular work addressed to a woman—Ælfric’s homily on Judith—was written for a nunna, which in this period signified a woman who pursued a religious vocation outside the monasteries, either as a solitary or in a small group.7 The number of pre-twelfth-century 4

See Hollis, pp. 243–70; Hollis, ‘The Minster-in-Thanet Foundation Story’, pp. 61–64.

5

Encomium Emmae Reginae, ed. by Alistair Campbell, with a supplementary introduction by Simon Keynes, Camden Classic Reprints, 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Vita Ædwardi Regis, in The Life of King Edward who rests at Westminster, ed. by Frank Barlow, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Vita Margaretae Scotorum Reginae in Pinkerton’s Lives of the Scottish Saints, rev. edn by W. M. Metcalfe, 2 vols (Paisley: Gardener, 1889), I, 159–82. There is some evidence of book ownership by royal women in the late Anglo-Saxon period. Harold Godwinson’s sister Gunhild bequeathed a Psalter with OE glosses to Saint-Donatien in Bruges in 1087 (now presumed lost); see Michael Lapidge, ‘Surviving Booklists from Anglo-Saxon England’, in Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies Presented to Peter Clemoes on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. by Michael Lapidge and Helmut Gneuss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 33–90 (pp. 58–59). For Margaret of Scotland’s book ownership, see below, n. 133. See also Patrick McGurk and Jane Rosenthal, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Gospel Books of Judith, Countess of Flanders: Their Text, Make-up and Function’, Anglo-Saxon England, 24 (1995), 251–308. 6 ‘An Account of King Edgar’s Establishment of the Monasteries’, in Councils and Synods, 153–54. See further Mechthild Gretsch, ‘Æthelwold’s Translation of the Regula Sancti Benedicti and its Latin Exemplar’, Anglo-Saxon England, 3 (1974), 125–51; Gretsch, ‘Die Winteney-Version der Regula Sancti Benedicti’, pp. 310–48. One of the fragmentary translations of Regularis Concordia (early eleventh century), was adapted for female use, probably at Nunnaminster; see Joyce Hill, pp. 310–11.

I,

7

Ælfric, ‘On the Book of Judith’, in Angelsächsische Homilien und Heiligenleben, ed. by Bruno Assmann (Kassell: Wigand, 1889), pp. 102–16. On the class of women to whom it is addressed, see Foot, I, 104–10; Mary Clayton, ‘Ælfric’s Judith: Manipulative or Manipulated?’, Anglo-Saxon England, 23 (1994), 215–27 (pp. 225–27). Evidence of book

KATERN 11

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manuscripts known to have been owned by English nunneries is minute.8 All this appears to suggest a sharp decline in the education of female monastics in the late Anglo-Saxon period as the replacement of double monasteries by segregated and more strictly enclosed female communities diminished both their opportunities to participate in the learned culture of their male counterparts and the respect they were accorded by clerics.9 The Legend of Edith and the Liber confortatorius are therefore important as evidence of the existence of educated monastic women in the late Anglo-Saxon period. But did Edith and Eve typify the educational standard of the Wilton community, or should they be regarded as examples of what a few exceptional women could occasionally achieve? Commissioning by a male community of a Latin Life of its patron saint is generally sufficient to establish its literacy; but, even if it were not the case that women’s literacy is still felt to require a higher standard of proof, Goscelin’s dedication of his Legend of Edith to Archbishop Lanfranc is undoubtedly a complicating factor, although there is reason to believe that Goscelin revised it for the Wilton community.10 It is, in fact, easier to demonstrate that the tradition of learning at Wilton was of long duration than it is to discern its breadth. Moreover, it is not nuns but queens who are the most visible alumnae of the Wilton monastic school. I want to suggest that the education of secular women was an established role of the Wilton monastic school, and that the fact that it was the queens who were educated at Wilton, not its nuns and abbesses, who were eulogised for their learning in the eleventh century, is indicative of its role in the education of aristocratic women. Edith herself, I conclude, was not a professed nun but a secular member of the community; from this perspective, the offer of the throne to Edith—in other words, marriage to a king chosen by the faction opposed to the succession of her half-brother Æthelred—appears to be not an improbable hagiographical

ownership by nunnan is found in the tenth-century will of Wynflæd (associated with the Shaftesbury nunnery, and identified as the grandmother of Edgar), who bequeathed books to a woman called Æthelflæd; Anglo-Saxon Wills, ed. and trans. by Dorothy Whitelock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930), pp. 10–15. 8

Bell lists only two prayer-books from Winchester (p. 215), one dating from the ninth century, thought to have belonged to Ealhswith, wife of King Alfred (Book of Nunnaminster), and one from the eleventh (Galba Prayerbook); an eleventh-century copy of Boethius from Horton (p. 143), which had been replaced by a male community c. 1055; a tenth-century glossed Psalter from Shaftesbury (p. 167); and a late tenth or early eleventh-century manuscript from Barking containing the four gospels with Jerome’s prefaces and sections of Eusebius (p. 111). 9

Compare Lees and Overing, p. 14, who ‘agree with Judith Bennett that, in many cases, women’s history is characterised far more by continuity than change’. 10

See ‘Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women’, pp. 238–42.

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demonstration of Edith’s commitment to the renunciation of earthly queenship, but symptomatic of the liminal position of Wilton’s lay community.11

The Education of Edith and Eve, and the Wilton Library Goscelin portrays Edith as an apt and eager pupil as a child, whose enthusiasm for her studies gave way to mystical love-longing for her heavenly bridegroom when she reached adolescence.12 Edith’s ability to read and write is substantiated by circumstantial details. She read the Lives of many saints and was particularly inspired by the example of her aunt, Edith of Tamworth, and her grandmother, Ælfgifu of Shaftesbury.13 Among the relics of her preserved at Wilton was a devotional manual which contained scriptural quotations and prayers written in her own hand. It included, perhaps, some which were composed by her, since Goscelin relates: Sighing also with the daughter of Caleb for a land that is watered, she besought the Father in this prayer ascribed to her and often repeated: ‘Almighty and most merciful Lord, who brought forth for your thirsty people a spring of living water from the rock, 14 bring forth from the hardness of my heart tears of contrition’.

The sentence Goscelin quotes is prescribed as a collect for weekdays by Regularis Concordia (c. 970).15 He might therefore merely mean that this prayer was known as one that Edith had made her own, but as his quotation is followed by an et cetera, this sentence could, equally well, be the opening of a longer prayer composed by her, and the prayer of Caleb’s daughter that Goscelin recommends to Eve in the Liber confortatorius may represent part of its continuation.16 Edith is not lauded as an 11

Vita Edithae, chap. 19. Compare Ridyard, Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England, p. 140, who suggests that this episode owes its existence to Goscelin’s concern to establish Edith’s sanctity by means of ‘a conventional antithesis between the uirgo regia and the sponsa summi regi’. My argument here is to some extent anticipated by Yorke, pp. 153–59. 12

Vita Edithae, chap. 8 (p. 52).

13

Vita Edithae (R), chap. 8 (pp. 53–54). It is also worth noting in this context that on the Wilton Abbey seal, believed to be a copy of Edith’s personal seal, Edith is depicted holding a book (there are, however, similar depictions of Mary in the late Anglo-Saxon period); see Harvey and McGuinness, pp. 3–4. 14

Vita Edithae, chap. 8: ‘Suspirans quoque cum filia Chaleb terram irriguam, postulabat a Patre hac sibi ascripta et frequentata oratione: “Omnipotens mitissime Domine, qui sitienti populo fontem uiuentis aquae de petra produxisti, educ de cordis mei duritia compunctonis lacrimas”, et cetera’ (p. 56). 15

Regularis Concordia, chap. 27 (Symons, p. 24). The version quoted by Goscelin, however, is couched in the first person. 16

Liber confort., p. 106 (Judges 1. 15).

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eminent and learned scholar, however; but neither does Goscelin appear to find her Latin literacy and her (seemingly modest) compositional skills remarkable in themselves. What he celebrates is the multiplicity of her (primarily artistic) accomplishments. She had an angelic voice, ‘sweet eloquence, a noble intellect capable in all kinds of thought, a perceptive ardour in reading; hands as elegant as they were accomplished in painting and writing as scribe or as author’.17 She also played a string instrument, and embroidered splendid ecclesiastical vestments adorned with gold, gems, and pearls.18 Edith may have derived her early knowledge of Latin from her mother, Abbess Wulfthryth, who had been educated at Wilton before being carried off from the school room by King Edgar.19 Wulfthryth, Goscelin relates, adorned her daughter in learning and virtues that she might shine more brightly to the glory of the Church, but Edith was also educated by two Lotharingian priests employed by her father Edgar, Benna, a former canon of Trier, and Radbod, formerly a monk at Rheims.20 Edgar, Goscelin reports, was eager to attract scholars and artists to his kingdom, and in bringing to Wilton two continental scholars renowned for their learning, he was, presumably, furthering the aims of the Benedictine reformers, particularly Æthelwold, who sought to ensure that reformed male communities were centres of learning.21 As presented by Goscelin, however, Edgar appears to have employed Benna and Radbod as private tutors for his daughter. The chapter in which they are introduced is entitled (in Rawlinson) ‘How her royal parents equipped this jewel of the Church with learning’, and we hear only of their instruction of Edith in this chapter (although, in a later chapter, Benna’s advice to Edith and Abbess Wulfthryth is likened to Jerome’s mentorship of Paula and her mother Eustochium).22 And just as Goscelin eulogises Edith for the multiplicity of her literary and artistic talents, he

17

Vita Edithae, chap. 11: ‘mellita facundia, generosum et ad omnia capax ingenium, legendi intellectuosa flagrantia; manus pingendi, scriptitandi, dictitandi tam decentes’ (p. 68). See also Metre IV. 18

Vita Edithae, chap. 11 (p. 69).

19

Vita Edithae, chap. 2 (p. 41). See further below.

20

Vita Edithae, chap. 7 (p. 50).

21

Edgar’s importation of foreign artists and scholars (Vita Edithae, chap. 7 (p. 50)), and the diplomatic exchanges referred to in Vita Edithae, chap. 10 (pp. 62–63), have their origins in the marriages of Edward the Elder’s daughters to Ottonian royalty, and were facilitated by Archbishop Egbert of Trier, 977–93, who was said to have had an English mother, and was pre-eminent in the development of Trier as one of the most famous cultural and artistic Ottonian centres in the 1080s and 1090s. See Ortenberg, pp. 41–64. 22

Vita Edithae, chap. 14 (p. 73). Benna remained at Wilton for some time after the death of Edith (Translatio Edithae, chap. 3 (p. 271)).

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gives almost as much emphasis to Benna’s accomplishments as a painter and a craftsman as to his reputation as a scholar.23 Goscelin himself may have been brought to Wilton by Bishop Herman for the specific purpose of educating Eve.24 His recollection of his instruction of Eve similarly suggests that he was a private tutor rather than the teacher of a monastic school. His presentation of Benna and Radbod as private tutors could have been shaped by his memories of the times when he and Eve sat together talking and reading, with St Edith, seemingly, as their only companion—although if Goscelin instructed his young pupil from behind a curtained window, which, he says, was the custom of Benna and Radbod, it is surprising that this does not figure in his recollections.25 Goscelin’s education of Eve appears to have consisted of exegetical interpretation of the scriptures—and in so far as he envisaged the nature of Benna’s instruction of Edith, this seems to be what he had in mind.26 He has, he says, inculcated in Eve that Scripture is the key to understanding, and he assumes that she needs no instruction in scriptural hermeneutics, only occasionally reminding her to bear in mind the figurative significance of the scriptures.27 The high standard of Latin literacy attained by Eve is evident from Goscelin’s assumption that she will read his extended epistle for herself—he imagines her doing so, with no apparent recognition of the difficulties that it presents.28 But although he exchanged frequent letters with her while she was at Wilton, he does not assume that she shares his desire for an anchorite’s cell in order to write books,29 nor does he anywhere suggest that she followed Edith’s practice of composing prayers, though he may be implying that, like Edith, she kept a kind of commonplace book of devotions and scriptural quotations, since he recalls having written down for her a verse of the Psalms so that she might more carefully consider it.30 He also assumed that she was sufficiently well-versed in Latin to carry out the ambitious reading 23

To the description of Benna as a distinguished painter and artist in Rawlinson, the Cardiff revision adds that he adorned the interior of the church built by Edith with paintings still visible (Vita Edithae, chap. 7 (p. 50)); Vita Edithae, chap. 20 (p. 87), relates that his paintings were executed to Edith’s design. 24

See above, ‘Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women’, pp. 225–27.

25

Liber confort., pp. 27, 42, 45, 80.

26

Liber confort., p. 80; Vita Edithae, chap. 7 (p. 51), says: ‘hi portabant pedibus eius lucernam uerbi Domini, ut, accensis lampadibus scripturarum, lectis gradibus uirtutum, niteretur ad etherei regis solium’. (‘These men brought to her feet the light of the word of God, so that by the light of the lamps of the scriptures and by choosing the steps of virtues, she might advance to the throne of the eternal king’.) 27

Liber confort., pp. 38, 39, 56.

28

Liber confort., pp. 27, 45.

29

Liber confort., pp. 29, 34; compare p. 80.

30

Liber confort., p. 89.

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programme he recommends to her in Book III and that she was an independent reader-interpreter, capable of understanding what she read by her own unaided efforts—‘take hold, return, read again, until you understand abundantly’, he exhorts her, ‘because nothing is so difficult that it cannot be found by seeking’,31 and, in a remarkably proto-Protestant manoeuvre, which is also in contrast to his conception of himself in Book I as the parental provider of spiritual nourishment for her, he interprets ‘The fire on my altar shall always burn, which the priest shall feed, putting on wood’ to mean that Eve should become her own priest and nourish herself with the food of Holy Writ.32 But although Goscelin regards Eve as his spiritual superior, he appears to regard her as an intellectual equal rather than a learned prodigy, possessed, like Edith, of ‘a noble intellect capable in all kinds of thought’, but outstanding in the concentrated fervour of her devotion, which he values even more than learning itself.33 He does, perhaps, suggest that the Wilton magistra (‘school mistress’) was impressed by her, since he mentions her ‘pious witness’ in his recollection of Eve’s dedication.34 The reading programme that Goscelin recommends to Eve is, by definition, not one normally undertaken by monastics of either sex, but appropriate to the higher form of religious vocation that Eve had chosen. Set against Aldhelm’s De virginitate, Goscelin’s Wilton writings do suggest a decline in the standard of learning expected of female religious, though one less sharp than the documentary record otherwise suggests. He appears to regard Edith’s ability to read, write and compose in Latin as a normal accomplishment for a female religious. But whereas Aldhelm urged all of the nuns of Barking on to greater heights in the pursuit of learning, Goscelin regards the pursuit of learning as the characteristic vocation of the exceptionally devout who seek God in solitude—how many, either in monasteries or in the world, he exclaims, long for the contemplative life that Eve has chosen.35 His recommended reading list for Eve consists of the biblical commentaries of Jerome, Augustine, Gregory, and other learned men, the lives of the Fathers, particularly the Life of St Antony, Augustine’s Confessions, Eusebius’ Historia ecclesiastica, Cassiodorus’ Historia tripartita, Augustine’s De civitate Dei, Orosius’ De ormesta mundi, and Boethius’ Consolatio philosophiae.36 He also suggests occasionally, throughout the Liber confortatorius, that Eve should refer to a work he

31 Liber confort., p. 81: ‘occupa, reuolue, relege, donec affatim capias, quia nil tam difficile est quin possit querendo inueniri’. 32

Liber confort., p. 80 (Leviticus 6. 12).

33

Liber confort., p. 80.

34

Liber confort., p. 28. For the identification of Eve’s magistra as her teacher, see below,

n. 48. 35

Liber confort., p. 89.

36

Liber confort., pp. 80–81.

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cites for a fuller elaboration of the point he is making.37 His recommended reading list is broader in scope than the study of scriptural commentaries and chronicle histories which, as Aldhelm understood it, were on the syllabus at Barking, but narrower in range than the libraries of reformed male communities, since it includes, for instance, nothing (apart from Boethius) that could be loosely described as ‘scientific’.38 Conspicuously absent are the post-patristic authors known to AngloSaxon monks, such as Bede, Isidore, and Aldhelm (though Eve may already have read Aldhelm’s De virginitate, which was widely studied in Anglo-Saxon monasteries), and although Goscelin speaks of the wisdom of pagan authors and occasionally adorns his work with classical allusions and quotations, he does not appear to have considered any of the more secular classics owned by male communities, such as Prudentius’ Psychomachia and Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii,39 suitable for Eve to read in her cell. It is of considerable interest, however, that he does seem to have expected that Eve would understand his allusions to the Aeneid.40 The extensive reading programme Goscelin recommends to Eve would have been rare in England during his lifetime, either inside or outside a monastery. Goscelin’s patron, Bishop Herman, for instance, had spent three years at Saint-Bertin and was described as ‘well-educated’ by the author of Edward the Confessor’s Life, but what Lanfranc thought he wanted to read if he were permitted to resign his bishopric was Scripture, Psalms, hymns and prayers.41 Most eleventh-century monastic communities owned a multi-volume martyrology (and St Edith, we note, read breathlessly the lives of saints, including those of her aunt and her grandmother).42 The last two works listed by Goscelin, Orosius’ De ormesta mundi and Boethius’ Consolation, were well-known in England—chiefly in vernacular versions, since they were among the works translated by King Alfred and the clerics who assisted in his educational reform, but one of the few surviving books known to have been owned by an Anglo-Saxon woman is an early eleventh-century Latin copy of 37 See, for instance, Liber confort., p. 81 (Jerome’s Letters), and p. 88 (the Life of Benedict in Gregory’s Dialogues). 38

For representative examples of books owned by individuals and monastic libraries, see Lapidge, ‘Surviving Booklists’, pp. 33–90. 39

Liber confort., pp. 73–75; Goscelin does, however, cite Prudentius, at p. 79. For the monastic syllabus see Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion, ed. by Peter S. Baker and Michael Lapidge, EETS, SS 15 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. lxxix–lxxxvi, xcii–xciv. 40

See W. R. Barnes, ‘Goscelin’s Greeks and Romans’, pp. 407–15; Hayward and Hollis, ‘The Anchorite’s Progress’, pp. 377–78. 41

See The Letters of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. by Helen Clover and Margaret Gibson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 36. Herman is described as competenter erudito in Life of King Edward, I. 6 (p. 72). 42

Vita Edithae (R), chap. 8 (pp. 53–54).

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Boethius, which was gifted to the Horton community by Ælfgyth the Good.43 Some of the numerous biblical commentaries of Jerome, Gregory and Augustine were available in England before the 1080s, as were De civitate Dei and the Histories of Eusebius and Cassiodorus.44 But, as Teresa Webber points out, the programme of patristic reading that Goscelin urges Eve to undertake was ‘by no means widely adopted in England, even in the houses of male religious. Instead the 1080s mark the very early stages of efforts of several religious communities in England to form thorough collections of patristic texts to support such a programme of reading’.45 She also points out that copies of Augustine’s Confessions were rare and that there is no evidence that it was available in England before the 1080s; she therefore suggests that one of the exemplars of the copies made in England in the late eleventh century derived from a copy that Goscelin had read at Saint-Bertin.46 What is no less remarkable, then, than the ambitious and somewhat avant garde reading programme that Goscelin recommends to Eve is that Goscelin himself was familiar with the works that he lists—and probably others besides, including Cyprian, Ambrose and Prudentius—although it is somewhat surprising that his own reading appears not have included much that post-dated the sixth century. We have no way of knowing whether Eve followed Goscelin’s advice on this, or on any other matter, but her education at Wilton had, at very least, laid the foundations for the reputation she acquired on the continent—Hilary of Orléans chiefly praised her for her asceticism, but also recorded that the reading of holy books was food and drink to her.47 Goscelin was not solely responsible for the education of Eve. As mentioned above, he refers to Eve’s magistra in the context of her dedication; subsequently, he enumerates among the desirable things that Eve had left behind at Wilton the diligence of her magistra. His use of this term suggests that the teacher who prepared Eve for her dedication was not a mere instructor of novices but the teacher of a 43

Bell, p. 143.

44

For example, among the thirty-three books donated to the church of Saint-Vasst at Arras by Abbot Sæwold of Bath, c. 1070, when he took refuge after the Conquest, was Gregory’s Moralia in Job and Cassiodorus’ Historia tripartita (Lapidge, ‘Surviving Booklists’, pp. 58– 62). The staple of biblical study was the writings of Jerome, Augustine, Gregory, and Ambrose; Baker and Lapidge, p. xciv, detected possible derivation from De civitate Dei in the work of Byrhtferth of Ramsey, and concluded that ‘the Ramsey library must have been reasonably well-stocked in patristic texts’. 45

Webber, ‘The Diffusion of Augustine’s Confessions in England’, p. 30.

46

Goscelin evidently had read Augustine’s Confessions himself, since he recommends it to Eve because it instils devout emotion; see also Liber confort., p. 33, where he recalls (inexactly) an episode in the Confessions. Olson, p. 80, claims, on rather tenuous grounds, that Goscelin engages in ‘a sophisticated intertextual manipulation of the themes and events of Augustine’s Confessiones and one which would have been wasted in a text written solely for Eve if she had not been familiar with the Confessiones’. 47

Häring, p. 928, line 113.

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monastic school who commanded Goscelin’s respect.48 In Goscelin, however, Eve had a teacher whose extensive familiarity with patristic writings—and fluency in Latin—may have been without parallel in England, and who, moreover, encouraged her to cultivate the ‘perceptive ardour in reading’ that figures in his portrait of Edith.49 It may be, then, that the conclusion to be drawn from Goscelin’s memory of Eve in her childhood obtaining for him the books that he desired is that the Wilton library was better stocked than any that Goscelin had access to in England.50 Benna and Radbod, and the two continental priests who succeeded them at Wilton, Osmund and Adelman, are unlikely to have arrived without books.51 It is also possible that the reason why Goscelin envisages the narrowness of the window in Eve’s cell as the only obstacle she might encounter to obtaining the many books he recommends is that he assumed that any book, no matter how scarce or unobtainable in England, could be easily obtained on the continent.52 But it is perhaps easy to underestimate the literary resources available in England in the second half of the eleventh century—as Webber perhaps does, for it is possible that the lost exemplar of the Salisbury copy of Augustine’s Confessions was brought from Saint-Bertin by either Herman or Goscelin rather than imported from the continent in the 1080s.53 Whereas 48

Liber confort., pp. 28, 37. Magistra is sometimes used of abbesses, but particularly those with a reputation for learning (compare below, n. 110). Goscelin, however, is not using magistra to refer to Eve’s abbess, since in Liber confort., p. 37, he includes, among the desirable things she has left behind at Wilton, both the piety of her spiritual mother and the zeal of her magistra (matris pietas, magistre sedulitas). 49 Vita Edithae, chap. 11 (p. 68). Barlow, p. 143, n. 7, thought Goscelin ‘probably [...] one of the most widely-read men of his times’. Webber, p. 30, n. 8, notes that ‘Goscelin’s knowledge of Latin literature, both sacred and secular, should not be taken as typical’. See further my ‘Afterword’. 50

Liber confort., p. 28. Olson, p. 75, follows Barlow, Life of King Edward, p. 98, in regarding this as meaning that Eve lent Goscelin books that she owned. 51 Three German manuscripts are known to have entered England in the tenth century, perhaps among the gifts sent to Edgar from the Ottonian court, or even among those presented to Edith to solicit her favour (Vita Edithae, chap. 10, pp. 62–63); see Ortenberg, p. 61. 52 Liber confort., p. 80. The Saint-Bertin scriptorium during Goscelin’s residency was outstanding; see Wilmart, ‘Les Livres de l’abbé Odbert’, pp. 169–88. For the library at SaintBertin, see Emile Lesne, Les livres, “scriptoria”, et bibliothèques du commencement du VIIIe à la fin du XIe siècle (Lille: Facultés catholiques, 1938; repr. New York: Johnson, [1964]), pp. 628–34. Hamilton, II, 448, n. 78, considers that its holdings were similar to other Lotharingian monasteries; compare Lesne, pp. 655–84. Goscelin’s first-hand knowledge of the clergy at Speyer (Liber confort., p. 107), may suggest that he had travelled beyond Flanders, either before or after he immigrated to England. 53 For the copy of Augustine’s Confessions in the library at Salisbury in time of Herman’s successor Osmund, see Teresa Webber, Scribes and Scholars at Salisbury Cathedral, c.1075–

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for Chaucer, for instance, ‘twenty books’ was loosely synonymous with a decent sized personal library,54 expressions such as ‘the infinite series of books’, ‘the maker of a thousand books, the great Augustine’, and ‘the holy banquet of sacred volumes’, do not give the impression that Goscelin regarded books as a scarce commodity.55 He does give the impression, in the Liber confortatorius, of quoting directly only from a relatively small number of the works he refers to,56 but by the time he wrote the Liber confortatorius he was, presumably, entirely dependent on the library at Burg (either Peterborough or Bury St Edmunds).57 It is, however, scarcely conceivable that he had read all of the works he drew upon in the Liber confortatorius before he left Saint-Bertin as a young man. He presumably had access to the library at Sherborne, where Herman had his see until he moved to Salisbury in 1075, recently refurbished by Bishop Ælfwold, and perhaps added to by Herman himself.58 The most probable meaning of Goscelin’s recollection of Eve obtaining books for him is that he made use of Wilton’s library, but it is unfortunately no longer possible to determine whether it was in some respects better stocked than the Sherborne library. Only four manuscripts belonging to Wilton survived the dissolution, all of them later than the twelfth century.59 A brief booklist is recorded c.1125 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 12, 13, 148. 54

General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. by Larry D. Benson, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 28 (line 294). 55

Liber confort., pp. 40, 33, 80.

56

See, for instance, Goscelin’s careful referencing of pseudo-Jerome’s Homilies on Joshua (Liber confort., pp. 56–61). 57

At least one of the books Goscelin was accustomed to have to hand appears to have been unavailable at Burg, since he remarks that, as he does not have Ambrose’s De virginibus he must relate the martyrdom of a female saint in an unpolished manner (Liber confort., p. 98). The twenty-one books donated to Peterborough by Bishop Æthelwold in the second half of the tenth century (Lapidge, ‘Surviving Booklists’, pp. 52–55) included commentaries on the Song of Songs and the Psalms. Over sixty others are listed in a later booklist which may, however, post-date 1080 (Lapidge, pp. 76–82); this includes Augustine’s De civitate Dei and the Histories of Cassiodorus and Eusebius, as well as commentaries by Gregory, Augustine and Jerome. 58

For Bishop Ælfwold’s refurbishment of the Sherborne library, see Goscelin’s Vita sancti Wulsini, chap. 18; Talbot, p. 83. Herman’s compatriot, Giso, bishop of Wells (1060–88), donated a collection of books and relics to his cathedral; Ortenberg, p. 58. Little remains of the Sherborne library; see N. R. Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books (London: Royal Historical Society, 1941), p. 179. For Goscelin’s possible use of the library at Malmesbury, see my ‘Afterword’, p. 428. 59

For books owned by Wilton at the dissolution, see Bell, pp. 213–14. The survival of the Wilton cartulary, containing charters in English and in Latin to 1208, suggests that Wilton is likely to have conserved manuscripts in these languages, rather than to have disposed of them before the dissolution as some monasteries did; Registrum Wiltunense, ed. by Hoare.

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in the manuscript containing the Wilton Chronicle (c. 1420); as Richard Sharpe remarks, if this is a list of books owned by Wilton, it is unlikely to represent the sum of the library.60

Secular Members of the Community The monastic school at Wilton pre-dated the arrival of Benna and Radbod. In the Legend of Edith, Goscelin relates that her mother, Wulfthryth, was taken from the school room at Wilton by King Edgar (c. 960), or as Goscelin puts it: ‘The king loved her as Jacob loved Rachel; he had taken her, the splendid star of noble maidens, from the very school room by divine dispensation, and united her with the kingdom by indissoluble vows’.61 Goscelin’s Life of Wulfhild of Barking gives more information on this.62 It relates that Edgar had previously attempted to abduct Wulfthryth’s sister Wulfhild, who had been brought up at Wilton since her infancy. (Edgar may have deserved his later reputation for sexually predatory behaviour, but his determination to form an alliance with one of the daughters of Wulfhelm, who was his father’s brother, presumably sprang from the fact that they were descended from a rival branch of the royal family.)63 Edgar enlisted the help of Wulfhild’s aunt, 60

London, British Library, MS Cotton Faustina B.iii, fol. 208v; see Richard Sharpe, English Benedictine Libraries: The Shorter Catalogues (London: British Library, 1996), pp. 645–46. Four Latin works are named (which include Isidore and Gregory’s Moralia in Job). The remainder are described only by general category, and include a number of English books. As Sharpe also notes, if this does refer to the Wilton library, it does not add much to our knowledge of its contents. The blandientes epistole that Goscelin lists among the desirable things left behind by Eve at Wilton were, presumably, the letters he wrote to her (Liber confort., p. 37). John Aubrey, who grew up in Wiltshire in the early seventeenth century, recalled that in his childhood, old manuscripts ‘flew about like butterflies’, and were variously used for covering new books, stopping bungholes, cleaning guns, and as wrapping paper by glovers; see John Aubrey: Brief Lives, ed. by Richard Barber (London: Folio Society, 1975), p. 26. Aubrey also mentions ‘the ledger book of Wilton, one page Saxon, the other page Latin, which Mr Dugdale perused’ (p. 146), which was in the library of the Countess of Pembroke; this is presumably a reference to the Wilton cartulary. 61

‘Hanc rex, ut Jacob Rachel dilexerat; hanc, splendidius nobilium puellarum sidus, de ipsis scolis diuina dispensatione assumserat, et insolubilibus uotis regno sociauerat’. Vita Edithae, chap. 2 (p. 41). 62 63

Vita sanctae Wulfhildae, chaps 1–4 (Colker, pp. 418–25).

The great-grandfather of Wulfthryth and her sister Wulfhild is said to have been a foundling of royal birth, and an adopted son of King Alfred (Vita sanctae Wulfhildae, Prefatio, p. 418). Wulfhelm is identified as the uncle of Edgar in Vita sanctae Wulfhildae, chap. 4 (p. 424); the high birth of Wulfthryth, touched on in this chapter, is further elaborated in Vita Edithae, chap. 1 (p. 40), where Wulfthryth is described as a descendant of princes and a nobly born child of a royal duke. Scandalous behaviour by Edgar is hinted at by Regularis

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Wenflæd, who lured Wulfhild to her house at Wherwell, where Edgar made pressing offers of marriage. Wulfhild escaped his clutches and fled back to Wilton; Edgar pursued her there through the cloisters, but he relented when she took sanctuary at the altar, and granted her the monastery at Barking (which was at that time no longer inhabited and had fallen into decay) together with a number of other properties. Edgar therefore contracted an alliance with Wulfthryth, who, Goscelin relates, was being educated at Wilton as a secular: The king, having given up Wulfhild, accepted by divine dispensation his kinswoman Wulfthryth, the daughter of his father’s brother Wulfhelm. She had been educated in secular clothing in the same monastery as Wulfhild had been, and was of equal reputation for beauty and nobility and equally worthy by her birth and breeding of the 64 king and of royal power.

William of Malmesbury, writing c. 1125, similarly represents the Wilton community as including lay members. In recounting the marriages contracted by the numerous daughters of Edward the Elder (d. 924), he states that Eadflæd and Æthelhild ‘took a vow of virginity and spurned the pleasures of earthly marriage, Eadflæd taking the veil and Æthelhild in lay attire; both lie at Wilton, buried next to their mother’.65 In the wake of the Norman invasion, the lay membership of the nunneries increased; an unknown number of women and children took refuge there. Lanfranc sought (unsuccessfully) to regularise the nature of female communities: Nuns who have made profession that they will keep a rule or who, although not yet professed, have been presented at the altar, are to be enjoined, exhorted and obliged to keep the rule in their manner of life. But those who have been neither professed nor presented at the altar are to be sent away at once without change of status, until their desire to remain in religion is examined more carefully. As to those who you tell me fled to a monastery not for love of the religious life but for fear of the French, if they can prove that this was so by the unambiguous witness of nuns better than they, let 66 them be granted unrestricted leave to depart. This is the king’s policy and our own. Concordia, chap. 3 (p. 2), and elaborated upon by William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, II. 157–59 (pp. 256–60). 64

‘At rex amissa Vulfilda accepit diuina dispensatione propinquam eius Vulftrudem, germani patris sui Vulfelmi natam, eodem monasterio Vuiltonie in seculari habitu secum educatam, pari gloria formae nobilitatis et generosorum morum regno et regi condignam’. Vita sanctae Wulfhildae, chap. 4 (p. 424). 65

‘Celibatum Deo uouentes, Edfleda in sacrato Ethelhilda in laico tegmine, terrenarum nuptiarum uoluptatem fastidiere; iacent ambae Wiltoniae iuxta matrem tumulatae”. Gesta Regum Anglorum, II. 126 (pp. 198–200). William’s statement that both daughters took a vow of virginity presumably reflects the more widespread practice of taking vows in the Norman period; compare his account of Wulfthryth, who, he says, was certainly not a nun, but a girl of lay status who had adopted the veil out of fear of the king, but it was snatched away from her and she was forced into a royal marriage (p. 260). 66

‘Sanctimoniales quae de seruanda regula professionem fecerunt, uel quae quamuis adhuc

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The lay members of communities who particularly concerned Lanfranc were evidently not those who had taken refuge from the French and wished to depart, but those who wanted to stay, even though they had neither made a profession themselves nor been dedicated at the altar by their parents as child oblates. Presumably, not all children placed in the care of a nunnery were dedicated at the altar; William’s account suggests that lay members also included women who sought refuge from pressure to marry but wished to keep their options open. In regarding a formal profession as irreversibly binding, Lanfranc was in accord with the official pronouncements of Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastics of the reform period. But in ruling that children presented to monasteries by their parents were equally bound to remain members of religious communities, he was introducing an unprecedented form of constraint.67 As Lanfranc’s successor Anselm understood it, formal profession was the exception rather than the rule in pre-Conquest England. Like Lanfranc, he regarded the assumption of a monastic habit as an act which bound the wearer to life-long membership of a religious community, no less irreversible than a formal profession.68 As Lanfranc’s Constitutions specified that a child presented to a monastery by its parents was to be thereafter dressed in a monastic habit, it followed that child oblates, too, were irreversibly committed for professae non sint ad altar tamen oblatae fuerunt, secundum mores et uitas earum ad seruandam regulam moneantur, increpentur, constringantur. Quae uero nec professae nec oblatae sunt, ad praesens sic dimittantur, donec uolantates earum de seruando ordine subtilius exquirantur. Quae uero non amore religionis sed timore Francigenarum sicut uos dicitis ad monasterium confugerunt, si hoc firmo meliorum sanctimonialium testimonio probare possunt, libera eis recedendi concedatur potestas. Et hoc est consilium regis et nostrum’. Letters of Lanfranc, p. 166 (to the Bishop of Rochester, c. 1077x1089). But, writing to Bishop Maurice of London, c. 1086x1089 (p. 174), Lanfranc assumed that members of the laity were still present at the Barking nunnery, since he instructed that the nuns, clergy, and laity, both within the convent and beyond, were to serve and obey the abbess and the prioress. 67

The Rule of St Benedict, chap. 59, differed from other rules in regarding the dedication of children by their parents as binding. The Synod of Toledo (655) declared that parents could not force children to enter monastic life until at least the age of ten; canonists of the ensuing period raised this age to twelve or fourteen. The capitulary of Aix-la-Chapelle (817) held that child oblation, to be valid, must be confirmed by the oblate on reaching the age of reason. During the period in which the Benedictine Rule was adopted almost to the exclusion of all others in the West, Celtic and Eastern traditions had considerable influence on the formation of lay monastic roles. See Derek G. Smith, ‘Oblates in Western Monasticism’, Monastic Studies, 13 (1982), 47–72; John Doran, ‘Oblation or Obligation? A Canonical Ambiguity’, in The Church and Childhood, ed. by Diana Wood, Studies in Church History, 31 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), pp. 127–42. 68

See Letters of Lanfranc, p. 142; writing to the Bishop of Rochester (1071x1080), Lanfranc states that legislation and the letters of the holy Fathers do not permit anyone who has worn the monastic habit for several days in public to return to the secular life on any pretext.

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life by their parents’ action.69 Anselm, however, went further than Lanfranc, by claiming, erroneously, that his own views had also been held by Anglo-Saxon religious communities. Anselm therefore opposed the marriages of two women who had been brought up from childhood at Wilton. Gunhild, the daughter of Harold, last of the Anglo-Saxon kings, was placed at Wilton for safe-keeping c. 1069.70 In 1093, Gunhild eloped from Wilton with Count Alan the Red, and, when he died shortly afterwards, contracted an alliance with his brother, Count Alan the Black.71 It was claimed in exculpation of Gunhild (though not, it seems, by Gunhild herself) that she was prevailed on to adopt the habit of a nun by people who promised her an abbacy, and that when this abbacy failed to materialise she was under no obligation to remain a member of the community. Anselm would have none of this. He did not argue that Gunhild had been dedicated at the altar as a child—either she had not been or Anselm did not consider that a sufficiently strong argument. He based his case entirely on the claim that wearing a nun’s habit irreversibly bound her to remain a member of the community: For although you were not consecrated by a bishop and did not make your profession in his presence, yet this alone is a manifest and undeniable profession, that you have, publicly and in private, worn the habit of the religious life, through which in the sight of everyone you have declared yourself dedicated to God, just as much as if you had made your profession. Nowadays the profession and consecration of monastic life is common, but previously many thousands of men and women, professing that intention by the habit alone, achieved its loftiness and its crown. And those who put on the habit without profession and consecration and then cast it aside were considered apostate. Therefore you will be without excuse if you abandon the holy intention which you have long professed by your habit and your way of life; even though you did not make 72 the profession which now is customary and you were not consecrated by a bishop. 69 The Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc, ed. by David Knowles, rev. edn by Christopher N. L. Brooke (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 162–64. All of the ritual Lanfranc prescribed for the dedication of oblates was intended to make it irreversibly binding—the oblate was required to make his own profession when he grew up, but the written promise made by his parents was held to have the same force as the one required for the profession of an adult, and was therefore not to be repeated by the oblate when he made his profession. 70

For the flight of the Godwinsons after the Conquest (with Queen Edith presumably left in charge of Margaret of Scotland as well as Gunhild), see Barlow, The Godwins, pp. 112–22. 71

R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm and his Biographer: A Study of Monastic Life and Thought, 1059–c.1130 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), pp. 182–89; Southern, A Portrait in a Landscape, pp. 262–64. 72

‘Quamvis enim ab episcopo sacrata non fueris nec coram ipso professionem legeris, hoc solum tamen est manifesta et quae negari non potest professio, quia publice et secrete habitum sancti propositi portasti, per quod omnibus te videntibus deo dicatam te esse non minus quam professionem legendo affirmasti. Nam antequam fieret ista nunc usitata monachici propositi

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When Alan the Red first encountered Gunhild at Wilton, he had come to inspect a thirteen-year-old Scottish princess, whom he was thinking of marrying.73 Matilda was a direct descendant of Æthelred the Unready through her mother, Margaret, the wife of Malcolm of Scotland, and had been brought up at Wilton. She eventually married Henry I in 1100, after a protracted dispute with Anselm, who was only prevailed upon to give his consent for the marriage when witnesses were found at Wilton who testified to her claim that she had never willingly worn a nun’s habit but had been compelled to do so for her own protection by her aunt Christina.74 The canon law collection attributed to Archbishop Wulfstan I (d. 1023) prohibits the consecration of virgins under twenty-five.75 This collection echoes Isidore’s Regula monachorum to the effect that infants offered to a monastery by their parents should remain there, but it includes no penalties for leaving the monastery.76 It does, however, include the ruling that any man who marries a nun is to be excommunicated.77 Alfred’s law code, by contrast, reveals that marriages with professio et sacratio, multa millia utriusque sexus hominum solo habitu se ipsius esse propositi profitentia eius celsitudinem et coronam consecuta sunt. Et qui tunc habitum sine ipsa professione et sacratione assumptum reiciebant, apostatae iudicabantur. Inexcusabilis ergo es, si deseris sanctum propositum, quod diu habitu et conversatione professa es, quamvis professionem nunc usitatam non legeris et ab episcopo consecrata non fueris’. Letter 168 in S Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, ed. by F. S. Schmitt, 6 vols (Edinburgh: Nelson, 1946–61), IV (1956), 43–46 (pp. 44–45). Trans. by Rhoda Beare,‘Anselm’s Letters to Gunhild, Daughter of King Harold’, Prudentia, 28 (1996), 27–34 (pp. 27–31). 73

See Southern, A Portrait in a Landscape, pp. 260–62. The ultimate source of this account is a report by Baldwin, who visited Tournai c. 1101–02, which was recorded by Hermann of Tournai in his De Restauratione S. Martini Tornacensis (MGH SS 14, 278–81). 74

Eadmer: Historia Novorum in Anglia, ed. by Martin Rule, RS, 81 (Stationery Office: London, 1884; repr. [New York]: Kraus, 1965), pp. 121–26 (pp. 122–23). For discussion, see Southern, Anselm and his Biographer, pp. 182–93; Eleanor Searle, ‘Women and the Legitimisation of Succession at the Norman Conquest’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 3 (1980), 159–70; Vaughn, pp. 185–202. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (E) 1085 says that Christina took the veil at Romsey when her brother Edgar despaired of gaining William’s favour and left his court. Eadmer, however, makes no mention of Romsey, and states that Matilda had been brought up at Wilton (p. 123). 75

Wulfstan’s Canon Law Collection, ed. by J. E. Cross and Andrew Hamer, Anglo-Saxon Texts, 1 (Cambridge: Brewer, 1999), pp. 72–73 (A15), p. 93 (A63). 76

Wulfstan’s Canon Law Collection, p. 94 (A65): ‘Quicumque a parentibus propriis in monasterio fuerit delegatus, nouerit se ibi perpetuo mansurum. Nam Anna Samuel puerum natum et ablactatum Deo obtulit, qui in ministerio templi permansit’. (‘Whoever has been sent into a monastery by his own parents will know that he must remain there for ever. For Hannah offered to God her baby boy Samuel, when only just weaned, and he remained in the service of the temple’.) 77 Wulfstan’s Canon Law Collection, p. 157 (B145). The excommunication of any man who marries a nun (monacham quam Dei ancillam apellant), presumably implies

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cloistered women were permissible if they were authorised by the king and the bishop: If anyone brings a nun out of a nunnery without the permission of the king or the bishop, he is to pay 120 shillings. [...] If she outlives him who brought her out, she is to have nothing of his inheritance. If she bears a child, it is not to have any of the inheritance, any more than the mother. If her child is killed, the maternal kindred’s share of compensation is to be paid to the king; the paternal kindred’s share is to be 78 given to them.

As Barbara Yorke points out, Alfred’s legislation echoes the legatine councils of 786 which ruled that the children of nuns were barred from inheritance.79 The purpose of the Alfredian legislation, however, is not to prohibit all marriages to nuns; it appears rather to be an attempt to prevent alliances which threatened the interests of the king. In later Anglo-Saxon law codes, marriage alliances with female religious figure only in the code Wulfstan drafted for Cnut (1018), which merely states that men must not marry (gewifige) consecrated women (gehalgodre nunnan).80 What this suggests is that alliances with women in nunneries continued to take place in the late AngloSaxon period, even though reformist bishops like Wulfstan presumably refused to authorise them, but that—in contrast to clerical marriage and the premature remarriage of widows, for instance—it was not one of the irregularities that particularly exercised Wulfstan. Women who took vows—the exceptional few, as Anselm was aware—included some who sought protection in a nunnery from an unwanted marriage. Wulfhild’s successor Leofflæd, for instance, took the veil at Barking on the advice of Wulfhild, whom she consulted when her parents were pressing her to marry against her will.81 Others, as Matilda’s defence suggests, assumed a nun’s habit in order to deter potential abductors; some women who ‘took the veil’ pledged themselves to chastity but did not make a formal profession and were not consecrated as nuns.82 Abbesses, excommunication of the woman also; an adjacent canon excommunicates any layman who commits fornication with a handmaiden of God as well as the woman herself (B143). 78

‘Gif hwa nunnan of mynstere ut alæde butan kyninges lefnesse oððe biscepes, geselle hundtwelftige scill’ […] Gif hio leng libbe ðonne se ðe hie utlædde, nage hio his ierfes owiht. Gif hio bearn gestriene, næbbe ðæt ðæs ierfes ðon mare ðe seo modor. Gif hire bearn mon ofslea, gielde cyninge þara medrenmæga dæl; fædrenmægum hiora dæl mon agife’. Alfred, 8– 8.3: Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. by F. Liebermann, 3 vols (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1903– 16; repr. Aalen: Scientia, 1960), I, 54. 79

Yorke, pp. 154–55. As she also points out, a long-standing tradition of acceptance of marriages to nuns is demonstrated by Theodore’s Penitential, which assigns three years penance to a nun who leaves her foundation to marry. 80

I

Cnut, 7.1; Lieberman, I, 290.

81

Vita sanctae Wulfhildae, chap. 7 (p. 427).

82

A variety of vocations and degrees of commitment are suggested by the various kinds of

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presumably, were usually drawn from the ranks of professed nuns (although it is noticeable that Goscelin glosses over this issue in his account of the installation of Wulfthryth as Abbess of Wilton—he makes much of her exchange of her royal finery for a black habit, but, although he says that Bishop Æthelwold sanctioned her separation from King Edgar, he does not claim that Æthelwold consecrated her).83 The oral traditions of Barking included a miraculous occurrence which took place when Wulfhild made a vow of perpetual virginity before she assumed the abbacy of Barking and Horton; they also included a story of how Wulfruna-Judith went shopping in London for a nun’s tunic, and seemingly forgot to pay for it.84 But, even after more than two decades of Norman rule, Gunhild could establish herself as a serious candidate for an abbacy merely by exchanging her secular costume for a nun’s habit and by promising that she would become a nun.85 Edith, however, typifies the women at Wilton, and perhaps at other royal nunneries, whose presentation to a monastery by their parents did not preclude them from marrying if they were permitted to do so by the bishop and the king, or—in cases where the king had granted himself license—by the bishop. (Hence, very probably, the ‘divine dispensation’ claimed by Goscelin in his account of Edgar’s abduction of Wulfthryth, both in the Life of Wulfhild and in the Legend of Edith.)86 blessings of women and their clothing found in pontificals. See, for example, the Egbert Pontifical; Banting, pp. 117–23. Only a minority of these formulae refer to vows. To some extent, doubtless, this variety reflects the existence of women pursuing a religious vocation outside the cloisters; see Foot, I, 127–34. 83

Vita Edithae, chaps 2, 4.

84

Vita sanctae Wulfhildae, chaps 4, 15.

85

Anselmi Omnia Opera, Letter 169, pp. 48–49: ‘Quod si dicis te suscepisse habitum religionis, quia promissa est abbatia—sicut audio quosdam dicere—, et idcirco, cum abbatiam non habeas, te non ex debito servare assumptum habitum: considera, filia mea, quantum dedecus facias Christo. […] Non ipse promisit tibi abbatiam, sed nescio qui viri aut mulieres. Tu vero, cum illi promiserunt tibi abbatiam: cui promisisti votum tuum, deo an hominibus? Utique hoc effecerunt homines tibi promittendo abbatiam, ut tu deo promitteres sanctae conversationis propositum. Deo ergo promisisti, non hominibus’. (‘But if you say that you put on the habit of religious because you were promised an abbacy—as I hear some people say— and therefore, since you were not made abbess, you are under no obligation to keep the habit you put on; consider, my daughter, how you are insulting Christ. […] He himself did not promise you an abbacy, it was men or women who did that. When they promised you the abbacy, to whom did you make your promise, to God or to men? The people who promised you an abbacy did bring it about that you promised God that you would be a nun. Therefore you gave your promise to God, not to men’.) Trans. by Beare, p. 32. 86

Vita Edithae, chap. 2 (p. 41); Vita sanctae Wulfhildae, chap. 4 (p. 424). Conceivably Goscelin’s orthodoxy led him to assume that Wulfthryth had been dedicated as a child—in actuality, Edgar would have needed a dispensation to contract an alliance with a woman to whom marriage was prohibited by virtue of her close family relationship to him.

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Some form of compensatory or penitential action is likely to have been involved in such dispensations; the laws of Alfred required compensation to be paid to the ‘overlord’ of the nunnery as well as to the bishop and the king.87 The noblemen who sought to persuade Edith to marry their preferred candidate for the throne offered to dedicate their daughters to the convent ‘so that the monastic profession should suffer no loss’.88 To Goscelin the eternal salvation of many was no compensation for Edith’s own loss of a heavenly crown, but the offer perhaps represents a not implausible attempt to recompense both God and the convent. Had it been in keeping with Wilton traditions to represent Edith as having made a formal profession as a nun, Goscelin would surely have done so, given his insistent (and in fact misleading) depiction of Edith as a bride of Christ. Instead he depicts her at the age of two as having irrevocably committed herself to a monastic vocation by picking out the veil from the objects laid out before her at the altar and placing it on her head.89 Goscelin may, indeed, have held views on the dedication of infants that were more in keeping with those adopted by the Norman hierarchy than was generally the case in England. For him, Eve’s childhood dedication was a highly charged emotional experience that made her the bride of Christ, in which she ‘put on the pledge of divine faith’ by assuming a black habit—although his constant prayer at that time, that she might seek Christ only in marriage, might reflect the less than binding force this ceremony had c. 1065.90 Bishop Herman’s customary greeting (‘Eve, mother of the living’) could imply that he did not necessarily regard her as destined for a monastic life, an implication denied by Goscelin’s equally customary insistence that she was cast in the mould of Mary (‘this Eve will be the daughter of the living’).91 Whether or not Goscelin was acquainted with Lanfranc’s views on the subject, his depiction of Edith’s dedication to the nunnery serves to deny that a child presented in infancy is bound to a religious lifestyle by its parents’ choice, while at the same time asserting the binding nature of the dedication—the ‘vocational choice’ motif putatively restores volition to Edith, but simultaneously makes manifest the will of God. Goscelin, however, is conceivably registering the existence of controversy over the determination of a child’s manner of life by a chance event (in effect, a form of divination) when he explains that, just as Peter chose Matthias by lot, so most of the saints have deserved, in various matters, either to consult God or to receive replies from him. Significantly, Goscelin misses another opportunity for a set-piece lyrical celebration of Edith’s spiritual brideship when, in relating that Edgar wished to make 87

Alfred, 8. Lieberman, I, 54; ‘þære cirican hlaforde, ðe ðone munuc age’ (‘the lord of the church to whom the monk [sic] belongs’, which might mean the abbess). 88

Vita Edithae, chap. 19 (p. 84).

89

Vita Edithae, chap. 5 (p. 44).

90

Liber confort., p. 28.

91

Liber confort., p. 29.

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her abbess of three monasteries, he merely remarks that Æthelwold consecrated her at Winchester (Nunnaminster), and that at the Barking monastery she was entrusted with the protection of a third community.92 Lax as the Anglo-Saxon church was by continental standards, it is easier to believe that this is another example of Goscelin employing Æthelwold to give an orthodox appearance to what he had been told than it is to believe that the leader of the Benedictine reform gave his official blessing to the installation of a fifteen-year-old who was not a professed nun—as an absentee abbess, furthermore—without even managing to persuade her to wear a monastic habit; although, according to Goscelin, she did make herself an absolutely gorgeous alb, which was preserved at Winchester.93 Like Wulfthryth before her abduction by Edgar, and like Wulfhild before her installation as abbess of Barking and Horton (like Edward the Elder’s daughter Æthelhild, too, unless William was projecting back into the early tenth century a practice that arose in the Benedictine reform period and survived until at least the 1090s), Edith denoted her status at Wilton by wearing secular clothing. Indeed, she was chiefly memorable for the royal finery of her clothing.94 Goscelin implies that Edith was obliged to dress as a king’s daughter when visiting her father’s court;95 but this is not really a satisfactory explanation (surely her best protection against abduction or unwanted offers of marriage was a nun’s tunic, as Matilda’s defence illustrates), and Edith is also wearing royal finery in Goscelin’s account of how she assisted the workmen building her chapel shortly before her death.96 Wilton, we may conclude, served as a repository for young women who, by virtue of their birth or wealth, posed a potential threat either to the interests of the king or to their relatives, and also for those for whom no husband of sufficient standing could be found.97 Dedication to a religious community effectively removed them 92

Vita Edithae, chap. 16 (pp. 76–77). The third community may have been Horton, which was a dependency of Barking; see Vita sanctae Wulfhildae, chap. 4 (p. 424). For the centrality of the theme of spiritual marriage in the Legend, see ‘Edith as Contemplative’, pp. 281–306. 93

Vita Edithae, chap. 16; the alb was preserved at Winchester, with a miraculous staff, also believed to have belonged to Edith (pp. 78–79). 94

Vita Edithae, chaps 12–13; for discussion of this account of Æthelwold’s criticism of her royal clothing and its subsequent miraculous preservation in a fire, see further ‘St Edith and the Wilton Community’, pp. 261–62. 95

Vita Edithae, chap. 10 (p. 70).

96

Vita Edithae, chap. 20 (p. 87).

97

Compare Ridyard, pp. 142–43: ‘With every page of Goscelin’s narrative we are transported into a world where monasticism provided a respectable alternative career for those royal and aristocratic ladies who failed to marry or who wished to extricate themselves from marriage. In theory those ladies had withdrawn from the world, in practice the walls of their convents afforded some protection against the worst excesses of the world but their seclusion was far from complete’.

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from the marriage pool. But if circumstances changed, they could be reclaimed if it suited the king, or, in the case of the offer of marriage made to Edith, if it suited the interests of men too powerful to need the permission of the king—unless, as the Lives of Edith and Wulfhild show, the women themselves refused to marry.98 This, doubtless, underlies the outstandingly high social status of the women who made up the Wilton community.99 The nunnery’s proximity to a royal palace offered protection against abduction (except when the king himself was the abductor), in addition to the nebulous power of protection it afforded as a sacred place (to which Edgar was evidently susceptible).100 As a safe repository for daughters whose status as assets or liabilities remained to be determined, the nunnery at Wilton may not have been unique.101

The Education of Queens It would be wrong to conclude, however, that Goscelin’s statement that Wulfthryth was ‘educated in secular clothing’ merely represents a euphemistic rationale for the presence of lay women at Wilton.102 Alfred may or may not have been thinking of girls as well as boys when he urged his bishops to ensure that the geoguð (‘young persons’) of the free born classes were educated in the vernacular and that the more promising of them were instructed in Latin, but his own daughter Ælfthryth, if not all of his daughters, received an education, though perhaps different in kind, and inferior to, that of his youngest son Æthelweard.103 Æthelweard was sent to a 98

The law code drafted by Archbishop Wulfstan for Cnut (1018) rules that no woman is to be forced to marry against her will; as this section of the law code is particularly concerned with abuses of power by the king, the prohibition on constrained marriages may have had particular relevance for women in nunneries like Wilton: II Cnut, 74; Liebermann, p. 360. 99

Vita Edithae, chap. 10 (pp. 61–62).

100

For the Wilton nunnery’s proximity to a royal palace, see Haslam, p. 123.

101

Yorke, p. 159: ‘The expectations of Gunnhild and Edith-Matilda that they would be free to leave Wilton to marry no doubt reflects Anglo-Saxon custom, and would also have been regarded as acceptable in the continental houses of canonesses which the later Anglo-Saxon nunneries most obviously resemble’. 102

Vita sanctae Wulfhildae, chap. 4 (p. 424). Goscelin appears to have considered that the education of women in secular clothing in the Anglo-Saxon period was a common practice, and acceptable to mention, as a past custom, in orthodox post-Conquest circles. In his Legend of Mildrith, written for St Augustine’s, he relates that Mildrith was sent by her mother (an early eighth-century abbess of Minster-in-Thanet), to be educated in Chelles; Mildrith, he explains, was at this time still in secular clothing. Vita Deo delectae virginis Mildrethae, chap. 7 (Rollason, p. 120). 103 Christine Fell, Women in Anglo-Saxon England and the Impact of 1066 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), p. 100. Alfred’s daughters included Æthelflæd, Lady of

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monastic school, Asser relates, together with virtually all the nobly born children of the same area and a good many of lesser birth as well, to learn how to read and write in Latin and English and to study the liberal arts. At the time Asser was writing his Life of Alfred, Ælfthryth and her elder brother Edward were being educated in the vernacular at the court by tutors, who were both male and female.104 Edward, who succeeded Alfred, followed his father’s example. William of Malmesbury relates: All [of Edward’s] daughters had been brought up to devote most time in their childhood to letters, and thereafter to acquire further skill with distaff and needle, that with the support of these arts they might pass their girlhood in chastity; the sons had been educated so that having first received a thorough immersion in book-learning, they could then proceed not like rustics but as philosophers to govern the 105 commonwealth.

William’s rationale for the education of Edward’s daughters is a characteristic piece of Anglo-Norman misogyny. As William’s account reveals, Edward and his son Athelstan secured important alliances through the marriages of these daughters; most of them (with the exception of the two who joined the Wilton community, and Eadburg, who became a nun at Winchester) were given as brides to Frankish or Ottonian kings.106 The Wessex dynasty’s inherited respect for education, influenced very probably by continental ideals of queenship, established literacy as a desirable attribute of an upper-class bride.107 According to the Life of Edward the Confessor, Mercia, and Æthelgifu, the founder abbess of Shaftesbury. Fell considers it unlikely that Alfred regarded literacy as a male prerogative, since it was his mother, who owned a book of vernacular poems, who prompted him to learn how to read. 104

Asser speaks of teaching by nutritorum et nutricum; Asser’s Life of King Alfred, ed. by William H. Stevenson, with an article by Dorothy Whitelock (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), chap. 75 (p. 58). 105

‘Filias suas ita instituerat ut litteris omnes in infantia maxime uacarent, mox etiam colum et acum exercere consuescerent, ut his artibus pudice impubem uirginitatem transigerent; filios ita ut primum eruditio plena litterarum in eos conflueret et deinde quasi philosophi ad gubernandam rempublicam non iam rudes procederent’. Gesta Regum Anglorum, II. 126 (p. 200). 106 107

See Ortenberg, pp. 54–61.

Yorke, p. 158, suggests that the presence of a continental nun called Hundrada at the court of Offa of Mercia (who was in contact with the court of Charlemagne) may have been to provide education for his daughters, and that Alfred’s Mercian wife Ealhswith may have introduced this custom to Wessex. She also notes the similarities between Ottonian royal nunneries (from the ninth century onwards) and those of late Anglo-Saxon England (p. 80). For the significant influence exerted by Ottonian concepts of imperial power, reflected in the introduction of a coronation ordo for both Edgar and his wife Ælfthryth, see Ortenberg, pp. 64–65. The Latin chronicle written by Æthelweard for Matilda of Essen indicates both his awareness of the Wessex dynasty’s marital alliances with the Ottonian empire and the

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commissioned by his wife, Edith Godwinson, Queen Edith bestowed her patronage on the Wilton nunnery because she attributed her marital success to the education she had received there.108 As well she might; powerful as Earl Godwine was, Edith was not inevitably destined to be a queen—her marriage to Edward was a political coup for Earl Godwine, and if William of Malmesbury’s informant is to be believed (possibly his English mother), it was fortunate for the Godwinsons that Edward was not swayed by appearances.109 Education at Wilton thus served as much to equip women to form alliances advantageous to their families as to enable them to read their service books. The teachers who educated Wulfthryth and Wulfhild at Wilton are likely to have been royal women like Edward’s daughters, who had been educated at court according to their station before they joined the community,110 although, as private tutors were employed at the royal court from at least the time of Alfred, Edgar (whose boyhood tutor was Bishop Æthelwold) may not have been the first king to have acquired learned priests as teachers for his daughter at Wilton. In Wulfhild, Barking and its sister house, Horton, had an abbess whose literacy can be inferred from Goscelin’s report that her aunt lured her to Wherwell by pretending that she was on her deathbed and needed Wulfhild to write her will for her.111 Two of the abbesses who succeeded Wulfhild were taught by her, and the survival of a pre-Conquest Latin manuscript owned by Barking suggests a tradition of learning that paralleled Wilton’s.112 So, too, does the fact that at Barking, as at Wilton, Goscelin was commissioned to commemorate the convent’s saints—and, in contrast to Wilton, Barking appears to have already possessed written accounts of Wulfhild’s life.113 It educational attainments of Ottonian women: The Chronicle of Æthelweard, ed. by Alistair Campbell (London: Nelson, 1962). 108

Life of King Edward, I. 6 (p. 70).

109

Gesta Regum Anglorum, II. 197 (p. 352). Compare Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, p. 259, who considers that the power of Earl Godwine was such that Edward may have felt he had no choice in his marriage to Edith; however, she had three sisters. 110

A charter of King Eadwig granting lands to the nuns of Wilton, dated 955, is, unusually, witnessed by a woman, Ælfgyth, magistra prefati monasterii: Cartularium Saxonicum, ed. by Walter de Gray Birch, 3 vols (London: Whiting, 1885–93), II, no. 917. 111

Vita sanctae Wulfhildae, chap. 2 (p. 421). A mid-tenth-century will is likely to have been written in the vernacular, but a Latin testament is possible at this date. 112

See above, n. 8. Bell, p. 111, also lists a twelfth-century glossed copy of the Song of Songs and Lamentations owned by Barking (glosses all in Latin), as well as the Cardiff manuscript in which the revised version of the Legend of Edith is preserved. See further ‘Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women’, pp. 237–42. 113

In the Prefatio to Vita sanctae Wulfhildae (p. 418), Goscelin states that his work is based on the oral testimony of the Barking community, but, whereas in the Legend of Edith (Vita Edithae, chap. 1, p. 36) he intimates that the oral report of Edith’s fame is such that a written Life is scarcely necessary, in Vita sanctae Wulfhildae he states that the fame of the

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is, however, as difficult to detect any specifically educational (as opposed to moral) content to the abbess’s teaching in Goscelin’s Life of Wulfhild as it is in Bede’s account of Whitby and Barking, and his interest in the education of Edith (sketchy as it is) may be in part attributable to his association of her with Eve.114 A monastic school taught by Wulfthryth is, perhaps, to be inferred by Goscelin’s description of her abbatical leadership in imagery that echoes Aldhelm’s description of the monastic school at Barking: ‘Then, following the example of the bees and ants, the swarms of virgins were eagerly industrious in the building of the heavenly Jerusalem, and like Christian Amazons they trained for the divine battle’.115 The continued presence of Benna at Wilton and a reference to a second pair of continental priests in the later part of Wulfthryth’s abbacy, after Edith’s death, offer the only indication that the Wilton community at large might possibly have benefited from the teaching of learned clerics.116 (The underlying assumption here is not that the teaching of female monastics was necessarily inferior, but that an educational tradition passed on within a community was prone to deteriorate; centres of learning at male houses generally depended on their access to continental influence.) Queen Edith’s education at Wilton would have taken place during the long abbacy of Brihtgifu.117 Notwithstanding the impression created by Goscelin’s explanation that a vernacular account of the Colbek dancers was made at Brihtgifu’s instruction, Brihtgifu, who was growing up at Wilton during the years that Benna remained in residence there after the death of St Edith, need not have been illiterate.118 But Queen Edith does seem, at least in part, to have owed her reputation for learning to foreign priests, since she is said to have been fluent in French and Irish as well as Danish.119 saint is as much spoken about as written in books. In his Life of Æthelburg (which, like the Vita sanctae Wulfhildae, was dedicated to Maurice, bishop of London), as well as in his long and short accounts of the translation of Æthelburg, Hildelith, and Wulfhild (Colker, pp. 398– 452), Goscelin states that he is writing at the request of Abbess Ælfgifu; there is no comparable statement in his Vita sanctae Wulfhildae. 114

See further ‘Edith as Contemplative’, pp. 291–306. For Wulfhild as the teacher of Leofflæd and Wulfruna-Judith, see Vita sanctae Wulfhildae, Prefatio, and chap. 15 (pp. 418, 435). 115

‘Sic apum ac formicarum studio feruebant in edificio celestis Ierusalem examina uirginum, et ut cristiane Amazones ad diuinum exercabantur prelium’. Vita Edithae, chap. 9 (p. 59); compare Aldhelm’s De virginitate, chaps 2–6. 116

Translatio Edithae, chaps 3–4.

117

Edith was born 1020x1030; her marriage to Edward took place in 1045. She is said to have entered Wilton in her childhood; Life of King Edward, I. 2 (p. 22). 118 Translatio Edithae, chap. 16 (p. 292); Vita Edithae, chap. 26. Benna had returned to Trier by 993; Ortenberg, pp. 79–80. 119

Barlow, p. lxvi, doubts Edith’s knowledge of Irish, and considers fluency in French plausible after her marriage; but the introduction into England of Norman clerics by Queen Emma at the time of her marriage to Æthelred is not unlikely. Stafford, p. 111, finds some

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The eulogy of Edith in the Life of Edward the Confessor commissioned by her has been lost, but as transmitted by Richard of Cirencester, it reads: This exquisite young woman was from infancy immersed in the study of letters in the monastery at Wilton, and, it was reported, shone not only in letters but also in handicraft and the integrity of all her behaviour. […] She diligently read religious and secular books, and she herself excelled in the writing of prose and verse. In the arts of painting and needlework she was, as they say, another Minerva. She could speak the general language used in Gaul, as well as Danish and Irish, as though they were her mother tongues; and in all these she attained not merely an average standard but 120 perfection.

That Queen Edith is celebrated as a prodigy, whereas St Edith is not, may tell us nothing about the actual qualitative difference in their accomplishments, but like St Edith, her queenly namesake is eulogised for the variety of her literary and artistic accomplishments. Also reminiscent of Goscelin’s portrait of St Edith are the robes that Queen Edith embroidered for her earthly husband, which were adorned at the top with gold in the English style, and studded with gems and pearls, so that he was arrayed even more gloriously than Solomon.121 There is too much difference in the specific detail to encourage the view that Queen Edith’s reputation for literary and artistic accomplishments rested on a mere act of literary borrowing from the Legend of Edith; nor is there reason to suspect that Queen Edith was incapable of reading the Latin work she commissioned. Her reputation for learning is independently confirmed, in a manner of speaking, by William of Malmesbury (who describes her as ‘a woman in whose bosom there was a school of all the liberal arts, though she had a bad judgement in worldly matters; when you saw her, if you were astonished by her learning you would at the same time feel a certain lack of intellectual humility and of personal beauty’).122 She is, in addition, almost certainly the ‘most learned Queen Eadgyth’ referred to by the author of the Life of Kenelm, who, he says, had basis for considering that Emma arrived in 1002 with a French contingent. 120

‘Hec uero uirgo elegantissima a tempore infancie studiis literarum in monasterio Wiltunensi inbuebatur, et tam literis quam uniuersa morum honestate ac arte manuum illustris habebatur. […] Lectione diuina uel seculari sedula, ipsa per se prose uel uersu eximia, pictura et opera altera, ut aiunt, Minerua. Locqui uniuersa Gallorum lingua uel Danorum uel Hibernensium eque docta, acsi eisdem fuisset innata. Et in his omnibus non ad mediocritatem sed pollebat ad perfectionem’. Life of King Edward, I. 2 (p. 22). 121 122

Life of King Edward, I. 2 (p. 24); compare Vita Edithae, chap. 11 (p. 69).

‘Feminam in cuius pectore omnium liberalium artium esset gimnasium sed prauum in mundanis rebus ingenium; quam cum uideres, si litteras stuperes, modestiam certe animi et spetiem corporis desiderares’. Gesta Regum Anglorum, II. 197 (p. 352). Compare the epigram of Godfrey, prior of Winchester (1104x1107), in which he commemorates Edith after her death: ‘You teach the stars, measuring, arithmetic, the art of the lyre,/ The ways of learning and grammar,/ An understanding of rhetoric allowed you to pour out speeches’. Trans. by Barlow, The Godwins, pp. 115–16.

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drawn his attention to documents which she said she had herself read, although these documents might have been in the vernacular.123 For Queen Edith to have deliberately modelled herself on her saintly namesake’s reputation for literary accomplishment and expensive artistic expression would have been apt. St Edith was, after all, also a secular member of the community, and might also have become a queen, even though she was exemplary, from an ecclesiastical point of view, in refusing an offer of marriage that was in keeping with her royal status. That Queen Edith chose to express her gratitude for her education at Wilton by engaging in a building project reminiscent of St Edith’s was clearly a deliberate attempt to associate herself with her husband’s sainted aunt.124 What we may infer from the coincidence of these portraits is that Edith Godwinson was educated at Wilton in the same mould as her saintly namesake (with the plausible addition of secular literature),125 and, moreover, that we are witnessing a stage in a process that began when Bishop Æthelwold elevated Edgar’s wife, Ælfthryth, to the role of a Marian partner in Edgar’s Christ-like rule, and accorded her oversight of the nunneries.126 The role was not dissimilar to the one exercised in the early period by some of the most eminent abbesses in England, who were the partners of bishops and advisors of kings, and by Leoba at the continental mission.127 St Edith, as a frequent visitor at her father’s court, bringing her influence to bear on the governance of the kingdom, and solicited for her favour by foreign diplomats and ecclesiastics, recalls these politically influential and publicly visible abbesses.128 But whereas the double monasteries were actively engaged in forwarding the conversion of England, later female communities were increasingly cut off from the world; their social participation—if Wilton was typical—was largely confined to the provision of elite boarding schools. Ultimately, queens came to fill the niche once occupied by royal abbesses. Ælfthryth managed to make herself unpopular in the nunneries, but does not seem to have otherwise attempted to make anything of the role accorded her by Æthelwold.129 Queen Emma rose to the potential for power and influence offered by the role of earthly counterpart of the Queen of Heaven, though only when her marriage to Cnut gave her a second chance at the English throne. In the portrait of Queen Edith, equipped for queenship by her convent education, Æthelwold’s vision 123

Vita sancti Kenelmi, Prefatio; Love, p. 50. I am in agreement with her in the identification of the queen as the wife of the Confessor, not Matilda (who was also known as Edith), but doubtful of the attribution of this Life to Goscelin prior to 1080 (pp. xc–xci). 124

Life of King Edward, I. 6 (p. 70); Queen Edith is described as the namesake of her husband’s saintly aunt. 125

See above, n. 39.

126

Regularis Concordia, chap. 3 (p. 2).

127

Hollis, pp. 181–82, 271–82.

128

Vita Edithae, chap. 10 (pp. 62, 64–65).

129

See Stafford, ‘Religious Status and Reform’, pp. 24–30.

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of a queen-abbess was fulfilled, just as Edward the Confessor, right down to his hair shirt (and, it was rumoured, his unconsummated marriage), was a more convincing monk-king than Edgar. The ideal of royal womanhood that shapes the portraits of St Edith and the Confessor’s queen echoes in later portraits of romance heroines, although the literary accomplishments of these multi-talented heroines tended to fall out of the picture. William of Malmesbury’s portrait of Queen Matilda in Gesta Regum Anglorum, although recognizably representing an appropriation of monastic practices and ideals, signals a more secular direction to her queenship and her literary interests. Like Queen Edith and Queen Emma before her, Matilda cultivated her public image by commissioning a eulogist to celebrate her most politically useful family connections. Matilda’s chief material advantage, from the point of view of Henry I, was her direct descent from the Anglo-Saxon royal dynasty through her mother, Margaret of Scotland.130 Matilda commissioned a life of her mother (c. 1104x1107), although she also made much of her relationship to Edward the Confessor.131 Margaret herself was notably well-educated, and her opportunities for making use of her learning among the barbarous and heretical Scots were such as few women in Western Europe had had since the conversion. According to Turgot, the author of her Life and formerly her chaplain, she reformed the Scottish church, conducting learned debates with ecclesiastics at church councils; she was certainly in correspondence with Lanfranc.132 She also civilised the Scottish court, and her superior piety and learning secured her the humble and devoted service of her husband Malcolm. Turgot depicts her as an avid reader and a collector of books. Her favourite book was a gospel lectionary; Turgot was asked to obtain other sacred books for her, and Malcolm had the volumes that she particularly prized richly adorned. Although he was unable to read Margaret’s books, Turgot relates, Malcolm would often leaf through them, and whenever he gathered from the queen that one of them was particularly dear to her, he too considered it as particularly precious, kissing it and often touching it; sometimes he would instruct a goldsmith to adorn that volume with gold and gems, and when it had been ornamented, the king himself used to carry the book to the queen as a token of his devotion.133 Margaret might possibly 130 William of Malmesbury says that she was, although of exalted rank as a great-grandniece of Edward the Confessor, mistress of only a modest fortune; Gesta Regum Anglorum, V. 394 (p. 716). 131

Barlow, pp. 156–57; Matilda was buried at Westminster beside Edward and his queen.

132

Vita Margaretae Scotorum Reginae, II. 10–16 (pp. 165–71). See Letters of Lanfranc, pp. 160–62. Lanfranc (writing in response to a letter received from Margaret about her request for monks for a monastery founded by her at Dunfermline) describes her as regaliter educate (‘educated as befits a queen’). Barratt, p. 55, assumes this refers to Margaret’s upbringing at the court of the Empress Agnes; but Margaret was still very young when her family were summoned to the court of Edward. 133

Vita Margaretae Scotorum Reginae, III. 25 (p. 176). Compare Richard Gameson, ‘The

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have owed all this to the teaching of Queen Edith. She returned to England with her brothers and sister Christina in 1057 at the invitation of Edward the Confessor, and Richard of Cirencester says that Queen Edith ‘reared, educated, adorned and showered with motherly love those boys (children?) who were said to be of royal stock’.134 But Margaret’s education at Wilton seems likely, given Queen Edith’s connections with it. Her outstanding and well-attested piety, and her desire to live as a virgin, said to have been the reason for her reluctance to marry Malcolm, certainly suggest a convent upbringing.135 Like St Edith as represented by Goscelin, bringing her influence to bear on Edgar at his court, while at the same time, despite her royal finery, devoting herself to the sick and destitute and kissing the feet of lepers, Margaret transferred the monastic pursuit of perfection to a royal setting, the hair shirt beneath the royal robes emblematising her engagement in acts of mercy and ascetic self-abasement amid the luxury and splendour with which she surrounded herself.136 So did her daughter, according to William of Malmesbury, whether modelling herself on her mother as depicted by Turgot, or educated for queenship in the same school—the durability of the ideal has in some measure been made manifest even in our time by Diana, Princess of Wales: Under her royal robes she [Matilda] wore a hair shirt and trod the church floors bare foot in Lent; nor did she shrink from washing the feet of the diseased and handling

Gospels of St Margaret of Scotland: The Literacy of an Eleventh-Century Queen’, in Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence, ed. by Lesley Smith and Jane H. M. Taylor (London: British Library, 1996), pp. 149–71 (pp. 157, 161): ‘It is clear that she owned books, and there can be no doubt that she was literate. Yet it is worth remembering that we know next to nothing about her education; we have little way of knowing how proficient she was at reading, how much time she devoted to it, nor how important a role literacy placed in her life as a whole’. Given the fact that hagiographers and chroniclers show far greater interest in informing their readers of the piety of female subjects than they show in their literacy, learning or scholarship, the fact that Turgot refers three times to Margaret’s books seems to me reason to believe that reading played a significant role in her life. Of this collection there appears to be no remaining trace, except for what is believed to be her favourite Gospel Book, c. 1030x1070, which was ‘probably not produced in any of the better-known centres’ (Gameson, pp. 154–55). 134

Life of King Edward, I. 2 (p. 24): ‘quanto studio pueros, qui ex ipsius regis genere dicebantur, enutrierit, docuerit, ornauerit et omnem maternum affectum in eis effuderit’. 135

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (D), 1067; the entry incorporates a verse on Margaret’s desire to preserve her virginity, which states that she swore she would be no man’s bride. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (D) is thought to have been destined, in its final form, for the Scottish court, in part because of its unique emphasis on the English descent of Margaret of Scotland: see Frank Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1947), p. 681. 136

Vita Edithae, chap. 10; Vita Margaretae Scotorum Reginae, II. 17–25 (pp. 171–77).

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their foul discharging sores, after which she would kiss their hands at length, and set food before them.137

William, having been encouraged to write his history of the English kings at Matilda’s instigation, gives particular prominence to her extensive literary patronage, in which she appears to have anticipated Eleanor of Acquitaine’s sponsorship of secular clerics who sang in praise of ladies, or at any rate of Matilda herself.138 William is not the man to give us an impartial assessment of Matilda’s own literary accomplishments, but we can at least take his word for it that she herself was an author, for even William surely cannot have regarded it as unusual for a woman to read: ‘She had been brought up from her earliest years among the nuns at Wilton and Romsey, and had even exercised her intelligence, though a woman, in literature’.139 Six letters survive written by Matilda to Anselm; she also corresponded with Bishop Hildebert of Le Mans and Pope Pascal II.140

Conclusion That Goscelin claims to have based his Legend of Edith on the oral testimony of the nuns does not signify the absence of a literate culture at Wilton. Like the early Anglo-Saxon period, the late Anglo-Saxon period (to which the second half of the eleventh century properly belongs) presents us with evidence of the existence of literate women, but not a scrap of evidence of their authorship of saints lives or 137

‘Cilitio sub regio cultu conuoluta, nudipes diebus Quadragesimae terebat aecclesiarum limina, nec horrebat pedes lauare morbidorum, ulcera sanie distillantia contrectare, postremo longa manibus oscula protelare, mensam apponere’. Gesta Regum Anglorum, V. 418 (p. 756). Lois L. Huneycutt, ‘The Idea of the Perfect Princess: The Life of Margaret in the Reign of Matilda II (1100–1118)’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 12 (1989), 81–97, regards the Life of Margaret as a deliberately didactic work intended to impart an ideal of queenship, on which Matilda consciously modelled herself. This view does not, however, necessitate the assumption that the portrait of Margaret is pure invention. See now also Lois L. Huneycutt, Matilda of Scotland: A Study in Medieval Queenship (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003), pp. 125– 43. 138

Eight poems written for Matilda or as epitaphs shortly after her death have been identified; see Huneycutt, ‘Perfect Princess’, p. 94. 139 Gesta Regum Anglorum, V. 418 (p. 754): ‘A teneris annis inter sanctimoniales apud Wiltoniam et Rumesium educata, litteris quoque femineum pectus exercuit’. Bell, p. 84, n. 38, offers a less satisfactory translation: ‘foemineum pectus may be translated as “what it means to be a [medieval] woman”’ . 140

See Huneycutt, ‘Perfect Princess’, p. 92, for letters of spiritual counsel written to Matilda; she also notes that Matilda’s own letters cite classical and patristic writings. For a fuller study of Matilda’s literacy and literary patronage, see Huneycutt, Matilda of Scotland, pp. 129–34.

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chronicles, even though Goscelin describes St Edith as an author, and despite the fact that Queen Edith was reputed to excel in the composition of prose and verse.141 Wilton overcame the isolation from the mainstream of monastic learning that generally attended the enclosure of female communities at least in part because it was the educator of royal and aristocratic women who might—or might not—be required to make an advantageous marriage. Prior to the Conquest, its royal connections enabled it to enhance its own traditions of learning by the employment of continental scholars as chaplains, both in the time of Wulfthryth and when Edith Godwinson was resident (between c. 1030 and 1045). There is reason to believe that several other of the nunneries endowed by the Wessex royal family had monastic schools. Barking, and its sister house at Horton, had a Wilton educated teacher in Wulfhild, and the survival of a glossed twelfth-century Latin manuscript testifies to the continuity of a tradition of learning there.142 The tenth-century glossed Psalter now assigned to Shaftesbury is not thought to evince a high standard of Latin; nor is the early eleventh-century Galba Prayerbook, generally assigned to Nunnaminster (which Muir describes as possibly a school-book from a monastery where both men and women were being taught)—but learners of Latin and readers who require a gloss are by definition not fluent in the language.143 What university would want the overall standard of education it offers assessed on the basis of annotations in library books? These nunneries too might have functioned as elite boarding schools, but, if 141 Life of King Edward, I. 2 (p. 22). On the absence of a written life of Edith prior to the Wilton community’s commissioning of Goscelin, see above, ‘St Edith and the Wilton Community’, pp. 276–80. 142 See above, n. 112. In the late eleventh century, an anonymous Barking nun translated Aelred of Rievaulx’s Life of Edward the Confessor from Latin into Anglo-Norman verse; in the same period, Clemence of Barking wrote a Life of St Catherine of Alexandria in Norman French. In the early thirteenth century, a Latin Life of Æthelthryth was translated into French by an anonymous woman. See M. Dominica Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 60–66, 264–66. 143

A Pre-Conquest English Prayer-Book (BL MSS Cotton Galba A.xiv and Nero A.ii (ff. 3– 13)), ed. by Bernard James Muir, HBS, 103 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1988); The Salisbury Psalter, ed. by Celia Sisam and Kenneth Sisam, EETS, 242 (London: Oxford University Press, 1959). An early twelfth-century Latin manuscript from Nunnaminster, containing the Diadema monachorum of Smaragdus and a collection of pseudo-Augustinian sermons, was written by a female scribe; see P. R. Robinson, ‘A Twelfth Century Scriptrix from Nunnaminster’, in Of the Making of Books: Medieval Manuscripts, Their Scribes and Readers, ed. by P. R. Robinson and Rivkah Zim (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1997), pp. 73–93. Nunnaminster was probably founded by Alfred’s wife Ealhswith, thought to have been the owner of the Book of Nunnaminster. Two twelfth-century Latin Psalters owned by Shaftesbury survive; Bell, pp. 165–66. As the possessor of the relics of Edward the Martyr, Shaftesbury (founded by Alfred’s daughter Æthelgifu) may have commissioned the Passio attributed to Goscelin: Edward, King and Martyr, ed. by Christine Fell, Leeds Texts and Monographs, n.s. 3 (Leeds: Leeds University Press, 1971).

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Wilton was not unique in this respect, it does appear to have been pre-eminent in the social status of the women educated there, and perhaps also in the standard of education (and good breeding) it provided. Owing to the near-destruction of its library, testimony to Wilton as a centre of learning is found, outside Goscelin’s works, only in the literary patronage of queens. This does, however, appear to be an accurate reflection of a significant and long-standing aspect of education at Wilton. That it is queens rather than abbesses and their communities who are the publicly influential and visible exemplars of female learning (as well as piety and virtue), eulogised for their accomplishments by virtue of their assumption of the role of literary patrons, also reflects the implementation of Bishop Æthelwold’s promotion of the wife of the king as the Marian counterpart of his Christ-like reign.144 Given the ambiguous status of many of the women resident at Wilton, neither entirely secular nor wholly religious until they either married or died without having done so, it seems reasonable to assume that the accomplishments of Queen Edith and those of Queen Matilda, some fifty years later, typified the opportunities open to all high-born women at Wilton. Had Edith Godwinson been ten years older at the time of Edward’s accession, she might have ended her days unsung as the abbess of Wilton. Without the permission of Anselm, so too might Matilda. Abbess Godiva, who commissioned the Legend of Edith, was a member of the Wilton community during the years that Edith Godwinson was educated there; so too perhaps was Eve’s magistra. Notwithstanding its reliance on royal and aristocratic patronage, Wilton’s tradition of learning survived the destruction of the Anglo-Saxon ruling class. At the turn of the twelfth century, it is thought, the renowned Angers poet, Muriel, was at Wilton.145 It also appears to have been the only English house capable of providing verses for the mortuary roll of Abbot Vitalis of Savigny (1122–23).146 This may be attributed to the survival of an educational tradition that was established during the life of St Edith, and transmitted from the time of Edith Godwinson by long-lived 144

See Stafford, pp. 165–85. She points out that the position of queens was significantly enhanced by bishops’ support for their consecration, and by the development of primogeniture. 145

Tatlock, pp. 317–21. So far as is known, none of Muriel’s poetry has survived. Bell, p. 67, n. 74, concludes that ‘those who esteemed her work, such as Serlo and Baudri of Bourgeuil, indicate that she was writing in Latin’; by the end of the thirteenth century, the Benedictine Rule had to be translated into French so that the nuns could understand it better. Muriel was reported in the early twelfth century by Herman of Tournai to have been buried at Wilton next to the grave of Bede. The Venerable Bede was not buried at Wilton, but neither this nor the fact that Muriel does not appear in the list of members of the community in the death roll of Vital of Savigny rules out her residency at Wilton (as well as at Angers), particularly as, if Herman was right, she was dead before this list was made. Compare Signora, p. 200. 146

See Barlow, Life of King Edward, p. 137, n. 34.

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members of the community such as Godiva; to judge from William’s depiction of Matilda, there was less encouragement to artistic talent by the late eleventh century, but a more pronounced leaning to secular literature. Did Goscelin, for all the high value he placed on learning as a means to know God and his inclusive view of salvation, contribute nothing to the educational tradition of Wilton except as the teacher of Eve—in whom another learned abbess was lost to Wilton? Matilda arrived too late to do more than benefit, if at all, from the legacy left by Goscelin. Margaret of Scotland’s residency in England (1057–69) did coincide with Goscelin’s presence at Wilton, and were it certain that Wilton was her alma mater, we might speculate that she, no less than Eve, was responsible for Herman bringing Goscelin to Wilton; Margaret clearly merited an education fit for a princess, her family having originally been invited to Edward’s court when it appeared that he would die without heirs. Gunhild Godwinson was at Wilton for almost the whole of the period that Goscelin visited Eve there. Her replies to Anselm’s letters do not survive, but Anselm, who had spoken with her, assumed that she could read and write, and rather well it seems, since Anselm describes her replies as ‘the sweetest letters’.147 Whether she owed her epistolary accomplishments to Goscelin or to the magistra who taught Eve, Gunhild is the closest we can approach to an educated woman at Wilton who was (by 1069) neither destined for marriage in the highest echelons by virtue of her family connections nor aspiring to great spiritual heights.148

147 148

Anselmi Opera Omnia, Letter 169 (p. 47): dulcissimas litteras.

The account of Archbishop Wulfstan II’s miraculous healing of an affliction of the eyes suffered by Gunhild, found in William of Malmesbury’s Life, suggests that Gunhild did not occupy a high position within the Wilton community; she was not among the nuns who were sitting talking with the archbishop, but was summoned at his request when her affliction was mentioned. Vita Wulfstani, II. 11, in Saint’s Lives: Lives of SS Wulfstan, Dunstan, Patrick, Benignus and Indract, ed. by M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), pp. 3–155 (pp. 80–82).

Part 4 The Liber confortatorius: The Writer and the Reader

KATERN 12

Spiritual Friendship and Gender Difference in the Liber confortatorius REBECCA HAYWARD

P

erhaps inevitably, the tone of Goscelin’s Liber confortatorius has aroused unease among its commentators in the twentieth century, who have been swift to place it into contexts that lessen what they have seen as its disquieting potential.1 I trace here the evidence for this discomfort in previous discussions, which reveals the assumptions upon which critics have based their interpretation of the text. In comparing the Liber with other writings from the period, particularly letters, I outline the alternative contexts within which it can be understood, drawing on recent work on the articulation of love and friendship in this period. First and foremost among scholars who have written on the Liber is André Wilmart, who published two articles, one on Eve and Hervé in 1934, the other on Eve and Goscelin in 1938.2 In the latter article, Wilmart confines his comment on the emotions expressed in the text to a footnote. He writes: ‘Even if there is some excess in the expression, from time to time […], we would be very wrong to find scandal there; we must remember rather that from this time an arm of the sea separated these two souls’.3 Wilmart combines a desire not to sensationalise the work, little-known at the time that he published his article, with a sense that the language is excessive, but does not attempt to account for why this should be so. However, in his conclusion, he does go so far as to describe Goscelin and Eve in the following terms:

1

Thanks to Stephanie Hollis and Bill Barnes for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this material. 2 3

Wilmart, ‘Ève et Goscelin [I]’, pp. 414–38; ‘Ève et Goscelin [II]’, pp. 42–83.

‘Même s’il y a quelque excès dans l’expression, de fois à autre […], nous aurions grand tort d’y trouver scandale; songeons plutôt qu’un bras de mer séparait désormais ces deux âmes’ (p. 60, n. 1, my translation).

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These holy souls, in thrall to the ideal, who nonetheless had human passions, live again to our eyes in the penumbra, through the pages of the little work that a wounded 4 affection tore from the heart of Goscelin [...].

The first editor of the Liber confortatorius, C. H. Talbot, seems to have been relatively untroubled by its tone. In his introduction, he characterises Eve in terms suggestive of a wilful adolescent, saying that: ‘She took it into her head to leave the convent and seek a life of solitude abroad’. He describes Goscelin’s purpose in writing the Liber as to give Eve comfort and strength in her new enterprise, but observes that the first part of the work is taken up with his expression of sorrow at losing her companionship and not having been consulted when she took the decision. He continues: ‘As a result, there is a kind of inner tumult discernible in the early part of the book, and a definite plan does not emerge until his emotions have quietened down and he is able to take a more detached and spiritual view of the whole matter’.5 If Eve is presented as impulsive and adolescent, this seems to give some kind of justification for Goscelin’s reaction, and he can be portrayed as more considered and mature by contrast. For Talbot, then, Goscelin is emotionally engaged but is able to distance himself and offer spiritual counsels: Talbot does not raise the possibility of a sexual element to the relationship. Frank Barlow’s opinion is that Eve ‘had been thoroughly spoilt’, seemingly by the attention Goscelin describes her as receiving from Bishop Herman and the permission she had to attend the two church dedications.6 Barlow is the first to problematise the relationship between Goscelin and Eve: Although he was, perhaps, thirty years older than Eve, and her spiritual father, the existence of a warm human relationship cannot be doubted. There are signs of emotional troubles on both sides; and Eve’s secret escape to Angers after avoiding a meeting, and Goscelin’s impassioned words in his Liber confortatorius, suggest a 7 friendship which, although probably innocent, was nevertheless dangerous.

There is no evidence in the text that Eve avoided meeting Goscelin before her departure: she left after he was banished from the diocese, so a meeting would not have been possible.8 Barlow’s description of Eve’s ‘secret escape to Angers’

4

‘Ces saintes âmes, éprises d’idéal, et qui n’avaient pas moins des passions humaines, revivent à nos yeux dans la pénombre, à travers les pages de l’opuscule qu’une affection blessée arracha au coeur de Goscelin’ (p. 83, my translation). 5

Talbot, pp. 22–23.

6

Barlow, Life of King Edward, p. 138. Barlow’s observations appeared in the first edition of this work (1962). 7 8

Barlow, pp. 138–39.

See Liber confort., p. 29, where Goscelin says that, while he was eager to go to her, she departed beyond calling back.

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borrows from Goscelin’s own rhetoric surrounding her departure.9 In fact, it is more probable that her departure was no secret to others, but was arranged in advance through the well-established networks either of the convent or of the episcopate.10 Later in his discussion, Barlow advances the opinion that ‘In his love for Eve [Goscelin] toppled on the brink of spiritual disaster’.11 For Barlow, then, Goscelin’s rhetoric appears to indicate a potential spiritual crisis caused by an overly close attachment that had already caused Eve to avoid and then run away from him. Thomas Hamilton, in his 1973 PhD thesis on Goscelin, argues that Barlow’s opinion that the relationship brought Goscelin to near disaster ‘seems too harsh’, and reverts to Wilmart’s reassurances.12 Allowing that ‘Goscelin is guilty of a certain excess in the manner in which he expresses his sentiments’, he offers alternative explanations for the emotional tone of the work: Goscelin’s expulsion from the diocese of Sherborne and the suddenness of Eve’s departure for Angers; and Goscelin’s subsequent feelings of bitterness, anxiety about his future, and disappointment over Eve’s lack of communication with him before her departure.13 Hamilton summarises their connection as ‘a warm personal relationship, free from any hint of scandal, which reflected Goscelin’s deep appreciation for the spiritual capabilities of women’.14 Commentators before the 1980s, then, were concerned with whether the relationship should be read as one that had a ‘dangerous’ element, namely a romantic or sexual one. More recent scholars have also wondered whether there was potential or actual scandal in Goscelin’s dealings with Eve, but they have also changed the focus of the debate to ask how his work relates to the history of spiritual friendship between men and women in the monastic context. Brian Patrick McGuire offers two possible explanations for the tone of the Liber. He says that ‘The violence of Goscelin’s emotions in the early part of the Liber may indicate that he had been in love with Eve’. As an alternative, he suggests that Goscelin, as a ‘surrogate father’, may have been disappointed that Eve left without consulting him despite the length of their association.15 McGuire continues the tendency of earlier scholars to emphasise their association as that of a spiritual father and daughter, based on Goscelin’s own description of it.16 Specifically, McGuire offers this as an 9

See Liber confort., pp. 29–30.

10

See Hollis, ‘Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women’, pp. 221, 228, 232, n. 85.

11

Barlow, p. 145.

12

Hamilton, I, 166.

13

Hamilton, I, 166.

14

Hamilton, I, 167. Hamilton follows Barlow in believing that Eve avoided a meeting with Goscelin before her departure. 15

McGuire, p. 201.

16

Liber confort., pp. 30, 34.

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interpretation that neutralises the threat of a potentially sexualised relationship between them. Although McGuire’s main concern is that Goscelin should be read as an example of a monastic writer who demonstrates the increased value being placed on human relations generally in spiritual experience, and the potential importance of friendship between women and men in the religious life, he does observe Goscelin’s focus on his physical being by describing his language as possessing a ‘bloodless eroticism’.17 This curious phrase is, however, not especially helpful in discerning the precise nature of Goscelin’s descriptions of the physical manifestations of his emotions. McGuire’s lead has been followed by Irene van Rossum and Mark Williams. Van Rossum, in her 1999 doctoral thesis, sets the text in relation to other examples of spiritual friendship, such as Jerome’s letters to women and Anselm’s correspondence with men and women. Her premise is that ‘Goscelin seems to take the innocence and purity of his relationship with Eve for granted’. She notes the indication in the Prologue that Goscelin was aware that others might be suspicious of his relationship with Eve but stresses that he says nothing about this in the body of the text: ‘It is clear in his mind that they have nothing to worry about. Their love is firmly based in Christ and Christ is a fundamental part of it. It could therefore not be anything but pure’.18 Van Rossum goes on to argue that Goscelin’s work reveals a consciousness that their attachment had relied too much on worldly happiness. She posits a reading of the Liber in which Goscelin displays the tumultuous state of his feelings as a stage in the process of the eventual resolution of his distress: ‘At this early stage of writing, Goscelin is obviously in a state of emotional turmoil in which rhetoric and the expression of actual feelings become hopelessly confused’.19 However, she believes that Goscelin is not left in this state of despair: ‘To sum up Book I, then, Goscelin moves from a state of intense grief over their physical separation to the acknowledgement of the sublime nature of spiritual love’.20 Later in her argument, van Rossum gives the opinion that the writing of the book had a cathartic effect on Goscelin.21 She offers thus a model of reading the work whereby the text is a reflection of Goscelin’s progress in coming to terms with the trauma caused by Eve’s departure.22 In spite of her initial assertion about Goscelin’s conviction of the purity of his relationship with Eve, van Rossum obviously felt the need to consider whether there might be more to the relationship than is revealed to the reader of the Liber, but she 17

McGuire, p. 202.

18

Van Rossum, p. 94.

19

Van Rossum, p. 96.

20

Van Rossum, p. 116.

21

Van Rossum, p. 181.

22

For further comment on van Rossum’s argument here, see my essay, ‘The Liber Confortatorius: Complaints and Consolations’, p. 365.

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concludes that there is no detail provided by Goscelin to cause us to think that the relationship went beyond a spiritual one, and little reason to suspect that there was anything more to it than that.23 However, van Rossum returns to the issue in her conclusion, when discussing Eve’s decision to go to Angers: It might even be tempting to read into Goscelin’s passionate expressions of grief and his insistence on the charity of forgiveness, that there had been a sexual relationship between them, or at least an attempt to have one. There are however no explicit 24 indications within the text that support this.

Van Rossum, then, follows the path of earlier scholars in raising the possibility of a romantic or sexual element to Goscelin and Eve’s relationship, only to reject it or to pronounce the evidence insufficient to make a judgement. In a lecture given at the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library in 2000, and subsequently published on the Internet, Mark Williams considers Barlow’s concern at the nature of the relationship, and Wilmart’s understanding of it as ‘more conventional and less threatening’.25 He characterises Hamilton as ‘cautious’26 and says that he does not account sufficiently for the emotional intensity with which Goscelin expresses himself;27 he also takes a critical view of McGuire’s readiness to assume the possibility of a love relationship.28 Williams then makes a most useful connection in observing that the Liber can be read as an example of what Stephen Jaeger defines as ‘ennobling love’ in his book of that name.29 The aspects of Jaeger’s thesis of ennobling love that Williams identifies as relevant for an understanding of Goscelin’s work are that it is a love that exists primarily in the public sphere, as a means of aristocratic self-expression, whereby virtus is recognised in the beloved as well as claimed for the one who loves. Such love is seen not only in aristocratic circles but also in monastic and educational settings. Williams suggests that Goscelin situates his relationship with Eve ‘in the constellation of differing amicitiae and caritates available to a monastic writer of the late eleventh century’.30 He observes that Goscelin is located within the spiritual and intellectual environment that was to give rise to the culture of strong friendships 23

Van Rossum, p. 210.

24

Van Rossum, p. 216.

25

Mark F. Williams, ‘Monastic Love or Just a Friendship? Reading the Liber confortatorius of Goscelin of St. Bertin’, ‹http://www.hmml.org/events/williams_lecture_.htm› [accessed 4 July 2001] (p. 2). 26

Williams, p. 2.

27

Williams, p. 3.

28

Williams, p. 3.

29

Williams, p. 3; C. Stephen Jaeger, Ennobling Love: In Search of a Lost Sensibility (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1999). 30

Williams, p. 4.

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based on personal emotion, and notes particularly the tensions between traditional monasticism, which was suspicious of particular friendships, and the emotional understanding of friendship and ennobling love derived from Cicero and Carolingian writers. He makes the point that gender is a complicating factor in Goscelin’s composition of the Liber, despite the tradition of affectionate letters of ennobling love exchanged between male and female religious.31 Williams then discusses how the Liber itself can be seen within this context, and expresses Goscelin’s main purposes in writing the work: First, he had to express to Eve several related but conflicting affective states: his good faith as both friend and spiritual advisor, disappointment at her abrupt departure for the continent, reassurance that his disappointment was justly founded and well motivated, and finally his desire to continue the relationship, albeit at a great 32 distance.

Williams argues that Goscelin had to take account of anyone else who read the Liber confortatorius and reassure them that his affection for Eve was noble rather than scandalous and corrupt. He writes: The Liber confortatorius is more than anything else a public document. If there was anything more scandalous than ennobling love between Goscelin and Eve, an unscrupulous Goscelin may have used the LC to camouflage rather than to advertise 33 the true nature of his attachment to Eve.

A fuller consideration of Jaeger’s discussion reveals that a further development of his thesis can be applied to Goscelin’s text. Jaeger makes the point that ennobling love is expressed in public discourse, using as his primary example the affection of kings for one another and that between kings and their courtiers, which he observes can be presented in public documents in terms that seem startlingly sensual to the modern reader. Yet, he argues, although such love can be seen as a public posture, for example when a courtier is hoping for promotion or other favour from the king, that does not rule out the possibility of it being reflected in personal experience; it is simply that personal experience is shielded from the reader, rather than revealed. Jaeger observes that a modern reader frequently has the expectation that when a text is openly expressive of sexual or sensual feeling, a revelation of personal feeling is made.34 To this extent Williams is correct to state that the Liber is a public document. Yet it is a document where we seem to see a set of negotiations precisely between the public and private spheres, through the rhetorical strategies employed by Goscelin. The element of the text that reveals this peculiar cross-over effect between public and private is, predictably, gender. Goscelin himself reveals that he 31

Williams, p. 4.

32

Williams, p. 4.

33

Williams, p. 4.

34

Jaeger, pp. 14–20.

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is conscious that because he is writing to a woman in these terms of ennobling love, others may misconstrue his discourse as shameful, and thus he must adhere to representations which reinforce probity, as Williams suggests. Many of the commentators discussed in this essay so far have received the impression that sexual feeling is at least potentially present in Goscelin’s address to Eve: that sexuality is an issue in the text. All of them have concluded either that there is no evidence that there was a sexual relationship between Goscelin and Eve, or that it seems unlikely that the text is a record of such a relationship. What element in the text accounts for both the need to discuss this question and the subsequent conviction that the text as it stands probably does not allude to a sexual relationship? Two factors appear to be relevant here: the open and unabashed tone of Goscelin’s emotional protestations, and his willingness to describe the physical impact of his feelings for Eve upon him. To modern readers, both these things, in the context of a man writing to a woman who is not related to him, suggest the revelation of erotic feeling. Yet both fit within the parameters of the portrayal of ennobling love, as outlined by Jaeger. Such love is public, therefore open expressions of affection and longing for the beloved’s presence are acceptable without necessarily implying a sexual tone to the relationship. And Jaeger points to the physicality of the terms in which ennobling love is often expressed, observing that the very conjuring up of the erotic through the physical can coexist with the ideal of chastity and enhance it, because of the discipline required to keep such forces in check. In Goscelin’s case, the description of his physical sensations does not even seem to allude to the erotic. In one important example, when he is struck by emotion at the time of Eve’s dedication,35 she is a child, and the rhetoric suggests a physical manifestation of religious rather than erotic feeling. In another, when he talks about the ‘sighs’, ‘weaknesses’ and ‘sick expectations’ that he experienced as he lamented the absence of her ‘longed-for’ soul when he was prevented from visiting her,36 the gratification is again presented as spiritual, and while this can be read, following Freud, as sublimation of erotic feeling, in Goscelin’s own context it may have been written and read as testimony to the power of their joint religious fervour, to the point that it permeated the physical body. His copious tears, which make him pause, he says, in the very composition of the book, similarly can and should be read as an expression of affectionate Christian love rather than erotic feeling. Goscelin, then, does not draw on Ovid’s texts on love as a way of representing the close friendship of men and women in a religious context in the manner of other 35

Liber confort., p. 28; ‘altius uiscera me percussere’; ‘I was struck more deeply in my heart’. 36

Liber confort., p. 29; ‘quos gemitus, quos defectus, quam egras expectationes […] quam inaccessibilem desiderantissime anime caritatem planxerim’; ‘the sighs, the weaknesses, the sick expectations [...] the love of your longed-for soul when I could not reach it, that I lamented’.

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eleventh-century writers who celebrate chaste friendships with women, such as Baudri of Bourgeuil. It is rather the sense of longing for Eve’s presence that is expressed in the book in physical terms. There is plenty of precedent for this in monastic writings on friendship, yet most writers in that tradition seem to emphasise the value of spiritual presence for friends who have been parted and to find it more consoling than Goscelin does. Clearly, Goscelin felt a sense of betrayal not merely because of Eve’s departure but also because she did not tell him she was leaving. His sense of dissatisfaction with the ideal of spiritual friendship, then, may be because of his feeling that there was a breach in what he perceived as the former harmony of their friendship. Goscelin’s problem in presenting his feelings in physical terms was particularly acute because he chose to adapt such conventional language to his friendship with a woman, although he was not the first to do so. To fully understand the Liber confortatorius in this light, then, we must compare it with other texts that can be considered as part of the culture of ennobling friendship, or that develop it in a different direction. Jaeger stresses the way in which patristic and medieval writers drew on Cicero’s Laelius: On Friendship for their understanding of friendship, and that this then fed into the development of ennobling love.37 Williams traces particularly Goscelin’s use of medieval commonplaces of friendship that can be taken back to Cicero, such as the idea that an absent friend can be present in the mind of one who longs for him or her, and the idea that the heart burns with spiritual love for a true friend who is absent.38 To this we can add Cicero’s emphasis that friends can be joined as one: ‘man […] both loves himself and looks for another whose mind he may, so to speak, mingle with his own so as to turn the two into one’.39 This idea of the joining of two into one became a commonplace for Christian writers on friendship; Goscelin may have known it directly from Cicero’s treatise on friendship, or it may have been transmitted to him through the church fathers.40 Christian authors also had Acts 4. 32 to relate to this context, where believers are said to share one heart and one soul (cor unum et anima una). However, Goscelin’s impatience to be joined with Eve in any way that he can is far removed from the calm acceptance and fortitude that Cicero’s Laelius displays 37

Jaeger, pp. 29–32.

38

Williams, pp. 5-6.

39

‘Et se ipse diligit, et alterum anquirit cuius animum ita cum suo misceat ut efficiat paene unum ex duobus’. Cicero: On Friendship and the Dream of Scipio, ed. and trans. by J. G. F. Powell (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1990), pp. 64–65. 40 Jaeger, p. 31. See also James McEvoy, ‘The Theory of Friendship in the Latin Middle Ages: Hermeneutics, Contextualization and the Transmission and Reception of Ancient Texts and Ideas, from c. AD 350 to c. 1500’, in Friendship in Medieval Europe, ed. by Julian Haseldine (Stroud: Sutton, 1999), pp. 3–44; Carolinne White, Christian Friendship in the Fourth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 31–32.

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in his bereavement at his friend Scipio’s death, perhaps because of the lack of resolution that Goscelin seems to experience about the nature of Eve’s departure throughout the text. Goscelin’s dependence on the rich tradition of patristic and medieval monastic letters exchanged between friends has been noted by McGuire, van Rossum and Williams.41 Usually they were addressed by men to other men, but there is a small but significant body of material addressed by men to women, by Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine, for example. Letters at this time were not primarily conceived of as private documents, but were written on the understanding that they would also circulate in public, or at least among a group of friends or a community. As Christian thinkers fused classical ideas about friendship with the new emotional climate of Christian doctrine, the idea of friendship as ennobling love developed, particularly in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Friendship was seen as a tool for enhancing Christian vocation. The influence of Jerome’s letters to women is most marked upon the Liber confortatorius, as Goscelin quotes from the only letter in the collection attributed to Paula and Eustochium (insisting, meanwhile, that Jerome is likely to have had a hand in its composition)42 and possibly also from other letters. Letter 22: To Eustochium is an important source for Goscelin, offering as it did an example of a male religious teacher writing to a young woman to exhort her to chastity and a strict form of life. Its influence can be seen particularly in Book III, where Goscelin concerns himself briefly with the practicalities of Eve’s daily life.43 In Letter 65: To Principia, Jerome reveals that he has been criticised for writing to women and defends himself for doing so by praising them.44 This would have offered Goscelin an example of a male writer justifying his closeness to women and presenting it in a very positive light. What we see in Jerome’s letters to women, however, as with those of Augustine and Ambrose, is extensive use of kinship terminology. The friendships with women are shown to be spiritual kinship, a replacement of the traditional bonds of kinship, and thus the women are addressed as sisters and daughters of the men who write to them. In this way, any suggestion of scandal is diminished, and the context of the friendship is justified by being placed within the ‘family’ of Christ. In some cases, the church fathers wrote to women but did not spend time with them. However, Jerome is an exception to this, as he did have warm friendships with women whom he knew well. The status of the church fathers as well-known scholars and clergy also increased the respectability of their friendships with women. The tradition of writing affectionate letters to friends, including women, was maintained by writers such as Boniface and Alcuin in the eighth century. Anglo41

McGuire, pp. 201–04; van Rossum, pp. 67–99; Williams, p. 4.

42

Liber confort., pp. 31–32, 35.

43

PL 22, 394–425; Liber confort., p. 80. See Roy, pp. 114–15; van Rossum, pp. 109–10.

44

PL 22, 622–39 (622–24).

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Saxon nuns such as Leoba wrote in very affectionate terms to Boniface and received similar letters in return.45 Jaeger discusses Alcuin’s letters to men as an important stage in the development of ennobling love,46 and Alcuin did also write to women, although in a less passionate tone.47 In the eleventh century, the affective tone in the letters of writers such as Anselm grew even stronger. Anselm explored the experience of Christian love, playing with the tensions between the love of particular individuals and the general love of all, which participation in the love of God was thought to enflame. The resulting passionate letters of friendship to male correspondents has given rise to the argument that these were part of a culture that had a greater tolerance for homosexual feelings, but this has been refuted by scholars who point instead to the context of the tradition of friendship to account for this warmth.48 Anselm’s correspondence with women has been studied by Sally Vaughn, who concludes that Anselm’s relationships with women were significant influences in his life. She observes that he may have been criticised for maintaining links with women, particularly Countess Ida.49 In addition, she suggests the influence of Jerome’s letters to women upon Anselm’s ideas of the possibility of male and female spiritual friendship.50 Vaughn (who argues for the probability of contact between Anselm and Goscelin) notes the similarity between the opening passage of Book I of the Liber confortatorius, after the Prologue, and the tone of Anselm’s letters.51 An example of Anselm’s use of the motif of a friend as a second self, derived from Cicero and also used by the church fathers, is found in a letter to Lanzo, a novice of Cluny: When I consider, dearest, your desire and mine, by which we long for one another, there is one thing that consoles me about our separation: that by divine clemency I hope for our eternal union in the life to come. I am sure of my own feelings and I have no doubt of yours, that no matter what geographical regions may separate us, yet, out of our two souls charity will make one. Hence it comes about that our souls, present in love to one another, embrace each other, and being absent from one another in life, long for each other. But when the pilgrimage of this life has come to an end, with the help of him towards whom we are travelling and in whom we place our hope, we shall

45

See Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church, pp. 137–50.

46

Jaeger, pp. 43–50.

47

McGuire, pp. 125–26.

48

John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 218–19; Southern, Portrait in a Landscape, pp. 148–60. For an account of the controversy, see Vaughn, pp. 14–18. 49

Vaughn, p. 155.

50

Vaughn, pp. 135, 155.

51

Vaughn, pp. 173–74. Compare Hollis, ‘Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women’, pp. 224, 235, n. 99, 236; ‘Edith as Contemplative’, pp. 284-86; ‘Afterword’, pp. 428-29.

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come together in that homeland towards which we are striving, as it were, by different routes.52

Goscelin writes, seemingly in a very similar way: O soul dearer than light, your Goscelin is with you in inseparable presence of soul. He is with you in that better part of himself with which he could love you, one with you, from which no distance may separate you. He greets you in Christ with eternal greetings. Behold, he has touched us with his hand, and he has determined and allotted all those things with wisdom. Although he has separated us for the time being, he has also given us higher counsels, so that of course we shall pant and hasten to be united in that homeland where we can never ever be separated. The more distance he has put between us physically, the more inseparably at some time he will join together again 53 one soul from two people.

Like Anselm, Goscelin is writing to a junior in the religious life to exhort her to increased fervour and disciplined commitment, with the goal of heaven in view. In this way friendship is seen as a tool for kindling an increased love of God. The argument that Goscelin’s feelings for Eve can be considered to be part of the culture of ennobling love is heightened by his use here of the language of idealised and passionate masculine spiritual friendship to address a woman. Similarly noteworthy is that he does not hedge his address with the kinship terminology so widely applied by other men to their friendships with women. Goscelin addresses Eve as ‘anima mi dulcissima’ (soul sweetest to me), as ‘anima mi’ (my soul) and ‘dulcissima’ (sweetest one). He also speaks to her as ‘o domina mea’ (my lady). Although he describes her as having been a daughter in relation to him as a father, he does not address her as ‘filia’ (daughter), nor does he ever use ‘soror’ (sister), a term common, for example, in the correspondence of Boniface with women in the eighth 52

‘Cum meum et tuum, carissime, desiderium quo nos invicem desideramus considero, unum est quod me de nostra consolatur separatione, quia in futura vita aeternam nostram coniunctionem per divinam spero clementiam. Nam certus sum de mea nec dubito de tua conscientia, quoniam quaelibet nos regionum diversitas distineat, de duabus tamen animabus nostris caritas unam conficiat. Unde fit ut animae nostrae et dilectione praesentes sese amplectantur, et conversatione absentes sese desiderent. Sed consummata huius vitae peregrinatione, illo adiuvante ad quem tendimus et in quo speramus, in patria ad quam suspiramus quasi diversis itineribus conveniemus’. Letter 37 in Anselm, Opera omnia (Schmitt, III, 145). Translation from The Letters of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, trans. by Walter Fröhlich, 3 vols (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1990–94), I, 133. 53

‘O luce dilectior anima, adest tibi Goscelinus tuus, inseparabili anime presentia; adest meliori parte, ea qua te diligere potuit, indiuidua, qua nulla excludant terrarum interstitia; salutat te in Christo salute sempiterna. Ecce tetigit nos manu sua, illa omnia discernens et dispensans sapientia, et ad tempus separans docuit altiora consilia, ut scilicet in illa patria anhelemus et festinemus coniungi, ubi nunquam perpetuo possimus seiungi. Quo autem longius corpore remouit, eo inseparabilius unicam aliquando duorum animam resolidabit’. Liber confort., p. 27.

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century. This represents a bold claim: that their friendship has transcended the gender tensions that caused most male writers to address women in familial terms, and is now one of equals because of Eve’s new calling and new status as a holy woman and a heroic female warrior of Christ. Thus, Goscelin is justified in addressing Eve with the language of ennobling love similar to that used in contexts of male monastic friendship. It is important to maintain the distinction between Goscelin’s text and, on the one hand, the erotically-charged yet chaste texts of friendship of Baudri of Bourgeuil and Marbod of Rennes, who were part of the development of an Ovidian subculture even in the eleventh century,54 and on the other the twelfth-century texts where eros is not transcended but celebrated openly, such as the ‘lost’ love letters attributed to Heloise and Abelard by Constant J. Mews.55 I believe that Goscelin addresses Eve in the terms of spiritual friendship without implying a sexual tone of the kind that Baudri and Marbod court and elaborate on, let alone sexual longing and fulfilment of the kind seen in the twelfth-century love letters. We note the difference of Goscelin’s milieu when we consider, for example, Goscelin’s address to Eve as ‘my soul’. In classical poetry this is a form of erotic address, and this is picked up in the twelfth century, for example in the ‘lost’ love letters, where one of the salutations from the male writer (Abelard, as Mews argues), reads: ‘To his soul, her soul: may we be one in one soul for a long time’.56 However, Goscelin is able to address Eve as ‘anima’ by adapting perhaps two impeccable sources, which thus protect him from the erotic implications of such address. Towards the end of Book I, he says ‘What are we doing, my soul?’ in a paragraph which is addressed to Eve. This may be a quotation of Jerome in Letter 108: To Eustochium, where Jerome, however, is not addressing Eustochium but his own soul, rhetorically.57 Shortly after this, Goscelin quotes from Psalm 114. 7: ‘Therefore, my soul, turn into your rest, because the Lord has been bountiful to you’.58 This is still within the context of a sequence of direct address to Eve. Another example of the chaste spiritual union of a man and a woman can be found in a poem attributed to Prosper of Aquitaine that Goscelin is likely to have known because he quotes from it elsewhere in the Liber confortatorius. It is written by a husband who exhorts his wife 54 See Gerald A. Bond, The Loving Subject: Desire, Eloquence and Power in Romanesque France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), pp. 63–69, 92–93, 170–93; Jaeger, pp. 91–101. 55 See Constant J. Mews, The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999). 56

‘Anime sue, anima eius: in una anima diu unum esse’. Letter 65 in Mews, pp. 244–45. Translation by Neville Chiavaroli and Constant J. Mews. 57 58

Liber confort., pp. 45–46: ‘Quid agimus, anima?’; Letter 108, 27, PL 22 (903).

Liber confort., p. 46: ‘Conuertere ergo, anima mea, in requiem tuam, quia Dominus benefecit tibi’.

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to continence, and ends: ‘So that we should be not only of the same flesh, but also of the one mind, and two should be nourished by the one spirit’.59 Goscelin may have been influenced by such texts celebrating the union of male and female souls in spiritual marriage.60 In this way, although he may seem to be using language similar in style to twelfth-century love letters, he remains within his own tradition of chaste affection between women and men, in particular by manipulating language in a different context. One unusual feature of his use of this tradition is the context of their friendship. Unlike many of the men and women who corresponded as spiritual friends in the Christian tradition, Goscelin and Eve had spent time together: considerable amounts of time, Goscelin implies. In his role as the hagiographer of St Edith, and probably also chaplain to the nuns at some point, he was a frequent visitor to Wilton.61 He says in the Liber confortatorius: We also have had our times. We have seen each other and talked together enough; we have feasted together also and banqueted; we have participated in ceremonies and taken pleasure sufficiently in the mercy of the Lord, if only anything could be enough 62 for love.

The final phrase undercuts what begins as a calm assurance that Goscelin has had a sufficiency of Eve’s physical presence: even for an ennobled Christian lover, nothing is ever enough, and he makes sure she knows it. For him, there is no rhetorical contradiction between desiring her presence and claiming the friendship as a chaste one. Goscelin’s text, then, is poised between the monastic tradition of friendship and the more knowing, Ovidian culture of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, where erotic desire found new forms of expression in chaste and openly sexual relationships. His address to the woman he could not forget is a poignant expression of an ideal that was already experiencing the pressures of history.

59

‘Ut caro non eadem tantum, sed mens quoque nobis/ Una sit, atque duos spiritus unus alat, Poema conjugis ad uxorem: PL 51, 611–16 (616). 60

See Dyan Elliott, Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 67–73. 61 62

See Hollis, ‘Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women’, pp. 219–20, 225–27.

Liber confort., p. 42: ‘Habuimus nos quoque nostra tempora. Satis inuicem uidimus, satis collocuti sumus, conuiuati quoque et epulati, sollemnizati et iocundati satis in misericordia Domini, si modo quicquam satis esse posset caritati’.

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ome time around 1080, Goscelin executed his project of writing a book of ‘encouragement’ or ‘strengthening’ for Eve. 1 Yet he chose not to write in the impersonal style that we might expect of a monk writing for a female recluse, but in a way that draws on their personal circumstances as part of the book’s construction. Goscelin’s purpose is not merely to console her for her losses, but also to express to her the emotional impact of her sudden and unannounced departure on him: not merely to encourage her, but also to reshape their friendship in an eternal form. If there had been no breach in their friendship, Goscelin might have written a more straightforward book to exhort her to succeed in her new vocation, although it is difficult to imagine that he would not have managed to express the feelings of loss that her departure evoked in him even if he had been consulted. Yet it seems that there was a breach, around which Goscelin needed to negotiate if he was to write the book for her at all. This determines the structure of the first book, which occupies a crucial place in the overall plan of the work. It seems that Goscelin felt that his first task was to ensure that she read the book, and his second was to get her, when reading, to accept his consolations. This would mean that he was continuing the role that was obviously so dear to him of being her trusted counsellor and advisor, and would also encourage her to accede to his final request: that she pray for him. If this outcome were to be achieved, Goscelin would have managed to transform a broken spiritual friendship into a mutual relationship of pious exhortation and assistance. He would contribute to her salvation with his encouragements; she to his with her prayers. In this way his superior intellect would find its perfect counterpart in her outstanding sanctity. There can be no doubt that Goscelin understood his capacity for intellectual understanding and hers for exceptional piety in gendered terms: his 1

Thanks to Stephanie Hollis and Bill Barnes for their valuable suggestions on earlier drafts of this material.

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descriptions of them both in the salutation emphasise this. Goscelin is an ‘exclusus’, a man shut out, writing to an ‘inclusa’, a woman shut in. He also describes himself in the salutation as ‘one solitary in the world’ (male) writing to ‘one solitary from the world’ (female). The salutation thus articulates a powerful theme of relational oppositions that runs throughout the book at a deep level. How, then, does Goscelin get around the problem of the breach in their friendship, to work towards this desideratum? Firstly, he interweaves the formal features of a book and a letter, so that she is addressed by him directly, as in a letter, yet he can embellish his exhortations with lengthy examples and quotations, as in a book. Secondly, he asks her to recall to mind their former friendship and its warmth and then mixes his complaints with his consolations, so that he presents his case for a resolution of their differences without the need for any response from her. Thirdly, he reconstructs their roles in the friendship, so that she is portrayed as a spiritual warrior and he as, alternately, a spiritual mother, wounded by Eve’s unkind treatment, and a trumpeter who stirs her to further glory in battle. Blending the conventions of a book and a letter suited Goscelin’s purpose well. It is obvious from the length of the work that he wanted to write something substantial for Eve, perhaps even comprehensive, so that it would be useful to her in her new life. Yet equally obviously he wished to speak to her directly, a desire more easily fulfilled by the generic conventions of the letter. Letters were expected to be short, although there was no hard and fast definition of a letter in the Middle Ages, and terms such as carta, opusculum, libellus and tractatus could be used to describe letters in the eleventh century, in addition to epistola.2 In the twelfth century, St Bernard wrote at the end of one of his works, De praecepto et dispensatione, that his reader could choose whether to call it a letter or a book.3 Goscelin was able to exploit a certain fluidity in the definition of a letter at the time. What did this mean for readers other than Eve? Medieval letters were usually written on the understanding that they would probably circulate beyond the addressee. Giles Constable argues that: ‘In view of the way in which letters were written and sent, and also of the standards of literacy in the Middle Ages, it is doubtful whether there were any private letters in the modern sense of the term’.4 So it is possible that Goscelin had no concept of writing a private letter. Gerald A. Bond offers a different perspective on this point: ‘Facing a double audience—the known and the private […] and the unknown and public—epistolary authors resorted to double systems of meaning. […] This inherent “duplicity” 2

Giles Constable, Letters and Letter-collections, Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental, 17 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1976), p. 25. 3

Constable, p. 19; De praecepto et dispensatione, Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. by J. Leclercq, C. H. Talbot, and H. M. Rochais, 8 vols (Rome: Editiones cistercienses, 1957–77), III (1963), 253–94 (p. 294). 4

Constable, p. 11.

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constitutes a central trait of the medieval letter’.5 There are few clues in the Liber confortatorius as to whether Goscelin hoped that his letter would remain as exclusively personal to Eve as was possible, or whether he was in fact writing intentionally for such a double audience. In the Prologue he makes the following request: If, by chance, this pilgrim letter, which I give to the fickle winds but commend to God, falls into the hands of others, I entreat that it should be returned to her to whom alone it stands destined, and let no one snatch away in advance what is not made for them. It is a private document of two people, sealed with Christ as intermediary, touching first 6 on the duty owed by virginal simplicity and pure affection.

Goscelin’s description of Eve as the one to whom alone the letter stands destined seems to indicate that he would have preferred that only Eve should read the letter, if he had had any way of getting it to her without relying on intermediaries who might well open it and read it. His dispatch of the letter under the invisible seal of Christ reinforces the impression of at least an attempt at privacy. After these comments on privacy, Goscelin directs other readers as to how they should read the work. He seems to accept reluctantly that it is not only likely that people other than Eve will read the letter, it is also possible that they will misunderstand his motives: May hissing calumny, the wicked eye, the artful finger, the impure gossip-monger and cackler be far from our pure whispering. The tale is long and the language is awkward and weak; let him who does not love not read it. Let him instead leave what was not written for him to those to whom it belongs. But whatever happens, I have preferred to be made an object of mockery by the superciliousness of strangers than to neglect 7 what is owed to affection.

5

Bond, p. 48.

6

Liber confort., p. 26: ‘Si forte in alienas manus oberrauerit hec peregrina epistola incertis uentis dimissa, sed Deo commendata, precamur ut ei reddatur cui soli constat destinata, nec preripiat quisquam non sibi parata. Archanum duorum est Christo medio signatum, uirginee simplicitatis et candide dilectionis prelibans officium’. 7

Liber confort., p. 26: ‘Absint a puro susurrio sibilantes insidie, nequam oculus, uafer digitus, uentilator et cachinnator impurus. Longa est fabula, uerba insulsa et eneruia, non diligens non legat, non sibi scripta propriis relinquat. Quicquid tamen euenerit, maluimus alieno supercilio infatuari, quam non satis facere caritati’. There is evidence from the following century that an anchoress was prohibited from receiving letters from monks or clerics: see Aelred of Rievaulx, De institutione inclusarum; La vie de recluse, ed. and trans. by Charles Dumont, Sources chrétiennes, 76 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1961), pp. 58–59. In Ancrene Wisse, the anchoresses are advised not to receive letters at all: Ancrene Wisse, ed. by Robert Hasenfratz (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, 2000), p. 408; trans. by Anne Savage and Nicholas Watson, Anchoritic Spirituality: Ancrene Wisse and Associated Texts (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), p. 204.

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It could be argued that these remarks spring from a conscious attempt on Goscelin’s part to present the Liber confortatorius to a double audience of the kind described by Bond. In this case, Goscelin might have addressed the book to Eve, but with the hope that others would also read it. In light of the ambiguity of the evidence, such a suggestion must remain conjecture. However, we can observe that Goscelin maintains his address to Eve throughout and reveals no further consciousness of other readers or attempt to engage them directly. As it has come down to us, the text begins with four lines of hexameter verse that summarise the argument of the four books. This initially identifies the work as being long enough to warrant such a ‘table of contents’ to assist the reader.8 It is followed by a salutation, a convention used in medieval letters. However, in this salutation, the writer and the addressee are not named, but are referred to according to their situations, as I have discussed above. Paradoxically, this creates a sense of intimacy between them, as any reader other than Eve has to read on to establish the identities of the two. This gives the impression that the text will have a particular meaning for the named reader, Eve, that cannot be shared by anyone else. The Prologue is in the third person and is the only part of the book that is directly addressed to anyone other than Eve. This is a feature more common in a book than a letter. At the end of the Prologue, Goscelin acknowledges the blurring of boundaries between a book and a letter: ‘In any case this letter of exhortation, even as it exceeds the limit of a letter, is divided into four little books, so that as it runs with its charge it may take breath’.9 This is followed by an explicit of the Prologue and an incipit of the first book that contains the writer’s name and the name and address of the person to whom the book is sent. By the time that Goscelin begins his main address to Eve, then, he has already engaged in an elaborate process of salutation and identification. He has made it clear that his work, although substantial enough to be a book and to have some of the formal features of one, also functions as a letter to her, and he has done his best to establish the purity of his intentions in committing the work to writing. Goscelin begins the first book proper with a firm assertion of spiritual friendship: O soul dearer than light, your Goscelin is with you in inseparable presence of soul. He is with you in that better part of himself, with which he could love you, one with you, from which no distance may separate you. He greets you in Christ with eternal 10 greetings. 8

The manuscript is a copy, but as Goscelin is unusual for his time in his employment of classical metres (see Wilmart, ‘La Légende de Ste Édith’, pp. 31–34), his authorship of these hexameters is not in doubt. 9

Liber confort., p. 26: ‘Sed hec ex‹h›ortatoria epistola modum excrescens, in quattuor libellos ubi cursitans respiret stadiatur’. 10

Liber confort., p. 27: ‘O luce dilectior anima, adest tibi Goscelinus tuus, inseparabili anime presentia; adest meliori parte, ea qua te diligere potuit, individua, qua nulla excludant terrarum interstitia; salutat te in Christo salute sempiterna’.

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Although they have been separated, Goscelin emphasises that they will be encouraged by such separation to strive for salvation to be united in heaven. He describes the writing and sending of the letter as mutual consolation because they cannot be together; however, by virtue of the fact that he is the one writing, it is clear that he is offering her this opportunity for consolation. She is invited, every time she reads the letter, to picture them both sitting together at Wilton or in the place where she is, receiving his speech, his exhortations, his consolations and his pouring of Christ into her heart. Up to this point, the reader has no indication that there has been any breach between them. Quite the reverse seems to be true in this bold and confident statement of love that apparently expects a similarly affectionate response. Yet when it is read in the light of Goscelin’s later revelations, we can only assume that his request that she read the book comes not from confident affection or convention (although convention may play a part), but rather from his lack of confidence that she will do so unless she is specifically exhorted to, which assumes such a bold stance to cover his sense of insecurity. The terms that Goscelin uses to request her to read the book are significant. When he asks her to picture that they are seated together at Wilton, he says that it will be in the presence of ‘our lady St Edith’.11 This reference to Edith seems to be placed to remind Eve both of the past and of Goscelin’s credentials to address her and reinforces his case for the probity of his intentions in writing to her. Their ‘conversation’ will be as it was formerly, and they will be conducting it with the implied approval of St Edith. After all, Goscelin is the hagiographer of St Edith as well as someone who has enjoyed in the past a privileged relationship with Wilton and thus with Eve. At the end of the fourth book Goscelin balances this reference here with his image of St Edith as the bride of Christ at the end of time.12 It is somewhat surprising for the reader when Goscelin describes the way that his suffering and tears interrupted his writing of the book.13 After this affecting picture of his own grief, Goscelin repeats his injunction to Eve: ‘as often, I say, as you deign to read my holy devotion again here, accept this consolation as if I were present, if the fervour of one who loves you moves you’.14 Bluntly, Goscelin tells Eve that she is not the only one in need of consolation. At this point, the first-time reader can only assume that it is Eve’s absence that causes this grief; on a second reading, however, this seems to be Goscelin’s first move towards acknowledgement of the breach in their friendship and subsequent offer of a rhetorical resolution of it. Goscelin 11

Liber confort., p. 27: ‘sancta domina nostra Eadgyda [...]’.

12

Liber confort., p. 115. See Hayward and Hollis, ‘The Anchorite’s Progress’, pp. 370–82.

13

Olson argues for a parallel between Goscelin’s tears and Augustine’s description of his experience of conversion (pp. 76–77, 79). 14

Liber confort., p. 27: ‘quotiens, inquam, hic dignaberis nostram deuotionem recolere, consolationem quasi presentis, si qua pietas diligentis mouet, accipe’.

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suggests that if Eve is moved by this representation of his grief (and takes any responsibility for having caused it by her behaviour?), the best recompense she can make him is to read the book and to imagine him being present to her. Goscelin then introduces his next section in the following terms: Permit me now, for mutual comfort and memory, to go over again the unbroken history of our affection and strengthen our perpetual love. Do not be deterred by this volume in place of a letter, which although so large will not contain such great longing. Unless I am mistaken, however, insatiable fervour and anxious love will actually make the longest conversation the briefest for you. Pay attention to one who is 15 speaking to you as if from a bed of pain.

Once again, Goscelin boldly claims that he believes he is fulfilling mutual desires, not just his own, by writing to Eve. He describes their affection as ‘unbroken’, yet this is difficult to reconcile with the story that he has to tell. For the second time he parallels their emotional reactions; he has written a volume that is commensurate with the magnitude of his longing, yet he believes that her fervour is so strong that her reading of the book will seem short. His comparison of himself to someone speaking from a bed of pain underlines the pitiable nature of his situation. These claims of the mutuality of their affection perform an important role in the structure of his address to Eve. Having asserted this, he can continue to address her with reference to their love. It also enables him to offer to Eve the chance to confirm this state of affairs: if she decides that she does feel the same way, the past breach can be forgotten. Goscelin’s theme of the current mutuality of their affection is mirrored in his subsequent account of their history, as he traces the development of their connection from their first interactions when she was a child. He relates that because of her special qualities, the traditional hierarchy of authority was overturned in their friendship. As Eve’s elder and a male religious, probably a cleric, Goscelin thought that he would correct her, a mere little girl, yet he found that she inspired him: ‘I won you over with talk, but you conquered me with kindnesses’.16 According to Goscelin, he had the intellectual superiority, but Eve’s piety had a powerful effect upon his own religious life. He recounts significant moments and relationships in their life together, including her dedication to God and the dedication of two churches, up to the point where they consoled one another upon the death of Bishop Herman, until the enmity between Goscelin and Bishop Osmund meant that Goscelin had to depart the diocese and could no longer see Eve. By representing them both as 15

Liber confort., p. 27: ‘Liceat me nunc in mutuum refrigerium ac memoriam perhennem nostre dilectionis recapitulare ordinem ac perpetuam confirmare caritatem; nec te absterreat hic liber pro epistola, qui uel maximus tanta non capiet desideria. Ni fallor, etiam insatiabilis feruor et caritas anxia, longissima colloquia tibi facient breuissima. Quasi de lectulo doloris affantem attende’. 16

Liber confort., p. 28: ‘Ego te alloquiis, tu me uicisti beneficiis’.

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orphans upon the death of their father, Goscelin emphasises his role as a spiritual brother of Eve, not as a father himself. In the section entitled ‘The example of love’, Goscelin introduces his complaint into his work of consolation: ‘From this point the manner of my speech is compelled to change, because reason approves of the path of virtue indeed, but love, that is set before us as the nurturer of the virtues, is being wounded’.17 Here Goscelin admits for the first time, other than the somewhat displaced account of his suffering and tears at the start, that there is a problem in their friendship. In keeping with the theme of the inversion of the power hierarchy in their friendship, which he introduced with the account of his interactions with Eve as a little girl, he reshapes the nature of his relationship with her from the nurturing of a brother to that of a mother: That mother soul, which with her womb panting brought you to birth, which on your account feared her longed-for homeland as an exile, which dwelt in exile as in a homeland, which endured or did such great things in the hope of being brought together, laments now that it could have been deserted by you with as much cruelty as 18 insolence, which it did not believe it was possible that your love could do.

When Goscelin makes his first major complaint to Eve about her treatment of him, he emphasises the fact that he considers himself to have given birth to her soul. Like his earlier descriptions of his grief and tears and portrayal of himself as speaking from a bed of pain, this gives pathos to his complaint, as if it has been carefully designed to appeal to a tender-hearted Eve and to allow him to articulate the bitterness of his complaint without alienating her so much that she will stop reading the book and accepting his consolations. It may be, then, that Goscelin structured the book so that the first real complaint would only occur once Eve had been drawn in by his recollection of happier times at Wilton, and then in terms softened by his claim to be her spiritual mother. Goscelin does express his complaint bitterly, accusing her of concealing her intentions from him as if from an enemy, and deliberately setting out to inflict the maximum pain upon him by the manner of her departure. He then names their relationship for the first time as being that of a father and a daughter, as if this is the culmination of a familial hierarchy of authority: ‘You have become for it19 the slayer of your father in place of his daughter’.20

17

Liber confort., p. 29: ‘Hinc mutari cogitur oratio, quia uirtutis quidem uiam comprobat ratio, sed altrix uirtutum proposita leditur dilectio’. 18

Liber confort., p. 29: ‘Illa mater anima que te anhelis uisceribus peperit, que desideratam patriam pro te ut exilium timuit, exilium et patriam coluit, que tanta spe mutue representationis pertulit uel fecit, queritur nunc quod a te tam dure quam insulte deseri potuit, quod tuam caritatem posse impossibile credidit’. 19

Namely, either ‘the soul’ or ‘love’. See footnotes to the Barnes and Hayward translation of Liber confort., pp. 105, n. 15. 20

Liber confort., p. 30: ‘Parricida ei facta es pro filia’.

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At this point Goscelin launches into a discussion of saintly and biblical parallels to their relative situations. Eve’s behaviour is unfavourably compared firstly to that of St Martin and St Benedict, and then to that of Christ, all of whom warned their followers of their impending departures or deaths to lessen their followers’ pain. Mary’s grief at the crucifixion is portrayed in an image that mirrors that of the weeping Goscelin at the start of the work. Goscelin then returns to the pathos of his appeal, saying that his love was crushed at the first news of her departure. He instances the example of David, who accepted the death of his son without reproaching the Lord, but says that he cannot imitate such a great example in this case. Eve is reminded of the grief of all those at Wilton and Eve’s parents. However, at this point, having toned down the bitterness of his complaint somewhat, he interweaves his complaint with exhortations to Eve to continue in her new vocation, which include scriptural verses of encouragement. At the beginning of the section ‘Fruit of prayer’, Goscelin makes a formal request for her prayers for the first time: But restore me with your prayers; I lament not your salvation but my desolation. Indeed I implore you, my lady, if you have ever loved my worthless self, offer my mourning with your tears to the highest kindness, through him for whom alone you have enclosed yourself […] May you pray that this soul, which you will offer with special feeling, may be given to the Saviour for eternity, so that in place of the temporal sufferings that I endure in your absence, I may possess with you eternal joys.21

Goscelin suggests that if they both strive for salvation, and if Eve helps him with her prayers, they can be united in heaven. He compares himself to the sinful Augustine and Eve to Monica, his mother, who wept and prayed for Augustine’s salvation.22 This parallel gives Goscelin the opportunity to return to the formulation of their relationship as a father and daughter for almost the last time: ‘The aforesaid mother gained her son for God; let the daughter gain her father by the same piety’.23 He emphasises that he too would like to be enclosed, so that he might pray, read, write 21

Liber confort., p. 33: ‘Nos autem refoue precibus, qui non tuam salutem, sed nostram desolationem plangimus. Immo imploro te, o domina mea, si unquam paruitatem nostram dilexisti, meos luctus cum tuis lacrimis offer altissime benignitati, per ipsum cui te soli inclusisti. […] hanc tibi speciali affectu offerendam saluatori in eternum optes donari, quatinus pro temporalibus plagis quas patior in tui absentia, sempiterna tecum possideam gaudia’. 22

For a discussion of Goscelin’s use of the example of Augustine and Monica here, see Olson, pp. 78–80. I am, however, not convinced by her suggestion of a parallel between Augustine’s address to God and Goscelin’s address to Eve. For examples of other texts that offer parallels for Goscelin’s address to Eve, see my essay ‘Spiritual Friendship and Gender Difference in the Liber confortatorius’, pp. 347–53. 23

Liber confort., p. 34: ‘Predicta mater lucrata est Deo filium; eadem pietate lucretur filia patrem’.

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and speak. This differs from his picture of Eve’s enclosure, as nowhere does he suggest that she might write in her cell. Goscelin then states his own unworthiness, and reformulates their relationship: ‘May I now have a patron in place of a daughter, of whose prior claim I am as unworthy as I am unequal to her in life’.24 The inversion of the traditional hierarchy of power that began when Eve was a little girl is now completed, and all that remains is for Goscelin to address Eve from his rhetorically lowly position. After representing Eve as a patron, Goscelin then repeats his initial request that she should read the book and accept it as a substitute for his presence: Therefore by this faith, this hope, this love, let me be commended to your love after the complaint of your departure; let me be admitted and received; look upon me sitting 25 with you; hear me talking with you.

This second appeal suggests that he felt he had to repeat himself once he had expressed his negative feelings about her departure. Goscelin then poses the question of how he is to console her when he is himself ‘more in need of consolation, or even inconsolable’.26 His response to this question continues the theme of the inverted power hierarchy; her status as one who is secure in the quest for salvation gives him the confidence to offer her consolation. He offers such consolations not from a position of strength but from one of weakness. Like a modesty topos, this legitimates his address to her, as he does not have to prove his own worth before he speaks to her. Once Goscelin has offered this reconstruction of their relationship to her, he embarks upon his actual exhortations to her of strength and courage in her calling, drawing on biblical imagery. He represents himself as the ‘unwarlike singer or trumpeter’ who rouses the warriors.27 His original hopes that she would become a sacrifice to Christ in the convent of Wilton or as a recluse in her homeland are detailed, and he admits that the reason for these hopes was so that he might mourn his desolation less if she was still close by. At last, Goscelin admits his acceptance of her decision and her new situation: And finally, to confess the truth even against my will, I see this refuge as so opportune for your salvation that I think it to have been prepared by divine beneficence. For which reason, even if it results in sufferings of desolation for me, now that you have 24

Liber confort., p. 34: ‘Sit mihi iam patrona pro filia, cuius tam indignus sum prerogatiua, quam impar uita’. 25

Liber confort., p. 34: ‘Hac ergo fide, hac spe, hac caritate, dilectioni tue post querelam discessionis commendatum, admissum, susceptum, respice tecum assidentem, ausculta tecum sermocinantem’. 26 27

Liber confort., p. 35: ‘egentior consolationis uel etiam inconsolabilis […]’.

Liber confort., p. 36: ‘imbellis cantor uel tubicen […]’. See W. R. Barnes, ‘Goscelin’s Greeks and Romans’, pp. 407, 414, for the Virgilian echoes of this passage.

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been planted in this place, I am compelled to help you take root, you whom I should have preferred, if it could have been done in the will of God, to tear away.28

Having made his complaint about her decision, Goscelin assures Eve that he has now accepted it and values it for the benefits it will bring her. He may have hoped that this avowal would contribute to her willingness to read the book, to accept its exhortations and consolations and thus to receive himself as a spiritual guide once more. Goscelin then offers Eve the traditional consolations of Christian thought, that she should not regret the absence of worldly things because of the things she will gain in heaven. He imagines her lamenting the loss of the joys of her homeland: parents, relations, friends, letters and the virtues and company of the nuns of Wilton, and encourages her to see herself progressing to a spiritual homeland where she will meet her loved ones again in a spiritual form. This is followed by a discussion of the vanity of worldly things. The only value that he marks out as being eternal is the love that is in Christ, which he has from the first claimed as the emotion that defines their relationship. This gives him a philosophical underpinning for the proposition that their reconstructed friendship still has a potential role in her new life and in her life in heaven. Other aspects of her life that can be considered to fall within Christian love, such as the companionship of others from Wilton, are also portrayed in his picture of heaven at the end.29 Goscelin adds examples of those who have given up a homeland for worldly purposes, and argues that she is much wiser to give up her homeland for an eternal one, namely an increased chance of salvation. He then considers a paradox. He is offering her consolation for the things that she has left behind; should he console her for the loss of his own presence, when he considers that she left him without due notice of her intentions? Finally, as to a certain person who was formerly special, against whom alone you have been able to harden yourself, who having been left so far behind, and as though dead, has been given to oblivion by your heart, why should I care that a heart is closed? Or shall I offer consolation for hardness and anoint flint with oil? Shall I add lead and equip hardness with its weight? Or shall I give passage to one who flies, and wings? Indeed, let the unction of Christ comfort you in all things with the oil of gladness, and let him be propitious to one who has been abandoned, and who is as miserable as he was once inconsolable.30 28 Liber confort., p. 36: ‘ac tandem, ut uerum etiam inuitus fatear, tam oportunum saluti tue hoc uideo asylum, ut diuino beneficio cogitem paratum. Unde et in penas desolationis mee hic te plantatam cogor radicare, quam mallem, si fieri posset in uoluntate Dei, auellere’. Talbot’s punctuation is emended here by the translators. 29 30

Liber confort., pp. 113–15.

Liber confort., p. 42: ‘Postremo de quodam quondam speciali in quem solum obdurari potuisti, qui tam longe postpositus et tanquam mortuus a corde obliuioni est datus, quid curem obstrusum pectus? An pro rigore feram consolationem et oleo liniam silicem? Addamne

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Goscelin recommends to her that she call out to God for comfort ‘if ever your former love awakes and a panting storm of affections rises’.31 Irene van Rossum argues that the Liber confortatorius is a cathartic project for Goscelin: that he himself moves from emotional turmoil towards acceptance of Eve’s new calling.32 I believe that the dynamic at work is more complex, and that Goscelin has crafted his book to appeal to Eve through a set of carefully judged rhetorical manoeuvres, with the result in mind that she will accept his book, his exhortations and consolations and, therefore, himself. It reflects then not an outburst of feeling that relieves Goscelin’s mind, but an invitation to Eve to see their friendship in a new light. Goscelin offers two further consolations for the fact that they cannot be together, which presumably are intended to be for both of them. Firstly, they have spent time together talking, feasting and taking part in ceremonies, which would be sufficient for them ‘if only anything could be enough for love’.33 God has enabled them to be together; now they are separated, and they will be called together again in heaven. Secondly, Goscelin lists examples of those who have loved one another but have been prevented from living together always: David and Jonathan, the apostles, Sabinus and Sabina, Orestes and his unnamed friend (Pylades), the abbess Modesta and St Gertrude, Eve herself and Eagytha, her own special friend from Wilton. Once again, Goscelin has turned the conversation back to the loss of their friendship and things that will console Eve for it, perhaps feeling that by his complaints he has done enough to deal with the question of why she left Wilton without telling him in the first place. To conclude the first book, Goscelin says that she should consider herself to be ‘admonished by all these things to be kindled to perpetual love with your whole mind, and to steel yourself to all patience in this very short journey of mortality’.34 He offers one final representation of himself and request for her prayers: Now if by chance you ask anything about one who is so devoted, he is the same absent as he was present; his mind and face are the same; his vigour and constitution of body, his purity of faith and devotion, his force and fervour of love are all the same, but his pain is the sharper for being more lonely, and the sighs of his longings are the heavier for being more distant. Then if he lasts until he has grey hair and into old age and feebleness, he will persevere in the same integrity with the assistance of the Lord. But plumbum et pondere armabo duritiam? Aut fugienti commeatum et alas apponam? Consoletur uero te in omnibus oleo letitie unctio Christi, et propitietur relicto tam miserabili quam modo inconsolabili’. 31

Liber confort., p. 42: ‘Si quando […] pristina euigilauerit caritas et surrexerit anhela affectuum tempestas […]’. 32

Van Rossum, pp. 96, 181, 211–12.

33

Liber confort., p. 42: ‘si modo quicquam satis esse posset caritati’.

34

Liber confort., p. 45: ‘his omnibus admoneri, ut et tota mente ad caritatem perpetuam inflammeris, et ad omnem patientiam in tam breui excursu mortalitatis muniaris […]’.

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if ever the thought returns to you and asks thus ‘what is he, who was once dear, doing now?’, this page will always respond with this one verb in the active rather than the passive voice: he sighs. And whenever you seek him, you will find him here; you will either see him or hear him whispering with you here. At one time I presumed, if the Lord should forgive my sins, that I might be able to cherish you in my bosom in the paradise of God, but now I wish for this: that I may happily deserve to see you in the 35 more worthy bosom of father Abraham.

Goscelin’s appeal here draws on the kind of pathos he used at the start to appeal to her affections and thus to encourage her to grant his request for her prayers. He seems to acknowledge that even in heaven he can expect less from her friendship than he did formerly. The book ends with further exhortations to her to pursue her calling vigorously and successfully, drawing on the imagery of the Exodus and the war against Amalec that he develops further in the second book. The first book, then, functions as a point of departure for the remaining three, as he develops his consolations on an increasingly grandiose scale.36 The picture that Goscelin draws of the mutuality of the way that they can help one another, arranged along gendered lines, can be associated with various other topics that he discusses throughout the work, such as the repeated pattern of male assistance to a female saint,37 and Goscelin’s portrayal of the chaste joining that will occur in heaven between men and women once sex has been left behind and individual bodies have been joined to the body of Christ.38 In the last three books, Goscelin offers Eve no further complaints about her behaviour or requests for her prayers, although from time to time he recalls personal incidents from their shared past or comments that certain things may be of particular interest to her, until the very end of the book, where his request at the end of the first book for her prayers and his statement of his desire to see her in heaven is echoed:

35

Liber confort., p. 45: ‘Iam si quid forte, si quid de tam deuoto requires, idem est absens quod erat presens, mens et facies, uigor et habitudo eadem, ea puritas fidei et deuotionis, ea uis et feruor dilectionis, dolor uero eo acrior quo destitutior, ac desideriorum suspiria eo grauiora quo dilatiora. Tum si ad canos et in senectam et senium durauerit, eiusdem sinceritatis Domino aspirante perseuerabit. Si quando autem reuersa ad te cogitatio ita interrogauerit, “ille quondam carus quid nunc facit?” hec semper pagina hoc uno uerbo actiuo pro passiuo respondebit: Suspirat. Vbicumque illum queres, hic inuenies, hic tecum susurrantem uel uidebis uel audies. Aliquando presumebam, si Dominus propitiaretur peccatis meis, quod te in paradiso Dei gremio possem refouere, sed nunc hoc opto ut te merear digniori sinu patris Abrahe feliciter uidere’. 36

See Hayward and Hollis, ‘The Anchorite’s Progress’, pp. 369–83.

37

For example, Perpetua is accompanied in her dream of her struggle against the dragon by Saturus (Liber confort., p. 50), Vitaliana (or Vitalina) is helped after her death by St Martin (p. 84) and the virgin in the brothel is assisted by the young man (pp. 98-99). 38

Liber confort., p. 115.

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And because love has compelled me to be fluent with such large matters and the time has come now finally to make an end of such prolix garrulity, if you have care for your own, have pity for the bereavement of Goscelin, whom you have loved as the home of your soul in Christ, but whom by your departure you have shaken completely from his foundations, and whom you have overturned from comfort in this present life; and, lest I stain the light of joys held out before us with the mist of a greater complaint, beg for me, I beseech you, the mercy of the Lord that is ready to be appeased for eternity, and forgiveness for my sins, so that although you are very far removed from my unworthiness, I may have the happiness of seeing you in your highest happiness, in the 39 blessed light. So may you have all the desires of your soul.

The themes expressed in the first book then, offer an important frame for the exhortations, examples and discussions in the rest of the book. Goscelin discusses their separation after Eve’s decision, the new roles he offers her, following an inversion of the traditional gendered hierarchy of power, and his request for her prayers so that they may be present to one another again in heaven, even if it is at some remove. To convey his messages, Goscelin exploits the conventions of the book and the letter. The book is addressed to Eve, although Goscelin includes directions of how to interpret the book for any other reader into whose hands it may come. Goscelin’s stated purpose is to exhort Eve in her new calling, but his complaints form a necessary counterpart to his exhortations, as he needs to canvass the disputed territory of the past before offering her a new way that that past can be resolved, in accordance with Christian eschatological hope. Goscelin does not ask Eve for any tangible sign or token of reconciliation or acceptance of his exhortations and requests for prayers. The resolution of their friendship is to take place in purely spiritual terms, in anticipation of the joys of heaven. Perhaps it was in this spiritualised understanding of their relation that Goscelin could take comfort, picturing Eve, chastened by his criticism of her behaviour, reading his book in pursuit of her calling and responding to his request for her prayers, to fulfil the goal he offers her of mutual assistance towards salvation.

39 Liber confort., p. 117; ‘Et quia dilectio tantis me fluere coegit et tam prolixe garrulitatis iam aliquando finem ponere conuenit, si pietatis uiscere nosti, miserere orbitatis Goscelini, quem ut anime tue domicilium in Christo dilexisti, sed recessu totum a fundamento concussisti, et a solatio presentis uite euertisti; ac, ne maioris querele nebula pretentum gaudiorum iubar inficiam, ora michi, queso, placabilem in eternum Domini clementiam, ac peccatorum ueniam, ut te, licet longius a mea indignitate remotam, letus merear uidere in beata luce letissimam. Sic habeas anime cuncta cupita tue’.

The Anchorite’s Progress: Structure and Motif in the Liber confortatorius REBECCA HAYWARD AND STEPHANIE HOLLIS

A

lthough the Liber confortatorius, on a first reading, may seem both verbose and only loosely structured, Goscelin’s text has been designed very carefully for the use of its recipient. The work is laid out as a model of Eve’s progress in the religious life, and is tied together by the placement of key images and ideas. In this way the text, which aims to give her inspiration and also to acknowledge her struggle, is an experiential analogue of her life in her cell, where she will encounter both joys and trials in her quest for heaven. Unlike the cell, however, from which Goscelin is excluded, he can be omnipresent in the text as its speaker, and thus can join with her through discourse, something that is barred to him in reality. Goscelin’s desire for this is made explicit early in Book I: Your affection will be able to see by reading the one whom it has left in the body, and will be able to drink in my voice and my sighing words with your eyes instead of your ears. So, lest you think that I have been cut off from you, as often as, mindful of me in Christ, you deign to look upon these remembrances of me, consider that I am seated with you at Wilton in the presence of our lady St Edith or even in this chaste order, that I speak to you, that I exhort you, that I console you, that I pour Christ into your 1 heart with the sighs of the feelings of wounded love.

1

Liber confort., p. 27; ‘poterit et tua dilectio uidere lectione quem reliquit facie, et uocem et uerba nostra suspiriosa oculis pro auribus haurire. Ne ergo me putes abscisum a te, quotiens, in Christo nostri memor, dignaberis hec nostra monimenta respicere, estimato me tecum Wiltonie coram sancta domina nostra Eadgyda aut etiam in hac pudica serie residere, te alloqui, te exhortari, te consolari, anhelantibus uulnerose caritatis affectibus Christum tuo infundere pectori’. The exact meaning of the phrase translated above as ‘even in your chaste order’ (‘aut etiam in hac pudica serie’) is obscure.

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Thus, when Goscelin imagines Eve reading the book, a picture which he incorporates into the book itself, he mixes this inextricably with a portrait of himself being present with her, a re-creation of how things were in the past when they were together at Wilton. To begin with, Eve is offered four lines of hexameters as a table of contents. Each line corresponds to one of the four books and gives a brief indication of its contents: The first book expresses complaints and consolations. Wars are waged with desires and won by the second. The third expels discontent with impassioned prayers. 2 From earthly things the fourth seeks the stars in a four-horse chariot.

Book I gives expression to Goscelin’s complaints about Eve’s departure, and offers consolation for the grief he assumes she must feel in leaving her friends and her homeland. His summary of the second book introduces the idea of spiritual warfare. In this book he will develop the imagery of warfare to encourage her to struggle against the impulses that may jeopardise her religious life. The emphasis of the third is on the overcoming of taedium. This is fitting for the next level of her religious life. Young warriors are eager for battle, Goscelin remarks at the beginning of Book II, but when Eve has triumphed in the battles that are immediately ahead of her, there will be a long life stretching out before her to be endured in her cell. Finally, the oneline synopsis of the fourth book focuses on reaching heaven. Clearly, this is the much-anticipated final stage of her journey, in which she will ascend, as Elijah did, in a chariot of fire.3 The clarity of this scheme has been obscured for those who have read the text only in Talbot’s edition because of his faulty transcription.4 The upward movement of Goscelin’s book for Eve, then, is evident even in the first four lines. In Book I, progress with the promised ‘book of encouragement’ is somewhat impeded by Goscelin’s need to express his anguish and inconsolability in losing Eve. He is then able to engage with the obstacles that lie in her path, both the things that must be actively resisted and the length of life that must be endured within the confines of her cell. Finally, when these levels of the spiritual life have been reached, Goscelin offers her the highest level of all, as an anticipation of her achievement of this goal.

2

Liber confort., p. 26; ‘Primus agit questus et consolamina thomus./ Bella cupidinibus mouet euincitque secundus./ Tertius ignitis pellit fastidia uotis./ Ex humili sumptis quartus petit astra quadrigis’. See n. 4 below for the correction to Talbot’s transcription. For Goscelin’s authorship of these hexameters, see above p. 358, n. 8. 3 4

II

Kings/IV Kings 2. 11.

The first and third lines are correct in Talbot’s edition. For the second line, Talbot printed ‘Pella cum demonibus movet evincitque secundus’. In Sloane 3103, however, the first words are Bella cupidinibus. In Talbot’s fourth line, ‘Edictis sumptis quartus petit astra quadrigis’, Edictis should be replaced with Ex humili, again following the reading of Sloane 3103.

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Goscelin adheres to this pattern throughout the work, and maintains the rising momentum of his project for Eve. A nexus of images of ascent and elevation throughout—chariots, ladders, watchtowers, mountains, and columns, for instance— figure the upward movement within the text. The fourfold division of Goscelin’s work recalls the model of reading Scripture that was encouraged in John Cassian’s Collationes and remained popular throughout the Middle Ages. This model relied on four tiers of interpretation: the literal one, the actual historical meaning of Scripture; the allegorical level, which sought for correspondences between the Old and New Testaments, exploring particularly the relationship between Christ and the Church; the tropological, or moral sense, as the Scripture could be related to the soul and its relationship to God; and the anagogical level, in which the Scripture prefigured the end of time and the coming of the heavenly kingdom. Goscelin draws on all these ways of reading Scripture throughout the course of his book, and while there is no neat correspondence between his four-book structure and the four levels of allegory, the sense of upward progression and ultimate fulfilment in the New Jerusalem that is implicit in the interpretative model is reproduced in his book for Eve. If Eve read the book, then, she could not choose but to engage with the dynamics of her relationship with Goscelin, and to some degree to accept him as a spiritual guide and teacher once more. He certainly does not lose the opportunity to impress himself upon her in this role, often addressing her directly and appealing to what appear to be shared memories and stories with which she may be familiar. If she continued to read the second, third and fourth books, she would have found that, as the table of contents promised, they mirrored her spiritual journey. As she moved through each book in quest of the final consolation of the narrative, the vision of heaven that comes at the end of the fourth book, she would have encountered certain themes and images repeated at strategic points in the narrative, helping her to orientate herself and gain a sense of direction. In this way, even though the theme of spiritual progression encouraged her to move through the book as if through a spiral, in a circular motion by the repetitive structure of four books, yet each time ascending a little higher towards God, the repeated themes and images would have encouraged her to perceive connections between the different levels, and thus to feel a sense of familiarity even as she explored the upper reaches of where the spiritual life would take her. We focus here on the beginnings and ends of the four books, merely sketching the structure and accumulation of images.5 It is a rich and complex work that Eve could have re-read many times, always discovering more. Goscelin does not of course refer to the heavenly joys in store for Eve only in the fourth book. He encourages her throughout the work to strive to gain entry to the eternal kingdom. Book I brings to the fore the figurative conception of life as a journey to gain an eternal homeland instead of an earthly one, and it has much to say 5

We are indebted to Bill Barnes, whose observations on the text were seminal to the conception of thematic unity advanced below, and for his comments on an earlier draft.

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about separation from friends and leaving one’s homeland.6 In departing from her homeland to seek closer union with Christ, exchanging the Wilton nunnery for an anchorite’s cell in a foreign land, Eve has embarked on the first stages of a journey away from the world, leaving earthly things behind her. Goscelin’s own struggle to come to terms with the termination of his earthly union with Eve, whom he loves as his own soul, enacted in Book I, can itself be regarded as illustrative of the strength of earthly attachments that Eve has already overcome. At the end of the first book, he exhorts her to the battle that lies ahead of her, holding out to her at the same time the promise of ultimate peace in heaven, which she is seeking to enter through her lifetime in the cell: Hurry from war with your adversaries to enter his peace, that peace of the saints where sadness has no place, where no joy can be absent, which in fleeing hell you have 7 sought here in anxious desire.

He then adds one of his many claims to her notice, urging her to think of him as she is engaged in the struggle: From where now, as, in the footsteps of your Jesus, you are about to pass through the midst of your enemies and overcome them, recommend your inert and unwarlike 8 encourager, just as you yourself won mercy from the God of your salvation.

In this humorous and self-deprecating way, Goscelin links his own role as her exhorter to her role as a warrior, stressing the passivity of his role and how he may benefit from her intercession. Earlier in Book I, he contrasted Eve’s ‘precipitous and unannounced flight’ from him with Christ’s forewarning to his friends of his separation from them through his imminent death on the cross.9 Eve’s pilgrimage to the eternal homeland, he indicates here, is also the path Christ took to the cross; her sacrifice of the world is a form of martyrdom in which she follows ‘in the footsteps’ of Christ. Goscelin then makes a direct correlation between her struggle and the story of how the Israelites, having made their way from captivity in Egypt, had to fight against the armies of Amalec before they could gain possession of the promised land: 6

Goscelin quotes ‘All who belong to the heavenly city are travellers in this world’, which he attributes to Augustine, and Hebrews 13. 14, ‘We have not here a lasting city but we seek out one that is to come’ (Liber confort., pp. 38, 41). 7

Liber confort., p. 46; ‘Festina de bellatis aduersariis ingredi in suam requiem, in illam requiem sanctorum ubi nullum locum habet tristitia, nulla potest deesse letitia, quam infernum fugiendo huc petisti sollicita’. 8

Liber confort., p. 46; ‘Vnde iam, Ihesu tuo precedente, per medios hostes transitura et superatura, inertem et imbellem exhortatorem concilia, sicut ipsa a Deo salutari tuo misericordiam es consecuta’. 9

Liber confort., p. 30.

KATERN 13

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Here now, after shaking off the dominion of Pharaoh and crossing the sea, let camp be pitched and courage restored, so that tomorrow there might be a sounding of trumpets against Amalec, and tomorrow the warriors who will conquer their land might be 10 equipped with divine arms.

The story of the Israelites’ attainment of the promised land, aptly combining the elements of warfare and journey to a final destination, constitutes the overarching metaphorical construction of Eve’s spiritual progress; allusions to this story link together the beginnings and endings of the four books. Here, at the end of Book I, Goscelin employs it to signify that, by leaving her homeland and crossing the English Channel, Eve has freed herself from worldly attachments (the captivity of Pharaoh); but the anchorite cell that was the goal of her actual journey—figured as a military camp on the eve of a battle—is only a temporary stopping place on the way to the eternal homeland, and will be the site of a more arduous struggle to advance towards her ultimate destination. When Book II begins, then, military imagery is repeated, as part of the structural patterning of the work. Eve is to begin again where she left off in the last book, in her exploration of this next spiritual level. Goscelin opens Book II with a powerful call to arms: ‘Hear the voice of the Lord in power, the voice of the Lord as he shakes the desert […] “Awake in bravery […]. Stand fast in faith, act manfully.”’11 This is followed by an allusion to Paul’s well-known imagery of the armour of God. Goscelin then returns to the story of the Israelites’ battles and their struggles against other tribulations on their way to the promised land, citing the Lord’s instruction to Moses, after he had led the Israelites out of Egypt, to register all the men of twenty and over for military service. This particular form of re-evoking the Israelites’ wars against Amalec is perhaps chosen because Eve herself was around twenty when she left her homeland; 12 at any rate, Goscelin continues in the role of a military trainer equipping a novice warrior: This age, being more full of fervour, is more suitable for training, for spiritual as much as for material warfare. All men seek war; young men rage for arms. However, 13 triumphs over vices and desires are more glorious.

10

Liber confort., p. 46; ‘Hic modo post excussum Pharaonis dominium et maris transitum, posito tentorio uirtus reparetur, ut cras in Amalech buccinetur, et cras terram suam triumphatura pubes diuinis preparetur armis’ (Exodus 17. 8–16). 11

Liber confort., p. 47; ‘Vox Domini in uirtute, uox Domini concutiens desertum […] “Expergiscimini fortes. […] State in fide, uiriliter agite”‘. 12 13

See Liber confort., p. 70.

Liber confort., p. 47; ‘Hec etas plenior feruoris exercitabilior est, tam spiritualibus quam materialibus armis. Tota petit bellum pubes, fremit arma iuuentus. De uitiis et concupiscentiis triumphatur gloriosius’. The second sentence derives from Virgil, Aeneid, XI. 453; see also VII. 460.

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Throughout Book II Goscelin emphasises that warfare against external enemies is to be understood as the struggles of the soul as it tries to reach God.14 It becomes evident that progress in battle is envisaged as an upward movement as much as a forward advance. Even in Book I, about halfway through, Goscelin exhorts Eve to arise, treading the world underfoot so that, exalted in the watchtower of Zion, she may contemplate the inestimable joys of a future age.15 In Book II, Perpetua’s dream of ascending a golden ladder to heaven, trampling down the dragon lying in ambush at its foot, and undaunted by the instruments of torture at each of its rungs, is followed, in the next two chapters, by a meditation on the victory that Christ won on the cross.16 The idea of ascent through battle is repeated in the story of how Caleb gained a mountain by warfare, which is followed by mention of the mountains ascended by Moses, Elijah and Christ.17 Like Book I, Book II concludes with another reference to the Israelites’ battles against Amalec and his armies. Goscelin exhorts Eve, after having won these battles, to advance on the next stage of her journey to the promised land: Therefore, armed by these examples of either courage or grace, having destroyed Amalec with his army and having cut down every hostile obstacle, go, beloved one, to 18 a share and portion of the eternal inheritance.

He urges her to cross the River Jordan, as the Israelites did, thirsting for the living fountain of God after the dryness of the desert, to the victory feast in the tabernacle of God: As a soul desiring God, the living fountain, and thirsting like a hart for springs of water, cross over the Jordan of your tears with your soul poured out in you, and enter by your desire the place of the wonderful tabernacle, even to the house of God, with 19 the voice of joy and praise and with the sound of feasting.

Through the examples and struggles described in Book II Eve’s journey has now been advanced to the point where she can contemplate not just future battles but the tabernacle as an intermediate goal on her journey to heaven. 14

See, for instance, Liber confort., p. 56.

15

Liber confort., p. 36.

16

See Liber confort., pp. 50, 52–54.

17

Liber confort., pp. 61–62.

18

Liber confort., p. 68; ‘His igitur siue fortitudinis siue gratie exemplis armata, deleto Amalech cum exercitu, et omni hostili obstaculo reciso, uade dilectissima ad sortem et partem hereditatis perpetue’. Goscelin’s sequence differs from that of the scriptural narrative; there the tabernacle is constructed before the Israelites cross the river Jordan. 19

Liber confort., p. 68; ‘et anima desiderans ad Deum fontem uiuum et sitiens ut ceruus ad fontes aquarum, transi per Iordanem lacrimarum effusa in te anima tua, et ingrediens desiderio in locum tabernaculi admirabilis usque ad domum Dei, in uoce exultationis et confessionis et in sono epulantis’.

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Book III begins, as we should perhaps by now have come to expect, with a lavish description of the tabernacle, drawn from the account in Exodus 25–26, which God commanded Moses to build when he led the Israelites to the promised land. Goscelin’s image of the tabernacle elaborates on God’s instructions to Moses; he portrays it as decorated with pictures painted in all colours and representing all manner of forms, and depicts the tabernacle as translucent, the sun shining through it as if it was a temple made entirely of glass of all kinds of colours. The tabernacle— although it is, following Exodus, a tent made of cloth—thus assumes more the aspect of a church; the same imagery is used in the Legend of Edith to describe the church that she built at Wilton, which was decorated with paintings and translucent with glass.20 Like the New Jerusalem, which it prefigures, the tabernacle includes the beauty of the whole creation, the adornment of heavens, the earth and the sea: It was a tent as big as a very large temple; its walls were of purple and it was stretched out over a large area on columns and door-posts of gold […]. As heaven is adorned by the stars, the earth by flowers and the world by the ornamentation of various things, so that moveable palace shone with the splendours of all things. The whole construction was made of the whitest cloth, and it was decorated with purple, twice-dyed scarlet and gold embroidery. There was more beauty in elaborate pictures, not only of all the colours but also of all kinds of subjects […]. Then the golden joy of the sun shone with its rays through that utterly translucent tent, as if through a temple made wholly of glass of all colours, and adorned the immense quantity of gold and the images of all 21 kinds of figures with its light.

The tabernacle seems to rise up in the text like a landmark, at this halfway stage in the work. Goscelin suggests that Eve should keep this image in her mind as an antidote to solitude, captivity and the cell. Monika Otter suggested in her paper at the 2002 Kalamazoo conference that the decorated tabernacle also functions as an image of the kind of meditative spirituality Goscelin has in mind for Eve to develop, as he encourages her to reflect on stories and images from Scripture and to develop them in her own imagination.22 20 See Vita Edithae, chap. 20, and Metre IX (pp. 86–87). The sun shining through the tabernacle is perhaps from Bede, On the Tabernacle, III. 1 (CCSL 119A, 93/6). 21

Liber confort., p. 69; ‘Tentorium erat instar amplissimi templi parietibus pu‹r›pureis, columnis ac postibus late intensum aureis. […] Vt celum sideribus, terra floribus, mundus uariis rerum decoratur ornatibus, sic illud mobile palatium omnium radiabat splendoribus. Vniuersa machina ex bisso candidissimo constabat et purpura coccoque bis tincto aurosaque textura florebat. Vt omnium colorum, ita et omnium formarum pictura artificiosa decorem addiderat. […]. Tum aurea solis iocunditas perspicacissimum castrum quasi solidum ex omni colore uitreo templum suis radiis perlustrabat, aurumque copiosissimum cunctarumque figurarum insignia suo lumine decorabat’. 22 Monika Otter, ‘Paint Your Tent from Within: Acedia and the Pictorial Imagination in Goscelin’s Liber confortatorius’, 37th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, 2–5 May 2002.

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Goscelin develops another connection between the beginning of Book III and the end of Book II. Towards the end of Book II, he recounts the story of a slave woman from Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History. One particularly striking miracle in this is that when a church is being constructed, the builders are mysteriously unable to erect one of the columns. The slave woman enters alone at night and prays. In the morning, the column is found hovering upright a foot above its base.23 Near the start of Book III, Goscelin makes the conventional association of the solitary life with captivity and then advises Eve to ‘raise a column of faith’ for herself as well as ‘a tent of hope’.24 By reconstructing her cell as the tabernacle, she can sit within it and meditate on the beauty of that image in order to expel weariness from her mind. In Book III Goscelin focuses on the mind within and the cell in which Eve is enclosed. He offers her strategies to avoid being defeated at this level of the spiritual life by the constant regime of life in the cell. She should not feel daunted by the length of time that stretches ahead of her until her death, nor by the narrow constraints of her cell, nor be weary of her solitude. He advises her to count her life as one day in eternity, for every finite thing is short as she makes her way to eternity.25 Do not think yourself too constrained by the narrow space of the cell, he counsels her, for the Lord has given you a place of refuge from the vast seas of the world, and you will attain the whole court of heaven ultimately.26 She is not alone, for the whole company of heaven will be her companions ultimately. Goscelin conjures up images of the vastness of the world dwarfing her cell which is in turn dwarfed by the immensity of heaven, and of the infinite numerousness of the earth’s inhabitants who will be gathered together as her fellow citizens in the New Jerusalem.27 Just as she has everything she requires in her cell (she has obtained all her rooms in one, her oratory, refectory, dormitory, etc.)28 so, too, the image of the tabernacle which she is to construct with her mind suggests, not only the rich powers of the imagination, but the mind’s capacity to comprehend the infinity of creation, as the tabernacle itself does. Goscelin figures the enclosing cell in a variety of other ways. Eve will be led into Zion from this prison house.29 She has already been brought into the bedchamber of

23

Liber confort., p. 66.

24

Liber confort., p. 69; ‘erige tibi columnam fidei, tentorium spei’.

25

Liber confort., p. 88.

26

Liber confort., pp. 78, 88–89.

27

Liber confort., pp. 85–87. See Rebecca Hayward, ‘Representations of the Anchoritic Life in Goscelin of Saint-Bertin’s Liber confortatorius’, in Anchorites, Wombs and Tombs: Intersections of Gender and Enclosure in the Middle Ages, ed. by Liz Herbert McAvoy and Mari Hughes-Edwards (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004), forthcoming. 28

Liber confort., p. 78.

29

Liber confort., p. 89.

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the Lord.30 Her cell is a tomb, but one from which she will rise again, just as Christ came forth from both the enclosed womb of the Virgin and the sealed tomb.31 It is like her own body, as Goscelin suggests, for instance, when he uses the example of the different aspect assumed by the guest-house he stayed in when he first came to England, after it had been cleaned.32 Eve’s cell is also described in Book III as a ‘place of certainty’ and a ‘certain rest from’ her toils to which God has led her.33 This echo of the Aeneid is one of several allusions to the journeying of Aeneas, linked contrastively to the Israelites’ struggles to attain the promised land, which Goscelin presumably expected Eve to recognise and understand. Aeneas is alluded to (though not named) at the beginning of Book II, when Goscelin is exhorting Eve into battle, in a quotation derived from the Aeneid: Paul said: ‘We must enter the kingdom of God through many tribulations’. Virgil sounds forth something similar, but whereas the lamp of heaven calls us to higher things, the cauldron that has been kindled boils with earthly hope: ‘Through various chances, through so many turning points in our affairs, we are making for Latium, where the fates promise a peaceful settlement. There is the certain rest from your 34 toils’.

This cryptic reference to Aeneas’ journey to Latium, where he is promised requies certa (‘certain rest’), which hints at the inferior (and illusory) peace sought by those who pursue worldly aims, is elaborated at the end of Book III (without any identifying reference to Virgil to prompt Eve to connect it with the earlier allusion). Aeneas’ journeying did not lead him to a secure resting place, Goscelin intimates, for the requies certa he was promised became a battlefield: Aeneas, after long wanderings and uncertain settlements on lands and seas, at last found a certain home for his needs; he founded a city, but from the perils of the seas he 35 entered the dire perils of wars. ‘Is that the certain rest from your toils?’

30

Liber confort., p. 89.

31

Liber confort., pp. 79, 83. Similarly, the author of Ancrene Wisse encourages the anchoresses to see Jesus as a recluse like themselves in Mary’s womb and in his tomb (Hasenfratz, p. 370); trans. by Savage and Watson, p. 186. 32

Liber confort., p. 102.

33

Liber confort., p. 72; ‘Hic ad certum locum deduxit te Dominus, Deus tuus. Requies ea certa laborum’ (compare Virgil, Aeneid, III. 393, VIII. 46 (in some manuscripts only)). 34

Liber confort., p. 47; ‘Paulus ait, oportet nos introire in regnum Dei. Simile quid sonat Virgilius; sed celi lampas uocat ad superna, olla succensa ebullit spe terrena: Per uarios casus, per tot discrimina rerum/ Tendimus in Latium, sedes ubi fata quietas/ Promittunt./ Requies ea certa laborum’ (Aeneid, I 204-06; III. 393, VIII. 46 (in some manuscripts only)). 35

Liber confort., p. 88; ‘Eneas post longas peruagationes et incertas sedes terrarum et marium, tandem certam mansionem ad tempus suum inuenit, ciuitatem constituit, sed de perculis equorum dira pericula intrauit bellorum. Requiesne ea certa laborum?’

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As Cain, the founder of the first city, is in Augustine’s De civitate dei the anti-type of the pilgrims and exiles who seek their homeland in heaven, so the warrior Aeneas, seeking a secure homeland in this world, is employed by Goscelin as the secular antithesis of the spiritual pilgrim who is figured by the Israelites’ struggle to attain the promised land.36 The conclusion of Book III recurs to the promise of feasting within the tabernacle mentioned at the end of Book II. Spiritual food is a dominant theme in Book III. Eve is urged to feed her mind and inflame it with love by feasting upon books, fattening herself like a bird in its cage. The battle has now become a struggle to understand the scriptures.37 The transition between the end of the third book and the beginning of the fourth is based upon the correspondence between the feast of the mass and the heavenly feast, union with Christ by partaking of his body and blood and union with him by consummation of the mystical marriage in heaven. Goscelin recommends Eve to take communion daily if she is able to, treating this as provision for her heavenly journey. He then continues the imagery of feasting with a quotation from Revelation 3. 20: The Lord says: ‘Behold, I stand at the gate and knock; if anyone opens the door to me, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with me’. With such food you will have Christ, with the holy angels, as your dinner-companion, and not wandering in the outside world in your thoughts, but in the company of the Lord intent on your own world, you will not now be solitary, nor will you suffer mortal tedium, but in the 38 fortitude of heavenly food you will pass joyfully to the feast of eternal peace.

The image of the cell as the dwelling place in which Eve feasts with Christ and the angels, as she will do in the New Jerusalem, combines with that of Eve herself as the dwelling place of Christ with whom she is united by receiving the elements of the mass. The beginning of the fourth book represents the culminating goal of Eve’s journey boldly in an image of the city of the New Jerusalem drawn from the Book of Revelation; its visual resemblance and initial position makes manifest its typological relationship to the tabernacle at the beginning of Book III: Your streets, Jerusalem, are paved with pure gold and clear glass. So says the witness of the divine mysteries, John, in his book of theology. The pure gold tested in the furnace of poverty and patience and the clear glass of a pure mind light up the streets 36

For a fuller discussion of the Virgilian echoes, see W. R. Barnes, ‘Goscelin’s Greeks and Romans’, pp. 407–15. 37 38

Liber confort., pp. 72, 80–81.

Liber confort., p. 90; ‘“Ecce”, inquit Dominus, “sto ad ostium et pulso; si quis aperuerit michi intrabo ad eum et cenabo cum illo, et ille mecum”. Tali cibo Christum cum sanctis angelis conuiuam habitura, nec foris mente uagabunda, sed intus cum Domino intenta, iam non eris solitaria, nec patieris mortalia tedia, sed in fortitudine cibi celestis transibis letabunda ad eterne pacis conuiuia’.

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they pave, so that by them humility, after Egypt and deserts, and the trampling down of her enemies, may run the way of God’s commandments, and may rise to the city of heavenly peace with a heart enlarged, where both walls of gold and turrets of gems rise 39 above the stars from a humble foundation.

Just as Goscelin began the work by looking ahead to his final goal, so here, when he introduces that goal almost as if her journey were over and her goal achieved, he looks back at the obstacles she has overcome. He alludes again, as in earlier books, to the Israelites breaking free of captivity in Egypt and making their way to the promised land, by figuring her previous experiences as ‘Egypt and deserts, and the trampling down of enemies’. It is by humility that Eve must rise to the eternal city, therefore she must take care to avoid pride, so as not to be cast down from the high level she has attained in her upward ascent. For when someone is rising to the promised land, Pharaoh (still representing the tyranny of the world) mounts in his chariot and pursues them and tramples them down.40 She must build a temple of good works like Solomon’s, taking care that it is not cast down by pride as his was, or like the old Jerusalem of the daughters of Zion.41 She should not glory in her virtue (figuratively, her virginity), thinking herself better than the wife, the widow and the prostitute, or she will be cast out of the bedchamber of the heavenly bridegroom.42 As Eve was urged to feed on the body of Christ in the mass in Book III, in Book IV she is urged (like Mary) to embrace his body and give him birth.43 Towards the end of Book IV, Goscelin begins to depict the Last Judgement, with the gathering of the many, who are to be made one with Christ’s body as his bride. In Revelation 21. 2 the city of the New Jerusalem descends ‘prepared as a bride adorned for her husband’. The form this takes in Goscelin’s culminating vision is very specifically designed for Eve. The city of the New Jerusalem is depicted as a transfiguration of the Wilton convent (or perhaps the church built by St Edith). To this chamber of Christ, St Edith will descend to consummate her mystic marriage with him; Goscelin envisages her leading her heavenly spouse to the chamber as often she wishes, together with a great company of heaven and all those of the community of Wilton who have been found worthy: 39 Liber confort., p. 91; ‘Platee tue, Iherusalem, sternentur auro mundo et uitro perlucido. Sic ait mysteriarche Iohannis theologia. Aurum mundum in fornace paupertatis et patientie probatum, perlucidumque uitrum pure mentis, stratas plateas illustrat, qua humilitas, post Egyptum et solitudines ac hostes calcatos, uiam mandatorum Dei excurrat, et ad superne pacis urbem dilatato corde ascendat, ubi et muri aurei, et turres gemmee ab humili fundamento sydera superant’. 40

Liber confort., p. 91.

41

Liber confort., p. 92; pp. 95–96.

42

Liber confort., p. 100.

43

Liber confort., p. 107.

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Then your Wilton will be a huge and broad city, lit far and wide with a golden wall, with a citadel shining with turrets of gems, raised up not for battle, but as a watchtower of glory, from where the daughters of Zion may see more broadly all their England. Its gates will be of pearl, and all its houses golden. The temple will shine with jasper, chrysolite, beryl, amethyst, and all precious gem-stones, as far exceeding the glory of the old Solomon, as it is more finely constructed by the new art of our new Solomon. Here, as often as she wishes, your queen Edith will descend in power, proud in the chamber of the great Christ. Here she will lead her beloved spouse with her very great friends, the angels and archangels, apostles and martyrs, with Roman and English kings and counsellors, with her father Edgar and her brother Edward, with Thecla, Agnes, Cecilia and Argina, Catherine, and a great crowd of virgins, and all her 44 household of the people of Wilton, as many as the Lord made worthy in their lot.

The rationale of Edith as the bridal New Jerusalem is, presumably, to be found in Goscelin’s insistence on the Many within the One.45 As there are many mansions in the heavenly kingdom, so there will be many marriages which are ultimately one; Goscelin’s vision of the mystic marriage of Edith and her company is preceded by an account of the gathering of many patriarchs and patron saints, Edith among them, all of whom are accompanied by their train.46 The mystical union of Edith and her company with Christ appears to be distinct from, yet simultaneously to stand for all of the mystic marriages in heaven, and it takes place against a background of pure marriages between ‘young men and virgins, men and women, the married and the celibate’.47 The union of Edith and her spouse in the bedchamber of a transfigured Wilton is the fulfilment of the building and habitation images throughout the work, especially of course the tabernacle at the beginning of Book III, as well as the temple of Solomon and the watchtower of Zion.48 The transfigured Wilton here also represents 44

Liber confort., p. 115; ‘Tunc erit vviltonia tua urbs ingens et ampla, muro aureo late perlustrata, arce fulgida [tu]rribus gemmeis, non in pugnam, sed in speculam glorie sublimata, unde filie Syon latius aspiciant tota Anglia sua. Porte eius margarite, omnes domus eius auree. Templum iaspide, crisolitis, berillis, amet‹h›istis cunctisque lapidibus preciosis perlucidum, ueteris Salomonis dignitate tanto precellentius, quanto noui Salomonis nostri noua arte constructius. Huc quotiens uoluerit, descendet potens regina tua Edgytha, magni Christi thalamo superba. Huc dilectum sponsum inducet cum summis amicis suis angelis et archangelis, apostolis et martyribus, cum regibus et patribus Romanis et Angligenis, cum patre Edgaro et fratre Eduuardo, cum T‹h›ecla, Agnete, Cecilia, et Argina, Caterina, multaque uirginum turba, totaque sua vviltoniensis populi familia, quotquot dignos fecit Dominus in sorte sua’. 45

See, for instance, Liber confort., pp. 102–03.

46

Liber confort., p. 113.

47

Liber confort., p. 115; ‘Iuuenum et uirginum, uirorum et uiraginum, nuptorum et celibum’. 48

Liber confort., p. 92; pp. 95–96.

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a fulfilment of the description of the church built by Edith in Goscelin’s Legend, which he depicts in the imagery of the New Jerusalem and portrays as the bedchamber in which Edith celebrates her marriage to the heavenly bridegroom.49 But what of Eve’s cell, mentally reconstructed by her as a tabernacle, the bedchamber where she feasted on the body of Christ, and womb-cum-tomb of her own body from which she is to be liberated and rise like Christ, which we might have expected to be the site of her culminating union with him? Shortly before he evokes the image of Edith and her company entering the chamber of Christ, Goscelin addresses Eve directly with these words: With your holy lady Edith and all the choirs of sisters, all whom their place has formed for Christ, you will revisit from heaven your Wilton, or this cell of yours, now not a 50 cell but a distinguished palace.

In terms of Goscelin’s thematic insistence on the Many and the One, this seems to mean that Eve’s cell, transfigured to a palace, is individually distinct and yet at the same time one of the many mansions within the transfigured city of Wilton. Eve, by implication, like Wulfthryth in the Legend of Edith, attains union with Christ by incorporation into Edith as a member of her community.51 In keeping with the spiralling conception of Goscelin’s work, the prefiguration and fulfilment of the images of building and habitation returns Eve to her place of origin at the last and highest level of her journey. But this does not represent a fulfilment of the union between his soul and Eve’s in the heavenly homeland that Goscelin envisaged at the very beginning of Book I: Although he [God] has separated us for the time being, he has also given us higher counsels, so that of course we will pant and hasten to be united in that homeland where we can never ever be separated. The more distance he has put between us physically, the more inseparably at some time he will join us together again one soul of two 52 people.

His final words echo instead the position he reached at the end of Book I, when he resigned himself to the loss of Eve:

49

For the details of the relationship of this to the metres in the Legend of Edith, see Hollis, ‘Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women’, pp. 242–44. 50

Liber confort., p. 114; ‘cum sancta tua domina Edgitha cunctisque sororum choris, quascumque locus suus Christo educauerat, reuises de celo vviltoniam tuam, siue hanc cellam tuam, iam non cellam sed insignem regiam’. 51 52

See Hollis, ‘St Edith and her Community’, p. 279.

Liber confort., p. 27; ‘et ad tempus separans docuit altiora consilia, ut scilicet in illa patria anhelemus et festinemus coniungi, ubi nunquam perpetuo possimus seiungi. Quo autem longius corpore remouit, eo inseparabilius unicam aliquando duorum animam resolidabit’.

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At one time I presumed, if the Lord should forgive my sins, that I might be able to cherish you in my bosom in the paradise of God, but now I wish for this: that I may happily deserve to see you in the more worthy bosom of father Abraham.53

He concludes, at the end of Book IV: Have pity for the bereavement of Goscelin, whom you have loved as the home of your soul in Christ […]; beg for me, I beseech you, the mercy of the Lord that is ready to be appeased for eternity, and forgiveness for my sins, so that although you are very far removed from my unworthiness, I may have the happiness of seeing you in your highest happiness, in the blessed light. So may you have all the desires of your soul.54

Having constructed Eve as his intercessor in Book I, he remains dependent on her intercession for his place in heaven, but envisages this as making him, at best, an onlooker at her wedding feast. Just as he was a visitor at Wilton, not a member of the community, he imagines himself excluded finally from Eve’s reincorporation in community, unsure of whether she will want him immediately present or whether, having been loved by Eve ‘as the home of her soul’, he will, like her body, have been left far behind her in eternity. In their conception of the religious life as a progressive spiritual quest, the Liber confortatorius and the Legend of Edith are highly unusual.55 Works of spiritual formation written for women in the eleventh and twelfth century, Barbara Newman concludes, tend to be static in conception because the authors regard the virginal audiences of their works as having possession of a perfection which they must defend.56 For Goscelin, Eve’s virginity is only an issue in so far as it may cause her to fall through pride, and even so, he regards virginity as a figure for spiritual perfection rather than as a literal state. Were he to exhort her to defend her virginity, 53

Liber confort., p. 45; ‘Aliquando presumebam, si Dominus propitiaretur peccatis meis, quod te in paradiso Dei gremio possem refouere, sed nunc hoc opto ut te merear digniori sinu patris Abrahe feliciter uidere’. 54

Liber confort., p. 117; ‘miserere orbitatis Goscelini, quem ut anime tue domicilium in Christo dilexisti […] ora michi, queso, placabilem in eternum Domini clementiam, ac peccatorum ueniam, ut te, licet longius a mea indignitate remotam, letus merear uidere in beata luce letissimam. Sic habeas anime cuncta cupita tue’. 55

For spiritual progress in the Legend of Edith, see Hollis, ‘Edith as Contemplative’, pp. 281–306. 56

Newman, pp. 19–45. Compare now Elizabeth Bos, ‘The Literature of Spiritual Formation for Women in France and England, 1080 to 1180’, in Listen, Daughter: The Speculum Virginum and the Formation of Religious Women in the Middle Ages, ed. by Constant J. Mews (New York: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 201–20. She counters Newman’s view by demonstrating the variety of attitudes to virginity. She does not discuss the Liber confortatorius; her recognition of the theme of worldly sacrifice in the genre she studies offers a very fruitful line of approach for future investigation.

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it would prompt a reading of his relationship with her far less innocent than the one he is at pains to depict; presumably he can also be regarded as innocent in relating exempla involving subjects such as brothels, rape, and prostitution, that no Victorian clergyman would have mentioned to a young woman who belonged to a religious order.57 The regulation of her conduct does not fall within his purview, except for a passing prohibition on gossip and companion animals.58 In the Liber confortatorius, Goscelin is concerned to advance Eve’s spiritual progress, as he has been since he first met her as a child,59 and he is almost exclusively concerned with her mind (or soul) in his text. Though her progression to her ultimate goal connects at points with the bridal mysticism of the Legend of Edith, Eve’s spiralling quest, like the glimpses of eternity offered to her, is much richer, more complex, and intellectually extending than the single-minded, headlong advance towards the marital consummation in heaven that Goscelin depicts in the Legend of Edith for the Wilton nuns.

57

See further Hayward and Hollis, ‘The Female Reader’, pp. 396–97.

58

Liber confort., p. 80.

59

Liber confort., p. 28.

The Female Reader in the Liber confortatorius REBECCA HAYWARD AND STEPHANIE HOLLIS

F

rom the beginning, Goscelin and Eve’s friendship had a textual dimension. Goscelin recalls how Eve, when she was still a child, brought him books that he wanted.1 As Linda Olson observes, it is hard to know what historical reality lies behind this, whether it means that she carried books to him or whether it means that she had access to books that he did not have.2 It is evident, at any rate, that Goscelin associated Eve with a shared love of the written word and of the knowledge to be found in books. This was presumably important to Goscelin’s close relationship with her, since likeness and common interests were central to monastic conceptions of male friendship in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and shared literacy made possible its expression in the exchange of letters.3 For Goscelin, of course, books were not an end in themselves, but were a means to salvation. In Book III he depicts the reading of devotional books as food and drink for the soul, and urges Eve to ‘take possession of the holy banquet of sacred volumes with avidity and praiseworthy gluttony,’ and ‘to hunger for it as for the bread of life and thirst for it as the fountain of life’, in order to sharpen her intellect and kindle herself with divine love.4 Eve’s role as reader is endorsed by the authority of Jerome. Goscelin urges her to be like the women that Jerome corresponded with, Paula, Eustochium, and Blaesilla, whom, Goscelin claims, Jerome described as ‘a library of Christ’ (Christi bibliotecam).5 He also refers her to Jerome’s writings for his 1

Liber confort., p. 28.

2

Olson, p. 75, n. 23. Compare Hollis, ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, pp. 316–18.

3

Olson, p. 75, nn. 24, 25, points out that Abelard regarded Heloise’s literariness as making her particularly attractive both as a present lover and an absent epistolary companion. 4

Liber confort., p. 80; ‘ut sacrorum uoluminum mensam sanctam auiditate et laudabili ingluuie peruadas, hanc ut uite panem ut uite fontem esurias et sitias’. 5

Goscelin appears to have misremembered Jerome’s commendation; see translators’ note,

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argument in favour of being learned instead of a simple rustic. In Book III Goscelin defends learning on the grounds that knowledge brings about humility and humility ensures salvation.6 He reveals a much higher valuation of it in Book IV, however, when, enumerating the various ways in which individual souls will be made perfect in the New Jerusalem, he says that those who are more learned in the ways of God will be made more familiar with him.7 Goscelin’s role in Eve’s life as a teacher obviously had both an intellectual and a spiritual dimension. He wishes her to be a proficient reader of Latin and welleducated in the standard texts of the Western Christian tradition, and intends this educational programme to assist her in her spiritual progress. This motivation is evident in the way that he structures the Liber confortatorius to provide both intellectual stimulation and a spiritual path that moves ever upwards.8 The third book of the Liber confortatorius is the one in which Goscelin discusses in the most detail the texts he hopes that Eve will read. It is not clear whether he is suggesting a refresher course or a programme of study that he thinks will be substantially new to her. The fact that he names at least some of the books that he hopes she will read has made his reading list for Eve one of the most commonly cited passages in discussions of the Liber confortatorius to date. As Bella Millett points out, Eve’s level of education must have been high: Goscelin expects Eve to cope with his own fairly difficult Latin, and to understand his allusions to classical literature, as well as following a demanding programme of Latin reading: not only the Scriptures, but the Scriptural commentaries of Jerome, Augustine, Gregory and others, the Lives of the Fathers, Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History, Augustine’s Confessions and City of God, Orosius’s History of the World, and Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. 9

Goscelin also names ‘the three-fold book of ecclesiastical history’ (Cassiodorus’ Historia ecclesiastica tripartita), and gives particular prominence to the Life of St Antony among the saints’ lives and patristic commentaries he urges her to read.10 For Goscelin, an anchorite’s cell is an ideal site for devotional literary activity. He contrasts the security and solitude of Eve’s cell, where he imagines her reading his book and others, with his own anxious and distracted condition in the world. There are many in the world, he assures her, who sigh for the part of the contemplative Mary that she has chosen instead of being busy in the world like Mary’s sister Liber confort., p. 81. 6

Liber confort., p. 82.

7

Liber confort., p. 114.

8

See Hayward and Hollis, ‘The Anchorite’s Progress’, pp. 369–83.

9

Millett, p. 88. See also Roy, pp. 113–16; Webber, ‘The Diffusion of Augustine’s Confessions’, pp. 29–30, 44–45; van Rossum, pp. 126–127, 138–141; Olson, p. 73. 10

Liber confort., p. 80.

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Martha.11 He himself, he says, has often longed for a cell like Eve’s where he could escape from social distractions and, instead of feasting, could dedicate his literary talents to God.12 At times Goscelin emphasises that the text provides a space where they can be present to one another; at other times, however, it suits his purpose to associate the pattern of imagery that contrasts being outside and inside the cell with the one who is outside the book, creating it, and the one who is inside, consuming it, and in a sense being constructed by it.13 Although Edith is depicted in Goscelin’s Legend as both a scribe and an author, he does not suggest that Eve is a writer of anything except answers to his letters.14 It might thus seem that the Liber confortatorius presents the classic spectacle of an active male writer and provider of intellectual food for a passive female reader who consumes his production. And it must be said that Goscelin, as a teacher of Eve in her childhood, does seem to have conceived her as a vessel into which he poured his words.15 Similarly, he recalls that she once dreamt that he fed her on white bread, from which she collected pieces of gold and stored them in her heart. He does, however, encourage her in Book III to become an independent reader and interpreter of scripture.16 He also inverts the implicitly active and passive roles of writer and reader by the stance that he adopts as the author of a ‘book of encouragement’ for Eve. It is Eve who is constructed as the active party—as a soldier of Christ fighting battles to gain the promised land, and, he hopes, as the intercessor for his salvation. Goscelin, by contrast, in urging her on to victory, is her ‘inert and unwarlike encourager’.17 Her mind is stronger than that of her non-combatant horn-blower,18 he writes, and also: Thus consoling and exhorting I desire, sweetest one, to arm you for strength, although I myself am without arms and worthless, without any strength. For although the unwarlike singer or trumpeter does not fight, yet he brings much to those who do. He rouses the strong ones and strengthens them with the glory of victory, ready ‘to stir heroes with brass and to fire battle with music’. These arms and this bravery, to which you are called forth, are not dependent on sex, age, or physical strength, but on mettle, on constancy, on a soul unconquerable in the conquest of all things. I confess my benevolence is weak, and my love is soft. This truly I always wanted, and to this end I

11

Liber confort., p. 89.

12

Liber confort., p. 34.

13

This pattern of imagery is announced at the very beginning of the Prologue; see Liber confort., p. 26. 14

Liber confort., p. 29, See further Hollis, ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, pp. 310–13.

15

Liber confort., pp. 28–29.

16

Liber confort., pp. 29, 81.

17

Liber confort., p. 46; ‘inertem et imbellem exhortatorem’.

18

Liber confort., p. 63.

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gave birth to you and loved you, that you should pass into the bowels of Christ, and become wholly a sacrifice to Christ.19

Goscelin’s role as a non-combatant encouraging the young warrior in battle slides at the end of this passage towards identity with another of his adopted roles, that of a mother who has given birth to Eve. But Goscelin does not make this connection explicit—he makes very little play with gender as an explicit theme. Gender undoubtedly plays a part in his conception of his relationship with Eve, but apart from casting himself as Eve’s spiritual mother, he rarely uses gender metaphorically.20 His highly emotional form of spirituality—tears, sighs, fervent love and ardent longing—may be regarded as a cultivation of his ‘contrasexual affective powers’.21 In the Legend of Edith these emotions are embodied in his female protagonist, whom he portrays as a bride of Christ; in the Liber confortatorius, however, even though it is addressed to a woman, he does not often employ female figures as representative of emotions, and he rarely uses them as representative of human fragility. For Goscelin, in other words, neither emotions nor weaknesses are specifically gendered. Although this essay is focussed, then, on the ways in which Goscelin accommodates Eve as a female reader, instances of this are not very conspicuous or numerous, and we are wanting to suggest that, unlike the authors of eleventh- and twelfth-century works of spiritual formation examined by Barbara Newman, Goscelin is not ‘deeply and self-consciously concerned with gender’.22 One evident way in which Goscelin shapes his text for Eve is when he suggests scriptural quotations for her to use in prayer. In such cases, he changes masculine grammatical forms to feminine ones.23 Space is made within the rewritten text for a 19

Liber confort., p. 36; ‘Consolando itaque et exhortando cupio te, dulcissima, ad uirtutem armare, cum ipse inermis et uacuus sine omni uirtute. Nam imbellis cantor uel tubicen, quanquam non pugnet, multum tamen pugnantibus confert. Robustos excitat, et ui‹n›cendi gloria roborat: “Ere ciere uiros, martemque accendere cantu” prontulus. Hec arma et hec fortitudo quibus prouocaris, non sunt sexuum, non etatum, non membrorum, sed magnanimitatis, sed constantie, sed animi ad omnia uincenda inuicti. Confiteor eneruem beniuolentiam, et mollem diligentiam meam. Hoc equidem semper optaui, et ad hoc peperi te ac dilexi, ut in Christi transires uiscera, ac tota Christi fieres uictima’. 20

See Hayward, ‘Spiritual Friendship and Gender Difference’, and ‘Complaints and Consolations’, pp. 347–53, 356–63. 21

Hollis, ‘Edith as Contemplative’, pp. 303–04.

22

Newman, p. 28.

23

For example, in Book I, where he offers texts for her conversation with God, he changes peregrinus in Psalm 38. 13 to peregrina, salum in Psalm 30. 3 to saluam and traditus sum to tradita sum in Psalm 87. 9. Talbot omitted to record the first of these changes, printing peregrinus, although MS Sloane 3103 reads peregrina (fol. 17r/6; Liber confort., p. 38). Goscelin repeats this pattern with the replacement of saluus with sauva in his usage of Psalm

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feminine subject to take up the role of speaker. It is also noticeable that, in Book III, where he turns from youthful battles to consider how Eve will spend the long life that lies ahead of her, he tries to imaginatively enter into her experience and anticipate what problems she will need to be counselled about. He pictures, for instance, what it would be like for a young woman to be shut up in a cell, and imagines the ways in which the devil will tempt her: ‘Why have you done this? Why have you cut off such splendid things from your nature? Ah, a green branch, transplanted from your vernal grace, you have withered before your time. You are a girl; you are in your first youth; in the very flower of life you have suddenly perished. Will you remain here from the youthful age of twenty to your fiftieth or your hundredth year, to old age and feebleness, to a long-lived and distant end, to such long days, such dark nights, to such long labours, such perpetual 24 prison, such continual deaths of desolation?’

This conjuring up of what he thinks may be Eve’s darkest fears and most despairing moments, with its acknowledgement of what she has sacrificed, shows a real commitment to engage with her experience, and his acknowledgement of its gendered dimension. His treatment of the woman who might have seemed the most likely candidate for the introduction of a misogynistic viewpoint, the first Eve, is surprising. Nowhere does he engage in the kind of blame of Eve that was common in the patristic sources with which he was familiar.25 Very early in Book I, when Eve is introduced immediately after the salutation, her name may lead the reader to expect such associations, but Goscelin quashes such ideas firmly.26 He dissociates his Eve from 118. 117 near the end of Book I (Liber confort., p. 46). Similarly, when in Book IV Goscelin quotes Isaiah 3. 12 as a warning against over-confidence, he changes it from the original, which reads: ‘Popule meus, qui te beatum dicunt ipsi te decipiunt’ (‘O my people, they that call you blessed, the same deceive you’), writing instead ‘Filia, qui beatam te dicunt, ipsi te decipiunt’ (‘Daughter, those who call you blessed deceive you’; Liber confort., p. 92). 24

Liber confort., p. 70; ‘“Hec quid egisti? Quid tantos rerum splendores ab indole tua amputasti? Ah, uiridis uirgula a uernali gratia transplantata, ante tempus aruisti. Pupa es, adolescentula es, flos ipse uite repente peristi. An hic uicenna etatula in quinquagesimum uel centesimum sedebis annum, in senectam et senium, in finem longeuum et longinquum, in tam longos dies, tam profundas noctes, in tam prolixos labores, tam iuges carceres, tam continuas desolationis mortes?”’ 25

See Roy, p. 116. For example, Jerome says in Letter 22: To Eustochium, 21, PL 22, 394– 425 (408): ‘Mors per Evam: vita per Mariam’ (‘Death came through Eve, life through Mary’). One point where Goscelin does reveal some element of misogyny is in his discussion of the fickleness of human love, where his example is a woman who takes up with a man who is more pleasing than her husband (Liber confort., p. 40), and his use of the haughty daughters of Zion also belongs in this category (Liber confort., pp. 97–98). 26 See Van Rossum, pp. 107–08. She observes that when Goscelin discusses the Fall and Redemption he uses the pairing of Adam and Christ rather than Eve and Mary (Liber confort.,

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the scriptural one by his description of her profession: ‘She is Eve, the ward of Christ, left to God alone as a recluse in her dwelling’.27 A little later, Goscelin explicitly connects her to Mary: ‘May the one who took up Mary take her up, as he gathers and enfolds all the souls who come to him in the tireless embrace of his kindness’.28 This deflection of possible misogynistic associations continues later in Book I, when Goscelin recalls that whenever Bishop Herman greeted Eve as ‘mother of the living,’ he, playing with the name, said, ‘that Eve is the mother of the living; this Eve will be the daughter of the living’. 29 And just before this reported exchange— the only point at which Goscelin associates Eve with her namesake—he also links her with Mary, recalling how she had a dream in which she collected pieces of gold from the bread that Goscelin fed her, preserving his words like Mary and thinking them over in her heart.30 Even when Goscelin refers to the first Eve as the woman who disobeyed the commandment of God and persuaded Adam to do the same, he stresses that the blame was not hers alone. In Book III he says: ‘That snake, the seducer of the old Eve, whispers with a flattering voice’.31 This recognises the temptations to which his new Eve will be subjected, and yet lessens the focus of blame on the old Eve. Eve is also interpreted near the end of Book III as a figure for the Church: Goscelin says that just as Eve came from the side of Adam, so the Church grew and has been redeemed from the side of Christ.32 His deflection of the misogynistic connotations of Eve’s name is thus in marked contrast to that of Hilary of Orléans, whose posthumous eulogy of her begins with the assertion that she was not the Eve who transmitted the seed of sin to the world.33 When Goscelin comes to depict the Last Judgement in Book IV, he names Eve as someone certain of salvation: ‘Then take pity on us with your Eve, Jesus, Saviour of the world, and set us as yours on your right hand’.34 In this way any resonance of p. 53). 27

Liber confort., p. 26; ‘Eua ea est Christi pupilla, Deo soli relicta solitaria in tecto’.

28

Liber confort., p. 26; ‘Suscipiat eam qui suscepit Mariam, qui inexhausto sinu benignitatis omnem ad se uenientem colligit et complectitur animam’. 29

Liber confort., p. 29 (Genesis 3. 20); ‘Eua mater uiuentium[…] illa mater uiuentium, hec erit filia uiuentium’. 30

Liber confort., p. 29.

31

Liber confort., p. 70. ‘Sibilat ille antique Eue seductor serpens blanda uoce’.

32

Liber confort., p. 90; compare Author uncertain (Jerome?), Exposition of the Four Gospels: Matthew, PL 30, 557C; Author uncertain (Augustine?), Sermon 231, 1, PL 39, 2171. 33 34

Häring, p. 925 (line 13).

Liber confort., p. 112; ‘Tunc miserere nostri cum Eua tua, Ihesu saluator seculi, et dextros tuos constitue [nos]’.

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Eve’s name with the woman held responsible by the church fathers for the Fall is cancelled out by this Eve’s superior sanctity and her role as the woman who will assist Goscelin to reach heaven. The first Eve, along with Adam, is also named among those who will be included in the heavenly kingdom, along with the patriarchs and their descendents.35 Goscelin also offers a potential identification between Eve and Mary by presenting Mary as a female reader. He retells a legend that relates that Mary was accustomed to rise in the night to say the Psalms, and that Gabriel entered just as Mary had reached the Psalm that says ‘May the Lord guard your coming-in and going-out’.36 This must have been an attractive story for female religious, who could imagine the Virgin Mary carrying out the spiritual practices that were central to their own lives. The noticeable feature about Goscelin’s references to Mary, however, to a reader familiar with later medieval devotional literature, is how few they are.37 And in the culminating image of the union of Christ and his Church, where we might have expected that the Church would be symbolised by Mary, she is displaced by St Edith from the role of bride to that of universal mother-in-law.38 Nor is the Virgin Mary very conspicuous in the Legend of Edith; Goscelin associates Edith much more closely and pervasively with Mary Magdalene.39 Rachel Fulton argues that spiritual advisors of the eleventh century did not feel it necessary to accommodate their female audiences by recommending devotion to Mary, and notes Goscelin as an instance of this. Although he advised Eve to adopt his practice of meditating hourly on the sufferings of Christ, she points out, he does not recommend that Eve perform the same type of meditation on Mary and her co-suffering.40 Goscelin does in fact evoke the sufferings of Mary as a witness of the Crucifixion, but, rather than recommending her to Eve for self-identification, the logic of Goscelin’s argument equates him with Mary, since Mary’s sufferings figure in the context of his complaint that, by leaving him without warning Eve has sinned against the love exemplified by Christ, who forewarned his friends of his impending death.41 Goscelin’s employment of Mary suffering at the departure of Christ as a figure for his grief for the loss of Eve is consistent with his cross-gendering of his parenthood of Eve elsewhere in Book I; he describes himself, for instance, as ‘that mother soul which with her womb’ gave birth to Eve, and he appeals to her never to forget the 35

Liber confort., p. 113.

36

Liber confort., p. 83 (Psalm 120 (121). 8).

37

References by Goscelin to Mary additional to those mentioned above are found in Liber confort., pp. 27, 28, 32, 101. 38

Liber confort., p. 115.

39

See Hollis, ‘Edith as Contemplative’, pp. 290, 298, 300–01.

40

Fulton, p. 227.

41

Liber confort., pp. 30–31.

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‘labour pangs and birthing of Goscelin’.42 His identification with Mary is also seen when he reports that he was obliged to stop writing his ‘book of encouragement’ because he was overcome with grief, and bellowed loudly: ‘Holy Mary, succour the unhappy; help the faint-hearted’.43 Goscelin’s appeals to Eve to be merciful and intercede for him, like his expressions of his grief for the loss of her, assume her emotional susceptibility to suffering, but he does not exploit the potential for a Marian construction of Eve in her role as intercessor. He does encourage Eve in Book IV to participate imaginatively in the experience of giving birth to Christ, but his recommendation is too brief and generalised to be described as an encouragement to affective devotion: ‘In loving uniquely one so worthy of love conceive him, carry him, give birth to him, feed him. Let him deign in you from infancy to be born and to grow to the fullness of love’.44 There is rather more encouragement to identify with Mary Magdalene as the lover of Christ. She is mentioned a number of times in the Liber confortatorius, particularly as the contemplative antithesis of her sister Martha.45 Her appearance as the lover of Christ in Book IV of the Liber confortatorius fits neatly into Goscelin’s exhortations to Eve not to fall victim to pride in her virginal state, because less evidently pure souls, figuratively described as wives, widows and prostitutes, may equally be brides of Christ. Goscelin expands the description of Mary anointing the hair of Christ as if to encourage Eve to linger on the image: ‘She covers his hair with very sweet odours; she pours; she strokes; she pleases him; she combs; she arranges, and the sweetness spread out from the head of the Saviour and filled the whole house’.46 In depicting Edith as a bride of Christ in his Legend, then, Goscelin portrays her in the role of lover and wife, which, as a female religious (in Goscelin’s depiction if not in actuality), she had renounced. In the Liber confortatorius, in keeping with his 42 Liber confort., p. 29: ‘Illa mater anima que te anhelis uisceribus peperit’: Liber confort., p. 45: ‘ut uiscerum et partus Goscelini in Christo nunquam obliuiscaris’. Goscelin later uses Mary and John as an example of friends who could not stay together. 43

Liber confort., p. 27; ‘Sancta Maria, succurre miseris, iuua pusillanimes’.

44

Liber confort., p. 107; ‘Tam amabilem unice diligendo, concipe, parturi, gigne, enutri. A paruo nasci et in plenitudinem caritatis crescere dignetur tibi’. 45

In Book III Goscelin has already noted that it was Mary Magdalene who deserved to see the Lord first. He also includes her in his two lists of remarkable conversions in Book IV: alongside the observation of such transformations as that the Lord made the denier a leader (Peter) and the persecutor a teacher (Paul), he says that he made the prostitute his friend (Liber confort., p. 95), and in the second list, which says that the Lord found a fisherman and made him an apostle (Peter), and found a tax-collector and made him an evangelist (Matthew), Goscelin says that he found a prostitute and made her equal with virgins (Liber confort., p. 98). 46

Liber confort., p. 101; ‘crines suauissimis odoribus inuoluit, infundit, permulcet, gratificat, comit, componit, atque respersa de uertice saluatoris suauitas totam domum repleuit’.

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merely occasional construction of Eve as a bride of Christ, Goscelin makes little attempt to encourage Eve to identify with specifically female experiences as later medieval authors writing for women were to do. 47 Whether historically accurate or not, Goscelin’s account of Edith in his Legend portrays her as feeling a particular affinity with other holy women and women in the scriptures. He relates that, of the many lives of the saints that she read voraciously, she was most inspired by the example of two of her female relatives, her grandmother Ælfgifu and Edith of Tamworth.48 He also relates that Edith depicted herself in the role of Mary Magdalene on the alb that she embroidered for herself, and the prayers that he quotes from her manual of devotions associate her with the Israelite woman in John 1. 7 and the daughter of Caleb.49 Whereas Goscelin does not encourage Eve to identify with Mary as the mother of Christ or Magdalene as his lover, in exhorting her to be a spiritual warrior he does offer her female role models. In Book II, where the martial conception of Eve’s quest is dominant, three of the four extended exempla feature holy women of the early church (Perpetua, Blandina, and an unnamed slave woman). The fourth concerns a male English anchorite called Brihtric, who had recently been burnt to death because he refused to leave his cell when a Viking army came. The story of Brihtric is explicitly included because Goscelin thinks that as an English anchorite he will be of particular interest to Eve.50 Presumably he thought that the stories about women in Book II would also be of particular interest to Eve, but his intention in using them seems to have been to convey that spiritual warfare did not entail women becoming men. Significantly, in his account of the dream of Perpetua in which she wrestles with an Ethiopian, Goscelin does not say, as her Passio does, that, in this dream, Perpetua was turned into a man.51 Throughout the Liber confortatorius Goscelin only once describes a woman as manly.52

47

It should be noted, however, that the exhortation to give birth to Christ quoted above is part of a more extended meditation on Christ as a lover; Liber confort., pp. 106–07. 48

Vita Edithae (R), chap. 8 (pp. 53–54).

49

Vita Edithae, chap. 8. (p. 56). For the daughter of Caleb in Liber confort., p. 106, see Hollis, ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, p. 310. 50

Liber confort., pp. 67–68. Goscelin’s concluding remarks suggest that he also thought that the anchorite being burned alive in his cell would have particular significance for Eve. 51

Text in Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité, ed. and trans. by Jacqueline Amat (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1996), X.7 (pp. 136–39)); see van Rossum, pp. 172–74. 52

The woman who escapes from a brothel disguised in the clothing of her male rescuer is described as having the garb and spirit of a man: Liber confort., p. 99. There is an exhortation to act ‘manfully’ in the opening call to battle in Book II; Liber confort., p. 47.

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In both of the stories of women martyrs that Goscelin summarises in Book II their femaleness is uppermost. The story of the slave woman, Blandina, is used to illustrate the power of the weak.53 Goscelin doubtless chose the story of Perpetua out of the many available stories of female martyrs because the dream of Perpetua in which she fights her way up a ladder bristling with instruments of torture after trampling down a dragon at its foot contains one of the key images of his work, that of upward ascent through struggle.54 But one of the primary features of Goscelin’s summary is that both Perpetua and Felicity, who also figures in this story, are mothers. Biological motherhood here is an impediment to spiritual achievement, which is removed by divine aid. Felicity feared that she would be deprived of martyrdom because it was not permitted for a pregnant woman to be executed; she was ‘freed from her offspring by giving birth’.55 Perpetua’s infant is snatched from her by her father; ‘as God willed it neither did the infant want her breasts, as he had been accustomed, nor did she have the pain of the milk to cause her discomfort’.56 The characterization of motherhood in this story seems consistent with Goscelin’s perfunctory treatment of Eve’s engagement with spiritual motherhood, and conceivably offers a consolation for the fear of being a prematurely withered green branch that he touches on in the imagined temptation of the serpent in Book III. His story registers, however, the pain involved in the renunciation of maternity; just as Perpetua feels for her father’s unhappiness as he rages and appeals to her, when he snatches the child from her, Goscelin relates, ‘her maternal feelings were distressed’.57 Goscelin does not focus on the violence done to the female martyrs nor on their suffering, but on their courage and their triumph; there are no sado-masochistic spectacles here. He also diminishes the role of Saturus, Perpetua’s male helper and leader of the band of martyrs, and attributes his words to her, thus increasing her authority and her triumph; he regards it as the most noteworthy feature of her story that she threw a great crowd of people into confusion by saying: ‘Note carefully what our faces are like, so that you may recognise us on the day of judgement’.58 Blandina, too, has power in her words, repeatedly saying only to her torturers: ‘I am a Christian’ (Christiana sum).59 53

Eusebius’ Werke II: Historia ecclesiastica, ed. by E. Schwartz and T. Mommsen, Die Griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller 9.2 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1908), V.1.17–19 (p. 409)). 54

Liber confort., p. 50. See Hayward and Hollis, ‘The Anchorite’s Progress’, pp. 369–83.

55

Liber confort., p. 50; ‘a partu liberari’.

56

Liber confort., p. 50; ‘Dei nutu nec ille assueta ubera curauit, nec illa feruorem lactis infestum habuit’. 57

Liber confort., p. 50; ‘materna precordia anxiarentur’.

58

Liber confort., p. 51; ‘Notate diligenter facies nostras quales simus, ut recognoscatis nos in die iudicii’. 59

Liber confort., p. 64.

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Goscelin’s female martyrs, then, do not engage in the aggressive verbal heroics that can be found in the literature of the heroic age as well as in later medieval hagiography. In a number of respects Goscelin was moving away from a heroic age mentalité. In keeping with his self-characterization as ‘unwarlike’ and his compassionate identification with the sufferings of Christ, he does not explain the nature of the redemption purely in terms of a battle between Satan and Christ. He portrays Christ as a human sufferer who reconciled humanity to God as a victimsacrifice: ‘The new wars are to pay back kindness and love to enemies, to submit to all suffering, to overcome all vices with all hostility’.60 In narrating the story of Blandina as an illustration of the power of the weak, Goscelin does not make much of her weakness as a woman or suggest that her courage was in any way extraordinary for a woman. He merely says that all torments were ‘trampled underfoot and crushed by one of the weaker sex’.61 As presented by Goscelin, the redemption was also an example of the power of the weak; Christ on the cross ‘engaged with our enemy, not in the majesty of his divinity, but in the fragility of our flesh. In that very weakness, the Lord was clothed in strength and girded himself with power’.62 Comparing Blandina to three women of the Old Testament who defeated armies (Deborah, Jael, and Judith), Goscelin introduces his next female exemplum with a brief reflection on the Lord’s partiality to women; he, who chose to enter the world by means of a woman, chose a slave woman to gain a kingdom for himself by her conversion of it.63 The slave woman in this story is apparently a holy hermit; Goscelin describes her as living in a cell. Although the story is entitled ‘The strength of the slave woman’ (Virtus captiue), it illustrates the power of her prayer—she raised a column in the building of the church which the builders had been unable to erect. The story of Brihtric which follows this one is similarly headed ‘The strength of an anchorite’ (Virtus anachorite). Goscelin seems in these two stories to be emphasising a non-physical conception of strength, and also to be providing eulogistic portraits of recluses for Eve; the structurally significant feature of the story of the unnamed slave woman is the image of raising a column by prayer, which is picked up at the beginning of Book III in the description of the tabernacle, but Goscelin relates her story verbatim and at unusual length, including an account of her conversion of the king and queen, her asceticism, and the healing miracle she accomplished. 60 Liber confort., p. 51; ‘noua uero bella hostibus benignitatem et dilectionem rependere, omni patientie manus dare, omnia uitia omni hostilitate expugnare’. 61

Liber confort., p. 64; ‘ab infirmo calcantur sexu elisa’.

62

Liber confort., p. 52; ‘congressus est cum hoste nostro, non in maiestate diuinitatis sue, sed in infirmitate carnis nostre. In ipsa infirmitate indutus est Dominus fortitudinem et precinxit se uirtute’. 63

Liber confort., p. 64.

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In Book III Goscelin tells a story about a woman as an example of perseverance (surprisingly, although she is described as a poor woman, the story turns on her ability to write). As an example of perseverance, she is compared to Mary Magdalene, who was the first to see the risen Christ by her persistent watching at the tomb.64 But Goscelin does not characterise persistence as a female virtue. Persistence and patience, however, are also represented by a female figure elsewhere in this book; Goscelin includes Mary of Egypt, as a founder of the anchoritic life, alongside John the Baptist and Paul the First Hermit.65 Goscelin says nothing about her early life as a prostitute here; he focuses entirely on her ascetic endurance of the elements, giving it a heroic cast by describing her as having won a victory by trampling on the head of the serpent that tempted Eve.66 In this account, Goscelin makes it explicit that female saints do not only inspire other women; Mary of Egypt is ‘a woman who must be venerated by virgins and admired by men’.67 Two related stories about women occur in Book IV, whose theme is to warn against the pride that the virginal state (literal and physical) might engender. Both of these stories involve female martyrs who were thrown into a brothel but saved from ravishment by a man, who at first seems about to assault them. In both stories, both the woman and the male helper are killed and the woman gains a martyr’s crown for the man.68 These stories are told as examples of how some have escaped with their virginity intact from the jaws of perdition; only in this, highly oblique, fashion does Goscelin introduce the theme of the preservation of female virginity which is generally of over-riding concern in works of spiritual formation written for women. What is striking about these examples is that they illustrate the rewards gained by men in acting contrary to expectation and helping the female protagonist to preserve her virginity, since she is then able to gain his salvation; they thus offer a covert parallel to Goscelin’s appeal to Eve, as her spiritual adviser, to intercede for his salvation. The most spectacular and extended example of a holy person succumbing to temptation does not feature a woman but a male anchorite. St Alexander, Goscelin relates, having been asked, by the devil disguised as a monk, to act as foster father to a female child, murdered her after making her pregnant. Following his release from a long penance, the incorrupt body of the young woman was exhumed. She signified her forgiveness of Alexander. Then, ‘blessed Alexander rejoiced that, from the crime of a corrupter and a murderer, he had made the fruit of a martyr, and that she would 64

Liber confort., p. 85.

65

Liber confort., p. 75; see further Hayward, ‘Representations of the Anchoritic Life’, forthcoming. 66 He does allude to her later, in Book Liber confort., p. 106.

IV,

as a ‘sinful woman’, but without naming her;

67

Liber confort., p. 75; ‘mulier uirginibus ueneranda, femina uiris admiranda’.

68

Liber confort., pp. 98–99.

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triumph in heaven for him, in the inseparable bond of love’.69 Whereas, in the stories of women thrown into brothels, men’s resistance of sexual temptation is the means by which the woman is able to intercede for their salvation, in this story, it is (troublingly) through the male anchorite’s criminality that he creates a female saint who will intercede for him. This exemplum is very particularly recommended to the attention of Eve. If we wish to argue that there is an element of sexual anxiety in Goscelin’s admissions of sin in his appeals for the intercession of Eve in Book I, here, if at all, is the narrative reflex of a guilty conscience.70 In Book I, in the course of reconciling himself to Eve’s departure, Goscelin gives a number of examples of friends who were separated in life; unexpectedly, he does mention one married couple, Sara and Tobias, though he may have regarded them as an example of chaste marriage.71 His concluding example is the story of Abbess Modesta and Gertrude, whom Modesta loved from afar because of her reputation for sanctity. The story tells that, at the time of St Gertrude’s death, she appeared to Modesta in a vision, announcing her salvation.72 This story reflects a visionary tradition in which particular intimacy is attested by knowledge of the fate of the soul of the departed. The tradition is reflected in several of the visions that Goscelin reports in the Legend of Edith: Edith appears in a dream to her mother, announcing her salvation; two unnamed nuns have dreams concerning the fate of Abbess Ælfgifu’s soul; Wulfthryth’s closest friend who remains at her tomb is rewarded with a vision of a lamb emerging from it. Goscelin also indicates that there were visions of the fate of Abbess Brihtgifu’s soul at the time of her death. Edith herself appears to have had a particular friend among the women at Wilton; Goscelin relates that, while Edith was dying, one of the nuns met with a radiant being who said that angels had come to carry Edith away to heaven.73 Eve also had a particular friend at Wilton. Goscelin gives her name as Eagytha; she is the only person whom he presents as having been forewarned by Eve of her ‘precipitous and unannounced flight’.74 The fact that Goscelin mentions Eve’s friend Eagytha immediately after the story of Modesta and Gertrude suggests that he thought this story would be of interest to Eve. Eleventh- and twelfth-century writers, though condemning friendships between monks and women and unchaste 69

Liber confort., p. 105; ‘Gaudet beatus Alexander de crimine corruptoris ac percussoris se fructum fecisse martyris, atque hanc sibi triumphaturam in celis inseparabili nexu dilectionis’. 70

Hayward, ‘Representations of the Anchoritic Life’, forthcoming, discusses this episode from a different perspective. 71

Liber confort., p. 32; see Tobit 6. 18–22.

72

Liber confort., p. 44.

73

Vita Edithae, chaps 24, 25, 26; Translatio Edithae, chaps 8, 20; See Hollis, ‘St Edith and her Community,’ p. 274. 74

Liber confort., p. 29.

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friendships between men, are silent on friendships between monastic women. Aelred, renowned for his celebration of friendship between monks, when writing for a recluse who was his sister, regards any contact with women, and even female children, as threatening to her chastity.75 Goscelin, characteristically unconcerned with regulating Eve’s behaviour, merely says that he had envied Eagytha’s emotionally and physically closer relationship with Eve: O how often I thought your Eagytha blessed, who as she loved you more closely, so by shared place and sex cherished you to herself in presence. But look, her observances have been changed into grief and loneliness, although she is even now more blessed in 76 that she could say goodbye to you, when you were going away.

He later mentions that the lady who had helped Eve to settle at Angers is now her very close companion.77 Goscelin clearly evokes Eagytha as a means of engaging Eve’s sympathy for his grief at the way in which she has left him without a word of explanation or farewell. But it is worth reconsidering Goscelin’s culminating image of Eve’s attainment of the New Jerusalem in the light of his reference to Eve’s close relationship to Eagytha.78 That Goscelin represents Eve as united with Christ not directly, but through her inclusion in those who enter the marriage chamber with Edith when she leads her spouse there, is of course open to the interpretation that he did not want to envisage Eve in a heterosexual union, not even in the most figurative and mystical form—he had, he states, always wanted her to be a nun (‘a sacrifice to Christ’).79 Comparable images of female incorporation are found, however, in the Legend of Edith. In implying that Eve will be incorporated in Edith in the New Jerusalem as a member of her community, Goscelin is echoing his account of Wulfthryth in the Legend of Edith, whom he depicts, in an inversion of her biological mother-daughter relationship with Edith, as achieving union with the heavenly bridegroom by her incorporation in Edith. When Wulfthryth died, Goscelin relates, she passed ‘to the 75

De institutione inclusarum, chaps 2–4 (Dumont, pp. 42–53). See Newman, pp. 39–43. In the letters of Hildegard, spiritual friendship is not discussed but presupposed; see Ulrike Wiethaus, ‘In Search of Medieval Women’s Friendships: Hildegard of Bingen’s Letters to her Female Contemporaries’, in Maps of Flesh and Light: The Religious Experience of Medieval Women Mystics, ed. by Ulrike Wiethaus (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1993), pp. 93– 111. 76 Liber confort., p. 45; ‘O quotiens Egidam tuam beatam pensabam, que te ut ar‹c›tius diligebat, ita et loci et sexus unitate presentialiter sibi confouebat! Sed ecce sua sollemnia in merorem et solitudinem sunt conuersa, quanquam adhuc eo sit beatior quo abeunti potuit uale dicere’. 77

Liber confort., p. 92.

78

Liber confort., p. 115.

79

Liber confort., p. 36.

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eternal embraces of her beloved daughter in Christ, with whom she rejoices in the immortal spouse himself’.80 This image is reminiscent of Ælfgifu’s dream in which Edith prophecies that Ælfgifu will become the Abbess of Wilton: It is said also that the lady Wulfthryth was seen by her, lying in the Gabriel Chapel above the altar, most splendidly dressed, and she invited Ælfgifu to lie beside her; and when she cried out that she was unworthy, Wulfthryth grasped her and placed her beside her. 81

This dream clearly invites further exegesis; in its immediate context, it elaborates on Edith’s prophecy, since Ælfgifu is, in due course, buried beside Wulfthryth together with the other three abbesses who succeeded Wulfthryth. Ælfgifu’s foreknowledge of her own salvation consisted of an assurance that she would dwell for ever with the virgin martyrs Agatha, Cecilia and Lucy; one of the Wilton nuns dreamed of a voice announcing that Mary was waiting for the soul of Ælfgifu in the highest tower of her church with a great company of virgins.82 The many mansions in heaven, as Goscelin understood it, are the promise of an eternity which is both singular and the fulfillment of manifold desires, and, in envisaging Eve’s ultimate assumption into a female community, he may have been more in touch with the Wilton community’s ideas of heaven than he was when he depicted Edith’s ascent at death to the embrace of her heavenly spouse.

80 Translatio Edithae, chap. 7 (p. 275); ‘ad eternos amplexus desiderabilis filie in Christo, cum qua gaudet super ipso immortali sponso’. See also Metre XII. 81

Translatio Edithae, chap. 20 (p. 295); ‘Fertur quoque domina Wlftrudis in porticu Gabrielis super altare ornatissime sibi uisa iacuisse, et ipsam ut secum iaceret inuitasse, atque indignam se reclamantem ultro apprehensam secum collocasse’. 82

Translatio Edithae, chap. 20 (p. 296).

Goscelin’s Greeks and Romans W. R. BARNES

G

oscelin lists some peoples of the world by their languages in the Liber confortatorius (LC 86/37–87/1), in three groups, Greeks, Franks, and Teutons. The third group may have a little point for Eve in its last two peoples, Flandri atque Angli (87/1).1 The Greeks are perhaps also significant for the observer of Goscelin’s perception of the world in Christian and pagan terms. The last two peoples in this group, the Corinthians and the Galatians, are the addressees of letters from the apostle Paul. Of the rest, one at least of the cities, Mycenae, and most if not all of the peoples are not from life but at whatever remove from pagan poetry; most of the peoples might be from Virgil (the Inachidae are not). Goscelin does not invariably identify writers whose words and ideas he uses, but an examination of his references to Greek and Roman literature and thought in the Liber confortatorius may take into account at least some thirteen or fourteen passages in Virgil, four or five in Horace, one in Cicero, two in Sallust, two in Seneca the Younger, one in the Ilias Latina, two in the Disticha Catonis, and one in Avianus;2 references to mythology (conspicuously Orestes and Pylades, and briefly 1 2

Wilmart, ‘Ève et Goscelin [II]’, p. 48, n. 3.

Listed in Appendix. Editions of works listed there are as follows: Catullus: A Critical Edition, ed. by D. F. S. Thomson (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978); Cicero: Cato Maior de Senectute, ed. By J. G. F. Powell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Q. Horati Flacci Opera, ed. by D. R. Shackleton Bailey (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1985); C. Sallusti Crispi Catilina, Iugurtha, Historiarum Fragmenta Selecta, Appendix Sallustiana, ed. by L. D. Reynolds, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991); L. Annaei Senecae ad Lucilium epistulae morales, ed. by L. D. Reynolds, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965); P. Vergili Maronis Opera, ed. by R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969); Baebii Italici Ilias Latina, ed. and trans. by Marco Scaffai (Bologna: Pàtron, 1982); The Fables of Avianus, ed. by Robinson Ellis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1887); Disticha Catonis, ed. by Marcus Boas (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1952). The translation of Liber confort. has sometimes been adapted in this essay with a little injury to English idiom, in order to convey

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one or two others) which do not name particular authors; and also the use of other Christian writers’ treatment of pagan works and subject matter. It is not an object of this essay to identify Goscelin’s immediate sources, whether original texts, complete or incomplete, intermediary texts quoting or reporting the originals, or florilegia. The internal evidence of the Liber confortatorius is not sufficient for any certainty; the material needs to be considered with reference to Goscelin’s other writings, and to the external evidence that might indicate the texts to which he might have had access. Some of the internal evidence is very interesting. The phrase puluere foedans canitiem (‘with dust disfiguring his white hair’), of the father of Perpetua at 50/29, can be read as the end of one hexameter and the beginning of the next, puluere foedans / canitiem. It may be referred to three passages in pagan hexameter verse, canitiem […] puluere foedans, of the father of Theseus in Catullus 64, 224, canitiem […] puluere turpans, of Latinus after the death of his wife in Aeneid XII. 611, and puluere canitiem […] / turpat, of the father of Meleager in Ovid, Metamorphoses VII. 529–30.3 The whole verse of Aeneid XII. 611, canitiem immundo perfusam puluere turpans, is also used by Jerome, oddly, perhaps parodically, of an officer responsible for the execution of a Christian woman whose orders were being frustrated, as (inaccurately) canitiem immundam perfuso puluere turpans, Epistulae 1, 10 (PL 22, 330). If Goscelin’s phrase is from any of those authors it is from Catullus, who alone uses foedans; if it were from Catullus it would be another of a very few echoes which are the only indications that Catullus was read in the Middle Ages before the thirteenth century beyond Verona.4 The two quotations from Seneca’s Epistulae Morales, 89, 21 (LC 78/12) and 123, 1–2 (LC 79/2–6), the second with the story that was its context, are both from that part of the Letters (89–124) which was known to few until the twelfth century; the quotations in the Liber confortatorius may be the earliest evidence that a text of that part of the Letters had reached England.5 Pythagoras’ beans are interesting (even if they will not be explained here): Pythagoras luxu contempto faba gloriabatur (‘Pythagoras, contemptuous of luxury, gloried in the bean’, 74/4–5). Goscelin is describing the simplicity of life pursued by some Greek philosophers. To Pythagoras he adds Jerome: ‘Quid iuuat’, inquit, ‘pretiosis de epulis stercora conficere? Faba uentrem impleo’ (‘What is the pleasure of producing excrement from expensive feasts? I fill my stomach with beans’, the relation of the Latin to another text. Translations of other texts have been formulated when necessary for the same purpose, sometimes with the same effect. 3

The difference between turpans (turpat) and foedans is not significant for present purposes. 4

For other echoes see R. J. Tarrant, ‘Catullus’, in Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics, ed. by L. D. Reynolds (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 43–44. 5

L. D. Reynolds, ‘The Younger Seneca’, in Reynolds, Texts and Transmission, pp. 357–81 (p. 375).

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Epistulae 58, 6 = PL 22, 583, 45, 5 = 22, 482). Goscelin appears to assert that Pythagoras ate beans as a large part of his diet. But it was notorious in antiquity that Pythagoreans did not eat beans; there was much debate about the reason,6 but almost complete agreement on the fact. Goscelin does not have his idea from Jerome’s letter, nor from the Aduersus Iouinianum, from which he may have derived the story of Crates (Socrates, 74/1–4); Jerome indeed mentions the usual story in his commentary on Ezekiel (4, 9, PL 25, 44). A contrary story appears prominently in pagan Latin literature only, as it seems, in Aulus Gellius IV. 11, 4: Aristoxenus […] nullo saepius legumento Pythagoram dicit usum quam fabis, quoniam is cibus et subduceret sensim aluum et leuigaret (‘Aristoxenus says that Pythagoras took no vegetable more often than beans, since that food (he said) loosened the bowels gently and eased them’).7 These are interesting questions; but it is not possible within the limits of this essay to establish Goscelin’s immediate sources, or, for the same reasons, to pursue the suggestion that he might prove to be ‘one of the most widely read men of his times’.8 The evidence of the text of Sloane 3103 is not secure in some places. Goscelin tells of Socrates at LC 74/1–4 a story which Jerome tells of Crates (PL 23, 312A; so Diogenes Laertius 6, 87). He describes Satan at 92/2 as ille Prometheus in omnia transformabilis (‘that Prometheus transformable into all things’); but transformation is the characteristic power of Proteus (whom Augustine compares with Satan at Civitas Dei X. 10). Socrates and Prometheus may be the result of textual corruption between Goscelin’s own manuscript and Sloane 3103; but if they were rather errors (of whatever origin) in Goscelin’s source they are real errors in Goscelin’s knowledge. In a more complex instance he quotes an epitaph for Diogenes the Cynic, Parua polenta, tripos, baculus, sciphus, arta supellex, / haec fuerant cinico sed putat haec nimio, 74/8–9.9 That is evidently related to Ausonius’ epigram on Diogenes, 55, 1–2 Pera polenta tribon baculus scyphus, arta supellex / ista fuit Cynici: sed putat hanc nimiam. Parua for pera and tripos for tribon, which remove two of the most characteristic accoutrements of the Cynic philosopher, the wallet and the cloak, must be the result of textual corruption; perhaps in Sloane 3103, because 6

W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, 6 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962–1978), I, 184. 7

On the circulation of the text of Aulus Gellius see P. L. Schmidt, ‘Aulus Gellius. D. Tradition und Rezeption’, in Die Literatur des Umbruchs. Von der römischen zur christlichen Literatur 117–284 n. Chr., ed. by K. Sallmann, Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft, 8.4 (München: C. H. Beck, 1997), pp. 74–76. 8

Barlow, Life of King Edward, p. 143, n. 77; some discussion and detail in Hamilton, I, 23–38, 496–98. See further Hollis, ‘Afterword’, pp. 420–29. 9

‘A little peeled barley, a three-legged stool, a staff, a cup, scanty household equipment: / these were the things the Cynic owned, but he thinks these too much’. Ausonius 1–2: ‘A wallet, peeled barley, a cloak, a staff, a cup, that was the scanty household equipment / that belonged to the Cynic: but he thinks this too much’.

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Goscelin himself evidently knew the wallet, which he mentions at 74/7. Haec fuerant cinico may be a rewriting of ista fuit Cynici in the same sense, which entailed haec for hanc in the second part of the line; or the repetition of haec may be an improvement on Ausonius. Nimio is another corruption, more likely in Sloane 3103 than in Goscelin’s source. Then Goscelin tells the story of Diogenes seeing someone drinking with his hands instead of a cup, which forms the conclusion of Ausonius’ epigram, 3–4, namque cauis manibus cernens potare bubulcum / ‘cur, scyphe, te’, dixit, ‘gesto superuacuum?’;10 but Goscelin tells it in a larger version in prose, which expands Diogenes’ comment with the wit of ‘egone ad unam uentris lacunam tres lagenas feram, qui duas in manibus habeam?’, 74/10–11, which is not in the pagan versions of the story, and not in Jerome’s version (PL 23, 318C), which is cited by Talbot. But the text of Sloane 3103 tells the story not of Diogenes but of ‘a certain person’, quidam, as if this were another philosopher; which seems to offer two possible conclusions, either corruption in Sloane 3103 itself, or, if quidam is correct, a source from which Goscelin did suppose that these were two different philosophers. But in other places the accuracy with which Goscelin or his sources appear to have referred to pagan literature and thought for their purposes may serve as a starting point for a description of his dealings with it. Some differences of wording may be errors of memory; some may be, and not necessarily alternatively, improvements on the original for Goscelin’s or a source’s purposes. So the stronger synonym promittunt (‘promise’) is substituted for ostendunt (‘show’) in Aeneid I. 206 (attributed to Virgil) at LC 47/27; as the plainer synonym [collegam] fecerat (‘made’) is substituted for [collegam] coniunxerat (‘joined with itself’) in the Christian Prudentius’ Psychomachia, 201 (attributed to Prudentius) at 79/21–22. Dari (‘be given’) for the original peti (‘be sought’) in Avianus 2, 14 at 62/8 has more point in Goscelin’s context. Cubilia for cubicula in Seneca Epistulae 89, 21 (attributed to Seneca) at 78/12 might be an error of memory, or of copying, between two words that are partly synonymous (especially in the sense of ‘bedroom’); the omission of prosunt (‘benefit’) might also be an error of memory, or even of copying, because the word is strictly superfluous to the sense, but the omission also increases the vigour of the question.11 The general replaces the particular in some places. The present tense uincit (‘overcomes’) replaces the perfect uicit in Georgics I. 145–46 at 81/7–8, and so makes a statement of past events into a present general truth or maxim. That needed no knowledge of the original, and no intervention by Goscelin; the phrase had certainly been established as a present maxim by his time, as may be concluded from 10

‘For seeing a farm-labourer drinking with cupped hands / “why, my cup,” he said, “do I carry you, when you are superfluous?”’ Goscelin: ‘Shall I carry three flasks for one hole in my stomach, when I have two in my hands?’ 11

British Library, MS Harley 2659, which Reynolds connects with Goscelin’s knowledge of Seneca (p. 375, n. 27), has cubicula and prosunt (and in unum).

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references to it already by Jerome and Macrobius (who compares it specifically with sententiae and prouerbia in Homer, v. 16, 7), the appearance of the present tense in some manuscripts of the ninth century, and the inclusion of the phrase in that tense in the florilegia.12 The relative clause in qui ergo lassitudinem, famem, sitim opperitur […] reficitur at 79/1–2 (‘So, those who wait for tiredness, hunger, thirst’) is from non famem aut sitim neque frigus neque lassitudinem opperiri in Sallust, Catilina 13, 3 (‘they did not wait for hunger or thirst nor cold nor tiredness’). The list of afflictions has been reduced and re-ordered, the division into kinds (non […] aut […] neque […] neque […]) has been replaced with asyndeton; and the tense has been changed, so that what particular people did not do at a particular period might become the condition for a general rule. But the condition in its present syntax could not have stood alone as an independent quotation in Goscelin’s source. The verse tota petit bellum pubes, fremit arma iuuentus is presented by Goscelin as a general truth at LC 47/11 (‘All men seek war; young men rage for arms’). The first part replaces the first part of arma manu trepidi poscunt, fremit arma iuuentus of particular circumstances in Aeneid XI. 453 (‘In agitation they call for arms with hands outstretched, the young men rage for arms’). The thought is the same, or similar (petit bellum, arma […] poscunt); but the omission of trepidi and the addition of tota now contribute to making the particular into the general. The adaptation, whether by an earlier poet or by Goscelin himself, at least in pagan poetry would have been expected still to evoke recognition of Virgil. A quotation has been elaborated and its context rewritten in the story from Seneca, Epistulae 123, 1–2 (attributed to Seneca) at 79/2–6. Seneca, waiting for good bread, had realised that with waiting hunger would make even bad bread good bread. Goscelin’s account of the circumstances suppresses the fact that Seneca might still have good bread, nec ante edam quam aut bonum panem habere coepero aut malum fastidire desiero, (‘and I shall not eat before I have either begun to have good bread or ceased to feel distaste for bad’, 123, 2); because at least in Goscelin’s context Eve is not to have good bread. The new version of the story seems less plausible than the original, because it is not evident why Seneca might not have waited for good bread; the miller who does not have bread may have been retained in the story to suggest a reason, but the reader who knows the original will recall his role in that. Goscelin proceeds to quote Seneca, expecta, bonus erit (‘wait, it will be good’), with the substitution of erit (‘will be’) for fiet (‘will become’). Then he improves on Seneca’s explanation, etiam illum tibi tenerum et siligineum fames reddet (‘even that bread will be turned into a bread of soft white flour by your hunger’, 2), with two lines of verse, esuries faciet bonum / quem saties habuit malum (‘hunger will make good what satiety thought bad’). Those lines are not necessarily to be taken by the reader as Seneca’s; but if they are not, what is then attributed to Seneca is almost intolerably cryptic. 12

46.

See R. A. B. Mynors, ed., Virgil: Georgics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), on I. 145–

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Goscelin may have adapted not the wording of an original or a source but the information in it in his treatment of Orestes and Pylades (44/8–23); he names Orestes but not Pylades, horum alter dicebatur Orestes (‘one of them was called Orestes’, 11). The source of his story was not the references in Ambrose (De Officiis I. 41, 206 = PL 16, 85B–C) and Augustine (Confessions IV. 6, 11 = PL 32, 697), or their ultimate source (as it may be, at least in part) in Cicero’s references to Pacuvius’ tragedy (De Amicitia 24, De Finibus II. 79; V. 63); even after Goscelin’s elaboration is discounted there remain the temple of Diana, the theft, and the responses of the gods, which Ambrose, Augustine, and Cicero do not mention. But whatever the source it seems unlikely that it did not name Pylades. Rather, in a story in which both friends claimed to be Orestes, Goscelin’s narrative technique represents the circumstances in which there is only ‘Orestes’: responsis daemonum Orestes notatur. Cumque e duobus Orestes posceretur […] uterque se Orestem appellauit, nec umquam potuit in duobus Orestes inueniri, dum uterque esset Orestes […] (‘The responses of the idols named Orestes. When Orestes was sought from the two […] each called himself Orestes, nor could Orestes ever have been found from the two, while both were Orestes […]’, 11–14). A few quotations are used for a sense or an application other than that of their original context. The second line of Disticha Catonis II. 17, labitur exiguo quod partum est tempore longo (‘what has been gained in a long time slips away in a short time’), which is used there of particular circumstances defined in the first line (cum sumptus abundat, ‘when expenses are in plenty’), is used by Goscelin at LC 48/17 by itself, and so by implication more generally of all earthly achievement; there can be little question that he knew well enough a more or less complete text of the Disticha, but the second line of II. 17 might be detached relatively easily from the first, as is demonstrated by the editorial history of the couplet (described by Boas).13 The instruction nudus ara, sere nudus (‘plough bare, sow bare’) at Georgics I. 299 is an indication of the time of year to plough and to sow, as Servius told Virgil’s readers, adeo sereno caelo ut amictum possis contemnere (‘when the weather is so calm that you can despise clothing’); it is quoted by Goscelin with attribution to Virgil at 78/35–36 as proof apparently that, as peasant farmers have few clothes for protection in winter (hiemis pluuias […] nudo ceruice, nudo ferunt uertice, ‘they bear the rains […] of winter with bare neck and bare head’, 33–35), so they have few in summer (caloris et frigoris arma fronte rident aperta, ‘they laugh full in the face of the weapons of heat and cold’, 37). But that is perhaps simply an instance of the convenient clothing of one profession seeming uncomfortable and inconvenient to another. The phrase neque copia neque inopia minuitur (‘[it] is diminished neither by abundance nor by want’), used by Sallust of auaritia (Catilina 11, 3), is attributed to Sallust by Jerome in his Commentary on Ecclesiastes with reference to auaritia, and is used once each by Jerome (again) and Augustine of avarice; it is used by 13

Marcus Boas, ed., Disticha Catonis (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1951), pp. 118–19.

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Goscelin, without attribution, of the very different emotion of love in Christ at LC 40/27–28. Goscelin’s reference to Ecclesiastes in his preceding sentence may seem some reason to think the phrase is not direct from Sallust but from Jerome’s Commentary; but it is without reference to that context also. Goscelin’s warriors at 47/11 are models for Eve in her warfare; Virgil’s at Aeneid XI. 453 demand battle for their own future injury. Goscelin in his encouragement of Eve is a trumpeter, who is no warrior, but can inspire those who are warriors, 36/20– 25; he adapts Virgil’s description of Aeneas’ trumpeter Misenus in Aeneid VI. 164– 65. Aere ciere uiros Martemque accendere cantu prontulus (‘ready to stir heroes with brass and to fire battle with music’, 24–25) is from quo non praestantior alter / aere ciere uiros martemque accendere cantu (‘than whom no other was more outstanding to stir heroes with brass and to fire battle with music’); Goscelin is not comparing trumpeters, but only describing a good one. Prontulus (‘ready’) echoes faintly in sound the word it replaces in the sense and the syntax, praestantior (‘more outstanding’); the word is not certainly to be read as verse, but it may be read as the first foot of the next hexameter, and is attached most closely to Virgil’s line by the order of words in the sentence as a whole. But Virgil continues in his next two lines to describe Misenus as both a trumpeter and a warrior, 165–66, Hectora circum / et lituo pugnas insignis obibat et hasta (‘at Hector’s side he used to go into battle, winning distinction with both trumpet and spear’; and 169, fortissimus heros, ‘very valiant hero’). That seems to put into doubt a supposition that Goscelin both knew and remembered Virgil’s whole context, and expected his reader to do so, unless he is saying something like ‘[even] trumpeters who are not warriors as well [like Misenus] can encourage warriors [like Misenus]’; which is not easy. Nil sine supremo miseris mortalibus umquam / vita labore dedit (‘life never gave/gives anything to unhappy mortals without supreme labour’) at 48/11–12 is attributed there to Horace; the lines are from Satires I. 9, 59–60, nil sine magno / uita labore dedit mortalibus (‘life gave/gives nothing to mortals without great labour’). Goscelin encourages Christian aspiration with an elaboration of lines in which Horace’s bore expressed his social ambition. The idea is already out of context in Horace’s use of it, for his satiric purposes. The lines could be used without reference to their original context by Jerome, who probably did know that context, although the wording is a little inaccurate, and they are not attributed to Horace (Epistulae 58, 11, 2 = PL 22, 586);14 and they were used in their original wording independently as a proverb in the Middle Ages. But the question of context needs to be focused in this case on Goscelin’s context. The version in Goscelin’s text is an elaboration of Horace’s idea, which while retaining Horace’s authority improves on one detail, with supremo (‘supreme’) for magno (‘great’), and adds two more, with miseris (‘unhappy’) and umquam (‘ever’), all with an effect of greater emphasis on the suffering of human existence, and the two last emphasising that suffering is an 14

Jerome and Horace: H. Hagendahl, Latin Fathers and the Classics: A Study on the Apologists, Jerome and Other Christian Writers (Göteborg: Elanders, 1958), pp. 281–83.

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absolute condition of any achievement at all. The idea does not serve Goscelin’s purposes very well, as he introduces it here. His argument to this point has been that labour and suffering are the necessary way to a great reward, deduxit Dominus Israel in regna lac et mel manantia, docens simili labore ingrediendum esse in requiem et gaudia sua (‘the Lord led Israel […] into his peace and joy’, 47/20–21); the quotations from Acts, Virgil, Boethius, and Prudentius that precede the elaboration of Horace specify a great goal and reward, a promised land or heaven (Acts: regnum Dei, Virgil: sedes […] quietas and requies […] certa, Boethius: sidera, Prudentius: astra). The idea in Horace, and the elaboration with more emphasis, generalise for any achievement at all, and if they do not actually question God’s benevolence on earth carry only relatively weak encouragement for Eve in a special struggle for a special reward. Goscelin has not set the idea in its appropriate place in the order of his argument, but has apparently simply added it at the end of a series of stronger encouragements. It is perhaps more likely that Goscelin found the elaboration already made, than that he went to the trouble of making it himself and then failed to place it effectively in his argument. Another quotation that seems awkward in its immediate place in Goscelin’s argument is that from Horace, Epistles II. 2, 175–79, at LC 78/13–18. Goscelin is comparing Eve in the constraints of her cell with the Roman emperor in the extent of his empire. He quotes Seneca, Quid multa cubilia? In uno iacetis (‘Why many beds? You lie in one’), from Epistulae 89, 21. He then quotes Horace. The principal ideas in Horace’s lines are that wealth passes from heir to heir (175–77) and that wealth cannot save one from death (177–79). Goscelin does not develop either of those ideas, but rather returns immediately to the thought in Seneca’s question and comment with the point that Caesar could occupy in all the world with all his body no more space than Eve’s cell, 19–20. The wealth that passes to an heir is not indeed very obviously a possible common term of a comparison of Eve with the emperor, as the space that they occupy is a common term. Horace’s larger argument is the same as Goscelin’s larger argument, that wealth and extensive possessions bring no benefit; the idea of addition in Horace’s second sentence, Calabris / saltibus adiecti Lucani (‘[why] combine Calabrian woodlands with Lucanian’), is like that in Goscelin’s description of the emperor, transibat de domo in domum, de regno in regnum (‘he used to go from house to house, from kingdom to kingdom’, 10–11). The question in Horace’s first sentence, quid vici prosunt aut horrea? (‘what good are villages or granaries?’), is in the same form and uses the same verb as the original wording of the question in Seneca, quid prosunt multa cubicula? (‘what good are many beds?’). But Goscelin does not employ Horace’s counters, heirs and death, as he employs Seneca’s, in uno iacetis. But the conclusion is not necessarily that Goscelin has imported Horace’s lines from a source in which they were already associated with Seneca’s idea, because Seneca’s letters 89–124 were apparently

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known only to a few individuals even in the twelfth century, and not in the schools until a little later (they are not quoted for example in the Florilegium Gallicum).15 Goscelin’s responses to and uses of the authority of pagan Greek and Roman literature and thought are various. In a number of places he quotes pagan ideas for their similarity to Christian ideas: they add force to his exhortation. He reduces their authority, even quite vigorously, by depreciation of their object, especially in comparisons with Christian expressions of similar ideas; but he also appropriates the pagan language polemically for the Christian ideas. Both quotation and appropriation recognise the authority of pagan literature and thought. He formulates his accommodation most simply perhaps in his comments on Orestes and Pylades (after depreciating a friendship without Christ, 44/17–21): ‘But whatever the author of all things bestrewed of grace among those without faith, he has prepared as an example for his faithful ones, so that even if faith is not useful to the faithless, it might be useful to the faithful as a demonstration of faith’, 44/21–23. He engages with Virgil’s Aeneas as a hero of search and struggle in three places. At the end of Book I and the beginning of Book II he develops a comparison between Eve in her departure from Wilton and her wars of the spirit and the Israelites in their exodus from Egypt to the promised land and their wars. Coming to his conclusion, deduxit Dominus Israel in regna lac et mel manantia, docens simili labore ingrediendum esse in requiem et gaudia sua (47/20–21, ‘The Lord led Israel […] into his peace and joy’), he quotes the same thought from Acts, then ‘something similar’ from Virgil’s Aeneid, per varios casus […] (I. 204–205, ‘Through various chances […]’), then requies ea certa laborum (III. 393, ‘There is the certain rest from your toils’). But he qualifies the authority of that even before he quotes it, sed caeli lampas uocat ad superna, olla succensa ebullit spe terrena (23–24, ‘but the lamp of heaven calls us to higher things, the cauldron that has been kindled boils with earthly hope’). The idea is Christian;16 the form of the expression a little ambiguous, for the verse form is pagan,17 the rhyme mediaeval. For the same exhortation to struggle he then quotes Boethius on Hercules; but Boethius is a Christian (noster), and the story of Hercules is a tale (fabula). He adds Prudentius, and Horace, without comment. Then he returns to Eve and Aeneas. At 48/16 procellosior (‘stormier’), after his quotation from Aeneas’ speech in the Aeneid, evokes the storm that led to that speech, in preparation for Goscelin’s question, si per uarios casus, per tot discrimina rerum ambiunt caduca, ubi labitur exiguo quod partum est tempore longo, quare 15

L. D. Reynolds, The Medieval Tradition of Seneca’s Letters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 120–24. 16

See note to Barnes’ and Hayward’s translation of LC 47/23–24, and Novum Glossarium s.v. olla, 450, 29. A reader might think also of the cauldron in Aeneid VII. 462–466, then of 460 and of XI. 453, adapted a few lines above in LC 47/11; but the latter adaptation seems to be without reference to the original context. 17

‘Mauvais saphiques’, Wilmart, ‘Ève et Goscelin [II]’, p. 64, n. 2.

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tam breui certamine quaeri dissimulatur sempiterna exultatio? (‘if they seek transitory things […] will bring us eternal joy?’, 16–18) The pagan achievement is evanescent, the Christian reward eternal. The first part of Goscelin’s response to Virgil here, the negative labitur exiguo quod partum est tempore longo (‘what has been gained in a long time slips away in a short time’) is from the Disticha Catonis, II. 17; he answers pagan with pagan elsewhere, but the quotation raises the question of his and his readers’ perception of that school-book, and the influence of the process of Christianization of it, of which there are perhaps some signs even in the eleventh century.18 Goscelin’s references to the Aeneid are relatively simple so far; the next three words, his accensa super (48/18–19, ‘when fired by these things in addition’), are more complex in their implications. First, the phrase, here used of Eve, appears in the same context of Aeneas’ storm, but is used there of Juno in the account of her hostility, and her motives for starting the storm (I. 29). The reader can extend the construction of a relation between Eve and Aeneas only perhaps by conceiving from the next three words again, transfer cor tuum (19, ‘turn your heart’), a transference or turning from sufferer to doer that inverts the hierarchy of power. Secondly, Eve is to be inspired by Christian thought as it reaches beyond pagan thought; but the phrase that describes her inspiration, his accensa super, is from the pagan poem. It might perhaps be read as polemic appropriation. Goscelin compares Eve with Aeneas with reference to a ‘rest from toils’ again early in Book III, Hic ad certum locum deduxit te Dominus, Deus tuus. Requies ea certa laborum (Aeneid III. 393) (‘The Lord your God has led you here to a place of certainty. There is the certain rest from your toils’, 72/9–10); locum evokes the first part of Virgil’s line also, is locus urbis erit (‘that will be the place of your city’). Requies ea certa laborum recalls the same quotation in the same context at 47/28; at the same time deduxit te Dominus recalls deduxit Dominus Israel in regna […] in that context, 20–21, in which the Israelites and Aeneas are models for Eve’s physical and spiritual journey. The integration of these allusions to Book II might be read as attributing equal validity to the Israelites and Aeneas as models for Eve; and some confirmation of the authority of Virgil for her might be seen almost immediately in a quotation of a half line from the Bucolics, trahit sua quemque uoluptas (‘each person is dragged by their own desire’, 2, 65; 72/12–13). But it will appear from Goscelin’s third reference to Aeneas that his use at least of requies ea certa laborum here may be rather polemic appropriation of Virgil’s language for his own idea. The cell in this passage early in Book III, the book of the cell, is apparently itself the promised land: so at the end of Book II deleto Amalech cum exercitu, et omni hostili obstaculo reciso, uade […] et […] transi per Iordanem, ‘having destroyed Amalec with his army, and having cut down every hostile obstacle, go, […] and […] cross over the Jordan’, 68/20–23. But there remains the spiritual Jerusalem at the beginning of Book IV; and at the end of Book III Goscelin returns to images of 18

R. Hazelton, ‘The Christianization of “Cato”: The Disticha Catonis in the Light of Late Medieval Commentaries’, Mediaeval Studies, 19 (1957), 157–73, ns 17, 27.

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wandering, 88/20–89/2, and indicates a shift of perspective to the spiritual, by using again his own words from the beginning of Book III, but in the future tense, ad certum locum deducet sperantes in se Dominus Deus noster (‘the Lord our God will lead those hoping in him to a place of certainty’, 34). With his own words here he both evokes and appropriates Virgil’s, 32–34: In omni tribulatione magna requies est animae certum locum et sedem habere. Filia Syon habitauit inter gentes nec inuenit requiem; sed ad certum locum deducet sperantes in se Dominus Deus noster (‘In every tribulation […] to a place of certainty’). But if Eve’s place of rest is now in the future, and if she has to fight wars on the way (23–29, even after Book II), Goscelin can distinguish between that final spiritual place of rest and Aeneas’ place of rest, where he still had to fight wars, 88/35–89/2, and accordingly asks, Requiesne ea certa laborum?, and answers Videlicet ad comparationem instabilitatis, requies erat bellum stationis (‘Clearly, in comparison with instability, there was rest in a war for a place to stand still’, 37–38). The whole story of Aeneas’ wanderings and wars, as Goscelin sets it out here19 and as he focuses it on the idea requies ea certa laborum, may fairly be referred to his first quotation of requies ea certa laborum at 47/28 in confirmation of Aeneas’ exhortation at the beginning of the Aeneid. Goscelin here relates Eve’s wars to Aeneas’, as he did not in Book II, and so completes the comparison. And here he draws a distinction between the authority of the language which he has appropriated as the expression of an idea the same with or similar to his own, and the authority of the narrative in which Virgil originally expressed the idea. He cites pagan expressions of ideas and pagan precedent fairly extensively again when he comes to the simplicities and constraints of Eve’s life in her cell (73/7). After commenting that the pagan goal in the simple life was less than the Christian (8–9; beginning with a qualification, as at 47/23–24), he quotes Horace at length, then Boethius; he refers to the Brahmans, the Romans as a people, and a series of Greek philosophers, Socrates (or Crates), Pythagoras, and Diogenes. Boethius referred to the pagan past in felix nimium prior aetas (23); he was a Christian, noster (21; as in 48/1), accepting pagan opinion (secutus opinionem priorum 21–22; perhaps writers), as Goscelin is doing. But Goscelin repeats that the pagan goal is less than the Christian (20–21, 30–33; another qualification, 36–37). He draws from his pagan precedents an exhortation to the Christian to do as much for greater reward, quid in his faciet inuitatus ad caelestia conuiuia Christianus, quae sine meliori spe contemnere potuit paganus? (74/17–18). But he qualifies pagan authority once more: in the arrogance of what they thought was their wisdom they were unwise (21–24). After describing simplicity of life and suffering in Christian precedents (John the Baptist, Paul the Hermit, Mary of Egypt) he comes to the constraints of Eve’s cell (77/8), and compares her with the Roman emperor in his empire and his palaces (37). Against the ambition for possession he attributes to the 19

‘C’est bien toute l’Énéide en résumé’, Wilmart, Ève et Goscelin [II]’, p. 73, n. 7.

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emperor he quotes Seneca (78/12) and Horace (13–18); pagan against pagan in this case, because Seneca and Horace criticise such ambition. He returns briefly to the simplicity of Eve’s life (26), and compares her with emperors, the rich, and peasant farmers; for the existence of these last he misinterprets Virgil, wittingly or unwittingly. He repeats his point that the Christian should be able to endure as much for greater reward (78/39–79/1). He expresses the idea of patience in the satisfaction of needs in terms adapted from Sallust, qui ergo lassitudinem […] (79/1–2), but does not name Sallust, so that it is not clear what authority he recognises in Sallust’s expression or attributes to it. Finally he cites Seneca on the same idea of patience. If he elaborates his quotation and rewrites Seneca’s account of the occasion, Seneca’s experience and his conclusion evidently carry some authority; but it is subject to the distinction Goscelin has just drawn between eternal reward and temporal necessity. In the same domain of moral and ethical ideas he quotes Horace at 70/18: Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum (Epistles I. 4, 13, ‘Believe that every day has dawned as your last’). But then he quotes Christ in Matthew 25. 13 (with 24. 42): fortius nos vitae dator et receptor excitat… (‘the giver and receiver of life stirs us up more strongly’). Fortius apparently at least in part because Christ refers to the uncertainty not only of the day but of the hour.20 Goscelin’s use of a quotation from the Ilias Latina is unusual in the Liber confortatorius both in his purpose and in the process of his depreciation of its source. Instructing Eve in her reading of the Psalms (82/16) Goscelin interprets Psalm 21 (22) from Christ’s use on the cross of the first verse, Deus, Deus meus […] (Matthew 27. 46, Mark 15. 34), as an intercession for the Church. He quotes salva me ex ore leonis (22), and explains me, hoc est corpus meum, omnes electos meos quorum caput sum (23–25). In support of that explanation he quotes Ilias Latina 89–90, Thetis’ appeal to Jupiter for her son Achilles, ulciscere meque meumque / corpus (‘avenge me and my flesh’). Goscelin is asserting a parallelism of thought not only in the dramatic structure of intercession, but in the more particular idea of the identification of the third party (the Church, Achilles) with the first party (Christ, Thetis) in the metaphor of ‘my body’. That particular parallelism may not bear much inspection (the Church is not Christ’s body in the sense in which Achilles is Thetis’ body); but this justification of a Christian interpretation of a psalm from a metaphor in a pagan book goes beyond the comparison of Eve with Aeneas. The Ilias Latina was a school-book; the metaphor is striking, and may well have attracted attention.21 The authority if not of the pagan book at least of the pagan subject is focused and restricted with the introduction hanc lucem accepi de fumo fabularum, ubi in Omero fingitur Thetis […] (‘I have taken this light from the smoke of fables, where in Homer, Thetis is represented […]’; compare Alcidae fabulam, 48/1). In this instance 20 21

On Talbot’s reference to Cicero (p. 70, n. 6a), see Appendix, pp. 416–17.

The Ilias Latina as a school-book: Scaffai, ed., Ilias Latina, pp. 31–34; on the metaphor, see Scaffai on 89 ff.

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the authority of the pagan is qualified by what was originally pagan itself: Goscelin’s introduction may be referred to non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumo dare lucem / cogitat (‘he intends to produce not smoke from a flash but light from smoke’) in Horace, Ars Poetica 143–44 (with reference to Homer in the Odyssey). Horace is there considering the beginnings of epic poems, and contrasts the fine blaze and then smoke in the composition of the cyclic poets with the smoke and then light and clarity of Homer.22 Horace’s recommendation of Homer as a model is quoted in the Florilegium Gallicum, evidently for the emulation of writers.23 Goscelin’s application of the idea lucem ex fumo to a passage from the Ilias Latina suggests that he was aware of the application of it especially to Homer; in his use of it what was attributed to the original Homer is denied to the later Homer. But he has turned literary exhortation into religious polemic. There remain a number of places in which Goscelin applies pagan ideas and language to himself, especially in his relation with Eve or in his service to God. The original author in each case is Virgil; but Goscelin does not name him. These are not quotations in form; they are quotations and allusions for those who recognise Virgil. So when his powers fail him in his attempt to write to Eve, 27/22–23, he uses of himself the phrase Virgil used of Daedalus when he failed in his attempt to depict his loss of Icarus, cecidere manus (‘[his] hands fell’, Aeneid VI. 33). Phrases of verse such as cecidere manus are reused by successive poets, and do not necessarily carry reference to particular works and particular contexts; cecidere manus is used in at least four other places in surviving classical poetry.24 But Goscelin’s use of it has in common with Virgil’s alone the context of the writer (artist) whose hand fails as he attempts to communicate with (treat in art) someone dear whom he has lost; someone to whom Goscelin elsewhere represents himself as a father (30/6; 34/1), as Daedalus is father of Icarus. The phrase cecidit manus (‘[my] hand fell’) is used by Jerome in his description to Eustochium of his difficulties in writing of Paula after her death (Epistulae 108, 32, PL 22, 906);25 in reference to the loss of Paula that may be an allusion to Virgil. Goscelin’s circumstances, the writing of a letter, are closer to Jerome’s than to Daedalus’ in the Aeneid, and he might well have had Jerome in mind. But there remains a case that he has taken from Virgil the plural, which, appropriate for Daedalus as a worker in bronze, is less appropriate for himself as a writer than Jerome’s singular would have been; and the tense form in -ere, which he

22 See C. O. Brink, Horace on Poetry: The ‘Ars Poetica’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), on 143–44, 143. 23

See Rosemary Burton, Classical Poets in the ‘Florilegium Gallicum’, Lateinische Sprache und Literatur des Mittelalters, 14 (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1983), p. 287. 24

Propertius II. 34, 10, Lucan, Bellum Civile II. 181, Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica IV. 301, Silius Italicus, Punica V. 328. 25

I am grateful to Rebecca Hayward for drawing my attention to this passage.

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himself uses often elsewhere, but which here formulates the phrase in dactylic rhythm. For his representation of himself as a trumpeter who is not a warrior himself but encourages those who are (36/20–25; compare 46/21) he adapts Virgil’s description of Misenus (Aeneid VI. 164–65); in this instance it is difficult to see that he refers the reader to Virgil’s whole context, because Misenus is a trumpeter who is also a warrior. Encouraging Eve to be willing to suffer he offers a long list of examples, from Abraham, David, and Stephen, to Genevieve (63/5–26). He includes himself as a transitional term in the comparison, at both beginning and end of the list: […] maiori fiducia gloriae animeris. Degeneres animos timor arguit (Aeneid IV. 13), qualem me sentio, qui dum lego Abraham […] (‘be animated with greater confidence in glory. “Base spirits are proved by fear” (Aeneid IV. 13) as I perceive myself to be while I read that Abraham […]’, then dum haec, inquam, […] sanctorum certamina doceor, a bucina quasi a sagitta terreor gelidusque per ima cucurrit ossa tremor (Aeneid XII. 447–8).26 Tuum autem crediderim animum tam imbelli cornicine plus ualere […] (‘while, I say, I learn of these […] struggles of the saints, I am terrified by the trumpet as if by an arrow, “and a chill trembling ran through my inmost bones” (Aeneid XII. 447–8). But I believe your mind to be stronger than that of your hornblower, who is so unwarlike […]’). Goscelin has already represented himself as the unwarlike encourager, both in 36/20–25 and in 46/20–22. The idea that he is a hornblower does not follow easily here on a bucina quasi a sagitta terreor (‘I am terrified by the trumpet as if by an arrow’, 63/23); the implication is perhaps that the lesser trumpeter (Goscelin) may be terrified by the greater (the greater sufferers). One passage in which he seems to echo Virgil for himself and for Eve may bear on his depreciation of pagan authority. At the beginning of Book II he compares Eve in her migration and spiritual struggle with Aeneas, especially in his storm; but he depreciates the authority of the story of Aeneas’ wanderings. After elaborating on the objects of Eve’s struggle (48/18–39) he returns to her struggle itself (49/1) and from his own travel on the Thames describes the crew’s struggles against the river (49/4–9). He saw then, he says, the moral that he evidently applies to Eve now (49/10–11). Within that argument he describes the crew’s struggles in terms that are apparently from a simile on the same subject in Georgics I. 201–203: his si bracchia remisissent (‘if they had relaxed their arms’, 8) can be referred to Virgil’s si bracchia forte remisit (‘if he perchance relaxes his arms’, 202), and the alliteration of nauim in profundum praecipitavisset (‘would have plunged the boat into the depths’, 9) to that of illum in praeceps prono rapit alueus amni (‘the river tears him 26 Gelidusque per ima cucurrit / ossa tremor is quoted by Goscelin in the Vita Deo dilectae virginis Mildrethae, ed. by Rollason, The Mildrith Legend, p. 129, line 17, with reference to Mildrith’s followers. The same words are used by Virgil in Aeneid II. 120–21 (and with a variation in VI. 54–55), and it is II. 120–21 that is cited by Rollason; but the context in LC and especially in the Vita is much closer to that in XII. 447–48.

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headlong downstream’, 203). For the reader who recognises an echo of the Georgics it is an expression of the authority of the poet for Goscelin himself; for the reader who also refers the story of Goscelin on the Thames to that of Aeneas in his storm the echo restricts Goscelin’s qualification of the authority of the story in the Aeneid, by reasserting the moral in Virgil’s terms outside pagan legend. At 72/12–13 he applies Bucolics 2, 65 not to himself but to Eve. He does not attribute the words to Virgil, and they were on the way to becoming a proverb;27 but echoes of Aeneid III. 393 in 72/9–10 evoke the author. After the appropriation of the language of the Aeneid in those lines (see above) the half line from the Bucolics assumes the authority at least of the language even if the idea is immediately and emphatically interpreted for Eve’s circumstances in Christian terms (72/13, Tua portio […] tua portio […], ‘Your portion […]; your portion […]’). This examination of a single work cannot come to many generalizations about the sources and the range of Goscelin’s knowledge of Greek and Roman literature and thought; it indicates particulars, and one or two that may be worth pursuing, in Catullus and Seneca, and perhaps even in Aulus Gellius. But it is conspicuous that he quotes Virgil as often as all other pagan authors together. He names the author for two of thirteen or fourteen passages from Virgil, four of four or five from Horace, the two from Seneca, and the one from the Ilias Latina (as Homer); those figures might well suggest that Virgil was the pagan author with whom Goscelin was most familiar, and expected his reader to be most familiar. They indicate nothing about the other authors, because most of the attributions appear in contexts in which he is setting opinions beside or against other opinions, and might necessarily identify an opinion with its author. But the implication of the figures for Virgil is confirmed by Goscelin’s purposes in his use of Virgil. He quotes Horace at greater length than Virgil (LC 73/12–19; 78/14–18); and there may be some subtlety in his use of Horace, if he thought of Horace, against the Ilias Latina (LC 82/25–27). But it is with Virgil that in different ways he engages most deeply. He relates Aeneas’ exhortation in Aeneid I. 204–6 to the larger context of the storm that inspired it, and to the cause of the storm; he refers to the storm in other works.28 He uses Virgil for a comparison of Eve with Aeneas which he develops coherently over Books II and III, in anticipation of Book IV. And finally, he applies Virgil to his own circumstances as he does with no other pagan writer. But even from Virgil, an author whom he apparently knew well, his use of a quotation may seem awkward (Aeneid VI. 164– 65).

27

Hans Walther, Proverbia sententiaeque Latinitatis Medii Aevi, 6 vols (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1963–), no. 31520. 28

In the Translatio Sanctae Mildrethae, ed. by Rollason, ‘Translation and Miracles of St Mildrith’, pp. 169–70, ns 76–78, 83, and in the Vita et virtutes S. Ethelburgae, Colker, ‘Texts of Jocelyn of Canterbury’, p. 416 (lines 20–23).

APPENDIX

The following list is of those phrases and passages in the Liber confortatorius which have so far been referred to passages in pagan Latin literature; it includes passages identified by Wilmart and by Talbot. The passage in the Liber confortatorius is specified by its first and last words. A tilde (~) indicates that the correspondence is not verbally exact. 27/22–23 36/24 40/27–28 47/11 47/25–26 47/28 48/11–12 48/16 48/16 48/17 48/18–19 49/8–9 50/29 62/8 63/7 63/23–24 70/19 72/10 72/12–13 73/12–19 78/12 78/14–18 78/36 79/1–2 79/2–5 79/25 81/7–8 82/25 82/27 88/37–38

cecidere manus aere […] cantu neque copia […] minuitur fremit […] iuuentus Per […] quietas Requies […] laborum Nil […] dedit procellosior per […] rerum labitur […] longo His […] super si bracchia […] praecipitasset puluere […] canitiem non sine […] dari Degeneres […] arguit gelidusque […] tremor Omnem […] supremum Requies […] laborum Trahit […] uoluptas Beatus […] limina Quid […] iacetis sic […] auro Nudus […] nudus lassitudinem […] opperitur Refert […] malum Diuturna […] ministrat labor […] improbus lucem […] fabularum Vlciscere […] corpus Requiesne […] laborum

Virgil, Aeneid VI. 33 Virgil, Aeneid VI. 165 Sallust, Catiline 11, 3 Virgil, Aeneid XI.453 Virgil, Aeneid I. 204–205 Virgil, Aeneid III. 393 ~ Horace, Satires I. 9, 59–60 compare Virgil, Aeneid I. 81–123 Virgil, Aeneid I. 204 Disticha Catonis II. 17, 2 Virgil, Aeneid I. 29 compare Virgil, Georgics I. 201–203 ~ Catullus, 64, 244 ~ Avianus 2,14 Virgil, Aeneid IV. 13 Virgil, Aeneid XII. 447–448 Horace, Epistles I. 4, 13 Virgil, Aeneid III. 393 Virgil, Bucolics 2, 65 Horace, Epodes 2, 1–8 ~ Seneca, Epistulae Morales 89, 21 Horace, Epistles II. 2, 175–179 Virgil, Georgics I. 299 ~ Sallust, Catiline 13, 3 ~ Seneca, Epistulae Morales 123, 1–2 Disticha Catonis I. 2, 2 ~ Virgil, Georgics I. 145–146 compare Horace, Ars Poetica 143 Ilias Latina 89–90 ~ Virgil, Aeneid III. 393

70/22–23 For Goscelin’s comment omni scilicet mortali tam certa mors est quam hora incerta (22–23, ‘for death is as certain for every mortal as the hour is uncertain’) Talbot (p. 70, n. 6a) referred to Cicero, de Senectute 74, in particular, presumably, to moriendum enim certe

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est, et incertum an hoc ipso die: mortem igitur omnibus horis impendentem timens, qui poterit animo consistere? (‘for one must certainly die, and it is uncertain whether it will be this very day: who then, if he fears death, as it hangs over him every hour, will be able to be composed in mind?’); but it is necessary here to consider as well the saying nihil certius morte, nihil hora mortis incertius (‘nothing is more certain than death, nothing more uncertain than the hour of death’), which appears in Anselm, Meditations 7, 1.1 The forms of Goscelin’s expression are closer to those of the saying than to those of Cicero’s expression: Goscelin and the saying contrast certainty and uncertainty for the nouns mors and hora; Goscelin and the saying use comparative forms, tam certa […] quam […] incerta, nihil certius, nihil […] incertius. Goscelin proceeds climactically from day (Horace) to day and hour (Matthew) to hour (omni hora […]), as Cicero proceeds from day (ipso die) to hour (omnibus horis); but Matthew does the same (diem […] horam). Goscelin shares with Cicero only his emphasis on every hour, omni hora […], omnibus horis. Best to abandon Cicero.

1

On the saying see Samuel Singer, Sprichwörter des Mittelalters, 3 vols (Bern: Lang, 1944–47), III, 109–10.

Afterword STEPHANIE HOLLIS

T

he Legend of Edith and the Liber confortatorius are mutually illuminating and little studied texts whose implications the foregoing essays have only begun to explore; the unique insight into the history of women religious and the representation of female spirituality in the late Anglo-Saxon period (pre-1100) offered by Goscelin’s two texts merits further investigation. In the prolegomenary essays in this volume, the literacy and literary culture of women has been a central theme. Of the many topics that await further exploration, the study of Goscelin’s literary culture—particularly the nature and extent of his knowledge of patristic and classical writings, and how he came by it—has perhaps the greatest potential to change our understanding of late Anglo-Saxon England, because it has implications for the way in which continental developments were (or were not) transmitted to England. This issue, in turn, has bearing on the Anglo-Saxon period’s isolation from the mainstream of history.1 The belief that what is loosely described as ‘the twelfthcentury Renaissance’ was transmitted to England by Normans after the Conquest has the effect of further isolating pre-Conquest England from the mainstream of history. Goscelin (who was only one of a number of continental clerics resident in England prior to the Conquest), represents a useful challenge to this belief. The Rawlinson version of the Legend of Edith—prefaced by a prologue which dedicates the work to Lanfranc and affirms the absence of any previous written account of the patron saint of the Wilton community—might seem at first sight to confirm the view that educated monastic women were no longer to be found in England after the disappearance of the double monasteries. In fact, the Legend is of the utmost importance in revealing Wilton’s role as a school for the education of royal and aristocratic laywomen from at least the mid-tenth century, when Edith’s mother Wulfthryth was taken from the school room by King Edgar. Queen Edith, 1

See, for instance, Lees and Overing, pp. 1–6, for the implications of this for the study of Anglo-Saxon women.

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Queen Matilda, Gunhild Godwinson (and perhaps Queen Margaret of Scotland) are testimony to its success (and prestige) as an educational centre. Viewed against this background Eve of Wilton, as the intended recipient of the Liber confortatorius, no longer appears to be a freakishly well educated young woman who by a fortunate chance had benefited from the encouragement and companionship of Goscelin since her early childhood. Goscelin’s role in Eve’s life, I have argued, can be best understood as a continuation of the practice (instituted by St Edith’s father) of employing continental scholars to tutor able young women who were of particularly high social status. The question of whether Eve was exceptionally well educated and well read has been canvassed in this volume. But was Goscelin exceptional? As I have remarked, it is the extent and nature of his knowledge of literature, and how he came by it, which are in need of extensive study. The study of what Goscelin knew undoubtedly has bearing on what Eve knew. His relationship with Eve was rooted in their love of learning, and the Liber confortatorius reflects the shared literary culture that united them as former teacher and pupil. W. R. Barnes’ essay is of particular interest in demonstrating that the study of Goscelin’s classical allusions can contribute to our knowledge of Eve’s range of literary references. But, as Teresa Webber remarked in a different context, ‘what Goscelin had read is of wider importance than evidence of the Latin learning of an Anglo-Saxon nun’.2 As Barnes observes, interpretation of the testimony of a single work such as the Liber confortatorius ideally requires consideration of the whole of an author’s corpus. No really satisfactory study of Goscelin’s literary culture can be undertaken until his canon has been determined and more of his works are available in modern editions; the appearance of Rosalind Love’s forthcoming edition of the Ely hagiographies and Richard Sharpe’s work in progress on Goscelin’s Canterbury writings will do much to make possible a more far-reaching investigation of Goscelin’s literary formation. But a few observations based on a consideration of the Liber confortatorius and the Legend of Edith, as well as the sources of ten of his hagiographical works that Love has contributed to Fontes Anglo-Saxonici, are offered here. Barlow described Goscelin as ‘a very learned man and an excellent scholar’, and remarked that ‘a study of his reading, both classical and patristic, would probably show him to be one of the most widely read men of his times’.3 Barlow based his estimation of the range and depth of Goscelin’s reading on a brief survey by Hamilton.4 Hamilton, however, in asserting that Goscelin had ‘acquired a profound knowledge of literatures’ and that there were ‘numerous manifestations of his erudition’, did not consider the possibility that Goscelin may not have had first-hand 2

Webber, p. 45.

3

Barlow, p. 143, and n. 77.

4

Hamilton, I, 496–511.

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knowledge of the patristic works he cited.5 He did raise the question of whether Goscelin had read the classical authors he cites; he conceded that his knowledge may have derived from his education in rhetoric at Saint-Bertin, but argued that the variety of Goscelin’s metrical compositions, written in lyric metres based on classical models instead of the rhyming Leonine verses commonly employed by his contemporaries, confirmed his belief that Goscelin ‘had made an intense study of a wide range of poetry written during the classical age of Latin literature’.6 The conclusion to be drawn from Barnes’ admirably careful examination of the accuracy and contextual appropriateness of Goscelin’s classical allusions may be that, with the possible exception of Virgil’s Aeneid, much of Goscelin’s acquaintance with classical authors is more likely to have derived from his education in rhetoric than from a first-hand reading of entire texts. Whether Goscelin’s skill in the composition of lyric metres could only have been gained by an ‘intense study of a wide range of [classical] poetry’ is a matter for experts in the field to determine.7 But it is worthy of note that neither in the Liber confortatorius nor in the hagiographical writings that have to date been sourced by Love for Fontes AngloSaxonici does Goscelin allude to the classical poets whom Hamilton considered to have influenced his diction (Lucan, Statius, and Claudian).8 Goscelin, however, is 5

Hamilton, I, 502, 504. Hamilton, I, 23–38, surveys earlier assessments of Goscelin’s learning. Hamilton also noted that Goscelin’s knowledge of the scriptures was extensive; he quotes familiarly from an unusually wide range of biblical books. For Eve’s reading of Scripture, see ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, pp. 312–13. His liturgical citations (excluded from Love’s sourcing of the Legend) do not appear to be very numerous but may prove illuminating; see further below. 6

Hamilton, I, 496–98. Hamilton drew on the analysis of the metres in the Legend of Edith by Wilmart, pp. 32–34. Hamilton also noted (II, 445) that the Saint-Bertin library ‘at this time’ included copies of Juvenal, Horace, Virgil, Terence, Ovid, Persius, Statius, and Lucretius. Whether the contents of the Saint-Bertin library have bearing on the determination of what Goscelin is likely to have read depends on it being possible to establish which works were there during Goscelin’s residency. The earliest list of its holdings is 1104 (Lesne, pp. 628–35). 7 The author of the Life of King Edward (whom Barlow considered to be either Goscelin or Folcard, who arrived in England before 1069 and probably before 1066, presumably from Saint-Bertin (Barlow, p. lvi)), also composed in hexameters, but does not offer Goscelin’s range of lyric metres (Barlow, pp. xxvii–xxviii). Barlow, pp. xxvii–xxviii, does not appear to consider that the author had made a study of classical poets; he remarks that some of the poems are ‘composed from the common stock of classical poets’ (p. xxvii), and that the author ‘seems to have studied grammar and rhetoric in the usual sources. He makes a parade of his knowledge of classical mythology but sometimes goes astray’. 8 Hamilton I, 454–57. He chiefly noted parallels with Ovid, Virgil, and Horace (II, 445); compare Barnes, Appendix, p. 416. Hamilton (n. 50) did, however, note one instance of a quotation explicitly attributed to Lucan in one of Goscelin’s Canterbury works not yet sourced for Fontes Anglo-Saxonici. See Rollason, ‘Translation and Miracles of St Mildrith’, pp. 170– 71, n. 91.

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unusual in being able to quote from the latter part of Seneca’s Epistulae Morales (see below). Barnes also raises the possibility that the Liber confortatorius contains one of the ‘very few echoes which are the only indications that Catullus was read in the Middle Ages before the thirteenth century beyond Verona’. This is certainly of interest since, if Goscelin is echoing Catullus, it might help to establish his association with the Italian scholars who migrated to the north of France (such as John of Fécamp, before 1017, and Anselm, in 1060).9 Hamilton and Barlow’s estimation of Goscelin’s learning, then, was based on a superficial consideration, and further study may not show Goscelin to have been ‘one of the most widely read men of his times’. But it can at least be deduced with confidence from the reading programme of patristic authors that he recommends to Eve that he was unusually well read (even if we take his exhortation to read the exposition of the holy fathers Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory, and other teachers of virtue to mean only the expositions of Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory that Goscelin cites elsewhere in the Liber confortatorius.)10 Webber makes the point that ‘the early 1080s mark the very early stages of efforts by several religious communities in England to form thorough collections of patristic texts to support such a programme of reading,’ and that ‘on the eve of the Conquest no copy of [Augustine’s Confessions] was present in England, and none had been there for nearly two centuries’ (although it is germane to my argument here that her study could give a misleading impression of the extent to which England lagged behind the continent).11 It is, in fact, only in the Liber confortatorius that Goscelin cites a range of patristic and classical authors, a number of whom he names. In this respect, the Liber confortatorius is in marked contrast to the hagiographical writings sourced by Love.12 Her non-biblical sources for the Legend of Edith, for instance, consist of a

9

‘Goscelin’s Greeks and Romans’, p. 402. See ‘Edith as Contemplative’, pp. 284–85; ‘Afterword’, pp. 428–29. 10

Liber confort., pp. 80–81. Compare Goscelin’s description of Augustine as ‘the maker of a thousand books’ (p. 33). 11

Webber, p. 30. See also N. R. Ker, English Manuscripts in the Century after the Norman Conquest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), pp. 7–8; R. M. Thomson, ‘The Norman Conquest and English Libraries’, in The Role of the Book in Medieval Culture, ed. by David Ganz (Turnhout: Brepols, 1986), pp. 27–40. Copies of the Confessions were also rare on the continent in the eleventh century; conversely there is some indication that the Confessions had been known in England in the eighth or ninth centuries (see p. 31, and n. 10). There is a copy of the Confessions of early twelfth-century Saint-Bertin provenance; whether it was at SaintBertin in the eleventh century during Goscelin’s residency is less certain (see p. 36); Olson, pp. 87–88, finds evidence that Anselm made use of it in his Orationes sive meditationes, 1070x78. See further below. 12

For a list of these, see ‘Edith as Contemplative’, p. 284, n. 13.

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single citation of Ovid, Virgil, and Fortunatus respectively.13 None of these authors is named in the Legend by Goscelin; the only work he specifically names is Gregory’s Dialogues (twice).14 Also excluded by Love are two probable citations of the Rule of Benedict identified by Wilmart, and a possible echo of Prudentius’ Cathemerinon.15 Goscelin also refers in the Legend to Jerome’s relationship with Paula and Eustochium (implying a knowledge of the Letters which the Liber confortatorius confirms); he also refers to a story about Hercules and speaks of ‘Elysian blooms’.16 Leaving aside Goscelin’s probably extensive acquaintance with Anglo-Saxon hagiographies and chronicles, necessarily entailed by his commemoration of various Anglo-Saxon saints, the ten works that have been sourced by Love give no idea of the unusually wide range of reading evinced by the Liber confortatorius.17 Goscelin’s minimal citation of patristic and classical writings in the saints lives’ sourced by Love is typical of late Anglo-Saxon hagiography; even his occasional unattributed citations of Ovid and Virgil can be paralleled.18 The fact that his hagiography does not reflect his actual range of literary reference may have implications for our evaluation of the literary culture of hagiographers in general. Displays of learning, presumably, were not appropriate in saints’ lives, in part because they were written for a broad-based monastic audience. The explicit citation of classical and patristic authors in the Liber confortatorius, on the other hand, mark it as being more in the nature of a learned treatise intended for a reader who, though not unusually well read compared to Goscelin, was unusually familiar with the same literary culture. As I have remarked, Barnes’ essay is of especial interest in revealing that examination of Goscelin’s literary allusions can cast light on the range of literary references known to Eve. Goscelin presumably knew that Eve was familiar with the 13

Ovid, Metamorphoses, Vita Edithae, chap. 13 (p. 71), Virgil, Eclogues, chap. 5 (p. 45), Fortunatus, chap. 14 (p. 74). Love omits the parallel between Metre I (p. 45) and Virgil, Eclogues, noted by Wilmart. 14

Vita Edithae, chap. 15 (p. 75); Translatio Edithae, chap. 14 (p. 228).

15

Vita Edithae, chap. 10 (p. 61), chap. 15 (p. 78); chap. 5 (p. 44).

16

Vita Edithae, chap. 14 (p. 73); chap. 19 (p. 86), chap. 6 (p. 47).

17

In the Legend of Edith, the patriis libris (‘local works’), which Goscelin mentions in the prologue as his sources (Vita Edithae, p. 39), included a vernacular account of the Dancers of Colbek (Translatio Edithae, chap. 16 (p. 292)), a Life of Æthelwold (Vita Edithae, chap. 9 (p. 58)), and perhaps also a Life of Wulfthryth (‘St Edith and the Wilton Community’, pp. 278– 79). On this category of Goscelin’s sources, as well as continental hagiography, sixth to eleventh century, see Hamilton, I, 499–502. 18 Fontes Anglo-Saxonici reveals that most of the late Anglo-Saxon hagiographers who occasionally cite classical literature (chiefly Ovid and Virgil) had come from the continent (Folcard, for instance; see n. 7 above), but there are exceptions (Frithegod, Wulfstan the Cantor, and Byrhtferth). It should be noted that Fontes Anglo-Saxonici’s sourcing of AngloLatin texts is still in progress.

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story of Aeneas, since he appears to have assumed that she would understand and appreciate the allusions to this story which are central to the development of his main theme.19 His citations of named classical authors in the Liber confortatorius suggest that he assumed that classical literature had formed part of her education in some form; perhaps, even, that the story of Aeneas was one that had figured in his conversations with her. In the light of the Liber confortatorius, it is also possible that the handful of classical citations in the Legend of Edith represent tag phrases and mythological allusions that Goscelin expected members of the Wilton community to have encountered in the course of their education in Latin.20 The resonances of the phrase from Ovid cited in the Legend are out of keeping with the context in which Goscelin employs it; Barnes is doubtless correct in regarding this kind of contextual inappropriateness as a probable indication of Goscelin’s own unfamiliarity with the original context, but a possible explanation of the occurrence of such inappropriateness is that Goscelin assumed that recognition of a well-known quotation would please his audience.21 Cultural change, such as the nexus of literary and devotional developments for which ‘the twelfth-century Renaissance’ is a convenient (though misleading) term, may depend on which books are read, but is also marked by how they are read. Hamilton observed that, even if Goscelin’s knowledge of classical literature was derived from his education in rhetoric rather than from first-hand reading, he could not have obtained the familiarity with sacred and secular subjects or the ability to accommodate them to a specific religious end which he displays in his writings unless a strong spirit of Christian humanism which encouraged diversity in learning, provided it enhanced religious aims, had prevailed at Saint Bertin’s during the time he 22 was there.

Barnes makes the point that, in using pagan authors to make moral and didactic points, Goscelin in some cases undermines their authority. That Goscelin registers his consciousness of the superior truth-value of Christian writers is noteworthy but not surprising; his relatively positive attitude to pagan writers and philosophers is evident if we compare his attitude to them, for instance, with the outright condemnation and rejection expressed by his contemporary Peter Damian in his letter to a male recluse.23 19

See also Hayward and Hollis, ‘The Anchorite’s Progress’, pp. 377–78.

20

The story of Hercules referred to in the Legend may have been known to the Wilton nuns (and to Goscelin himself) from Boethius; see Liber confort., p. 48. 21

Classical citations and allusion also occur in the Life of Edward commissioned by Queen Edith, which was more probably written by Folcard (see n. 7 above) than by Goscelin. Queen Matilda, educated at Wilton shortly after Goscelin’s departure, refers to classical literature in her letters to Anselm (‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, p. 335). 22

Hamilton, I, 504.

23

Letter 28; Reindel, I, 250–78 (pp. 251–52).

KATERN 16

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Whether classical literature played a part in the development of medieval humanism is debated. Southern, who is among those who denies that it did, argues that twelfth-century authors were neither interested in nor sensitive to classical literature as literature and desired only to get out of it the maximum contribution to doctrine regardless of the classical authors’ literary aims. He points out that the earliest commentary on the Aeneid (twelfth century) concentrates exclusively on the allegory of the various world-historical stages the poem allegedly displayed and that there is ‘not the slightest interest in the characters, […] the personal traits or sufferings of any of the people in the poem; not a thought for the lacrimae rerum’.24 In this context Barnes’ observations on Goscelin’s application of Virgil to his own circumstances gain further significance. Goscelin, it is true, moralises the story of Aeneas by making him a negative example of the exile’s quest for a homeland undertaken by Eve and figured by the Jewish people’s struggles to obtain a promised land after leaving Egypt (so that Aeneas is implicitly comparable to Goscelin himself as an ‘excluded man’ writing to an ‘included woman’).25 In his application of quotations from Virgil to his own circumstances, but above all in his engagement with Aeneas as ‘a hero of search and struggle’,26 Goscelin demonstrates a greater capacity for a responsive, literary reading than the proponents of the kind of ‘reading’ that Southern describes, and one which (like his personal identification with the youthful Augustine of the Confessions) is of a piece with a tendency to affective piety which is more marked than that of many of his contemporaries.27 The task of determining which patristic works Goscelin knew at first-hand (and in what form he might have read them and where he might have obtained copies) is a challenge that has still to be faced. What is immediately apparent in the Liber confortatorius is that Goscelin quotes at length only from a small number of texts (notably Eusebius’ History and Pseudo-Jerome’s Homilies on Joshua). It is also apparent that he was capable of misremembering even a book that had deeply engaged him, for although Augustine’s Confessions is one of the books he had unquestionably read, his recollection of the intervention of Augustine’s mother is a little hazy.28 The obvious inference is that the literary resources available to him 24 R. W. Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe, I: Foundations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), pp. 19–20 (p. 20). Compare, for example, C. Stephen Jaeger, Medieval Humanism in Gottried von Strassburg’s Tristan and Isolde (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1977): ‘Whenever Humanism appears as an intellectual movement in Christian culture, one of its dominant goals is synthesis: the reconciliation of Platonism and Judaism with Christianity, the fusion of classical literary forms with Christian truths’ (pp. 141–42). 25

Liber confort., p. 28; ‘Incluse exclusus’. As Hayward points out (‘Complaints and Consolations’, p. 356), ‘a powerful theme of relational oppositions [...] runs throughout the book at a deep level’. Goscelin is not, however, like Aeneas in pursuing a false god. 26

Barnes, ‘Goscelin’s Greeks and Romans’, pp. 409–11, 414–15.

27

Liber confort., pp. 33–34.

28

Liber confort., p. 33. See ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, p. 315, n. 46.

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when he was writing the Liber confortatorius (at Burg, he says) were more limited than those to which he had previously had access, and that, in at least some cases, inexact citations represent an imperfect recollection of something that he had actually read rather than knowledge derived from erroneous second-hand sources. At one point he specifically states that he is obliged to relate an exemplum in his own unpolished style because he is without a copy of Ambrose’s work in praise of virgins.29 The unusually extensive knowledge of patristic works revealed in the reading programme Goscelin recommends to Eve, I observed in the Introduction, is unlikely to reflect the influence of Lanfranc, unless the Liber confortatorius can be shown to have been written significantly later than c. 1080, since it was the early 1080s that witnessed ‘the very early stages of efforts by several religious communities in England to form thorough collections of patristic texts to support such a programme of reading’. 30 Goscelin’s unusually extensive reading unquestionably had its origins in his education at Saint-Bertin. But the limited resources available to him at Burg are not evidence that the literary resources of all English monastic libraries prior to the 1080s were significantly inferior to those at continental centres like SaintBertin—not unless we assume that, despite his encouragement of Eve’s reading, Goscelin had read nothing that was new to him from the time he arrived in England at about the age of twenty. As I have indicated in ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, some of the works mentioned in the reading programme Goscelin recommends to Eve were already available in England.31 Conversely, some of the works he recommends to her—including Augustine’s Confessions—are not known to have been at Saint-Bertin before the early twelfth century.32 The conclusion to be drawn from Webber’s study is not that the literary resources available to Goscelin in England were inferior to those available on the continent c. 1080. The really significant implication of her statement is that Goscelin, despite having been resident in England since before the Conquest, had carried out a programme of reading whose currency in England is believed to have derived from Lanfranc’s educational reform before that educational reform had got under way. So, too, several of the classical authors cited by Goscelin are not mentioned in the 1104 catalogue of the holdings of the Saint-Bertin library.33 In this context, I am 29

Liber confort., p. 98.

30

Webber, p. 30. See also ‘Goscelin’s Writings and the Wilton Women’, pp. 223–24.

31

See ‘Wilton as a Centre of Learning’, pp. 316–17, for Orosius’ History against the Pagans, Boethius’ Consolation, the tripartite history attributed to Cassiodorus, commentaries by Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory, and possibly Augustine’s City of God. Goscelin evidently had access to Eusebius and a Pseudo-Jerome commentary at Burg, because he quotes extensively from them. 32

See Webber, p. 36; for the 1104 Saint-Bertin catalogue, see Lesne, pp. 628–35.

33

Lesne, pp. 633–34; compare Barnes’ appendix to ‘Goscelin’s Greeks and Romans’, p.

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indebted to Barnes for drawing attention to the fact that Goscelin’s two quotations from Seneca’s Epistulae Morales ‘are both from that part of the Letters (89–129) which was known to few until the twelfth century’, and that the quotations in the Liber confortatorius ‘may be the earliest evidence that a text of that part of the Letters had reached England’.34 Reynolds, of course, assumes that the copy of Seneca’s Epistulae Morales known to Goscelin ‘crossed the Channel hard on the heels of the Norman conquerors’;35 but it is equally possible that some of the works known to Goscelin which do not appear to have been at Saint-Bertin before 1104 were brought to England by Lotharingian and Flemish clerics who were resident in England before the Conquest, or even by Goscelin himself. Hamilton, similarly, saw Goscelin as a key figure in relation to the question of whether continental learning was relayed to England by the Normans in the wake of the Conquest. From c. 1042 onward (when Queen Emma commissioned a monk from Saint-Bertin to write her Encomium), he pointed out, there were a number of continental clerics in England, not only Normans brought in or attracted by Edward the Confessor, but Lotharingians such as Bishops Herman, Leofric, Giso, and Flemings such as the hagiographer Folcard. All of them, Hamilton surmised, had received an education similar to Goscelin’s.36 It seems unlikely that educated continental clerics would have arrived in England unaccompanied by books, and there is some evidence of Flemish manuscripts in England prior to the Conquest.37 An alternative, or additional, explanation for Goscelin’s knowledge (in some form or other) of works which do not appear to have been at Saint-Bertin while he was resident there may be that he had access to copies which had been in England since the early Anglo-Saxon period, even though there is no evidence that they were being read after the ninth century. A number of works were available in England in the early Anglo-Saxon period, particularly to Aldhelm and Bede, which were seemingly 416. The 1104 catalogue did, however, record four volumes of Virgil, as well as commentaries by Servius and Sergius (Lesne, pp. 633–34). Lanfranc did not encourage study of the classics; see H. E. J. Cowdrey, Lanfranc: Scholar, Monk, and Archbishop (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 46–74. 34

‘Goscelin’s Greeks and Romans’, p. 402.

35

Reynolds, p. 375.

36

Hamilton, I, 504–08; Hamilton also points out that the work of all of these ‘cultural immigrants’ is less well known than that of the post-Conquest Normans. Barlow, pp. xliv–xlv, remarks upon the similarity of the education of Folcard and Goscelin. 37

Five manuscripts of Saint-Bertin provenance are listed by N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957; repr. 1990), nos 7, 52, 369, App. 6, 30. However, of those which appear to have been taken to England from Saint-Bertin, at least one may have entered England during the tenth-century monastic reform (no. 52), and App. 6 and 30 may also have reached England before Goscelin arrived. See Ortenberg, p. 61, for three Lotharingian manuscripts known to have entered England in the tenth century, and Vita Edithae, chaps 7, 10.

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unknown to late Anglo-Saxon authors (and some of these were also known to few on the mainland). Augustine’s Confessions was one of these.38 Notwithstanding the widespread destruction of the monastic libraries during the Viking invasions, Malmesbury is one of the places where Goscelin could conceivably have found books surviving from the early Anglo-Saxon period when he accompanied Bishop Herman on his travels around Aldhelm’s former see. Thomson finds ‘an unexpectedly long and interesting list’ of ‘rare patristic works, late antique secular literature [and], early copies of English and Carolingian writings’ which were, or may have been, at Malmesbury in pre-Conquest days, and Reynolds, who points out that William of Malmesbury (c. 1095–1143) was the first person since antiquity to quote from the whole range of Seneca’s Epistulae Morales, suggests that his source for Letters 89–124 may have been the one on which Goscelin drew.39 Of even greater importance than identification of the nature and extent of Goscelin’s reading of classical and patristic writings, in my view, is whether he can be shown to have drawn upon the writings of the continental precursors of Anselm (or to have been personally associated with any of them). Contact with Anselm himself or with his writings seems unlikely because Goscelin arrived in England between 1058 and 1064; Anselm did not arrive in the north of France until 1060 and his earliest works are dated to the 1070s. My essays in this volume have given particular attention to the remarkable extent to which Goscelin’s Wilton writings express a spirituality which is more characteristic of the twelfth century than the eleventh. It is his seeming anticipation of the ‘twelfth-century Renaissance’40—his conception of the spiritual life as dynamically progressive, intensely emotional, inward and solitary, his bridal mysticism and devotion to the suffering humanity of Christ, for instance—which gives these two texts a particular attraction and excitement. Of course there are parallels which can be drawn between his work and the work of some of his eleventh-century contemporaries; it is the extent to which Goscelin combines and gives extended development to these devotional tendencies that gives his Wilton writings the appearance of twelfth-century works.41 Evidence that Goscelin’s Wilton writings reveal the direct influence of his continental contemporaries, however, would not alter the fact that, before the arrival of Anselm, England effectively had in Goscelin a precursor to Anselm. The 38

See above n. 11.

39

Rodney Thomson, ‘Identifiable Books from the Pre-Conquest Library of Malmesbury Abbey’, Anglo-Saxon England, 10 (1982), 1–19 (pp. 3, 19); Reynolds, p. 375, and n. 27. Aldhelm’s sources (see entries by Andy Orchard in Fontes Anglo-Saxonici) do not include Seneca’s Epistulae Morales. 40

‘Seeming anticipation’ because his anticipation of the twelfth-century Renaissance is, of course, an artefact of the modern reader’s retrospective view. 41

His conception of his relationship with Eve, however, appears less in keeping with continental developments; see Hayward, ‘Complaints and Consolations’, pp. 347–53.

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importance of this cannot be over-emphasised. Nor should the fact be overlooked that he was by no means the only continental cleric resident in England before the Conquest, particularly if Hamilton was right in surmising that the Lotharingian and Flemish émigrés had received the same education as Goscelin (and he was very probably right about Goscelin’s patron Bishop Herman, who spent three years at Saint-Bertin, and Folcard, who was probably a fellow monk of Goscelin’s at SaintBertin). In their various ways these émigrés were influential, as bishops, hagiographers, and teachers. Goscelin, who spent a considerable time with Eve at Wilton, probably as her tutor and possibly as a chaplain to the nuns, presents in the Legend of Edith a role model for a form of bridal mysticism which, though possibly to some extent familiar to the nuns of Wilton, was almost certainly more powerfully ecstatic and individualistic than anything available to monastic women at that time either in England or on the continent. In Goscelin’s work at least, if not in that of his fellow émigrés, there is evidence that post-Conquest arrivals from Normandy were not the sole transmitters of devotional developments on the continent. One way or another, travel to and from the continent had been taking place since the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes first arrived from the mainland. Already, in the 960s, St Edith was being educated at Wilton by Lotharingian priests brought to England by her father, whom Goscelin describes as having welcomed to his kingdom any foreigner who was a serviceable scholar or a craftsman.42 But travel to and from the continent surely involved some degree of cultural exchange rather than simply the importation of continental influence, and the question I have raised is whether Goscelin’s spiritual formation is solely or even principally attributable to his youthful education at Saint-Bertin. I have speculated, for instance, on the possible effect on Goscelin of a female community which included educated upper-class women like Gunhild, some of whom may also have been as intensely devout as Margaret of Scotland, who may even have been receiving an education at Wilton while Goscelin was there. The community also, of course, included Eve, no less avant garde than Goscelin in setting off to become an anchorite in France in c. 1080. This, I have suggested, might well be evidence of Goscelin’s influence, though were it possible to find evidence of contact between Wilton and Angers before this date, it might suggest that Eve’s decision had less to do with her relationship with Goscelin than the Liber confortatorius leads us to imagine. I have also speculated, however, that Eve’s own, intense spirituality may have influenced Goscelin, and noted that his emotional response to her ‘marriage to God’ suggests that this experience may have been seminal to the development of the bridal mysticism he expresses in the Legend of Edith. Of possible traces of an ethos at Wilton that could have exerted a formative influence on Goscelin’s spirituality I can find few; the paintings of the Passion designed by Edith and executed by Benna on the walls of the church she built, the 42

Vita Edithae, chap. 7 (p. 55).

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use of the first-person pronoun in the prayers attributed to her, and perhaps her selfidentification with Mary Magdalene. I have not considered the possible influence of the liturgy—the bridal imagery in the liturgical echoes which appear in his account of Eve’s dedication suggests that liturgical imagery could have helped to shape the bridal mysticism with which Edith is endowed in the Legend; but the liturgical imagery would have been equally familiar to and hence capable of shaping the spirituality of the nuns of Wilton.43 Cultural change, I have urged, is not only generated and transmitted by texts, but by visual representations, personal encounters and experience, and therefore as capable of occurring in Anglo-Saxon England as on the continent. Texts, however, are chiefly what we have, and it is the identification of the texts that Goscelin knew and used that will illuminate his writings and, hopefully, will also help to establish the cultural continuities of AngloSaxon England and its position in the mainstream of history.

43

Liber confort., p. 28.

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Index Abelard see Peter Abelard Abraham 3, 366, 382, 414 Achilles 412 Adam 291, 390, 391 Adelman, priest of Wilton 226n, 316 Aeneas 377-78, 407, 409-11, 414-15, 423-24, 425 Aelred of Rievaulx De institutione inclusarum 287, 288, 357n, 398 Life of Edward the Confessor 336n Agatha, St 274, 275, 399 Agnes, Empress 333n Agnes, St 220n, 286n, 294, 380 Agnes of Poitou 283 Ailred see Aelred Aix-la-Chapelle 320n Alan the Black, Count 321 Alan the Red, Count 321, 322 Alcuin 349-50 Aldhelm, Bishop of Sherborne 42728 De Virginitate 7, 286-88, 295, 307-08, 313, 314, 330 Alexander, St 397 Alfred, King 250n, 251n, 269n, 314, 322-23, 325, 327, 328, 329 Amalec 366, 372, 373, 374, 410 Ambrose, St 315, 349

De officiis 406 De virginibus 317n, 426 Amelburg, St 218n Amesbury 245n Ancrene Wisse 287n, 289n, 290 Angers 2, 3, 10, 228n, 229, 230, 231, 244, 263n, 276, 306, 337, 342, 343, 345, 398, 429 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 253n, 322n, 354n Anglo-Saxon nunneries 1, 4, 6-8, 12, 229n, 245, 246, 251, 253, 254, 256-57, 261, 265-67, 309, 319-20, 323-25, 327, 328n, 332, 326 Anglo-Saxon period 5, 7, 8, 223, 245, 246, 256, 279, 286, 307, 308, 309, 323, 335, 419, 427, 428, 429 Anglo-Saxon saints 12, 218, 222, 223, 224, 232, 234-36, 238, 249, 254, 255, 269, 277-78, 279-80, 423 Anjou 11, 230n Anselm, Archbishop 10, 11, 12, 222, 235, 236, 258n, 282-84, 285, 303, 322, 323, 335, 337, 422, 428 Cur Deus Homo 283 Letters 2, 300, 320-21, 338, 344, 350-51, 424n Meditationes 270n, 417, 422n Antony, St 298, 313, 386

444 Api, father of Eve 227n Aristoxenus 403 Argina 220n, 380 Ark of the Covenant 293 Arthurian romances 282 Asser Life of King Alfred 328 Athelstan, King 328 Aubrey, John 318n Augustine, St 233n, 290, 315, 317, 349, 362, 372n, 386, 422 Confessiones 224n, 284, 288n, 303, 306, 313, 315, 316, 359n, 386, 406, 422, 425, 426, 428 De civitate Dei 313, 315, 317n, 378, 386, 403, 426n Aulus Gellius 403, 415 Ausonius Epigrams 403-04 Avianus Fables 401, 404, 416 Æbbe, Abbess of Minster-in-Thanet 279n, 327n Ælfgifu, Abbess of Barking 222n, 244n, 330n Ælfgifu, Abbess of Wilton 219, 220, 230-32, 234, 247, 253, 255, 267, 268, 269, 271-76, 279, 302, 397, 399 Ælfgifu of Shaftesbury 239, 241, 274n, 278, 301, 310, 393 Æthelgifu, Abbess of Shaftesbury 328n, 336n Ælfgyth of Wilton 329n Ælfgyth the Good 315 Ælfhere 250 Ælfhild of Wilton 231, 271, 272, 275 Ælfric, Abbot of Eynsham Life of Æthelwold 259 Homily on Judith 7n, 308 Pastoral Letters 262 Ælfthryth, Queen 245-46, 249n,

INDEX

271n, 254, 255, 256-57, 261n, 265-66, 330n, 334 Ælfthryth, daughter of Alfred 327-28 Ælfwold, Bishop of Sherborne 317 Æthelburg, Abbess of Barking Goscelin’s Life and Translatio 222, 223n, 238, 242n, 246n, 284n, 330n Æthelflæd 309n Æthelflæd, Lady of Mercia 327n Æthelhild of Wilton 319, 326 Æthelred, King 4, 231, 246, 247n, 248, 249, 251, 255, 257, 260, 260, 264, 265, 269, 270, 292, 296, 309, 322, 330n Æthelthryth, St 223n, 279n, 336n Æthelweard, son of Alfred 327 Æthelweard Chronicle 328n Æthelwold, Bishop 8, 239, 245, 249, 254, 257, 259, 260-62, 265-66, 277, 278n, 292, 293, 295, 297, 300, 308, 311, 324, 326, 329, 332, 337, 423n Account of Edgar’s Establishment of the Monasteries 256n, 265n, 308 Benedictine Rule, OE Translation 256n, 308 Regularis Concordia 236n, 256, 265, 266, 275n, 300, 310, 318n; OE Translation 256n, 308n Babius Italicus Ilias Latina 401, 412-13, 415, 416 Bartholomew, St 237 Barking 7, 222, 223, 238, 206n, 245, 249n, 254, 260, 266, 274n, 278, 286, 287, 296, 302, 307-08, 309n, 311, 314, 319, 320n, 323, 324, 326, 329, 330, 336 Battle of Hastings 7, 254, 276 Baudri of Bourgeuil 337n, 348, 352

INDEX

Bayeux 219n, 228n, 252n Bec 224n, 236n, 284 Bede 217, 314, 337n, 427 Historia 223, 274n, 302, 307-08, 330 On the Tabernacle 375n Benedict, St 241n, 242n, 254, 260n, 314n, 362 Rule 255, 257, 275, 282, 320n, 337n, 423 OE Translation see Æthelwold Benedictines 282, 300 Benedictine Reform 8, 12, 236, 246, 254, 256, 269, 278n, 311, 326 Benna of Trier 1, 10, 226, 256n, 263, 272n, 301, 311-12, 316, 315, 330, 429 Beorhtric, priest of Wilton 226n Bernard of Clairvaux 237, 283, 290, 303 De praecepto et dispensatione 356 Sermons on the Song of Songs 286 Bertin, St 221, 225, 232 Blaesilla 386 Blanche, Countess 283 Blandina 393, 394, 395 Boethius 408, 409, 411, 424n, 426n Consolatio 309n, 313, 314, 315, 330, 386, Boniface, St 7, 349, 350, 351 Book of Nunnaminster 309n, 336n Brahmans 411 Brihtsige, sister 272, 276 Brihtgifu, Abbess of Wilton 219, 231, 232, 233, 247, 250, 271-72, 273, 274, 278, 330, 397 Brihtric, anchorite 229n, 393, 395 Burg 221, 317, 426 Bury St Edmunds 221 Byrhtferth of Ramsey 314n, 315n, 423n Cain 378

445 Caleb 374; daughter 301n, 310, 393 Calendars 260n, 269, 277 Canterbury 219, 220n, 224, 235, 236, 284-85, 299, 420 Carolingians 346, 428 Cassiodorus Historia ecclesiastica tripartia 313, 315, 317n, 386, 426n Catherine, St 220n, 286n, 336n, 380 Cato Disticha 401, 406, 410, 416 Catullus 402, 415, 416, 422 Cecilia, St 218n, 237, 261, 274, 275, 380 Chatteris 245n Charlemagne 298n, 328n Chaucer 317 Christ Church, Canterbury 221n Christina of Romsey 322, 334 Cicero 346, 401 De amicitia 348-49, 350, 406 De finibus 406 De senectute 416-17 Cistercians 281, 282, 304 Claudian 421 Corinthians 401 Cnut, King 8, 248n, 270, 271n, 272n, 273, 302n, 323, 327n, 320 Colbek dancers 217, 273, 278, 330, 423n Countess of Pembroke 318n Crates 403, 411 Cyprian 315 Daedalus 413 Danes, Danish 227n, 273n, 330-31 David 362, 365, 414 Deborah 395 Denis, St 239, 241, 248n, 260 Diana, Princess of Wales 336 Diana, goddess 406 Diogenes the Cynic 403-04, 411 Domesday Book 227n, 250

446 Double monasteries 7, 8, 272, 307, 309, 332, 356, 419 Dugdale, William 318n Dunstan, Archbishop 11, 233, 23436, 239, 241, 245, 246, 248-49, 255, 257-60, 266, 270, 272n, 292, 293, 300 Dyonisian 290n Eadburg of Nunnamister 22n, 278n, 328 Eadflæd of Wilton 319 Eadgyth, Queen 331 Eagytha of Wilton 232n, 365, 398 Eadmer Life of Anselm 235n, 322n Ealhswith, Queen 309n, 328n, 336n Ealdgyth of Wilton 220n, 268, 275 Ealdred, Archbishop of York 270n, 273n Edgar, King 1, 4, 224, 226, 227, 234, 240n, 241, 242, 243, 245, 246, 248, 249, 250, 251, 253, 256, 257, 259, 260, 264, 266n, 269, 277, 289, 296, 308, 311, 318, 319, 324, 325, 326, 327, 329, 332, 333, 334, 380, 419 Edith of Polesworth 241n Edith of Tamworth 239, 241n, 278, 301, 310, 393 Edith, St: birth 258, 291, 293; dedication 291, 293, 296, 352-56; education 226, 257, 263, 277, 289, 291-92, 293-94, 295, 300, 310-12, 330, 429; lay member of Wilton community 4, 240, 249-50, 264, 272n, 296-97, 324-27; translation 248, 260, 261, 270; abbacies 240, 248-49, 259, 261, 266, 292; offer of throne 248, 249-50, 292, 30910; alb11, 240, 249n, 300-301, 305, 326, 393; church 240, 243, 250, 292-93, 294, 301, 305, 375,

INDEX

379-81, 429; clothing 239, 240, 241, 249, 251, 261-64, 277, 291, 295-98, 326; menagerie 239-40, 242, 250, 251, 264n, 296, 298-99, 305 prayerbook 11, 239, 240, 301, 310-11, 312, 393, 429; seal 251, 261n, 310n; and Æthelred 231, 246, 247n, 248, 251, 260, 260n, 269; Æthelwold 239, 249, 259, 261-62, 277, 292, 293-94, 295, 300; Dunstan 235-36, 239, 241, 246, 255, 258-60, 292, 293-94; Edgar’s court 224, 231, 239, 250, 251, 263, 264-66, 296, 298-99; Edward the Martyr 238, 240, 242, 243, 251, 261n, 296, 380; female saints 239, 241, 274n, 278, 301, 395; Wulfthryth 223, 231, 239, 243, 247, 249, 251, 255, 262, 27071, 272-73, 279, 291, 306, 311, 399; see also Eve, Legend of Edith Edith, Queen 2, 220n, 225, 252, 25354, 260n, 265, 274n, 308, 321n, 330-33, 334, 336, 337, 420, 424n Edmund, King 241n, 278n Edward the Confessor 2, 219n, 225, 231, 253n, 270n, 329, 330n, 333, 334, 337, 338, 427 Life 1n, 217n, 218n, 247n, 252, 253, 254, 265, 316, 330, 333, 421n, 424n Edward the Elder 313n, 321, 330, 331 Edward, King and Martyr 4, 238, 241, 242, 243, 246, 248, 249, 251, 259, 260n, 265, 296, 336n Passio 218n, 238, 242n, 250, 253n, 336n Egbert, Archbishop of Trier 311n Egypt 372, 373, 379, 409, 425 Eleanor of Acquitaine 335 Elijah 370, 374 Ely 222, 223n, 274, 420 Elysian 423

INDEX

Elphege, St 234-35, 236, 259, 260 Emma, Queen 265, 271, 276, 308, 330n, 332, 333 Encomium Emmae 308, 427 Eugene III, Pope 237 Euphemia, St 275n Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 309n, 313, 315, 317n, 376, 394, 425, 426n Eustochium 257n, 286, 311, 349, 352, 385, 389n, 413, 423 Eve: childhood 2, 219, 226, 227, 230, 306, 316; dedication 11, 220, 22526, 232, 253, 303-05, 306, 313, 325, 347, 430; departure 218, 220, 221, 228, 342-43, 348, 349, 355, 361, 362, 363, 370, 372; education 1-2, 6, 226, 309, 312-18, 385-87, 420, 423-24; vocational choice 4, 10, 11, 228-29, 230-31, 285, 3056; death 230, 233; at Angers 22930, 244, 263n, 288, 315, 316, 398; Saint-Eutrope 229; and Aeneas 314, 377-78, 409-11, 412, 414, 415, 423-24; Edith 4-5, 233, 24243, 276-77, 300, 303, 312, 330, 359, 379-81, 383, 387, 398-99; Goscelin 2-4, 10-11, 217-18, 22530, 303-06, 341-53, 355-67, 36970, 371, 381-82, 385, 397; Herman 225-27, 325, 342, 390; Hervé 228, 342; the Wilton community 4, 221, 230; her abbess 220, 221, 228, 232; female friends 398; magistra 313, 315-16, 337, 338; parents 2, 227, 362; as reader of LC 3, 4, 9, 237, 355-67, 369-83, 385, 99, 401, 407, 408, 409-10, 412, 413, 414, 415 Eve, the first 226, 291, 325, 389-91 Exodus 366, 375, 409 Felicity, St 394

447 Florilegium Gallicum 409, 413 Folcard 421n, 423n, 424n, 427, 429 Fontes Anglo-Saxonici 19, 284n, 420, 421, 423n, 428n Fortunatus, Venatius 422 Flanders, Flemings 284n, 316n, 427, 429 France 4, 422, 428, 429 Franks 402 Freud, Sigmund 347 Frithegod 423n Gabriel, Archangel 272, 391, 399 Galatians 401 Galba Prayerbook 309n, 336 Geminianus, St 275n Genevieve, St 414 Geoffrey, Abbot of Vendôme 230n Gertrude, St 397, 398 Giso, Bishop of Wells 317n, 427 Glastonbury 270 Godiva, Abbess of Wilton 220, 232, 234, 247, 252, 267, 273n, 274-76, 337, 338, Godwine, Earl 252, 329 Goscelin: arrival in England 10, 21819, 224, 226; at Wilton 1, 2, 219-0, 225-28, 253, 306, 316, 338, 429; itinerant period 221-222; at Saint Augustine’s 221, 223-24, 299; and Anselm 10, 224, 236, 283-85, 35051, 422, 428-29; Herman 218-20, 227, 234; Lanfranc 10, 217, 224, 234-36, 249, 257-59, 426; Osmund 220, 221, 222, 228; see also Eve; education 11, 224, 284-85, 317, 421, 424, 426, 427, 429; knowledge of classical literature 9-10, 314, 401-17, 420-25; learning and literary culture 9-10, 315-16, 419, 420-30; spirituality 8-11, 224, 230, 281-85, 288-90, 299-300, 302-06, 388, 428-30; hagiographical

448 writings 12, 217, 222-23, 236, 247, 306, 421-23; Barking writings 222, 223, 238, 246, 252; Ely writings 221n, 420; Canterbury writings 221-22, 302, 327n, 420, 421n; see also Hildelith, Æthelburg, Wulfhild, Mildrith, Wulfsige Greeks 401, 402, 409, 411, 415 Gregory the Great 282, 290, 313, 315, 317n, 386, 422, 426n Moralia in Job 314n, 315n, 318n Dialogues 314n, 423 Gunhild Godwinson 2, 8, 253, 297, 300, 321-22, 324, 338, 420, 429 Gunhild, sister of Harold Godwinson 308n Hampton 264n Harold Godwinson 2, 252, 253, 254, 321 Heloise, Abbess of the Holy Paraclete 3-4, 13, 252, 253, 254, 321, 352, 385n Henry I 2, 298n, 308, 322, 333 Hercules 409, 423, 424n Herman, Bishop of Sherborne 1, 2, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 224, 224, 226, 227, 228, 234, 236, 252n, 253, 265, 268, 273n, 299, 302, 312, 314, 316, 317, 325, 338, 342, 360, 390, 427, 428, 429 Herman of Tournai 322n, 337n Hervé of Vendôme 230, 341 Hilary of Orléans 4n, 227n, 228n, 229-30, 233, 237n, 315, 390 Hild, Abbess of Whitby 279n, 308 Hildebert, Bishop of Lemans 335 Hildelith, Abbess of Barking 286, 307-08 Goscelin’s Lectiones 223n, 238, 242n Goscelin’s Translatio 222, 246n, 284n, 330n

INDEX

Homer 405, 412, 413, 415 Odyssey 413 Honorius Sigillum sanctae Mariae 299n Horace 401, 409, 411, 412, 415, 417n, 421n Ars poetica 413, 417 Epistles 402-03, 407, 408, 417, Satires 407-08, 417 Epodes 417 Horton 246n, 249n, 261n, 266, 309n, 315, 324, 326, 329, 336 Hundrada 328n Ida, Countess of Bologna 224n, 350 Inachidae 402 Isaac the Cistercian 304 Israelite woman 301n, 393 Israelites 372, 373, 374, 375, 377, 378, 379, 409, 410 Isidore 314, 318 Regula Monachorum 322 Italy 284 Jael 395 Jacob 318 Jerome 309n, 311, 313, 386, 404, 405, 422 Aduersus Iouinianum 403 Commentary on Ezekiel 403 Commentary on Ecclesiastes 40607 Letters 13, 227n, 286, 314n, 315, 344, 349, 350, 352, 385, 389n, 402, 403, 413, 423 On the Song of Songs see PsJerome Jerusalem 273n, 291, 293, 379 John Cassian Collationes 371 John of Fécamp 283, 285, 422 Libellus for Agnes of Poitou 283 John the Baptist 396, 411

INDEX

John the Divine 378 Jonathan 365 Jordan 374, 410 Joseph 221 Joshua, Homilies on, see Ps-Jerome Judith, Countess 285, 308n Judith 308, 395 Jungian 305 Juno 410 Jupiter 412 Juvenal 421n Katherine, St 237 Katherine Group 287 Kenelm, St Life 215n, 216n, 284n, 331 Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury 10, 11, 12, 218, 219, 221, 222, 223, 224, 233, 234-36, 237, 24041, 246, 248, 249, 253, 255, 25758, 259n, 260, 261, 267, 268, 285, 298, 309, 314, 319, 320-21, 333, 419, 426 Constitutions 320 Lanzo of Cluny 350 Last Judgement 379, 390 Latium 377 Le Ronceray 229, 231n Legend of Edith: date 217-18, 224, 236, 244; manuscripts 237-38; metres 238, 240, 242-44, 279, 291, 299; sources 278-79, 422-24; versions 11, 237-42, 244, 263, 279, 291, 293, 298; dedication to Lanfranc 12, 222, 234-36, 241, 246, 248-49, 253, 255, 257-60, 267, 268, 285, 298, 309; portrait of Edith 5, 9, 233, 255, 258, 261-65, 276-77, 285, 289-306, 316, 31012, 325-6, 331, 332-33, 334, 387, 388, 391, 393, 429-30; Life of Wulfthryth 4, 247, 270-71, 273,

449 279-80, 423n; Prologue 11, 219, 222, 224, 234-36, 237, 250, 25758, 267, 276, 277, 278; Translatio 11, 219, 220, 231-32, 234, 237-38, 250, 251-52, 255, 257, 259-60, 264, 267-76, 279, 300n, 302, 303, 311n, 330, 397, 399, 423n; see also Edith, Eve, Wilton Leoba, Abbess of Bischofsheim 275n, 323, 350 Life 261n Leofflæd, Abbess of Barking 275n, 323, 330 Leofric, Bishop of Exeter 427 Liber confortatorius: date 218, 221, 224, 226; manuscript 236-37; Prologue 227, 237, 346, 359-60, 372, 389, 392; Book I 3, 218, 22526, 227-29, 303-04, 313, 344, 350, 352, 361-67, 369-70, 371-73, 374, 381, 382, 388n, 389-90, 392, 397, 398, 401; Book II 288n, 370, 37374, 376, 377, 378, 393-95, 409, 410, 411, 414; Book III 312-15, 349, 375-79, 380, 385-86, 387, 389, 390, 392n, 394, 397, 410-11; Book IV 240-41, 359, 370, 37982, 386, 389n, 390-91, 392n, 39699, 410, 415 Liturgy 19, 98, 421n, 430 Lotharingia, Lotharingians 227, 311, 316n, 427, 429 Lucan 421, 413n Lucretius 421n Lucy, St 274, 275, 399 Macarius, St 298 Macrobius 405 Malcolm of Scotland 2, 322, 333-34 Malmesbury 317n, 428 Marbod of Rennes 352 Margaret, Queen 2, 8, 308n, 321n, 322, 333-34, 338, 420, 429

450 Life 2, 333, 335n Martianus Capella De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii 314 Martha 290, 295, 297, 298, 305, 387, 392 Martin, St 362, 366n Martyrology 314 Mary, sister of Martha 290, 295, 297, 298, 300, 305, 387, 392 Mary of Egypt 396, 411 Mary Magdalene 11, 290, 293n, 298, 300, 301, 305, 391, 392, 393, 396, 430 Mary, Virgin 242-43, 273, 275, 282n, 290, 293, 301, 306, 310n, 325, 362, 377n, 379, 389n, 390, 391, 392, 393, 399 Matilda, Queen 2, 8, 297, 300, 308, 322, 323, 326, 327n, 332n, 333, 334-35, 337, 338, 420, 424n Matilda, Abbess of Essen 328n Matthias 325 Maurice, Bishop of London 222, 258n, 320n, 330n Meleager, father 402 Mildrith, Abbess of Minster-inThanet 279n Goscelin’s Legend 223, 284n, 302, 327n, 414n, 415n, 421n Minster-in Thanet 272, 279n, 327 Minerva 331 Misenus 407, 414 Modesta, Abbess 365, 397-98 Monica, mother of Augustine 362, 425 Monty Python and the Holy Grail 275 Moses 373, 374, 375 Muriel of Angers 231n, 337 Mycenae 402 New Jerusalem 9, 233, 234, 242, 243, 285n, 371, 375, 376, 378, 379,

INDEX

380, 381, 386, 398, 399, 410 Norman, Normans 2, 12, 222, 228, 234, 235, 236, 249, 253, 254, 258n, 259n, 324, 325, 328, 330n, 336n, 427, 429 Norman Conquest 1, 8, 219, 220, 230, 232, 234, 236, 252, 253, 255, 267, 276, 279, 319, 419, 427, 429 Nunnaminster 246n, 254n, 261, 266, 278, 308n, 326, 336 (see Winchester) Offa of Mercia 328n Oliva, mother of Eve 227n Omer, St 233 Orestes 401, 406, 409 Origen 281, 283 Orosius De ormesta mundi 313, 314, 426n Osbern of Canterbury 236n Life of Dunstan 235, 258n Life of Elphege 235 Osbert of Clare Life of Eadburg of Nunnamister 254n Osmund, Bishop of Sherborne 2, 5, 220, 221, 222, 225, 228, 285, 316n, 360 Osmund, priest of Wilton 226n, 316 Ottonians 251n, 311n, 316n, 328 Ovid 4, 347, 352, 353, 421, 423, 424 Metamorphoses 402, 422n Pacuvius 402 Pascal II, Pope 335 Paul the Apostle 373, 377, 392n, 401 Paul the Hermit 396, 411 Paula 355n, 311, 349, 385, 413, 423 Pearl 3 Perpetua, St 366n, 374, 393-94, 402 Persius 421n Peter the Apostle 325, 392n Peter Abelard 3, 4, 13, 352, 385n

451

INDEX

Rachel 318 Radbod of Rheims 1, 311, 312, 316, 318 Ramsey 220, 315n Romsey 245n, 322n, 335 Ravenissa, niece of Eve 229 Reginald of Canterbury 221n, 299n Regularis Concordia see Æthelwold Revelation, Book of 289, 302n, 378, 379 Richard of Cirencester Life of Edward the Confessor 331, 334 Robert of Arrissel 10, 230n, 231n Romans 411

421, 422n, 426-27, 429 Saint-Eutrope 229-30 Saint-Laurent du Tertre 2, 229 Saint-Vasst at Arras 315 Sallust 401, 412 Catiline 405, 406-07, 416 Saint-Sauveur-le Vicomte 237 Saint-Donatien 308n Salisbury 219n, 220n, 316, 317 Sara 397 Satan 302, 395, 403 Saturus 366n, 394 Sæwald, Abbot of Bath 315n Scipio 349 Seneca the Younger 401, 412, 415 Epistulae Morales 402, 404, 405, 408-09, 416, 422, 427, 428 Serlo 337n Sergius Commentary on Virgil 427n Servius Commentary on Virgil 406, 427n Shaftesbury 245n, 250, 266n, 309n, 336 Psalters 309n, 336 Sheba 289, 294 Sherborne 218, 222, 317, 343 Socrates 403, 411 Solomon 243, 289, 331, 379, 380 Song of Songs 281, 283, 285n, 286, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293n, 294, 303, 317n, 329n Speyer 224, 284n, 316n St Augustine’s, Canterbury 221, 223, 243n, 302, 299, 242n Statius 421 Stephen, St 294, 414 Svein 273n

Sabbath 290, 299 Sabinus and Sabina 365 Saint-Bertin 10, 11, 206, 208n, 218, 219, 224, 284, 314, 315, 316, 317,

Terence 421n Teutons 401 Thames 414-15 Thecla 220n, 380

Peter Damian Letters 283, 424 Peterborough 221, 222n Pharaoh 373, 379 Pontifical of Egbert 279n, 302n, 324n Prosper of Acquitaine Poema conjugis ad uxorem 352-53 Prometheus 403 Proteus 403 Prudentius 315, 408, 409 Cathemerinon 423 Psychomachia 314, 404 Psalms 233n, 291, 297, 312, 314, 317n, 388n, 391, 412 Ps-Jerome On the Song of Songs 286n Homilies on Joshua 317n, 425 Pylades 402, 406 Pythagoras 402-03, 411 Quedlinburg 430n Queen of Heaven 265, 332

452 Theodore’s Penitential 323n Theseus 402 Thetis 412 Thola of Wilton 232, 268, 272n, 274, 275, 302, 303 Thomas á Becket, St 237 Tobias 397 Toledo Synod 320n Trier 1, 10, 226, 301, 311, 330n Turgot Life of Margaret of Scotland 33334 Twelfth-century Renaissance 8, 1011, 282, 424, 428 Vendôme Abbey 229n Verona 402, 422 Vikings 393, 428 Virgil 401, 406, 408, 412, 415, 423, 427n Aeneid 314, 363n, 373n, 378n, 402, 404, 405, 407, 409-12, 41315, 416, 421, 425 Bucolics 410, 415, 416 Georgics 404, 406, 414-15, 416 Eclogues 412n, 423n Vitalis of Savigny, Abbot 337 Wareham 266n Westminster 225, 333n Wenflæd of Wherwell 319 Wherwell 245n, 253n, 319, 329 Whitby 274n, 308, 330 William of Malmesbury 326, 329, 428 Gesta Regum Anglorum 219, 248, 274, 276, 278, 298, 319-20, 328, 331, 333, 334, 335, 338 Life of Archbishop Wulfstan II 338n William the Conqueror 218n, 237, 322n Wilton

INDEX

Legend of Edith, commissioning 7, 11-12, 217-18, 222, 234, 236, 24647, 254, 255, 276, 309, 329; audience of 233, 236, 239-42, 24950, 254, 255-56, 257-58, 276-77, 302-03, 306, 383, 424, 429; oral traditions 12, 222, 234, 236, 24748, 254, 255, 258, 261, 263, 273, 276-79, 295-97, 335; in LC 12, 221, 233, 242-43, 359, 375, 37981, 397-99 abbatical succession 231-32, 255, 271-75, 399; cult of Edith 231-32, 247, 252, 255-56, 267-71, 274-80; educational centre 310-18, 327-38, 419-20, 429; ethos 230, 250, 300, 301-02, 39799, 429-29; lay membership 230, 296-97, 318-27; patronage 234, 245, 247n, 248n, 250-51, 252-54, 256, 264-66, 269, 270, 276, 337, 329; royal connections 1, 10, 231, 245, 251, 256, 274, 279, 336; visions 220n, 232, 242n, 250, 26769, 271-75, 276, 301-02, 303, 306, 397, 399; and bishops 254-55, 260-62, 266; queens 8, 265-66, 309, 327-35; charters 250, 317n, 329n; church 10-11, 220n, 225, 233, 240, 241-42, 292-93, 305, 312n, 375, 379, 381, 429-30; lands 232, 234, 240n, 252-55, 265, 268, 271, 276; library 316-18; magistra 313, 315-16, 329n, 337, 338; palace 296, 327; prefect 270; priests 226, 263, 270, 291, 316, 330; seal 310n, 249, 259n; wealth 245, 250-53 Wilton Chronicle 242, 240n, 318 Wiltshire 2, 5, 219, 220, 221, 226, 227, 228, 252n, 268, 285, 318n Winchester 222n, 240, 245n, 249n, 257, 260, 261n, 305, 309n, 326, 328, 331n

453

INDEX

Wynflaed, testatrix 309n Woodstock 298n Wooing Group 287 Wooing of Our Lord 290 Wordsworth, William 271n Wulfhelm, father of Wulfthryth 318, 319 Wulfhild, Abbess of Barking 5, 8, 249n, 251n, 254, 257n, 266, 275n, 296, 318-19, 323, 324, 326, 329, 336 Goscelin’s Life and Translatio 6n, 222, 223, 246, 247n, 254, 278, 284n, 302, 318, 327, 329, 330 Wulfruna-Judith of Barking 275n, 324, 330n Wulfsige, Bishop of Sherborne Goscelin’s Life 222, 284n

Wulfstan, Archbishop I canon law collection 322 law code 323, 327n Wulfstan the Cantor 423n Wulfstan II, Archbishop 338n Wulfthryth, Abbess of Wilton 4, 5, 8, 223, 226, 231, 233, 241, 243, 245, 246, 247, 248n, 250, 251, 254, 255, 256, 257, 261, 261, 263, 266, 268n, 269, 270, 271-73, 274, 279, 288n, 291, 296, 301-02, 306, 311, 318-19, 324, 326, 327, 329, 330, 336, 381, 397, 399, 419, 423n Wulfwen of Wilton 240n Ywi, St 271 Zion 374, 376, 379, 380, 389n

Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts Titles in series Jutta and Hildegard : The Biographical Sources, ed. by Anna Silvas (1998). New Trends in Feminine Spirituality: The Holy Women of Liège and their Impact, ed. by Juliette Dor, Lesley Johnson and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (1999). Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain: Essays for Felicity Riddy, ed. by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Rosalynn Voaden, Arlyn Diamond, Ann Hutchinson, Carol Meale, and Lesley Johnson (2000). The Knowing of Woman’s Kind in Childing: A Middle English Version of Material Derived from the Trotula and other Sources, ed. by Alexandra Barratt (2001). Send Me God: The Lives of Ida the Compassionate of Nivelles, Nun of La Ramée, Arnulf, Lay Brother of Villers, and Abundus, Monk of Villers, by Goswin of Bossut, trans. by and with an introduction by Martinus Cawley OCSO and with a preface by Barbara Newman (2003). St Katherine of Alexandria: Texts and Contexts in Western Medieval Europe, ed. by Jacqueline Jenkins and Katherine J. Lewis (2003). Seeing and Knowing: Women and Learning in Medieval Europe 1200 – 1550, ed. by Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker (2004).