This short article examines the origins of the cult of St Bega in Ireland and Britain. Insular and Scandinavian analogues of her Life are explored and so is the popularity of Celtic saints in northern Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This topic can shed light on broader issues of cultural identity in the Irish Sea Region during the middle ages.

University of Wales, MA Dissertation.

An introduction to Aelred's life and works.

In and around the 870s, Britain was transformed dramatically by the campaigns and settlements of the Great Army and its allies. Some pre-existing political communities suffered less than others, and in hindsight the process helped Scotland and England achieve their later positions. By the twelfth century, the rulers of these countries had partitioned the former kingdom of Northumbria. This thesis is about what happened in the intervening period, the fate of Northumbria’s political structures, and how the settlement that defined Britain for the remainder of the Middle Ages came about. Modern reconstructions of the era have tended to be limited in scope and based on unreliable post-1100 sources. The aim is to use contemporary material to overcome such limitations, and reach positive conclusions that will make more sense of the evidence and make the region easier to understand for a wider audience, particularly in regard to its shadowy polities and ecclesiastical structures. After an overview of the most important evidence, two chapters will review Northumbria’s alleged dissolution, testing existing historiographic beliefs (based largely on Anglo-Norman-era evidence) about the fate of the monarchy, political community, and episcopate. The impact and nature of ‘Southenglish’ hegemony on the region’s political communities will be the focus of the fourth chapter, while the fifth will look at evidence for the expansion of Scottish political power. The sixth chapter will try to draw positive conclusions about the episcopate, leaving the final chapter to look in more detail at the institutions that produced the final settlement..

In a paper published in 1995, I explored Romanesque revivalist features in Scottish architecture from the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries, and , by comparing them to contemporary Italian examples, conclude that cultural nationalism was the cause. The present article revisits the argument and extends it by the inclusion of of examples from Irish architecture of the same period. This is a black and white scan where the original colour illustrations reproduce poorly for which I apologise.

The Augustinian canons have never enjoyed the level of scholarly attention afforded to the monastic and mendicant movements of the central middle ages. This disparity has been particularly acute in the British Isles, despite being its most prolific religious movement. Scholars working in England, Ireland, and Wales have begun to correct this historiographical lacuna. In Scotland, the regular canons have also received comparatively scant attention, and, indeed, have largely been understood on the basis of imported paradigms. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to address a deficiency in Scottish historiography and make a contribution to the growing scholarship on the regular canons in the British Isles. The regular canonical movement is examined within the kingdom of Scotland over the course of roughly a century. Eleven non-congregational houses of regular canons are considered, namely Scone, Holyrood, Jedburgh, St. Andrews, Cambuskenneth, and Inchcolm and the dependencies of Loch Tay, Loch Leven, Restenneth, Canonbie, and St. Mary’s Isle. The kingdom of Scotland provides both a common context, and a diverse milieu, in which to consider the foundation and development of these institutions and the movement as a whole. The chronological parameters have been determined by the foundation of the first house of regular canons in Scotland in c. 1120 and the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, which had the effect of artificially creating the Order of St Augustine. By examining individual houses separately, as well as in unison, this study seeks to present an integrated picture of the regular canonical movement in the kingdom of Scotland during the period of its organic development from c. 1120 to 1215. The fundamental question concerning the regular canons is the nature of their vocation and their societal function. It has increasingly been recognised that a spectrum of different interpretations of canonical life existed ranging from the active – pastoral, practical, and outward looking – to the contemplative – ascetic, quasi-eremitical, and inward looking – which were all part of the same decentralised religious movement. This thesis attempts to situate the Scottish Augustinians, as far as possible, within this spectrum. It argues that a unique manifestation of the regular canonical movement emerged in the kingdom of Scotland as the result of a range of factors – including shared patrons, leadership, and episcopal support – which had the effect of creating a group identity, and, thereby, a collective understanding of their vocation and role in society. The subject institutions have been particularly fortunate in terms of the quality and variety of the surviving source material. The evidence is comprised principally of charter material, but also includes chronicles and foundation narratives produced by Scottish Augustinians, and these provide an essential supplement. This thesis sheds light on an important group of religious houses in Scotland and on a complex religious movement that is only beginning to be fully understood, and, thus, it is hoped that this study will lay the groundwork for future research.

... a king of Dunmeller (now Drummelzier) in Upper Tweeddale near Peebles, associated with both St Kentigern and with Merlin, who supposedly ... The editor here suggests that Alexander was probably a mistake for Alan, but Alexander son of Benedict of Pennington also appears ...

This paper examines a hitherto unpublished charter of the earl of Ulster, Hugh de Lacy, to one of his affiliates, Hugh Hose. Documents of this type were first and foremost records of conveyance, and a prerequisite task is to reconstruct the location and extent of the earl’s grant. This is made all the more difficult by certain ambiguities in the Irish place-names, no doubt rendered phonetically by Hugh’s Anglo-Norman clerk, and further compromised by its sole transmission in a seventeenth-century transcript. The written record had other practical uses. The true value of Hugh’s earldom was bound up in the exclusivity of the comital title, and de Lacy’s charter had an important supplementary function as an emblem of rank and prestige, advertising the earl’s comital status to an audience of his peers. Stylistic choices and the construction of formulae imply clear direction by the grantor, with the imitation of royal protocol, in particular, serving to underline Hugh’s elevation to the first stratum of nobility. If promotion to comital rank transformed the language used to frame de Lacy’s charters, it also brought a different kind of person within the orbit of Hugh’s patronage. Until 1205, those favoured in de Lacy’s acta were, like him, ambitious cadets with limited political clout: the sons or brothers of important men. With the title of 'comes' came an expectation and ability to attract higher-profile tenants. Hugh Hose is an example of the new class of vassal being courted by the earl. A significant landholder in his own right, and one of the coterie surrounding successive lords of Meath, Hose was both lord of Deece, in the de Lacy lordship of Meath, and of Penkridge, in Staffordshire. An appraisal of the beneficiary’s status and landholdings highlights some intriguing links to the charter’s witnesses, and illustrates well how Hugh de Lacy took full advantage of family connections on both sides of the Irish Sea in order to attract supporters appropriate to his newly acquired dignity.

This translation was undertaken as part of the AHRC funded project 'Hagiography at the Frontiers' undertaken at the University of Liverpool. It is available open access, for further details, please see the project website https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/irish-studies/research/hagiography/ Jocelin of Furness was one of the most influential hagiographers of the Insular Middle Ages. He lived at the turn of the thirteenth century and was a monk of the Cistercian abbey of Furness (a site whose ruins lie in south Cumbria). Four substantial Lives composed by Jocelin survive, namely of St Patrick (patron saint of Ireland), St Kentigern (patron saint of Glasgow), St Waltheof (abbot of Melrose), and St Helena of Britain (mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great).

We will analyse the relations between the different members of the secular power – monarchy, nobility and urban oligarchies – with the Cistercian monasteries of the Crown of Castile during the late Middle Ages. We will review the few foundations made in this period, the privileges granted by members of the royal family and the donations made by the nobility and the urban patriciate to their monasteries and religious communities. We will address the support or rejection of the secular power to the Cistercian reform undertaken by Martín de Vargas from the monastery of Montesión. Finally, despite a decline in devotions to traditional orders during the late Middle Ages, many powerful people continued to choose to be buried in Cistercian monasteries, where they commissioned liturgical services to perpetuate their memory.

In 1873 the Kingdom of Italy, after the conquest of Rome, confiscated the properties of the Church, including the Cistercian library of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme: thus began the “war of codes”. The collection was really very precious: not only medieval manuscripts and rare printed books, but also modern manuscripts of considerable interest. These volumes, that are a tangible testimony of the theological and cultural interests of the monks, show traces of the life within the walls of the monastery and offer an original look at the Roman Cistercian reality during the last centuries of the papal dominion over the Urbe.

The experience of architecture and imagery is a critical area of inquiry for pilgrimage studies. For example, how was the building perceived and interpreted? Who were the spectators, and what might the decoration have meant to them? In many cases devotional campaigns – material, architectural or decorative – worked as a visual link between building and spectator, communicating to them the function of the building. Pilgrimage art and architecture was, predominantly, designed to be seen and understood and, as such, played an integral role in the visitor’s experience of a space, accommodating and expecting multiple responses whilst inspiring a reaction of the senses. Thus, these aesthetic schemes communicated; they were intended to be read and cannot be divorced from the spaces they inhabited or the people they affected

The seven articles presented in the third edition of the MEMSA journal were initially presented as papers at MEMSA’s eleventh annual postgraduate conference, ‘Imitation and Innovation: Uses of the past in the Medieval and Early Modern World’ (Durham University, July 2017). CONTENTS: Dominic Birch, Kelly Clarke and Katie Haworth, INTRODUCTION: THE USES OF THE PAST IN THE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN WORLD pp. 6-11 Thomas Spray, V FOR VÍGA-KÁRI: FAKE NEWS, “NOTORIOUS FAME”, AND VICTORIAN READINGS OF NJÁLS SAGA, pp. 12-46 Sarah Hutcheson, MAPPING PROTESTANT THEOLOGY: MEDIEVAL CARTOGRAPHIC ELEMENTS IN WILLIAM PERKINS’S VISUAL ORDO SALUTIS, pp. 47-56 Andrew Bull, THE ADAPTATION OF SAINT’S LIVES IN MEDIEVAL CHANT: REMEMBRANCE AND REQUEST, pp. 57-75 Ann Sheffield, THE HEATHEN SUBALTERN SPEAKS: TENTH-CENTURY POETRY IN THIRTEENTH-CENTURY NARRATIVES OF ICELAND’S CONVERSION TO CHRISTIANITY, pp. 76-93 Caitlin Scott, APPEALING TO THE MASSES: LITURGY, BELLS, AND EARLY MEDIEVAL CHURCH TOWERS, pp. 94-114 Rachel Fennell, TO BE AND NOT TO BE: SHAKESPEARE’S UNDEAD PRINCESSES, pp. 115-128 Alice Stamataki, INTERTEXTUALITY, NARRATIVE TRANSMISSIONS, AND ARTHURIAN ANALOGUES IN SUPERHERO COMIC BOOKS, pp. 129-150 MEMSA 2018, p. 151

The tale of Óðinn and Rindr is a complex one, but in its version found in the early thirteenth-century Gesta Danorum, we can see how Óðinn’s gender fluidity has become simplified into transvestism. From a being capable of changing gender, Óðinn now simply adopts the disguise of a woman. With this disguise, Óðinn rapes the woman Rindr in order fulfil a prophecy. Thomas Hill found that this version of events has a parallel in Scotland: the story of Prince Ewen and St Thaney. Ewen similarly uses transvestism to gain access to an otherwise unwilling woman in order to rape her. This article will compare the two narratives to each other and to the broader figure of the male transvestite as found in the medieval period. What similarities are there? And what brought the writers of these tales to utilise this narrative trope? This article will firstly argue that Óðinn’s gender identity is simplified in the Christianised version of the Óðinn and Rindr narrative found in the Gesta Danorum. Secondly, it will take into account issues surrounding Thaney’s believed virginity, which caused the writer of the mid–twelfth century Vita Kentegerni Imperfecta to adopt the Óðinn and Rindr narrative, male transvestite rapist included. Finally, it will note that these stories show far more about their writer’s perceptions of transvestism, rather than having any basis in reality.

A hitherto unpublished text of a negotiated settlement between Walter de Lacy, lord of Meath (d. 1241), and the canons of St Thomas's Abbey, Dublin, relating to the church of Ardmulchan in County Meath sheds new light both on the career of Theobald Walter I (d. 1205), ancestor of the Butler earls of Ormond, and on the dealings of John, son of King Henry II of England, with his Irish lordship during the period 1185–99 for which sources are scarce. It indicates that not only in Leinster, but also in Meath, John encroached on the seigneurial rights of Anglo-Norman landholders.

This paper explores how tales of difficult births found in medieval miracle narratives can contribute to our understanding of the experience of pregnancy and childbirth in twelfth-century England. While rare in the early collections, pregnant and parturient women are increasingly visible in the miracula from the later twelfth century. This paper seeks to explain why childbirth miracles began to appear more frequently and became more medical in character. The discussion centres on the two miracle collections belonging to St Thomas of Canterbury, written by Benedict of Peterborough and William of Canterbury in the 1170s. Explanations for the more frequent appearance of childbirth miracles are found, not in the changing relationship between humans and saintly intercessors, nor in the contemporary interest in the maternity of the Virgin Mary but in the specific context of the cult of St Thomas and the new emphasis given to lay testimony.

During the early and central middle ages St Cuthbert of Durham (d. 687) was arguably the most important local saint in northern England and southern Scotland. His cult encompassed a region approximately corresponding to the ancient kingdom of Northumbria. While Scottish devotion to the saint in that period has been well researched, the later medieval cult in Scotland has been surprisingly little studied. Following the outbreak of Anglo-Scottish warfare in 1296 a series of English monarchs, the Durham clergy and local political leaders identified Cuthbert with military victories over the Scots. Several historians have assumed that this association between Cuthbert and English arms led to the decline of his cult in Scotland. This article surveys the various manifestations of devotion to St Cuthbert in late medieval Scotland in order to reappraise the role of the saint and his cult north of the border in the later middle ages.

This paper argues that Aelred used 'English' in a very local context and the Relatio de Standardo should not be place in the same category as contemporary works by William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon that are cited as examples of an emerging Englishness after the Norman Conquest. Rather, ethnicity is a very weak force in the Relatio perhaps due to Aelred's own upbringing in the turbulent border region during the early twelfth century.

The Anglo-Scottish wars of the later middle ages cannot be adequately explained by a catalogue of battles and sieges. Both sides used legal, historical and spiritual arguments to give authority to their respective claims to independence (Scots) or sovereignty (English). Saints played a particularly key role in the Scottish articulation of independence. The official patron St Andrew provided a direct link to the papacy, whilst the careers of a wide range of other saints, from the ‘first bishop’ Palladius to Queen Margaret, were used to demonstrate the richness and longevity of the kingdom’s Christian past and of its independent ecclesiastical institutions. One individual who sat awkwardly in this narrative was Ninian of Whithorn, a saint whose shrine was located in Galloway, a region of traditionally weak royal authority close to the English border and whose bishops were suffragens of York until 1472. A winning blend of specific and general thaumaturgical and protective functions meant that in late medieval Scotland devotion to Ninian far surpassed that of traditional regional patron saints like Columba, Margaret and Kentigern. For many Scots in this period, particularly those who lived or travelled abroad, Ninian had evolved into a popular national patron in addition, or as an alternative, to the formal patron Andrew. This broad popularity led in the fifteenth-century to efforts by the Scottish governmental structures of national church and crown to appropriate the cult to their cause. However, by the late fourteenth century the fame of Ninian and his shrine at Whithorn had spread beyond Scotland and his cult was established in northern England, where in the late fifteenth century it found a high profile patron in the person of Richard III. The establishment of the cult in fifteenth-century England is particularly striking as cross-border saints are extremely rare in the jingoistic political atmosphere that followed the Anglo-Scottish wars of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. This article will explore the attempts by the Scottish authorities to claim Ninian, consider how and why the cult spread into England and examine the motivations behind Richard III’s remarkable patronage of the saint.

the chief academic focus has rested on three strands: the radical restructuring of the twelfth century, popular devotion in the immediate pre-Reformation period, and the dramatic events of the sixteenth-century Reformation. This does not mean that other aspects of medieval Church history have been neglected, for there has been much new research into its institutions, personnel, and properties. Access to papal records, published as the Calendars of Papal Letters and the Calendars of Scottish Supplications to Rome, has not only shed light on issues of papal provision to benefices, clerical celibacy, illegitimacy and education, and the continuing role and nature of lay patronage and benefaction of the secular and regular Church but has transformed scholarly understanding of the operation of the secular Church in Scotland, the organization and functioning of its governmental structures, and the exercise of canon law, and has given fresh insight into the influence which the clergy wielde...

Flemish settlements in twelfth-century Scotland (+ Appendix: Handlist of Flemings in Scotland in the twelfth and thirteenth century), Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire / Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis 74 (1996) 659-693 (675-693).

Upon his election to the see of Canterbury in 1162, one of Thomas Becket's first acts as archbishop was to seek a papal canonization for his predecessor Anselm from Alexander III. Responding to Becket's request, Alexander ordered Becket to convene a council of English prelates to decide the issue. Whatever this council determined, the pope would confirm. Shortly thereafter, however, Becket was forced to tend to more pressing concerns. The archbishop's relationship with King Henry II of England had quickly deteriorated, and he was forced to flee into exile. Contemporary accounts speak no more about Becket's council, and it has been presumed that it was never even called. Through an examination of the surviving twelfth-century copies of Anselm's hagiography, this paper will argue that Becket had indeed begun to take steps to call a council in accordance with the pope's command, behavior which not only sheds new light on Becket's relationship to Anselm, but also provides a case study for the political dimension of the developing process of papal canonization.

Introduction to the Medieval Vol. 1 by Samantha Zacher

Abstract: This article considers the cultural implications of the distinctive use of Old Testament personal names by Brittonic-speaking peoples (Welsh, Breton, and Cornish) in the centuries down to ca. 1100. An argument is made that the origin of the tradition is early, developing among the Britons in the Roman and sub-Roman periods. The case is made for the geographic dispersal of the practice, for the constructedness of British ecclesiastical identity, and the maintenance of the tradition among successive communities of the Brittonic-speaking peoples despite their other differences.

In recent Scottish historical research on issues of ecclesiastical renewal and reform, the chief academic focus has rested on three strands: the radical restructuring of the twelfth century, popular devotion in the immediate pre-Reformation period, and the dramatic events of the sixteenth-century Reformation. This does not mean that other aspects of medieval Church history have been neglected, for there has been much new research into its institutions, personnel, and properties. Access to papal records, published as the Calendars of Papal Letters and the Calendars of Scottish Supplications to Rome, has not only shed light on issues of papal provision to benefices, clerical celibacy, illegitimacy and education, and the continuing role and nature of lay patronage and benefaction of the secular and regular Church but has transformed scholarly understanding of the operation of the secular Church in Scotland, the organization and functioning of its governmental structures, and the exerci...

The connections between the medieval kingdom of Scots and Irish earldom of Ulster have remained elusive. One of the most intriguing points of contact occurred in 1205×10, when the first earl of Ulster, Hugh II de Lacy (d. 1242), granted churches within his Irish lordship to the cathedral priory of St Andrews. Exploring de Lacy’s links to the bishop of St Andrews, William Malveisin, and the constable of Scotland, Alan of Galloway, this article suggests that the gift to St Andrews was part of the earl’s bid to secure King William the Lion, as an ally in the North Channel region. The king of Scots is connected to de Lacy’s attempts to undermine King John of England, involving partners in France and northern England. It is further argued that the revelation of de Lacy’s patronage of St Andrews contributed directly to the Anglo-Scottish crisis of 1209 and the humiliating terms imposed on the Scots by the treaty of Norham in the same year. What is superficially an ordinary grant of ecclesiastical benefices is on closer inspection found to be charged with political meaning, leading ultimately to Hugh de Lacy’s expulsion from the earldom of Ulster by the army of King John.

"This article examines two developments in Scottish architecture hitherto considered unrelated: a late medieval Romanesque revival in ecclesiastical architecture and the arrival of Italian Renaissance motifs. The first part sets various Romanesque- looking architectural features in the wider political and cultural context of Scotland c. 1380-c. 1520 to show that, far from being retardataire, they reflect a mood of Scottish national self-awareness and confidence found also in veneration of native saints and the writing of history, which looked back to the Golden Age of the Canmore dynasty (1058-1286), to the beginnings of the Scottish church, and, ultimately, to the belief that the Scots were descended from the Greeks. I argue that this indigenous Romanesque revival prepared the ground in many important respects for the Renaissance. In the second part, I demonstrate that Italian influence was already apparent in the royal works of kingsJames III (1460-1488) and James IV (1488-1513), focusing especially on Linlithgow Palace."

König David von Schottland (1124-1153) war der Sohn Malcolms III (Malcolm Canmore) und der hl. Margarete von Schottland. Er wurde am englischen Hof erzogen, und nachdem bereits zwei seiner Brüder ihm auf dem schottischen Thron vorangingen, 1124, nach dem Tod Alexanders I., zum König erhoben. Obwohl er ab 1135 im Thronstreit mit König Stephan von Blois (1135-1154) formell die ehemalige Kaiserin Mathilde unterstützte, betrieb er eine sehr eigenständige Territorialpolitik mit dem Ziel ganz Nordengland bis zum Humber unter seine Kontrolle zu bringen. Um dieses Ziel zu erreichen brach er immer wieder Vereinbarungen mit dem englischen König und griff stets zuerst die englischen Positionen an. Dabei gingen die schottischen Truppen oft sehr grausam zu Werke. Den Reformorden war er sehr zugeneigt, insbesondere den Tironensern, Zisterziensern und Augustiner-Chorherren. Außerdem versuchte er stets die Unabhängigkeit der schottischen Kirche gegenüber dem Erzbistum York zu wahren. Er gilt als einer der fortschrittlichsten schottischen Könige, der nicht nur zahlreiche Burgen erbauen ließ und Städte gegründet hat, sondern auch eine eigene Münzprägung begann und die fortschrittliche Verwaltung des anglo-normannischen Hofes im Norden eingeführt hat.

In Walter Bower's Scotichronicon, Robert the Bruce speaks confidently about saintly help for the Scottish forces at the Battle of Bannockburn. Based on which saints are depicted elsewhere in the Scotichronicon as being helpful to Scots, which were favoured by Robert the Bruce personally, and which were popular among Scots more broadly, this paper makes an informed conjecture about how Saints Andrew, Thomas, Columba, Ninian, Margaret, Kentigern, and Fillan might have been among the saints that King Robert and his subjects were thinking about when they looked to the saints at the Battle of Bannockburn.