UHI Research Database pdf download summary Dying and Death in Later Anglo-Saxon England Thompson, Victoria Publication date: 2004 The Document Version you have downloaded here is: Peer reviewed version Link to author version on UHI Research Database Citation for published version (APA): Thompson, V. (2004). Dying and Death in Later Anglo-Saxon England. 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Oct. 2021 DYING AND DEATH IN LATER ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND VICTORIA THOMPSON TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND DEDICATION LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ABBREVIATIONS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE: ÆTHELFLÆD OF MERCIA CHAPTER TWO: DYING AND DEATH IN A COMPLICATED WORLD PART ONE: DYING AND DEATH IN CONTEXT PART TWO: VERCELLI HOMILY IX CHAPTER THREE: DYING WITH DECENCY CHAPTER FOUR: THE BODY UNDER SIEGE IN LIFE AND DEATH PART ONE: THE LIVING AND DYING BODY PART TWO: THE MAKING AND MEANING OF GRAVES CHAPTER FIVE: THE GRAVESTONE, THE GRAVE AND THE WYRM CHAPTER SIX: JUDGEMENT ON EARTH AND IN HEAVEN CONCLUSION BIBLIOGRAPHY ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND DEDICATION In writing this book I have incurred debts of many kinds, to friends and family as well as to those who have helped and guided me intellectually (and these categories are by no means mutually exclusive). I have been greatly assisted by the staff of the British Library and the faculty of the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York. I am more grateful than I can say for the emotional and intellectual support of Chris, Alison (and Matthew) Daniell, Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn, Katherine Lewis, Noel James, Joanna Huntington, Susie Holden, Lucy Hunter, Jessica Haydon and Sophie Holroyd. I am also indebted beyond measure to Helen Gittos, John Blair, Sarah Semple, Andrew Reynolds, Sam Turner, Howard Williams, Felicity Clark, Jane Hawkes, Kellie Meyer, Alice Cowen, Philip Shaw, Simon Trafford and Nick Orchard for their patience in hearing me out and their unstinting generosity with their own ideas. Aleks Pluskowski was equally generous in offering to illustrate the sculpture from Masham, Middleton and Newent. My deepest debts are to my father, my sisters and my brother, and above all my mother, to whom this book is dedicated. SHEILA MARY THOMPSON (NEE GUISE-MOORES) 18TH JUNE 1927 — 26TH MARCH 2002 Study to be like her LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Thanks are due to the British Library and Dr Aleks Pluskowski for permission to reproduce images in this book. 1. The Quinity, from Ælfwine’s Prayerbook (London, British Library, Cotton Titus D xxvii, fol. 75v) 2. The Newent Stone Book, Last Judgement 3. The gravestone from Cambridge Castle (1) 4. Noah’s raven pecking a human head (London, British Library, Cotton Claudius B iv, fol. 15r) 5. The ring-headed cross from Middleton (N. Yorks) 6. The cross-shaft from Masham (N. Yorks) 7. York Metropolitan School, York Minster 38 8. St Peter embodying intercessory prayer (London, British Library, Stowe 944, fols 6v-7r) ABBREVIATIONS ASPR The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, eds Krapp and Dobbie ASE Anglo-Saxon England Assmann B. Assmann (ed.), Angelsächsiche Homilien und Heiligenleben (reprinted Darmstadt, 1964) BAR British Archaeological Reports Bately, MS A J. Bately (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A Collaborative Edition, Volume 3: MS. A (Cambridge, 1986) Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales S. Lucy and A. Reynolds (eds), Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales, Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 18 (London, 2002) CASSS Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture CBA Council for British Archaeology CCSL Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina CH Comm M. Godden (ed.), Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: Introduction, Commentary and Glossary, EETS SS 18 (Oxford, 2000) CH I P. Clemoes (ed.) Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, the First Series, Text, EETS SS 17 (Oxford, 1997) CH II M. Godden (ed.) Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, the Second Series, Text, EETS SS 5 (Oxford, 1979) Cross Goes North M. Carver, (ed.) The Cross Goes North (Woodbridge, 2003) CSASE Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England Cubbin, MS D G. P. Cubbin (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Version. Volume 3, MS D (Cambridge, 1996) Cultures in Contact D. Hadley and J. D. Richards (eds), Cultures in Contact: Scandinavian Settlement in England in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Turnhout, 2000) Death in Towns S. Bassett, (ed.) Death in Towns: Urban Responses to the Dying and the Dead, 100-1100 (Leicester, 1992) EEMF Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile EETS Early English Texts Society EETS SS Early English Texts Society Supplementary Series EHD English Historical Documents EHR English Historical Review HBS Henry Bradshaw Society HE Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969) JBAA Journal of the British Archaeological Association JEGP Journal of English and Germanic Philology Ker N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957) LS I W. Skeat (ed.), Ælfric’s Lives of Saints Volume I, EETS 76 and 82 (reprinted in one volume, Woodbridge, 1999) LS II W. Skeat (ed.), Ælfric’s Lives of Saints Volume II, EETS 94 and 114 (reprinted in one volume, Oxford, 1966) Napier A. S. Napier (ed.), Wulfstan: Sammlung Der Ihm Zugeschreibenen Homilien Nebst Untersuchungen Über Ihre Echteit (Zurich, 1967) NM Neuphilologische Mitteilungen O’Keeffe, MS C K. O’Keeffe (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Volume 5: MS C (Cambridge, 2001) PL Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844-1864) Raunds A. Boddington, Raunds Furnells: The Anglo-Saxon Church and Churchyard, English Heritage Archaeological Report 7 (London, 1996) S P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: an Annotated List and Bibliography, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks 8 (London, 1968) Supp J. C. Pope (ed.), Homilies of Ælfric, A Supplementary Series, 2 vols. EETS 259 & 260 (Oxford, 1967 and 1968) Taylor, MS B S. Taylor (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Volume 4: MS B (Cambridge, 1983) TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Vikings and the Danelaw J. Graham-Campbell et al. (eds), Vikings and the Danelaw: Select Papers from the Proceedings of the Thirteenth Viking Congress (Oxford, 2001) Whitelock, Brett and Brooke D. Whitelock, M. Brett and C. N. L. Brooke (eds), Councils and Synods of Great Britain with Other Documents Relating to the English Church. Volume I. Part 1, 871-1066; Part 2, 1066-1204 (Oxford, 1981) WMGP William of Malmesbury, De Gestis Pontificum Anglorum, ed. N. Hamilton RS 52 (London, 1870) WMGR William of Malmesbury, De Gestis Regum Anglorum, 2 vols, ed. W. Stubbs, RS 90 (London, 1887 and 1889) All quotations of Anglo-Saxon poetry are taken from the relevant volume of Anglo- Saxon Poetic Records unless specified otherwise. INTRODUCTION In mid-June, 918, a woman’s corpse was carried a hundred kilometres across the West Midlands, from her death-bed in Tamworth to her grave in Gloucester.1 The body was that of Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians (c. 870-918), eldest child of Alfred the Great, but little more can be said with certainty about this funeral.2 We do not know exactly how old she was, how she died or what kind of medical treatment she may have had, whether her body went by ox-cart or barge, whether she was embalmed or shrouded, carried in a coffin or on a bier. Nor can we say who attended her body on its last journey, who presided at her funeral, how elaborate that funeral was, what kind of grave awaited her or what monument stood over it. We do not know how those who mourned expressed their emotions, or how they commemorated her. Nonetheless, Æthelflæd is a good case study with which to begin this book. There are other questions which can be answered about her encounters throughout life with the dying, dead and buried, and we can make many more informed guesses. Also, paradoxically, the very fact that so many areas of ignorance can be pinpointed in this particular case demonstrates how much can be known, more generally, about high-status funerals in the last two centuries of Anglo-Saxon England. An analysis of Æthelflæd’s experiences introduces many sources, questions and ideas, while never letting us forget how much has vanished and how, as Wormald puts it, ‘as Anglo- Saxonists, we cultivate the borders of prehistory’.3 1 S. a. 918 in Taylor, MS B; O’Keeffe, MS C; Cubbin, MS D. 2 F. T. Wainwright, ‘Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians’ in H. P. R. Finberg (ed.), Scandinavian England: Collected Papers by F. T. Wainwright (Chichester, 1975), pp. 305-24; R. Abels, Alfred the Great: War, Kingship and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England (London and New York, 1998), pp. 121-2 and 230; S. Keynes, ‘King Alfred and the Mercians’, in M. Blackburn and D. N. Dumville (eds), Kings, Currency and Alliances: History and Coinage of Southern England in the Ninth Century (Woodbridge, 1998), pp.