This volume continues the Society's commitment to historical and interdisciplinary research from the early and central Middle Ages, demonstrating its belief that the close interrogation of primary documents yield new insights or important revisions into our understanding of the past. Volume 33 of the Haskins Society Journal continues the Society's commitment to historical and interdisciplinary research from the early and central Middle Ages and demonstrates its belief that the close interrogation of primary documents yield new insights or important revisions into our understanding of the past. After an investigation of the role of Anglo-Saxon bishops in the provision of coastal defense, the subsequent articles explore different dimensions of the Anglo-Norman period: the place of sex at the royal court, the penitential sensibilities of Anglo-Norman prelates and their geographical expression, the complexity of using Anglo-Norman land surveys as evidence for the nature of and changes in peasant labor and obligations, and the office of sheriff and its place in the developing common law. The Denis Bethell Prize winning essay, through its close analysis of Denis Piramus' French translation of the Life of Edmund, king of England, explores the role of translated texts in the formation of Anglo-Norman elite identity. Essays on Queen Ingeborg of Denmark's conception and expression of her role as a Capetian queen. and on the use and meaning of direct and metaphorical references to art and artists in French sermons in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, round out the volume. Contributors: Yaoling Dai, Gabrielle Faundez-Rojas, P.D.A Harvey, Charles Insley, Tom Licence, Sara Lipton, Anne C. Schlender, Nigel Tringham.

In the central Middle Ages, English society lavished unprecedented attention on a category of would-be outcasts who repudiated its ambitions and spurned its aspirations. Hermits and recluses (collectively 'anchorites') had their own, very different vision of how life should be lived, and yet nobles retained them on their estates, parishioners did their bit to support their local recluses, and every tier of society from the peasantry up to royalty journeyed to rural hermitages for prayer, advice, and spiritual instruction. Anchorites were everywhere, dotted across the landscape, striving to restore humanity's broken image, in their own lives and in their clients. The respect that came of their endeavour grew from a heightened sense of the conflict between society's worldly concerns and its spiritual ideals, in the minds of their admirers. Tom Licence sets out to discover why anchorites rose to prominence, in the context of European monasticism and trends in spirituality. In the past, historians linked their rise to many different things: the impact of the Norman Conquest; a crisis of identity in the monasteries; the discovery of the individual; a reaction to the profit economy; and to a new need for 'holy men' (or holy women) to minister to a changing society. Investigating the avenues by which anchorites gained their reputation, and pinpointing their function in relation to society, this new inquiry puts these hypotheses to the test in a study of English society in the central Middle Ages.

Responses to the impact of the Norman Conquest examined through the wealth of evidence provided by the important abbey of Bury St Edmunds. Bury St Edmunds is noteworthy in so many ways: in preserving the cult and memory of the last East Anglian king, in the richness of its archives, and not least in its role as a mediator of medical texts and studies. All these aspects, and more, are amply illustrated in this collection, by specialists in their fields. The balance of the whole work, and the care taken to place the individual topics in context, has resulted in a satisfying whole, which placesAbbot Baldwin and his abbey squarely in the forefront of eleventh-century politics and society. Professor Ann Williams. The abbey of Bury St Edmunds, by 1100, was an international centre of learning, outstanding for its culting of St Edmund, England's patron saint, who was known through France and Italy as a miracle worker principally, but also as a survivor, who had resisted the Vikings and the invading king Swein and gained strength after 1066. Here we journey into the concerns of his community as it negotiated survival in the Anglo-Norman empire, examining, on the one hand, the roles of leading monks, such as the French physician-abbot Baldwin, and, on the other, the part played by ordinary women of the vill. The abbey of Bury provides an exceptionally rich archive, including annals, historical texts, wills, charters, and medical recipes. The chapters in this volume, written by leading experts, present differing perspectives on Bury's responses to conquest; reflecting the interests of the monks, they cover literature, music, medicine, palaeography, and the history of the region in its European context. DrTom Licence is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History and Director of the Centre of East Anglian Studies at the University of East Anglia. Contributors: Debbie Banham, David Bates, Eric Fernie, Sarah Foot, Michael Gullick,Tom Licence, Henry Parkes, Veronique Thouroude, Elizabeth van Houts, Thomas Waldman, Teresa Webber

An authoritative life of Edward the Confessor, the monarch whose death sparked the invasion of 1066 "In putting flesh back on Edward's bones Licence has brought a new succession story to popular attention."-Leanda de Lisle, The Times "This fine biography of Edward the Confessor is both entertaining and elegiac."-Nicholas Vincent, The Tablet One of the last kings of Anglo-Saxon England, Edward the Confessor regained the throne for the House of Wessex and is the only English monarch to have been canonized. Often cast as a reluctant ruler, easily manipulated by his in-laws, he has been blamed for causing the invasion of 1066-the last successful conquest of England by a foreign power. Tom Licence navigates the contemporary webs of political deceit to present a strikingly different Edward. He was a compassionate man and conscientious ruler, whose reign marked an interval of peace and prosperity between periods of strife. More than any monarch before, he exploited the mystique of royalty to capture the hearts of his subjects. This compelling biography provides a much-needed reassessment of Edward's reign-calling into doubt the legitimacy of his successors and rewriting the ending of Anglo-Saxon England.

St Edmund was medieval England's patron saint, and at his abbey, two major Latin miracle collections were compiled: one in the 1090s by Herman the Archdeacon, an historian trained in the schools of Lorraine; the other c. 1100 by an anonymous hagiographer who rewrote and expanded Herman's work. Herman's Miracles, an important text for the history of the realm and East Anglia in particular, is edited and translated here in its full fifty chapters for the first time, along with a shorter version intended for wider circulation. The second miracle collection, never before in print, is also presented for the first time and attributed to the Flemish hagiographer Goscelin of Saint-Bertin. Together the collections illustrate a rapid turnover of hagiography, connected to a change of leadership at the abbey of Bury St Edmunds. These works illustrate the evolution of historical writing, applied to the affairs of an exceptional international cult. The introduction revises the history of Bury St Edmunds from its foundations to c. 1100, rejecting old assumptions, adding to our knowledge of Herman's background, and proposing a context and attribution for the second collection which will alter the debate on Goscelin's career. A poem attacking Bishop Herbert Losinga (1091-1119) for simony is also included, edited from previously undiscovered textual witnesses, and linked to Herman and the factional divisions behind the two miracle collections. This volume makes the subject accessible to the full range of scholars interested in Edmund and Anglo-Norman England by providing editions and translations for the first time. Its arguments clear up much of the confusion surrounding the history of the cult and the abbey. It will remain invaluable to literary scholars and historians alike.

In the central Middle Ages, English society lavished unprecedented attention on a category of would-be outcasts who repudiated its ambitions and spurned its aspirations. Hermits and recluses (collectively 'anchorites') had their own, very different vision of how life should be lived, and yet nobles retained them on their estates, parishioners did their bit to support their local recluses, and every tier of society from the peasantry up to royalty journeyed to rural hermitages for prayer, advice, and spiritual instruction. Anchorites were everywhere, dotted across the landscape, striving to restore humanity's broken image, in their own lives and in their clients. The respect that came of their endeavour grew from a heightened sense of the conflict between society's worldly concerns and its spiritual ideals, in the minds of their admirers. Tom Licence sets out to discover why anchorites rose to prominence, in the context of European monasticism and trends in spirituality. In the past, historians linked their rise to many different things: the impact of the Norman Conquest; a crisis of identity in the monasteries; the discovery of the individual; a reaction to the profit economy; and to a new need for 'holy men' (or holy women) to minister to a changing society. Investigating the avenues by which anchorites gained their reputation, and pinpointing their function in relation to society, this new inquiry puts these hypotheses to the test in a study of English society in the central Middle Ages.