Anglo-Saxon Saints' Lives as History Writing in Late Medieval... - 9781843844020

Anglo-Saxon Saints' Lives as History Writing in Late Medieval EnglandAuthor(s): Cynthia Turner Camp\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd, United Kingdom\nImprint: D.S. Brewer\nISBN-13: 9781843844020, 978-1843844020\nSynopsis\nA groundbreaking assessment of the use medieval English history-writers made of saints' lives.\n\nThe past was ever present in later medieval England, as secular and religious institutions worked to recover (or create) originary narratives that could guarantee, they hoped, their political and spiritual legitimacy. Anglo-SaxonEngland, in particular, was imagined as a spiritual \""golden age\"" and a rich source of precedent, for kings and for the monasteries that housed early English saints' remains.\n This book examines the vernacular hagiography produced in a monastic context, demonstrating how writers, illuminators, and policy-makers used English saints (including St Edmund) to re-envision the bonds between ancient spiritual purity and contem.