Bishop Æthelwold, His Followers, and Saints’ Cults in Early Medieval England: Power, Belief, and Religious Reform by Alison Hudson (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Bishop Æthelwold, His Followers, and Saints’ Cults in Early Medieval England: Power, Belief, and Religious Reform by Alison Hudson Benjamin Bertrand Alison Hudson, Bishop Æthelwold, His Followers, and Saints’ Cults in Early Medieval England: Power, Belief, and Religious Reform (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2022), xvi + 293 pp., 10 ills. Alison Hudson’s first monograph, the latest volume in the Anglo-Saxon Studies series, is an ambitious work that aims to recontextualize the reforms of Bishop Æthelwold and his followers through a hagiographical lens. A specialist in early medieval England, Hudson has served as a Project Coordinator for Early Medieval English Manuscripts at the British Library and published extensively on this period. Her new book marshals her impressive command of the manuscript sources to reconsider how Æthelwold and his followers used the worship of saints to influence the laity and shore up their political and economic base. Hudson focuses on the bishop’s “circle,” whom she describes as “the men and women who staffed and/or were trained at the houses Æthelwold refounded … because they were conscious of their links to each other, identifying themselves as ‘alumni Æthelwoldi’” (3). Pushing back against scholars such as Eric John who argued that this group’s reforms were made possible only through royal backing, she argues that “they also … interacted and engaged with groups outside their monasteries, and thereby sought to gain others’ support” (225). Hudson analyzes how this circle carefully encouraged the veneration of certain saints to achieve their political and religious goals as part of their reform program. Using the introduction and first chapter to lay out the terms of her analysis and establish her historiographical intervention, Hudson suggests that Æthelwold and his circle’s choice of saints had more to do with constituencies outside the monastery than with monastic worship. She identifies three contexts for saintly veneration, which she describes as “‘individual,’ ‘intra-communal,’ and ‘supra-communal’” (18). Although the majority of the book focuses on the third category, Hudson does not discount the importance of the worship of saints by individual monks and monastic communities. Her first chapter considers veneration of saints in individual prayers and monastic life by considering their role in education and in daily readings, relying upon sources such as Æthelwold’s Regularis concordia. Hudson pushes back against previous scholarship that argued that the the circle focused primarily on the worship of local saints and especially those mentioned by the Venerable Bede. She argues instead that in individual and monastic spaces, the monks generally favored the same continental saints being worshipped in the Carolingian world. Accordingly, she notes that their use of local saints was instead an attempt to reach external audiences through “supra-communal” veneration. Hudson explains that this form of worship allowed reformers to reach the laity through activities such as “liturgical celebrations … translation ceremonies, pilgrimage to shrines, and miraculous healings” (18). Using a wide range of written sources and archaeological evidence, she suggests that this furthered their reforming goals and secured their economic and financial security. The second and third chapters consider how the circle’s choice of local saints served practical purposes. Building upon the work of David Rollason, Stephen White, and Barbara Rosenwein, Hudson examines their charters to consider how [End Page 235] they used saints to attract and preserve gifts, relying upon the saints’ role as “un-dying landlords” during periods of crisis. Assessing Abingdon alongside other houses, she is quick to acknowledge that the leaders of communities associated with Æthelwold’s reforms varied their use of saints to suit the property disputes of each house. Hudson ties this to their larger reforming goal to establish monastic independence from lay influence. She further argues that supra-communal veneration of certain saints helped reformers to minimize the influence of unre-formed clerics. Although Æthelwold and his followers expelled clerics who did not follow the Rule of Benedict from their communities, many remained powerful and well-connected influences on early medieval English society. Hudson argues that the circle encouraged the veneration of local saints and the creation of hagiography and miracle collections in order to assert authority over these clerics. They did so by capitalizing on preexisting local cults, such as St. Swithun...