CROWLAND ABBEY AS ANGLO-SAXON SANCTUARY IN THE PSEUDO-INGULF CHRONICLE

Abstract

Crowland Abbey was one of many English monasteries after the Norman Conquest to forge documents that claimed a right to permanent sanctuary rooted in the Anglo-Saxon period. Yet Crowland's claims stand out because while other ecclesiastical chronicles that grounded their sanctuary claims in an earlier tradition did so in order to defend those rights in the twelfth century or later, Crowland never claimed this privilege for anything other than the abbey's Anglo-Saxon past. Indeed, I argue that the three forged “Anglo-Saxon” charters that make this assertion, which all appear in the Pseudo-Ingulf section of the abbey's chronicle, the Historia Croylandensis, do so in order to emphasize a more fundamental claim about the institution's authority — its association with one of the most significant fenland saints, Guthlac. Moreover, I argue that the most likely date when this material was forged is the late twelfth century. In the context of the narrative in which they appear, these charters reveal that later medieval Crowland constructed a narrative that saw permanent sanctuary as an important feature of the abbey's Anglo-Saxon past.