Aelred's Life of St. Edward

Royal Studies Journal, 2019

In medieval England, the life of St. Edward the Confessor functioned as ideological myth; Henry III used it to show that the Plantagenet dynasty had reconciled two ‘nations’ within England after the Norman Conquest. Edward’s post-Conquest hagiography generally supports a sacralized monarchy and its prerogatives. However, a lesser-known, anonymous version of Edward’s life exists in Middle English verse and resists royalist mythmaking from a more populist perspective. In the South English Legendary and in several Middle English chronicles, a counter-tradition of writing about Edward continues to sacralize the saint-king but simultaneously positions him as a symbol of resistance to Plantagenet rule. In this tradition, the rhetoric of sacral kingship works unexpectedly: rather than sanctifying the authority of the ruling house, it reminds readers of a previous, dead monarch, whose claim to sanctity (the fulfillment of Edward’s famous prophecy of the green tree) should act as a check on the abuse of power by the presently-reigning dynasty. From this point of view, resistance to the Crown can be seen, not as discouraged and limited by the idea of sacral monarchy, but instead as partly motivated by it.

Anglo-Norman Studies, 2016

This paper, delivered at the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings Battle Conference, at Battle in 2016, argues that Edward the Confessor made a consistent policy of attempting to procure an heir of the blood. When he failed to produce a son by Edith, he turned to the next in line, Edward the Exile; and when the Exile died, he adopted the Exile's son, Edgar Aetheling, and named him as his heir. This paper overturns the traditional argument that Edward nominated William or Harold or both.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. 1 Prince Edward The Legacy: Edward I Edward I was a hard act to follow. By 1295, he had subdued Wales. He promulgated what Michael Prestwich calls a "majestic set of statutes" that led to his being called the English Justinian. 1 Though his relationships with the nobility were sometimes stormy, there was no doubt who was in charge. The same would not be said about his son. Prestwich sums up Edward I's character well in The Three Edwards: "Edward I was not the kind of king who was greeted by cheering crowds . . . Edward was a king to inspire fear and respect." 2 The fear developed before the respect. As a young man in the 1250's, Edward had gained a reputation for cruelty; the chronicler Matthew Paris records an incident when Edward and his men attacked a youth, cut off his ear, and gouged out his eye. Though by the time Edward became king, such youthful incidents were well behind him, he still could be brutal. In 1306, he ordered that Mary, sister of the Scottish leader Robert Bruce, and the Countess of Buchan, who had crowned Bruce King of Scotland, be imprisoned in open cages, albeit with privies. Such a punishment is probably much more shocking to people of our time than it was to Edward's contemporaries; nonetheless, the conventional treatment of high-ranking female prisoners was to confine them honorably in castles or in nunneries. (Robert Bruce's queen was confined in this 1 Prestwich, Edward I, p. 267. 2 Prestwich, The Three Edwards, pp. 37-38. It should also be remembered that Edward I had left his boyhood far behind him when he became king at age thirty-two, and the times had presented him with many learning opportunities during his youth and young manhood. The reign of Edward's ineffective father, Henry III, was dogged by crises, most famously the rebellion of Simon de Montfort, whom Edward himself defeated at Evesham after the royal forces had been defeated at Lewes. Edward had the opportunity-and, more important, the ability-to learn from his father's mistakes as well as his own, and his father needed all of the help he could get from his more able son. By contrast, Edward II would spend his young manhood under his father's domination, very much in the shadows. He was not good at learning from mistakes, his or other people's, and when he made them, it was with the weight of the crown upon his head.

Cross and Cruciform in the Anglo-Saxon World: Studies to Honor the Memory of Timothy Reuter, edited by Sarah Larratt Keefer, Karen Louise Jolly, and Catherine E. Karkov, 2010

The life and writings of Aelred of Rievaulx (1110-67) provide some of the most important material for the study of Cistercian monasticism in 12th-century England, Cistercian teachings and beliefs, and the relationship of the order with other ecclesiastical and secular bodies. To date, the corpus of surviving works attributed to Aelred includes almost 200 sermons, 13 treatises and seven historical and hagiographical works. Among modern audiences, Aelred is regarded as one of the foremost thinkers of 12th-century England, at times on par with the great Bernard of Clairvaux, with whom Aelred is known to have had regular contact and with whom Aelred's biographer; a link which inspired Knowles' now famous description of Aelred as the 'Bernard of the North'.(1) Aelred provides the subject for the latest addition to the Brill Companions to the Christian Tradition series. This is a book which easily fulfils Brill's brief to produce 'full balanced accounts at an advanced level' and 'synthesis of debate and the state of scholarship', with particularly notable strengths in the latter.(2) This collection has been curated by Marsha Dutton who, as Professor Emerita at Ohio State University, Executive Editor of Cistercian Publications, editor of several of Aelred's works, and author of numerous studies on Aelred's life and themes within his writings, needs little introduction to Aelred specialists.(3) Dutton is author of two chapters, with the remaining eight authors drawn from the ranks of the established academic field of Aelred and Cistercian studies. This companion makes a worthy and timely addition to Brill's series, focusing on one of the most important thinkers in 12th-century English theology and spirituality, and drawing on a number of recent new editions of Aelred's works, many of which have been produced by Dutton. Dutton's introduction is carefully planned, introducing the reader to Aelred's life and works in just enough detail so as to provide sufficient coverage, but without too much content so as to confuse the novice. Dutton expertly outlines the case for Aelred as a subject for attention, describing his treatises on spiritualism as his 'greatest contribution to Western thought', and portraying Aelred as a 'significant contributor' to his three main fields of writing, noted here as spiritual thought; history-writing, and discourse on English conquests abroad, which is here termed 'paracolonialism' (p. 1). Dutton's summary of Aelredian scholarship reflects on the major trends in Aelred studies from Dumont and Squire to more recent developments, recognising debts owed to modern Cistercian scholars, before setting out the agenda for the rest of the volume.

Remembering the Present: Generative Uses of England’s Pre-Conquest Past, ed. Jay Gates and Brian O’Camb (Brill), 51-86, 2019