The following article explores some of the ways in which the leaders of a medieval ecclesiastical institution, in this case Bury St Edmund, could construct that institution’s own identity by textual production that was centred on the figure of their patron saint, Edmund Martyr. This textual production, and the formulation of Saint Edmund, underwent a continuous development from 1065 onwards, which can be most clearly seen in the composition of the liturgical office for Edmund’s feast day. By an examination of three examples taken from this office, I aim to demonstrate some of the ways in which the figure of Edmund was altered, how the narrative of his passion story was developed and what audiences these changes were aimed at. The purpose of the article is to emphasise the function of the office as a vehicle for the construction of institutional identity in the Middle Ages.
A medieval ecclesiastical institution, such as an abbey or a cathedral church, operated within a matrix of affiliations. Within this matrix there were other, and often competing, ecclesiastical institutions operating in the same region and there were worldly figures of power such as nobles or royalty. This matrix also included the wider Christian church, represented in Latin Europe by the papacy, as well as various monastic orders. It was within this matrix that the ecclesiastical institution in question constructed its institutional identity, which is to say how that institution understood, formulated and propagated its own place within the history of a kingdom, a local geography or a regional church on the one hand, and the history of Christendom and as a member of the universal Christian church on the other. The history of an institution operated on these two levels simultaneously, both the regional and the universal (
In the following article I wish to present three ways in which the institutional identity of Bury St Edmunds was constructed through the composition of the office for Saint Edmund’s feast. I have chosen to focus on texts from the office, because it is through the office that we often find the clearest formulation of how the cult centre understood its saint (
It must be emphasised, however, that these three examples only offer a brief glimpse of how the image of Saint Edmund was developed in the liturgical office, and how the office texts both adapted the narrative of Edmund’s
Before going on to the three examples from the office of Saint Edmund, I will provide a historical and textual background for the office itself, where I present the office as belonging in both a historical and a textual/literary continuum. I will then provide a presentation of the key terms that guide my analyses of the three excerpts from the office, before I move on to each of the three cases in question. As my focus is on texts of the office, I will not enter into discussion about the music, but throughout my analyses I will address how these changes need to be understood in their performative contexts, which is particularly relevant for the question of audiences.
The earliest testimony of a cult of Edmund Martyr is the legend on some coins, most likely minted in East Anglia at the end of the ninth century (
During his abbacy, Baldwin sought to strengthen the standing of the abbey both within the framework of the English kingdom as well as within Christendom at large. This was prompted by conflicts with Bishop Herfast of Thetford. During Archbishop Lanfranc’s post-conquest ecclesiastical reform, Herfast sought to move the episcopal seat to Bury, which would necessarily weaken the abbey’s own jurisdiction and institutional independence. In response to this conflict, Abbot Baldwin went to Rome in 1071 to appeal to the pope; during this journey he also exported the cult of Edmund to Lucca by distributing relics of the saint there (Herman, 2014: 80–81). Baldwin’s distribution of relics abroad is emblematic of the role the cult of Edmund played in the strengthening of Bury’s position as an institution independent from episcopal control.
In addition to his exportation of the cult of Edmund, Abbot Baldwin also sought to strengthen the prestige of Edmund and thus also Bury at home. At some point in the 1080s, Baldwin initiated an extensive refurbishment of the abbey church, and on 29 April 1095, which appears to have been Resurrection Sunday, Edmund’s relics were translated and the occasion was reportedly marked by miracles, including the healing of a knight’s wounded arm and a downpour of rain for the arid soil (Herman, 2014: 118–20). These events were recorded in
The importance of the textual aspect of the cult of Saint Edmund can also be seen in the manuscript production from the mid-eleventh century onwards. From the period c.1065–c.1130, five manuscripts containing material for Saint Edmund have survived, four of which contain
If we consider these manuscripts as a group, they exhibit a sustained interest in the cult of Edmund in the period 1065–1130. They furthermore show that not only was the
As mentioned in the introduction, the construction of institutional identity worked on two levels: a regional/local level, and a universal level. Moreover, this two-tiered identity construction consisted of emphasising an institution’s unique features as well as its connection to established Christian tradition, and it was in the negotiation of this balance that an abbey such as Bury St Edmunds could formulate its own place in Christian history. In short: a medieval religious institution needed to stand out from the rest of the church to which it belonged, but it also needed to demonstrate its connection to that church. Of particular interest to us here is the effort to connect Bury to the wider Christian world by emulation and adaptation of features whose origin outside of the abbey could give it some of the venerability of the institution, tradition and/or cult that was emulated. This approach appears to have been widespread throughout Latin Christendom and it could take many different forms. One example, that has nothing to do with Bury St Edmunds but which reached its institutional apogee at around the same time, is the imperial abbey of Farfa, Italy. In her study of Farfa and its monastic identity, Susan Boynton found that the monks fashioned some of its liturgy to evoke a connection to the liturgy of Cluny, and thus the abbey of Farfa increased its own aura of venerability, at least to its community of monks, by borrowing some of the venerability of Cluny (
While the primary methodological concerns at play in these strategies for identity construction are addressed in each of the case studies, there are two key aspects of the identity construction that need to be explained in more detail here. The first is how liturgical material which was shared by all Christian churches was adapted into and thus appropriated by the cult of one particular saint, a process whose importance will be explained shortly. The second aspect is the role of the audience, who they were and how they contributed to identity construction.
The monastic liturgy, and in particular the office, provided a very useful vehicle for establishing connections to other institutions, saints or repertoires of text, and for this end the liturgy could be utilised in different ways (
By such liturgical appropriations as I will address here, bonds were established between the original context of the old text and the cult of the new or younger saint, thus connecting the cult of that saint to the universal Christian church. This relied on the idea that saints were part of a collegium and would come to each other’s assistance in petitioning the community’s case before the throne of God. In other words, a saint was the ambassador of a community, and if that saint were closely affiliated with another — usually a more senior — saint, then the community could rely on the petitions of both. The efficaciousness of a saint was measured by its
These liturgical appropriations were of both regional and universal significance. The regional significance lay in how the monks at Bury St Edmunds would perform both the chants of the original repertoire and also the new repertoire of Edmund containing connections to the original one. Through the yearly rhythm of performing the liturgy of the church calendars, the original liturgy and the appropriation of it would be instilled into the memory of the monks through performance, and they would learn how their own patron was connected to older, more venerable and more merited colleagues. This served to teach the monks at Bury about the potential of their own patron, on whom the entire history and the identity of the abbey was centred. For this reason, the connections to older saints and older textual repertoires provided the community at Bury with a better sense of how their own institution was positioned within the wider matrix of the universal church.
These liturgical appropriations were also of universal significance since these connections to a shared textual repertoire could be caught and understood by visiting representatives from other ecclesiastical institutions, and these connections would be part and parcel of the liturgy when it was exported to other institutions either regionally within England or universally throughout Christendom. In this way, members of the wider Christian church would be informed of Bury’s position within the matrix of the Christian church, just as the monks of Bury had been instructed about that position. Whether these connections were accepted by members of other ecclesiastical institutions, however, is impossible to say. On the whole, it is reasonable to suspect that not all aspects of an institution’s self-constructed identity were accepted outside that institution. However, whether or not such an institutional identity was successfully exported beyond the institution itself, we should expect that an institution of the size of Bury would be alert to how exporting one’s identity could increase the institution’s prestige abroad. And as I hope to demonstrate, there seems to be evidence to support the claim that Abbot Baldwin did seek to enhance Bury’s prestige both at home and abroad.
It is important to mention that such connections with other institutions and saints could also be shaped through adaptation of the music for the office. One example of this practice has been explored by Roman Hankeln in the liturgy of Saint Olaf in twelfth-century Norway. Here, the newly-established archbishopric, with its metropolis in Trondheim, recycled melodies from offices of saints important to the Augustinian order and especially the abbey of Saint Victor in Paris (Hankeln, 2012: 138ff). It is entirely possible that the music of the office of Saint Edmund might also evince connections to other saints and repertoires, but this requires a study of its own and is not part of my present work. To date, the most comprehensive investigations of the music of the office for Saint Edmund have been carried out by Lisa Colton (
When addressing how the formulation of the saint changed due to measures taken by the authorities at Bury, it is important to keep in mind the question of the audience. For whom were these changes made, and for what purpose did the monks and clerics undertake these adaptations? In order to answer these questions, I will here distinguish between the intended audience and the actual audience. The intended audience would in the case of the liturgical office be a three-part audience, as a liturgical office was — to quote Hankeln — a trialogue.
The actual audience, however, would encompass a wider range of people, as on the feast day of the community’s patron saint there would be a throng of lay people of all walks of life and both sexes gathered at the shrine to pray for the saint’s intercession and God’s performance of miracles. Sometimes the laity could be physically separated by a rood screen from the choir where the office was performed (
In order to understand the effect of the liturgical appropriation, we must look at the intended audience. The appropriation of material, and connecting a saint to other saints and other institutions, were both part of the institutional identity that was constructed by the leaders of that institution, and which was constructed for the institution’s community, i.e. its intended audience of the liturgical celebration. This identity was meant to be sustained
As stated, the present article is in no way an exhaustive outline of the various strategies by which Bury St Edmunds sought to construct its institutional identity through liturgy. The three examples I focus on here are drawn from two manuscripts, one (København GKS 1588) from Baldwin’s abbacy and one from the early twelfth century (
The first example is drawn from the fifth lesson of Matins in the office for Saint Edmund as contained in
The fifth lesson begins after Edmund has responded to the messenger sent by the Danish chieftain Hingwar and refused to comply with Hingwar’s demands (as has been described in the fourth lesson). In
Passio Eadmundi | Office for Saint Edmund, lesson 5 |
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Uix sanctus uir uerba compleuerat et renuntiaturus miles pedem domo extulerat cum ecce Hinguar obuius iubet breuiloquio ut utatur, illi pandens per omnia archana regis ultima | |
Barely had the holy king finished announcing these words and the soldier exited the house on foot when lo Hingwar stood nearby, and ordered [him] to use a concise speech when spreading out to all the king’s last missive | The holy man and king had barely finished announcing these words and the soldier exited the house on foot when lo Hingwar, the iniquitous judge, stood nearby, and ordered [him] to use a concise speech when spreading out to all the king’s last missive. |
The most important change is arguably found in the opening of the fifth lesson, where the first word is changed from
The second consequence, however, is much more tangible and should probably be understood as the main reason why this text was altered. By opening the lesson with
Psalm 1:1–2 (The Clementine Vulgata) | Psalm 1:1–2 (Douay-Rheims) |
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Beatus vir qui non abiit in consilio impiorum, et in via peccatorum non stetit, et in cathedra pestilentiae non sedit; sed in lege Domini voluntas ejus, et in lege ejus meditabitur die ac nocte. | Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the chair of pestilence. But his will is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he shall meditate day and night. |
In early Christian interpretation, this psalm provides the characteristics of Christ as man and divinity, as explained by Cassiodorus (
While the first example connected Edmund with the yardstick of Christian living, Christ, the second example demonstrates how Edmund was linked to a specific saint, John the Baptist. As hinted above, it was typical for saint-biographers and liturgists to connect a saint with an older colleague in sanctity. Such links could be forged out of a similarity of type, emphasising that the older and the younger saint were both martyrs, for instance. In some cases, there could also be further similarities that allowed for a stronger connection than one of merely belonging to the same type. In the office for Saint Edmund, we see the establishment of such a connection in the seventh antiphon. The words which are the same in both chants have been put in bold, while the words that are different but fulfil the same purpose are underlined (my translations).
Matins antiphon 7, Saint Edmund[CID: 203146] | Antiphon for the beheading of John the Baptist [CID: 003790] |
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The tyrant decreed that the executioners be sent, and the athlete of God, Edmund, when his head was cut off, thus resounded with hymns for God and brought the soul rejoicing to Heaven | Herodes ordered the executioner to be sent to cut off the head of John in prison, which when his disciples heard they came and buried it in a tomb. (Mark 6: 27; 29) |
Although there are only three words that are common to both chants, there are three other words that serve the same purpose and carry the same message. These six words, marked above, are also key elements in the respective narratives. Moreover, it is important to note that in the antiphon for Edmund, the chieftain Hingwar is not mentioned by name but instead referred to as
The desire on the part of the authorities at Bury to connect Edmund with John the Baptist is suggested by the strong lexical overlap between the two chants, and it is clear that the chant for the
This connection between Edmund and John the Baptist, formulated through liturgical borrowings, also must be understood in terms of institutional identity. The appropriation of a chant that is very likely to have been performed at Bury, would allow the members of Saint Edmund’s community to grasp the link — forged by the recycling of the chant for John the Baptist — between the two saints, since the monks themselves sung these chants every year. This would in turn instil into the minds of the monks at Bury that their patron could rely on John the Baptist if need be, and because of this Edmund’s patronage was stronger. In this way, Edmund was formulated so that his community — and the communities to which the liturgy was exported — would have an increased respect and veneration for Saint Edmund and, concomitantly, for the abbey of Bury St Edmunds which was his house and place of patronage. This link would thus have both regional and universal relevance.
The chant
The episode in question occurred on the vigil of the nativity of John the Baptist (24 June). Goscelin tells how a crippled woman crawled to the altar of Saint Edmund, and Edmund brought about her healing because he wished to grant (or bestow) her,
As part of Abbot Baldwin’s effort to construct an institutional identity for Bury St Edmunds, it appears that he and those in his closest circle sought to promote the idea of Edmund as a saint for all of England, not just East Anglia. Such a promotion would — as in the cases of both previous examples — have regional as well as universal significance. On the regional level, the image of Edmund as a saint of all England would strengthen the community of monks at Bury in their self-understanding vis-à-vis other ecclesiastical institutions in England, perhaps most importantly the bishop of Norwich. On the universal level, such an image would establish Bury as the home of England’s most important representative in the Christian church. While there were many saints in England and while the idea of national saints had not yet been formulated, some saints were more important to a region than others.
Tom Licence has argued it was only in the 1090s — i.e. after the composition of the office for Edmund — that saint-biographers active in post-conquest England began to formulate their saints as ‘patrons of regions, even entire peoples’ (2014: 116). He does, however, allow for the possibility that the idea of Edmund as a saint of region-wide importance had been in place in East Anglia for a much longer period, but he nonetheless argues that ‘the notion [of Edmund’s regional patronage] seems not to have occurred to other hagiographers […] until Herman gave it expression’ (Licence, 2014: 116). Licence is here referring to Herman’s
However, I argue that from liturgical evidence we can see hints that the authorities at Bury sought to promote the view of Edmund as a representative of all of England, reformulating him as a patron not only of their own abbey but of all of England. As mentioned, this would have significance for the Bury community as well as the wider church, and this reformulation should thus be understood as part of Abbot Baldwin’s efforts to disseminate the cult of Edmund — and thus the standing of Bury — on the continent. Possibly the earliest evidence of such a reformulation is the Magnificat antiphon from the office of Edmund’s feast day from København GKS 1588 (f.28r). This chant exhorts the church of the ‘entire English people’,
Exulta sancta ecclesia totius gentis anglice ecce in manibus est laudatio eadmundi regis inclyti et martyris inuictissimi qui triumphato mundi principe celos ascendit uictoriosissime sancta pater eadmundo tuis supplicibus intende | Rejoice, holy church of the entire English people, behold in [whose] hands is Edmund praised, the illustrious king and invincible martyr, who triumphing over the prince of the world ascended victoriously in heaven. Holy father Edmund hold out your prayers |
Edmund’s textual iconography in the Magnificat antiphon is an interesting combination of typical and novel features. The typical features are the descriptions of Edmund’s kingship and martyrdom which have been part of the textual tradition about Edmund since Abbo’s
Moreover, there is a second feature connected to Edmund’s patronage that is contained in the antiphon, namely his role as a father. The formulation of Edmund as a paternal figure only appears once in
Edmund’s role as a father is not surprising, as this is a title commonly bestowed on male saints. However, that his role as a father is presented as something that is accessible to the church of the entire English people is significant. Such a presentation of the saint elevates him from a saint of local relevance to a saint relevant to an entire people. It is important, however, to note that this does not necessarily mean that we can see the monks at Bury at this point propagating the idea of Edmund as a patron saint of England. Being important to the entire English church does not equate to patronage of that church.
However, the claim that Edmund, as a representative of all of England, was important to the community at Bury in the eleventh century is also supported by one of the hymns in Cotton Vespasian D.xii. As mentioned, Parkes (
The hymn in question is
The hymn and the Magnificant antiphon comprise what is probably the earliest step towards the idea of Edmund as a patron saint for all of England. A more fully-fledged version of this idea can be found in the antiphons for the Vesper of Edmund’s feast day, which were composed by Abbot Warner of Rebais during his visit to Bury in 1087. In his
From Herman’s account we know that Warner composed the four antiphons at Bury. Rodney Thomson has identified these to be the four Vespers antiphons found in
That Edmund’s patronage extended to include all of England is already suggested by the Magnificat antiphon and the hymn — if the hymn was performed at Bury, which is highly plausible. Moreover, it is likely that it was from these two chants that Warner was inspired to speak of Edmund in such elevated terms.
Baldwin’s effort is shown not only through his deployment of relics at Lucca, or the relics given to Warner of Rebais, but also through exportation of the liturgy itself. The manuscript København GKS 1588 (the oldest surviving text-witness to the liturgical office), was at some point in time donated to the Abbey of Saint-Denis. We do not know when the manuscript arrived at Saint-Denis, but it was there by the thirteenth century.
The textual material from Abbot Baldwin’s abbacy and subsequent decades demonstrates that the formulation of Edmund’s patronage was in flux. The strongest of these formulations that have survived to this day do not appear to come from Bury but from the visiting abbots Warner and Lambert. This appears at first sight to mean that it was in France rather than in England that Edmund was understood as a saint whose patronage extended across all of England. However, the aforementioned chants of the office of København GKS 1588 demonstrate that it was at Bury that the reformulation of Edmund’s image was taking place, and it was from Bury that the seed to the idea of Edmund as a patron available to the entire English church was once disseminated. Through the incorporation of Abbot Warner’s antiphons and through the quotation from Abbot Lambert, together with the general surge in textual production centred on Saint Edmund, Abbot Baldwin and his circle constructed an image of their patron that was exported into the universal church. In this way, Baldwin sought to establish Bury’s institutional identity on a universal level by making Edmund a representative of the entire English church and as such England’s representative in the eyes of ecclesiastics from the continent. This is not to say that Baldwin presented Edmund as a national saint, because the very notion of national saints was somewhat anachronistic by this time. What we can see, however, is that Baldwin exported his patron’s cult abroad and oversaw formulations as in the Magnificat antiphon (we do not know whether the hymn was exported also), whereby Edmund appeared to be venerated throughout England and not only in East Anglia. It is unlikely, however, that other English churches in Baldwin’s time would agree with such an assessment, but it was this appearance that Baldwin propagated abroad to establish Bury St Edmund’s identity on a universal level and in the eyes of an audience beyond Bury St Edmunds, and it seems to have worked.
From the late 1060s and for several decades after, Abbot Baldwin and his immediate successors were actively engaged in strengthening the position of Bury St Edmunds both within the region of East Anglia, within the kingdom of post-conquest England and within Latin Christendom as a whole. The purpose of these efforts was to ensure Bury’s liberty from episcopal control, to sustain the good standing with the English kings that Bury had enjoyed from before the conquest and to perpetuate Bury’s role as a site of pilgrimage whose patron saint could efficiently bring about God’s cures. In order to meet these goals, Baldwin and his successors oversaw increased production of manuscripts containing Edmund’s
The abbots aimed to construct an institutional identity for Bury St Edmunds through these efforts: 1) the figure of Saint Edmund and the house of his relics were established in relation to regional and universal entities of worldly and ecclesiastical power; 2) the figure of Saint Edmund was iconographically and typologically connected to other saints, partly through liturgical appropriation; and 3) the institution of Bury formulated its own history both at the regional and the universal level. This institutional identity was also presented to various audiences. The most immediate audience consisted of the Bury monks themselves, and through the chants and lessons of liturgical office — as well as readings from
In addition to the monks at Bury, the exportation of Edmund’s cult also created an audience of monks and high-ranking ecclesiastics on the continent. By presenting these members of the Christian church with a unified version of Bury, its history and its patron saint, the abbots at Bury ensured that Bury became known within the matrix of Christian history and that Bury garnered a reputation abroad. The importance of spreading Bury’s identity is easy to understand when we consider that conflicts with episcopal authorities brought Baldwin to petition to the pope in order to secure Bury’s independence. By exporting the cult of Edmund — and thus also some knowledge of Bury’s institutional identity — Baldwin informed ecclesiastical leaders about Bury’s existence and its position within England. Judging from the antiphons by Warner of Rebais and the quotation from Lambert, it appears that Bury’s position within England had been presented in a more favourable light than other English ecclesiastics might have agreed with. Even so, the result was that Bury became known outside of England, and this was done both to ensure support from ecclesiastics able to influence the papacy in conflict resolutions and to attract ecclesiastics and pilgrims to come to Bury St Edmunds.
The way that Bury’s institutional identity was constructed, and the way in which these audiences were taught about Bury, was through the reformulation of Edmund as a patron saint. Through the examples I have provided above, we can see that the way Edmund was formulated in texts at Bury was not static but subject to continuous development. In the first example, this was done through a manipulation of the narrative of Abbo’s
These changes that were made to the figure of Saint Edmund and to the institutional identity of Bury St Edmunds were made possible by the format of the liturgical office, where the straightforward narrative of
Several studies that have investigated identity and history construction at medieval ecclesiastical institutions have demonstrated that in its construction of identity a medieval institution had to position itself on two levels of history. For studies focussing on one single institution, see Remensnyder (
For the importance of charters, see Foot (
For the provenance of Cotton Tiberius B.ii, see Pinner (
The dating of the first office for Saint Edmund remains contested. Andrew Hughes’ dating from 1993 has been challenged by Henry Parkes who suggests that the office was composed in the period 1020–1060 (
For an overview of the manuscript’s content, see
Cotton MS Vespasian D XII ff.118r–f.119r. The hymns in question are
I am indebted to Professor Roman Hankeln for discussing this term with me.
The plural of the executioners in the chant of Saint Edmund is noted in the CANTUS database (and it fits with the narrative of the
I am grateful to Professor Åslaug Ommundsen and Professor Nils Holger Petersen for pointing out the reliance of this antiphon on Mark 6.
For examples, see CID a01551 and CID 008389b, the hymn and the hymn verse respectively for the feast of the Innocents, and also CID a00589, a responsory verse. Moreover, the brutal tyranny of Herodes,
The anniversary of a saint’s death is usually called
The term
The hymn has been printed in
København MS GKS 1588, f.7v. For the biblical ideal of the ruler as a protector of widows and orphans, see for instance Psalm 67: 5–6 (in
As one of my reviewers pointed out to me, this paternal iconography is also interesting in light of the etymological connection between ‘
The translation of these lines is my own, but the hymn as a whole — together with the other two — has been translated by Inge B. Milfull based on the Durham Hymnal (
This antiphon appears to have been famous and popular throughout the following centuries, both at Bury and elsewhere in East Anglia. For examples of its reception after the eleventh century, see Colton (
For
In his recent monograph,
See
I am profoundly grateful and indebted to Dr. Pilar Herráiz Oliva for helping me with the coherence of the text and the solidity of the arguments, to Dr. Danette Brink and Professor Nils Holger Petersen for helping me in my understanding of the terminology, to Professor Roman Hankeln for discussing the material with me and to Lizzie Hensman at Lambeth Palace Library for helping me with the details of the
This article was written with financial support from the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF102ID).
Steffen Hope earned his MA in history at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim in the period 2010–12 with the thesis