This is the first study of the Anglo-Welsh border region in the period before the Norman arrival in England, from the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Its conclusions significantly alter our current ...picture of Anglo/Welsh relations before the Norman Conquest by overturning the longstanding critical belief that relations between these two peoples during this period were predominately contentious. Writing the Welsh borderlands in Anglo-Saxon England demonstrates that the region which would later become the March of Wales was not a military frontier in Anglo-Saxon England, but a distinctively mixed Anglo-Welsh cultural zone which was depicted as a singular place in contemporary Welsh and Anglo-Saxon texts. This study reveals that the region of the Welsh borderlands was much more culturally coherent, and the impact of the Norman Conquest on it much greater, than has been previously realised.
This introduction to the special issue considers the central themes raised by the volume’s contributions as a whole, focusing on their collective interest in the political and cultural — as opposed ...to geographical — fluidity of borderland zones in early medieval Britain. To highlight these important points, two case studies from the Anglo-Welsh border region are discussed: the Old English legal text known as the Dunsæte Agreement or Ordinance concerning the Dunsæte and the tradition preserved within some Welsh law texts that legal reforms were enacted by the Welsh ruler Bleddyn ap Cynfyn (king of Gwynedd from 1064 to 1073), both of which underscore the fluidity of frontiers on a political level.
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.
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.
While the Old English poem Wulf and Eadwacer has a reputation as hopelessly enigmatic, it has a clear, albeit self-contained, narrative. A critically-accepted understanding of this work follows Kemp ...Malone's 1962 conclusion that 'this poem is based on a tale familiar to the poet's audience but unknown to us'. This article argues that such a familiar tale exists in the only extant copy of the Vita of the littleknown Anglo-Saxon saint, Bertellin of Stafford, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in the Nova Legenda Anglie (1516). I argue that Wulf and Eadwacer and the Vita Bertellini share significant narrative parallels and demonstrate that the latter text can be confidently dated to the twelfth century. Bertellin's cult and church date to the Anglo-Saxon period; his singular legend is preserved in at least one iconographie representation from c. 1100, meaning that the core of this narrative is far older than its 1516 printing; and information in John Bale's catalogue suggests that he examined a twelfth-century manuscript of this text. I conclude that the Vita Bertellini preserves authentic Anglo-Saxon material and that it and Wulf and Eadwacer are two reflections of the same local legend from Anglo-Saxon England.
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