¹ This paper was first read to the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists' conference held in Cambridge in 1985. I am grateful to the society for the opportunity of presenting my work and of benefiting from the ensuing criticisms and suggestions. My chief debts have been to Förster, Max, Zur Geschichte des Reliquienkultus in Altengland (Munich, 1943)Google Scholar; Fichtenau, Heinrich, ‘Zum Reliquienwesen in früheren Mittelalter’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Osterreichische Geschichtsforschung 60 (1952), 60–89Google Scholar; and Thomas, Islwyn Geoffrey, ‘The Cult of Saints' Relics in Medieval England’ (unpubl. Ph.D. dissertation, London Univ., 1974).Google Scholar To the last of these I owe a continuing debt for permission to use his immensely valuable thesis. I should also like to thank George Garnett and Dr Alan Thacker for their helpful comments on the draft of this article.

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⁸ Förster, , Reliquienkultus, pp. 65–7Google Scholar, and, for discussion, pp. 35–40. See also Thomas, ‘Cult of Saints' Relics’, pp. 94–103, where all the surviving Exeter relic-lists are discussed.

⁹ Förster, , Reliquienkultus, pp.; 57–9Google Scholar, and Rose-Troup, Frances, ‘The Ancient Monastery of St Mary and St Peter at Exeter (680–1050)’, Trans, of the Devonshire Assoc. for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art 63 (1931), 179–220, at 213–15.Google Scholar

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¹¹ Willelmi Malmesbiriensis Monachi, De Gestis Kegum Anglorum, Libri Quinque, ed. Stubbs, William, RS (1887–1889) 1, 149–51.Google Scholar On this passage see Loomis, Laura Hibbard, ‘The Holy Relics of Charlemagne and King Athelstan: the Lances of Longinus and St Mauricius’, Speculum 25 (1950), 437–56, and Michael Lapidge, ‘Some Latin Poems as Evidence for the Reign of Athelstan’, ASE 9 (1981), 61–98, at 62–71.Google Scholar Although Lapidge has convincingly disproved the theory that William based his account on a now lost tenth-century poem, Loomis's other arguments for the veracity of that account remain strong and it would be rash to reject it as merely a twelfth-century invention. See also Wood, Michael, ‘The Making of King Athelstan's Empire’, Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies Presented to J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, ed. Wormald, Patrick with Bullough, Donald and Collins, Roger (Oxford, 1983), pp. 250–72, at 265–6Google Scholar, and Keynes, ‘Athelstan's Books’, pp. 144–5, n. 15.

¹² Frolow, A., La relique de la Vraie Croix, Archives d'Orient Chrétien 7 (Paris, 1961), 86Google Scholar, and Widukindi Kerum Gestarum Saxonicarum Libri Tres, ed. Waitz, G., Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum in Usum Scholarum ex Monumentis Germaniae Historicis Recusi, 3rd ed. (Hanover, 1882), p. 26.Google Scholar

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¹⁴ De Gestis Pontificum, ed. Hamilton, pp. 399–400, on which see Robinson, , Times of Dunstan, pp. 73–5Google Scholar, and Lot, Ferdinand, ‘Date de l'exode des corps saints hors de Bretagne’, Annales de Bretagne 15 (1899–1900), 60–76Google Scholar, esp. 64.

¹⁵ ibid. Lot's belief that the relics were never actually sent (p. 64, n. 2) seems to have been groundless.

¹⁶ Stenton, , Anglo-Saxon England, p. 348.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Förster, , Reliquienkultus, p. 61Google Scholar; Robinson, , Times of Dunstan, pp. 73–4Google Scholar; Liebermann, Felix, Die Heiligen Englands (Hanover, 1889), pp. 19–20Google Scholar; and De Gestis Pontificum, ed. Hamilton, pp. 186 and 398–400.

¹⁸ ibid. p. 400: ‘Et modo reliquias, quas omni terrena substantia vobis scimus esse cariores, transmitto vobis.’

¹⁹ Thacker, A. T., ‘Chester and Gloucester: Early Ecclesiastical Organization in Two Mercian Burhs’, NH 18 (1982), 199–211, at 203–4 and 209–11.Google Scholar

²⁰ De Gestis Pontificum, ed. Hamilton, p. 198. Although in De Gestis Regum, ed. Stubbs 1, 56 and 60, William regarded the translations of these northern relics to Glastonbury as having occurred ‘tempore Danicae vastationis’, which would seem to exclude Edmund's reign (ibid. pp. 157–60), he was there writing in general and rather vague terms, so the De Gestis Pontificum version is probably to be preferred. The story in the De Antiquitate Glastonie Ecclesie of how an abbot called Tyccea brought the relics to Glastonbury in 754 is anachronistic and certainly a later interpolation into the text; see Scott, John, The Early History of Glastonbury. An Edition, Translation and Study of William of Malmesbury's De Antiquitate Glastonie Ecclesie (Woodbridge, 1981), pp. 58Google Scholar and 194 and Thomas, ‘Cult of Saints' Relics’, pp. 172–3.

²¹ Brooks, Nicholas, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury: Christ Church from 597 to 1066 (Leicester, 1984), pp. 227–8.Google Scholar

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²³ Rollason, D. W., ‘The Shrines of Saints in Later Anglo-Saxon England: Distribution and Significance’, The Anglo-Saxon Church: Papers on History, Architecture and Archaeology in Honour of Dr H. M. Taylor, ed. Morris, Richard, Council for British Archaeology Research Report 60 (London, 1986), 32–43Google Scholar, and Fichtenau, ‘Reliquienwesen’, pp. 88–9.

²⁴ Important studies include: Fichtenau, ‘Reliquienwesen’; Töpfer, B., ‘Reliquienkult and Pilgerbewegung zur Zeit der Klosterreform im Burgundisch-Aquitanischen Gebiet’, Vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit. Zum 6;. Geburtstag Heinrich Sproemberg, ed. Kretzschmar, H. (Berlin, 1956), pp. 420–39Google Scholar; Herrmann-Mascard, Nicole, Les reliques des saints. Formation coutumière d' un droit (Paris, 1975)Google Scholar; and Geary, Furta Sacra.

²⁵ See the thought-provoking remarks of Brown, Peter, ‘Society and the Supernatural: a Medieval Change’, Daedalus 104 no. 2 (1975), 133–51Google Scholar, esp. 140 (repr. with additions in Brown, Peter, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (London and New York, 1982), pp. 302–32Google Scholar, esp. 316–18).

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³¹ ibid. 1, 228 (III Æthelred 2.1 and 3.1).

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³⁵ ibid. 412 (Iudicia Dei VI. 1).

³⁶ For Bodmin, see Förster, Max, ‘Die Freilassungsurkunden des Bodmin-Evangeliars’, A Grammatical Miscellany Offered to Otto Jespersen on his Seventieth Birthday (Copenhagen, 1930), pp. 77–99Google Scholar; for Athelstan, see Robinson, , Times of Dunstan, pp. 72–3Google Scholar; Harmer, , Select Documents, pp. 32–3 and 116Google Scholar; and Keynes, ‘King Athelstan's Books’, pp. 185–9.

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³⁹ The following documents are cited from Sawyer, P. H., Anglo-Saxon Charters: an Annotated List and Bibliography, R. Hist. Soc. Guides and Handbooks 8 (London, 1968)Google Scholar, abbreviated S with number of document: S 939, S 981, S 1478 and S 1521. Their most recent editors translated the phrase ‘mid þæs kynges haligdome’ and its variants as ‘in the king's sanctuary’: see Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. Robertson, A. J., 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 170–1, 216–17Google Scholar and Anglo-Saxon Wills, ed. Whitelock, Dorothy (Cambridge, 1930), pp. 46–7 and 78–9Google Scholar. But the word haligdom does clearly mean relics (as in the passages cited above, p. 97), and Förster, , Reliquienkultus, p. 14Google Scholar n. 4, argued cogently for translating the phrase in question ‘with the king's relics’. The distinction may be unreal, since what made a sanctuary sacred was precisely the presence of the relics. An unambiguous Latin phrase is to be found in a similar context in Chronicon Abbatiae Rameseiensis, ed. Macray, W. Dunn, RS (London, 1886), p. 172Google Scholar. See also Keynes, Simon, The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’ 978–1016: a Study in their Use as Historical Evidence (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 148–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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