¹ Alfred, , prose preface to the Cura pastoralis, transl. Keynes, S. and Lapidge, M., Alfred the Great Asser's ‘Life of King Alfred’ and Other Contemporary Sources (Harmondsworth, 1983), 125Google Scholar.

² Ibid., p. 126. See Bullough, D. A., ‘The Educational Tradition in England from Alfred to Ælfric: Teaching utriusque linguae’, La Scuola nell'Occidente Latino dell'alto medioevo, Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi Sull'alto medioevo, 19 (1972), 453–94, at 455–63Google Scholar.

³ King Alfred's Old English Version of Boethius De Consolatione Philosophiae, XLII (ed. Sedgefield, W.J., Oxford, 1899, 148Google Scholar; transl. Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 136Google Scholar).

⁴ For discussion of these issues in a Garolingian context, see Innes, M., ‘Memory, Orality and Literacy in an Early Medieval Society’, Past and Present, 158 (1998), 3–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ Clanchy, Michael, From Memory to Written Record (2nd edn, Oxford, 1993), 26–32Google Scholar; Wormald, Patrick, ‘The uses of literacy in Anglo-Saxon England and its neighbours’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 27 (1977), 94–114CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Keynes, Simon, ‘Royal Government and the Written Word in late Anglo-Saxon England’, in The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe, ed. McKitterick, Rosamond (Cambridge, 1990), 226–57Google Scholar.

⁶ The fullest discussion is by Kelly, Susan, ‘Anglo-Saxon lay society and the written word’, in The Uses of Literacy, ed. McKitterick, , 36–62Google Scholar.

⁷ An early tenth-century charter of King Edward the Elder explains succinctly the purpose for which written record of an oral conveyance was made: because the Church had long ago resolved ‘that the gifts of most pious kings should be delivered with the records of charters on account of the changeable vicissitudes of the times and concluded with the testimony of a title-deed, lest the source of truth should be brought to nothing by the assault of misty oblivion’. S 362 [S: Sawyer, P. H., Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography (London, 1968)Google Scholar]; transl. English Historical Documents, I, c.500–1042, ed. Whitelock, D. (2nd edn, 1979) [hereafter EHD], no. 100Google Scholar.

⁸ Most notable in the pages of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica, where the testimony of named oral witnesses is accorded privileged status in comparison with vulgar report; for discussion of Bede's network of informants, see Kirby, D. P., ‘Bede's Native Sources for the Historia ecclesiastica’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 48 (1966), 341–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ The formulaic phraseology of early Anglo-Saxon charters always attributed pious motives to secular donors to churches and monasteries, but some texts spelt out in some detail the spiritual benefits anticipated from the gift; for example, the Kentish ealdorman Oswulf and his wife Beornthryth gave land early in the ninth century to Christ Church, Canterbury, on condition that they might be in the fellowship of the community there and that their anniversay be celebrated each year with religious offices [on godcundum godum] and with the distribution of alms: S 1188; transl. Harmer, F. E., Select English Historical Documents of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1914), no. 1, 39Google Scholar.

¹⁰ The concept of ‘collective’ memory was defined by Halbwachs, Maurice (Les cadres sociaux de In mémoire (Paris, 1925)Google Scholar; La Mémoire collective (Paris, 1950, English translation, New York, 1980)Google Scholar. His ideas about the ways in which memory is structured by group identities have been developed in a slightly different direction by Fentress, James and Wickham, Chris, Social Memory (Oxford, 1992)Google Scholar. See also Geary, Patrick, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton, NJ, 1994), especially 3–22Google Scholar.

¹¹ I must acknowledge the assistance of Michael Bentley in clarifying my thoughts about memory, and his suggestion that commemoration is a more useful term than social memory.

¹² The revisionist position was first articulated by Sawyer, Peter, The Age of the Vikings (1962)Google Scholar, and has acquired numerous adherents since then.

¹³ On the panic-stricken mood of many of the Frankish sources in particular, see Wallace-Hadrill, J. M., Early Medieval History (Oxford, 1975), 218–20Google Scholar. That the Danes were notably more violent than their contemporaries has been questioned, for example by Halsall, G., ‘Playing by whose Rules? A Further Look at Viking Atrocity in the Ninth Century’, Medieval History, 2.2 (1992), 2–12Google Scholar. For a contrary view, see Dumville, David N., The Churches of North Britain in the First Viking Age, Fifth Whithorn Lecture (Whithorn, 1997)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Space does not permit the cataloguing of these largely familiar details; for summaries, see Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, introduction, 11–26Google Scholar; Kirby, D. P., The Earliest English Kings (1991), 210–20Google Scholar. That the effects of the vikings in England were ‘very serious indeed’ was argued by Wormald, Patrick, ‘Viking Studies: Whence and Whither’, in The Vikings, ed. Farrell, R. T. (1982), 128–53, at 139Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Anxieties about the provision of pastoral care were expressed in Northumbria long before the start of the Viking Age (Bede, , Epistola ad Ecgbertum, ed. Plummer, C., Venerabilis Baedae Opera Historica, 2 vols, Oxford, 1896, 1, 405–23Google Scholar); the contention here is not that such problems were new, nor that they were solely prompted by Danish warfare, but that they were felt more acutely in this period.

¹⁶ No bishop of Hexham is recorded beyond Bishop Tidferth who died in 821: Keynes, Simon, ‘Episcopal succession in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Fryde, E. B. et al. , Handbook of British Chronology (3rd edn, 1986), 209–24, at 217Google Scholar. The last known bishop of Dunwich was Æthelwold, who acceded 845 x 870, the date of his death is unknown: ibid., 216; Whitelock, D., ‘The pre-Viking Church in East Anglia’, Anglo-Saxon England, 1 (1972), 1–22, at 17–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The see of Elmham was revived in the later tenth century, following a century of interruption after the death of Bishop Hunberht in 845 or 856X? or? November 869: Keynes, in Fryde, et al. , Handbook, p. 216Google Scholar; Whitelock, , ‘The pre-Viking Church’, 21–2Google Scholar.

¹⁷ For Leicester, see O'Donovan, Mary Anne, ‘An Interim Revision of Episcopal Dates for the Province of Canterbury, 850–950: Part 1’, Anglo-Saxon England, 1 (1972), 23–44, at 27, 43–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The see of Lindisfarne transferred to Chester-le-Street in c. 883; Keynes, in Fryde, et al. , Handbook, 219Google Scholar; Smyth, A. P., Scandinavian York and Dublin (2 vols, Dublin, 1975–1979), I, 41–4, 96–103Google Scholar.

¹⁸ O'Donovan, Mary Anne, ‘An Interim Revision: part 2’, Anglo-Saxon England, 2 (1972), 91–113, at 91–6Google Scholar. It is, of course, possible that men were still performing the role of bishop across this period when their names were not recorded, the dislocation being simply one of record-keeping, but this seems distinctly implausible in cases where the episcopal seat was relocated.

¹⁹ For example, the congregatio clericorum at Horningsea mentioned in the Liber Eliensis, II, 32 (ed. Blake, E. O., 1962), 105Google Scholar; see Whitelock, ibid., xi–xii.

²⁰ A list of sorts may be found in Knowles, David and Hadcock, R. Neville, Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales (2nd edn, London, 1971)Google Scholar, appendix I, 463–87. See, however, Dumville, David N., Wessex and EnglandfromAlfred to Edgar (Woodbridge, 1992), 33–49Google Scholar.

²¹ Demonstration of the generally parlous state of Latin learning in ninth-century England is given by Lapidge, Michael, Anglo-Saxon Literature, 600–899 (1996), 409–39Google Scholar.

²² See Cubitt, C., ‘Universal and Local Saints in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Local Saints and Local Churches, ed. Sharpe, Richard and Thacker, Alan (Oxford, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

²³ Craster, E., ‘The Patrimony of St Cuthbert’, English Historical Review, 69 (1954), 177–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ Historia regum Anglorum, part I, s.a. 875 (Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, ed. Arnold, T., 2 vols, Rolls Series, London, 1882–1885, II, 82Google Scholar) reports a nine-year wandering; part 2, s.a. 875 (ibid., II, 110) allocates seven years. A fuller account of the seven-year wandering is found in Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, ch. 20 (ibid., 1, 207–8); the fully developed story in Historia Dunelmensis eccksiae, II, 6–13 (ibid., 1, 54–71). See Dumville, , The Churches, 24, and n. 68Google Scholar, and Cambridge, E., ‘Why did the Community of St Cuthbert Settle at Chester-le-Street?’, in St Cuthbert His Cult and His Community, ed. Bonner, G. et al. (Woodbridge, 1989), 367–86, at 379–86Google Scholar. That the community rested at Crayke was reported in the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, ch. 20; the one-time presence of Cuthbert's relics at Norham finds mention in the earliest surviving list of saints' resting-places: Die Heiligen England, 11.4 (ed. Iiebermann, Felix, Hanover, 1889, 10)Google Scholar.

²⁵ Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 934, BCDE 933; Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, ch. 26 (ed. Arnoold, , I, 211)Google Scholar; Craster, , ‘The Patrimony’, 191–2Google Scholar; Bonner, G., ‘St Cuthbert at Chester-le-Street’, in St Cuthbert, ed. Bonner, et al. , 387–95, at 389–92Google Scholar.

²⁶ Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS. 183, fo. IV; Keynes, S., ‘King Æthelstan's Books’, in Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Lapidge, Michael and Gneuss, Helmut (Cambridge, 1985), 143–201, at 170–85Google Scholar. For other examples of relics moved (sometimes only temporarily) by their guardians away from Danish attack, compare Ermentarius, Miracula S. Philiberti ch. 1 (ed. Holder-Egger, O., MGH, SS XV.I, Hanover, 1887, 298–9)Google Scholar; Adrevald of Fleury, Miracula S Benedick, ch. 34 (ed. Holder-Egger, ibid., 495–6); Annals of Ulster 831, 849, 878, ed. and transl. Sean Mac Airt and Gearoid mac Niocaill, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (Dublin, 1983).

²⁷ Thacker, A. T., ‘Kings, Saints and Monasteries in pre-Viking Mercia’, Midland History, 10 (1985), 1–25, at 8–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁸ Thacker, A. T., ‘Chester and Gloucester: Early Ecclesiastical Organisation in two Mercian Burhs’, Northern History, 18 (1982), 199–211, at 203–4, 209–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rollason, D., ‘Relic-Cults as an Instrument of Royal Policy c. 900–1050’, Anglo-Saxon England, 15 (1986), 91–103, at 95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thacker, , ‘Kings’, 18Google Scholar.

²⁹ William, of Malmesbury, , De gestis pontificum Anglorum, §91 (ed. Hamilton, N.E.S.A., Rolls Series, London, 1870, 198)Google Scholar.

³⁰ Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 948. Rollason, , ‘Relic-cults’, 94Google Scholar.

³¹ Alfred, prefatory letter, transl. Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 124Google Scholar.

³² Æthelwold, , ‘Account of King Edgar's establishment of ministers’, ed. and transl. Whitelock, D. et al. , Councils & Synods with other Documents Relating to the English Church: I 871–1204, 2 vols, part I, 871–1066 (Oxford, 1981), no. 33, 148–9Google Scholar.

³³ The only nunnery explicitly to be mentioned in any contemporaneous account of the process by which the precepts of the Rule of St Benedict were introduced was the Nunnaminster at Winchester: Wulfstan of Winchester, The Life of St Æthelwold, chs 16–18 (ed. and transl. Lapidge, M. and Winterbottom, M., Oxford, 1991, 30–3)Google Scholar.

³⁴ The women's houses that dominate the contemporary sources and later historiography are Amesbury, Barking, Horton, Romsey, Shaftesbury (and its cell at Bradford-on-Avon), Wherwell, Wilton, and the Nunnaminster at Winchester. Their prominence in the literature arises primarily because these are the only houses for which extant charters have survived. I provide here a summary of the argument defended in full in my book Veiled Women: the Disappearance of Nuns from Anglo-Saxon England (2 vols, Ashgate Publishing, forthcoming)Google Scholar: the role of women in the tenth-century Benedictine revolution is analysed in vol. 1, ch. 4.

³⁵ At the time of the Domesday survey the lands of Minster-in-Thanet had come into the possession of St Augustine's, Canterbury, and there was only a church with one priest left on the island, but a congregation of St Mildrith's is attested in the eleventh century and four nuns who held land in alms of the abbotg of St Augustine's in 1086 might, conceivably, have been the remnant of the former Thanet community: Domesday Book, 1, fo. 12ra–b.

³⁶ There is no evidence for the continuation of the female house at Barking between the early eighth century and the 950s, when a monastic community there received a grant from King Eadred (S 552a) and was beneficiary of the will of Ealdorman Ælfgar: ibid., no 1483. It is not, however, necessary to believe the late eleventh-century account of Goscelin of St-Bertin's that the abbess and nuns were burnt to death by the Danes in 870: Lecciones de sancta Hildelitha, ch. 2 (ed. Colker, M. L., ‘Texts of Jocelyn of Canterbury which Relate to the History of Barking Abbey’, Studia Monastica, 7 (1965), 383–460, at 455Google Scholar).

³⁷ These houses are Berkeley, Boxwell, Castor, Cheddar, Leominster, Wareham, Warwick, Wenlock, Wimborne, and Winchcombe.

³⁸ Goscelin, Libellus contra inanes sanctae uirginis Mildrethae usurpatores, ch. 4 (ed. Colker, M. L., ‘A Hagiographic Polemic’, Mediaeval Studies, 39 (1977), 60–108, at 74–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Lyminge was granted a refuge from the Danes at Canterbury in 804: S 160.

³⁹ S 535, AD 948.

⁴⁰ Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 1011 CD; EF have wrongly ‘Leofwine’. The Chronicle of John of Worcester, II The Annals from 450 to 1066, s.a.1011 (ed. Darlington, R. R. et al. , Oxford, 1995. 468–9)Google Scholar.

⁴¹ V Æthelred, chs 4–4.1 (ed. Liebermann, Felix, Die Gesetze der Angehachsen, 3 vols, Halle, 1903–1916, I, 238)Google Scholar: ‘₇hurubinga Godes beowas—biscopas ₇ abbudas, munecas ₇ mynecena, preostas ₇ nunnan—to rihte gebugan ₇ regollice libban ₇ for eall Cristen folc bingian georne’. Compare VI Æthelred, ch. 2.2 and I Cnut, ch. 6a (ibid., 246 and 288).

⁴² Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 886; Asser, Life of King Alfred, ch. 83, ed. Stevenson, W. H., Asset's Life of King Alfred (Oxford, 1904; new impression, 1959), 69Google Scholar; transl. Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 98Google Scholar.

⁴³ Foot, S., ‘The making of Angelcynn: English identity before the Norman Conquest’, TRHS, 6th series 6 (1996), 25–49, at 27–37Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Keynes, S., ‘King Alfred and the Mercians’, in Kings, Currency and Alliances: the History and Coinage of Southern England, AD 840–900, ed. Blackburn, M. A. S. and Dumville, D. N. (Woodbridge, 1998), 1–45, at 24–6Google Scholar; Keynes, S., ‘The West Saxon Charters of King Æthelwulf and his Sons’, English Historical Review, 109 (1994), 1109–49, at 1147–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁵ Foot, , ‘The making of Angelcynri’, 28–9 and 35–7Google Scholar; the relevant texts are Bede's Historia ecclesiastica, Orosius, Seven books of histories against the pagans, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. See also Smyth, A. P., ‘The Emergence of English Identity, 700–1000’, in Medieval Europeans: Studies in Ethnic Identity and National Perspectives in Medieval Europe, ed. Smyth, (1998), 24–52, at 39–44Google Scholar; and for historical writing, Scharer, A., ‘The Writing of History at King Alfred Court’, Early Medieval Europe, 5 (1996), 177–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁶ Compare the fabrication of a collective past by the Carolingians, discussed by Innes, , ‘Memory’, 11Google Scholar, and particularly by McKitterick, R., ‘Constructing the Past in the Early Middle Ages: the Case of the Royal Frankish Annals’, TRHS, 6th series, 7 (1997), 101–29, at 113–17 and 125–9Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ Alfred, prose preface, transl. Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, 125Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ The Chronicle of Æthelweard, prologue (ed. and transl. Campbell, A., 1962, 1–2)Google Scholar: ‘in quantum memoria nostra argumentatur et sicut docuere parentes’.

⁴⁹ Barker, Pat, Another World (1998), 84–5Google Scholar.