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CHAPTER FOUR

Fruitful in the House of the Lord: The Early Miracle Collections of Goscelin of St.-Bertin

Though they lived a century apart, the careers and interests of Goscelin of St.-Bertin (d. after 1107) and Lantfred of Fleury (fl. 970s) bear close comparison. Both were born and spent their childhoods outside of England—Lantfred in west Frankia, Goscelin in Flanders. Both were members of large and influential Benedictine abbeys in their home regions. After coming to England, both spent their time visiting and living among Benedictine monks. Both were highly accomplished writers with a particular interest in miracle stories and miracle collecting. Both wrote about English saints for whom there was little or no previous written commemoration, and both filled their miracle collections principally with in-house stories told by their Benedictine hosts. But whereas Lantfred appears to have written just one collection, Goscelin wrote many. He never seems to have gone home again after leaving St.-Bertin as an adolescent in the early 1060s. After the death of his patron in 1078, he spent much of his life moving from monastery to monastery. In the course of these travels, Goscelin produced so much hagiography that his contemporary, William of Malmesbury, wrote:“in the celebration of the English saints he was second to none since Bede.”¹

Unlike Lantfred, Goscelin was determined to write accounts of the lives of saints, even in the face of a severe paucity of information. But he almost always gave equal or more room in his texts to stories of saints’ actions after their deaths. Miracle stories most captured his imagination: as Rosalind Love writes, Goscelin “is at his best and most lively as a narrator of the miraculous in the lives of ordinary mortals, of little vignettes full of circumstantial detail.”² Hagiographic works securely attributed to Goscelin include texts about Wulfsige at Sherborne, Edith at Wilton, Kenelm at Winchcombe, Ivo at Ramsey, Hildelitha, Ethelburga, and Wulfhilda at Barking, Seaxburg, Eormenhild, and Withburh at Ely, Wærburh at Chester, and Augustine, Mildreth, and numerous early bishops (Laurence, Mellitus, Justus, etc.) at St. Augustine’s.³ Excepting only the minor saints connected to Ely and some of the lesser early bishops at St. Augustine’s, Goscelin collected posthumous miracles for all of these saints. These were not short texts. Goscelin’s account of Ivo’s miracles runs over thirty chapters. His miracle collection for Augustine stretches over fifty chapters, so long that he himself made an abbreviation of the text for easier circulation.⁴ In the case of Kenelm and Wulfsige, Goscelin devotes more space to the saints’ posthumous histories than their lives. Some of Goscelin’s most ambitious works were those concerning the translations of Edith, Augustine, and Mildreth; these texts too are largely made up of stories of posthumous miracles.

In the early part of his career, Goscelin was quite alone in his interest in preserving miracle stories. The few other hagiographers active in England in the first decades after the Norman Conquest cared little for miracle collecting: the anonymous authors of the Life of Edward the Confessor, the Life of Rumwold, and the Life of Erkenwald mention that their saints were performing posthumous miracles but describe none in detail.⁵ The lack of interest in miracle collecting is especially striking in the case of Folcard, who, like Goscelin, was a monk of St.-Bertin resident in England. Folcard wrote a Life of John of Beverley sometime in the 1060s. He states at the conclusion of the Life that “through [John’s] merits, cripples were cured, demons were banished, the blind were made to see, the deaf were made to hear,” but he did not make the effort to tell a single story.⁶ Miracle collecting only began to gain in popularity in England in the 1090s—in large part, as I will argue in the next chapter, because of Goscelin’s own example, reputation, and peripatetic labors.

In this chapter, I will examine Goscelin’s first three compositions concerning the lives and miracles of English saints: the Life of Wulfsige, the Life and Translation of Edith, and the Life and Miracles of Kenelm. These texts all appear to be products of the late 1070s and early 1080s.⁷ This early corpus is particularly revealing of Goscelin’s approach to miracle collecting, an approach that would serve as a model for the first native English collectors in addition to Goscelin’s own prolific later work. In making these texts, Goscelin listened to the same sorts of people, selected the same sorts of stories, and organized his material in very similar ways. Goscelin’s hagiographies are almost always read as serving the political interests of local monastic houses, but while the monks and nuns who told Goscelin stories about Wulfsige, Edith, and Kenelm no doubt valued his writings, these texts appear to have been stimulated and guided much more by Goscelin’s own interests, needs, and literary ambitions than by theirs. Though these texts were compiled just a decade or so after the Norman Conquest, Goscelin says nothing about this event and exhibits no concern about Norman skepticism about English saints. What worried him more, it seems, was Norman skepticism about him. The late 1070s and early 1080s were a trying time for Goscelin. His long-term patron died in 1078, he was frustrated with his own lack of literary output, he was deeply grieved by the departure of a young nun of Wilton whom he loved dearly, and he was being forced out of the west country—likely because of his overly intense relationship with said young nun. Goscelin wrote his early corpus under a cloud of personal disappointment if not downright disgrace. But though this time must have been a low point, it was also the launching point of his career as “the busiest of all Anglo-Latin hagiographers.”⁸ He was fascinated by the stories told about the saints in his adopted homeland. He possessed the desire and the ability to convert oral stories into graceful written histories that both Saxons and Normans could appreciate. An analysis of this remarkable monk’s work and career is essential for an understanding of the beginning of the miracle collecting craze in England.

Goscelin came to England as a protégé of Herman, a distinguished Lotharingian whom Edward the Confessor had made the bishop of Wiltshire in 1045. In 1055, Herman resigned this post, left England, and stayed some years at St.-Bertin. Around 1062, Herman was appointed bishop of Sherborne and went back to England to take up this new position. At this point or shortly thereafter, Goscelin joined him there.⁹ Goscelin would speak of himself as being a “youth” [adolescentulus] when he arrived in England. Since he appears to have lived past 1107, he may have been in his late teens when he left St.-Bertin.¹⁰ He had already experimented with hagiographic composition by this time. His first known text is his Life and Translation of Amelberga, a text about a nun some three hundred years dead whose relics were housed in Ghent. In the preface, Goscelin terms himself a “boy” [puer] who has never attempted such a project before. Rosalind Love describes the text as “truly the work of youth.”¹¹ Perhaps Herman wished to secure Goscelin’s nascent talents as a hagiographer when he invited him to join his retinue, or perhaps he simply thought of him as a promising young man. Goscelin would later comment that his lodgings on arrival in England were shocking to him, “more like a pigsty than a human habitation,” though later, “what I had first abhorred I now loved.”¹² Nowhere in his works does he say why he decided to leave home.

After he arrived in England, Goscelin appears to have spent at least a decade in Herman’s company without producing much, if any hagiography.¹³ In the silent period between the early 1060s and late 1070s, it appears that Goscelin identified Sherborne, the initial seat of Herman’s bishopric, as his home monastery. In the prologue of his Life of Wulfsige, Goscelin describes a monk of Sherborne as “a fellow monk [confrater] I knew, saw and heard,” and speaks of how he learned about Wulfsige’s life and death “from the brothers’ most truthful testimony.”¹⁴ As a member of Herman’s retinue, Goscelin made many trips to London and undoubtedly other places as well. In his Translation of Edith, Goscelin mentions being at Salisbury during Herman’s lifetime, a stay that was probably connected with Herman’s transfer of the see from Sherborne to Salisbury in 1074–75.¹⁵ Wilton looks to have been Goscelin’s most frequent stopover. Located not many miles from Sherborne, Wilton was an ancient and prosperous nunnery patronized by the royal house of Wessex. It was used as something of a safehouse for princesses, widows, and other noblewomen. Goscelin is frequently termed a “chaplain” of Wilton, but he does not describe himself as such and did not necessarily have a formal connection with the nunnery.

Under whatever terms he visited Wilton, Goscelin came to know its inhabitants well. The Life and Translation of Edith is shot through with references to sisters and senior nuns at Wilton telling stories about Edith and their other saints.¹⁶ It could be too that the Life and Miracles of Kenelm was inspired, at least in part, by conversations he had at Wilton. In the prologue to the work, Goscelin names Queen Eadgyth, widow of King Edward the Confessor, as a “most learned” informant, someone who told him about what she had read concerning Kenelm. Eadgyth probably went to Wilton after Edward’s death in 1066; in a charter dated 1072 she is said to be at Wilton.¹⁷ At some point in the 1070s, Goscelin became emotionally involved with his “most dear,” “most sweet,” and “most beloved” Eve, a young woman at Wilton probably ten years or so younger than himself.¹⁸ We know of this relationship from Goscelin’s most well-known work: the Book of Consolation, an extended treatise intended for Eve’s eyes.¹⁹ In the Book, Goscelin describes how he annoyed Eve with his attentions, received books from her, taught her to revere St. Bertin, wept at her consecration ceremony, accompanied her to church dedications presided over by Herman, and grieved with her over Herman’s death in 1078. Sometime after this death, Goscelin came to Wilton with plans of visiting Eve as usual, and was devastated to find that she had left, forever, to take up life as a recluse in Normandy. She had not told him she was going.²⁰

Goscelin’s charged friendship with Eve may not have lasted long, but her departure (exact date unknown, but assumed to have been c.1080) coincided with other major changes in his life. Herman’s death in 1078 left Goscelin without a patron. Osmund, the Norman chancellor of King William, was appointed as Herman’s replacement in 1078. Goscelin seems to have finished his Life of Wulfsige shortly after Herman’s death, as he dedicates the text to Osmund, speaks of Herman’s death, and describes at the text’s close how Osmund translated Wulfsige and the relics of another saint, Juthwara, to silver reliquaries.²¹ But if the text was read by the new bishop, it did not persuade him to retain the Flemish monk in his service. Bishop Osmund seems to have been the one who, in Goscelin’s words in the Book of Consolation, “forced [me] to wander far” because of “the envy of vipers and the cruelty of a stepfather.”²² The date of Goscelin’s departure from the region of Sherborne and Wilton is not known, but scholars have speculated that Goscelin’s passion for Eve incurred Osmund’s condemnation, and that Eve herself may have been ordered to leave Wilton rather than setting out for Normandy voluntarily.

Whatever happened, after some fifteen years in England in Herman’s service, and now probably in his early thirties, Goscelin lost his standing in the bishop’s household as well as his dear Eve, “the sweetest child of my soul.” It was at this point that texts began to pour out of him. Goscelin wrote the Book of Consolation c.1080–82. The Life and Miracles of Kenelm could not have been written before 1066: it is likely a composition of the late 1070s or early 1080s.²³ Goscelin states that he began both the Life of Wulfsige and the Life and Translation of Edith while Herman was alive and with his encouragement, but he did not finish either of them until after his death: they are usually dated c.1080. In the prologue to the Life and Translation of Edith, the most ambitious work of this early hagiographic corpus, Goscelin dedicates the work to Archbishop Lanfranc and declares that “it is your part to accept the votive offerings of all those bringing gifts to the tabernacle of the Lord … I seek to offer a previous jewel.”²⁴ By the jewel, Goscelin meant Edith herself, “famous throughout the whole land,” but Goscelin’s texts themselves bear comparisons to gems. In early Norman England, miracle collections like these were actually a good deal rarer than precious stones, and it is to those texts that I now turn.

Wulfsige, Edith, and Kenelm died in different centuries and would seem to be quite different saints, but in the 1070s all three were lodged in Benedictine monastic houses and were viewed as active miracle-working saints. Wulfsige, the most recently dead, was a bishop at Sherborne. Within a decade after his death in 1002—from what Goscelin tells us—Wulfsige had been translated to a shrine near an altar.²⁵ Edith, an illegitimate daughter of King Edgar, was probably born in the 960s. She was enclosed at Wilton from the time she was a young girl. Wulfthryth, Edith’s mother, became abbess at Wilton, but though Edith was appointed the abbess of three nunneries, she refused these posts. She died a virgin in 984 or 987.²⁶ Kenelm, possibly a wholly fictitious figure, was supposedly a young Mercian prince killed through the machinations of an evil sister in the early ninth century. At some unknown point, his relics were translated to Winchcombe. The place of his supposed martyrdom also served as a cult site. Kenelm was widely celebrated in Anglo-Saxon litanies by the eleventh century.²⁷

Swithun’s healings were what fascinated Lantfred and impelled him to write his collection at Winchester. In the years he spent at Sherborne and Wilton, Goscelin probably did not see a cult of the magnitude of Swithun’s in the 970s, but Wulfsige and Edith were certainly both revered as healers. Goscelin describes how the water used to wash the relics of Wulfsige and Juthwara was “a source of healing for many sick people.”²⁸ Monks of Sherborne, servants of the monks, and relatives of the monks were all claiming healing from this drink at the time he wrote his miracle collection.²⁹ Edith, too, was busily curing cripples and striking off the chains of lay supplicants at her tomb.³⁰ But, strikingly, these recent healing and liberation miracles among the laity, of such fascination for Lantfred, held little appeal for Goscelin. He tells few of these stories, and what he does tell he tends to compress.³¹ The more recent the story, in fact, the less Goscelin seemed to feel it needed elaboration or record. After describing, rapidly, a set of Edith’s recent miracles among the laity, he writes, “why should more of these miracles be recounted which are so well-known and frequently perceived by the eyes, that they may be known more certainly by eyewitness experience than by written testimony? There is no need to relate more of these revelations which are so frequent.”³²

What Goscelin saw a need for, instead, was a written reconstruction of the whole history of a saint and his or her cult. For Goscelin, contemporary miracles were an endpoint, a way to wrap up the overall narrative rather than the center of attention. The Life and Miracles of Kenelm, the Life of Wulfsige, and the Life and Translation of Edith are balanced, carefully conceived surveys that encompass the saints’ lives, deaths, burials, translations, and past and present miracles.³³ The three texts have a remarkably similar structure despite their differing titles and subjects. Of the thirty chapters in the Life and Miracles of Kenelm, Goscelin devotes six to Kenelm’s life (cc. 1–6), two to Kenelm’s death (cc. 7–8), eight to the discovery and translation of Kenelm’s relics to Winchcombe and accompanying miracles (cc. 9–17), nine to miracles “from modern times” (cc. 18–26), and the final four (short) chapters to “recent miracles” (cc. 27–30). He applied equal weight to posthumous miracles in the Life of Wulfsige. After six chapters about Wulfsige’s life (cc. 1–6), he devoted three to his death and burial (cc. 6–9), five to miracles that started twelve years after Wulfsige’s death (cc. 10–14), six to miracles from “modern times” (cc. 15–20), and then four to contemporary miracles (cc. 21–24). Though the Life and Translation of Edith is a much longer and more prettified text, Goscelin measures out Edith’s story in roughly similar proportions. After twenty-seven lengthy chapters concerning Edith’s life, death, and burial and immediate post-burial miracles, Goscelin dedicates a second book entirely to posthumous events, starting with Edith’s translation in the late tenth century (cc. 1–2), then digressing into a mini-vita and miracle collection for Wulfthryth, Edith’s mother (cc. 3–7, life and death; cc. 8–11, miracles), and finally eleven chapters concerning Edith’s miracles from the age of Cnut to the present day (cc. 12–22).³⁴

Goscelin seems to have been quite conscientious about listing the written sources he was able to find concerning these saints—if any—in the preface or in the course of his text. These references to written sources were apparently meant to enhance the credibility of his texts, but he did not have much to report. He apparently found nothing from or about Wulfsige’s life except for two foundation charters issued in Wulfsige’s name.³⁵ At the end the Life of Wulfsige, he mentions an account of Juthwara’s miracles that described a miracle during the time of Bishop Ælfwold (bishop of Sherborne after 1045 and until at least 1062), a text unfortunately otherwise unknown.³⁶ For Edith, he seems to have had very little in writing. All he claimed to have was an Old English account of a miracle from the time of Abbess Brihtgifu (c.1040–65).³⁷ The sources were a little richer for Kenelm, at least for his vita: he claims to have had a letter about Kenelm’s martyrdom (supposedly sent from heaven), some writings from a certain Wulfwine, and a song and other material in Old English.³⁸

This fluky little handful of written sources could not have been much help in constructing the broad histories Goscelin aimed to write. His material came instead from long soaking in the conversations of the communities of Sherborne, Wilton, and Winchcombe. Goscelin writes in the preface that he had learned about Wulfsige “long ago … from the present brothers, who like thirsty sucklings eagerly drank in these stories from their predecessors.”³⁹ Goscelin, aptly described as a thirsty suckling himself, could have been listening to stories from the Sherborne monks for fifteen or more years before he completed this text. At Wilton, Goscelin heard stories about Edith from the abbess and the nuns, both “the things which they saw with their own eyes,” and “those things which they heard from the venerable senior nuns, who both saw the holy virgin herself and devotedly obeyed her.”⁴⁰ Goscelin does not provide such a direct statement about hearing stories from the brothers at Winchcombe, but many of the stories he tells about Kenelm show clear signs of having come from them: in a chapter about Kenelm healing a mute man, for instance, Goscelin describes how the man was “restored to speech in the sight of the aforenamed abbot and the brothers and the assembled crowds.”⁴¹

Thus, though Goscelin did not dig into contemporary cults the way Lantfred had, his texts are still almost wholly comprised of stories being told at the time. No single informant stands out in any of Goscelin’s texts the way Eadsige does in Lantfred’s, but there was a type of conversation partner he sought out: elderly monks and nuns, people who could explain why things looked the way they did in their churches and tell stories about the miracles that had happened in their youth, people who were in a chain of testimony stretching back, in the case of Wulfsige and Edith, even to the living presence of the saints themselves. Goscelin talks about hearing the stories of Ælfmær, for instance, a monk who he says “was with [Wulfsige] himself not only during his life but also as he lay dying.”⁴² Counting from the time Wulfsige died and when Goscelin arrived in England, Ælfmær must have been in his seventies, at least, when the young Goscelin first met him. Bishop Herman, Goscelin’s own elderly patron, was a source for a story about one of Edith’s miracles.⁴³ In the Translation of Edith, Goscelin describes a miracle of Wulfthryth experienced by “a sister, who is still alive under the nursing of the younger nuns”; he also discusses the story of a nun who was healed by Edith in her infancy and was “still surviving” in Goscelin’s day.⁴⁴ Queen Eadgyth, one of Goscelin’s conversation partners for the composition of the Life and Miracles of Kenelm, must also have been elderly by the time he spoke to her. She died in 1075.⁴⁵ Goscelin did interact with younger people. In his Translation of Edith, for instance, he writes about a nun named Ealdgyth, “still in the springtime of her youth,” who was “grumbling to us” about the loss of some possessions of the nunnery.⁴⁶ There was also, of course, Eve, though with her Goscelin seems to have done more talking than listening. In general, though, Goscelin seems to have sought out old stories from older informants when he was collecting stories for his texts.

From his conversation partners at Sherborne, Wilton, and Winchcombe, Goscelin heard hand-me-down stories about the saints’ lives, deaths, and burials. He heard and recorded stories of all sorts of miracles—about fetters bursting and the healing of many kinds of illnesses, but also stories about lawsuits, property, and punishments for those who failed to observe feast days; stories about translations, kingly gifts, and patronage; stories that explained how certain objects came to be hanging up near shrines; stories about former abbots, recently dead monks, fellow nuns, relatives outside of the monastery, and lay visitors from near at hand and far away. Notably, Goscelin does not appear to have tried to track down or speak to any lay supplicants. Almost all of the miracles involving the laity in Goscelin’s texts closely involve someone in the monastic house, such as the affecting story of how Abbot Godwin of Winchcombe rubbed wax into the sores of a man whose stomach had been tightly bound in chains, a story that was still remembered twenty-odd years later when Goscelin came to Winchcombe.⁴⁷ Some of the miracles about lay people in these three texts concern blood relatives of the monks and nuns, such as the story of the evildoings of a certain Brihtric, the kinsman of a nun at Wilton; the cure of crippled man “connected by kinship” to the abbess of Wilton; and the mother of a monk at Sherborne cured by the water of Wulfsige and Juthwara.⁴⁸

To all appearances, Goscelin did his story collecting in-house. That, and Goscelin’s decision not to bother much with the swirl of current cults, made his collecting task easier, in certain ways, than Lantfred’s. But Goscelin was determined, in a way Lantfred was not, to arrange the stories he heard into a chronology. Whereas Lantfred had not worried about chronology after the first three chapters of his collection, Goscelin wanted to put the stories remembered and treasured by the monks or nuns about their saints in their proper order. This was difficult. Goscelin might ask, for instance, whether anyone knew the story behind the distaff and spindles hanging up over Wulfsige’s shrine.⁴⁹ Even if a monk said he knew what had happened—that an obstinate woman had refused to stop her work on Wulfsige’s feast day and found that she was frozen to those very objects—that did not necessarily mean he knew or remembered when this happened. How could Goscelin know where to insert such a story into his overall narrative of Wulfsige’s life and afterlife?

Often, it is clear, he did not know. Stories about the life, death, and burial of a saint should obviously go in that order, but things were much more free-floating when it came to posthumous miracles. Goscelin’s strategy was to place stories within the succession of religious leaders at the local house in question or (sometimes and) within the succession of Anglo-Saxon kings. In his Life and Miracles of Kenelm, for instance, he ties posthumous miracles to the time of King Cnut, Abbot Godwin, Abbot Godric, and then to the present living abbot, whom he does not name. Goscelin structures the Translation of Edith around the regimes of Archbishop Dunstan, Abbess Wulfthryth, King Cnut, then abbesses Brihtgifu, Ælfgifu, and finally Godiva, the living abbess. The succession of bishops forms the skeletal structure of the Life of Wulfsige, although past priors and kings—Cnut again—also make appearances. Quite a few of the miracles Goscelin tells directly concern these religious leaders: Abbess Ælfgifu’s eye is healed, Bishop Ælfwold and Prior Ælfweard have visions about translating Wulfsige, the present abbot of Winchcombe takes Kenelm’s relics on a tour to Clent, Kenelm’s martyrdom site, and so on.⁵⁰ Goscelin never provides dates for these abbots, abbesses, kings, or bishops, but he uses a considerable amount of parchment moving the narrative from one leader to another. Many transitions between chapters concern the death of one and the succession of the next.

Goscelin sweated over these chronological frameworks, but, as we can see now, they are riddled with error. Goscelin starts his Translation of Edith, for instance, by announcing that “thirteen years” after her death, Edith appeared in a vision to Archbishop Dunstan, “then still living,” and demanded to be translated.⁵¹ Edith died in 984 or 987. Add thirteen and that makes 997 or 1000. At this point, Dunstan had been dead himself for at least nine years: there is no way to make these numbers work. In the Life and Miracles of Kenelm, Goscelin places a miracle story in the reign of Cnut (1016–35) and the regime of Abbot Godwin (1042–53).⁵² In the Life of Wulfsige, Goscelin refers to a bishop of Sherborne succeeding Wulfsige that we now know not to have existed.⁵³ Editions of Goscelin’s texts bristle with footnotes noting and attempting to rectify his blunders. “Goscelin here seems to have got into confusion over his kings of England,” writes Rosalind Love in a typical editorial comment.⁵⁴

Frustrating as they are, these mistakes are some of our best clues to Goscelin’s working process. He appears to have learned about these leaders the same way he learned about the miracles: by steeping himself in house conversation, listening and asking questions. The further back he tried to go, the more he struggled and stumbled. One can imagine the nuns of Wilton telling stories in which Dunstan played a role in Edith’s translation and not realizing themselves that this was chronologically impossible. It must have been equally difficult for the monks of Winchcombe to recall whether Abbot Godwin’s tenure overlapped with Cnut’s reign or not. Old Ælfmær’s memory seems to have failed him when it came to the names of Wulfsige’s immediate successors, or maybe Goscelin did not to think to ask him about this until it was too late, or got confused about what he had said. In sum, these are the kinds of mistakes one would expect to find if someone was attempting to put chronologies together working only with passed-down oral stories and very few written texts.⁵⁵

Goscelin himself saw limits to what he could do in this situation. In his Life and Miracles of Kenelm, he skips over two centuries of Kenelm’s posthumous history, leaping from the story of Kenelm’s translation to Winchcombe (which Goscelin presents as occurring very soon after Kenelm’s death in the early ninth century) to a story placed in the time of Cnut, saying, “Having recounted afresh these things of old sent from heaven, let us describe a few of the many miracles of modern times and of our own time” [ex multis moderni et nostri temporis].⁵⁶ Goscelin uses the term “modern times” again in his Life of Wulfsige, here as a transition after a story about Cnut: “of his very many miracles, we here faithfully report in addition to the above those which have been wrought in modern times.”⁵⁷ Though Goscelin does not explicitly mark out a transition to “modern times” in the Translation of Edith, here again, strikingly, he launches his account with three stories about Cnut and Emma.⁵⁸ The reign of Cnut, about fifty years earlier, seems to have been the dividing line for Goscelin, what he considered to be the limit of living memory and after which he could start to write with confidence.

It is hard to say now whether the monks and nuns who told stories to Goscelin would also have viewed Cnut’s reign as the starting gate of the “modern,” or whether this was Goscelin’s own working shorthand. In any case, “modern” stories, the ones from about a generation ago, were his favorites. Goscelin’s texts bulge with stories from about twenty to thirty years before his time. Most of the posthumous miracle stories Goscelin tells in the Life and Miracles of Kenelm derive from the time of Abbot Godwin (1042–53).⁵⁹ In the Translation of Edith, Goscelin highlights the abbacy of Brihtgifu (c.1040–65).⁶⁰ In the Life of Wulfsige, Bishop Ælfwold, who held the bishopric sometime after 1045 until c.1062, is mentioned more than Goscelin’s own mentor Bishop Herman.⁶¹ The closer Goscelin got to the present, the more cursory he became. After story upon story from the time of Abbot Godwin in the Life and Miracles of Kenelm, Goscelin makes an explicit transition to “miracles recently brought about” [nuper patrata], and describes a miracle connected to Godric, abbot of Winchcombe from 1054 to 1066.⁶² It is a short chapter, followed by three even shorter chapters about events “last year” (likely sometime in the 1070s or early 1080s) and so the text comes to a swift close. In the Translation of Edith, Goscelin labels a miracle that happened “in the time of bishop Herman”—probably dead when Goscelin was writing—a “recent” miracle, and with that story, he ends the text.⁶³

Stories the older monks and nuns remembered from their youth were clearly the most to Goscelin’s liking in terms of time period. In terms of type, he tells a wide range in all three of these texts—healings, releases, property disputes, feast day punishments, and so forth—but he seems to have especially liked stories that explained the existence of shrines and cultic objects. Goscelin has much more to say about relic translations than Lantfred did, even though most of the translations he describes happened before he was born.⁶⁴ Structuring his texts by abbacies made tracking and inserting multiple translation stories easier, and may well have determined his decision to organize his texts this way in the first place. Goscelin was also eager to tell the stories behind objects like the distaff and spindle at Wulfsige’s shrine, the blood-stained psalter at Winchcombe, the little white pallium at Wilton, the broken chains hanging up at Edith’s shrine, Wulfsige’s staff, Edith’s pastoral ring, and where the gold came from for the shrines.⁶⁵ The difficulty was knowing where to put these stories. Goscelin terms the distaff and spindle story a “modern” miracle, for instance, but does not connect it to any bishop or prior.⁶⁶

Miracle stories about other local saints were also difficult to place. The standard format of a text focused unwaveringly on a single saint did not seem to reflect the conversational realities Goscelin encountered at many houses. At Wilton, Goscelin was hearing a significant number of miracle stories about Wulfthryth, Edith’s mother. At Sherborne, Wulfsige and Juthwara also seem to have been quite tightly linked together by the 1070s—Goscelin said that they shone “with twin brightness.”⁶⁷ A century earlier, Lantfred may well have been hearing about miracles performed by St. Iudoc or other Winchester saints, but kept his text’s focus unwaveringly on Swithun.⁶⁸ Goscelin, with his stronger interest in translations, objects, and the development of cults at these houses, found ways to slip in a few stories about Wulfthryth and Juthwara even though they fit neither the organization nor the titles of his works. He made excuses for the insertion of a mini-vita and miracle collection for Wulfthryth in his Translation of Edith: “it is right that the same page should celebrate them both together since the same church embraces them.”⁶⁹ Juthwara’s story appears rather abruptly toward the end of the Life of Wulfsige, where Goscelin jumps back a bishop in order to explain when Juthwara was translated, reaches further back to describe how she had died by being beheaded by her brother, and then leaps forward to the present to relate how bishop Osmund had put Wulfsige and Juthwara into “reliquaries splendidly adorned with gold.”⁷⁰ He concludes his text overall by stating “we have added to [Wulfsige’s] noble train the martyred virgin Juthwara, and have woven roses among lilies … [so that] by being blended they might give a more splendid display.”⁷¹

In all three texts, Goscelin will also ignore chronology and link stories together by type rather than by time. For instance, he describes how Edith saved Cnut from shipwreck at sea, and, in the same chapter, he describes how “later on,” Ealdred, the archbishop of York, was also saved at sea by Edith.⁷² Just a few chapters afterward, Goscelin describes how Edith defended the property of Wilton during the reign of Queen Emma, and then writes “we also add an event which has recently taken place, very similar to this one,” going on to tell a story about Brihtric in the next chapter.⁷³ Similar pairings are evident in Goscelin’s work for Kenelm: he matches together two stories about feast day punishments (cc. 20–21), two stories about mute men speaking (cc. 23–24), and two stories about fetters bursting (c. 26). These are all in a section ostensibly dedicated to stories from abbot Godwin’s tenure. Matching stories together like this held rhetorical as well as practical value, beautifying Goscelin’s texts in ways that later miracle collectors would also emulate.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Goscelin’s work to slot miracle stories into chronologies is his treatment—or, rather, lack of treatment—of the Norman Conquest. In Goscelin’s histories, William the Conqueror and Norman prelates appear briefly at the end of the story simply as the next in the line of succession of leaders, with no mention of Harold’s brief reign and no suggestion that a watershed event had occurred. Goscelin describes the abbacy of Ælfgifu at Wilton, for instance, as “partly under [King Edward] and partly under the present king, William.”⁷⁴ In his three early works, the closest Goscelin comes to mentioning the consequences of the Conquest is at the end of the Translation of Edith, where he describes how a young Wilton nun felt upset about Edith’s failure to prevent the “erosion of the possessions of the monastery.” Yet even here, Goscelin does not name or blame any Norman for this erosion—it is the nun who is chided for disbelieving in Edith’s powers.⁷⁵

Goscelin’s silence about the Conquest and reluctance to tell stories about the very recent past invite a range of readings. Paul Antony Hayward reads parts of the Life and Translation of Edith as “a direct command to Lanfranc to support [Edith’s] cult” with the “veiled aggression that typifies his work.”⁷⁶ In general, Hayward sees the English hagiography of the 1070s and 1080s, nearly all of it written by Goscelin, as intended “to assert the righteousness of these English communities”: “These saints’ cults may well … have been the most formidable weapon left to the English in their resistance to Norman attempts to deprive them of their offices.”⁷⁷ Stephanie Hollis views Abbess Godiva at Wilton as the woman behind the Life and Translation of Edith, suggesting that Godiva sought “to employ Edith again in the service of the convent by commissioning a Legend from Goscelin, with a view to attracting powerful patronage in defense of the monastery’s lands.”⁷⁸ Susan Ridyard, who does not believe that Norman prelates were generally hostile to English saints’ cults, nevertheless suggests that Goscelin’s Life and Translation of Edith, along with other texts of the period, could be read as “defensive hagiography,” that is, “an attempt to vindicate not only the status of a saint but also the history, the traditions and the political status of the religious community with which that saint was associated: it was an act of monastic propaganda on a grand scale.”⁷⁹

One difficulty with reading Goscelin’s early corpus as monastic propaganda is the very limited circulation of these works. This fact makes it difficult to view these texts as winning patronage or propagandizing for Wilton or Sherborne even within religious circles. One complete and two abridged manuscript copies of Goscelin’s Life of Wulfsige survive; all of them date from the fourteenth century.⁸⁰ There are also only three extant copies of the Life and Translation of Edith. The earliest of these, from the early twelfth century, lacks the dedicatory letter to Lanfranc and the Translation.⁸¹ The Life and Miracles of Kenelm appears to have been the most widely circulated of these three texts, with nine extant manuscript witnesses, but unfortunately Goscelin does not name his (likely Norman) dedicatee.⁸² Rosalind Love, the editor of the Life and Miracles of Kenelm, remains undecided whether or not the text should be read in the context of “the sweeping of the new broom” at Winchcombe.⁸³

Two Normans we know Goscelin thought of as readers of his early texts were Bishop Osmund, to whom he sent the Life of Wulfsige, and Archbishop Lanfranc, who received the Life and Translation of Edith. Osmund had been in England for less time than Goscelin and probably did not know many of the stories Goscelin recounts in the Life. If Osmund read the text, he likely did come away with a clearer understanding of Wulfsige’s history at Sherborne. But, importantly, he does not seem to have needed the text to respect Wulfsige. Osmund had honored Wulfsige and Juthwara with a translation to new silver reliquaries before Goscelin completed the text.⁸⁴ Archbishop Lanfranc, too, probably knew few of the stories Goscelin recounts in the Life and Translation of Edith and would have learned something if he read it. However, it is highly unlikely that Goscelin thought of him as a man hostile to English saints in general or Edith in particular.⁸⁵

It is much easier to make an argument that Goscelin’s west country hagiography was designed to gain Norman respect and patronage for Goscelin than for the saints and houses he wrote about. Goscelin’s dedicatory letters beseech his readers for their good favor. He begins his letter to Lanfranc, for instance, by reminding the archbishop that it is his responsibility to accept all gifts and to see “for what uses of the Church the work of each individual is fit.”⁸⁶ At a point when Goscelin had likely been driven out of the west country, he rather poignantly declares to the archbishop that “no person is shut out, we are all invited to the supper of the Lamb … the gifts of all are demanded.”⁸⁷ Goscelin plays up the humility game in these letters, requesting, for instance, that Osmund see in the Life of Wulfsige “not so much the clumsiness of the workman as the evidence of truth, so that under your bright gaze the night and gloom of bombastic incredulity might not mar the bright radiance of sanctity.”⁸⁸ If we did not know that Osmund already celebrated Wulfsige’s cult, it would be easy to read this passage as expressing a fear of Norman “incredulity,” but it seems rather to reflect Goscelin’s anxieties about Osmund accepting his work. Goscelin’s care to name his chief oral and written sources in his texts also seems designed to enhance the credibility of his own writing. Although Goscelin implores Lanfranc to accept the Life and Translation of Edith despite the fact so much of it was based on stories told by women—“nor will their sex be a reason for detracting from the truth of their testimony … the handmaids of the Lord prophesy as well as the menservants”—he never expresses any fears that English testimony per se would be doubted by his Norman readers.⁸⁹

Goscelin’s longing, as he states in the Book of Consolation, for a “little refuge similar to yours … where I might pray, read a little, write a little, compose a little; where I might have my own little table … where I might revive the dying, tiny spark of my little intellect, so that, unable to be fruitful in good deeds, I might yet be just a little bit fruitful by writing in the house of the Lord,” suggests that Goscelin’s composition of hagiography had a lot to do with his own sense of fulfillment.⁹⁰ Goscelin also complains to Eve of lethargy: “I wish I could point to my successes and say … ‘with the pen of a scrivener that writes swiftly.’ I have become more sluggish than a snail.”⁹¹ When he wrote this, he may well have been thinking specifically of the Life of Wulfsige and Life and Translation of Edith, texts that appear to have loitered long in the planning and gathering stage. Goscelin attributes his failure to complete the Life of Wulfsige before Herman’s death to “day-dreaming,” and writes of delaying the completion of the Life and Translation of Edith as a result of “bashfulness or negligence.”⁹² He speaks of “the requests of the senior nuns” at Wilton and the requests of the brothers at Sherborne in the prologues of these hagiographies, but Goscelin seems to have completed these texts on his own timetable and in response to his own pressing needs—his precarious position after the loss of Herman and of Eve—rather than any of theirs.