This thesis considers how religious literature represented sickness and disability in Anglo- Saxon and post-Conquest England. Based on Gospel accounts of Jesus's healings, narratives of miracle-cures were highly valued within medieval Christian culture. By analysing a selection of miracle-cure narratives from the main period of miracle writing in England, from the age of Bede to the late twelfth century, this project considers the social significance of such stories. All miracle-cures followed the pattern of a spiritual triumph over the material world, but this thesis focuses on how hagiographers represented human experiences of sickness and disabilities. The first two chapters of this thesis address the conceptual structure of the project. The first explains the two areas of scholarly theory that underpin this thesis. These are the use of narrative sources for historical study; and sociological conceptualisations of bodily difference. The second chapter orientates the case-studies selected for this project in their context. Miracle-cures were recounted in relation to other aspects of the culture of medieval England, most importantly the theology of sainthood and of sin. The remaining three chapters of the thesis provide detailed thematic analysis of selected miracle-cure narratives. The third chapter asks how the spiritual experience of bodily difference was understood. The next chapter considers the physical understandings of a body that was affected by either sickness or disability, and the links between miracle-cure narratives and contemporary medical theory. The fifth and final chapter addresses the representation of social aspects of sickness and disability in these texts, in particular the moralising rhetoric of such texts in favour of community support. This thesis concludes with a discussion of how modern Disability Studies and scholarship on medieval culture benefit from interaction with one another.

In the fifth century, after the departure of the Romans, according to tradition, which is based on the ancient written sources, Britain was invaded by the Angles and Saxons. This view has been questioned in the last century. The size of the ‘invasion’, and indeed its very existence, have come into doubt. However, this doubting school of thought does not seem to take into account all of the evidence. An interdisciplinary, nuanced approach has been taken in this thesis. Firstly, the question of Germanic raiding has been examined, with reference to the Saxon Shore defences. It is argued that these defences, in their geographical context, point to the likelihood of raiding. Then the written sources have been re-examined, as well as physical artefacts. In addition to geography, literature and archaeology (the disciplines which are most commonly used when the coming of the Angles and Saxons is investigated), linguistic and genetic data have been examined. The fields of linguistics and genetics, which have not often both been taken into consideration with previous approaches, add a number of valuable insights. This nuanced approach yields a picture of events that rules out the ‘traditional view’ in some ways, such as the idea that the Saxons exterminated the Britons altogether, but corroborates it in other ways. There was an invasion of a kind (of Angles – not Saxons), who came in comparatively small numbers, but found in Britain a society already mixed and comprising Celtic and Germanic-speaking peoples: a society implied by Caesar and Tacitus and corroborated by linguistic and genetic data.

The thesis examines a number of questions concerning the design, construction, costs and use of Romano-British seagoing and inland waters shipping. In the first part the reasons for the methods of construction for seagoing and coastal vessels, such as the Blackfriars Ship 1, the St. Peter Port Ship and the Barland's Farm Boat, have been investigated. The constructional characteristics of the two ships are massive floors and frames, with the planking fastened only to the floors and frames with heavy clenched iron nails. There is no edge to edge fastening of the planks, with tenons inserted into mortises cut into the edges of the planks, as is normal in the Mediterranean tradition of ship construction in the Roman period. The Romano-British ships also differ from the Scandinavian tradition of clinker building with overlapping planks nailed to each other along their length. It has been concluded that a natural phenomenon, the large tidal range around the British Isles and the northern coasts of Gaul and Germany, had a dominant effect on the design of seagoing vessels. Deep water harbours, such as Portus, Caesar ea Maritima and Alexandria in the Mediterranean, where ships could lie afloat at all times, were neither practicable nor economic with the technology available. At the British ports, such as Dover, London and Chichester, ships had to come in with the high tide, moor to simple wharves at the high tide level, and then settle on the ground as the tide dropped. At the numerous small havens, inlets and estuaries around the British coasts, ships would come in with the tide, settle on a natural or man-made 'hard' as the tide fell, and discharge cargo over the side to carts, pack animals or people. This mode of operation required sturdy ships that could take the ground without damage, and also withstand a certain amount of 'bumping' on the bottom in the transition period from fully afloat to fully aground. The second part of the thesis investigates the cost of building, maintaining and operating various types of vessels. To do this, a new mode for measuring cost, the Basic Economic Unit, or BEU, has been developed. The probable volume of the various types of cargoes carried has been examined. It appears that grain was the dominant cargo in both coastal and overseas traffic. The total cost of building, maintaining and operating the seagoing and inland water shipping was less than one percent of the gross product of Britain, a small cost for an essential service. / Arts, Faculty of / Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies, Department of / Graduate