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This PhD thesis explores the representation of warfare in the earliest Anglo-Saxon Chronicle narratives, focusing on the Common Stock (to 891), and the first continuations which were produced during the reigns of King Alfred, King Edward, and Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians. As there was a major break in Chronicle-writing after the death of King Edward (924), this analysis focuses on the inception and initial stages of the text, with some forward-looking comments on the later reflexes. Chronicle annals tend to focus on military events and as a result of their dry style, seem to present an objective view; for this reason, historians often use these annals as fact-mines for dates or quick summaries of events. While it has been accepted that Chronicle entries provide only a snapshot of the times, and chroniclers were selective in the events they chose to record, the overarching goals of each narrative section will be examined in order to determine to what extend these accurately depict events. This thesis looks at the representation of warfare in the above-named sections, placing the battles and fortification-building described into their historical, literary and archaeological context. A close analysis of language and formulations used show that each set of annals was composed under specific circumstances, and the narrative reflects the current ruler’s goals, legitimating the rule and justifying policies, and encouraging subjects to follow these policies. By viewing the Chronicle texts in this light, one can look at the annals with a better awareness of their context of composition, drawing out new information about how warfare was conducted, the depiction of authority, and the persuasive purposes of the Chronicle.

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This study contemplates the part played by style in the creation of Anglo-Saxon Northumbrian works of art produced in the seventh and eighth century. Considering style as a locus of meaning, it investigates how Anglo-Saxon art makers may have responded to the emergence of Continental styles brought to the region with the spread of Christianity. By looking at some of the ways style has been treated within the scholarship of Anglo-Saxon art objects, and by thinking about some of the effects stylistic analysis has had on current understandings of style, an alternative view of style is proposed. Working from the standpoint that Anglo-Saxon creators of artistic products were fully aware of the ramifications their stylistic choices had in conferring meaning, this investigation seeks to reveal some of the potential signs and symbols embedded in Anglo-Saxon designs. Taking various analytic and theoretical approaches to the material, it aims to offer some new interpretations of some of Northumbria’s most canonical artworks and suggests new insights in to the mindset of Anglo-Saxon artists and viewers. Its overriding objective is try to understand more about style’s role in the creation processes involved in formulating these works of art.

This two-part thesis explores aspects of Anglo-Saxon number culture through a detailed examination of numerical encyclopaedic notes. The first part (Chapters I-III) is an edition of seventy-two notes transmitted in eight Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. These manuscripts are London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian B.vi, British Library, MS Royal 2.B.v, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius A.iii, British Library, MS Harley 3271, British Library, MS Cotton Julius A.ii; Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 183 and Corpus Christi College, MS 320; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS, lat.2825. The edition in Chapter III is preceded by the manuscript descriptions and discussions in Chapter II where the notes are placed in their manuscript contexts in order to explore questions about the codicological context and the cultural standing of these texts. The second part consists of three chapters, Chapters IV to VI. Chapter IV is an extensive commentary divided into four parts corresponding to the subject matter of the notes, which is chronological, spatial, enumerating and miscellaneous. Chapter V provides a series of case studies on metrology and the value of money in Anglo-Saxon monastic and lay culture. In Chapter VI, the computistical notes in British Library, MS Harley 3271 are discussed in the wider context of the study of computus. The two parts of the thesis demonstrate the rich culture of number symbolism these encyclopaedic notes are witnesses to and provide further evidence to the medieval belief of divine order based on Wisdom 11.21: ‘but thou hast ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight’. It further reveals how inextricably connected the spiritual and practical uses of number were, thereby pointing to an all-encompassing number culture which governed early medieval Christianity.

This thesis focuses on the influence of Rome – both as a place and as a concept – on the public arts of early Anglo-Saxon England. It considers the visual culture of Late Antique and Early Christian Rome (and the Classical world from which these emerged) alongside Anglo-Saxon architecture and sculpture, to draw out the connections between them, the nature of the contacts that shaped the arts, and the social, political and religious ideas underlying such inspiration and changes. It thus adopts a fresh perspective from which to view Anglo-Saxon art and architecture, moving away from the earlier focus on classification and style, and setting this against the backdrop of medieval England’s connection with Rome at all levels of society. Issues of patronage are placed at the forefront of this research, and particular attention is paid to the multiplicity of possible and intentional interpretations for individual monuments, their location, and effect on patrons, artists and audiences. Evidence from the catacomb art in Rome, and the graffiti found therein, is used in relation to Anglo-Saxon England, thus providing a different approach to the transmission of influences.

This thesis is a study of the textual representation of friendship in a selection of documentary and narrative sources, portraying the ideas circulating amongst the élite of late Anglo-Saxon England. Friendship as a reciprocal bond at the heart of both formal and informal power negotiations in the social structure of the late Anglo-Saxon kingdom has surprisingly been overlooked in research of this period. The aim of this study is to assess and reveal some of the ideological discourses which position friendship at the intersection of formal and informal bonds, public and private negotiation of power and authority, idealised and actual conceptualisations of social interaction, and secular and religious relations in an increasingly layered and complex society. A detailed study of sources in both Latin and the vernacular will be presented, opening up two linguistic modes channelling and negotiating this essentially reciprocal bond within a complex social interchange based on personal bonds and loyalty. Lawcodes, charters, wills, a selection of poetry, and a collection of hagiographical material will be assessed in close detail, demonstrating that friendship was both an ideological and practical notion at the heart of the social fabric of late Anglo-Saxon England. In doing so, friendship’s flexibility, multi-interpretability, and supplementary nature will prove to be its most valuable aspects for revealing ideas and commenting on various issues from within the construction of society, including the gendered vocabulary of social bonds. Friendship occurs as establishing and negotiating the bonds between the kings and their dependants alongside affective modes of behaviour, and as shaping and communicating the precarious relationship between the lay and religious élite. This in turn has important lessons to teach for the study of medieval friendship in a wider European context.

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This thesis provides a detailed and interdisciplinary analysis of one of medieval England’s most enduring saints’ cults: that of St Edmund of East Anglia. Focussing largely on the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the surviving material, literary and visual evidence is examined through the twin lenses of matter and narrative, thus offering a novel means of perceiving medieval saintly devotion. Borrowing elements from Alfred Gell’s distributed agency theory, Michel Callon and Bruno Latour’s Actor Network Theory (ANT) and notions of ‘object biography’, chapter one develops a bespoke means of modelling the spatial, temporal and material dimensions of cult. Saints’ cults are imagined as expansive and entangled phenomena, focussed around a central ‘relic nexus’. Following this, chapter two employs these ideas to analyse the historical and material growth of Bury St Edmunds as a cult centre. This chapter demonstrates that Edmund’s materiality both played a significant role in determining the form his cult took and positioned him within an elite cadre of incorrupt saints. Switching to the narrative lens, chapter three contrasts early chronicle texts with later hagiography and charter evidence. This chapter shows that, across succeeding generations, Edmund’s legend shifted in line with contemporary historical circumstances to become entwined with the institutional identity of Bury St Edmunds Abbey. Chapter four expands the narrative analysis to consider the consequences of literary and oral dissemination. Tracing the literary transmission of a story implicating Edmund in the death of Swein Forkbeard, this chapter reveals how a series of twelfth-century, historical and political writers adapted this legend for their own purposes. Yet, far from being limited to literature, the chapter further argues that Edmund’s narrative was couched within a fluid oral context. Chapter four concludes by employing the theoretical structures developed in chapter one to model the narrative environment of Edmund’s cult. Chapter five focusses on how Edmund was visualised at his cult centre. A particular example of pictorial storytelling produced at Bury, the miniature sequence in Pierpont Morgan MS M.736, is analysed to reveal that visual representations provided a means of expounding both the material and narrative sensibilities of cult. Chapter six expands the visual and material discussion. A range of media, from large-scale wall art to small-scale archaeological finds, are used to show that Edmund and his narrative could be presenced in personal and idiosyncratic ways through a variety of objects. Chapter seven draws together the interrelated strands from the preceding sections and discusses what we can say about the relationship between matter and narrative in cult. It concludes that combinations of Edmund’s materiality and narrative could be combined, to create the unique truths that fashioned personal and corporate identities. Edmund’s cult, it is suggested, was a multi-faceted and expansive phenomenon which, although based around his shrine at Bury St Edmunds, held meaning well beyond. Following this, some concluding thoughts are offered on how the theoretical framework developed in this thesis might be adapted and applied to similar cult structures.