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About the Project

Introduction
The Database
   The Database: Conversion
   The Database: Specific Motifs
   The Database: Miracles
   The Database: A Pilot Project
Methodology: Conversion and Miracle
Methodology: Sources
   Sources from England
   Sources from Ireland
   Sources from Wales
Acknowledgements

Before entering the database, users are encouraged to read the following information regarding the processes by which this resource was compiled.

Introduction

‘Mapping Conversion’ is the collaborative work of Dr Robert Gallagher, Dr Jennifer Key, Professor Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Dr Helen Oxenham, Dr Sarah Waidler and Dr Myriah Williams and has been made possible through the financial support of the University of Cambridge’s Isaac Newton Trust. Through its emphasis on conversion, it is linked to the Leverhulme Trust-funded project, ‘Converting the Isles’. The initial impetus for the research was provided by a student-led initiative entitled ‘Mapping Miracles’, which was launched in 2013 by three then-PhD students, Julianne Pigott and Sarah Waidler of the University of Cambridge and Jennifer Key of the University of St Andrews. Their aim was to explore the value and feasibility of an online searchable database for the miracle accounts of Insular hagiographic literature from the seventh to the twelfth centuries, the collaborators having been inspired by the intertextual nature of medieval literary production and the rich tradition of hagiographic writing in which Insular authors had been engaged. While this database serves in part as a methodological pilot project for the wider aims of ‘Mapping Miracles’, it is also intended as a stand-alone resource, for which the primary focus is conversion rather than the miraculous, though related miracles have been noted in the cataloguing process. Moreover, the theoretical and technical issues that the compilers of the present resource have confronted are highly pertinent to the success of any future database centred on the indexing of hagiographic motifs of any kind.

The initial pilot database was launched in June 2016. This focussed on English and Irish material and involved Gallagher, Key, Ní Mhaonaigh, Oxenham and Waidler. The lives of the Welsh saints were added in 2017, also with the financial support of the Isaac Newton Trust. This material was prepared by Williams with the support of Ní Mhaonaigh and Waidler. This second strand of the project was assisted by the work of the AHRC-funded project ‘Vitae Sanctorum Cambriae: The Latin Lives of the Welsh Saints’, based at the University of Cambridge and the Canolfan Uwchefrydiau Cymreig a Cheltaidd Prifysgol Cymru/University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies.

The Database

Much of the value of this database lies in its coverage. 119 texts have been examined in the making of this resource, including sixty-four hagiographies composed in England, thirty-three composed in Wales and twenty-two composed in Ireland. The earliest specimens date to the seventh century, the latest are likely to be from the fourteenth, although the majority are from the twelfth century or before. Ninety-nine are in Latin, while fourteen are in Old English, two are in Middle Welsh and three are in Medieval Irish along with a single item that is a mixture of Medieval Irish and Latin. Through the cataloguing of hagiographies from both Anglo-Saxon England, early medieval Ireland and the entire medieval period of Wales, this resource enables comparison between three areas of north-west Europe — for the majority of this period two of which were Celtic-speaking, the other Germanic-speaking — with a myriad of connections, yet also with striking contrasts in their experiences of and responses to religious conversion. Since the time of Bede the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons has regularly been attributed to a strong Roman and Irish missionary presence from the late sixth century onwards, much to the discredit of any influence from the British Church, which had maintained a presence on the island in some form since the third century. The roots of conversion go back to the Roman period in Wales as well, with influence from Ireland at a later date also possible, but its conversion story is more difficult to piece together from limited written sources.¹ Meanwhile, Ireland’s earliest relationship with Christianity, meanwhile, has often been told through the life of a single figure, Patrick. The contrasts are no less strong in modern scholarship, which offers considerable discussion of Anglo-Saxon conversion yet much less on the Irish or Welsh experience. The work of the ‘Converting the Isles’ project has sought to redress this imbalance, emphasising the efficacy of a comparative approach and viewing Anglo-Saxon, Irish and Welsh evidence together.² This holds true as much for literary representations of conversion as it does for the undoubtedly more complex ‘real’ events themselves.

The Database: Conversion

Sixty of the 119 hagiographies in this resource recount an instance of conversion, with twenty-six texts including multiple examples. In total, there are 120 conversion episodes catalogued in the database. The spread of such accounts across the corpus demonstrates that while descriptions of conversion were a frequent feature of the genre and were of particular value to certain authors, there were no prescriptive demands for their inclusion. Indeed, some narratives are set significantly after the time of conversion, in societies that were already deeply Christian. In these cases, it is perhaps no surprise that instances of conversion are nowhere to be seen.

Where we do find depictions of conversion, it is most often the case that the author was writing several years or centuries after the episodes are purported to have taken place. As such, we are dealing with the memory – imagined or not – of conversion frequently in markedly different contexts to those that are conjured up within the hagiographical narratives. Much as any one experience of conversion needs to be considered within its own local context, thus the circumstances specific to the production and consumption of any single hagiography need to be borne in mind, including any possible political, cultural, theological or liturgical influences. As Gabrielle Spiegel so eloquently argued, the ‘social logic’ of the text is key to understanding authorial decisions.³ In other words, conversion was, in real and in literary terms, not an exclusively religious reality. It is for this reason that as a starting point for users, the database contains a summary of information regarding a text’s author, date of composition and its earliest manuscript witnesses. In addition, narrative features that the collaborators considered to be possibly revealing of such influence, such as descriptions of landscape and specific individuals, have also been included in the database.

The Database: Specific Motifs

Further dimensions that researchers may wish to explore through this resource are the impact of literary tradition and form. It is well known that medieval hagiography is a highly referential body of literature, often alluding to Biblical stories and drawing on topoi found widespread throughout the genre. The nuances of any particular adaption of a motif must be treated with care, making it challenging to catalogue all of the potentially salient features of a conversion account. This database, nevertheless, includes basic information that will assist researchers who are seeking to track the use of specific motifs across the corpus. Furthermore, it should be noted that a considerable number of the texts within this database are concerned with the same saint, some of which were direct sources for others in the catalogue. There are, for example, four texts dedicated to St Dunstan. Comparison between these narratives may yield rich results, particularly when one also considers the potential impact of versification or of translation between languages.

The Database: Miracles

Given the genesis of this project, the miraculous dimension to hagiographic accounts of conversion has also been a particular concern for its compilers. Special attention, therefore, has been given not only to when a conversion account involves a miracle, but also to what type of miracle takes place. In all cases, basic summaries of any such conversion miracles have been provided and users are encouraged to explore these events typologically across the corpus and alongside accounts of conversion that the compilers do not consider to contain a miracle. It should be noted, for example, that of the 120 conversion accounts in this database, fifty-seven feature a miracle – and it is possible to tease out far more specific patterns. For instance, ten of these conversion miracles involve the resurrection of the dead and of these ten, exactly half are contained in Irish texts.

The Database: A Pilot Project

As a pilot project, this resource has sought to explore the possible merits and challenges of working comparatively with a large body of literature and, specifically, of categorising their details for public consumption. The information on any single text or conversion episode is relatively elementary, but it is hoped that this database will serve as a guide for deeper and more detailed discussions of the material at hand. For the compilers of this resource, it is clear that there is still much to be uncovered within the Insular hagiographic corpus; in turn, it still has much to tell us about the power of the conversion story for medieval authors and their audiences.

Methodology: Conversion and Miracle

First, we must state our definition of ‘conversion’. Although the adoption of a new religion – in this case, Christianity – is at first glance a seemingly straightforward process, historians and anthropologists have increasingly stressed the complex and multivalent conceptualisations that this term embodies.⁴ When and how does an individual officially ‘convert’? Is ‘conversion’ a single moment or a transition that could span weeks, months or even years? And where does the frontier lie between unconverted and converted status? One could argue that conversion is a relative concept drawn at various points along a single spectrum of faith, allowing various experiences and actions to be framed within a shared discourse of ‘conversion’. Reform from heterodox to orthodox practice, therefore, could be framed in the same way as the rejection of paganism in favour of Christianity. These are challenging questions that each researcher needs to confront on their own terms. For the purposes of the database, we have limited ourselves to accounts that explicitly state that a non-Christian individual has converted to Christianity, be it through the agency of a saint or by another means. Thus, we have not taken into account, for instance, ‘conversions’ from secular to monastic life, as are found, for example, in Eadmer’s life of Anselm.

Second, what do we mean by a ‘miracle’? This term is no less conceptually challenging – and indeed, contested – and the compilers of this resource acknowledge that alternative interpretations are valid, especially given that theologians during the medieval period could not always agree on what, if anything, could be understood as ‘miraculous’. We have chosen to adopt a definition in line with the words of David Basinger, who states that in various religious systems a miracle is taken to mean some kind of event that would not be expected to occur without the ‘intentional activity of a supernatural being’ (author’s emphasis).⁵ We have thus taken a miracle to be an event that would not normally occur in the natural order of things and therefore points towards the involvement or intervention of the divine in the realisation of that event.

Methodology: Sources

The database contains 119 prose and verse vitae. Unedited lives, or lives that have only been edited in the Acta Sanctorum, were initially omitted from consideration, although two exceptions (the Vita S. Wenefrede by Robert of Shrewsbury and the Vita S. Dauidis from Lincoln, Cathedral Library 149), have been included with the addition of the Welsh lives in order to provide completeness for this range of material.⁶ The majority of the texts used in the pilot version of this database are from England. This is due in part to the greater number of studies and materials available for hagiographic material from England and in part to the finite time-period and resources available for the production of this pilot version.

Sources from England

It should be noted that the database comprises only data taken from individual vitae. No hagiographic collections are included in this resource, even if they contain relevant material. Thus, Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum and Ælfric’s Lives of Saints or Catholic Homilies collections, for example, have not been mined for this trial database. The only exception concerns those vitae transmitted with the Lives of Saints but not written by Ælfric, such as the Old English Life of Euphrosyne (LS 7). The same applies to various homily collections (Blickling, Vercelli) and the many hagiographical notices in the Old English Martyrology, for example. Moreover, the database does not treat passiones. There are exceptions to this general rule, however; for instance, the legends relating to St Kenelm are designated vitae, despite the fact that the child-saint Kenelm was martyred by his tutor. Indeed, many of the wider motifs found in the Vita brevior S. Kenelmi (BHL 4642m) and the Vita et miracula S. Kenelmi (BHL 4641n–4641t) are motifs that typically relate to confessors rather than martyrs. In such cases, the internal designation of the text is followed where applicable, which means that legends of martyrs are included where the legend also treats of the saint’s life. Standalone miracula and/or translatio texts are also omitted from the database. Although Frank Barlow asserts that the anonymous Vita S. Ædwardi Regis, for example, is not hagiography, its designation as a vita in the text itself means that it has been included in the database.⁷ Given our emphasis on vitae, the majority of the saints under consideration are confessors.

In addition, there are a number of short Old English notices relating to saints that it was felt pertinent to include in the database. For example, a notice on St Paulinus (LS 31 Paulinus; B3.3.31) is appended to folio 202b of Oxford, Bodleian Library Bodley 342, a homiliary containing, for the most part, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies. The notice, which runs to seventeen lines in Kenneth Sisam’s edition of the text is written in a later hand to that of the original manuscript Explicit.⁸ Given that the text functions almost as a standalone mini-vita of the saint, it was decided that the text should be included in the data sample. The extant Old English notice on the Deposition of St Augustine, however, which is, like the Paulinus notice, ‘an addition within its manuscript’, has not been included because, as Jane Roberts notes, ‘there is nothing specific to Augustine’ in its few lines.⁹

In respect of the ‘English’ material, this pilot database encompasses texts from the earliest hagiographic compositions made in Anglo-Saxon England in the early eighth century, up to the time of William of Malmesbury (c. 1090-1143), in Latin and Old English. William of Malmesbury’s Lives of Patrick, Indract and Benignus are now lost. They have been edited in Michael Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson, ed., William of Malmesbury: Saints’ Lives: Lives of SS. Wulfstan, Dunstan, Patrick, Benignus and Indract (Oxford, 2002) from John Leland’s notes on the manuscripts which he saw at Glastonbury Abbey in the sixteenth century, from the works of John of Glastonbury and from various other sources (see pp. 307-13). As these are reconstructions of lost texts, however, they are not included in the database.

Sources from Ireland

Medieval Ireland produced over one hundred Latin lives of about sixty Irish saints, as well as approximately fifty lives concerning forty saints in Medieval Irish before the fifteenth century.¹⁰ The particular lives chosen for this pilot database comprise the earliest lives written in Ireland along with a very small selection of later lives.

The five earliest hagiographical works from Ireland, which were written in Latin between the later seventh and the early eighth centuries, are hagiographical texts relating to Brigit, Columba and Patrick. Bethu Brigte (The Life of Brigit) is the sole life included dating to the ninth century and is bilingual, with approximately three-quarters of the surviving text being in Old Irish (the language of the period c. 650-900), and one quarter in Latin. Nine further works known as the ‘O’Donohue Lives’ have also been included in this resource, which are the lives of Áed mac Bricc, Ailbe of Emly, Cainnech, Colmán Élo, Fintán of Clonenagh, Fínán Cam, Fintán/Munnu of Taghmon, Luguid/Molua of Clonfertmulloe and Ruadán. These texts have been dated by Richard Sharpe to the eighth century, although it should be noted that this dating is contentious, with much later dates having been proposed for these texts by other scholars as well.¹¹

In addition to these texts, seven other lives have also been included in the database, comprising the lives of Ciarán of Clonmacnoise, Findchú of Brí Gobann and Senán of Inis Cathaig. The purpose of including such lives in the pilot project version of this resource is to suggest to users of the database the possible fruits that can be harvested from later texts written in Ireland, including those dating from a later period than the ‘English’ material in this database. As such, the saints chosen for this project represent diverse cults, with Ciarán possessing one of the largest cults in Ireland aside from those of Brigit, Columba and Patrick, and Findchú one of the smallest and least studied. All of these saints have texts written in Middle Irish (the language of the period c. 900-1200), and Ciarán and Senán both possess Latin lives as well. Only lives written in Ireland have been included, thus the various lives concerning Senán written in Brittany and on the Continent are not considered here.

Sources from Wales

There are no Welsh lives of saints extant from before the late eleventh century, although there are clues within the surviving literary record that lives existed in Wales from an earlier period.¹² At this latter date, we appear to have the start of a blossoming of hagiography in Wales, with two lives coming from this period and many more appearing in the twelfth century. One of these late eleventh-century lives is the Vita S. Dauidis by Rhygyfarch ap Sulien, whose father was bishop of St Davids twice: from 1073 to 1078 and from 1080 to 1085. Rhygyfarch’s work lies behind all other versions of the Vita S. Dauidis that were to be produced in the coming centuries and those from Wales are included in this database. At approximately the same time or slightly later, Llifris of Llancarfan composed his life of Cadog, which was followed only slightly later by a life of the same saint by Caradoc of Llancarfan. There are also collections of lives, such as that found in the Book of Llandaf (Liber Landauensis; Aberystwyth, NLW MS 17110E), which dates from the twelfth century. These lives join with other texts in this manuscript in arguing for the rights regarding the property owned and controlled by the ecclesiastical establishment of Llandaf.¹³ Another collection of lives appears c. 1200 in the manuscript known as British Library, Cotton Vespasian A. xiv. This collection represents the largest collection of lives from Wales and even contains multiple versions of some lives, such as that of Cybi of Holyhead. At a later period a collection of lives in abbreviated form is found further away from home in the Nova Legenda Anglie, which has its origins in John of Tynemouth’s Sanctilogium Angliae, dating from the fourteenth century. This was added to and rearranged by John Capgrave and later Wynkyn de Worde to form the surviving collection.¹⁴ The majority of the Welsh lives found in this collection derive from those in Vespasian A. xiv and it is likely that Capgrave actually used this manuscript as his source.

The lives from Wales included in this database are representative of the prose lives composed in Wales during the medieval period which concern native saints culted in Wales. International saints, such as Catherine, have not been included, nor have the lives of the two Irish saints found within Vespasian A. xiv, Maedóc and Brendan. The term ‘native’ saint when it comes to Wales is somewhat difficult to define, given that the hagiographical accounts of some of these saints tell us they were born outside of Wales, most commonly in Cornwall, Brittany or Ireland. It has been taken here to encompass saints who have lives that contain a strong element involving Wales and who appear to have had their main cult sites within Wales. However, texts which concern saints associated with Wales but which were written outside of Wales, such as the life of Gildas by a monk of Rhuys or the two early lives of Samson of Dol, have not been entered into this database. The later life of Samson, which occurs in the Book of Llandaf, has been included within the database due to its incorporation of Welsh material, in particular that relating to other saints within the Book of Llandaf, which point to its having been redacted within Wales.¹⁵

Only two lives of native saints exist in Welsh before the very late Middle Ages. They have been included, though both are likely to date from the fourteenth century and thus are later than the majority of the texts in this database. Other late lives from the Nova Legenda Anglie are included where there is no other earlier life of that particular saint extant in Wales. Although the Vita S. Wenefreda by Robert of Shrewsbury was produced just outside of Wales, it has been included here due to the combined endorsements of its importance in the hagiographical tradition of Wenefreda/Gwenfrewi and its unique position amongst these lives as having been written shortly after the translation of this saint’s relics from Wales, an event in which the author himself participated. Though exceptional, the inclusion of this life and those from the Nova Legenda Angliae allows this database to offer a fuller coverage of the Welsh saints and how their lives present conversion.

We hope that this pilot database will prove useful to many of you and will encourage further research in this area. Comments on this pilot project are welcome and can be sent to Máire Ní Mhaonaigh (mnm21@cam.ac.uk).

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for financial support from the Isaac Newton Trust of the University of Cambridge. For advice and support, we wish to thank Julianne Pigott, co-founder of the student-led project, ‘Mapping Miracles’, as well as Dr Rosalind Love, Head of the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic, University of Cambridge and Dr Christine Rauer, School of English, University of St Andrews. For assistance with the Welsh lives we are grateful to Professor Paul Russell and Dr Ben Guy of the ‘Vitae Sanctorum Cambriae: The Latin Lives of the Welsh Saints’ project. We are indebted to Dr Andrew McCarthy of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies and Jen Pollard of the University of Cambridge for technical assistance. We would also like to thank Dr Fiona Edmonds for her photo of the high cross in Ahenny, Co. Tipperary, Ireland on the Home Page.

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Footnotes