Perhaps the most telling story, though, has to do with the ringing of the bell. Some monks “bore it ill that they were so frequently awakened from their night-time sleep” to give thanks for miracles, Lantfred writes, and “they perversely persuaded others” to ignore Eadsige’s bell-ringing.72 After nearly two weeks of this—Eadsige must have been very upset—Swithun appeared in a vision to a noblewoman, telling her to tell Æthelwold that the monks of the Old Minster were not being properly grateful. Æthelwold sent a reprimand to the monks, and things improved: “From that time on … no matter how often a miracle was performed at the body of the blessed saint, whether during the day or in the middle of the night, and the sacrist rang the bell even lightly, the monks went to the monastery in order to praise the omnipotent Lord.”73
The detail about “ringing the bell lightly” certainly sounds like it would have come from Eadsige. When Lantfred writes that 25 people were cured on the day of the Feast of the Assumption or that 36 people were cured in three days, it likely that such information came to him from the man who rang the bell for all those miracles.74 Indeed, Eadsige may well be behind more chapters of Lantfred’s collection than those in which he is named. If Lantfred did not speak Old English, or spoke it haltingly, it would have been difficult for him to get details about many of the miracles in his collection for himself. Lantfred claims to have spoken with the blacksmith whose vision was relayed to Eadsige—“I learned from the smith himself that these things had happened exactly as the present little book describes”75—but otherwise does not present himself as listening to the lay English men and women featured throughout his collection. In two chapters, Lantfred mentions how people came and “reported to the monks of that place” about their miracles—it seems likely that Lantfred then heard the story from the monks, rather than the original tellers.76 Lantfred many well have heard many of the stories he recounts in the comfortable company of Eadsige and other Old Minster monks enthusiastic about Swithun’s cult.
In the collection’s prefatory letter, Lantfred addresses the monks of the Old Minster: “I, the most worthless of all men … sustained by no prerogative of divine learning nor by any authority accruing from my good conduct, but obeying your commands, trusting in your prayers—have come trembling to the mighty vastness of this sea.” In the next sentence, Lantfred speaks of “the good will of you who are requesting the work.”77 Lapidge reads this passage as indicating that after Swithun’s translation, “the monks of the Old Minster soon felt the need to have these abundant miracles recorded, and the task fell to Lantfred.”78 However, Lantfred’s presentation of his composition as the result of a “request” seems more like a considerate genuflection than an indication that it was the Old Minster monks who had first felt a need for such a text. It had been over 150 years since an English monk had produced a miracle collection. Lantfred, in contrast, came from a monastery and a region in which miracle collections were actively being made. Fleury, Lantfred’s own monastery, had a distinguished tradition of miracle collecting. It was home to one of the most well-known collections of the early medieval period, Adrevald’s collection of the miracles of St. Benedict written in the 860s.79 While Adrevald’s collection was not so focused on contemporary healing miracles as Lantfred’s would be, this collection must have been known to Lantfred and impressed on him how a text could keep the memory of past miracles alive. Lantfred was also likely aware of the translations of relics and miracle collections compiled at Trier in the 960s, at Metz around the same time, in Picardy after 964, at Gorze in 965, and other contemporary examples, as Lapidge has outlined.80
It seems likely that Lantfred was the one who thought it was important to write a miracle collection. Writing was something Lantfred clearly enjoyed; in his collection for Swithun, he employs grecisms, rhyme, and other rhetorical pyrotechnics. Lantfred was such a fine writer, in fact, that Lapidge terms him “the most accomplished prose stylist active in England since the days of Aldhelm and Bede.”81 A different monk from Fleury might have been impressed by the goings-on at Winchester, told his friends about Swithun’s miracles, and enjoyed mulling over miracles with Eadsige, but written nothing. Lantfred, though, wanted to write—and, as noted above, he was thinking about Frankish readers as well as English ones. Four manuscripts of Lantfred’s collection survive. There are two early copies written at Winchester, one dated to the late tenth century, perhaps 996, the other to c.1000; there is one copy with a Fleury origin, dated c.1000–1050; and there is a copy made at Worcester between about 1050 and 1075.82 Without Lantfred’s text, it would be hard to guess at the full vibrancy of Swithun’s cult in the 970s. Apart from his collection, all we have concerning Swithun from this ten-year period is an enigmatic and unlabeled image in the Benedictional of St. Æthelwold, a set of benedictions that briefly mention Swithun’s abundant miracles in the same manuscript, and recently discovered archaeological evidence indicating a rebuilding of the Old Minster around this time.83
“It was in no small measure a result of Lantfred’s eloquent advocacy of St. Swithun,” Lapidge writes, “that he quickly became established in the vanguard of Anglo-Saxon saints.”84 Surely, though, it was not Lantfred’s eloquence that placed Swithun in this vanguard, but the volatile oral spread of stories of his miracles and the making of more and more. By the time Lantfred began collecting miracle stories, Swithun’s cult had already reached far more locales outside of Winchester than his text ever would. Lantfred’s essential motive for miracle collecting—I want this cult and these stories to be remembered, “so that such great favours may not lie hidden from succeeding generations”—would be articulated again and again by later miracle collectors in England. It is a less ambitious and less political motive than scholars tend to want to read into miracle collections, but it is precisely what Lantfred’s text accomplished, both in the medieval period and up to the present day.
Lantfred’s collection, in sum, appears to be the result of a fortunate and unusual conjunction of circumstances. Here was a Frankish visitor whose home monastery was a traditional center for miracle collecting, a gifted writer coming upon a cult that astounded him, a foreigner who developed a friendship with and appreciated the stories of the prickly sacrist at Winchester. Lantfred’s initial trip to England likely had nothing to do with Swithun. We should not imagine that Lantfred’s sole business in England was miracle collecting, nor that he came to England with the intent of creating such a text. Instead, he seems to have been inspired to write by the contemporary cult, whenever he first came upon it. It was an extremely unusual project for someone residing in late tenth-century England. Lantfred’s efforts were respected, considering Wulfstan’s pains to versify the collection and Ælfric’s to abbreviate and to translate it, but his example seems to have done little to inspire more miracle collecting in England. After Lantfred finished his collection, new English cults appeared (Dunstan’s at Canterbury seems to have been particularly strong), other cults faded, and still others, including Swithun’s, rolled on, all with minimal or no written record of the miracle stories being created and exchanged.85 It would be a full century before another writer—a foreigner, again—would think it important to preserve miracle stories about English saints in texts.
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
