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
