a few of the many miracles of modern times and of our own time” [ex multis moderni et nostri temporis].56 Goscelin uses the term “modern times” again in his Life of Wulfsige, here as a transition after a story about Cnut: “of his very many miracles, we here faithfully report in addition to the above those which have been wrought in modern times.”57 Though Goscelin does not explicitly mark out a transition to “modern times” in the Translation of Edith, here again, strikingly, he launches his account with three stories about Cnut and Emma.58 The reign of Cnut, about fifty years earlier, seems to have been the dividing line for Goscelin, what he considered to be the limit of living memory and after which he could start to write with confidence.
It is hard to say now whether the monks and nuns who told stories to Goscelin would also have viewed Cnut’s reign as the starting gate of the “modern,” or whether this was Goscelin’s own working shorthand. In any case, “modern” stories, the ones from about a generation ago, were his favorites. Goscelin’s texts bulge with stories from about twenty to thirty years before his time. Most of the posthumous miracle stories Goscelin tells in the Life and Miracles of Kenelm derive from the time of Abbot Godwin (1042–53).59 In the Translation of Edith, Goscelin highlights the abbacy of Brihtgifu (c.1040–65).60 In the Life of Wulfsige, Bishop Ælfwold, who held the bishopric sometime after 1045 until c.1062, is mentioned more than Goscelin’s own mentor Bishop Herman.61 The closer Goscelin got to the present, the more cursory he became. After story upon story from the time of Abbot Godwin in the Life and Miracles of Kenelm, Goscelin makes an explicit transition to “miracles recently brought about” [nuper patrata], and describes a miracle connected to Godric, abbot of Winchcombe from 1054 to 1066.62 It is a short chapter, followed by three even shorter chapters about events “last year” (likely sometime in the 1070s or early 1080s) and so the text comes to a swift close. In the Translation of Edith, Goscelin labels a miracle that happened “in the time of bishop Herman”—probably dead when Goscelin was writing—a “recent” miracle, and with that story, he ends the text.63
Stories the older monks and nuns remembered from their youth were clearly the most to Goscelin’s liking in terms of time period. In terms of type, he tells a wide range in all three of these texts—healings, releases, property disputes, feast day punishments, and so forth—but he seems to have especially liked stories that explained the existence of shrines and cultic objects. Goscelin has much more to say about relic translations than Lantfred did, even though most of the translations he describes happened before he was born.64 Structuring his texts by abbacies made tracking and inserting multiple translation stories easier, and may well have determined his decision to organize his texts this way in the first place. Goscelin was also eager to tell the stories behind objects like the distaff and spindle at Wulfsige’s shrine, the blood-stained psalter at Winchcombe, the little white pallium at Wilton, the broken chains hanging up at Edith’s shrine, Wulfsige’s staff, Edith’s pastoral ring, and where the gold came from for the shrines.65 The difficulty was knowing where to put these stories. Goscelin terms the distaff and spindle story a “modern” miracle, for instance, but does not connect it to any bishop or prior.66
Miracle stories about other local saints were also difficult to place. The standard format of a text focused unwaveringly on a single saint did not seem to reflect the conversational realities Goscelin encountered at many houses. At Wilton, Goscelin was hearing a significant number of miracle stories about Wulfthryth, Edith’s mother. At Sherborne, Wulfsige and Juthwara also seem to have been quite tightly linked together by the 1070s—Goscelin said that they shone “with twin brightness.”67 A century earlier, Lantfred may well have been hearing about miracles performed by St. Iudoc or other Winchester saints, but kept his text’s focus unwaveringly on Swithun.68 Goscelin, with his stronger interest in translations, objects, and the development of cults at these houses, found ways to slip in a few stories about Wulfthryth and Juthwara even though they fit neither the organization nor the titles of his works. He made excuses for the insertion of a mini-vita and miracle collection for Wulfthryth in his Translation of Edith: “it is right that the same page should celebrate them both together since the same church embraces them.”69 Juthwara’s story appears rather abruptly toward the end of the Life of Wulfsige, where Goscelin jumps back a bishop in order to explain when Juthwara was translated, reaches further back to describe how she had died by being beheaded by her brother, and then leaps forward to the present to relate how bishop Osmund had put Wulfsige and Juthwara into “reliquaries splendidly adorned with gold.”70 He concludes his text overall by stating “we have added to [Wulfsige’s] noble train the martyred virgin Juthwara, and have woven roses among lilies … [so that] by being blended they might give a more splendid display.”71
In all three texts, Goscelin will also ignore chronology and link stories together by type rather than by time. For instance, he describes how Edith saved Cnut from shipwreck at sea, and, in the same chapter, he describes how “later on,” Ealdred, the archbishop of York, was also saved at sea by Edith.72 Just a few chapters afterward, Goscelin describes how Edith defended the property of Wilton during the reign of Queen Emma, and then writes “we also add an event which has recently taken place, very similar to this one,” going on to tell a story about Brihtric in the next chapter.73 Similar pairings are evident in Goscelin’s work for Kenelm: he matches together two stories about feast day punishments (cc. 20–21), two stories about mute men speaking (cc. 23–24), and two stories about fetters bursting (c. 26). These are all in a section ostensibly dedicated to stories from abbot Godwin’s tenure. Matching stories together like this held rhetorical as well as practical value, beautifying Goscelin’s texts in ways that later miracle collectors would also emulate.
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Goscelin’s work to slot miracle stories into chronologies is his treatment—or, rather, lack of treatment—of the Norman Conquest. In Goscelin’s histories, William the Conqueror and Norman prelates appear briefly at the end of the story simply as the next in the line of succession of leaders, with no mention of Harold’s brief reign and no suggestion that a watershed event had occurred. Goscelin describes the abbacy of Ælfgifu at Wilton, for instance, as “partly under [King Edward] and partly under the present king, William.”74 In his three early works, the closest Goscelin comes to mentioning the consequences of the Conquest is at the end of the Translation of Edith, where he describes how a young Wilton nun felt upset about Edith’s failure to prevent the “erosion of the possessions of the monastery.” Yet even here, Goscelin does not name or blame any Norman for this erosion—it is the nun who is chided for disbelieving in Edith’s powers.75
Goscelin’s silence about the Conquest and reluctance to tell stories about the very recent past invite a range of readings. Paul Antony Hayward reads parts of the Life and Translation of Edith as “a direct command to Lanfranc to support [Edith’s] cult” with the “veiled aggression that typifies his work.”76 In general, Hayward sees the English hagiography of the 1070s and 1080s, nearly all of it written by Goscelin, as intended “to assert the righteousness of these English communities”: “These saints’ cults may well … have been the most formidable weapon left to the English in their resistance to Norman attempts to deprive them of their offices.”77 Stephanie Hollis views Abbess Godiva at Wilton as the woman behind the Life and Translation of Edith, suggesting that Godiva sought “to employ Edith again in the service of the convent by commissioning a Legend from Goscelin, with a view to attracting powerful patronage in defense of the monastery’s lands.”78 Susan Ridyard, who does not believe that Norman prelates were generally hostile to English saints’ cults, nevertheless suggests that Goscelin’s Life and Translation of Edith, along with other texts of the period, could be read as “defensive hagiography,” that is, “an attempt to vindicate not only the status of a saint but also the history, the traditions and the political status of the religious community with which that saint was associated: it was an act of monastic propaganda on a grand scale.”79
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