An unrealized cult? Hagiography and Norman ducal genealogy in twelfth‐century England
This article traces the adoption and ideological uses of the image of the pious Norman dukes in four consecutive hagiographical texts written in twelfth-century England. While this is a well-known topos of the earlier Norman tradition, its reception in England has been neglected in the existing scholarship. The article also examines further evidence of an interest in pious Norman dukes under Henry II, focusing on the translation of the remains of Richard I and Richard II at Fecamp in Normandy in 1162 and discussing whether the dukes' official cult could have been established. The conclusion situates the material in the general context of the development of the cults of lay rulers in twelfth-century Europe and sheds light on the interplay between hagiography, historical memory and politics at the time.
Historical writing in twelfth‐ and thirteenth‐century Scotland: the Dunfermline compilation
This article examines the first three items in a manuscript housed in the Royal Library in Madrid but written at the Benedictine abbey of Dunfermline in Fife, Scotland during the reign of James III (1460–88). It argues that the three items were originally put together during the reign of Alexander III (1249–86) and together formed a compilation which should be viewed as the earliest extant history of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century kings of Scots. Interestingly, the Dunfermline compilation did not stress the Irish ancestry of the kings of Scots, as might be assumed, but instead set its subjects against the backdrop of their Anglo-Saxon descent from the house of Cerdic. The article then considers the relationship of the Dunfermline compilation to Turgot's Vita Sancte Margarete and Aelred of Rievaulx's Genealogia Regum Anglorum and argues that the use of these sources in the compilation suggest that it was put together for a particular political purpose, a purpose for which the Anglo-Saxon ancestry of the kings of Scots had particular relevance.
Bulletin of the John Rylands Library Manchester
THE Epistle appears in our Bibles with the superscription, 4 The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews' (A.V. and R.V.). I propose to substitute for this, * The Epistle of Apollos to the Churches of the Lycus Valley '. The original heading is a guess and so is this, but I hope to show that a number of converging lines of argument make it a fairly probable guess*. I take first the external evidence ; but before doing that we must ask whether letter is the correct name for the document. Hebrews has no epistolary beginning Gust as the Epistle of James has no ending); but it has an ending which, if genuine, shows that it is a letter and not a sermon. The words, * I exhort you the more exceedingly to do this, that I may be restored to you the sooner ' (xiii. 19), show that the author is not present with the recipients of his message. Further there are indications within the letter that it is not a ' general epistle ' addressed to the Church at large. The writer has in view a definite group ; this is clear from such passages as xiii. 18 f. ; x. 32-34; vi. 10; v. 11-vi. 8, all of which point to a community known intimately, and over a period of time, to the author ; one, moreover, in which he has a lively and personal interest. It is the more curious that there is no introductory matter, and