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Envisioning Episcopal Exemption: The Life of Christina of Markyate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2015

Katie Bugyis
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Abstract

This article examines the biography of a twelfth-century English holy woman, the Life of Christina of Markyate—particularly its account of a vision that she had in which she was crowned in the likeness of a bishop's miter—within the context of campaigns undertaken by English monasteries in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries to obtain the papal privilege of full exemption from the sacramental and juridical control of their diocesan bishop. Reading Christina's vision in view of the bids for independence made by St. Albans—the community responsible for commissioning and writing her biography—especially helps to shed light on why the Life seems to figure her in a distinctly episcopal cast. Significantly, the Life's account of this vision may have been shaped by a miniature cycle of the passion and miracles of St. Edmund, produced by Bury circa 1125, seemingly in an effort to provide further confirmation of the abbey's exempt status. In a miniature depicting Edmund's apotheosis, the saint divinely receives a miter-like crown, which is nearly identical in its ornamentation to the one that Christina would later receive. Ultimately under investigation in this article is whether St. Albans' campaign for exemption was one of the influences dictating the composition of the Life of Christina.

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Articles
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Church History , Volume 84 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 32 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2015 

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References

1 Knowles, David, “Essays in Monastic History, IV. The Growth of Exemption,” The Downside Review 50 (1932): 201–231Google Scholar, 396-436; Knowles, , The Monastic Order in England: A History of its Development from the Times of St. Dunstan to the Fourth Lateran Council, 943–1216 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1940; repr. 1950), 575–591Google Scholar; Brett, M., The English Church under Henry I (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), 58–62Google Scholar, 133–135. As Barbara Rosenwein has noted, the correct use of the English word “exemption” to designate certain papal privileges has enjoyed lively scholarly debate, especially given that the Latin word exemptio did not mean “exemption” in the sense of libertas until the second half of the twelfth century. See Negotiating Space: Power, Restraint, and Privileges of Immunity in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), 4fn5Google Scholar. On the use of exemptio in the second half of the twelfth century, she cites Pennington, Kenneth, The Papal Monarchy in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 156Google Scholar. For the sake of clarity this article will use “exemption” to refer to the papally granted privilege of independence from local diocesan control.

2 For Fleury's privilege, granted by Gregory V (996–999), see Prou, M. and Vidier, A., eds., Recueil des chartes de l'abbaye de Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire (Paris, 1907), no. 71Google Scholar. For Cluny's, granted by Gregory V and John XIX (1024–1032), see Zimmermann, Harald, Papsturkunden, 896–1046, vol. II (Wien, 1988)Google Scholar, nos. 351 and 558, respectively. Barbara Rosenwein's Negotiating Space studies the historical development of such privileges granted to monasteries on the Continent. Elizabeth Dachowski has examined most recently the development of Fleury's privileged status during the abbacy of Abbo (988–1004); First among Abbots: The Career of Abbo of Fleury (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008).Google Scholar For the development of Cluny's exempt status, see Cowdrey, H. E. J., The Cluniacs and the Gregorian Reform (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970), 22–36Google Scholar; Constable, Giles, “Cluny in the Monastic World of the Tenth Century,” Il secolo di ferro: mito e realtà del secolo X, Settimane di studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo 38 (Spoleto, 1991), 416–419Google Scholar; Iogna-Prat, Dominique, Order and Exclusion: Cluny and Christendom Face Heresy, Judaism, and Islam (1000–1150) (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002), 55–60Google Scholar. Lemarignier, J.-F. more broadly examined the development of exemption in Normandy; Étude sur les privilèges d'exemption et de juridiction ecclésiastique des abbayes normandes depuis les origines jusqu'en 1140 (Paris, 1937)Google Scholar.

3 Rosenwein, Negotiating Space, 172.

4 Holtzmann, Walther, ed., Papsturkunden in England, vol. III (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1952)Google Scholar, nos. 5 and 6, respectively (hereafter PUE). For a detailed study of St. Albans' twelfth-century papal privileges, see Sayers, Jane, “Papal Privileges for St. Albans Abbey and its Dependencies,” in The Study of Medieval Records: Essays in Honour of Kathleen Major, eds. Bullough, D. A. and Storey, R. L. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971)Google Scholar. Unless otherwise noted all translations are my own.

5 Koopmans, , “The Conclusion of Christina of Markyate's Vita,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 51 (2000): 680, 694–695Google Scholar.

6 For notable examples, see Talbot, C. H.'s introduction to his edition and translation of the Life: The Life of Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth-Century Recluse (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959; repr. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Talbot, , “Godric of Finchale and Christina of Markyate,” in Pre-Reformation English Spirituality, ed. Walsh, James (New York: Fordham University Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Holdsworth, Christopher, “Christina of Markyate,” in Medieval Women: Dedicated and Presented to Professor Rosalind M. T. Hill on the Occasion of her Seventieth Birthday, ed. Baker, Derek T. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978)Google Scholar; and the essays contributed by Cartlidge, Neil, Fanous, Samuel, and Staples, Kathryn Kelsey and Karras, Ruth Mazo to the volume, Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth-Century Holy Woman, ed. Fanous, and Leyser, Henrietta (New York: Routledge, 2005)Google Scholar.

7 For the full consecration rite, see Vogel, Cyrille and Elze, Reinhard, eds., Le Pontifical Romano-Germanique du dixième siècle, 3 vols., Studi e Testi 226, 227, 269 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1963-72)Google Scholar, i.38–46. Over the course of the eleventh century, the ordines from the pontifical tradition known as the Romano-Germanic Pontifical were disseminated widely on the Continent; they reached England by roughly the third quarter of the century. For their availability in England, see Lapidge, Michael, “The Origin of CCCC 163,” Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 8 (1982)Google Scholar; Lapidge, , “Ealdred of York and MS Cotton Vitellius E. xii,” in Anglo-Latin Literature, vol. 2 (London: Hambledon, 1996), 453–467Google Scholar.

8 London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius E.i, ff. 145r–167v. The addition of Christina's Life to the end of the Sanctilogium seems to have been an afterthought, as it, like the four uitae that immediately precede it, does not appear in its appropriate location according to the liturgical calendar (i.e. by the feast day of the saint), but rather at the very end of the manuscript. Additionally, it was copied by a different hand and on a different layout than appear elsewhere in the manuscript. See Koopmans, “Conclusion,” 696.

9 For John of Tynemouth's life, see Horstmann, Carl, Nova Legenda Anglie: As collected by John of Tynemouth, John Capgrave, and others, and first printed, with New Lives by Wynkyn de Worde (Oxford: Clarendon, 1901), ix–xiiGoogle Scholar.

10 The sole copy of Walsingham's continuation is now found in British Library, MS Cotton Claudius E.iv. James G. Clark has offered the most recent and thorough studies of Thomas Walsingham's life and his literary and intellectual contributions to St. Albans. See Clark, , “Thomas Walsingham Reconsidered: Books and Learning at Late-Medieval St. Albans,” Speculum 77 (2002)Google Scholar; Clark, , A Monastic Renaissance at St. Albans: Thomas Walsingham and his Circle, c. 1350-1440 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2004)Google Scholar. It should be noted that Koopmans did not rule out the possibility that an anonymous predecessor to Walsingham interpolated these extracts from Christina's Life into the copy of Paris's Gesta abbatum that Walsingham used as the exemplar for his continuation (“Conclusion,” 672–674). But Joanna Royle recently has provided evidence in support of Walsingham's interpolation of the extracts; “Transitional Holiness in the Twelfth Century: The Social and Spiritual Identity of Domina Christina of Markyate” (PhD diss., University of Glasgow, 2008), 44–46.

11 Koopmans, “Conclusion,” 666-667.

12 Riley, H. T., ed., Gesta abbatum monasterii Sancti Albani, a Thoma Walsingham, vol. I, Rolls Series 28 (London, 1867-1869), 104Google Scholar, 105.

13 Life, 192.

14 The Tiberius version of Christina's Life comprises three quires of eight, and the final leaf of the third quire is missing.

15 Roscarrock's digest is printed in Horstmann, Nova Legenda Anglie, 536.

16 Ibid., 536–537.

17 Smith, Thomas, Catalogus librorum manuscriptorum bibliothecae Cottonianae (Oxford, 1606), 28–29Google Scholar. Koopmans, “Conclusion,” 668.

18 Ibid., 681–685; Koopmans, “Dining at Markyate with Lady Christina,” in Christina of Markyate, 154–157.

19 This acceptance not only owes to Koopmans's compelling argumentation and careful research, but also to the endorsement of her article by many of the contributors to the 2005 collection of essays edited by Henrietta Leyser and Samuel Fanous, Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth-Century Holy Woman. See Leyser, “Introduction,” 7.

20 Concerning the relationship between St. Albans and the archbishop of Canterbury immediately following the Conquest, see Knowles, Monastic Order, 582.

21 Crick, Julia, ed., Charters of St. Albans, Charters, Anglo-Saxon XII (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 32Google Scholar.

22 Greenway, Diana, ed., Historia Anglorum: The History of the English People (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996)Google Scholar, ix.2, p. 624: “Que scilicet ecclesia, causa prothomartyris Anglorum sanctissimi, tanto honore habita est, ut ab apostolica consuetudine que uocatur Romescot, cum neque rex neque consul, nec archiepiscopus nec presul, nec abbas nec aliquis ab illa consuetudine sit immunis, ipsa quidem sola quieta est. In presbyteros etiam et laicos possessionis sue ius pontificale semper abbas eiusdem loci priuilegiosus exercet.”

23 Crick helpfully has measured Henry's claim: “Tempting though it is to see in the situation described by Henry a balance of power between bishop and abbot established earlier still, before 1066, the abbey's charters provide clear warnings against any such assumption. They offer no evidence for opposition to episcopal involvement in the generations before the Conquest, quite the contrary” (Charters of St. Albans, 32).

24 Gesta abbatum, vol. I, 71–72.

25 Ibid., 70–71.

26 Charters of St. Albans, 32. The bull, Ex relatione, issued by Adrian IV in 1156, makes clear that the bishop of Lincoln had been charging St. Albans for chrism. Such exaction, though common in practice, was, according to Adrian, “contra sacrorum statuta canonum” and had to cease (PUE, iii, no. 105). On chrism payments, see Brett, English Church, 164–166.

27 Life, 64.

28 Ibid., 66: “An ignoras cupiditatem ipsius pariter et in[continentiam]? . . . Auaricia per[suade]bit iudicia peruertere incontinentia castimoniam aliis inuidere.”

29 Ibid., 84. Not surprisingly, given St. Albans' former ties with the archbishop of Canterbury, Ralph d'Escures is described favorably by the writer. He was “in utraque sciencia diuine scilicet legis et seculi sicut decebat personam apprime eruditus et gracia pietatis omnibus amabilis,” and was ultimately convinced by Eadwin's account of Christina's vow of virginity and immediately absolved her marriage and blessed her vow.

30 Ibid., 118: “P[er] idem tempus interiit Lincolniensis ep[iscopus] accerrimus Christine persecutor qui diut[ur]nam perpessus ultionem subitanea morte uitam finiuit et alios a persequendo Christi uirgines exemplo suo deterruit.”

31 Gesta abbatum, vol. I, 73.

32 Geoffrey's feelings of indebtedness to Abbot Richard also may have been compounded by an event that took place immediately prior to his profession at St. Albans. The Gesta reports that when Geoffrey finally arrived at St. Albans to fill the post of magister at the abbey's school and discovered that the position had been filled, he travelled to the nearby town of Dunstable to set up a school there. While he was at Dunstable, he attempted to stage a play of the miracles of St. Katherine of Alexandria and borrowed several choir copes from the sacristan of St. Albans for the production. On the night before the performance, these copes were accidentally destroyed in a fire at Geoffrey's house. Immediately following the fire, he vowed to become a monk at St. Albans, not knowing how else to repair the loss of the abbey's copes (ibid.).

33 Ibid., 140. According to the Gesta, circa 1160, Robert de Chesney, then bishop of Lincoln (1148–1166), contested St. Albans' newly acquired exemption from Adrian IV before King Henry II in Winchester. Speaking on behalf of his uncle, Robert, Gilbert Foliot, then bishop of Hereford (1148–1163), made several allegations against St. Albans, in support of which he produced Richard's and Geoffrey's written professions of obedience to the bishop of Lincoln: “Habemus prae manibus professionem Ricardi Abbatis; praesto est, qui professionem Gaufridi Abbatis scripsit.”

34 PUE, iii, no. 6.

35 Ibid., no. 5: “Omnia etiam pontificalia iura ecclesiarum sancti Albani sub eiusdem ecclesie abbatis dispositione atque arbitrio pendeant preter sacramenta episcopalia secundum antiquam ipsius ecclesie consuetudinem facienda, saluo nimirum in omnibus sancte Romane ecclesie iure ac reuerentia.”

36 The Gesta confirms Alexander's presence at the translation ceremony (vol. I, 85).

37 Knowles, Monastic Order, 586.

38 Knowles noted that in the fifty years after the Conquest, the number of cathedral monasteries rose from four to nine out of the total of seventeen existing sees. This count includes Sherborne among the four original Anglo-Saxon cathedral monasteries (ibid., 133).

39 See London, British Library, Cotton Ch. xi.8.

40 Life, 166. Concerning this event and the council at Winchester that ultimately resolved it, see Bollerman, Karen and Nederman, Cary, “King Stephen, the English Church, and a Female Mystic: Christina of Markyate's Vita as a Neglected Source for the Council of Winchester (August 1139) and its Aftermath,” Journal of Medieval History 34 (2008)Google Scholar.

41 Life, 166: “eo quod suspectos eos haberet utpote prudencia castris pecunia parentibusque munitos.”

42 No English monastery was granted episcopal exemption by Innocent II from 1130 to 1138. During this time, Innocent only passed six bulls granting privileges to English monasteries, and four of them confirmed the royal privileges that Reading Abbey had received from King Henry I. For these six bulls, see PUE, iii, nos. 25–30.

43 Life, 142: “ueneratur ille uirginem et [in ea] diuinum quid solito amplius in eadem amplecitur.”

44 For example, see ibid., 140–142.

45 Ibid., 160, 162, 166, 168-170.

46 Ibid., 164–166: “Sentitque plus apud Deum uirginis posse puritatem quam potentum seculi factiosam uel prudentem calliditatem.”

47 Ibid., 146.

48 Ibid. Talbot noted that in 1131 the feast of St. Matthew fell on September 21.

49 Ibid., 128. The writer supplies August 21 as the date of this vision. Thus, according to the writer, Christina's vision preceded her consecration by Bishop Alexander by a month.

50 Ibid., 126.

51 Ibid., 128: “immo iugiter creuit et deuocio et spes.”

52 Ibid.

53 Ibid.

54 Ibid.: “circumsteterunt illam iuuenes eximii decoris. Plures quidem aderant sed illa tres tantum discernere poterat.”

55 Ibid. Cf. Lk 1.28.

56 Ibid.

57 Ibid.

58 Ibid.: “A parte posteriori pendebant albe due tanquam uitte instar episcopalis mitre descendentes usque ad renes eius.”

59 Ibid.: “Christus eam mente et corpore uirginem usque seruauerat.”

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid., 146: “Die itaque festo Sancti Mathei, qui et ipse primus uirginum consecrator, describitur ab Alexandro episcopo Lincolnie uirgo Christo consecratur.”

62 Mayo, Janet, A History of Ecclesiastical Dress (London: Batsford, 1984), 40–41Google Scholar; Norris, Herbert, Church Vestments: Their Origin and Development (London: Dent, 1949), 99–101Google Scholar; Mellinkoff, Ruth, “The Bishop's Mitre,” in The Horned Moses in Medieval Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 94–106Google Scholar; and, Salmon, Pierre, Étude sur les insignes du pontife dans le rite Romain: histoire et liturgie (Rome: Officium Libri Catholici, 1955), 41–49Google Scholar, 54-61.

63 Oxford, Magdalen College, MS 226, f. 85v. For the edition of this pontifical, see Wilson, H. A., ed., The Pontifical of Magdalen College, Henry Bradshaw Society 39 (London, 1910)Google Scholar. Brückmann, J. has catalogued all extant medieval pontificals of English provenance; “Latin Manuscript Pontificals and Benedictionals in England and Wales,” Traditio 29 (1973)Google Scholar. See also Gneuss, H., “Liturgical Books in Anglo-Saxon England,” in Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Lapidge, M. and Gneuss, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 131–134Google Scholar; and, Nelson, Janet and Pfaff, Richard, “Pontificals and Benedictionals,” in The Liturgical Books of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Pfaff, (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1995)Google Scholar.

64 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Tanner 3, f. 1v. In this opening, full-page miniature, Gregory sits enthroned with his interlocutor, Petrus, at his feet. Gregory wears a miter with two long fillets descending past his shoulders. Temple, Elzbieta, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, 900-1066 (London: Harvey Miller, 1976)Google Scholar, no. 89, pl. 298; and, Ohlgren, Thomas, Insular and Anglo-Saxon Illuminated Manuscripts: An Iconographic Catalogue, c. A.D. 625 to 1100 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1986), no. 194Google Scholar.

65 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 253, Part I, f. 1r. The opening historiated initial “M” features Christ Cambridge, enthroned between a mitered bishop on his right and a youth in secular dress on his left. The bishop's miter has two long fillets that drop below his shoulders. Budny, Mildred, Insular, Anglo-Saxon, and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript Art at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: An Illustrated Catalogue, 2 vols. (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997), no. 51Google Scholar, pl. 696.

66 Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 157, p. 383. The illumination features two visions of King Henry I. In the first, he is approached, while asleep in bed, by two abbots and three bishops, who are aggrieved over high taxation. The bishops wear miters; two white fillets are visible on the back of one's miter. In the second illumination, two mitered bishops are shown with the king aboard a ship. Kauffmann, C. M., Romanesque Manuscripts, 1066–1190 (London: Harvey Miller, 1975), no. 55, pl. 142Google Scholar.

67 For examples, see London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero C.iv, f. 34r (Psalter of Henry of Blois, ca. 1150, Winchester Cathedral Priory); New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.619 (single leaf related to the Winchester Bible, ca. 1160–1180, Winchester Cathedral Priory); Cambridge, St. John's College, MS H.6, f. 11v (Bede, Commentary on the Apocalypse, ca. 1160-1170, Ramsey Abbey); London, British Library, MS Royal 10 A.xiii, f. 2r (Smaragdus, Expositio in Regulam Sancti Benedicti, ca. 1170, Christ Church, Canterbury); London, British Library, MS Cotton Claudius B.ii, f. 341r (John of Salisbury, Vita Thomae archiepiscopi Cantuariensis, ca. 1180, Christ Church, Canterbury). Kauffmann, Romanesque Manuscripts, nos. 78, 84, 86, 92, 93, respectively.

68 London, British Library, Seal lv.72. For a full description of this seal, see de Gray Birch, W., Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, vol. I (London, 1887-1900), no. 1170Google Scholar.

69 See London, British Library, Seal lvii.59 and the seal affixed to the dedication charter of Markyate Priory from 1145, London, British Library, Cotton Ch. xi.8. Alexander wears a double-horned miter with visible fillets in both seals, but he is enthroned in the first and standing in the second. See Catalogue of Seals, nos. 1685, 1687. No original charters survive from the pontificates of Alexander's two immediate predecessors, Remigius and Robert; consequently, their sealing practices are unknown. See Smith, David, ed., English Episcopal Acta I: Lincoln 1067–1185 (London: Oxford University Press, 1980), lviii–lixGoogle Scholar.

70 Abou-el-Haj, Barbara has provided the most thorough study of the Bury miniature cycle as a powerful, visual expression and confirmation of the abbey's exempt status; “Bury St. Edmunds Abbey between 1070 and 1124: A History of Property, Privilege, and Monastic Art Production,” Art History 6 (1983)Google Scholar.

71 Hildesheim, Dombibliothek, MS St. Godehard 1. The question of the psalter's production and ownership has enjoyed lively debate since Otto Pächt, Dodwell, C. R., and Francis Wormald claimed Christina as the psalter's intended recipient; The St Albans Psalter (Albani Psalter) (London: Warburg Institute, 1960)Google Scholar. More recently, Magdalena Carrasco, Ursula Nilgen, Jane Geddes, Morgan Powell, and Peter Kidd have all advanced this earlier claim and argued that the psalter was either produced and/or adapted for Christina's use. See Carrasco, , “The Imagery of the Magdalen in Christina of Markyate's Psalter (St. Albans Psalter),” Gesta 38 (1999)Google Scholar; Nilgen, , “Psalter der Christina von Markyate (sogenannter Albani-Psalter),” in Der Schatz von St. Godehard, ed. Brandt, Michael (Hildesheim, 1988), no. 69Google Scholar; Nilgen, , “Psalter für Gelehrte und Ungelehrte im hohen Mittelalter,” in The Illuminated Psalter: Studies in the Content, Purpose and Placement of its Images, ed. Büttner, F. O. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004)Google Scholar; Geddes, “The St. Albans Psalter: The Abbot and the Anchoress,” in Christina of Markyate; Geddes, , St. Albans Psalter: A Book for Christina of Markyate (London: The British Library, 2005)Google Scholar; Powell, , “Making the Psalter of Christina of Markyate (The St. Albans Psalter),” Viator 36 (2005)Google Scholar; Powell, , “The Visual, the Visionary and Her Viewer: Media and Presence in the Psalter of Christina of Markyate (The St. Albans Psalter),” Word & Image 22 (2006)Google Scholar; Kidd, , “Contents and Codicology,” in The St Albans Psalter (Albani Psalter) (Simbach am Inn, Germany: Müller & Schindler, 2008)Google Scholar. I am persuaded by their arguments for the psalter's provenance, but for accounts that helpfully measure and even contest some of their claims, consult Haney, Kristine, The St. Albans Psalter: An Anglo-Norman Song of Faith (New York: Peter Lang, 2002), 334–346Google Scholar; Haney, , “The St. Albans Psalter: A Reconsideration,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 58 (1995)Google Scholar; Matthew, Donald, “The Incongruities of the St. Albans Psalter,” Journal of Medieval History 34 (2008)Google Scholar; and, Thomson, Rodney, “The St. Albans Psalter: Abbot Geoffrey's Book?,” in Der Albani-Psalter. Stand und Perspektiven der Forschung, ed. Bepler, Jochen and Heitzmann, Christian (Hildesheim: OLMS, 2013)Google Scholar.

72 Found in New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.736, ff. 7r–22v. Elizabeth McLachlan has argued that the Bury provenance of the manuscript is confirmed by the presence of two letters copied on ff. 2–4 that were written to Anselm of St. Saba, abbot of Bury (1121–1146); The Scriptorium of Bury St. Edmunds in the Twelfth Century (New York: Garland Publishing, 1986)Google Scholar. See also her “A Twelfth-Century Cycle of Drawings from Bury St. Edmunds Abbey,” Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology 21 (1969)Google Scholar. Otto Pächt, in his study of the miniatures of the St. Albans Psalter, was the first to claim that the Bury cycle was also illuminated by the Alexis Master (The St Albans Psalter, 141, 142, 167). But McLachlan has expressed less confidence in this ascription and has suggested that a pupil of the Alexis Master may have executed the illuminations instead (“Twelfth-Century Cycle,” 79–87; Scriptorium of Bury St. Edmunds, 80–85). This argument was first advanced by Rickert, M., Painting in Britain: The Middle Ages (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1954), 66Google Scholar, and echoed by Bateman, Katherine, “Pembroke 120 and Morgan 736: A Reexamination of the St. Albans Bury St. Edmunds Manuscript Dilemma,” Gesta 17 (1978)Google Scholar. Subsequently, Rodney Thomson has argued that the draftsman and colorist of the illuminations were different people, as the colorist “crudely applied” paint and frequently departed from the underdrawings; furthermore, study of the underdrawings reveals “how confident and expert” the draftsman was, and that he was the Master, Alexis; Manuscripts from St. Albans Abbey, 1066–1235, vol. I (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 1982), 26Google Scholar. See also his “Early Romanesque Book-Illustration in England: The Dates of the Pierpont Morgan ‘Vitae Sancti Edmundi’ and the Bury Bible,” Viator 2 (1971)Google Scholar; Thomson, , “The Date of the Bury Bible Reexamined,” Viator 6 (1975)Google Scholar.

73 New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.736, f. 22v, http://utu.morganlibrary.org/medren/single_image2.cfm?page=ICA000077578&imagename=m736.022v.jpg.

74 C. R. Dodwell first noted the parallel between the crowns that Christina and Christ wear in her Life and the crown worn by St. Edmund in the Morgan manuscript, but he did not discuss why such a parallel would have been significant to Christina's figuration in her Life; The Pictorial Arts of the West, 800-1200 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993), 332–333Google Scholar.

75 Abbo of Fleury, , “Life of St. Edmund,” in Three Lives of English Saints, ed. Winterbottom, Michael (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1972)Google Scholar.

76 C. H. Talbot was the first to establish a possible connection between Christina's family and Ramsey Abbey in the introduction to his edition and translation of Christina's Life. It is likely that the Autti of Huntingdon mentioned in the Ramsey cartulary, who between 1114 and 1123 returned the church of Shillington in Bedfordshire to the abbot of Ramsey in exchange for ten marks of silver, is the same Autti referred to as Christina's father in the Life (Life, 11). See also Hart, W. H. and Lyons, Ponsonby, eds., Cartularium monasterii de Rameseia, vol. I (London, 1884–1893), 138Google Scholar.

77 Francis Wormald, in his analysis of the liturgical calendar that opens the St. Albans Psalter, argued that the calendar originally had been made at Ramsey Abbey because of the absence of seven feast days specially celebrated at St. Albans and the presence of three feast days specially celebrated at Ramsey. The feast day of St. Edmund, November 20, was among the original feast days listed in the calendar (The St Albans Psalter, 25). Peter Kidd recently has challenged Wormald's analysis by entertaining other provenances for the calendar (“Contents and Codicology,” 139–141).

78 Saunders, O. Elfrida, A History of English Art in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon, 1932), 67Google Scholar; Pächt, The St Albans Psalter, 118fn2. Pächt highlighted the resemblance between the miniature of the coronation of Emperor Henry II in the Regensburg Sacramentary (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 4456, f. 11r) and the miniature of St. Edmund's apotheosis: “The emperor's coronation has been turned into the apotheosis of a martyred king” (119). It should be noted, however, that the crown bestowed on Henry II in the Regensburg Sacramentary miniature is not adorned with two fillets.

79 See the miniature of Edmund's coronation on New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.736, f. 8v, http://utu.morganlibrary.org/medren/single_image2.cfm?page=ICA000077549&imagename=m736.008v.jpg.

80 PUE, iii, no. 8.

81 In a mid-twelfth-century copy of John of Worcester's Chronicon produced at Bury (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 297), passages concerning the monastery's earlier history were interpolated and marginally added to the Chronicon's text. Beginning on p. 370, the events related to the privileges bestowed on the abbey by both William I and Alexander II were recorded; Arnold, Thomas, ed., Memorials of St. Edmund's Abbey, vol. I, Rolls Series 96 (London, 1890-1896; repr. Wiesbaden: Kraus, 1965), 344–350Google Scholar. Alexander II confirmed the royal grants that Bury had received from Cnut and Edward the Confessor, placed the abbey under papal protection, and prohibited the establishment of an episcopal see at Bury (345–347). For William I's charter, see Davis, H. W. C., ed., Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, vol. I (Oxford: Clarendon, 1913)Google Scholar, no. 137. For Lanfranc's letter to Herfast, see Clover, Helen and Gibson, Margaret, eds., The Letters of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), no. 47Google Scholar. Concerning Bury's struggles for independence, see Knowles, Monastic Order, 580–583, 586; Knowles, “The Growth of Exemption,” 208–213; Grandsen, Antonia, “Baldwin, abbot of Bury St. Edmunds, 1065–1097,” Anglo-Norman Studies 4 (1982)Google Scholar; and, Williams, Ann, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1995), 136–137Google Scholar.

82 Memorials of St. Edmund's Abbey, vol. I, 351–352.

83 Colgrave, Bertram and Mynors, R. A. B., eds., Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, vol. I (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969), 30Google Scholar. Fanous, “Christina of Markyate and the Double Crown,” in Christina of Markyate, 57.

84 Life, 56: “Nec dubium quin hoc in articulo meruerit illo nomine sui [crean]tis insigniri quo postea uocabatur [nempe] Christina . . . Christum sequens co[nten]debat ipsius solius infa[ti]gabiliter im[pl]ere uoluntatem.”

85 Ibid., 126.

86 Ibid.

87 Ibid: “Et senciendum quod ipse benignissimus patronus noster Albanus [elegit] eam a domino quam in exco[lendo] et prouehendo familiam suam haberet in terra cooperatricem et postmodum in celo felicitatis eterne consortem.”

88 Gesta abbatum, vol. I, 86: “Imposuerat quidem uenerabilis Rex Offanus circulum aureum circa cranium insculptum litteris his: ‘Hoc est caput Sancti Albani, Anglorum Protomartyris.’”

89 See chapter eleven of the Rule; Vogüé, Adalbert de and Neufville, Jean, eds., La Règle de saint Benoît, vol. II, Sources chrétiennes 181–186 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1971–1977), 514–516Google Scholar.

90 Life, 186: “Au[ream in] capite deferebat corona[m gemmi]s interlucentibus et eisdem [ ] ac insertis, quicquid homi[nis ingenio] confingitur precellere [uidebat]ur. In summitate autem [fuit crux mi]rifici operis et ipsa aurea mi[nus manuf]acta quam diuina. Depende[bant su]per faciem hinc inde due uitte [coro]ne adherentes exiles et perluc[ide in gem]marum capitibus deorsum cerne[bantur] quasi roris guttule.”

91 The opening lines of chapter two of the Rule, which pertain to the qualities of the abbot, explicitly state that the abbot is to hold Christ's place in the monastery: “Abbas qui praeesse dignus est monasterio semper meminere debet quod dicitur et nomen maioris factis implere. Christi enim agere uices in monasterio creditur, quando ipsius uocatur pronomine, dicente apostolo: Accepistis spiritum adoptionis filiorum in quo clamamus: abba, pater;” de Vogüé and Neufville, eds., La Règle de saint Benoît, vol. I, 440–442. See also ch. 63 (vol. II, 646).

92 Knowles, Monastic Order, 711. The other six vestments and insignia were the staff, ring, sandals, gloves, tunicle, and dalmatic. For a more general study of the granting of permission to abbots to wear pontificalia, see Hofmeister, Philipp, Mitra und Stab der wirklichen Prälaten ohne bischöflichen Charakter (Stuttgart: F. Enke, 1928; repr. Amsterdam: P. Schippers, 1962)Google Scholar.

93 Jaffé, Philip, ed., Regesta pontificum Romanorum, vol. I (Leipzig: Veit, 1885–1888; repr. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1956), no. 4541Google Scholar. See also the late fourteenth-century chronicle of the abbey by William Thorne, which likely drew on the thirteenth-century chronicle by Thomas Sprott, but is no longer extant. Thorne's chronicle was edited by Twysden, Roger in Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores Decem (London, 1652)Google Scholar, col. 1785; Knowles, Monastic Order, 711.

94 Epistola cxxxvii, Patrologia Latina 151, 412B. Cowdrey, The Cluniacs and the Gregorian Reform, 59.

95 Memorials of St. Edmund's Abbey, vol. I, 345. Knowles, Monastic Order, 711.

96 The privilege conceding the use of the miter to the abbots of Bury is no longer extant, but Jocelin of Brakelonde's Chronica records the mitering of Abbot Samson (1182–1211) by Richard of Ilchester, bishop of Winchester (1173–1188), on February 28, 1182 (Memorials of St. Edmund's Abbey, vol. I, 229–230).

97 PUE, iii, no. 118.

98 Life, 126. For a helpful study of St. Albans' relations with local communities of women religious and the monastic options available to Christina, see Stephanie Hollis and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, “St. Albans and Women's Monasticism: Lives and their Foundations in Christina's World,” in Christina of Markyate. Near the end of their essay, Hollis and Wogan-Browne ask, but do not answer, the following, provocative question: “Did Geoffrey de Gorron, devotee of the royal female patron of clerical learning, St. Katherine, and builder of the queen's guestchamber at St. Albans, see himself in the tradition of elite spiritual foundations for women, as already established for instance at Fontevrault?” (42).

99 Urban II, the same pope who bestowed the privilege of wearing all the pontificalia to Cluny, issued Marcigny's privileges in 1095; epistola clxviii, PL 151, 442–443.

100 For Fontevrault's twelfth-century privileges, see Paschal II's epistola clv, PL 163, 164–165; epistola cccxxxix, PL 163, 296–297; Calixtus II's epistola xxxii, PL 163, 1121–1124; Honorius II's epistola xlix, PL 166, 1268; Innocent II's epistola xxv, PL 179, 72–74; epistola lxxiv, PL 179, 116–117. Berenice Kerr noted that it was not until 1244 with the bull of Innocent IV that the Order of Fontevrault was declared exempt from its diocesan and placed directly under the control of the apostolic see “nullo mediante;”Religious Life for Women c. 1150-c. 1350: Fontevraud in England (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999), 63Google Scholar.

101 Furthermore, the twenty-seventh canon of the Second Lateran Council in 1139 forbade nuns from singing the Divine Office with monks or canons; this ruling would have made the establishment of a “double” house, with some kind of shared liturgy, difficult, if not impossible; Hefele, Karl and Leclercq, Henri, Histoire des Conciles d'après les documents originaux, vol. 5, pt. 1 (Paris, 1912), 733Google Scholar.

102 St. Osyth is a quasi-historical figure composed of three Anglo-Saxon women who lived between the seventh and tenth centuries. For complications surrounding this saint's identity, see Hohler, Christopher, “St. Osyth and Aylesbury,” Records of Buckinghamshire 18 (1966)Google Scholar; Hagerty, R. P., “The Buckinghamshire Saints Reconsidered, 2: St. Osyth and St. Edith of Aylesbury,” Records of Buckinghamshire 29 (1987)Google Scholar; and, Bethell, Denis, “The Lives of St. Osyth of Essex and St. Osyth of Aylesbury,” Analecta Bollandiana 88 (1970)Google Scholar.

103 Millor, W. J. and Butler, H. E., eds., The Letters of John of Salisbury, vol. I (London: T. Nelson, 1955), no. 76Google Scholar.

104 For the most thorough study of the historical circumstances that gave rise to the writing of the Vie Seinte Osith, see Zatta, Jane, “The Vie Seinte Osith: Hagiography and Politics in Anglo-Norman England,” Studies in Philology 96 (1999)Google Scholar. For D. W. Russell's edition and Zatta's translation of the Vie, with revisions and annotations by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, see “The Life of St. Osith,” Papers on Language and Literature 41 (2005)Google Scholar. The Vie only survives in one late thirteenth-century manuscript, London, British Library, MS Additional 70513, which was produced for and/or by the community of Augustinian canonesses at Campsey Ash Priory in Suffolk. For a study of the implications of this manuscript's female readership, see Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn, “Powers of Record, Powers of Example: Hagiography and Women's History,” in Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Erler, Mary and Kowaleski, Maryanne (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; and, Gorman, Sara, “Anglo-Norman Hagiography as Institutional Historiography: Saints' Lives in Late Medieval Campsey Ash Priory,” The Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 37 (2011)Google Scholar.

105 For the first act, see “Life of St. Osith,” pp. 376–380, ll. 628–677; for the second, pp. 386–388, ll. 798–839; and for the third, pp. 428–436, ll. 1516–1657.

106 Zatta, “Vie Seinte Osith,” 387.

107 “Life of St. Osith,” 389fn32. Significantly, the next day Christina dedicated herself as a virgin to Christ at the church at Shillington. For both episodes, see Life, 38–40.

108 Bethell, Denis, “Richard of Belmeis and the Foundation of St. Osyth's,” Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society 2 (1970): 299–304Google Scholar.

109 “Life of St. Osith,” pp. 426–428, ll. 1484–1515.

110 For the writer's report of the rumors spread against Christina and his proof of their falsehood, see Life, 172–174.

111 For the writer's claim to Christina's renown in England and on the Continent, see Life, 122–124.

112 Koopmans, “Conclusion,” 681–685. See Gesta abbatum, vol. I, 95, 103.

113 Markyate was located in the territory of Caddington, which manor was owned by St. Paul's from circa 1000; Kelly, S. E., ed., Charters of St. Paul's, London (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 97–100Google Scholar, 192–201. Domesday Book also attests to St. Paul's ownership of Caddington in 1086; Morris, John, ed., Domesday Book, vol. 12, Hertfordshire (Chichester: Phillimore, 1976)Google Scholar, 13, 2, f. 136v. Geoffrey may not have thought that St. Paul's possession of Caddington was a barrier to his bid for exemption through Christina's Life. Two pieces of evidence—one external and the other internal to the Life—suggest that St. Albans viewed Caddington as one of its ancient possessions. A list of St. Albans' benefactions and estates remembered as lost appears twice in the mid-thirteenth-century manuscript containing Matthew Paris's autograph copy of the Gesta abbatum, London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero D.i, ff. 63r, 167v. Among King Offa's benefactions, the territory of Caddington was included, but, surprisingly, it was not listed among the estates that were subsequently lost (Charters of St. Albans, 229–231). St. Albans' possession of Caddington may have been presumed or alleged on the basis of the claim that, according to Christina's Life, Roger, the hermit who founded and later entrusted Markyate to her care, was formerly a monk at St. Albans (Life, 80–82). This claim was also interpolated into the Gesta (vol. I, 97).

114 Koopmans, “Dining at Markyate,” 147.

115 Without naming names, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton has made the compelling suggestion that the author of the “submerged textual layer” undergirding the Life was “a woman, an intimate of Christina's house at Markyate;” “Skepticism, Agnosticism and Belief: The Spectrum of Attitudes Toward Vision in Late Medieval England,” in Women and the Divine in Literature before 1700: Essays in Memory of Margot Louis, ed. Kerby-Fulton (Victoria: ELS Editions, 2009), 14Google Scholar. Given that the Life records Christina not-too-subtly expressing her hope that her various miraculous deeds would be written down while her sister, Margaret, was within hearing, and that these deeds were ultimately written down, it is certainly possible that Margaret wrote the original version of these deeds, and that her written accounts were incorporated into the Life (Life, 154).

116 See n. 115.

117 For the charter confirming Bishop Alexander's consecration of the priory's church, see London, British Library, Cotton Ch. xi.8.

118 London, British Library, Cotton Ch. xi.6. Though this charter safeguards Markyate's free election of its prioresses, it stipulates that they were to be consecrated by and swear fealty to the canons of St. Paul's.

119 Geoffrey made Sopwell an official dependency of the abbey circa 1140. See Gesta abbatum, vol. I, 80–82. Concerning Christina's decision to found an independent priory, see the related explanations proposed by Hollis and Wogan-Browne, “St. Albans and Women's Monasticism,” 42.

120 PUE, iii, no. 43.

121 Bolton, Brenda, “St. Albans' Loyal Son,” in Adrian IV, The English Pope, 1154–1159: Studies and Texts, ed. Bolton, and Duggan, Anne (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003)Google Scholar.

122 The Gesta abbatum reports Abbot Robert's rejection of Adrian's application to the novitiate three times (vol. I, 112–113, 125, 127).

123 Ibid., 124–125. For additional evidence regarding the burial of Adrian's father in the chapter house of St. Albans, see Biddle, Martin and Kjolbye-Biddle, Birthe, “England's Premier Abbey: The Medieval Chapter House of St. Albans Abbey, and its Excavation in 1978,” Expedition 22 (1980): 25Google Scholar, 28-30.

124 Robert traveled with the first embassy in 1156, and two relatives headed up the second in 1157 (Gesta abbatum, vol. I, 125–129, 131–132; Bolton, “St. Albans' Loyal Son,” 86).

125 PUE, iii, nos. 100, 118.

126 Gesta abbatum, vol. I, 110.

127 Ibid., 127: “Obtulit igitur Abbas Domino Papae aurum et argentum non minimi ponderis, et alia munera pretiosa; mitras etiam tres et sandalia operis mirifici, quae Domina Christina, Priorissa de Markyate, diligentissime fecerat.”

128 Ibid.

129 For recent studies of the spiritual significance of the textile productions of medieval women religious, see Schulenburg, Jane Tibbetts, “Holy Women and the Needle Arts: Piety, Devotion, and Stitching the Sacred, ca. 500–1150,” in Negotiating Community and Difference in Medieval Europe: Gender, Power, Patronage and the Authority of Religion in Latin Christendom, ed. Smith, Katherine and Wells, Scott (Leiden: Brill, 2009)Google Scholar; and, Griffiths, Fiona, “‘Like the Sister of Aaron’: Medieval Religious Women as Makers and Donors of Liturgical Textiles,” in Female vita religiosa between Late Antiquity and the High Middle Ages: Structures, Developments and Spatial Contexts, ed. Melville, Gert and Müller, Anne (Berlin: LIT, 2011)Google Scholar.

130 Gesta abbatum, vol. I, 111.

131 Life, 110.