The Anglo Saxon to Middle English Understanding of Death in Life

The Anglo Saxon to Middle English Understanding of Death in Life

By Thomas Saxon

The presence of the dead in Anglo-Saxon times was dealt with in a variety of ways. This has generated a degree of scholarship, mostly focusing on material goods, from archaeological excavations, such as weapon furnished inhumations. The secondary material for the subject has therefore been of some difficulty for this examination, as it has warranted a full investigation into the rationale behind these prior investigations into death. Whilst the investigation of the secondary material is by necessity a large proportion of this paper, the primary intention behind it was instead to trace the attitudes and beliefs of the late Anglo-Saxon period through to the ghost stories of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, paying special attention to the formulation and development of ideas such as the location and proximity of the dead, but also the idea present in a body of scholarly work that hero or ancestral worship was a primary cause behind the symbology of the burial mounds, especially the seeming communication that was being attempted with the dead. This was in turn linked to the cult of saints such as St Foy, who despite not being an Anglo-Saxon English saint, was nevertheless used due to being a familiar saint, and as a control to enable a proper reading of the Anglo-Saxon and latter English material.

The presence of the dead in the remembrance of the living has a long degree of scholarship behind it. This includes works such as that of Bill Griffiths Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Magic, as well as being seen in earlier work such as that of G. Storms Anglo-Saxon Magic.[1] More recent work such as Elves in Anglo-Saxon England,[2] have built upon aspects of these studies. As a brief overview, this has largely entailed a concentrated on study of (especially pagan) Anglo-Saxon beliefs and attitudes towards the dead, and such entities as spirits, ælfs, and similar, mostly through the study of such material as the Scandinavian sagas, folklore, and continental writings such as the Indiculus Superstitionum. Curiously, as is somewhat pointed out by the likes of Christina Lee, there has been very little focus on the late Anglo-Saxon perspectives of death,[3] although it must be pointed out that what there has been has been heavily focused on the symbology of noble, especially kingly, death and funeral arrangements.[4] The issue inherent with focusing primarily on a singular area of society, especially with attempting to chart evolution or progression of ideas, are of course a distorting view of the material, especially when looking at trends crossing cultural boundaries. Despite this it is clear however that there are continuing aspects of regards for the dead in Anglo-Saxon England, and that in some ways the ancestral hero that Griffiths argues for is still present. This is significant for this examination in two key manners – firstly, an earlier concept of venerating the legendary/heroic dead may have survived, merged into a Christian context, for example in the creation of royal saints,[5] and secondly, that the generally continuance of issuing proclamations against feasting with the dead for the dead shows that the practice was still in some use,[6] as without there being a practice to legislate against there is no need to issue legislation or proclamations. However, it should be noted that Lucy points out with extreme lucidity the issues inherent in attempting to assign identity to the material remains,[7] which should serve as a cautionary word for attempting to read too far into the material culture present, as is often done by both historian and archaeologist in this period, especially in regards to the lack of direct archaeological and written evidence.

To expand on the issues involved in many of the writings about the dead in Anglo Saxon England; many of the sources used are not directly related to the period or to the culture under discussion, being either located in Iceland/Scandinavia such as the sagas, or else concentrated on the Merovingian and Carolingian kingdoms in the form of capitularies and Indiculus Superstitionum, or in one notable case in Russia in the eleventh century, namely Ibn Fadlan’s testimony. Whilst using sources from geographically close or similar cultures may enable a reading to emerge, it is nonetheless a problematic usage owing to the lack of concrete evidence from the actual culture and period under discussion. This however is an area where it is impossible to disentangle, owing to many decades of scholarship for one, but more pointedly owing to the need to enable a close reading of the sources requiring a departure from strictly Anglo-Saxon/contemporary sources. Another issue that is not always addressed in Anglo-Saxon Studies is that many of these cultural models are built with the assumption of the Germanic past, in a nostalgia for the (perceived) reality of that once great past, a product of the nationalism of the last two centuries. There is also a more immediate concern within this examination itself however regarding the basis of many of the prior studies understanding – whilst it is true that a direct line cannot be drawn between Storm’s “primitive man” attitude; where magic can be explained as an attempted to cause a result, or expecting a result, through non-mundane means,[8] it is very possible to see that thinking, perhaps unconsciously, influencing the writings and readings of many later explorers of magic and death, due to the inherent colonialist basis that many mid-twentieth century writers developed in, and with the instructional qualities of historiography being prevalent. Indeed, that magic and death studies seem to be intrinsically linked is perhaps the largest amount of concern that needs to be raised in regards to this area of Anglo-Saxon research, as the connection is one that perhaps is only committed to owing to modern perceptions of rationality. Essentially, this returns to the prior issue of fundamental issues relating to the historiography of the subject, as defining magic as Storms did is no longer a workable or worthwhile pursuit in modern academia. However, magic in the sense of the supernatural is an area that can be used to explore the relationship to the ultimate natural process of all – death.

Nevertheless, it is undeniable that the study of death in Anglo-Saxon England can highlight a very interesting parallel with later writings about the dead, in particular regarding relationships with the dead. For example, the appearance of the dead woman beseeching aid to her lover,[9] which whilst of course strongly imbued with Christological concerns such as redemption and purgatory, it is also in many ways is an inversion on the relationship that Griffiths lays out, namely that of the ancestral or honoured dead aiding the living. This inversion in itself deserves attention that cannot be dealt with in detail here, but in summary this may well be an over reaction on the part of the cultural consciousness that the writers such as the Ely Preacher were attempting to create, namely in replacing the established understanding of the dead with that of the developing notion of purgatory. This linkage of ideas however is much more strongly observable in a tale from the twelfth century from William of Newburgh, where it is related that a man’s wife came back to haunt her and his brothers, and indeed his entire village.[10] This idea of the dead having the power to influence an entire village is strikingly similar to the powers to intercede that the likes of Griffiths and Hall seem to imply the dead had, namely in that they appear to have the ability to communicate with the living in some way, which to an extent the dead man does, until he is peacefully laid to rest by the archdeacon’s intercession. Laying to rest does seem to have been something of an issue in both Anglo-Saxon and later eras, for example there are references to the dead being staked through the heart, suggesting either sympathetic magic as in voodoo, or else an attempt to lay the spirit to rest.[11]

Indeed, William of Newburgh in particular retells many events that appear to require a physical response to the dead walking,[12] and in particular that require the heart to be destroyed. This is of interest, considering the general perception of the heart being the centre of intellect, and the previously mentioned destroying of the heart in the Anglo-Saxon period. What this fully suggests could perhaps be argued that the cultural perception of the dead had not fully changed by this period, and indeed was not in itself a part of the Christian doctrines regarding purgatory and the soul being bound to the will of God, as there is a link that can be drawn to the dead of the Anglo-Saxon period. Indeed, this link shows that the concepts of the dead influencing the living had not in itself changed, rather the rationale behind why they were doing so had changed, namely in that the general consensus by the twelfth century was that the dead were much more harmful than benevolent, that “we do not speak to the dead”,[13] and as demonstrated throughout William’s accounts were more likely to cause death by pestilence and plague. This is different to what can be discerned of some Anglo-Saxon practices, as Lucy demonstrates in her work, where the long presence of certain bodies outside of the grave can denote the status of an individual, and be gathered by the presence of the larvae found.[14] This shift from displaying a corpse for a time to not doing so is not complete by the period in question, but an awareness of the need to move the dead away from the living does seem to be present, demonstrating a shift to perhaps a more fear based relationship with the dead. In terms of the ancestral worship that seems to have been present in Anglo-Saxon England however is most definitely a change – whilst the dead do seem to be worthy of respect in certain eyes, such as the bishop in the Berwick story, there also seems to be no compunction regarding destroying human remains to prevent the dead from harassing the living. Ultimately, it must be regarded as both a continuation and a large change in attitudes that is observable from Anglo-Saxon practices to twelfth century ones, whilst respect for the dead does continue to be seen, and indeed the believe in a proper burial to respect the dead, the fear and harm that the dead can cause is definitely development that can be observed, however it is not one that seems to have emerged without a prior background in the Anglo-Saxon period, demonstrated by the laying of spirits to rest.

Of interest to this study is the concept of spirits and/or souls, sawol in Old English. There was a concept of the soul and spirit being inseparable and bound, especially into the burial mound, with sawol being life as opposed to spiritus.[15] The sawol being intrinsically bound into the physical is to an extent still present in later tales, as it is only by destroying the heart that the vampire is laid to rest in the William of Newburgh tale. This preoccupation with the physical remains, and in some sense the fusion of the physical and the non-physical, can be seen also in hagiography such as that attached to St. Foy, seen for example in the tale surrounding the miracles of her tomb due to the blood that was shed there.[16] This blurring is present from a very early date in hagiography, seen in for example the head of St Eadmund. There is perhaps a link and resonance between the hagiography of St Eadmund’s head and the importance of the head in a broader Germanic context.[17] Fundamentally it is undeniable that the power of relics and the power of soul in them is a noticeable component of the standard doctrine of the Church. The favour of God’s power could be channelled through a saint’s relics, perhaps explaining the proliferation of local saints.[18] This however immediately resembles the power of the local ancestor god, which could then help explain why certain executions, or at least mutilated remains from such, where placed into older burial mounds as an exercise of Christian kingship.[19] Perhaps this could be argued to be seen as an extension of the destruction of ancestor worship, which was then compounded by the replacement of these local figures of worship with the saints of the Church such as Sainte Foy. Therefore, this blurring of the lines between the two concepts is more understandable, as it was built on a concept of the dead that was already apparent. Accepting that saints were regarded as holy and in some ways semi divine we can see that this usurpation of the role of the ancestral dead was an interesting full circle, as there was a bias towards reusing Bronze Age barrows for Anglo Saxon dead in a distinct pattern of areas,[20] perhaps suggesting that those areas required an imposition of power from the Anglo-Saxon elites. This usage of the saint’s bodies, and the saintly dead in general, is a fascinating development, and demonstrates a clear continuation of cultural expectation, with however a development of the standardisation of Christianity, as it is noticeable that cultural movements towards a Christian model may have been due to a codification that Christianity enabled.[21] This can be extended to the belief in the dead and magic surrounding them were in turn fluid, and ever changing, and indeed the saintly dead such as Eadmund were clearly utilised in such a way, with Griffiths for example arguing for the legendary dead being merged into the Christian concept of the royal saint found in Anglo-Saxon England,[22] in turn enabling royal control of an area, and in turn influencing the local and elite reactions to and understanding of the dead.

The concept of the dead that is seen in saints Lives, especially in the saint Foy example, is perhaps best understood by the medieval theological and clerical explanation of the spiritus, as succinctly explained by Caciola.[23] When such concepts are placed in contrast to the mentality observable here, it is clear that there is something of a conflation of ideas and ideals here, but that a direct line can still be drawn, with some notable accuracy, between the two different models of ideas, that of saint worship and ancestor worship. To further expand, disease was used as an explanation, in a Christian Anglo Saxon context, to denote God’s will, as both punishment and testing.[24] This oddly flies against the later development seen in such tales as the Ghost of Anant were the dead were raised as a result of Satan’s will, and not by the grace of God, who is however responsible for the Saint Foy raising. This then perhaps highlight the separation in some respects of the idea of the dead being uninhabited by the soul, as taught by Church doctrine, were the saints were parts of their relics, but the “unholy” dead were not regarded as possessing a soul, but they did have a centre to their being in the form of their heart. Related to this concept can perhaps be posited the location of the two-different type of dead, the saintly and the ancestral. In the case of ancestral burials, said burials were often located at liminal spaces such as earthworks of an enclosure.[25]

On the other hand, the reliquary for most saints was within the church within the centre of the settlement. This in itself is significant, as it demonstrates that the cultural emphasis was placed more on the church, and enabled a more immediate relevance to the living. Indeed, it is argued that the isolated barrows, especially those of a certain size, where of a significantly ranked individual to warrant attention,[26] which perhaps ties into the centrality of such a heroic ancestral figure. This relegation to the outside however cannot hope to compete with the daily reminder of the dead that a saint can command with such a central location. It does however further demonstrate that the cultural reality of the dead can be seen differently, depending on the viewpoint of the person under question. The single most coherent conclusion that can be drawn from the mutual inspection of saints and the ancestral dead is that the cultural usage of very similar ideas is inherently comparable, and inherently enables an analysis of the two. We cannot say with authority that the usage of ideas such as a local saint was deliberately to blend the ideas of the local ancestral hero-god into a more Christian form, but it is strikingly similar, and the innate ability of the church to codify and standardise was assuredly a useful tool for it to attempt to tap into and direct the evolution of cultural thought. Caciola offers a useful explanation for the classification of cultural knowledge, which we can use to attempt to reconcile the innately contradictory nature of official theology versus recorded interactions with the dead that are accorded reality by the chroniclers. In this sense then, the evolution of cultural though is even harder to trace accurately, and therefore the prominent sense of similarity that can be seen between the two concepts, localised ancestor worship and local saint’s miracles, must be acknowledged as being telling of the continuity between the regard that the dead were held in the two time periods

The practice of traditions and rituals, and even location of reverence, towards the dead is a highly profit area to investigate for this study. Ælfric attempted to demonstrate a clearer distinction, and to remove the possibility of resurrection from anything save only by the will of God.[27] Whilst this attempted change to the mentality of life after death does seem to have worked, in so far as the vanquishers of the dead in later centuries do not seem to have had any issues with destroying the physical remains of the dead, that the mentality had to be enforced through high clerical writing does demonstrate that there was a directed evolution of the cultural attitudes of the dead. Whilst the practice of inhumation completely replaces that of cremation, furnished burials and cremations can be telling in the symbolism of certain goods. For example, pottery urns were used to make a statement in physical symbology about the individual that it contained, mostly through age, sex, and status.[28] Similarly, the dead are accorded “proper burials”, which it seems involves the Eucharist to be fully “proper”, for burials from the twelfth century onwards at least, lest Satan take control of the dead. Indeed, the place of burial can be symbolic itself. It is notable that there is an interesting correlation between settlements being in the lowlands or dales, and the cemeteries for the dead being in higher, more visible locations,[29] implying that there is a need for the visibility of the site, perhaps as a reflection of local dominance of the area. Interestingly, churchyards came into the towns themselves from the 11th century onwards, which can show that the usage of cemeteries was even more heavily involved in symbolism for the latter period. What is noticeable as well is that even long after the usage of them as cult or ritual locations must have ended, Burial mounds were referenced in charters, and were perhaps an acknowledgment of a local reality of “witches” meditating on burial mounds.[30] More likely however it is a local feature with a historic reality being used as a landmark, but the mere need to mention the witches meditating on the barrows does imply a continued recognition of these sites as places of importance, and which the latter period still perhaps has a remnant awareness of in regards to the dead being fully buried in the proper location and the proper manner.

Despite this, it is noticeable that there is one area in which the latter period does not seem to have fully gone into, which is the feast with the dead. There is in the Anglo-Saxon period an implication of food offerings to the dead, perhaps as a conveyance of food or ancestral worship.[31] Indeed, Christina notes that the dead as enhancers of social memory is something that can be linked to the presence of the animals worth.[32] This symbolic use of animals is not innately present in the latter period, where of course inhumation with animal remains is no longer done. The living dead noted by Caciola however do demonstrate in many cases a familiarity with the living,[33] and in many ways continuance of life through death, that is similar enough in intention to the giving of food by mourners, and in a few cases involves food, that the similar expression cannot be ignored. Ultimately, this is an area that cannot be fully resolved, as enough of the approaches to rituals involved in caring for the dead, and interacting with them, are different enough to prevent any complete analysis. However, it does lead to the ability to explore the variant expectations of the dead, and leads to a surprising amount of similarity in the approaches that were employed.

In conclusion, the material at hand has various outstanding issues associated with it. The primary material is incomplete, or fragmentary, especially the case in the form of the burial customs, both in terms of the earlier Anglo-Saxon period and especially the late period. In terms of the writing on the period, Caciola mentions the issues involved in them, namely that the writers of whom we have are by and large educated elite priests, who have their own ideological bent to pursue; this therefore requires a close anti reading as it were of the sources, to enable an approximation of the cultural norms of the day to be approached. The secondary material also experiences extreme issues, especially prevalent in issues of nostalgia for a non-existent, and most likely somewhat racially inspired, Germanic past. Partly owing to this, and partly owing to the twining of the central issue under discussion here, Death, with issues of Magic, and even the presumption of magic possesses issues of its own, not least the presentist issues surrounding attitudes to “primitive man”. Even studies of Sainte Foy perhaps require a wider reading within the context of both the period and a larger time span. Despite these inherent difficulties however, a clear argument that can be made is that there was a continuation, partly through the adoption of the Church of the saint system and seemingly deliberate blurring of the differences of the saint and the local hero-god. All of this ultimately must be acknowledged to have some issues that require further investigation within the period however, chief amongst them the further investigation of the co-opting of the locality role of the hero-god, and also the precise attitudes towards the dead themselves in the later period of Anglo-Saxon England. A complete investigation of notions of hygiene and health in both periods, especially in relation to the dead, would be another key area to make further enquiries.

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 Footnotes

1 See Griffiths, Bill, Aspects of Anglo Saxon Magic, (Frithgarth, Hockwold-cum-Wilton, 1996); Storms, G., Anglo-Saxon Magic (The Hague, 1948).

2 Hall, Alaric, Elves in Anglo-Saxon England: Matters of Believe Health, Gender and Identity (Boydell Press, Suffolk, 2007).

3 Lee, Christina, Feasting the Dead: Food and Drink in Anglo-Saxon Burial Rituals (Boydell Press, Suffolk, 2007),

105

4 Marafioti, Nicole, The King’s Body: Burial and Succession in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto Press, Toronto, 2014)

5 Griffiths, Aspects of Anglo Saxon Magic, 23

6 Griffiths, Bill, Aspects of Anglo Saxon Magic, 98

7 Lucy, Sam, The Anglo-Saxon Way of Death: Burial Rites in Early England (Sutton Publishing, Stroud, 2000), 158-73

8 Storms, G., Anglo-Saxon Magic (The Hague, 1948), 1

9 Medieval Ghost Stories: An Anthology of Miracles, Marvels, and Prodigie, ed. Joynes, Andrew, (Boydell Press, 2001), 55-57

10 Medieval Ghost Stories: An Anthology of Miracles, Marvels, and Prodigie, ed. Joynes, Andrew, 135-5

11 Griffiths, Bill, Aspects of Anglo Saxon Magic, 107

12 Medieval Ghost Stories: An Anthology of Miracles, Marvels, and Prodigie, ed. Joynes, Andrew, 139-42

13 McLaughlin, Megan, ‘On Communion with the dead’, Journal of Medieval History (vol. 16, January 1991), 23

14 Lucy, Sam, The Anglo-Saxon Way of Death: Burial Rites in Early England , 78

15 Griffiths, Bill, Aspects of Anglo Saxon Magic, 25

16 Trans. Sheingron, Pamela, The Books of Sainte Foy, ed. Clark, Robert L. A., (Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 37-8

17 Griffiths, Bill, Aspects of Anglo Saxon Magic, 44-5

18 Griffiths, Bill, Aspects of Anglo Saxon Magic, 6

19 Lucy, Sam, The Anglo-Saxon Way of Death: Burial Rites in Early England, 75, 152

20 Lucy, Sam, The Anglo-Saxon Way of Death: Burial Rites in Early England, 127-8

21 Griffiths, Bill, Aspects of Anglo Saxon Magic, 22-1

22 Griffiths, Bill, Aspects of Anglo Saxon Magic, 23

23 Caciola, Nany, ‘Wraiths, Revenants and Ritual in Medieval Culture’, Past and Present (Oxford Press, Oxford, 1996), 12-13

24 Griffiths, Bill, Aspects of Anglo Saxon Magic 62

25 Lucy, Sam, The Anglo-Saxon Way of Death: Burial Rites in Early Englan, 129-30

26 Lucy, Sam, The Anglo-Saxon Way of Death: Burial Rites in Early England, 100-1

27 Griffiths, Bill, Aspects of Anglo Saxon Magic, 34-5

28 Lucy, Sam, The Anglo-Saxon Way of Death: Burial Rites in Early England, 115

29 Lucy, Sam, The Anglo-Saxon Way of Death: Burial Rites in Early England, 154

30 Griffiths, Bill, Aspects of Anglo Saxon Magic, 108

31 Griffiths, Bill, Aspects of Anglo Saxon Magic, , 106

32 Lee, Christina, Feasting the Dead: Food and Drink in Anglo-Saxon Burial Rituals, 58

33 Caciola, ‘Wraiths, Revenants and Ritual in Medieval Culture’, 21

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