Overview

The centrality of the cult of saints to medieval Christianity is reflected in surviving liturgical, historical, literary and administrative texts, material culture and architecture. Too often, however, disciplinary boundaries mean these sources are studied in isolation from one another. This volume takes a multi-disciplinary approach to uncover both the mechanisms by which saints’ cults spread and also the manner in which veneration of the saints drove other forms of political, cultural and social expression. Focussed on the cult of Oswald of Northumbria in the high Middle Ages, this volume brings together historians, literary scholars, musicologists and art historians to explore the cult of saints through texts, objects, space, sound and the senses and particularly interrogates the influence of liturgy on society. Oswald’s cult spread far in time and space from its origins in seventh-century Northumbria, and the essays in this volume seek to understand how liturgical commemoration and celebration of Oswald in different times and places drove developments in cultural expression, initiating new styles in musical as well as visual and material art forms.

Full Product Details

Author:   Johanna Dale
Publisher:   Liverpool University Press
Imprint:   The British Academy
Volume:   280
ISBN:  

9781836245681

ISBN 10:   1836245688
Pages:   284
Publication Date:   21 October 2025
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables Notes on Contributors Abbreviations Acknowledgements Introduction: Liturgy, Literature and History Johanna Dale Part I: Oswald’s cult in Post-Conquest England 1. The Cult of Oswald in Twelfth-Century Durham Lauren L. Whitnah Towards a New Edition of Hugh Candidus’s Peterborough Chronicle Nicholas Karn Public Reading and the Celebration of the Feast of St Oswald at Peterborough in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries Teresa Webber King Oswald’s Arm: Liturgy and Material Culture at Peterborough Abbey Johanna Dale Oswald and Post-Conquest Kingship, 1066–1307 Nicholas Vincent The Imagery of King Oswald in Medieval England Julian Luxford Part II Oswald’s Continental Connections 7. The Transmission of Oswald’s Liturgy into Scandinavia Sean Dunnahoe The Liturgical Offices of St Oswald at Weingarten and a New Hypothesis for the Origins of the ‘Continental’ Historia Henry Parkes The Lives of Oswald and other English Saints in the Twelfth-Century Magnum Legendarium Austriacum Diarmuid Ó Riain St Oswald’s Raven: Sanctity, Sovereignty and Animality in the Munich Oswald Sarah Bowden Excursus: Old and New in the Liturgical Chants for the Feast of St Oswald at Peterborough: Musical Transcriptions David Hiley Index

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Author Information

Johanna Dale is a research fellow in the Department of History at UCL, where she previously held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship. She is Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded project ‘Liturgical and Literary Landscapes: the cult of St Oswald of Northumbria in the German-speaking world’. Her first book, Inauguration and Liturgical Kingship in the Long Twelfth Century: Male and Female Accession Rituals in England, France and the Empire (Woodbridge, 2019) was shortlisted for the Royal Historical Society’s Whitfield Prize. She has also published numerous articles and edited several collections of essays, including St Peter-on-the-Wall: Landscape and Heritage on the Essex Coast (London, 2023).

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