Signs of Devotion: The Cult of St. Æthelthryth in Medieval England, 695–1615. By Virginia Blanton. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2007. xviii+350 pp. $65.00 cloth.

摘要

Virginia Blanton’s fine study traces English devotion to St. Æthelthryth, anseventh-century nun and foundress, from the period after her death until thenseventeenth century. The latter date may surprise some readers since thenEnglish Reformation was presumably well along by that time, but, asnBlanton correctly points out, what was decreed in London did not alwaysnplay well in the provinces. A major factor in the preservation ofnÆthelthryth’s cult was the constant reworking of it by devotees, so that thenvirgin of the eighth century became the monastic reformer of the tenthncentury and even metamorphosed into an aristocratic patron of monasteriesnand nunneries by the late Middle Ages. The changing image of the saintntook on more than literary forms. Blanton includes some prominent visualnimages of Æthelthryth, and she also provides a detailed list of images withntheir type, such as glass, sculptures in both stone and metal, and paintings onnmanuscripts, roodscreens, and textiles. She even found a few on pilgrims’nbadges.