The Mound, the Altar, and the Tomb: Sanctuary, Jurisdiction, and Punishment in Early Medieval Hagiography

Andrew Rabin

The legal landscape of eleventh- century England was cluttered with conflicting juris- dictional claims as the crown, church, and aristocracy all grappled for political power. More than just a matter of legal precedence, however, jurisdictional disputes also came to play a central role in clerical debates over the church’s participation in the adminis- tration of secular justice, especially its involvement in the sentencing of capital crimes. Reflecting on the church’s complex jurisdictional entanglements thus offered clerical authors a chance to consider problems of legal authority and institutional identity. In exploring these issues, this article will focus on the record of a later Anglo- Saxon sanc- tuary dispute involving the abbey of Bury St. Edmunds and preserved in the Miracula sancti Edmundi of Herman the Archdeacon. Herman’s account provides a useful case study of the ways in which monastic authors navigated jurisdictional problems and ad- dressed concerns over ecclesiastical participation in meting out the ultimate penalty. In doing so, it sheds light on the ways in which ecclesiastical authors negotiated the juris- dictional complexities of eleventh- century England while also illustrating how they reconciled the practical demands of justice administration with the moral commitments of the early medieval church.

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