Abstract
After the Norman Conquest of England, there was a remarkable output of hagiographic activity dedicated to the saints of the pre-Conquest past, clearly pointing to the survival of early medieval cults into the twelfth century as well as to the changing social and cultural conditions of the period. This project examines the survival of these texts and seeks to illuminate how hagiographers of the post-Conquest period imbued their works with marks of their milieu both consciously and subconsciously by deploying the Norman Conquest as an analytical tool to illuminate moments of social, cultural, and political change in the hagiographical culture of medieval England. By re-introducing source material (hagiographies) that has often been discarded as “pious fictions” or too propagandistic in post-Conquest studies, this work argues that these texts bear evidence of the changing political, religious, social and cultural climate of late eleventh and twelfth century England. Deploying a comparative approach between pre-Conquest and postConquest hagiographies, this work uncovers the marks left by writers in hagiographies written after 1066. The historicization of these texts will reveal more than just the survival of saints’ cults: they will also point to ways of understanding how various medieval English groups understood their historical moment in relation to politics, religion, gender, and cultural identity after 1066.