I really can't focus today but need to re-read my master's thesis and choose a writing sample for this PhD app... might livetweet my thesis...

it's so funny that I managed to write this whole 15000 word thesis and yet cannot fucking read it

@ psychiatry uk please give me adhd medication my PhD applications are dying

ok fuck it let's livetweet this thesis. here is the title and abstract (I'm not sure if it's possible to tweet a thesis actually but it's the only way I'm going to read this thing) AMA

I was really interested in this image (London, British Library, Cotton MS Galba A XVIII, fol. 21r), in which three categories of saint are depicted: martyrs and confessors as men, virgins as women. I wanted to know whether this kind of gendered division was typical of the period

I looked at litanies, which also group saints by category—martyrs are listed together, then confessors, then virgins. while early litanies don't make these categories explicit, Felice Lifshitz has shown that they began to do so by the early 9th century

[F. Lifshitz, ‘Priestly Women, Virginal Men: Litanies and Their Discontents’, in L.M. Bitel and F. Lifshitz, eds, Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe (Pennsylvania, 2011), pp. 87-102]

one really interesting MS (BL Harley MS 7653), which was definitely in england before the tenth century, contains no male martyrs or confessors, listing only Old Testament prophets, apostles, evangelists, and female martyrs

we know from a gendered inflection in the latin prayer that it was probably produced for a house of women, which offers an exciting glimpse into how women's devotional habits might have differed from those of men (other litanies mostly group male saints as martyrs)

(aside: this kind of thing demonstrates the difficulty of patterns of survival. this manuscript is unusual, but so few litanies survive from before the tenth century in england that it's impossible to know how widespread this kind of practice might have been)

there's a section on Aldhelm in here but we're skipping that. onto Bede! Bede's Martyrology (compiled between 725 and 731) is super interesting because the only native 'English' saint he includes is Æthelthryth (who died of natural causes rather than being martyred)

he doesn't include more obvious candidates for martyrdom like Oswald, a seventh-century king of Northumbria who died in battle (and would be labelled as a martyr in calendars by the late 10th century)

so turns out this section is too complicated to tweet. but basically I argue that Bede's theology of martyrdom is less about a moment of violent death and more about rather long-term commitment to asceticism and sexual renunciation, as modelled by Æthelthryth

martyrdom was eschatologically important for Bede & it was really important that the English church kept making its own martyrs, but in the absence of persecution this was a more realistic route to the rewards of martyrdom (especially for Bede's monastic contemporaries)

neither Aldhelm, Bede nor Alcuin named any slain king as a martyr. while certainly venerated as saints, there is no evidence that kings were identified as martyrs before the tenth century

in this period (7th/8th century) female saints could be martyrs and martyrdom wasn't associated with masculinity. this is important because it shows that the gendered division we see in the Galba Psalter (the image up-thread) wasn't always the case. so what changed?

[this is actually working and getting me to read my thesis, thank you for indulging me. I am going to make a cup of tea and then tweet SECTION 2: THE VIKINGS ]

so, the 9th century. this is when the vikings show up (ok, really the last decades of the 8th, but this is when it gets intense). there's a debate about just how violent and disruptive they were, which I'm sidestepping because people who know far more about it than me will be mad

the important thing is that people *perceived* viking activity as a material and existential threat to christianity. in a letter to Æthelred of Northumbria, Alcuin wrote 'can it not be expected that from the north there will come upon our nation retribution of blood...

...which can be seen to have started with this attack which has lately befallen the house of God?' — for the first time, it was possible to see the english church as a persecuted church, attacked by pagan enemies, just like the early church supposedly had been

(for more on why that narrative of the early church is flawed, see @candidamoss' the myth of persecution, which is both historically and politically important)

persecution usually means one of two things for christians: either you're doing something very wrong and god is punishing you, or you're doing something very right and enduring martyrdom for the sake of the faith (which means big heavenly rewards, to put it crudely)

in this context, there was an incentive to think about martyrs in a different way: martyrdom could function as a way of reconciling defeat with the idea that god was still on the side of the english

my argument is that over the ninth century, the category of ‘martyr’ was reshaped in the image of the warrior and became increasingly associated with masculinity

(I'm feeling the strain of trying to sum this up in tweet form — there are lots of complex things about source survival and the problems of different types of sources that I can't get into. I guess just bear in mind that this is twitter and not the whole argument!)

I wrote a lot about Andreas, which is a really beautiful and underrated Old English poem. it's based on a late antique legend of St Andrew travelling to the land of Mermedonia and freeing the captive St Matthew, before himself being captured and almost martyred

when Andrew gets to Mermedonia, Christ appears and says to him, 'War is assured for you / with harsh bloody strokes your body shall / be dealt wounds, almost like water / will the gore flood out.’

so pain is depicted as an inevitable part of Andrew's mission, with a parallel drawn between the torments he will face and Christ's crucifixion. this parallel continues & intensifies through the poem

Christ reminds Andrew of the renown he'll gain by suffering, reminding him of how the fame of Christ's own sacrifice spread through countries; this mirrors heroic ideas of renown earned by bravery and success in battle

Andrew is described in heroic terms, as a 'man of mental patience, warrior hard in battle... a single-minded soldier sustained by valour'. having endured suffering, he is taunted by Satan (translations all by Richard North & Michael Bintley):

of course, a Christian audience would understand that Christ's crucifixion was not defeat—it was the greatest victory. through the analogy with the crucifixion, Andreas turns the idea of defeat on its head: a physical defeat can be a spiritual victory

Andreas is followed in the Vercelli Book ( https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/vercelli-book) by The Fates of the Apostles, a much shorter Old English poem by Cynewulf. Fates describes the apostles as warriors whose battles end in martyrdom; Peter and Paul 'bold, warlike, gave up their lives'

this is really interesting in comparison with another poem by Cynewulf about a martyr, this time a woman: Juliana. here, the language of militarism applies not to the saint but to her pagan enemies. Juliana overcomes Satan not by physical battle, but with her wit

Cynewulf seems reluctant to apply the language of heroism to a female martyr. in the poem, Satan asks her, 'you tell me first how you, bold through deep reflection, became so daring in battle above all womankind' (trans. R.E. Bjork)

pausing here because I have to get ready for a date

this has also reminded me how much I loved doing this work and want to keep doing it aaaaaa

wide awake so going to finish this thread! so we left it with Old English poetry (difficult to date, but nothing I've mentioned is earlier than 9th century). the Old English Martyrology (OEM) is also tricky to date but was probably compiled between 800 and 900

the OEM uses 'martyr' to refer only to male saints, but it doesn't use the kind of heroic language found in the poetry to describe martyrdom. it also doesn't refer to kings as martyrs — Oswald is in there, but for his Christian kingship rather than manner of death