Guthlac: Crowland’s Saint by Roberts, Jane and Thacker, Alan (editors), - 2020

Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2020. This extraordinary new book is issued in both hardback and paperback versions, here is the hardback. 672pp. It is a collection of 27 academic essays on the life and cult of St Guthlac, the saint who was honoured at Crowland (or Croyland) Abbey in the Lincolnshire fens. Guthlac had his hermitage there from the late-seventh century till his death in 714. Many of the essays originated in a conference on Guthlac held in 2014 but there are additional studies, including an edition and translation of the twelfth-century Miracles of St Guthlac and the story of the movement of his remains into a splendid new shrine at Crowland. Historians are immensely fortunate that Guthlac’s life was recorded in a very early biography by the monk Felix, writing in the mid-eighth century, which records early miracles and the story of Guthlac’s extraordinary battles with fen demons, his relationship with Æthelbald, soon to become king of the Mercians, and his early life as a warrior fighting on the Welsh borders, a way of life he repented from, taking his clerical training at Repton monastery before becoming a hermit to fight evil for a different lord. The book is graced with 32 pages of colour plates, which include many manuscript and stained-glass images, and there are many black-and-white illustrations in the main text, including reproductions of the entire Guthlac Roll in Jane Roberts’ essay. The architecture and history of Crowland Abbey, and the influence of earlier hagiography on the style of Felix’s Life, are common themes. The book is concluded with an index of defiant comprehensiveness. Now published during the coronavirus lockdown, it is finally available for safe mail order! The essays are by Alan Thacker, Andy Orchard, Britton Brooks, Meredith Bacola, Tom Lynch, Kelly Kirkpatrick, Christine Voth, Sarah Leeser, Joseph Grossi, Morn Capper, Stefany Wragg, Richard Hawtree, Jane Roberts, T. A. Heslop, Henry Parkes, Jennifer Alexander, Michael Chisholm, Avril Lumley Prior, Julia Barrow, Graham Jones, Tom Licence, Timothy A. Bolton, Cristian Ispir, Richard Sharpe, and Elizabeth Danbur . First Edition. Hardback. Fine/Fine. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" Tall.