"If ever an archaeologist has had the magic touch, it is Martin Biddle." This is the verdict of the editors of Intersections: the Archaeology and History of Christianity in England, 400-1200. Papers in Honour of Martin Biddle and Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle. They are, of course, right, and right too to include Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle as joint honorand. Fitting as it is for this particular festschrift to be published as a British Archaeological Report, it should be noted that this was made possible only through the generosity of the Marc Fitch Fund. Publishers' reluctance to accept festschrifts may be understandable but the genre should nonetheless not be allowed to wither away. The quality of the volume under review will suggest why.
The collection opens with an essay by Kenneth Painter on the Roman silver jug belonging to the Traprain Law hoard. The jug, dated to the late fourth or early fifth century, is decorated with Old and New Testament scenes, but this does not (argues Painter) mean that the jug has any liturgical significance. It may not even have been owned by a Christian family. But it could well have been on display at sophisticated dinner parties both as an object to admire and as a focus for learned discussion.
Next, Anthea Harris and Martin Henig discuss hand and foot-washing; sacral and secular in late antiquity and the early medieval period. The evidence here is plentiful and the symbolism, based on scriptural references, relatively straightforward. But archaeologists have found it hard to distinguish consecrated from non-consecrated basins. We may know that in late medieval at Durham, every monk had his own towel, and as well a cupboard with a key in which to hang it up to dry, but in general the evidence is much more difficult to interpret; the authors rightly conclude that this is an area where more work needs to be done.
The Christian origins at Gloucester are interpreted, topographically, by Carolyn Heighway. Post-Roman Gloucester seems to have been sparsely occupied, the evidence suggesting that it was the area outside the walls of the city that was most heavily settled by the incomers, at least until 900 when Gloucester became a burh along the model provided by Wessex. Even at this date there was still Roman stone available for the building of Gloucester's new Minster. Significantly it may have been during the intense period of re- building of the mid-tenth century that (suggests Heighway) the decision was taken to demolish a stretch of Roman wall, thus providing further supplies of stone for the building of still more churches.
Alison Telfer, in her paper on post-Roman London, follows in the footsteps of Martin Biddle's work on the Strand. Evidence from St Martin-in-the-Fields now suggests that Saxon settlement in London was earlier than previously thought; further it points the way to exciting possibilities linking early and middle Saxon activity.
Brian Gilmour's examination of sixth-century pattern-welded swords from Kent focuses on eleven swords found in the Saltwood cemetery. Gilmour makes a convincing case for the pagan significance of some of the designs on these swords and suggests that Christianity rendered such designs unacceptable.
Helena Hamerow discusses the relationship between Anglo-Saxon settlements and cemeteries, c.450-c.850. Before it became standard practice for burials to be within churchyards, where were the dead buried? Despite variations, it is possible to argue that the relatively large cemeteries characteristic of the earlier period began to be replaced by smaller plots more closely related with particular settlements.
A very particular burial, that of a hanging bowl from Winchester, is the subject of Barbara Yorke's paper. The bowl is an especially fine example of its type, dating probably from the late seventh century, found in the burial of a suitably armed male (he has both spear and seax) at a site easily visible in the landscape. The date and location of the burial make it highly unlikely to have been that of a "pagan recidivist" but, Yorke argues, the presence of the hanging-bowl could suggest both the status of the man (was he a royal official?) as well as a recognition of both the Celtic and Germanic origins of power within Wessex.
Katharina Ulmschneider tackles the controversial question of metal detectors and their usefulness, with special reference to finds in Middle Saxon Hampshire. Even allowing for the possibility that metal- detectors may be better at finding some types of coins than others, Ulmschneider is confident that the number of coins found in the Winchester area amply confirms our sense of the wealth of the region and the value of its trade.
Sally Crawford's paper "Food, Fasting and Starvation..." raises an number of alarming possibilities: were orphaned lower status children deliberately fed less well than their noble peers? Did St Guthlac really only allow himself the equivalent of 700 calories a day? How far did his muddy cup of water help overcome vitamin deficiency? Did the devils of Guthlac's imagination look exactly like any emaciated holy man? Does a starved body naturally mummify?
Michael Lapidge returns the reader to possibly more familiar ground with his paper on Bede and Roman Britain. Bede's section on Roman Britain has often been paid scant attention but Lapidge asks us to re- consider over hasty judgements of its value. He suggests that Bede may in fact have had access to sources now lost, and to have been much better informed than has previously been imagined. Even the assumption that Bede never visited the south of England is, as Lapidge points out, in fact no more than a conjecture. In fact he might have done; the stakes in the Thames which he describes faced Julius Caesar- -"traces of which are visible to this day" (108)--he could therefore have seen with his own eyes.
James Campbell's paper, "Questioning Bede," suggests that studies of Bede today have reached the point where "the more one knows, the less one understands, but paradoxically, the more one thinks one understands, the more one needs to know" (119). Campbell's suggestions in this particular paper are that Bede was most likely of very high birth and that the monastic environment in which he lived was more luxurious than he admits. Campbell further cautions the reader not to imagine Bede as some timeless academic and to remember always that he tells us no more than a fraction of what we need to know about seventh and early eighth century England.
Rosalind Niblett takes us to the territory deeply familiar to the Biddles of St Albans. She is concerned to find what kind of settlement was developing at St Albans, from the time of Offa onwards throughout the Saxon period. Further excavations (as Niblett herself states) will be needed to substantiate her suggestions.
Michael Hare discusses the Anglo-Saxon cross-shaft in the church in the parish church of Elmstone Hardwicke. It has been suggested that the cross originally commemorated the ealdorman Aethelmund of Deerhurst fame. Hare suggests that the cross may have given its name to the place (Elmstone possibly being a contraction of Aethelmund's stone), that it may mark Aethelmund's death in battle (in 802) and possibly even where he was buried.
John Blair's paper looks at the prehistory of English fonts, starting with a consideration of the different needs created by the practice of "affusion" as opposed to "immersion": "To qualify for immersion, we should probably envisage something more than a puddle" (150). Further, as Blair points out, fonts, stoups and piscinae each had separate functions even if there was sometimes overlapping of use. Blair's paper is lavishly illustrated (also delightfully--Ida Blair aged three months is the "model" in one font) taking the reader from tubs and troughs to the "proper" fonts of the central Middle Ages.
David Howlett's paper, "Architecture, Music and Time in Wulstan's Verse," provides a close analysis of Wulstan's preface to his Life of Aethelwold, followed by an examination and revised edition of further work of Wulstan's in order to illustrate the extraordinary complexity and sophistication of Wulstan's compostion, skills that were, however, matched also by the architects of the Old Minster.
Derek Keene looks at the "cnihts" of Winchester, in particular, but also by way of comparison, at the "cnihts" of London and Canterbury. These associations of "cnihts" were in effect merchant guilds. How far they were replaced after the Conquest by different bodies, and how far it is the case that it is the use of Latin or Anglo-Norman (rather than English) which creates an impression of change, seems hard to determine.
"Winchester in Domesday Book" is the subject of Julian Munby's paper. What indeed happened to the Domesday entry for the city? Where is it? And what are we to make of the Winton Domesday? Mundy's suggested answers are satisfying and ingenious: the Winton Domesday gives us some idea of the richness of the material available for the compilers of Domesday, while Domesday's blank sheets suggest that the work as planned was never completed.
John Crook has careful suggestions to make concerning the Romanesque west front of Winchester Cathedral, work that owes a direct debt to the Biddles' excavations at Winchester in the 1960s and which confirms Martin Biddle's original sense of the design.
Christopher Brooke takes us beyond the Conquest to consider tithes and parish formation--though the story, as he tells it, begins in the pre- Conquest period when tithes were expected to go to minsters. How and why they come later to support parish priests and who else benefited makes intriguing reading.
The volume is concluded by Pamela Tudor-Craig's paper, "Henry of Blois, The Cluny Connection and Two Ivories in the Victoria and Albert Museum." Tudor-Craig is concerned with Henry's possible gifts to Winchester and with a detailed consideration of the crozier carved with scenes of the Nativity and the Life of St Nicholas, and with an unusual pyx, both now in the Victoria and Albert. Both can be closely related to liturgical practices (the crozier for a boy bishop, the pyx for use on Maundy Thursday.) The suggestions are tantalizing, in keeping with the rest of this very fine volume, a rich and fitting tribute to two remarkable scholars and their partnership.