Anglo-Saxons in a Frankish World 690-900 (review)

"Saints are the products of interpretive acts" (p. 289). This axiomatic statement from the conclusion of Palmer's thorough study of the Anglo-Saxon missions to the Continent encapsulates several features of his work that may not be immediately apparent from the book's general title. Anglo-Saxons in a Frankish World might conjure up notions of Anglo-Frankish political relations, and while this topic is dealt with at some length in the book's second chapter, the study as a whole focuses on the motivations and outcomes of the textual construction of sainthood in the extended circles of the Anglo-Saxon missionaries Boniface and Willibrord. Palmer's book forms an impressive argument for the use of saints' lives as legitimate sources of historical information and cultural knowledge. Palmer focuses on how hagiographic texts represent and develop perceptions of saintly figures from the past in light of sociopolitical issues and literary discourses of immediate relevance to their authors. In the field of historical studies, hagiography in general, and the array of Latin vitae connected to the Anglo-Saxon missionary saints in particular, have often been dismissed as too fanciful to be seriously considered as sources (though this has been changing recently). The implicit argument that runs throughout Palmer's study is that while hagiographical texts may not always stand up to factual scrutiny, they nonetheless provide valuable insight about the ways that religious communities responded to and reinterpreted their own institutional history and the key figures and concerns that shaped it. This is particularly true when interrelated or competing versions of saints' lives (for instance, lives of two different saints that draw on similar source texts, or multiple lives of Boniface written in different times and places) are examined in correlation to one another, as well as in the wider frameworks of other documentary, historical, or literary evidence.

The scope of Palmer's study is wide. In addition to covering the more ubiquitous lives of Boniface and Willibrord, his book engages with the lesser-known figures of the Anglo-Saxon missionary circles. In every chapter except the last, Palmer provides detailed discussions of the more obscure vitae of Willehad, Gregory of Utrecht, Wynnebald, Burchard, Sturm, Eigil, Leoba, and several others. Anglo-Saxons in a Frankish World thus follows the precedents of Ian Wood's 2001 study The Missionary Life: Saints and the Evangelisation of Europe, 400-1500 and Lutz E. von Padberg's 1997 Heilige und Familie in viewing the Anglo-Saxon missions as interconnected, multigenerational phenomena that involved numerous Franks, Frisians, and Bavarians as well as the substantial cohort from the British Isles. The book is organized into seven, thematically arranged chapters, plus an ample introduction and short conclusion. The book is not heavily thesis-driven but offers instead a series of arguments drawn out and loosely woven together in the conclusion in the form of "threads" (p. 282). The chapters, like the book itself, are carefully exploratory, considering a theme from multiple possible angles, through multiple possible lenses, accumulating toward an overall synthesis. The progression of chapters is geographic. They move from an evaluation of the inward motivations of the individual Anglo-Saxon missionaries outward, encompassing their interactions with the Franks, their perceptions of the peoples and lands encountered in "Germania," their experiences with sources of monastic and papal authority in Italy, and finally, on to their limited engagement with the wider worlds of the Holy Land, Islam, and Byzantium.

The introduction presents a detailed history of the scholarship surrounding the Anglo-Saxon missions, with its attendant controversies and changes in scholarly approaches, as well as a discussion of the nature of hagiographic texts and the challenges of using them as historical sources. Palmer's first chapter, "Motivations," raises important questions about the two motivations for missions commonly ascribed to Willibrord, Boniface, and their circles: peregrinatio and a desire to convert their kindred gentes Germanorum. He re-evaluates the sources, including...