The story of St. Edmund, who was King of East Anglia from around 855 until his death in 869, is a challenging one to tell. We don’t know if he was married or had any children, although later popular belief maintained that he was a virgin throughout his life – a sign of his holiness. We don’t know anything about his parents, although we do know he was a member of the Wuffing dynasty – probably its last. Basically, you could fit the entirety of our knowledge about the life of St. Edmund into a few sentences – given that fact what is this book about and why is it interesting?
The reason we are even talking about St. Edmund, and the reason he’s a saint at all, is due to the manner of his death. Edmund was killed by Danish Vikings near the end of the year 869. The exact manner of his death is not entirely clear, and it is in the analysis of this that I have my only quibble with this book. The popular story first written by the French monk Abbo when he was in England almost a century after Edmund’s death is that the king defied the Danish warlord during a Viking invasion, and as punishment he was tied to a tree and used as target practice by the Viking archers. After he died, he was decapitated, and his head thrown into the woods to deny him a Christian burial. After the Danes departed the people of East Anglia recovered the saint’s head – guided to it by its miraculous ability to still talk. It was discovered in the protection of a massive wolf, possibly a nod to the literal meaning of Wuffing, who let the people take it back with them, whereupon it miraculously reattached itself to the king’s body which from that time on was inviolate – i.e. it did not decay.
Young’s analysis of Abbo’s story is fascinating, and he clearly is much more familiar with the period than I am, but there is one area I wish was explored in more detail. Buckle up kids because we’re about to get really niche here. The reason I’m interested in St. Edmund is that the story of him being tied to a tree and shot full of arrows bears a remarkable resemblance to the story of the early Christian martyr St. Sebastian – who was tied to a post and shot at by Roman soldiers at the orders of Emperor Diocletian. St. Sebastian is a major martyr, and late medieval images of him are invaluable to historians studying medieval archery so I’m reasonably familiar with him as a subject. Young mentions that Abbo was familiar with the story of St. Sebastian but doesn’t really explore the possibility that he was adopting the earlier saint’s martyrdom for his story about St. Edmund. The earliest reference to St. Edmund’s death, in an almost contemporary version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, just says that he was killed by Danes and implies that it was during or soon after engaging them in battle. Based on the available evidence I’d be more inclined towards a version where Abbo was adopting a pre-existing saint’s myth for the English king he was writing about, but I admit that Young is more of an expert on this subject than I am. However, that is precisely why I would have liked it if he had spent more time discussing this possibility – an expert’s analysis is exactly what I craved. That said, this is some really specific nit-picking, and most readers will not be as invested in stories about saints being shot with arrows as I am so I can’t really hold it against the work as a whole!
Young does an impressive job going through the very limited evidence we have for the reign of St. Edmund, including a handful of coins minted during his reign and the very few references to him in early medieval documents. However, this limited evidence can only sustain so much discussion, which is why much of the book is dedicated to the reputation and cult of St. Edmund after his death. This book is less a biography of Edmund the king, because there’s very little to write about that figure, and more an account of the post-mortem life of the saint. This includes discussions of his reported miracles, including the truly amazing story that Edmund appeared as a ghost before the Viking king Swein Forkbeard and killed him by stabbing him with a spear – real top tier miracle that one. Young even carries the story through the Reformation and the dissolution of the monasteries to examine the change in St. Edmund’s worship from being a patron of the English monarchy to a symbol of Catholic resistance and oppression under the new Protestant regime of the Tudors and their successors. Finally, the book concludes with an examination of the evidence for where St. Edmund’s body actually is. It went missing sometime after the monastery of Bury-St-Edmunds was dissolved in 1539 and Young thinks there is good evidence that it is under some tennis courts near the abbey’s ruins – having been reburied in the monk’s graveyard by the monastic community right before the abbey was dissolved. In 2020 the removal of the tennis courts was approved, and an archaeological survey of the monastery and its surroundings was set to begin so this book may eventually have an exciting new postscript!
Edmund: In Search of England’s Lost King is an engaging read and well worth your time if you’re interested in the cults and veneration of medieval saints throughout the Middle Ages and modern era. If you’re looking for a biography of an early medieval monarch, you may be better off with a history of a better documented king like Alfred the Great. That said, this book is relatively short, and the writing is engaging so you could do far worse than spending a couple of days learning about a once famous saint who has fallen somewhat into obscurity – but maybe could be famous again!