This volume in
Oxford Medieval Text
contains Eadmer's Lives of Saints Oda, Dunstan, and Oswald, as well as the Miracles of Dunstan and Oswald. These three English saints, together with Æthelwold of Winchester, were key figures in the Benedictine revival of the tenth century, which saw a flowering of Anglo-Saxon religious, artistic, and literary culture. Eadmer of Canterbury (
c
.1060-
.1130), the secretary, confidant, and biographer of Saint Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (1033-1109), was one of the most important historians and biographers in the period after the Norman Conquest. His works, written in Latin, look back constantly to the Anglo-Saxon past, while at the same time they accurately reflect the present-day realities of the wider European society into which England had been forcibly integrated. Manuscripts of his
Lives of the Saints
circulated widely in both in England and France, but apart from his
Life of Anselm
they have been little studied, and have remained largely untranslated. The works newly edited and translated in this edition provide many insights into the wider political history of the pre- and post-Conquest periods, as well as important evidence for the cults of the saints in Canterbury and Worcester.