Liturgy, Literature, and History: Oswald of Northumbria and the Cult of Saints in the Middle Ages (Proceedings of the British Academy: Themed volumes ... in the humanities and social sciences 2025)

The centrality of the cult of saints to medieval Christianity is reflected in surviving liturgical, historical, literary and administrative texts, material culture and architecture. Too often, however, disciplinary boundaries mean these sources are studied in isolation from one another. This volume takes a multi-disciplinary approach to uncover both the mechanisms by which saints’ cults spread and also the manner in which veneration of the saints drove other forms of political, cultural and social expression. Focussed on the cult of Oswald of Northumbria in the high Middle Ages, this volume brings together historians, literary scholars, musicologists and art historians to explore the cult of saints through texts, objects, space, sound and the senses and particularly interrogates the influence of liturgy on society. Oswald’s cult spread far in time and space from its origins in seventh-century Northumbria, and the essays in this volume seek to understand how liturgical commemoration and celebration of Oswald in different times and places drove developments in cultural expression, initiating new styles in musical as well as visual and material art forms. Read more