Prophetical Traditions in Northern Europe: Introduction

British Library MS Stowe 944 is a well-known eleventh-century manuscript, containing most notably the Liber Vitae of the New Minster at Winchester and the will of King Alfred. Written possibly in 1031 but certainly after Ælfwine was made abbot at the New Minster, the manuscript is a miscellany of lists of saints' resting places, kings' names, relics, and chronological commonplaces. The materials found in it are practical, historical, and could even be described as straightforward. On f. 40rv there appears a twelfth-century addition on an originally blank leaf, a text commonly known as the "Vision of Eadwine." In some fifty lines, the monk Eadwine apparently sees Cuthbert while lying in his cell at noon, and thereafter leaves the monastery, in defiance of abbot Ælfwine's order, in order to visit the saint's shrine. Upon his return he rejoices in the leniency of his reception by the other monks, and comments at some length upon the agreement between the two minsters at Winchester, "clarifying" the absolute equality of the two houses. This spurious vision is generally taken as a twelfth-century forgery, an attempt by the monks of the New Minster to establish their title and authority with respect to the Old Minster. They wished to establish that title and authority by way of this prophetic vision, a vision in the biblical and early Christian tradition of the revelatory dream-vision. Today, attempts to establish land claims and ecclesiastical authority would take place by way of arguments from documents, testimony from individuals, and careful historical investigation. A dream-vision by an employee of one of the involved parties would be unlikely to have much evidentiary value, though it is possible that were the text of the eleventh century, as this one purports to be, it might establish an historical pattern of belief (or spurious belief). How much value the "Vision of Eadwine" had in the medieval version of such proceedings is hard to determine.