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Bugyis, "Dating the Translations of Barking's Abbess-Saints by Goscelin of

Saint-Bertin and Abbess Aelfgifu," Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies 11
(2022): 97-130

Article  in  Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies · October 2022

DOI: 10.1484/J.JMMS.5.130743

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Katie Bugyis
University of Notre Dame
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 KATIE ANN-MARIE BUGYIS 

Dating the Translations of Barking’s

Abbess-Saints by Goscelin of
Saint-Bertin and Abbess Ælfgifu*

! ABSTRACT Sometime in the last two decades of

the eleventh century, the Flemish hagiographer
Goscelin of Saint-Bertin (c. 1035–d. after 1114)
assembled a dossier of Latin saints’ Lives, Translations,
Matins Lessons, and chronicled events for the
Benedictine nuns at Barking Abbey in Essex, England,
at the behest of their abbess Ælfgifu (c. 1047–c. 1114)
to memorialize the community’s three most treasured
saints: Barking’s founder and first abbess, Æthelburh
(d. after 686); her immediate successor, Hildelith
(d. after 716); and her later successor Wulfhild
(d. after 996). Ælfgifu’s request was, in large part,
occasioned by the major building project that she had
undertaken to raze the abbey’s old church and to
construct a new one. Her project necessitated the
translation of the three abbess-saints to temporary
resting places until the new church was completed.
The aim of this article is to determine when this
translation most likely occurred on the basis of the
available evidence internal and external to Goscelin’s
dossier. Establishing these dates is essential to efforts
being made by scholars to reconstruct Goscelin’s

* I wish to thank my research collaborators, Stephanie Hollis and Michael Wright, for their
feedback on this article, as well as the members of the Medieval Liturgy Virtual Symposium
— Alison Altstatt, Cara Aspesi, Margot Fassler, Tova Leigh-Choate, and Kate Steiner — for
their support throughout the research and writing of this piece. As always, I am grateful for
the encouragement of Eric and Joseph Bugyis in all my scholarly endeavours.

Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis (kbugyis@nd.edu) is Associate Professor in the

Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

The Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies, 11 (2022), 97–130

10.1484/J.JMMS.5.130743

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