From the first centuries of Christianity, believers turned to the perfection modeled by saints for inspiration, and a tradition of recounting saints’ Lives flourished. The Latin narratives followed specific forms, dramatizing a virgin’s heroic resolve or a martyr’s unwavering faith under torture.

In early medieval England, saints’ Lives were eagerly received and translated into the vernacular. The stories collected here by unknown authors are preserved in manuscripts dating from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. They include locally venerated saints like the abbess Seaxburh, as well as universally familiar ones like Nicholas and Michael the Archangel, and are set everywhere from Antioch to Rome, from India to Ephesus. These Lives also explore such topics as the obligations of rulers, marriage and gender roles, private and public devotion, the environment, education, and the sweep of human history. This volume presents new Old English editions and modern English translations of twenty-two unattributed saints’ Lives.

Scholarship on early medieval England has seen an exponential increase in scholarly work by and about women over the past twenty years, but the field has remained peculiarly resistant to the transformative potential of feminist critique. Since 2016, Medieval Studies has been rocked by conversations about the state of the field, shifting from #MeToo to #WhiteFeminism to the purposeful rethinking of the label “Anglo-Saxonist.” This volume takes a step toward decentering the traditional scholarly conversation with thirteen new essays by American, Canadian, European, and UK professors, along with independent scholars and early career researchers from a range of disciplinary perspectives. Topics range from virginity, women’s literacy, and medical discourse to affect, medievalism, and masculinity. The theoretical and political commitments of this volume comprise one strand of a multivalent effort to rethink the parameters of the discipline and to create a scholarly community that is innovative, inclusive, and diverse.