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IMC 2019: Sessions

Session 1507: Memory, Community, and Identity in High Medieval Northumbria, I

Thursday 4 July 2019, 09.00-10.30

Organiser:Jesse Harrington, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge
Moderator/Chair:Janet Burton, School of Archaeology, History & Anthropology, University of Wales Trinity Saint David
Paper 1507-aHagiography as Polemic: The Case of Reginald of Durham
(Language: English)
Margaret Coombe, Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford
Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Hagiography, Historiography - Medieval, Monasticism
Paper 1507-bDe Northymbrorum Comitibus: Cultural Identity and Dynastic Memory in 12th-Century Durham
(Language: English)
Peter Lunga, Christ's College, University of Cambridge
Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Historiography - Medieval
Paper 1507-cSaints' Wars, Episode III: The Revenge of St Cuthbert
(Language: English)
David Rogan, School of Arts, Languages & Cultures, University of Manchester
Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Hagiography
Abstract

This pair of sessions explores the negotiation of community identity in the northeast of England in the 11-12th centuries and beyond, through the prisms of medieval historiography, hagiography, and homiletic. Different communities in Durham, Yorkshire, and Northumberland all sought to place their own stamp on the memory of the distant and more immediate Northumbrian past, and to argue for what it meant for regional and indeed 'national' identity in the politically and culturally changing present. The papers in this session consider those contested identities through a range of cases. Session I focuses on community memory within the single community of Durham, while session II expands to explore the political memory and identity of the northeast more broadly.