Sites and sanctity: revisiting the cult of murdered and martyred Anglo-Saxon royal saints Catherine Cubitt The cults of the murdered and martyred royal saints of Anglo-Saxon England have been interpreted as political in origin and this view has received widespread acceptance. This article, which discusses the cults of the kings, Oswald, Oswiu and Edwin of Northumbria, and Edward the Martyr and those of the princes, Kenelm of Mercia and áthelred and áthelberht of Kent, puts forward a new interpretation, suggesting that their cults originated in lay and non-e Âlite devotion to the innocent victims of unjust and violent death, before being taken up for political and other purposes. It addresses the problem of popular religion in Anglo- Saxon England and seeks to show how these cults may be used to shed light on the beliefs of the ordinary Anglo-Saxon laity. Anglo-Saxon England has earned a certain scholarly renown for its crowd of royal saints. These included princess-abbesses such as áthelthryth of Ely, kings like Oswald of Northumbria and Edmund of East Anglia who were killed by pagans (and are generally referred to as royal martyrs) and royal victims of political violence, best exempli®ed by Edward the Martyr. The phenomenon of royal sanctity has attracted a considerable body of analysis and criticism in recent years with distinguished articles and monographs by David Rollason, Susan Ridyard and Alan Thacker. 1 The interpretations of these authors have produced a remarkable con- sensus in favour of the view that many of these cults, particularly those of murdered kings and princes, originated in royal sponsorship and were promoted for political reasons. Rollason, Ridyard and Thacker have been 1 D. Rollason, The Search for St Wigstan. Prince-Martyr of the Kingdom of Mercia, Vaughan Paper 27 (University of Leicester, 1981); The Mildrith Legend: a Study in Early Medieval Hagiography in England (Leicester, 1982); `The Cults of Murdered Royal Saints in Anglo-Saxon England', Anglo-Saxon England 11 (1983), pp. 1±22. A. Thacker, `Kings, Saints, and Monasteries in Pre- Viking Mercia', Midland History 10 (1985), pp. 1±25; `Saint-Making and Relic Collecting by Oswald and his Communities', in N. Brooks and C. Cubitt (eds.), St Oswald of Worcester: Life and In¯uence (London, 1996), pp. 244±68, at pp. 247±53. S. Ridyard, The Royal Saints of Anglo- Saxon England. A Study of West Saxon and East Anglian Cults (Cambridge, 1988). Early Medieval Europe 2000 9 (1) 53±83 # Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2000, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA