Ethnicity in hagiography: The case of Darerca/Moninna/Modwenna/Modwenne in the British Isles, seventh to thirteenth centuries

This is a contextual study of four related hagiographies written from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries in the British Isles. It is probable that there was a seventh-century original that is no longer extant much of which was retained in the tenth-century life. The saint herself is Irish and the earliest name we have for her is Darerca, but her name changes as the lives are rewritten. She is called Moninna in the eleventh-century life, Modwenna in the twelfth-century vita, and Modwenne in the thirteenth-century vie. Darerca is an Irish saint who lives and travels within Ireland and her Irishness is retained throughout these vitae. In the Life of St. Moninna, however, the saint's persona has been conflated with the legends of other saints of the British Isles, many of whom are difficult to identify with any certainty. Moninna's hagiographer includes her Irish journeys, but has her traveling to Scotland. In England, she is said to have founded Burton Abbey in the midlands, indicating that her name had become confused with that of a St. Modwenna whose relics were buried at Burton Abbey. In the early twelfth century, the abbot of Burton Abbey rewrote the Life of St. Moninna, retaining its Irish elements, but making it more relevant to an English audience. In c.1235, the text was reworked again at Burton in Anglo-Norman verse. The period during which these four lives were written was one of almost constant movement of peoples and mingling of ethnicities in the British Isles. For some newcomers, such as the Vikings, the processes of resistance were succeeded by varying degrees of assimilation. After the Norman Conquest in 1066, however, there developed a virulent institutionalized ethnic hostility toward the Irish. Therefore this study examines these lives through the lens of ethnicity, ethnogenesis, assimilation, and bias.