Whitby monastère dynastique. Rois et abbesses dans la Northumbrie du VIIe siècle
Résumé
The seventh-century abbey of Streoneshealh (modern Whitby, North Yorkshire) provides a fascinating case for the study of the emergence of Christian kingship in the recently converted North of Britain. The kings of the Northumbrians – whose power encompassed several earlier polities, including the kingdom of Deira where Whitby was situated – maintained very close relationship with that religious institution, which can be described by all means as a dynastic monastery. The abbey was under the authority of royal women, all of them close kinswomen of successive Northumbrian monarchs. Their influence was also transmitted all over England thanks to the abbey school, where several bishops were trained. Kings also used the place as a favourite setting for staging political and religious events. Moreover, in Streoneshealh was constructed an ambitious memory of the dynasty’s past: indeed, in the abbey church lay the tomb of Edwin, one of the dynasty’s saintly ancestors, beside whose revered bones several kings of the Northumbrians were buried.