Miracles in architectural settings: Christ Church, Canterbury and St Clement's, Sandwich in the Old English Vision of Leofric

Abstract

The ‘Old English Vision of Leofric, Earl of Mercia’ was first printed in a philological journal in 1908. It contains extremely interesting information about the arrangement and furnishings of two major Anglo-Saxon churches, Christ Church, Canterbury, and St Clement's Church, Sandwich. The Visio Leofrici is the only testimony, written or (apparently) archaeological, to the existence of St Clement's before the Conquest; it confirms and deepens aspects of our exclusively documentary knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon cathedral at Canterbury, which was destroyed by fire in 1067. Thus, it is particularly unfortunate that the Vision of Leofric, which has had but slight attention from students of language, literature or religious visions, has attracted even less notice from archaeologists, art historians and students of medieval liturgy.