Squabbling Siblings: Gender and Monastic Life in Late Anglo-Saxon Winchester

In the later Anglo-Saxon period, the saints whose relics lay in Winchester were sought for help and cures by citizens and by pilgrims from further afield, and their relics were carefully guarded and controlled by the male and female communities whose houses occupied the south-eastern corner of the city. This article explores how the three communities related to the urban space which surrounded and supported them, how they co-operated or collaborated in certain contexts, and how the competition between the houses and their patron saints played out in day-to-day concerns. Gender runs as a thread throughout this: the ways in which gender affected the religious experiences of Winchester’s citizens and their consecrated brothers and sisters are complex, but they are also important in understanding how the saints and their servants on earth related to God, to each other, and to the surrounding urban space.