St. John of Beverley ranks among the most interesting early Anglo-Saxon saints not only because he was bishop of Hexham from 687 to 706 and archbishop of York from 706 to ca. 721 but because he seems to have personally known three seventh- and eighth-century luminaries, Abbess Hilda of Whitby, Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury, and Bede, the father of English historical writing. The first two trained John at some point in his life, and the last he ordained as a deacon and priest when he was bishop of Hexham. John also founded Beverley, a church of enduring importance to the northern archbishopric, where his cult grew quickly from one of local to one of international significance. King Henry V made John co–patron saint of England after the English victory at Agincourt in 1415 on the feast of his translation, and some time in the later Middle Ages the Breton town of Saint-Jean-Brévelay tapped into his holiness by adopting his name. It is thus ironic, as Wilson notes, that far less attention has been paid in recent years to the cult of this illustrious figure than to the church he founded.

The reason for this relative neglect is not difficult to decipher: like most Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastics, John is virtually unknown to us apart from his hagiography, and as a result, historians have tended to focus on the tangible evidence available for the church and town of Beverley. This new edition of his vitae and miracle collections cannot add much to what we think we know about Archbishop John, but it does bring together the hagiographical evidence in translation with a very useful series of introductory chapters. For those of us who do not have easy access to the Rolls Series, upon which the translations are based, it is welcome indeed.

Although she does parse the various sources for what little historical information they impart, Wilson's overarching purpose is to examine the manner in which the cult developed over time. Because these sources were written over the course of the Middle Ages, it is indeed possible to detect important changes in attitudes toward saints and holiness. John's cult developed quickly after his death, beginning in the pages of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica and kept alive in Alcuin's Versus de patribus regibus et sanctis Euboricensis ecclesiæ, a verse history of the church of York written in the late eighth century. Folcard of Saint-Bertin's vita of St. John, commissioned by Archbishop Ealdred and composed in the 1060s, was the first vita but not the last written testimonial to the saint's holiness: a handful of abridged vitae, various small miracle collections, and related documents continued to be written at Beverley from the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries.

The corpus is a compelling blend of straightforward hagiography, documentary sources, and annals, albeit mostly late in date and weighted heavily on the side of miracles. Wilson does her best to extract what little historical information the corpus provides in two chapters entitled “John of Beverley the Man” and “John of Beverley: Saint or Sinner?” In the former she tries to reconcile, among other things, the confusing chronology of his training at Whitby and Canterbury and whether Beverley minster was the church mentioned in Bede (it was). The latter chapter is a short discussion of a brief mention of St. John in the Shewings of the fourteenth-century mystic Julian of Norwich, who, in contrast to his hagiographers, presents him as a sinner-turned-saint. The different tradition, Wilson suggests, indicates Julian might have had access to a different (and now lost) vita circulating in Norfolk at that time.

The longest chapter is, not surprisingly, devoted to John's hagiography. Wilson begins with a short but lucid discussion of the genre, before launching into detailed analyses of each miracle collection. One of my only criticisms of this book is that there is some repetition from the opening chapter on sources throughout the book, and it is perhaps most noticeable in this chapter. On occasion, people and events are referenced as if for the first time, making the overall work feel a bit disjointed. This is a very small point, however, and there is much of interest here. Wilson highlights the ways in which John's vita and miracles were reworked over time; she shows, for example, how in times of peace and prosperity John the healer is emphasized over John the protector/avenger, who appears in times of civil unrest. At the end of the chapter, Wilson situates the collection in the greater world of hagiography by associating it with the tradition of St. Martin of Tours. She also shows, however, that the collection does not fit so neatly into the schema identified by scholars of other collections of a progression from predominantly acts of power to acts of mercy. In John's corpus as a whole, approximately 32 percent are nonhealing miracles, which is a much higher percentage than the 10 percent typical of miracles stories from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries.

Three short chapters on the translation, shrine, and relics of the saint, the patronage of kings, and the development of his cult in Brittany, followed by a short conclusion, round out the introductory material. Lightly footnoted English translations of the major sources, including Folcard's vita, William Ketell's miracle collection, and the three sets of Alia Miracula (all of which are based on Raine's editions in the Historians of the Church of York and Its Archbishops) are followed by a few excerpts from the Beverley cartulary and the Chapter Act Book. It would have been nice to have the Latin texts as well, but that would have been a different (and much longer) book. What is here is more than enough to get anyone started on this interesting journey into both Anglo-Saxon and later medieval hagiography.