The Middle English text known as Athelston has long proved an awkward presence amongst the romances that purport to deal with subjects from English history. Its grasp of that history seems slippery, both inaccurate and anachronistic to a degree unusual even amongst the romances, and its accumulation of romance motifs fails to build convincingly into a romance. It is fast-moving, dramatic and well-paced and thus seems to be a popular narrative, but it exists in only one manuscript and leaves no trace of other copies or of wider circulation. It has no discernible source, although analogues have been identified amongst tales of accused queens and romances of male friendship. Since being dismissed by Sands, who saw it as over-valued, a thin and unremarkable piece not worth the attention it has been given, Athelston has attracted more favourable critical attention; ‘the diversity of scholarly views suggests the presence of an amazingly complex intertextuality and interpretive potential for this seemingly simple romance’. It has been praised for its examination of masculine relationships, for its focus on kingship, on the fourteenth-century interest in the law and in oaths and promises. Feminist criticism has moved discussion away from its focus on the masculine, public world of the poem to read it as a romance exploring issues of gender.

An anonymous, non-cyclical work such as this needs to be orientated in terms of its cultural moment and generic position. For much of its critical history, interest has derived from its spurious attachment to the Anglo-Saxon king Athelstan and the legendary history of England and thence into discussions of the Matter of England. Much has been done in recent years to historicize the romance in a more precise political context, but late-fourteenth-century culture provides terms of reference other than those relating to acute political crises. This paper sets out to further identify Athelston's cultural roots and the codes it draws on by reading it in terms of its religious context, a process which has been shown to lead to questioning the generic identification of the narrative. There is no argument about the presence of a religious element in Athelston – the figure of the heroic archbishop, the divine intervention through the ordeal by fire and the climactic scene with the birth of St Edmund are all clear enough pointers.