Although acknowledged as the author of four extant hagiographical texts, Jocelin of Furness remains a shadowy figure in modern historiography. Much of this obscurity reflects our limited knowledge about the author himself. His Vitae are largely impersonal works and outside sources provide little further information to complete the picture. In addition, the fact that three of Jocelin's four texts are reworkings of much earlier material means they have found few admirers in modern scholarship. Of those historians who choose to comment on Jocelin, only the minority do so with an interest in the author himself or the context in which he was writing. Instead, his works are frequently treated as imperfect secondary sources for the historical figures they describe and Jocelin himself as a credulous barrier to an elusive historical truth. However, the basis of much of this modern criticism rests on a profound difference between the original intentions of the texts and the way in which they have been read since. The comment by Silas Harris that Jocelin's Vita Kentegerni ‘is romance rather than history’ – as a hagiographical text it is, strictly speaking, neither – is representative of a wider attitude in the scholarly literature that has failed to appreciate the texts on their own terms. This book offers a much more sympathetic approach to Jocelin's works. By closely analysing the texts of the Vitae themselves and the wider environment in which they were written, this study places the author and his works firmly in the hagiographical, religious, cultural and political context of Angevin Britain. It is a methodology that reflects a wider movement in the current field of hagiographical studies. Whereas earlier scholars cited vitae as evidence for the periods described by the texts, greater attention is now being directed to the function and meaning of the works in the time in which they were written. The increasing appreciation of hagiographical texts as sources for the particular circumstances of their authors and patrons means that the rich historical material to be found in many medieval vitae is now being more fully recognized.

As an explicitly didactic genre, hagiography presents models of saintly behaviour for its audience to imitate. These models are rooted in centuries of Christian literary tradition and reinforce the individual saint's claim to sanctity by placing him or her within a recognized framework of holy mimesis.