John Keats's 1820 poem “The Eve of Saint Agnes” is a medievalist's dream, not the product of the Middle Ages but a Romantic-era vision filtered through readings of Spenser and Shakespeare – the very version of the past that seems most patently inauthentic. Multiple scholars of medievalism have pointed out that each age recreates the Middle Ages in response to its own concerns and preoccupations, and the British Romantic era is no exception. Yet, selfevidently, people did live in that time later designated the Middle Ages, and they too must have had their own hopes, fears, and interests. As the countless works published yearly based on research into a more accurate picture of the Middle Ages testify, the authentic – the “real” – still has an allure. Even in an artificially medieval poem, the reader is tempted to identify some germ of the actual Middle Ages. If there is an authentic medieval element in “The Eve of St. Agnes,” it would appear to be the Saint Agnes ritual, which suggests that the poem recalls pre-Reformation times and beliefs passed down through oral tradition. The kinds of evidence used to establish authenticity, however, such as contemporary written records and artifacts, do not help much in the case of a practice transmitted from person to person.

From the English perspective any rituals associated with Saint Agnes must date back at least to medieval times. Saint Agnes's feast day prompted no official celebration by the English Church in Keats's time. Early versions of the Church of England's Book of Common Prayer omitted St. Agnes entirely, although she and other saints were reinserted in the calendar in the 1600s. This would seem to be a fragment of something authentically medieval, yet problems immediately arise. Where and when is Keats's poem set? The easy answer is that St. Agnes's feast day is January 21, and the poem takes place the preceding day and night, but which January 21, and where, are harder to determine.