Although the Norman Conquest of 1066 swept away most of the secular and ecclesiastical leaders of pre-Conquest England, it held some positive aspects for English society, such as its effects on Anglo-Saxon monastic foundations, which this study explores. The first part deals in depth with five individual case studies (Abingdon, Gloucester, Bury St Edmunds, St Albans and St Augustine's, Canterbury) as well as Fenland and other houses, showing how despite mixed fortunes the major houses survived to become the richest in England. The second part places the experiences of the houses in the context of structural changes in religious patronage as well as within the social and political nexus of the Anglo-Norman realm. Dr Cownie analyses the pattern of gifts to religious houses on both sides of the Channel, looking at the reasons why they were made.EMMA COWNIEgained her Ph.D. from the University of Wales at Cardiff; she currently holds a research fellowship at King's College, London.

Since the Anglo-Norman period itself, the relations beween the English and the Normans have formed a subject of lively debate. For most of that time, however, complacency about the inevitability of assimilation and of the Anglicization of Normans after 1066 has ruled. This book first challenges that complacency, then goes on to provide the fullest explanation yet for why the two peoples merged and the Normans became English. Drawing on anthropological theory, the latest scholarship on Anglo-Norman England, and sources ranging from charters and legal documents to saints' lives and romances, it provides a complex exploration of ethnic relations on the levels of personal interaction, cultural assimilation, and the construction of identity. As a result, the work provides an important case study in pre-modern ethnic relations that combines both old and new approaches, and sheds new light on some of the most important developments in English history.

"While there has been work on the nobility as patrons of monasteries, this is the first real study of them as patrons of parish churches, and is thus the first study to tackle the subject as a whole. Illustrated with a wealth of detail, it will become an indispensable work of reference for those interested in lay patronage and the Church more generally in the middle ages." Professor David Carpenter, Department of History, King's College London This book provides the first full-length, integrated study of the ecclesiastical patronage rights of the nobility in medieval England. It examines the nature and extent of these rights, how they were used, why and for whom they were valuable, what challenges lay patrons faced, and how they looked to the future in making gifts to the Church. It takes as its focus the thirteenth century, a critical period for the survival and development of these rights, being a time of ambitious Church reform, of great change in patterns of land ownership in the ranks of the higher nobility, and of bold assertion by the English Crown of its claims to control Church property. The thirteenth century also saw a proliferation of record keeping on the part of kings, bishops and nobility, and the author uses new evidence from a range of documentary sources to explore the nature of the relationships between the English nobility, the Church and its clergy, a relationship in which patronage was the essential feature. Dr Elizabeth Gemmill is University Lecturer in Local History and Fellow of Kellogg College. University of Oxford.

The Battle of Hastings in 1066 is the one date forever seared on the British national psyche. It enabled the Norman Conquest that marked the end of Anglo-Saxon England. But there was much more to the Normans than the invading army Duke William shipped over from Normandy to the shores of Sussex. How a band of marauding warriors established some of the most powerful dominions in Europe - in Sicily and France, as well as England - is an improbably romantic idea. In exploring Norman culture in all its regions, Leonie V Hicks is able to place the Normans in the full context of early medieval society. Her wide ranging comparative perspective enables the Norman story to be told in full, so that the societies of Rollo, William, Robert (Guiscard) and Roger are given the focused attention they deserve. From Hastings to the martial exploits of Bohemond and Tancred on the First Crusade; from castles and keeps to Romanesque cathedrals; and from the founding of the Kingdom of Sicily (1130) to cross-cultural encounters with Byzantines and Muslims, this is a fresh and lively survey of one of the most popular topics in European history.

In her ground-breaking new study, Katie Bugyis offers a new history of communities of Benedictine nuns in England from 900 to 1225. By applying innovative paleographical, codicological, and textual analyses to their surviving liturgical books, Bugyis recovers a treasure trove of unexamined evidence for understanding these women's lives and the liturgical and pastoral ministries they performed. She examines the duties and responsibilities of their chief monastic officers--abbesses, prioresses, cantors, and sacristans--highlighting three of the ministries vital to their practice-liturgically reading the gospel, hearing confessions, and offering intercessory prayers for others. Where previous scholarship has argued that the various reforms of the central Middle Ages effectively relegated nuns to complete dependency on the sacramental ministrations of priests, Bugyis shows that, in fact, these women continued to exercise primary control over their spiritual care. Essential to this argument is the discovery that the production of the liturgical books used in these communities was carried out by female scribes, copyists, correctors, and creators of texts, attesting to the agency and creativity that nuns exercised in the care they extended to themselves and those who sought their hospitality, counsel, instruction, healing, forgiveness, and intercession.