The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society
Title | The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society PDF eBook |
Author | John Blair |
Publisher | OUP Oxford |
Pages | 624 |
Release | 2005-01-20 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0191518832 |
From the impact of the first monasteries in the seventh century, to the emergence of the local parochial system five hundred years later, the Church was a force for change in Anglo-Saxon society. It shaped culture and ideas, social and economic behaviour, and the organization of landscape and settlement. This book traces how the widespread foundation of monastic sites ('minsters') during c.670-730 gave the recently pagan English new ways of living, of exploiting their resources, and of absorbing European culture, as well as opening new spiritual and intellectual horizons. Through the era of Viking wars, and the tenth-century reconstruction of political and economic life, the minsters gradually lost their wealth, their independence, and their role as sites of high culture, but grew in stature as foci of local society and eventually towns. After 950, with the increasing prominence of manors, manor-houses, and village communities, a new and much larger category of small churches were founded, endowed, and rebuilt: the parish churches of the emergent eleventh- and twelfth-century local parochial system. In this innovative study, John Blair brings together written, topographical, and archaeological evidence to build a multi-dimensional picture of what local churches and local communities meant to each other in early England.
Leaders of the Anglo-Saxon Church
Title | Leaders of the Anglo-Saxon Church PDF eBook |
Author | Alexander R. Rumble |
Publisher | Boydell Press |
Pages | 218 |
Release | 2012 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 1843837005 |
Essays bring out the important and complex roles played by Anglo-Saxon churchmen, including Bede and lesser-known figures. Both episcopal and abbatial authority were of fundamental importance to the development of the Christian church in Anglo-Saxon England. Bishops and heads of monastic houses were invested with a variety of types of power and influence. Their actions, decisions, and writings could change not only their own institutions, but also the national church, while their interaction with the king and his court affected wider contemporary society. Theories of ecclesiastical leadership were expounded in contemporary texts and documents. But how far did image or ideal reflect reality? How much room was there for individuals to use their office to promote new ideas? The papers in this volumeillustrate the important roles played by individual leading ecclesiastics in England, both within the church and in the wider political sphere, from the late seventh to the mid eleventh century. The undeniable authority of Bede and Bishop Æthelwold is demonstrated but also the influence of less-familiar figures such as Bishop Wulfsige of Sherborne, Archbishop Ecgberht of York and St Leoba. The book draws on both textual and material evidence to show the influence (by both deed and reputation) of powerful personalities not only on the developing institutions of the English church but also on the secular politics of their time. Contributors: Alexander R. Rumble, Nicholas J.Higham, Martyn J. Ryan, Cassandra Rhodes, Allan Scott McKinley, Dominik Wassenhoven, Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Debby Banham, Joyce Hill.
Building Anglo-Saxon England
Title | Building Anglo-Saxon England PDF eBook |
Author | John Blair |
Publisher | Princeton University Press |
Pages | 497 |
Release | 2018-04-17 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1400889901 |
A radical rethinking of the Anglo-Saxon world that draws on the latest archaeological discoveries This beautifully illustrated book draws on the latest archaeological discoveries to present a radical reappraisal of the Anglo-Saxon built environment and its inhabitants. John Blair, one of the world's leading experts on this transformative era in England's early history, explains the origins of towns, manor houses, and castles in a completely new way, and sheds new light on the important functions of buildings and settlements in shaping people's lives during the age of the Venerable Bede and King Alfred. Building Anglo-Saxon England demonstrates how hundreds of recent excavations enable us to grasp for the first time how regionally diverse the built environment of the Anglo-Saxons truly was. Blair identifies a zone of eastern England with access to the North Sea whose economy, prosperity, and timber buildings had more in common with the Low Countries and Scandinavia than the rest of England. The origins of villages and their field systems emerge with a new clarity, as does the royal administrative organization of the kingdom of Mercia, which dominated central England for two centuries. Featuring a wealth of color illustrations throughout, Building Anglo-Saxon England explores how the natural landscape was modified to accommodate human activity, and how many settlements--secular and religious—were laid out with geometrical precision by specialist surveyors. The book also shows how the Anglo-Saxon love of elegant and intricate decoration is reflected in the construction of the living environment, which in some ways was more sophisticated than it would become after the Norman Conquest.
Priests and Their Books in Late Anglo-Saxon England
Title | Priests and Their Books in Late Anglo-Saxon England PDF eBook |
Author | Gerald P. Dyson |
Publisher | Boydell Press |
Pages | 296 |
Release | 2021-09-16 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 9781783276387 |
Fresh perspectives on the English clergy, their books, and the wider Anglo-Saxon church.
Monastic Life in Anglo-Saxon England, C.600-900
Title | Monastic Life in Anglo-Saxon England, C.600-900 PDF eBook |
Author | Sarah Foot |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 7 |
Release | 2006-10-26 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0521859468 |
A major 2006 history of English monasticism between the sixth and tenth centuries.
The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England
Title | The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England PDF eBook |
Author | Mary Clayton |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 336 |
Release | 2002 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 9780521531153 |
This book provides a wide-ranging exploration of the cult in England from c. 700 to the Conquest. Dr Clayton describes and illustrates with a plate section the development of Marian devotion, discussing Anglo-Saxon feasts of the Virgin, liturgical texts, prayers, art, poetry and prose.
Tradition and Belief
Title | Tradition and Belief PDF eBook |
Author | Clare A. Lees |
Publisher | U of Minnesota Press |
Pages | 220 |
Release | |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 9781452903880 |
In this major study of Angle-Saxon religious tests sermons, homilies, and saints' lives written in Old English -- Clare A. Lees reveals how the invention of preaching transformed the early medieval church, and thus the culture of medieval England in placing Anglo-Saxon prose within a social matrix, her work offers a new way of seeing medieval literature through the lens of cultures. To show how the preaching mission of the later Anglo-Saxon church was constructed and received, Lees explores the emergence of preaching from the traditional structures of the early medieval church -- its institutional knowledge, genres, and beliefs. Understood as a powerful rhetorical, social, and epistemological process, preaching is shown to have helped define the sociocultural concerns specific to late Anglo-Saxon England. The first detailed study of traditionality in medieval culture, Tradition and Belief is also a case study of one cultural phenomenon from the past. As such -- and by concentrating on the theoretically problematic areas of history, religious belief, and aesthetics -- the book contributes to debates about the evolving meaning of culture.