A survey of the landed endowment of Glastonbury Abbey before 1066, with a history of its estates. The early history of the religious community at Glastonbury has been the subject of much speculation and imaginative writing, but there are few sources which genuinely further our knowledge of Glastonbury Abbey in the Anglo-Saxonperiod. This has resulted in a lack of serious historical research and hence the neglect of an important ecclesiastical establishment. This study brings together the evidence of royal and episcopal grants of land and combines it with material from Domesday Book, to produce a survey of the landed endowment of Glastonbury Abbey before 1066, and an analysis of the history of its Anglo-Saxon estates. Although there is too little data to formulate a complete account of the Abbey's early landholdings, the surviving evidence, collected together here, outlines a history for each place named in connection with the pre-Conquest religious house; in addition, each case helps to establish an overall framework for the life-cycle of the Anglo-Saxon estate, building on our understanding of actual conditions of tenure and of the various fortunes ecclesiastical land might experience. LESLEY ABRAMS is Lecturer in History, Brasenose College, and Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford University.

His work demonstrates the importance of these neglected sources for our understanding of the late Old English church.' HISTORYAn important book of immense erudition. It brings into the open some major issues of Late Anglo-Saxon history, and gives a thorough overview of the detailed source material. When such outstanding learning is being used, through intuitive perception, to bear on the wider issues such as popular devotion and the reception of the monastic reform in England, and bold conclusions are bing drawn from such minutely detailed studies, there is no doubt that David Dumville's contribution in this area of study becomes invaluable. The sources for the liturgy of late Anglo-Saxon England have a distinctive shape. Very substantial survival has given us the possibility of understanding change and perceiving significant continuity, as well as identifying local preferences and peculiarities. One major category of evidence is provided by a corpus of more than twenty kalendars: some of these (and particularly those which have been associated with Glastonbury Abbey) are subjected to close examination here, the process contributing both negatively and positively to the history of ecclesiastical renewal in the 10th century. Another significant body of manuscripts comprises books for episcopal use, especially pontificals: these are examined here as a group, and their associations with specific prelates and churches considered. All these investigations tend to suggest the centrality of the church of Canterbury in the surviving testimony and presumptively therefore in the history of late Anglo-Saxon christianity. Historians' study of English liturgy in this period has heretofore concentrated on the development of coronation-rites: by pursuing palaeographical and textual enquiries, the author has sought to make other divisions of the subject respond to historical questioning. Dr DAVID N. DUMVILLEis Reader in the Early Mediaeval History and Culture of the British Isles at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Girton College.

The clash of cultures. Armies marching. The rise and fall of kingdoms. Yet Glastonbury remained a place of serenity, prayer. Crow deftly weaves through the years of Christianity in England in this historical novelization.

Forges innovative connections between monastic archaeology and heritage studies, revealing new perspectives on sacred heritage, identity, medieval healing, magic and memory. This title is available as Open Access.

A study of the manuscripts, relics and historical traditions of Anglo-Saxon Exeter before Leofric moved the see of Devon and Cornwall there in 1050.

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, andof 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, butgrew 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 andlocal communities meant to each other in early England.

The King's Body investigates the role of royal bodies, funerals, and graves in English succession debates from the death of Alfred the Great in 899 through the Norman Conquest in 1066. Using contemporary texts and archaeological evidence, Nicole Marafioti reconstructs the political activity that accompanied kings' burials, to demonstrate that royal bodies were potent political objects which could be used to provide legitimacy to the next generation. In most cases, new rulers celebrated their predecessor's memory and honored his corpse to emphasize continuity and strengthen their claims to the throne. Those who rose by conquest or regicide, in contrast, often desecrated the bodies of deposed royalty or relegated them to anonymous graves in attempts to brand their predecessors as tyrants unworthy of ruling a Christian nation. By delegitimizing the previous ruler, they justified their own accession. At a time when hereditary succession was not guaranteed and few accessions went unchallenged, the king's body was a commodity that royal candidates fought to control.

The workings of royal and ecclesiastical authority in Anglo-Saxon England can only be understood on the basis of direct engagement with original texts and material artefacts. This book, written by leading experts, brings together new research that represents the best of the current scholarship on the nexus between authority and written sources from Anglo-Saxon England. Ranging from the seventh to the eleventh century, the chapters in this volume offer fresh approaches to a wide range of linguistic, historical, legal, diplomatic and palaeographical evidence. Central themes include the formation of power in early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms during the age of Bede (d. 735) and Offa of Mercia (757–96), authority and its articulation in the century from Edgar (959–75) to 1066, and the significance of books and texts in expressing power across the period. Writing, Kingship and Power in Anglo-Saxon England represents a critical resource for students and scholars alike with an interest in early medieval history from political, institutional and cultural perspectives.

A sweeping and original history of the Anglo-Saxons by national bestselling author Marc Morris. Sixteen hundred years ago Britain left the Roman Empire and swiftly fell into ruin. Grand cities and luxurious villas were deserted and left to crumble, and civil society collapsed into chaos. Into this violent and unstable world came foreign invaders from across the sea, and established themselves as its new masters. The Anglo-Saxons traces the turbulent history of these people across the next six centuries. It explains how their earliest rulers fought relentlessly against each other for glory and supremacy, and then were almost destroyed by the onslaught of the vikings. It explores how they abandoned their old gods for Christianity, established hundreds of churches and created dazzlingly intricate works of art. It charts the revival of towns and trade, and the origins of a familiar landscape of shires, boroughs and bishoprics. It is a tale of famous figures like King Offa, Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor, but also features a host of lesser known characters - ambitious queens, revolutionary saints, intolerant monks and grasping nobles. Through their remarkable careers we see how a new society, a new culture and a single unified nation came into being. Drawing on a vast range of original evidence - chronicles, letters, archaeology and artefacts - renowned historian Marc Morris illuminates a period of history that is only dimly understood, separates the truth from the legend, and tells the extraordinary story of how the foundations of England were laid.