A History of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, 1182-1256
A History of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, 1182-1256

Author: Antonia Gransden

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13:

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Definitive history of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds during a crucial period in its history. St Edmund's Abbey was one of the most highly privileged and wealthiest religious houses in medieval England, one closely involved with the central government; its history is an integral part of English history. This book (the first of two volumes) offers a magisterial and comprehensive account of the Abbey during the thirteenth century, based primarily on evidence in the abbey's records [over 40 registers survive]. The careers of the abbots, beginning withthe great Samson, provide the chronological structure; separate chapters study various aspects of their rule, such as their relations with the convent, the abbey's internal and external administration and its relations with itstenants and neighbours, with the king and the central government. Chapters are also devoted to the monks' religious, cultural and intellectual life, to their writings, book collection and archives. Appendices focus on the mid-thirteenth century accounts which give a unique and detailed picture of the organisation and economy of St Edmunds' estates in West Suffolk, and on the abbey's watermills and windmills. Dr ANTONIA GRANSDEN is former Reader atthe University of Nottingham.

A History of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, 1257-1301
A History of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, 1257-1301

Author: Antonia Gransden

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 1783270268

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St Edmund's Abbey was one of the most highly privileged and wealthiest religious houses in medieval England, one closely involved with the central government; its history is an integral part of English history. This book, the second of two volumes, offers a magisterial and comprehensive account of the Abbey during the latter part of the thirteenth century, based primarily on evidence in the abbey's records (over 40 registers survive). It begins with an account of the two abbots of this period, Simon of Luton and John of Northwold, who showed outstanding ability in steering the abbey through difficult times, including conflict with the Friars Minor in the town, straitened financialcircumstances (partly caused by oppressive taxation from king and pope), and domestic issues. This is followed by consideration of such matters as the abbey's mint, its economy, religious, intellectual and cultural life, and the abbey's architecture -- especially the charnel chapel constructed by John, which survives to this day. The monks' dietary regime (with examples of actual recipes from the time) is examined in a detailed appendix. Dr Antonia Gransden is former Reader at the University of Nottingham.

Bury St Edmunds and the Norman Conquest
Bury St Edmunds and the Norman Conquest

Author: Tom Licence

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 1843839318

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Responses to the impact of the Norman Conquest examined through the wealth of evidence provided by the important abbey of Bury St Edmunds. Bury St Edmunds is noteworthy in so many ways: in preserving the cult and memory of the last East Anglian king, in the richness of its archives, and not least in its role as a mediator of medical texts and studies. All these aspects, and more, are amply illustrated in this collection, by specialists in their fields. The balance of the whole work, and the care taken to place the individual topics in context, has resulted in a satisfying whole, which placesAbbot Baldwin and his abbey squarely in the forefront of eleventh-century politics and society. Professor Ann Williams. The abbey of Bury St Edmunds, by 1100, was an international centre of learning, outstanding for its culting of St Edmund, England's patron saint, who was known through France and Italy as a miracle worker principally, but also as a survivor, who had resisted the Vikings and the invading king Swein and gained strength after 1066. Here we journey into the concerns of his community as it negotiated survival in the Anglo-Norman empire, examining, on the one hand, the roles of leading monks, such as the French physician-abbot Baldwin, and, on the other, the part played by ordinary women of the vill. The abbey of Bury provides an exceptionally rich archive, including annals, historical texts, wills, charters, and medical recipes. The chapters in this volume, written by leading experts, present differing perspectives on Bury's responses to conquest; reflecting the interests of the monks, they cover literature, music, medicine, palaeography, and the history of the region in its European context. DrTom Licence is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History and Director of the Centre of East Anglian Studies at the University of East Anglia. Contributors: Debbie Banham, David Bates, Eric Fernie, Sarah Foot, Michael Gullick, Tom Licence, Henry Parkes, Véronique Thouroude, Elizabeth van Houts, Thomas Waldman, Teresa Webber

Border Liberties and Loyalties
Border Liberties and Loyalties

Author: Matthew L. Holford

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2010-03-31

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 0748632174

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This book examines the organisation of power and society in north-east England over two crucial centuries in the emergence of the English 'state'. England is usually regarded as medieval Europe's most centralised kingdom, yet the North-East was dominated by liberties - largely self-governing jurisdictions - that greatly restricted the English crown's direct authority in the region. These local polities receive here their first comprehensive discussion; and their histories are crucial for understanding questions of state-formation in frontier zones, regional distinctiveness, and local and national loyalties. The analysis focuses on liberties as both governmental entities and sources of socio-political and cultural identification. It also connects the development of liberties and their communities with a rich variety of forces, including the influence of the kings of Scots as lords of Tynedale, and the impact of protracted Anglo-Scottish warfare from 1296. Why did liberties enjoy such long-term relevance as governance structures? How far, and why, did the English monarchy respect their autonomous rights and status? By what means, and how successfully, were liberty identities created, sharpened and sustained? In addressing such issues, this ground-breaking study extends beyond regional history to make significant contributions to the ongoing mainstream debates about 'state', 'society', 'identity' and 'community'.

King John and Religion
King John and Religion

Author: Paul Webster

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1783270292

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A study of the personal religion of King John, presenting a more complex picture of his actions and attitude.

Inventing William of Norwich
Inventing William of Norwich

Author: Heather Blurton

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2022-05-06

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 0812298535

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In Inventing William of Norwich Heather Blurton offers a revisionist reading of Thomas Monmouth's account of the saint's life that contains the earliest account of a Christian child ritually murdered by Jews. She demonstrates how innovations in literary forms in the twelfth century shaped the articulation of medieval antisemitism.

Northern European Reformations
Northern European Reformations

Author: James E. Kelly

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-09-22

Total Pages: 422

ISBN-13: 3030544583

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This book examines the experiences and interconnections of the Reformations, principally in Denmark-Norway and Britain and Ireland (but with an eye to the broader Scandinavian landscape as well), and also discusses instances of similarities between the Reformations in both realms. The volume features a comprehensive introduction, and provides a broad survey of the beginnings and progress of the Catholic and Protestant Reformations in Northern Europe, while also highlighting themes of comparison that are common to all of the bloc under consideration, which will be of interest to Reformation scholars across this geographical region.

Religious Conflict at Canterbury Cathedral in the Late Twelfth Century
Religious Conflict at Canterbury Cathedral in the Late Twelfth Century

Author: James Barnaby

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2024-05-21

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 1783277661

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The first comprehensive study of a bitter dispute which occupied the archbishops and monks of Canterbury throughout the 1180s and 1190s. For fifteen years the monks of Christ Church Canterbury waged a war against their archbishop, over a plan to build a church to provide funds for their administration, dedicated to Thomas Becket. Fearing the loss of their most beloved (and lucrative) saint to this new institution, the monks embarked on a course of action which saw rioting in the streets of Canterbury, their excommunication, and the cathedral placed under siege by the archbishop. Although at first glance an internal dispute between the archbishop and his cathedral chapter, it had a wide-ranging impact. The monks travelled thousands of miles in support of their cause, enlisting the backing of popes, cardinals, and the elites of Europe. In England, the kings during the period took a personal interest in the dispute, sometimes attempting to resolve it and sometimes hindering any chance of peace. This book, the first full account of the conflict, draws on the huge collection of letters it provoked (one of the largest compiled in the twelfth century), alongside other sources such as monastic culture, to offer a detailed narrative of this complicated feud between Archbishops Baldwin of Forde, Hubert Walter and their cathedral monks; it also considers the continuations of the dispute in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In addition, it analyses the key themes of the conflict: the role of royalty, travel, and the deployment of Thomas Becket.

Edmund
Edmund

Author: Francis Young

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-03-13

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 1786723611

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What buried secret lies beneath the stones of one of England's greatest former churches and shrines? The ruins of the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St Edmunds are a memorial to the largest Romanesque church ever built. This Suffolk market town is now a quiet place, out of the way, eclipsed by its more famous neighbour Cambridge. But present obscurity may conceal a find as significant as the emergence from beneath a Leicester car-park of the remains of Richard III. For Bury, as Francis Young now reveals, is the probable site of the body – placed in an 'iron chest' but lost during the Dissolution of the Monasteries – of Edmund: martyred monarch of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia and, well before St George, England's first patron saint. After the king was slain by marauding Vikings in the ninth century, the legend which grew up around his murder led to the foundation in Bury of one of the pre-eminent shrines of Christendom. In showing how Edmund became the pivotal figure around whom Saxons, Danes and Normans all rallied, the author points to the imminent rediscovery of the ruler who created England.

The Secular Clergy in England, 1066-1216
The Secular Clergy in England, 1066-1216

Author: Hugh M. Thomas

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2014-08-14

Total Pages: 445

ISBN-13: 0191007013

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The secular clergy - priests and other clerics outside of monastic orders - were among the most influential and powerful groups in European society during the central Middle Ages. The secular clergy got their title from the Latin word for world, saeculum, and secular clerics kept the Church running in the world beyond the cloister wall, with responsibility for the bulk of pastoral care and ecclesiastical administration. This gave them enormous religious influence, although they were considered too worldly by many contemporary moralists - trying, for instance, to oppose the elimination of clerical marriage and concubinage. Although their worldliness created many tensions, it also gave the secular clergy much worldly influence. Contemporaries treated elite secular clerics as equivalent to knights, and some were as wealthy as minor barons. Secular clerics had a huge role in the rise of royal bureaucracy, one of the key historical developments of the period. They were instrumental to the intellectual and cultural flowering of the twelfth century, the rise of the schools, the creation of the book trade, and the invention of universities. They performed music, produced literature in a variety of genres and languages, and patronized art and architecture. Indeed, this volume argues that they contributed more than any other group to the Twelfth-Century Renaissance. Yet the secular clergy as a group have received almost no attention from scholars, unlike monks, nuns, or secular nobles. In The Secular Clergy in England, 1066-1216, Hugh Thomas aims to correct this deficiency through a major study of the secular clergy below the level of bishop in England from 1066 to 1216.