A study of social organization, political power, conversion to Christianity, and church building in Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire in 400-1066 AD, Kingship, Society, and the Church in Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire argues that the decision of local kin-groups to convert to Christianity transformed kingship, society, and even the physical landscape.
Inspired by studies of Carolingian Europe, Kingship, Society and the Church in Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire argues that the social strategies of local kin-groups drove conversion to Christianity and church building in Yorkshire from 400-1066 AD. It challenges the emphasis that has been placed on the role and agency of Anglo-Saxon kings in conversion and church building, and moves forward the debate surrounding the 'minster hypothesis' through an inter-disciplinary case study. Members of Deiran kin-groups faced uncertainties that predisposed them to consider conversion as a social strategy, in their rule between 600 and 867. Their decision to convert produced a new social fraction - the 'ecclesiastical aristocracy' - with a distinctive but fragile identity. The 'ecclesiastical aristocracy' transformed kingship, established a network of religious communities, and engaged in the conversion of the laity. The social and political instabilities produced by conversion along with the fragility of ecclesiastical identity resulted in the expropriation and re-organization of many religious communities. Nevertheless, the Scandinavian and West Saxon kings and their nobles allied with wealthy and influential archbishops of York, and there is evidence for the survival, revival, or foundation of religious communities as well as the establishment of local churches.
This book uses Somerset as a case study to contribute to a broader understanding of how the Church developed across the British Isles during the transition from the post-Roman Church to the 11th century. It collates and cross-references all earlier research and offers the most up-to-date study of Somerset’s post-Roman churches.
The Chapel of St Peter-on-the-Wall, built on the ruins of a Roman fort, dates from the mid-seventh century and is one of the oldest largely intact churches in England. It stands in splendid isolation on the shoreline at the mouth of the Blackwater Estuary in Essex, where the land meets and interpenetrates with the sea and the sky. This book brings together contributors from across the arts, humanities and social sciences to uncover the pre-modern contexts and modern resonances of this medieval building and its landscape setting. The impetus for this collection was the recently published designs for a new nuclear power station at Bradwell on Sea, which, if built, would have a significant impact on the chapel and its landscape setting. St Peter-on-the-Wall highlights the multiple ways in which the chapel and landscape are historically and archaeologically significant, while also drawing attention to the modern importance of Bradwell as a place of Christian worship, of sanctuary and of cultural production. In analysing the significance of the chapel and surrounding landscape over more than a thousand years, this collection additionally contributes to wider debates about the relationship between space and place, and particularly the interfaces between both medieval and modern cultures and also heritage and the natural environment.
Presents the Anglo-Saxon period of English history from the fifth century up to the late eleventh century, covering such events as the spread of Christianity, the invasions of the Vikings, the composition of Beowulf, and the Battle of Hastings.
A study of mortuary practices in East Yorkshire from the fifth to the late seventh century BC. The author uses all the available evidence, from well-recorded modern excavations to briefly recorded nineteenth century finds. He believes that exploring the variation in burial rites can tell us more about this society than ' trying to reduce the rite to a single homogeneous entity ...until the advent of Christianity brings a new rite '. The book includes a useful chapter on ' The Anglo-Saxon Myth and the Development of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology '.
This book brings together new research that represents 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.
Written by a team of experts and presenting the results of the most up-to-date research, The Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology will both stimulate and support further investigation into a society poised at the interface between prehistory and history.
