Contributions on fundamental aspects of medieval ecclesiastical history, demonstrating the importance of primary documents. The work of historians in providing new editions of primary documents, and other aids to research, has tended to go largely unsung, yet is crucial to scholarship, as providing the very foundations on which further enquiry can be based. The essays in this volume, conversely, celebrate the achievements in this field by a whole generation of medievalists, of whom the honoree, David Smith, is one of the most distinguished. They demonstrate the importance of such editions to a proper understanding and elucidation of a number of problems in medieval ecclesiastical history, ranging from thirteenth-century forgery to diocesan administration, from the church courts to the cloisters, and from the English parish clergy to the papacy. Contributors: CHRISTOPHER BROOKE, C.C. WEBB, JULIA BARROW, NICHOLAS BENNETT, JANET BURTON, CHARLES FONGE, CHRISTOPHER HARPER-BILL, R.H. HELMHOLZ, PHILIPPA HOSKIN, BRIAN KEMP, F. DONALD LOGAN, ALISON MCHARDY

The fighting bishop or abbot is a familiar figure to medievalists and much of what is known of the military organization of England in this period is based on ecclesiastical evidence. Unfortunately the fighting cleric has generally been regarded as merely a baron in clerical dress and has consequently fallen into the gap between military and ecclesiastical history. This study addresses three main areas: which clergy engaged in military activity in England, why and when? By what means did they do so? And how did others understand and react to these activities? The book shows that, however vivid such characters as Odo of Bayeux might be in the historical imagination, there was no archetypal militant prelate. There was enormous variation in the character of the clergy that became involved in warfare, their circumstances, the means by which they pursued their military objectives and the way in which they were treated by contemporaries and described by chroniclers. An appreciation of the individual fighting cleric must be both thematically broad and keenly aware of his context. Such individuals cannot therefore be simply slotted into easy categories, even (or perhaps especially) when those categories are informed by contemporary polemic. The implications of this study for our understanding of clerical identity are considerable, as the easy distinction between clerics acting in a secular or ecclesiastical capacity almost entirely breaks down and the legal structures of the period are shown to be almost as equivocal and idiosyncratic as the literary depictions. The implications for military history are equally striking as organisational structures are shown to be more temporary, fluid and 'political' than had previously been understood.

Medieval Monasticism traces the Western Monastic tradition from its fourth-century origins in the deserts of Egypt and Syria through the many and varied forms of religious life it assumed during the Middle Ages. It explores the relationship between monasteries and the secular world around them. For a thousand years, the great monastic houses and religious orders were a prominent feature of the social landscape of the West, and their leaders figured as much in the political as on the spiritual map of the medieval world. In this book many of them, together with their supporters and critics, are presented to us and speak their minds to us. We are shown, for instance, the controversy between the Benedictines and the reformed monasticism of the twelfth century and the problems that confronted women in religious life. A detailed glossary offers readers a helpful vocabulary of the subject. This fifth edition has been revised by Janet Burton to include an updated bibliography and an introduction which discusses recent trends in monastic studies, including reinterpretations of issues of reform and renewal, new scholarship on religious women, and interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches. This book is essential reading for both students and scholars of the medieval world.

In Order in the Court, Brasington translates and comments upon the earliest medieval treatises on ecclesiastical legal procedure. Beginning with the eleventh-century “Marturi Case,” the first citation of the Digest in court since late antiquity and the jurist Bulgarus’ letter to Haimeric, the papal chancellor, we witness the evolution of Roman-law procedure in Italy. The study then focusses on Anglo-Norman works, all from the second half of the twelfth century. The De edendo, the Practica legum of Bishop William of Longchamp, and the Ordo Bambergensis blend Roman and canon law to guide the judge, advocate, and litigant in court. These reveal the study and practice of the learned law during the turbulent “Age of Becket” and its aftermath.

New study sets the medieval palatinate of Durham firmly in the context of a community built round the cult of St Cuthbert.

The availability of digital editions of early modern works brings a wealth of exciting archival and primary source materials into the classroom. But electronic archives can be overwhelming and hard to use, for teachers and students alike, and digitization can distort or omit information about texts. Teaching Early Modern English Literature from the Archives places traditional and electronic archives in conversation, outlines practical methods for incorporating them into the undergraduate and graduate curriculum, and addresses the theoretical issues involved in studying them. The volume discusses a range of physical and virtual archives from 1473 to 1700 that are useful in the teaching of early modern literature--both major sources and rich collections that are less known (including affordable or free options for those with limited institutional resources). Although the volume focuses on English literature and culture, essays discuss a wide range of comparative approaches involving Latin, French, Spanish, German, and early American texts and explain how to incorporate visual materials, ballads, domestic treatises, atlases, music, and historical documents into the teaching of literature.

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.

The first broad-ranging social history in English of the medieval secular clergy.

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

For more than forty years Nicholas Brooks has been at the forefront of research into early medieval Britain. In order to honour the achievements of one of the leading figures in Anglo-Saxon studies, this volume brings together essays by an internationally renowned group of scholars on four themes that the honorand has made his own: myths, rulership, church and charters. Myth and rulership are addressed in articles on the early history of Wessex, Æthelflæd of Mercia and the battle of Brunanburh; contributions concerned with charters explore the means for locating those hitherto lost, the use of charters in the study of place-names, their role as instruments of agricultural improvement, and the reasons for the decline in their output immediately after the Norman Conquest. Nicholas Brooks's long-standing interest in the church of Canterbury is reflected in articles on the Kentish minster of Reculver, which became a dependency of the church of Canterbury, on the role of early tenth-century archbishops in developing coronation ritual, and on the presentation of Archbishop Dunstan as a prophet. Other contributions provide case studies of saints' cults with regional and international dimensions, examining a mass for St Birinus and dedications to St Clement, while several contributions take a wider perspective, looking at later interpretations of the Anglo-Saxon past, both in the Anglo-Norman and more modern periods. This stimulating and wide-ranging collection will be welcomed by the many readers who have benefited from Nicholas Brooks's own work, or who have an interest in the Anglo-Saxon past more generally. It is an outstanding contribution to early medieval studies.