A Companion to the Early Middle Ages: Britain and Ireland, c.500-c.1100

568 Pages·2009·6.672 MB·English

by  Pauline Stafford (ed.)

A Companion to the Early Middle Ages
A Companion to the Early Middle Ages: Britain and Ireland, c.500–c.1100 Edited by Pauline Stafford
© 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-10628-3
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A COMPANION TO THE
EARLY MIDDLE AGES
Britain and Ireland, c.500–c.1100
Edited by
Pauline Stafford
A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication
This edition fi rst published 2009
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A companion to the early Middle Ages : Britain and Ireland c.500-c.1100 / edited by Pauline Stafford.
p. cm. – (Blackwell companions to British history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4051-0628-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Great Britain–History–To 1066.
2. Ireland–History–To 1172. 3. Great Britain–Civilization–To 1066. 4. Ireland–Civilization–To
1172. 5. Civilization, Medieval. 6. Middle Ages. I. Stafford, Pauline.
DA152.C6975 2009
941.01–dc22
2008032202
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Set in 10/12.5pt Galliard by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong
Printed in Singapore by Ho Printing Pte Ltd.
01 2009
Contents
List of Maps viii
Notes on Contributors ix
List of Abbreviations xiii
Maps xv
PART I INTRODUCTORY MATTER 1
1 Introduction 3
Pauline Stafford
2 Historiography 9
Pauline Stafford
3 Sources 23
Pauline Stafford
PART II BRITAIN AND IRELAND, C.500–C.750 39
4 Britain and Ireland, c.500 41
Barbara Yorke
5 Economy 57
Howard B. Clarke
6 Kings and Kingship 76
Barbara Yorke
7 Communities and Kinship 91
David E. Thornton
8 Social Structure 107
Thomas M. Charles-Edwards
vi contents
9 Britain, Ireland, and Europe, c.500–c.750 126
Paul Fouracre
10 Conversions to Christianity 143
Huw Pryce
11 Church Organization and Pastoral Care 160
Thomas Pickles
12 Latin Learning and Christian Art 177
Martin J. Ryan
PART III BRITAIN AND IRELAND IN THE LONG NINTH CENTURY,
C.750–C.900 193
13 Viking Raids and Conquest 195
Dawn Hadley
14 Scandinavian Settlement 212
Dawn Hadley
15 Britain, Ireland, and Europe, c.750–c.900 231
Janet L. Nelson
PART IV BRITAIN AND IRELAND, C.900–C.1100 249
16 Scotland 251
Alex Woolf
17 Ireland, c.900–c.1000 268
Edel Bhreathnach
18 Ireland, c.1000–c.1100 285
Seán Duffy
19 Northumbria 303
William M. Aird
20 Southumbria 322
Charles Insley
21 Wales and West Britain 341
John Reuben Davies
22 Britain, Ireland, and Europe, c.900–c.1100 358
Simon MacLean
23 The Institutional Church 376
Catherine Cubitt
24 Pastoral Care and Religious Belief 395
Catherine Cubitt
25 Nobility 414
Julia Crick
contents vii
26 Settlement and Social Differentiation 432
Sally Crawford
27 Localities 446
David E. Thornton
28 Queens and Queenship 459
Pauline Stafford
Bibliography 477
Index 524
List of Maps
Map 1 Ireland in the Early Middle Ages xv
Map 2 Southern Britain in the Early Middle Ages xvi
Map 3 West Britain in the Early Middle Ages xvii
Map 4 Northern Britain in the Early Middle Ages xviii
Map 5 Continental European links to Britain and Ireland xix
Map 6 Economically advantaged and disadvantaged areas in Britain
and Ireland 60
Notes on Contributors
William M. Aird lectures on medieval history at Cardiff University, Wales. He was
awarded his PhD by Edinburgh University. With a particular interest in the history
of the Normans in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, he is the author of a number
of articles and monographs including, St. Cuthbert and the Normans: The Church of
Durham, 1071–1153 (1998) and Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy, c.1050–1134
(2008). His current research concerns the medieval Life of St. Margaret of Scotland
and the career of Edward A. Freeman.
Edel Bhreathnach is the Academic Project Manager at the Mícheál Ó Cléirigh
Institute for the Study of Irish History and Civilisation, University College Dublin.
She has published on many aspects of medieval Ireland, including the royal
complex of Tara, Co. Meath, and edited the interdisciplinary volume The Kingship
and Landscape of Tara (2005). Her current interests include royal sites in Ireland
and the intellectual history of the Franciscan order in late medieval and early modern
Ireland.
Thomas M. Charles-Edwards is Jesus Professor of Celtic, University of Oxford. His
main fi eld of research is early medieval Irish and Welsh history and literature. He was
a Scholar of the School of Celtic Studies in the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies
and has held posts in Oxford since 1969. He was elected a Fellow of the British
Academy in 2001 and an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2006.
His main publications are Bechbretha (1983, with Fergus Kelly), The Welsh Laws
(1989), Early Irish and Welsh Kinship (1993), Early Christian Ireland (2000), and
The Chronicle of Ireland (2006), and he edited After Rome (2003). He is
currently writing volume 1 of the Oxford History of Wales.
Howard B. Clarke is a graduate of the University of Birmingham and spent most
of his working life teaching in the former Department of Medieval History at
University College, Dublin. Having retired in 2005 as Associate Professor of Medieval
Economic and Social History, he served for four years as secretary of the Royal Irish
Academy. He has published widely on medieval urban history, especially that of
Dublin but including also the Provençal town of Draguignan. He is currently editing
x notes on contributors
the two cartularies of Evesham Abbey, which will provide a basis for further publica-
tions on a variety of twelfth-century surveys.
Sally Crawford is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the History
of Medicine at the University of Birmingham, and an Honorary Research Associate
at the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford. She has written extensively on Anglo-Saxon
archaeology, burial ritual, childhood and medicine, and has directed excavations on
medieval sites in the UK. Published books include Childhood in Anglo-Saxon England
(1999) and Daily Life in Anglo-Saxon England (2008). She is a founder of the Society
for the Study of Childhood in the Past; a founder and general editor of the Journal
of Early Medicine; and co-editor of Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History.
Current projects include The Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology and The
Encyclopedia of Childhood, vol. 1: Ancient and Medieval.
Julia Crick was educated at the University of Cambridge in the Department of
Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic and the Faculty of History. She is currently Associate
Professor of History at the University of Exeter. Her research interests include prop-
erty, power, and gender before 1100, aspects of paleography, and the transmission
of texts, monastic culture, and the uses of the past. Her most recent book, Charters
of St. Albans, appeared in 2007 in the Royal Historical Society/British Academy series
“Anglo-Saxon Charters.” She has published a number of studies of landholding
practices and family solidarity before the Norman Conquest.
Catherine Cubitt is Senior Lecturer in Early Medieval History at the University of
York. She is the author of Anglo-Saxon Church Councils, c.650–c.850 (1995) and has
published articles on many aspects of Anglo-Saxon religious history. She has just
completed a study of penance and confession, Sin and Society in Tenth- and Eleventh-
century England, and is currently working on the introduction to a translation of the
649 Lateran Council.
John Reuben Davies gained his PhD from the University of Cambridge, and
is Research Assistant in the Department of History at the University of Glasgow.
He is the author of The Book of Llandaf and the Norman Church in Wales (2003),
co-author of the online Database of Dedications to Saints in Medieval Scotland, and
co-editor of Saints’ Cults in the Celtic World (2009). He has also published on the
Latin hagiography of Wales and Scotland, as well as on the broader ecclesiastical
history of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland in the early and central Middle Ages.
Seán Duffy is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History and a Fellow of Trinity College
Dublin. His primary research interests are currently the history and archaeology of
Dublin from the Viking Age to the early modern period; medieval Irish relations with
Wales, Scotland, and the Isles; and Anglo-Irish relations, particularly the historiog-
raphy of the English colony in medieval Ireland. He has published widely on Irish
history generally, and medieval Ireland in particular. He is Chairman of the Friends
of Medieval Dublin, and since 1999 has organized an annual interdisciplinary confer-
ence on medieval Dublin, the proceedings of which are published.
Paul Fouracre taught at Goldsmiths College, London from 1984 before becoming
Professor of Medieval History at the University of Manchester in 2003. His research
area is Francia under the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties, and he is presently