The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society

625 Pages·2006·33.66 MB·English

by  John Blair

THE CHURCH IN
ANGLO-SAXON SOCIETY
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The Church in
Anglo-Saxon
Society
JOHN BLAIR
1
Great Clarendon Street,Oxford ox2 6dp
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© John Blair 2005
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First published 2005
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FOR MY FATHER
who first inspired my interest in churches
AND IN MEMORY OF MY MOTHER
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Acknowledgements
This book brings to fruition a seed sown when, as a small child, I used to
play in a ditch near my parents’ home, in fact the boundary between the
residual Anglo-Saxon parish of Leatherhead and its Norman chapelry of
Ashtead (see below, p. 488n). Most of the research and all the writing,
however, have taken place during my tenure of a fellowship at The Queen’s
College, Oxford. To Queen’s, and to my successive colleagues in History
there—the late Alastair Parker, Kenneth Morgan, John Davis, and Christine
Peters—I owe a big debt for support, encouragement, and tolerance. As a
graduate student supervised by Barbara Harvey, I was on of the many who
‘in necessitatibus suis...ab ea consilium quaererent et invenirent’, as Bede
said of another great teacher.
The text has passed through many drafts, and has been much improved
by those who took the trouble to read and comment on it, notably Mick
Aston, Thomas Charles-Edwards, Rosamond Faith, Helen Gittos, Henry
Mayr-Harting, Christopher Whittick, and Barbara Yorke. Especially warm
thanks are due to three readers—Felicity Clark, Christine Peters, and Patrick
Wormald—for their searching and constructive criticisms (made unselfishly
when all of them were under special pressures, both academic and personal),
and for re-thinking so many of my thoughts more clearly than I could have
done myself. Sarah Blair lived with the writing of this book, and visited many
Anglo-Saxon church sites with me.
Among those who showed me their work in advance of publication, I owe
particular thanks to Susan Wood, Patrick Wormald, and Barbara Yorke for
access to fundamentally important books at draft stage. Martin Biddle and
Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle provided information on Winchester, and good-
humouredly debated hypotheses contrary to their own. More others than I
can remember have helped by commenting on individual chapters, answer-
ing questions, providing information, or just giving moral support: I am pro-
foundly grateful to them all, especially Julia Barrow, Stephen Baxter, Brad
Bedingfield, Tyler Bell, Claude Blair, Nicholas Brooks, Martin Carver, Katy
Cubitt, Scott DeGregorio, Fiona Edmonds, Sarah Foot, Richard Gem, Dawn
Hadley, Alaric Hall, Barbara Harvey, Jane Hawkes, Joy Jenkyns, Drew Jones,
Elisabeth Lorans, Simon Loseby, Ben Palmer, Aliki Pantos, Jonathan Pitt,
Philip Rahtz, Andrew Reynolds, Christopher Scull, Sarah Semple, Richard
Sharpe, John Steane, David Stocker, Victoria Thompson, Francesca Tinti,
viii Acknowledgements
Sam Turner, Ann Williams, Susan Wood, and Susan Youngs. Finally, thanks
to Kanerva Heikkinen for being there at the end.
For permission to reproduce illustrations, and for providing copy for them,
thanks are due to: Keith Baker, Fig. 47; Steven Bassett, Fig. 34; British
Museum, Figs. 5, 15; Robert Carr, Fig. 25; Durham Cathedral Chapter,
Fig. 54; Richard Gem, Fig. 15; Hartlepool Museum Service, Fig. 32; Jane
Hawkes, Fig. 20; Carolyn Heighway and Richard Bryant, Fig. 40; English
Heritage, Fig. 20; Simon Hill, Figs. 12,13; Humberside Archaeological Unit,
Fig. 16; Terrence James, Fig. 4; Christopher Loveluck, Figs. 16, 25; Ian
Meadows, Fig. 44; Audrey L. Meaney, Fig. 21; Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts,
Fig. 16; Dommuseum zu Salzburg, Fig. 17; Suffolk County Council
Archaeological Service, Fig. 26; Tim Tatton-Brown, Fig. 10; Andrew Tester,
Fig. 26; Leslie Webster, Figs. 17, 32; York Archaeological Trust, Figs. 12, 13;
and Susan Youngs, Fig. 5.
The staff of Oxford University Press, especially Ruth Parr, Anne Gelling,
and Kay Rogers, have shown extraordinary enthusiasm and tolerance for a
book which has reached them several years late and at several times the
projected length.
J.B.
Contents
List of Illustrations xii
Abbreviations xv
Introduction 1
1. The English and their Christian Neighbours, c.550–650 8
Influences (i): the Roman inheritance in Britain 10
Influences (ii): the Roman inheritance in Italy and Gaul 34
Influences (iii): the Frankish world 39
Influences (iv): the Irish 43
The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms: political and social contexts 49
The monumentalization of cult 51
Lay burial: church versus ancestors? 58
The first Christian sites and systems 65
The triumph of the monastic model 73
2. Minsters in Church and State, c.650–850 79
Minsters and monasticism 80
The royal and sub-royal context of monastic foundations 84
The episcopal context of monastic foundations 91
Useless to God and man? The problem of aristocratic minsters 100
Reaction and reform: Bede, Boniface, and the struggle for
episcopal governance 108
The problem of local churches 118
Minsters on the defensive: external control and disendowment 121
3. Church and People, c.650–850 135
The ‘minster culture’ of Bede’s England 135
The cults of saints 141
The landscape of minsters: distribution and influences 149
The territorial framework: secular and religious structures 153
The provision and organization of pastoral care 160
The lay practice of Christianity 166