Episcopal culture in late Anglo-Saxon England
By: Mary Frances Giandrea.
Series: Anglo-Saxon studies -- 7
Publisher: Boydell Press
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Woodbridge, UK; Rochester, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 245
ISBN-13: 9781843832836
Subjects: Church of England -- Bishops -- History -- To 1500.; England -- Church history -- 449-1066.
Description: "This first full-length study of the Anglo-Saxon episcopate explores the activities of the bishops in a variety of arenas, from the pastoral and liturgical to the political, social, legal and economic, so tracing the development of a particularly English episcopal identity over the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries. It makes detailed use of the contemporary evidence, previously unexploited as diffuse, difficult and largely non-narrative, rather than that from after the Norman Conquest; because this avoids the prevailing monastic bias, it shows instead that differences in order (between secular and monk-bishops) had almost no effect on their attitudes toward their episcopal roles. It therefore presents a much more nuanced portrait of the episcopal church on the eve of the Conquest, a church whose members constantly worked to create a well-ordered Christian polity through the stewardship of the English monarchy and the sacralization of political discourse: an episcopate deeply committed to pastoral care and in-step with current continental liturgical and theological developments, despite later ideologically-charged attempts to suggest otherwise; and an institution intricately woven, because of its tremendous economic and political power, into the very fabric of English local and regional society."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-233) and index.