Religion and Society in the Medieval West, 600–1200 Selected Papers

The papers reprinted here all have to do with the very varied ways in which religion made an impact upon, or was intertwined with, political and social life. They span the period from 600 to 1200, with particular points of focus on early Anglo-Saxon England, Charlemagne, the Ottonian empire, and 12th-century England. In these articles, the Oxford historian Henry Mayr-Harting explores the religion of secular rulers, the religion (or relative lack of it) of bishops and churches, the religion of custodians at shrines or of recluses or artists, as well as religious phenomena such as angelic apparitions, conversion, or apocalypticism.

Contents: Preface; Two conversions to Christianity: the Bulgarians and the Anglo-Saxons; Bede's patristic thinking as an historian; The Venerable Bede, the Rule of St Benedict, and social class; St Boniface, mirror of English history; Charlemagne, the Saxons, and the imperial coronation of 800; Charlemagne's religion; Perceptions of angels in history; Liudprand of Cremona's account of his legation to Constantinople (968) and Ottonian imperial strategy; The church of Magdeburg: its trade and its town in the 10th and early 11th centuries; Was the identity of the Prague church in the 10th century imposed from without or developed from within?; Apocalyptic book illustration in the early Middle Ages; Hilary, Bishop of Chichester (1147-1169) and Henry II; Henry II and the Papacy, 1170-1189; Functions of a 12th-century recluse (Wulfric of Haselbury); Functions of a 12th-century shrine: the miracles of St Frideswide; Odo of Deuil, the 2nd Crusade, and the monastery of Saint- Denis; Index.

Henry Mayr-Harting is Emeritus Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford, UK