This book has been long awaited and its appearance is a major event. John Blair's work over the last twenty years on the role and importance of minsters and on the subsequent emergence of a local network of parish churches has already transformed historians' understanding
This book has been long awaited and its appearance is a major event. John Blair's work over the last twenty years on the role and importance of minsters and on the subsequent emergence of a local network of parish churches has already transformed historians' understanding of the Anglo-Saxon Church. Here he develops and pursues these ideas in new and exciting ways and presents them in a powerful and compelling synthesis which will make them accessible to a much wider audience.
The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society surveys a broad sweep from c.550 to 1100. Its opening chapter places the Anglo-Saxon conversion to Christianity in the context of Britain's Roman inheritance and the South East's increasing links with the Continent. At the same time a detailed survey of the evidence reminds us that each region has a story of its own. But most of these stories (Cornwall aside) have a common message: that minsters staffed by groups of clergy were the Anglo-Saxon church, its institutional framework and the resource base for both bishops and low leve