Download Free Popular Religion In Late Saxon England Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Popular Religion In Late Saxon England and write the review.

In tenth- and eleventh-century England, Anglo-Saxon Christians retained an old folk belief in elves as extremely dangerous creatures capable of harming unwary humans. To ward off the afflictions caused by these invisible beings, Christian priests modified traditional elf charms by adding liturgical chants to herbal remedies. In Popular Religion in Late Saxon England, Karen Jolly traces this cultural intermingling of Christian liturgy and indigenous Germanic customs and argues that elf charms and similar practices represent the successful Christianization of native folklore. Jolly describes a dual process of conversion in which Anglo-Saxon culture became Christianized but at the same time left its own distinct imprint on Christianity. Illuminating the creative aspects of this dynamic relationship, she identifies liturgical folk medicine as a middle ground between popular and elite, pagan and Christian, magic and miracle. Her analysis, drawing on the model of popular religion to redefine folklore and magic, reveals the richness and diversity of late Saxon Christianity.
In this major study of Angle-Saxon religious tests sermons, homilies, and saints' lives written in Old English -- Clare A. Lees reveals how the invention of preaching transformed the early medieval church, and thus the culture of medieval England in placing Anglo-Saxon prose within a social matrix, her work offers a new way of seeing medieval literature through the lens of cultures. To show how the preaching mission of the later Anglo-Saxon church was constructed and received, Lees explores the emergence of preaching from the traditional structures of the early medieval church -- its institutional knowledge, genres, and beliefs. Understood as a powerful rhetorical, social, and epistemological process, preaching is shown to have helped define the sociocultural concerns specific to late Anglo-Saxon England. The first detailed study of traditionality in medieval culture, Tradition and Belief is also a case study of one cultural phenomenon from the past. As such -- and by concentrating on the theoretically problematic areas of history, religious belief, and aesthetics -- the book contributes to debates about the evolving meaning of culture.
The pervasiveness of the Christian religion has long been treated as one of the key features of medieval society. Indeed, Europe in the Middle Ages is often described simply as a Christian culture. Yet what do we mean when we say that medieval Europe was a Christian society, and what did it mean to be a Christian in the Middle Ages? These questions are fundamental to any understanding of the Middle Ages, yet the variety of theoretical approaches and conclusions represented in this carefully selected and provocative collection of key works in the field highlights the complexity of the answers. Introducing students to medieval Christianity, James L. Halverson presents a rich array of readings that offers a variety of ways to study the history of religion within a chronological setting. His opening chapter and introductions to each section and selection frame the essays and provide a strong conceptual framework to build upon. Making it clear that scholars have approached religion from many perspectives and used many different methodologies, this collection presents some of the best scholarship of religion as culture and practice, emphasizing the ongoing attempt to understand the social and cultural aspects of medieval Christianity. Contributions by: Rudolf Bell, Constance Brittain Bouchard, Peter Brown, Marcus Bull, Caroline Walker Bynum, Mark R. Cohen, Georges Duby, Eamon Duffy, Joan Ferrante, Richard Fletcher, Katherine L. French, Thomas A. Fudge, Herbert Grundmann, James L. Halverson, Karen Louise Jolly, Lester Little, Rob Means, Bernd Moeller, Andrew P. Roach, Jane Tibbets Schulenburg, Keith Thomas, and Ian Wood.
Liturgical rituals of the high festivals from Christmas to Ascension in late Anglo-Saxon England; liturgical practice derived from from vernacular homilies and sermons.
Represents an unparalleled exploration of the place of prehistoric monuments in the Anglo-Saxon psyche, and examines how Anglo-Saxon communities perceived and used these monuments during the period AD 400-1100.
Christian theology and religious belief were crucially important to Anglo-Saxon society, and are manifest in the surviving textual, visual and material evidence. This is the first full-length study investigating how Christian theology and religious beliefs permeated society and underpinned social values in early medieval England. The influence of the early medieval Church as an institution is widely acknowledged, but Christian theology itself is generally considered to have been accessible only to a small educated elite. This book shows that theology had a much greater and more significant impact than has been recognised. An examination of theology in its social context, and how it was bound up with local authorities and powers, reveals a much more subtle interpretation of secular processes, and shows how theological debate affected the ways that religious and lay individuals lived and died. This was not a one-way flow, however: this book also examines how social and cultural practices and interests affected the development of theology in Anglo-Saxon England, and how ’popular’ belief interacted with literary and academic traditions. Through case-studies, this book explores how theological debate and discussion affected the personal perspectives of Christian Anglo-Saxons, including where possible those who could not read. In all of these, it is clear that theology was not detached from society or from the experiences of lay people, but formed an essential constituent part.
A groundbreaking assessment of the use medieval English history-writers made of saints' lives. The past was ever present in later medieval England, as secular and religious institutions worked to recover (or create) originary narratives that could guarantee, they hoped, their political and spiritual legitimacy. Anglo-SaxonEngland, in particular, was imagined as a spiritual "golden age" and a rich source of precedent, for kings and for the monasteries that housed early English saints' remains. This book examines the vernacular hagiography produced in a monastic context, demonstrating how writers, illuminators, and policy-makers used English saints (including St Edmund) to re-envision the bonds between ancient spiritual purity and contemporary conditions. Treating history and ethical practice as inseparable, poets such as Osbern Bokenham, Henry Bradshaw, and John Lydgate reconfigured England's history through its saints, engaging with contemporary concerns about institutional identity, authority, and ethics. Cynthia Turner Camp is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Georgia.
Describes the early conversion to Christianity of the pagan peoples of an area stretching from Stratford-upon-Avon to Offa's Dyke.
Fresh perspectives on the English clergy, their books, and the wider Anglo-Saxon church.
The role of pastoral care reconsidered in the context of major changes within the Anglo-Saxon church. The tenth and eleventh centuries saw a number of very significant developments in the history of the English Church, perhaps the most important being the proliferation of local churches, which were to be the basis of the modern parochial system. Using evidence from homilies, canon law, saints' lives, and liturgical and penitential sources, the articles collected in this volume focus on the ways in which such developments were reflected in pastoral care, considering what it consisted of at this time, how it was provided and by whom. Starting with an investigation of the secular clergy, their recruitment and patronage, the papers move on to examine a variety of aspects of late Anglo-Saxon pastoral care, including church due payments, preaching, baptism, penance, confession, visitation of the sick and archaeological evidence of burial practice. Special attention is paid to the few surviving manuscripts which are likely to have been used in the field and the evidence they provide for the context, the actions and the verbal exchanges which characterised pastoral provisions.