Traditionalism and Continuity during the Last Century of Anglo-Saxon Monasticism

1989 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonia Gransden
Keyword(s):  
Religious Life ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Strict Enforcement ◽  
Rule Of Benedict ◽  
The Ideal

Those writing at the time, and subsequent historians, have tended to exaggerate the importance of the tenth-century monastic revival and of the reform movement which followed the Norman Conquest. During each period contemporary writers glorified the achievements of the reformation, of which they themselves were products, and belittled or even denigrated the religious life of the preceding era. This was partly because the hallmark of both reformations was the strict enforcement of the Rule of Benedict; the ideal of strict Benedictinism appealed to those writing during the reformations, since they themselves were strict Benedictines, and it has appealed to some historians in our own day. One result has been a tendency to emphasise the influence of continental models so much that it overshadows the importance of the Anglo-Saxon tradition. David Knowles makes continental influence on the tenth-century revival the theme of chapter 1 of hisThe Monastic Order in England.

The Old English Benedictine Rule: writing for women and men

2003 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 147-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohini Jayatilaka
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Monastic Reform ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
Benedictine Reform ◽  
The Status ◽  
Linguistic Level

The Regula S. Benedicti was known and used in early Anglo-Saxon England, but it was not until the mid-tenth-century Benedictine reform that the RSB became established as the supreme and exclusive rule governing the monasteries of England. The tenth-century monastic reform movement, undertaken by Dunstan, Æthelwold and Oswald during the reign of Edgar (959–75), sought to revitalize monasticism in England which, according to the standards of these reformers, had ceased to exist during the ninth century. They took as a basis for restoring monastic life the RSB, which was regarded by them as the main embodiment of the essential principles of western monasticism, and in this capacity it was established as the primary document governing English monastic life. By elevating the status of the RSB as the central text of monastic practice in England and the basis of a uniform way of life the reformers raised for themselves the problem of ensuring that the RSB would be understood in detail by all monks, nuns and novices, whatever their background. Evidence of various attempts to make the text accessible, both at the linguistic level and at the level of substance, survives in manuscripts dating from the mid-tenth and eleventh centuries; the most important of these attempts is a vernacular translation of the RSB.

Two pre-Conquest manuscripts from Glastonbury Abbey

1987 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 197-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
James P. Carley
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
Fine Collection ◽  
Irish School ◽  
William Of Malmesbury

The earliest identified surviving manuscripts from Glastonbury Abbey date from the ninth and tenth centuries, but there are reliable post-Conquest traditions claiming that valuable books were found at the monastery as early as the reign of Ine, king of the West Saxons (688–726). By the tenth century at the latest there are reports of an ‘Irish school’ at Glastonbury, famous for its learning and books, and St Dunstan's earliest biographer, the anonymous. B., relates that Dunstan himself studied with the Irish at Glastonbury. During Dunstan's abbacy (940–56) – that is, at the period when most historians would place the beginnings of the English tenth-century reform movement – there was a general revival at Glastonbury which included a concerted policy of book acquisition and the establishment of a productive scriptorium. Not surprisingly, Dunstan's abbacy was viewed by the community ever afterwards as one of the most glorious periods in the early history of the monastery, especially since the later Anglo-Saxon abbots showed a marked falling off in devotion and loyalty to the intellectual inheritance of their monastery. Æthelweard and Æthelnoth, the last two Anglo-Saxon abbots, were especially reprehensible, and confiscated lands and ornaments for the benefit of their own kin. Nor did the situation improve immediately after the Conquest: the first Norman abbot, Thurstan, actually had to call in soldiers to quell his unruly monks. In spite of these disruptions, a fine collection of pre-Conquest books seems to have survived more or less intact into the twelfth century; when the seasoned traveller and connoisseur of books, William of Malmesbury, saw the collection in the late 1120s he was greatly impressed: ‘tanta librorum pulchritudo et antiquitas exuberat’.

Monastic tower-naves and tower-nave origins

2019 ◽  
pp. 109-132
Author(s):  
Michael G. Shapland
Keyword(s):  
Tenth Century ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
High Status ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Burial Practices ◽  
Monastic Reform ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
Secular Power

This chapter traces the origins of the tower-nave form in Anglo-Saxon monasteries, where they occur from at least the early eighth century onwards. It seeks the architectural meanings underlying the tower form, which were drawn from Carolingian and Late Antique practice and related to high-status secular power and burial. Thus, many monastic tower-naves in England were constructed as private, often royal, chapels and burying-places, as a result of the expression of these meanings by their builders. The evidence for monastic tower-naves increases significantly during the mid–late tenth century, a period which coincided with the Monastic Reform, whose leaders were personally responsible for this apparent spate of tower-nave construction. These tower-naves were built in seeming fulfilment of key tenets of the Reform movement: the patronage of the king in monastic life, the regularization of burial practices, and the increased emphasis on the integrity of monastic space.

Vernacular Chronicles c.1000

After Alfred ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 149-174
Author(s):  
Pauline Stafford
Keyword(s):  
Tenth Century ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Original Manuscript ◽  
Benedictine Reform

This chapter provides an overview of vernacular chronicling c. ad 1000. It discusses both work on the surviving manuscript of Chronicle A and Chronicle G, a copy of Chronicle A produced at this time. G is one of the few Anglo-Saxon vernacular chronicles to survive in an original manuscript setting alongside other works. This is used to underline the probable episcopal connections of G and A with Winchester and further to illuminate the reception of Bede. The chapter covers the production now of a Latin translation of a vernacular chronicle by a layman, Ealdorman Æthelweard. It places in the hands of Wulfstan II, archbishop of York, a copy of the Northern Recension, an important textual ancestor of Chronicle D, and considers the unusual references to women in D’s tenth-century annals. The chapter provides a conspectus of vernacular chronicling at the height of the so-called Monastic (or Benedictine) reform movement.

Anglo-Saxon Towers of Lordship

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael G. Shapland
Keyword(s):  
Tenth Century ◽  
Dual Function ◽  
High Status ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Free Standing ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Monastic Reform ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
The Social ◽  
Secular Power

It has long been assumed that England lay outside the Western European tradition of castle-building until after the Norman Conquest of 1066. It is now becoming apparent that Anglo-Saxon lords were constructing free-standing towers at their residences all across England during the tenth and eleventh centuries. Initially these towers were exclusively of timber, and quite modest in scale. There followed the ‘tower-nave’ churches, towers with only a tiny chapel located inside, which appear to have had a dual function as buildings of elite worship and symbols of secular power and authority. This book gathers together the evidence for these remarkable buildings, many of which still stand incorporated into the fabric of Norman and later parish churches and castles. It traces their origin in monasteries, where kings and bishops drew upon Continental European practice to construct centrally planned, tower-like chapels for private worship and burial, and to mark gates and important entrances, particularly within the context of the tenth-century Monastic Reform. Adopted by the secular aristocracy to adorn their own manorial sites, many of the known examples would have provided strategic advantage as watchtowers over roads, rivers, and beacon systems, and acted as focal points for the mustering of troops. The tower-nave form persisted into early Norman England, where it may have influenced a variety of high-status building types. The aim of this book is to establish the tower-nave as an important Anglo-Saxon building type, and to explore the social, architectural, and landscape contexts in which they operated.

Perceptions of the Anglo-Saxon past in the tenth-century monastic reform movement

1997 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 61-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Coates
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Monastic Reform ◽  
The Past ◽  
State Of Affairs

Retrospection is a recognized characteristic of reform movements. An appeal to the past legitimates ideological concerns which seek to replace a state of affairs considered decadent and decayed. Reforming rhetoric depends on the past as a means of proving its value and credibility. Such preservation of the past as a key organizing principle in transforming events is necessarily selective and often has a tendency towards schematization and simplification. Not only does the reforming agenda determine what aspects of the past are remembered, and hence what aspects are buried, but it also determines who is responsible for the act of remembering itself. ‘Different groups of people remember things in different ways.’ The purpose of this paper is to examine the manner in which the Anglo-Saxon past was perceived and utilized during the tenth-century monastic reform movement. It will be shown how, under an influence which was heavily Benedictine in inspiration, the collective memory of monks created a picture of the Anglo-Saxon past which was ‘all of a piece and all monastic’. The past was closely linked to the exercise of power. It will thus be shown how this monastic view of the past competed with an alternative tenth-century view and was ultimately to triumph over its competitor.

Manuscripts containing English decoration 871–1066, catalogued and illustrated: a review

1978 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 239-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda L. Brownrigg
Keyword(s):  
High Standard ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The South ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Southern England ◽  
The North ◽  
Careful Preparation ◽  
Service Books

In the period from Alfred's reign to the Norman Conquest scribes and artists in southern England once more achieved a high standard in bookmaking, comparable to the brilliant tradition which had been established in both the north and the south in the eighth century. Some codices survive which are rough in execution, written on poorly prepared membrane by unskilled hands, but the majority – by no means chiefly service books produced for ecclesiastical and royal patrons – demonstrate that by the end of the tenth century a large number of scribes understood the techniques of careful preparation of membranes and inks, had mastered the letter-forms of two scripts, Caroline minuscule and Anglo-Saxon square minuscule, and were disciplined to follow consistently a hierarchy of scripts for the openings of texts and major divisions, chapter titles, incipits and explicits. What remains must be only a fragment of the production of Benedictine monks and nuns, secular clerks and lay scribes. But however incomplete and unbalanced the evidence, the over-all level of accomplishment cannot be doubted.

England and Aquitaine in the century before the Norman Conquest

1990 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 81-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Beech
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The South ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Language And Culture

A commonplace among English historians today is the importance of English ties with Aquitaine during the later Middle Ages. For some three centuries, historical events came to link the destinies of these two countries and peoples who otherwise differed strikingly in economy, language and culture in general, with lasting consequences for both. It has long been taken for granted by both English and French historians that this association came about abruptly in the 1150s as a result of the ascent to the English throne of Henry of Anjou who, through his marriage to Eleanor, heiress of the duchy of Aquitaine, became the sovereign of that enormous territorial principality. Till the present no one has suspected that any significant ties existed between the Anglo-Saxons and Aquitanians prior to that time. To be sure, the Anglo-Saxons had been in contact with the late Carolingian kings in the tenth century and with the Normans in the eleventh, but those were purely northern French phenomena. So too were the important Anglo-Saxon relations with the monks of Fleury-sur-Loire in the later tenth and early eleventh centuries, but these were not known to have had any repercussions in Aquitaine far to the south.

Rashid Rida’s Struggle to Establish A Modern Islamic State

1984 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-99
Author(s):  
Assad N. Busool
Keyword(s):  
Tenth Century ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Islamic History ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
Arab Muslim ◽  
The World ◽  
Physical Presence

Reform movements are important religious phenomena which haveoccurred throughout Islamic history. Medieval times saw theappearance of religious reformers, such as al-Ghazali, Ibn Taimiyah,Ibn Qayim al-Jawziyah and others; however, these reform activitiesdiffered significantly from the modern reform movement. The medievalreformers worked within Muslim society; it was not necessary to dealwith the external challenge presented by Europe as it was for themodern Muslim reformers after the world of Islam lost its independenceand fell under European rule. The powers of Europe believed that Islamwas the only force that impeded them in their quest for world dominanceand, relying on the strength of their physical presence in Muslimcountries, tried to convince the Muslim peoples tgat Islam was ahindrance to their progress and development.Another problem, no less serious than the first, faced by the modernMuslim reformers was the shocking ignorance of the Muslim peoples oftheir religion and their history. For more than four centuries,scholarship in all areas had been in an unabated state of decline. Thosereligious studies which were produced veered far from the spirit ofIslam, and they were so blurred and burdened with myths and legends,that they served only to confuse the masses.The ‘Ulama were worst of all: strictly rejecting change, they still hadthe mentality of their medieval forebearers against whom al-Ghazali,Ibn Taimiyah and others had fought. Hundreds of years behind thetimes, their central concern was tuqlid (the imitation of that which hadpreceeded them through the ages). For centuries, no one had dared toquestion this heritage or point out the religious innovations it impaired.In conjunction with their questioning of the tuqlid, the modernreformers strove to revive the concept of ijtihad (indmendentjudgement) in religious matters, an idea which had been disallowedsince the tenth century. The first to raiseanew the banner of $tihad inthe Arab Muslim world was Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani; after himSheikh Muhammad ‘Abduh in Egypt, and after him, his friend and ...

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis L. F Lee ◽  
Joseph M Chan
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Media System ◽  
System P ◽  
Connective Action ◽  
Integrated Media ◽  
Media And Communication ◽  
The Ideal

Chapter 1 introduces the background of the Umbrella Movement, a protest movement that took hold in Hong Kong in 2014, and outlines the theoretical principles underlying the analysis of the role of media and communication in the occupation campaign. It explicates how the Umbrella Movement is similar to but also different from the ideal-typical networked social movement and crowd-enabled connective action. It explains why the Umbrella Movement should be seen as a case in which the logic of connective action intervenes into a planned collective action. It also introduces the notion of conditioned contingencies and the conceptualization of an integrated media system.

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