Landscapes of Monastic Foundation

The Establishment of Religious Houses in East Anglia c.650-1200

Datos Bibliográficos

ID9799382
AutoresLeonard Abrams (0000-0002-9886-4872, autor de correspondencia)
Año2007
Volumen122
Número495
Páginas151-153
Fecha de publicación2007-02-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe English Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0013-8266 • E-ISSN: 1477-4534
EditorialOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ehr/cel380
OpenAlexW2165604372
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas10

TIM PESTELL begins his study of monastic foundations in East Anglia with two complaints. The preoccupation of past scholarship with buildings has led to an emphasis on the post-Conquest period, creating an unhelpful break with what had gone before. Another scholarly preoccupation, the different monastic orders, has meant that attention focused on Cistercians or Carthusians has isolated them from the wider context of overall religious provision. Pestell instead favours an approach which integrates monastic architecture with a broader social and political geography, focusing on the religious community in its landscape. He is particularly interested in the forces that led to monastic foundations, and the links that bound these communities to the secular world. As the subtitle reveals, Pestell rejects the chronological strait-jacket that has led many monastic scholars to begin their studies with the Norman Conquest; and his choice of a regional focus necessitates a consideration of the whole picture, not just of some of the parts. This makes categorisation issues, such as those behind the Anglo-Saxon ‘minster hypothesis’, less urgent, and places centre stage a part of England that has often been consigned to the margins. His region is East Anglia in the old sense of Norfolk and Suffolk (including Ely, now in Cambridgeshire), though his coverage of the late Anglo-Saxon period extends into the east midlands to include the important developments there. East Anglia's notorious profusion of parish churches derived from a distinctive social structure which affected patterns of patronage and foundation in the monastic context as well. That East Anglia was different from the rest of the kingdom of England which it came to join is not news, but Pestell's survey of East Anglia's monastic life focuses the mind on what the differences might signify

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · CONQUEST · Context (archaeology · Foundation (evidence · Period (music · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Architecture · Classics · History · Law · Medieval Architecture and Archaeology · Medieval Literature and History