Kingship, Society, and the Church in Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire by Thomas Pickles;

Author:Thomas Pickles; [Pickles, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780192550774
Publisher: OUP Premium
Published: 2018-10-22T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusions

The conversion of the Deirans to Christianity seems to have begun through the initiative of local kin groups, some of whose members were attracted to Christianity for a variety of reasons particular to the circumstances of the kin group and their own biographies. Yet by providing a political constituency for the official conversion of the kingdom of the Deirans, by establishing a new ‘ecclesiastical aristocracy’, and by working to found a network of religious communities across its territories, they produced the necessary social and institutional framework for the conversion of the lay population. The correlation between early religious communities, eleventh-century soke estates, and high medieval mother parishes suggests that the religious communities of the kingdom were at the heart of a developing early pastoral framework in which they bore some responsibility for the pastoral care of populations across the royal tribute territories within which they were founded. The Streoneshalh (Whitby) Vita Gregorii, passing references in texts about other Deiran communities, and the multivalent images carved on some stone monuments, suggest that some communities actively promoted this responsibility for providing pastoral care. The process of conversion amongst the laity is difficult to chart. Nevertheless, there are glimpses that it was occurring. Eighth-century authors apparently assumed that the Deirans were Christians, that public pagan worship had ceased, and that the laity were participating in some Christian rites. What was being debated, for both the ‘ecclesiastical aristocracy’ and the laity, was the degree to which existing socio-cultural practices could, or should, be adapted to the new religion, a negotiation that would continue well beyond the period considered here. A visible manifestation of this debate and negotiation is provided by shifting patterns in mortuary ritual and material culture in Yorkshire. The ‘ecclesiastical aristocracy’ was already changing in the second half of the eighth century and first half of the ninth century, as Chapter 3 has discussed; the conquest of the region by Scandinavians and their effect will be subjects of Chapter 5 and Chapter 6.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.