WOW! My partner, who also taught history and English, wrote her thesis on medieval Christianity. She is VERY interested in early church history so I will purchase this from amazon (if it's there) for her. THANK YOU!
Sage(Pie Iesu Domine. Dona Eis Requiem. *WHACK!*)Grouse
EDIT: Just looked... far FAR too pricy for me just now, but I'll keep an eye on it and on my finances.
Here, for y'all who would like to see more about the book, is the precis from Amazon:
Priests were ubiquitous figures in the Anglo-Saxon world: they acted as educators, agents of royal authority, scribes, and dealers in real estate. But what set priests apart from the society in which they lived was the authority to provide pastoral care and their ability to use the written word. Early medieval bishops saw books as indispensable to a priest's duties and episcopal legislation frequently provided lists of books that priests were to have: tools of the trade for the secular clergy. These books are not only an exceedingly valuable window into pastoral care, but also a barometer for the changes taking place in the English church of the tenth and eleventh centuries.
This first full-length study of Anglo-Saxon priests' books examines a wide array of evidence, including booklists, music, liturgy, narrative, and, crucially, the surviving manuscripts.
