David N. Dumville - Böcker

The backbone of historical accounts of Ireland, Scotland and Wales to the twelfth century is provided by annalistic texts which are related to one another in varying ways. This volume seeks to provide a series of models for the investigation of these Celtic annalistic texts.Kathryn Grabowski carries out a complete text-historical analysis of these southern Irish annals for the years 431-1092, establishing their relationships to the other annal-collections, separating the several strata of which they are composed, and judging the relative historical value of these sources. David Dumville studies the major source, the "Clonmacnoise Chronicle", to determine an outline-history ofthe sources and subsequent development of this chronicle. Text-historical study of this kind allows interrelationships to be charted with precision, and the historical value of the texts to be estimated with a greater degree of confidence.

These four major studies, thoroughly revised for this book, reflect this distinguished historian's continuing interest in relations between England and Wales in the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries. An introduction places theconclusions offered in these studies within the current framework of historical thinking about Wales in this period.The first chapter, a survey of Anglo-Welsh ecclesiastical life in the tenth and eleventh centuries, is followed by "The Archbishops of St Davids, Llandaff and Caerleon-on-Usk", in which the twelfth-century claims of certain major Welsh churches to extensive jurisdiction and the methods by which they promoted their claims are subjectedto a searching analysis. In "St Peter of Gloucester and St Cadog of Llancarfan" a detailed examination is made of the complicated links which bound together the churches of Gloucester and Llancarfan from about 1100 and of the sources which reveal these ties. Finally in "Geoffrey of Monmouth as a historian" the motivation and methods of one of the most controversial personalities of the Anglo-Welsh Church are considered.

An analysis and study of Caroline script from 200 years of ecclesiastical and secular records reveals important historical detail relating to late Anglo-Saxon England.Caroline minuscule script was adopted in England in the mid-tenth century in imitation of Continental usage. A badge of ecclesiastical reform, it was practised in Benedictine scriptoria but was also taken up by members of the royal writing office; the chancery occupied an important place in the pioneering of calligraphic fashions. During its approximately two-century history in England, Caroline script developed a number of forms, in part reflecting different tendencies within the Reform-cause. The Rule of St Benedict was focal for this movement.In the aftermath of the final Scandinavian conquest of England [AD1016] a Canterbury master-scribe created the form ofCaroline writing which was to become a mark of Englishness and outlive the Norman Conquest. In the closing chapter its inventor's career is discussed and his achievement assessed. This volume offers analysis of manuscript evidenceas a basis for the cultural and ecclesiastical history of late Anglo-Saxon England.David N. Dumville is professor of History and Palaeography at the University of Aberdeen

Study of surviving Anglo-Saxon kalendars and pontificals contributes to our understanding of 10th-century England.`His work demonstrates the importance of these neglected sources for our understanding of the late Old English church.' HISTORYAn important book of immense erudition. It brings into the open some major issues of Late Anglo-Saxon history, and gives a thorough overview of the detailed source material. When such outstanding learning is being used, through intuitive perception, to bear on the wider issues such as popular devotion and the reception of the monastic reform in England, and bold conclusions are bing drawn from such minutely detailed studies, there is no doubt that David Dumville's contribution in this area of study becomes invaluable. The sources for the liturgy of late Anglo-Saxon England have a distinctive shape. Very substantial survival has given us the possibility of understanding change and perceiving significant continuity, as well as identifying local preferences and peculiarities. One major category of evidence is provided by a corpus of more than twenty kalendars: some of these (and particularly those which have been associated with Glastonbury Abbey) are subjected to close examination here, the process contributing both negatively and positively to the history of ecclesiastical renewal in the 10th century. Another significant body of manuscripts comprises books for episcopal use, especially pontificals: these are examined here as a group, and their associations with specific prelates and churches considered. All these investigations tend to suggest the centrality of the church of Canterbury in the surviving testimony and presumptively therefore in the history of late Anglo-Saxon christianity. Historians' study of English liturgy in this period has heretofore concentrated on the development of coronation-rites: by pursuing palaeographical and textual enquiries, the author hassought to make other divisions of the subject respond to historical questioning. Dr DAVID N. DUMVILLE is Reader in the Early Mediaeval History and Culture of the British Isles at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Girton College.

Historians, numismatists and philologists consider fundamental aspects of 9c political and economic history.The ninth century was a period of upheaval in England, as the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex vied for supremacy, and East Anglia and Kent sought to regain their independence, with the arrival of the Vikings introducing a further element of unrest. This interdisciplinary collection of papers by historians, numismatists and philologists considers fundamental aspects of the period's political and economic history. Alliances and treaties are a central theme, political and monetary. A radical reassesment of events in London in the later ninth century is presented, prompted by a detailed examination of the numismatic evidence marshalled here along with the written sources; it is argued that the Vikings were not in control of the city prior to Alfred's "reoccupation" in AD 886. The volume includes an illustrated corpus of the coinage of Berhtwulf and another for the middle years of Alfred's reign; moneyers are identified as witnesses to charters, and the forms of their names are analysed according to the Old English dialects they represent. A listing of some 500 single coin-finds forms the basis for a discussion of the nature and extent ofmonetary use in ninth-century England.The late MARK BLACKBURN was Keeper of Coins and Medals at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; DAVID DUMVILLE is Emeritus Professor at the University of Aberdeen.Contributors: SIMON KEYNES, THOMAS CHARLES-EDWARDS, JAMES BOOTH, MARK BLACKBURN, LORD STEWARTBY, PAUL BIBIRE, D.M. METCALF, MICHAEL BONSER