Richard Sharpe – författare

This book explores the development of the cult of the saints in western Europe between c.400 and 1000. The main emphasis is upon Anglo-Saxon England, post-Roman Britain, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, but there are important contributions on Francia and on western Europe as a whole. No other volume combines such a broad geographical spread with such a wide range of disciplines and approaches - textual, archaeological, genealogical, onomastic, as well as historical. Veneration of innumerable local saints and martyrs is one of the defining characteristics of early medieval society. This book looks at how such saints came to be recognized and how they were enshrined, the circumstances in which they proliferated, and the factors leading to the development of their often extremely localized cults. Throughout, the aim is to emphasize the pan-European context, to place insular developments in a wider continuum extending from Ireland through to Rome and Byzantium. The volume combines wide-ranging surveys, providing fundamental orientation on a variety of core subjects, with crucial reference material (including a handlist of all known Anglo-Saxon saints). It will be indispensable to all interested in early Britain and Ireland, Anglo-Saxon England and to the culture of early medieval Europe as a whole.

This is a study of three important late medieval collections of saints' Lives. The manuscripts, written in Latin and, for the most part, relating to the lives of Irish saints, have never before been subject to critical examination. Richard Sharpe's pioneering analysis addresses such questions as when and where the Lives were compiled, and from what sources they derive. Dr Sharpe sets his own treatment of the collections within the wider context of Irish hagiographical studies. Formidable research underpins his lucid exposition and resolution of complex problems of historical and linguistic evidence.

Edition of important documents from one of the major monastic centres of medieval England.In the wake of the Conqueror's ravaging of the North in the course of the rebellion and Danish invasion of 1069-70 the devastated city of York had to be largely rebuilt. The Conqueror himself contributed a major new abbey built in the west of the city, no doubt in a spirit of penitence for the wasting of the city and county carried out by his troops. The community's origins were not straightforward. It had begun in the early 1080s as a struggling monastic settlement on the ancient site of Lastingham on the North York Moors under its charismatic leader, Stephen. Around 1085 the community was adopted by the king and translated to the western quarter of York, to a site which had previously been the "burh" of the earl of Northumbria. The Conqueror made a creative use of the new Norman elite of Yorkshire to endow and secure the new abbey, an enterprise adopted and extended by his son William II Rufus in 1088. By the end of Abbot Stephen's term of office his abbey had absorbed a remarkable number of land grants from a variety of greater and lesser aristocrats across the North and East Ridings, as well as spawned two daughter houses in Cumbria. This new study uncovers in meticulous detail the manoeuvres of the king, the abbot and the aristocracy of Yorkshire as each looked to make spiritual and political capital out of the grand new royal foundation.

This is the first book-length study of Peter of Cornwall, prior of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, London. His Liber Reuelationum (Lambeth Palace Library, MS 51), dated to the year 1200, is a compilation of over 1,100 chapters, excerpted from some 275 Latin texts, dealing with visions of the otherworld and revelatory appearances of God, Christ, Mary, angels, saints, devils, and revenants. Peter collected the material from saints’ lives, chronicles, and free-standing vision texts from the first century AD through to his own day – for the purpose of providing evidence of the existence of God, the soul, and life after death to unbelievers. Accounts of new visionary experiences circulating in England in the 1190s doubtlessly prompted his collection. Like his other large-scale work, Pantheologus, Peter of Cornwall’s Book of Revelations was intended to assist preachers with propagating the fundamentals of the faith. This volume introduces Peter’s life and writings and presents editions with parallel English translations of those parts of the Lambeth manuscript that Peter composed himself. A detailed description of the manuscript is included, and a Calendar identifies the source for each of Peter’s chapters. A bibliography and indices complete this volume, which provides a marvellous resource for scholars interested in the Latin literature of medieval dreams, visionary experience, and the eschatological concerns of sin, penance, death, the afterlife, and the judgement of the soul.

Medieval England was full of books, many times the number that have survived. The great moment of loss was when the country’s religious houses were suppressed by King Henry VIII and their libraries scattered and destroyed. Twentieth-century scholarship has been enterprising in establishing what survives and in discovering what libraries once held. To understand that evidence, and to be able to reconstruct the transmission of culture in the Middle Ages, we need to employ with care the evidence of the surviving books and what medieval library catalogues can tell us about these lost collections. Libraries and Books in Medieval England paints a new picture of the circulation of books, from the totality of the available evidence. It seeks to move away from the modern conceptualization of the monastic library as the only venue for medieval book provision, and to broaden awareness of the wider book economy, including private ownership and the birth of the book trade. The result, by one of the country’s leading experts and based on his Lyell Lectures in the University of Oxford, is an unparalleled work offering a new view of the field.