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What buried secret lies beneath the stones of one of England's greatest former churches and shrines? The ruins of the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St Edmunds are a memorial to the largest Romanesque church ever built. This Suffolk market town is now a quiet place, out of the way, eclipsed by its more famous neighbour Cambridge. But present obscurity may conceal a find as significant as the emergence from beneath a Leicester car-park of the remains of Richard III. For Bury, as Francis Young now reveals, is the probable site of the body - placed in an `iron chest' but lost during the Dissolution of the Monasteries - of Edmund: martyred monarch of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia and, well before St George, England's first patron saint. After the king was slain by marauding Vikings in the ninth century, the legend which grew up around his murder led to the foundation in Bury of one of the pre-eminent shrines of Christendom. In showing how Edmund became the pivotal figure around whom Saxons, Danes and Normans all rallied, the author points to the imminent rediscovery of the ruler who created England.
On Christmas Eve 1433, the young King Henry VI arrived at the abbey at Bury St Edmunds, one of the largest religious foundations in fifteenth-century England. He remained there until Easter and at the end of his stay was admitted to the abbey's confraternity. To cement the abbey's relationship with the king, abbot William Curteys conceived the idea of commemorating Henry's visit with a "life" of the Anglo-Saxon king, St Edmund, the patron saint of the abbey. The man charged with the task of translating the "life" of St Edmund was John Lydgate, a monk at the abbey and the pre-eminent poet of the fifteenth century. It is hard to overstate the importance of the resulting manuscript, both as a m...
'Medieval England' is an illustrated history tracing the story of England from the Norman Conquest to the tumultuous times of the Black Death, the Hundred Years War and the Wars of the Roses.
The importance of the themes of rulership and rebellion in the history of the Anglo-Norman world between 1066 and the early thirteenth century is incontrovertible. The power, government, and influence of kings, queens and other lords pervaded and dominated society and was frequently challenged and resisted. But while biographies of rulers, studies of the institutions and operation of central, local and seigniorial government, and works on particular political struggles abound, many major aspects of rulership and rebellion remain to be explored or further elucidated. This volume, written by leading scholars in the field and dedicated to the pioneering work of Professor Edmund King, will make an original, important and timely contribution to our knowledge and understanding of Anglo-Norman history.
Biography of Edmund King, currently Visiting Professor of Transport at Newcastle University, previously President at The Automobile Association and President at The Automobile Association.
From Yale's English Monarchs series, the most authoritative picture yet of King Stephen "King has written a masterpiece that reveals how a medieval political community can both consume and then reconstitute itself and offers readers a king emblematic of his truncated, troubled age."--Choice King Stephen's reign (1135-1154), with its "nineteen long winters" of civil war, made his name synonymous with failed leadership. After years of work on the sources, Edmund King shows with rare clarity the strengths and weaknesses of the monarch. Keeping Stephen at the forefront of his account, the author also chronicles the activities of key family members and associates whose loyal support sustained Stephen's kingship. In 1135 the popular Stephen was elected king against the claims of the empress Matilda and her sons. But by 1153, Stephen had lost control over Normandy and other important regions, England had lost prestige, and the weakened king was forced to cede his family's right to succession. A rich narrative covering the drama of a tumultuous reign, this book focuses well-deserved attention on a king who lost control of his destiny.
The cult of St Edmund was one of the most important in medieval England, and further afield, as the pieces here show. St Edmund, king and martyr, supposedly killed by Danes (or "Vikings") in 869, was one of the pre-eminent saints of the middle ages; his cult was favoured and patronised by several English kings and spawned a rich array of visual, literary, musical and political artefacts. Celebrated throughout England, especially at the abbey of Bury St Edmunds, it also inspired separate cults in France, Iceland and Italy. The essays in this collection offer a range of readings from a variety of disciplines - literature, history, music, art history - and of sources - chronicles, poems, theolo...
Originally published in 1962. In this book the main problems of contemporary education are illustrated with fresh material from many countries and assessed in a context of rapid change in technology, society, and politics. Familiar educational concerns are carefully considered; but the altered status of schools, teachers and homes in relation to competing influences receives particular attention. Recent reforms in the Soviet Union, and the development of education in Asia and Africa, are assessed vis-a-vis topical questions and proposals in Great Britain, the United States, and several Western European countries. The book is therefore useful both for ‘problem' studies in comparative education, and for an up-to-date review of principles and practices in a critically formative period. It is also intended to present a study of education that will be widely educative and contribute to world understanding.
An investigaton of the growth and influence of the cult of St Edmund, and how it manifested itself in medieval material culture.