Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-24hb2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T17:55:23.551Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Preface

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2021

Get access

Summary

THERE are few visible remains of the church of Evesham but there are many surviving records of its 800-year history, from its origin as a minster around the year 701 to its dissolution as a Benedictine abbey in 1540. For all those years it was a house of continual prayer while being at the same time an institution that governed the religious, economic, and social life of the Vale of Evesham. One could hardly find a more suitable part of England in which to observe the tense interplay of lordship and prayer over so many centuries. But the records are not straightfoward. Between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries Evesham abbey used imagination and artifice to create documents that were meant to represent its early history. The procedure sought to give Evesham a foundation story that linked it to the Virgin Mary, to supply a set of title deeds to its estates, and to furnish an array of precedents and privileges to show that it had never been subject to the bishops of Worcester. To those ends, admirable in themselves, the monks felt justified in preparing a dossier of texts in which unfavourable facts were suppressed and favourable ones selected, and in which the meagre remnant was improved and augmented with myth and legend. So thoroughly were those elements blended that historians were long unable to get at the truth. It became customary for each to express a proper scepticism and then, for want of anything else, to relate exactly what the suspect records said. In 1904 the Benedictine scholar Dame Laurentia McLachlan found it to be the simplest course in her book Saint Egwin and his Abbey of Evesham, which is still the only full-length history of the house. But there have been such advances in the interpretation of documents and archaeological remains that the monks’ difficult materials can now be probed more confidently.

Hence this book. I have tried to hold its themes in a chronological framework throughout, and that has not been difficult in the first two parts, which end in 1104. But coming to the twelfth century I have found so much information that I have separated it into thematic chapters. Even so, I have tried in Part III to keep some sense of movement through time.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Church and Vale of Evesham, 700-1215
Lordship, Landscape and Prayer
, pp. x - xi
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Preface
  • David Cox
  • Book: The Church and Vale of Evesham, 700-1215
  • Online publication: 11 May 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781782046400.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Preface
  • David Cox
  • Book: The Church and Vale of Evesham, 700-1215
  • Online publication: 11 May 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781782046400.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Preface
  • David Cox
  • Book: The Church and Vale of Evesham, 700-1215
  • Online publication: 11 May 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781782046400.001
Available formats
×