ABSTRACT
W e start with a com m ent on one special feature o f church life which is vital to understanding. It must be recognised that evidence for the state o f the C hurch in England in 940 is patchy and hard to assess, and yet in one respect is reasonably straightforward. Thanks to K ing Alfred and his imme diate successors, it had survived with one at least of its essential attributes unharm ed. Episcopal governm ent still existed, substantially intact. This is vastly im portant for the health o f the C hurch and also provides justification for our initial chapter on the monastic revolution. For the tenth-century reform ation owed its essential strength to the support o f the kings, Edm und and then Edgar primarily, and to the active support of the bishops. T o historians accustomed to ecclesiastical history at a later period in the M iddle Ages this sometimes comes as a surprise. O nly too often the records speak o f quarrels, sometimes violent, between monks and bishops, of great abbeys such as St Albans, for example, or W estminster, or St Augustine’s, C anterbury, struggling to release themselves from episcopal jurisdiction or at the least to relax the pressure. In the tenth century this was not so. T he monastic revival depended upon active positive support from the bishops. W ithout D unstan at Canterbury, Aethelwold at W inchester and Oswald at W orcester it would not have taken the dram atic shape it achieved.