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.