ABSTRACT
Quite apart from stimulating a sense of English national identity, Christianity and the Church, in their various aspects, made a major contribution to the social cohesion of the communities of Britain. These comprised mixed lay-religious ones, those of the (questionable) nation, dioceses, towns, villages and rural communities, and, within them, specialised ecclesiastical ones, of monks, nuns and cathedral clergy. Among the things that gave them community identity were, in England, activities within dioceses (including the workings of ecclesiastical estates), monastic landholding and monastic timetables, the beginnings of parishes, saints’ cults, spiritual kinship, penance and pilgrimage. These operated simultaneously with royal policy, popular assemblies and institutions of local government and law and order, works of literature and of history which themselves had a strongly Christian element, and the propagation of ideals and aspirations by various means.
