New insights into interpretive problems in the history of England and Europe between the eighth and thirteenth centuries.

New insights into interpretive problems in the history of England and Europe between the eighth and thirteenth centuries.

The Haskins Society, named after the celebrated American medievalist Charles Homer Haskins, was founded in 1982 to provide a forum for the discussion and study of English and related continental history in the middle ages.

Fruits of the most recent research on the worlds of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

In early Christianity it was established that every church should have a light burning on the altar at all times. In this unique study, Eternal light and earthly concerns, looks at the material and social consequences of maintaining these ‘eternal’ lights. It investigates how the cost of lighting was met across western Europe throughout the whole of the Middle Ages, revealing the social organisation that was built up around maintaining the lights in the belief that burning them reduced the time spent in Purgatory. When that belief collapsed in the Reformation the eternal lights were summarily extinguished. The history of the lights thus offers not only a new account of change in medieval Europe, but also a sustained examination of the relationship between materiality and belief.

New research on aspects of the political, social and religious history of the British Isles from 10c-13c, with related material on western Europe. The 1993 International Conference of the Haskins Society, held at the University of Houston, produced a varied collection of papers on numerous aspects of the medieval history of the British Isles, with related material on other Western European countries. The articles in this volume, most of which derive from the conference, focus strongly on the topic of religion, with stimulating essays on women religious, Archbishop Lanfranc and the Anglo-Saxon hagiographic tradition; however, other subjects are also explored, including Anglo-Norman litigation and the turbulent state of Denmark in the ninth century. Contributors: CARY L. DIER, SUSAN J. RIDYARD, K.L. MAUND, EDWARD J. SCHOENFELD, ROBIN FLEMING, BERNARD S. BACHRACH, PATRICIA HALPIN, EMILY ALBU HANAWALT, DANIEL F. CALLAHAN, H.E.J. COWDREY, DAVID ROFFE