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The Church in England between the Death of Bede and the Danish Invasions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009
Extract
Until a few years ago, it was customary to assume that the pre-Conquest Church in England enjoyed two golden ages—between the arrival of Theodore of Tarsus and the death of Bede, and the age of St. Dunstan; and that from Bede's death until the Danish invasions, and from the death of Dunstan until the Norman Conquest, the Church stagnated and even declined. Justice has now been done to the last phase of the Anglo-Saxon Church. More tentatively it has been suggested that its shortcomings in the eighth and ninth centuries were less serious than had once been supposed. It is the purpose of this paper to question whether for the earlier period the process of rehabilitation has gone for enough.
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References
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page 18 note 2 Anglo-Saxon England, p. 226.
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