Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Dangers of Invention: The Sack of Canterbury, 1011, and the ‘theft’ of Dunstan's Relics
- 2 Remembering Communities Past: Exeter Cathedral in the Eleventh Century
- 3 Communities, Conflict and Episcopal Policy in the Diocese of Lichfield, 1050–1150
- 4 The Acta archiepiscoporum Rotomagensium and Urban Ecclesiastical Rivalry in Eleventh-Century Rouen
- 5 Cathedrals and the Cult of Saints in Eleventh-and twelfth-Century Wales
- 6 A Bishop and His Conflicts: Philip of Bayeux (1142–63)
- 7 Ecclesiastical Responses to War in king Stephen's Reign: The Communities of Selby Abbey, Pontefract Priory and York Cathedral
- 8 Secular Cathedrals and the Anglo-Norman Aristocracy
- 9 The Lives of Thomas Becket and the Church of Canterbury
- 10 Caught in the Cross-Fire: Patronage and Institutional Politics in Late twelfth-Century Canterbury
- 11 Crown, Cathedral and Conflict: King John and Canterbury
- 12 The English Monasteries and their French Possessions
- Index of People and Places
- Other Volumes in Studies in the History of Medieval Religion
10 - Caught in the Cross-Fire: Patronage and Institutional Politics in Late twelfth-Century Canterbury
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Dangers of Invention: The Sack of Canterbury, 1011, and the ‘theft’ of Dunstan's Relics
- 2 Remembering Communities Past: Exeter Cathedral in the Eleventh Century
- 3 Communities, Conflict and Episcopal Policy in the Diocese of Lichfield, 1050–1150
- 4 The Acta archiepiscoporum Rotomagensium and Urban Ecclesiastical Rivalry in Eleventh-Century Rouen
- 5 Cathedrals and the Cult of Saints in Eleventh-and twelfth-Century Wales
- 6 A Bishop and His Conflicts: Philip of Bayeux (1142–63)
- 7 Ecclesiastical Responses to War in king Stephen's Reign: The Communities of Selby Abbey, Pontefract Priory and York Cathedral
- 8 Secular Cathedrals and the Anglo-Norman Aristocracy
- 9 The Lives of Thomas Becket and the Church of Canterbury
- 10 Caught in the Cross-Fire: Patronage and Institutional Politics in Late twelfth-Century Canterbury
- 11 Crown, Cathedral and Conflict: King John and Canterbury
- 12 The English Monasteries and their French Possessions
- Index of People and Places
- Other Volumes in Studies in the History of Medieval Religion
Summary
During the 1180s the church in England was again engulfed in an acrimonious dispute involving not only the country's monasteries, the episcopacy and the king but also continental religious houses and the papal curia, as each side sought to win allies and legal backing for its position. At the centre of this cause célèbre was Archbishop Baldwin's intention to establish a large community of secular canons at Hackington, just outside Canterbury, and the total opposition to his plan led by his cathedral monks. As the conflict raged across England, and to a lesser extent continental Europe, a particular incident occurred at Canterbury and it is this tiny offshoot of the dispute that is the subject of this essay. By adopting a microhistorical approach to the study of conflict and community, this analysis is following, as far as the sources will allow, the type of approach used so fruitfully by historians such as Carlo Ginsburg and Natalie Zemon Davis, who have attempted to investigate ‘social relationships and interactions among historical persons’ to try ‘to elucidate historical causation on the level of small groups where most of real life takes place’. However, before considering the events involving Master Feramin and the sisters at St James's hospital that took place a few days after Easter 1188, it seems worthwhile to highlight a few ideas taken from the recent historiography on medieval conflict. These will provide a theoretical framework which may aid our understanding of the surviving evidence regarding the processes involved and the ways individuals and groups sought to manipulate or were manipulated by these same processes.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Cathedrals, Communities and Conflict in the Anglo-Norman World , pp. 187 - 202Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2011