The English Church and the Continent in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries

Book excerpt: This is the first full-length study of the connections between the English and Continental churches during the tenth and eleventh centuries. Ortenberg draws on a wide range of liturgical, art-historical, and documentary sources to establish the strong and continuing links between England and the countries of Christian Europe. Her analysis of successive areas of contact--including not only France and Flanders, but the German lands, Italy, and even Byzantium and beyond--reveals much about the place of the English church in high medieval christendom. Ortenberg's work places the later Anglo-Saxon church exactly where it saw itself belonging: in the mainstream of Continental culture. Handsomely illustrated with numerous plates, this is a work of wide-ranging scholarship, which makes an important contribution to our understanding of medieval religious and cultural relations.