Awards

• Winner of Shortlisted for the 2017 Whitfield Book Prize of the Royal Historical Society Winner of the 2017 Best First Monograph Prize by the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists.
• Winner of Shortlisted for the 2017 Whitfield Book Prize of the Royal Historical Society Winner of the 2017 Best First Monograph Prize by the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists.
• Winner of Shortlisted for the 2017 Whitfield Book Prize of the Royal Historical Society.

Overview

In the modern world, angels can often seem to be no more than a symbol, but in the Middle Ages men and women thought differently. Some offered prayers intended to secure the angelic assistance for the living and the dead; others erected stone monuments carved with images of winged figures; and still others made angels the subject of poetic endeavour and theological scholarship. This wealth of material has never been fully explored, and was once dismissed as the detritus of a superstitious age. Angels in Early Medieval England offers a different perspective, by using angels as a prism through which to study the changing religious culture of an unfamiliar age.Focusing on one corner of medieval Europe which produced an abundance of material relating to angels, Richard Sowerby investigates the way that ancient beliefs about angels were preserved and adapted in England during the Anglo-Saxon period. Between the sixth century and the eleventh, the convictions of Anglo-Saxon men and women about the world of the spirits underwent a gradual transformation. This book is the first to explore that transformation, and to show the ways in which the Anglo-Saxons tried to reconcile their religious inheritance with their own perspectives about the world, human nature, and God.

Full Product Details

9780198785378

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Reviews

Meticulously researched, beautifully written and sensitively argued, many phrases will stay in the mind. ... This book is a treasure trove for its subject, and a pleasure to read. * Marie Lovatt, Journal of Ecclesiastical History *

Meticulously researched, beautifully written and sensitively argued, many phrases will stay in the mind. ... This book is a treasure trove for its subject, and a pleasure to read. * Marie Lovatt, Journal of Ecclesiastical History * Overall, Angels in Early Medieval England is an intelligent and spirited book that makes a lasting contribution to our knowledge of the thought-world of the Anglo-Saxons. It can be profitably read by anyone interested in Old English literature, Medieval Latin literature, and early Christian intellectual history in general. Sowerby emerges in this book as an original and humane voice, indifferent to trends, whose arguments are impelled by an earnest desire to understand medieval people as thoroughly as we can understand them from the fragmentary and tantalizing records they left to posterity. His work is sure to inspire a great deal of discussion, admiration, and imitation. * Leonard Neidorf, Anglia * Through careful attendance to nuance and respect for the sources, Sowerby builds an argument explaining the significant changes to the stature of angels in England over the course of the early middle ages. The book is primarily concerned not with abstract theology but aims to use ideas about angels as a means to access the culture and mind set of early medieval England. * Jonathan DavisSecord, Reading Religion *

-By drawing attention to how the medieval understanding of angels affected both formal theological opinions and popular Christian practices, this illuminating study affirms diversity of outlook in the Christian imagination...Highly recommended.---CHOICE

.. .Meticulously researched, beautifully written and sensitively argued, many phrases will stay in the mind. [...] This book is a treasure trove for its subject, and a pleasure to read. --Marie Lovatt, Journal of Ecclesiastical History By drawing attention to how the medieval understanding of angels affected both formal theological opinions and popular Christian practices, this illuminating study affirms diversity of outlook in the Christian imagination...Highly recommended. --CHOICE By drawing attention to how the medieval understanding of angels affected both formal theological opinions and popular Christian practices, this illuminating study affirms diversity of outlook in the Christian imagination...Highly recommended. --CHOICE -By drawing attention to how the medieval understanding of angels affected both formal theological opinions and popular Christian practices, this illuminating study affirms diversity of outlook in the Christian imagination...Highly recommended.---CHOICE

Author Information

Richard Sowerby is Lecturer in Early Medieval Insular History at the University of Edinburgh.

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