Overview
Although there have been many regional studies of the proprietary church or particular aspects of it, this is the first extensive study of it covering most of western Europe, from the end of the Roman Empire in the West to about 1200. The book aims at a broad survey in varying degrees of intensity and with a shifting geographical focus; and it asks questions that are as much social and religious as legal or administrative. The book vindicates, for village and estate churches, Ulrich Stutz's basic concept of a church with its possessions, revenues, and priestly office as an object of what we can reasonably call property. But it largely rejects his and his followers' application of this to great churches, and sees the position of intermediate churches (such as small or middling monasteries) as various, changeable, and ambivalent. Above all it turns away from Stutz's view of the property relationship as a distinct institution or system of 'Germanic church law', presenting it rather as a fluid set of assumptions and practices taking shape as customary law. The book considers also the changing background of ideas and the bearing on it of important polemical writings (with some questioning of their established interpretations). Finally the book discusses how property in churches was imperfectly superseded by the new canon-law patronage, in the increasingly bureaucratic post-Gregorian Church.
Full Product Details
Author: Susan Wood (Emeritus Fellow, St Hugh's College, Oxford)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 17.50cm
, Height: 6.00cm
, Length: 25.30cm
Weight: 1.938kg
ISBN: 9780198206972
ISBN 10: 0198206976
Pages: 1020
Publication Date: 03 August 2006
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Reviews
This is a book that adds substantially to the sum of knowledge Julia Barrow, Medium Aevum No other scholar has treated this subject in so comprehensive and detailed a way as Susan Wood. TLS Wood has shown that proprietary churches were an integral part of Christian society. TLS The research is exhaustive; the writing is appealing in its clarity; and the judgements are based on long and wise reflection. The author has written a truly great book. Dr Nicholas Orme, Church Times [A] formidable, fascinating, actually readable book Richard Kay, American Historical Review the new locus classicus for those looking for a definitive, comparative and long-tearm study of how and in what way churches were owned in the early Middle Ages, and of when and in what ways that changed. Charles West, Ecclesiastic History
Author Information
Susan Wood is an Emeritus Fellow of St Hugh's College, Oxford where she was a Lecturer, Fellow, and Tutor for over 35 years.
