Research Catalog

Title

In the shadow of death : Saint Boniface and the Conversion of Hessia, 721-54 / by John-Henry Clay.

Author

Clay, John-Henry

Publication

Turnhout, Belgium : Brepols, c2010.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xix, 487 p. : ill., maps; 24 cm.

Summary

In the year 721 the Anglo-Saxon missionary St Boniface came with his followers to Hessia, a small but turbulent province on the borders of the expanding Frankish kingdom. This book is the first dedicated interdisciplinary study of Boniface's thirty-three-year mission among the Hessians. The author relates the historical sources to the rich archaeological heritage of the region in order to describe the political and cultural context of the mission and its relationship to long-term Frankish interests in the Saxon borderlands. Thanks to the survival of many letters between the missionary community and its supporters, it is also possible to examine a symbolic literary discourse that portrayed the missionaries as heroic exiles who chose to suffer torments in a distant land for the sake of Christ. Finally, fresh evidence drawn from topography and place names is used to argue for the existence of an expansive pre-Christian sacred landscape that was one of the major obstacles faced by Boniface and his followers. The result is an innovative study that brings history and archaeology into communication with the landscape, both real and imagined, in order to reconstruct a crucial moment in the conversion of Europe in all its complexity, ambiguity, and drama

Series Statement

Cultural encounters in late antiquity and the Middle Ages ; v. 11

Uniform Title

Cultural encounters in late antiquity and the Middle Ages v. 11.

Alternative Title

Saint Boniface and the conversion of Hessia, 721-54

Subjects

• History
• Church history
• To 1500
• Geschichte 721-754
• Germany > Church history > To 843
• Missions, English > Germany > History > To 1500
• Hessians > Religion
• Boniface, Saint, Archbishop of Mainz, approximately 675-754

Genre/Form

• Church history
• History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [431]-471) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Foundations: Introduction -- Historiography -- Context: West Saxon origins -- Hessia on the eve of the Bonifatian mission -- Mission: The chronology of the Bonifatian mission in Hessia -- Representing the mission -- Experiencing the mission -- Conclusion -- Appendix: Terms and expressions relating to mission and missionaries in the letters of Boniface and Lul -- Metaphors and motifs used to represent the mission in the letters of Boniface and Lul -- The terms Germania and Germanicum in the letters of Boniface and Lul -- Property held by Hersfeld in Hessia before 775 -- Patrons of Fulda in the Amöneburg district, 750-79.

ISBN

• 9782503531618
• 250353161X

OCLC

• 642845177
• SCSB-12417209

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library