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Reviewed by:
  • Religion, Politics and Society in Britain, 1066–1272 by Henry Mayr-Harting
  • Hugh M. Thomas
Religion, Politics and Society in Britain, 1066–1272. By Henry Mayr-Harting. (Harlow, UK: Longman, an imprint of Pearson Education. 2011. Pp. xx, 354. Paperback. ISBN 978-0-582-41413-6.)

Henry Mayr-Harting is a scholar with mastery over an impressive range of subjects. Some of his most important work has been on religious and intellectual history in Anglo-Saxon England and Ottonian Germany, but his earliest work was on the bishopric of Chichester in the twelfth century, and he has periodically returned to British religious and political history ever since. With the work under review, he does so more fully by providing an overview of religion, society, and politics in Britain from 1066 to 1272. Most of the book focuses on the period 1066–1216, but there are chapters on the early history of the friars in Britain and on the Church under King Henry III. It is probably also fair to say that there is much more on England than on other parts of Britain, but Wales and Scotland are certainly not ignored. The series of which this book is a part studies the interaction of [End Page 355] religion with other aspects of society, and so although there are chapters on primarily religious topics such as monasticism, there are also chapters on topics such as the church and the economy, as well as relations among religion, intellectual life, and politics. As is common in such overviews, the book has no one overarching argument. What it does have is many novel insights and a great deal of wise commentary, based on years of experience in the field, by one of the leading scholars in medieval religious history. At times, this includes important reinterpretations. For instance, in Mayr-Harting’s discussion of the Becket controversy, he strongly downplays the importance of the issue of criminous clerks and emphasizes St. Thomas Becket’s concern for the rights of the church of Canterbury. This argument will be controversial, but scholars of the dispute will need to pay attention to it. Not surprisingly, the book covers many standard subjects in church history for the period, including not only relations between Becket and King Henry II but also the long dispute between York and Canterbury as well as the impact of the Norman Conquest on the Church. However, Mayr-Harting also makes periodic use of compelling microhistories to take the reader into less explored areas and to make telling points about more established subjects. For instance, he devotes one section to an unusually elaborate parish church on the royal manor of Melbourne in Derbyshire and to Athelwold, bishop of Carlisle, to whom King Henry I gave the church. Neither the church nor the bishop was hugely important in the overall scheme of things, but Mayr-Harting uses them to discuss architecture and royal symbolism, the nature of royal power, and medieval friendship. Throughout the work he also employs a wealth of vivid anecdotes to illustrate his arguments. As Mayr-Harting points out at the end, one of his aims is to discuss matters such as talk, confession, or prayer that were clearly important, but whose precise impact is impossible to gauge. In this, he succeeds surprisingly well. This book is pitched to be suitable for a variety of readers. Undergraduate students will have no trouble navigating it, and graduate students could benefit from it greatly, but even scholars who are very familiar with the period and subject will benefit from Mayr-Harting’s extensive knowledge and valuable insights.

Hugh M. Thomas
University of Miami
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