WS 4.iii Property and Piety in Early Medieval Winchester
Alexander R. Rumble (Oxford, 2002)

Winchester in the Anglo-Saxon and early Norman periods was an important royal and religious centre. Property and Piety comprises an edition and translation, with extensive commentary, of thirty-three Anglo-Saxon and Norman documents relating to the topography and minsters of early medieval Winchester. These texts record the physical effects on the city of the foundation and expansion of the three neighbouring minsters, and also of the removal of the New Minster to Hyde in about 1110. They record political, religious, and cultural aspects of the tenth-century reform of Benedictine monasticism, of which Winchester was a leading centre. The splendid New Minster refoundation charter, composed by Bishop AEthelwold and granted by King Edgar in 966, is here translated for the first time. A full examination is also made of the old minster confirmation charter, probably fabricated in the reign of AEthelred. The volume also includes all Anglo-Saxon grants of land within Winchester and a reappraisal of the evidence for the beneficial hidation of the surrounding estate of Chilcomb. This book is the third part of the fourth volume in the Winchester Studies series on The Anglo-Saxon Minsters of Winchester.

Reviews

‘[The interest of] this further magnificent number in the series of Winchester Studies … goes far beyond urban history and topography [and centres] upon the three minsters of the late Anglo-Saxon city’
John Cowdrey, Journal of Theological Studies (2003)

‘Previous volumes in the Winchester Studies series, which have appeared under the general editorship of Martin Biddle, have all been exemplary products and this latest addition is no exception. … All of these documents, printed in two parallel columns, have been translated into modern English — a service that assuredly and considerably enlarges the readership and user ship of this volume. … Dr Rumble’s labours have attained a level of perfection that is difficult to achieve and that ought to be widely available as a superlative model for the rest of us.
Professor Howard B. Clarke, Journal of the Society of Archivists (2004)

‘… highly rewarding. Thirty-three documents are printed, and each is accompanied by a facing-page translation into English; there is also an unusually rich level of annotation, especially about the language and phraseology of the documents … and their historical contents and contexts. It is splendid to have this detailed editorial intervention … a Rolls-Royce of a book — quietly elegant, pleasingly spacious, distinctly expensive, and deeply satisfying.’
Dr Nigel Ramsay, Archives (2003)

The volume [WS 4.iii] has been edited and produced to the highest standards … and is a worthy addition to the series of Winchester Studies.
Mark Page, Hampshire FCA Society Newsletter (2004)

The first and not the least part of the study of the Winchester Minsters to appear [WS 4.iii], accompanying the remaining parts on the archaeology and architecture (4.i) and the cult of St Swithun (4.ii) …
Anon. reviewer, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 2003