The so-called Investiture Conflict was a watershed moment in the political life of the Latin West and the history of the papacy. Occurring at a time of rapid social change and political expansion, the eleventh-century reform movement became a debate centered on a ritual: the investment of bishops with the signs of their sacred and secular authority. The consecration of bishops, however, was only one of several contemporaneous conflicts over the significance of consecrations. Less well known is that which occurred over the dedication of churches. This book provides an examination of the consecration, placing the fundamental questions of the Gregorian Reform and Investiture Conflict back into their original liturgical framework. This context allows us to consider the symbolic richness of the liturgy that attracted large numbers of people. -- .

Recent research on the Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, Viking and Angevin worlds of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The latest volume of the Haskins Society Journal presents recent research on the Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, Viking and Angevin worlds of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and includes topics ranging from emotional communities in the middle ages, English identity, and the artistic construction of sacred space to the organization of royal estates, Jewish credit operations, the English colonization of Wales, and more. This volume of the Haskins Society Journal includes papers read at the 21st Annual Conference of the Charles Homer Haskins Society at Cornell University in October 2002 as well as other submissions. Contributors include Barbara Rosenwein, Kate Rambridge,Nicholas Brooks, Ryan Lavelle, Robin Mundill, Diane Korngiebel, Ryan Crisp, Philadelphia Ricketts, Louis Hamilton, and Brigitte Bedos-Rezak.