Both of these books arise out of major collaborative research projects exploring the emergence and spread of Christianity in NW Europe in the Early Middle Ages. They profess to address slightly different geographic areas: Making Christian Landscapes encompasses a very broadly defined ‘Atlantic’ Europe including outliers such as Hessia and the Touraine, while Introduction to Christianity has a tighter focus, on Britain and Ireland. Not surprisingly given the similarity in scope, there is some overlap in authors. Introduction of Christianity, as befits a publication arising out of an interdisciplinary project, takes a broad perspective bringing together hagiographical, archaeological and anthropological approaches. This results in a diversity of topics, ranging from Woolf ’s focused analysis of a single Latin word plebs to more synthetic overviews, such as Etchingham’s review of conversion in Ireland and Edward’s analysis of the ideological impacts of Christianity in Wales. However, it is a shame not to see more integration of archaeological and historical approaches and more evidence of genuine collaboration rather than (with one or two honourable exceptions) two disciplines working in parallel. The strongest section is that exploring the relationship between conversion and economy, including Thomas reporting in from his landmark excavations at Lyminge (Kent) which will rewrite the agenda for understanding the relationship between Anglo-Saxon monasticism and economic intensification. Overall, though, this is a volume to be dipped into and plundered for particular gems rather than read as a coherent group of papers. In contrast, Making Christian Landscapes presents a far more focused approach to the topic, drilling down to look at the intersection between social and natural landscapes and the spread of the Church. This more tightly defined approach results in a stronger set of papers, which relate to each other with the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. The first group of papers, focussing on Ireland, work through in detail the spread of Christianity in case-study areas, drawing on both the archaeological data and the ample Irish historical material. The sheer quantity of data accessible means that the argumentation is often dense, but the value of close readings of this material in producing richly textured analyses of the embedding of the Church in a landscape is clear. Wales and Scotland are also covered — Comeau’s work on an early Christian landscape in Pembrokeshire is a text-book model of detailed reading of a range of textual and archaeological sources to present a thoughtful picture of the playing out of Christian ritual practice in a particular landscape. For the monoglot reader, the most useful papers cover continental material. Lunven and Zadora-Rio both present insightful analyses of the emergence of parochial territories in western France; they offer some intriguing methodological approaches that might be taken up elsewhere, as well as providing a useful suite of comparative material to set alongside our insular understanding of the process of parochial formation. Sanchez Pardo’s paper on ecclesiastical landscapes in Galicia also offers the kind of comparative data that we need in Britain to properly contextualise our own work and to draw out the similarities and differences between the insular experience and the processes being played out more widely across Europe.

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书评

这两本书都源于探索中世纪早期基督教在西北欧的出现和传播的重大合作研究项目。他们声称处理略有不同的地理区域：制作基督教景观涵盖了定义非常广泛的“大西洋”欧洲，包括 Hessia 和 Touraine 等离群点，而基督教导论则更加关注英国和爱尔兰。鉴于范围的相似性，作者之间存在一些重叠也就不足为奇了。基督教导论适合跨学科项目产生的出版物，它采用广泛的视角，将圣徒学、考古学和人类学方法结合在一起。这导致了主题的多样性，从伍尔夫对单个拉丁词 plebs 的重点分析到更综合的概述，例如 Etchingham 对爱尔兰皈依的回顾和爱德华对威尔士基督教意识形态影响的分析。然而，令人遗憾的是，没有看到考古和历史方法的更多整合以及更多真正合作的证据，而不是（除了一两个可敬的例外）两个学科并行工作。最强的部分是探索皈依与经济之间的关系，包括托马斯在莱明格（肯特）进行的具有里程碑意义的发掘报告，这将改写理解盎格鲁-撒克逊修道主义与经济集约化之间关系的议程。然而，总的来说，这是一本可以深入研究和掠夺特定宝石的书，而不是作为一组连贯的论文阅读。相比之下，制作基督教景观对这个话题提出了一种更有针对性的方法，深入研究社会和自然景观与教会传播之间的交叉点。这种更严格定义的方法产生了一组更强大的论文，它们相互关联，整体大于部分之和。第一组论文以爱尔兰为重点，利用考古数据和丰富的爱尔兰历史资料，详细介绍了基督教在案例研究领域的传播。可访问的大量数据意味着论证通常很密集，但仔细阅读这些材料在对教堂嵌入景观的丰富结构分析中的价值是显而易见的。威尔士和苏格兰也包括在内——科莫在彭布罗克郡的早期基督教景观方面的工作是详细阅读一系列文本和考古资源的教科书模型，以呈现出基督教仪式实践在特定景观中进行的深思熟虑的画面. 对于单语读者来说，最有用的论文涵盖大陆材料。Lunven 和 Zadora-Rio 都对法国西部教区领土的出现进行了深刻的分析；它们提供了一些可能在别处采用的有趣的方法论方法，并提供了一套有用的比较材料，以与我们对狭隘形成过程的狭隘理解相结合。