The World of Orderic Vitalis

`A wise learned gracefully written account of the Anglo-Norman world and its most remarkable chronicler.'' SPECULUMOrderic Vitalis born near Shrewsbury in 1075 and sent as a child oblate to the Norman abbey of Saint-Evroult wrote one of the most vivid and important medieval chronicles. His world encompassed Shropshire in the aftermath of theConquest Normandy in civil war and at peace and briefly the wider French perspective of the priory of Maule. Saint-Evroult was open to all the cross-currents of a changing society and Orderic witnessed fundamental changes inchurch organisation patterns of aristocratic inheritance attitudes towards knighthood and Christian militancy towards non-Christians. This book is concerned with monastic life and culture and its interaction with the life of courts and Norman families. It also describes the life of Orderic himself and an appendix gives a translation of his own moving account of his life an epilogue to the Historia.MARJORIE CHIBNALL is a Fellow of Clare Hall Cambridge. She has written many booksand articles about the Anglo-Norman world including an edition of Orderic''s Ecclesiastical History.