Conceiving Heroic Christianity in Early Medieval England (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781501526640)

Unlike much of early medieval Europe, the early English converted to Christianity through missional efforts, not martial conquest. Thus early English converts had freedom to construct their Christian identity, producing a religious subjectivity that differed from the Latinate perspective of the missionaries who converted them. This book investigates lay texts to undermine monolithic conceptions of medieval Christianity by revealing a uniquely English religious subjectivity evident in Old English wisdom literature.