Faith and Fortification: The Church
Faith and Fortification: The Church
This chapter assesses the consequences of the civil war for religious institutions, communities and structures such as churches, cathedrals, monasteries and bishops’ palaces. The war crimes against churches catalogued by horrified chroniclers and borne out to some extent in the archaeological evidence affected modest numbers of sites in specific geographical zones. Archaeological investigation has revealed very real evidence for the militarisation of ecclesiastical sites, although in many contexts documentary evidence for the apparent transformation of a church into a fortification suggests that the building was garrisoned rather than being converted into something physically resembling a castle. The civil war also had a series of much longer-lasting impacts on the ecclesiastical world in terms of creating the social and tenurial conditions and a spiritual environment where religious patronage became increasingly politicised and where lower-ranked members within the elite had the means and motivation to establish monasteries, which swelled in numbers as never before.
Keywords: bishop, bishop’s palace, cathedral, church, Cistercian, ecclesiastical, fortified church, monastery, parish church, Savignac
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