The documents in this section illustrate the character of everyday monastic life in the later middle ages in the form of administrative records, most notably accounts and inventories.

This documents in this section illustrate the interaction between monasteries and their patrons and benefactors in this period.

The Liber Historiae Francorum (LHF) is our most valuable guide through the last half of the seventh century and the first two decades of the eighth. The LHF was written while a Merovingian king ruled over the Franks and by someone geographically very close to the political centre of that realm. In the LHF the advent of the Pippinids into Neustria was a major political event. For the LHF, even after the Pippinids had made their political weight felt in Neustria, the most important expression of proper rule is a hereditary Merovingian king, reigning cum consilio of the Frankish nobility. For part of the period the Passio Leudegarii is of great help in adding to what can be gleaned from the LHF.

This chapter is comprised of annotated and translatedsource texts on the memory of Joan of Arc.

The Annales Mettenses Priores open with an account of Pippin II. Even though he was a secular figure, their treatment of him often resembles the way in which hagiographers portrayed their saintly subjects. Although Charles Martel's early life, and indeed his whole career, are expressly guided by God's will, nowhere is he adorned with the most Christian virtues that Pippin and his holy ancestors had sported. In Annales Mettenses Priores's early pages they treat many of the political events of the late Merovingian age in engaging detail, they were actually written more than half a century after the Carolingians had ursurped the Merovingian throne. Be that as it may, the first section of the Annales Mettenses Priores is clearly far more of an historical justification for the traditional and Frankish system of succession by division than for any idea of united empire.

The documents in this section discuss monastic life under The Benedictine Rule. The Benedictines, Cistercians, Cluniacs and many nunneries followed the sixth-century Rule of St Benedict, and other monastic orders were heavily influenced by its teachings.

This documents in this section concern monastic learning and study, and the involvement of monks and canons in university studies from the late thirteenth century.

The turbulent career of Leudegar, bishop of Autun from 662 to 676 is central to the history of later Merovingian Francia. This chapter looks at how the oldest text of the Passio Leudegarii can be reconstructed and focuses on the context of the work. This will allow us to appreciate the difficulties faced by its author in presenting Leudegar's saintly credentials to an audience which may have had good reason to doubt them. The chapter assesses the value of the Passio as an historical source. In it is a Passio Leudegarii written at Poitiers, home of the saint's cult from the end of the seventh century onwards. Leudegar's family background therefore made him a member of that supra-regional elite which had connections throughout the Merovingian kingdom, and whose vested interests lay in unity rather than in separatism.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered by the sources in this book. The book surveys the internal affairs of English monasteries, including recruitment, the monastic economy, standards of observance and learning. It looks at the relations between monasteries and the world, exploring the monastic contribution to late medieval religion and society and lay attitudes towards monks and nuns in the years leading up to the Dissolution. In the preservation and dissemination of learning, the spread of Christianity throughout Europe, the periodic reform of the Church, the stimulation of the economy and much else, the monastic contribution to the medieval world needs no elaboration. The later middle ages was an era of evolution in English monastic life in late medieval England. In comparison to earlier centuries, the later middle ages witnessed few new monastic foundations and few major grants of property to existing religious houses.

This chapter is comprised of annotated and translatedsource texts on the topic of the life of Joan ofArc.