The Ends of the Earth

Abstract This chapter looks at early medieval Britain and Ireland. The Insular world was only converted to Christianity comparatively late and either lacked or had lost much of the imperial Roman infrastructure that Christian institutions could take for granted elsewhere in the Latin West. In Britain and Ireland Christian professionals operated out of religious communities and monasteries closely integrated into aristocratic lifestyles and therefore intertwined with contemporary politics. This meant that relations between kings and monks and clerics were often tense; Christianity proved a strain on the resources of Insular kings to a degree not found elsewhere in the early medieval Christian world. Distinctive Insular ideologies of sacred kingship also existed that influenced the shape of Insular Christian ideas about rulership. In particular, in Ireland kingship was understood to be an office, dependent on the fulfilment of criteria that supplied subjects with the benefits of good rule.