Chertsey Abbey

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Ruins of Chertsey Abbey

Chertsey Abbey was a Benedictine monastery in the English county of Surrey . It was dedicated to St. Peter .

Chertsey Abbey was founded by the Bishop of London , Erkenwald , in 666. Its original name was Cerotaesei , which means Cerots Island. It received its first possessions from Ecgberht I , King of Kent . After King Wulfhere of Mercia was able to expand his influence to areas south of the Thames , Frithuwold , the sub-king of Surrey, granted Chertsey extensive lands between 672 and 674.

Around 870, Chertsey was sacked by Vikings , which initially did not affect the continued existence of the religious community: Clerics in Chertsey are still attested a good ten years later. Shortly afterwards, however, the religious life in Chertsey died out. It was not until 964 that Chertsey was re-established as a monastery after King Edgar of England had expelled secular clerics, and it developed into an important Benedictine monastery in Anglo-Saxon England.

After the Norman conquest of England, the monastery remained in the favor of the new ruler, William the Conqueror . The buildings of the monastery fell into disrepair, however, as the monastery never had the same income as other large monasteries. Reconstruction began in the first decade of the 12th century and continued with many changes until the end of the 13th century.

In the late Middle Ages, Chertsey Monastery was famous as the burial place of King Henry VI. whose remains were later transferred to St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle .

In the course of the Reformation, the monastery was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1537 .

Letter plaster

In the ruins are remains found one from letter tiles composite patch , which in the 13th century after the Scrabble was moved principle. Since any text can be created by simply lining up the individual bricks, according to the linguist Herbert Brekle it is an early form of printing with movable letters .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Beda, HE , IV, 6
  2. ↑ Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England , p. 55
  3. ^ Lapidge, Encyclopaedia , p. 102
  4. ↑ ASC , s. a. 964
  5. ↑ Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt (1940): “English wooden stamp alphabets of the XIII. Century ", in: Gutenberg-Jahrbuch , pp. 93–97 (96f.)
  6. ↑ Herbert E. Brekle (1997): “The typographical principle. An attempt to clarify the terms " , in: Gutenberg-Jahrbuch , vol. 72, pp. 58–63 (61f.) ( PDF )

swell

  • Janet Bately (Ed.): The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: MS A v. 3 , Janet Bately (Ed.), Brewer, Rochester (NY) 1986, ISBN 0-8599-1103-9 .
  • B. Colgrave & RAB Mynors (Eds.): Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People . Clarendon, Oxford 1969, ISBN 0-1982-2202-5 .

literature

  • James Campbell (Ed.): The Anglo-Saxons , Phaidon, London 1982, ISBN 0-7148-2149-7 .
  • Peter Hunter Blair: Roman Britain and Early England. 55 BC - AD 871. Nelson, Edinburgh 1963, ISBN 0-1771-1044-9 .
  • Michael Lapidge et al. (Ed.): The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England . Oxford 1999, ISBN 0-6311-5565-1
  • Frank Merry Stenton: Anglo-Saxon England. 3rd edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1971, ISBN 0-1928-0139-2

Coordinates: 51 ° 23 ′ 42 "  N , 0 ° 30 ′ 11.2"  W.