Monastic Legacies: Memory and the Biography of Place

Abstract

This chapter reviews recent approaches to the study of place and memory in the monastic landscape, before considering the biography of Glastonbury Abbey (Somerset) in detail. Monasteries were active in creating ritual landscapes as religious imaginaries, interweaving myth, materiality and hagiography. The Dissolution was not an abrupt end to these deeply-held beliefs, but rather a long process of renegotiating the meanings of medieval religious landscapes and their value to early modern communities.