Creating a ‘temple society’ in the early medieval west

Abstract

By the seventh century the church of the early medieval west was extremely richly endowed. This endowment went hand in hand with the increase in the number of clergy and monks, and with the pastoral and liturgical demands made on the church. Because of its pastoral and religious obligations, it should not be seen simply as a section of the elite. In order to understand the socio‐economic role of the church in the early Middle Ages it is useful, instead, to draw on the anthropological model of the ‘temple society’.