"In c.701, a minster was founded in the lower Avon Valley on a deserted promontory called Evesham. Over the next five hundred years it became a Benedictine abbey and turned the Vale of Evesham into a federation of Christian communities. A landscape of scattered farms grew into one of open fields and villages, manor houses and chapels. Evesham itself developed into a town, and the abbots played a role in the affairs of the kingdom. But individual contemplation and prayer within the abbey were compromised by its corporate aspirations. As Evesham abbey waxed ever grander, exerting a national influence, it became a ready patron of the arts but had less time for private spirituality. The story ends badly in the prolonged scandal of Abbot Norreis, a libertine whose appetites caused religion to collapse at Evesham before his own sudden downfall. This book integrates the evidence of archaeology, maps, and documents in a continuous narrative that pays as much attention to religious and cultural life as to institutional and economic matters. It provides a complete survey over one of the most important and wealthy Benedictine abbeys and its landscape, a stage on which was enacted the tense interplay of lordship and prayer."--Back cover.