Henry Mayr-Harting is Emeritus Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford, UK

• Contents: Preface; Two conversions to Christianity: the Bulgarians and the Anglo-Saxons; Bede's patristic thinking as an historian; The Venerable Bede, the Rule of St Benedict, and social class; St Boniface, mirror of English history; Charlemagne, the Saxons, and the imperial coronation of 800; Charlemagne's religion; Perceptions of angels in history; Liudprand of Cremona's account of his legation to Constantinople (968) and Ottonian imperial strategy; The church of Magdeburg: its trade and its town in the 10th and early 11th centuries; Was the identity of the Prague church in the 10th century imposed from without or developed from within?; Apocalyptic book illustration in the early Middle Ages; Hilary, Bishop of Chichester (1147-1169) and Henry II; Henry II and the Papacy, 1170-1189; Functions of a 12th-century recluse (Wulfric of Haselbury); Functions of a 12th-century shrine: the miracles of St Frideswide; Odo of Deuil, the 2nd Crusade, and the monastery of Saint- Denis; Index.