My project investigates the sacralisation of church property in England: the conversion of the English kingdoms in the sixth and seventh centuries introduced new concepts of sacred property, sacred space and the sacred nature of gifts to the church, including people.  The endowment of churches and monasteries needed to establish an institutional church required changes in the nature of land tenure in order to enable the alienation of land from the kindred and the creation of inalienable tenure, sacred property given in perpetuity to God.  These changes have usually been studied through the diplomatic of the earliest English charters which are preserved from the second half of the seventh century.  Rather than concentrate on the origins of English diplomatic, I shall explore the ideas underpinning these grants particular the canon law which regulated and safeguarded gifts to God.