The construction of a church was undoubtedly one of the most demanding events to take place in the life of a medieval parish. It required a huge outlay of time, money and labour, and often a new organisational structure to oversee design and management. Who took control and who provided the financing was deeply shaped by local patterns in wealth, authority and institutional development - from small villages with little formal government to settlements with highly unequal populations. This all took place during a period of great economic and social change as communities managed the impact of the Black Death, the end of serfdom and the slump of the mid-fifteenth century. This original and authoritative study provides an account of how economic change, local politics and architecture combined in late-medieval England. It will be of interest to researchers of medieval, socio-economic and art history.
The construction of a church was undoubtedly one of the most demanding events to take place in the life of a medieval parish. It required a huge outlay of time, money and labour, and often a new organisational structure to oversee design and management. Who took control and who provided the financing was deeply shaped by local patterns in wealth, authority and institutional development - from small villages with little formal government to settlements with highly unequal populations. This all took place during a period of great economic and social change as communities managed the impact of the Black Death, the end of serfdom and the slump of the mid-fifteenth century. This original and authoritative study provides an account of how economic change, local politics and architecture combined in late-medieval England. It will be of interest to researchers of medieval, socio-economic and art history.
English history has usually been written from the perspective of the south, from the viewpoint of London or Canterbury, Oxford or Cambridge. Yet throughout the middle ages life in the north of England differed in many ways from that south of the Humber. In ecclesiastical terms, the province of York, comprising the dioceses of Carlisle, Durham and York, maintained its own identity, jealously guarding its prerogatives from southern encroachment. In their turn, the bishops and cathedral chapters of Carlisle and Durham did much to prevent any increase in the powers of York itself. Barrie Dobson is the leading authority on the history of religion in the north of England during the later middle ages. In this collection of essays he discusses aspects of church life in each of the three dioceses, identifying the main features of religion in the north and placing contemporary religious attitudes in both a social and a local context. He also examines, among other issues, the careers of individual prelates, including Alexander Neville, archbishop of York and Richard Bell, bishop of Carlisle (1478-95); the foundation of chantries in York; and the writing of history at York and Durham in the later middle ages.
A fascinating guide to decoding the secret language of the churches of England through the medieval carved markings and personal etchings found on our church walls from archaeologist Matthew Champion. 'Rare, lovely glimmers of everyday life in the Middle Ages.' -- The Sunday Times 'A fascinating and enjoyable read' -- ***** Reader review 'Superb' -- ***** Reader review 'Riveting' -- ***** Reader review 'Compelling, moving and fascinating' -- ***** Reader review ***************************************************************************************************** Our churches are full of hidden messages from years gone by and for centuries these carved writings and artworks have lain largely unnoticed. Having launched a nationwide survey to gather the best examples, archaeologist Matthew Champion shines a spotlight on a forgotten world of ships, prayers for good fortune, satirical cartoons, charms, curses, windmills, word puzzles, architectural plans and heraldic designs. Here are strange medieval beasts, knights battling unseen dragons, ships sailing across lime-washed oceans and demons who stalk the walls. Latin prayers for the dead jostle with medieval curses, builders' accounts and slanderous comments concerning a long-dead archdeacon. Strange and complex geometric designs, created to ward off the 'evil eye' and thwart the works of the devil, share church pillars with the heraldic shields of England's medieval nobility. Giving a voice to the secret graffiti artists of Medieval times, this engaging, enthralling and - at times - eye-opening book, with a glossary of key terms and a county-by-county directory of key churches, will put this often overlooked period in a whole new light.
The concept of an ordered human society, both religious and secular, as an expression of a divinely ordered universe was central to medieval thought. In the West the political and religious community were inextricably bound together, and because the Church was so intimately involved with the world, any history of it must take into account the development of medieval society. Professor Southern's book covers the period from the eighth to the sixteenth century. After sketching the main features of each medieval age, he deals in greater detail with the Papacy, the relations between Rome and her rival Constantinople, the bishops and archbishops, and the various religious orders, providing in all a superb history of the period.
In recent years there has been an increasing interest in the history of the numerous houses of monks, canons and nuns which existed in the medieval British Isles, considering them in their wider socio-cultural-economic context; historians are now questioning some of the older assumptions about monastic life in the later Middle Ages, and setting new approaches and new agenda. The present volume reflects these new trends. Its fifteen chapters assess diverse aspects of monastic history, focusing on the wide range of contacts which existed between religious communities and the laity in the later medieval British Isles, covering a range of different religious orders and houses. This period has often been considered to represent a general decline of the regular life; but on the contrary, the essays here demonstrate that there remained a rich monastic culture which, although different from that of earlier centuries, remained vibrant. CONTRIBUTORS: KAREN STOBER, JULIE KERR, EMILIA JAMROZIAK, MARTIN HEALE, COLMAN O CLABAIGH, ANDREW ABRAM, MICHAEL HICKS, JANET BURTON, KIMM PERKINS-CURRAN, JAMES CLARK, GLYN COPPACK, JENS ROHRKASTEN, SHEILA SWEETINBURGH, NICHOLAS ORME, CLAIRE CROSS
A presentation of the social history of Britain, from 1348-1500, describing medieval society, with its rigid stratifications of nobility and peasant, and the transition to the beginning of the early modern period.
This authoritative survey of Britain in the later Middle Ages comprises 28 chapters written by leading figures in the field. Covers social, economic, political, religious, and cultural history in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales Provides a guide to the historical debates over the later Middle Ages Addresses questions at the leading edge of historical scholarship Each chapter includes suggestions for further reading
Simultaneously real and unreal, the dead are people, yet they are not. The society of medieval Europe developed a rich set of imaginative traditions about death and the afterlife, using the dead as a point of entry for thinking about the self, regeneration, and loss. These macabre preoccupations are evident in the widespread popularity of stories about the returned dead, who interacted with the living both as disembodied spirits and as living corpses or revenants. In Afterlives, Nancy Mandeville Caciola explores this extraordinary phenomenon of the living's relationship with the dead in Europe during the five hundred years after the year 1000.Caciola considers both Christian and pagan beliefs, showing how certain traditions survived and evolved over time, and how attitudes both diverged and overlapped through different contexts and social strata. As she shows, the intersection of Christian eschatology with various pagan afterlife imaginings—from the classical paganisms of the Mediterranean to the Germanic, Celtic, Slavic, and Scandinavian paganisms indigenous to northern Europe—brought new cultural values about the dead into the Christian fold as Christianity spread across Europe. Indeed, the Church proved surprisingly open to these influences, absorbing new images of death and afterlife in unpredictable fashion. Over time, however, the persistence of regional cultures and beliefs would be counterbalanced by the effects of an increasingly centralized Church hierarchy. Through it all, one thing remained constant: the deep desire in medieval people to bring together the living and the dead into a single community enduring across the generations.