Bishop Richard Fox of Winchester (1448-1528) was an important early modern English prelate whose tireless service to his church, to his king and to humanist studies single him out as one of the great shapers of the Tudor age. This book explores the life and career of Bishop Fox as an architect of his world, not only literally, physically designing chapels and colleges, but also figuratively, building the careers of other important Tudor personalities such as Thomas Wolsey and John Fisher. Fox also laid the foundation for humanist learning in England by establishing Corpus Christi College at Oxford, and he negotiated the treaties and marriages that in time produced the Tudor and Stuart successions.

Bishop Richard Fox of Winchester (1448-1528) was an important early modern English prelate whose tireless service to his church, to his king and to humanist studies single him out as one of the great shapers of the Tudor age. This book explores the life and career of Bishop Fox as an architect of his world, not only literally, physically designing chapels and colleges, but also figuratively, building the careers of other important Tudor personalities such as Thomas Wolsey and John Fisher. Fox also laid the foundation for humanist learning in England by establishing Corpus Christi College at Oxford, and he negotiated the treaties and marriages that in time produced the Tudor and Stuart successions.

This book focuses upon the tomb with a transi image, which the author defines as 'a tomb with a representation of the deceased as a corpse, shown either nude or wrapped in a shroud', tombs that were peculiar to Northern Europe from the late fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Cohen challenges the modern view that the transi image was a mere memento mori for the living. Drawing upon 200 examples of tombs with, as well as without transi images, and upon poetry, church hymns, prayers, sermons, ceremonial texts, and wills, she demonstrates that in the course of the 15th & 16th centuries the meaning of the transi evolved, reflecting changes in religious, social and intellectual life during this period.

Examinations of the culture - artistic, material, musical - of English monasteries in the six centuries between the Conquest and the Dissolution. The cultural remains of England's abbeys and priories have always attracted scholarly attention but too often they have been studied in isolation, appreciated only for their artistic, codicological or intellectual features and notfor the insights they offer into the patterns of life and thought - the underlying norms, values and mentalité - of the communities of men and women which made them. Indeed, the distinguished monastic historian David Knowles doubted there would ever be sufficient evidence to recover "the mentality of the ordinary cloister monk". These twelve essays challenge this view. They exploit newly catalogued and newly discovered evidence - manuscript books, wall paintings, and even the traces of original monastic music - to recover the cultural dynamics of a cross-section of male and female communities. It is often claimed that over time the cultural traditions of the monasteries were suffocated by secular trends but here it is suggested that many houses remained a major cultural force even on the verge of the Reformation. James G. Clark is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. Contributors: DAVID BELL, ROGER BOWERS, JAMES CLARK, BARRIE COLLETT, MARY ERLER, G. R. EVANS, MIRIAM GILL, JOAN GREATREX, JULIAN HASELDINE, J. D. NORTH, ALAN PIPER, AND R. M. THOMSON.

The later medieval English church is invariably viewed through the lens of the Reformation that transformed it. But in this bold and provocative book historian George Bernard examines it on its own terms, revealing a church with vibrant faith and great energy, but also with weaknesses which reforming bishops worked to overcome. Bernard emphasises royal control over the church. He examines the challenges facing bishops and clergy, and assesses the depth of lay knowledge and understanding of the teachings of the church, highlighting the practice of pilgrimage. He reconsiders anti-clerical sentiment and the extent and significance of heresy. He shows that the Reformation was not inevitable: the late medieval church was much too full of vitality. But Bernard also argues that alongside that vitality, and often closely linked to it, were vulnerabilities that made the break with Rome and the dissolution of the monasteries possible. The result is a thought-provoking study of a church and society in transformation.