Papers reflecting current research on orthodox religious practice and ecclesiastical organisation from c.1350-c.1500.

The first systematic study of the financing and management of parish church construction in England in the Middle Ages.

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.

This volume of essays explores the interaction of Church and town in the medieval period in England. Two major themes structure the book. In the first part the authors explore the social and economic dimensions of the interaction; in the second part the emphasis moves to the spaces and built forms of towns and their church buildings. The primary emphasis of the essays is upon the urban activities of the medieval Church as a set of institutions: parish, diocese, monastery, cathedral. In these various institutional roles the Church did much to shape both the origin and the development of the medieval town. In exploring themes of topography, marketing and law the authors show that the relationship of Church and town could be both mutually beneficial and a source of conflict.

How power was distributed and exercised is a key issue in understanding attitudes and assumptions in late medieval England. The essays in this volume all deal with those who had the power to make political decisions, whether kings, nobles or gentry, courtiers or clergy. While ultimately power rested on force, it was enshrined in the law and more usually exercised by influence and by the dangling of reward. Most disputes were settled without violence, if often with recourse to prolonged struggles in the courts, but those who offended against established interests could be punished severely, as the cases of Sir John Mortimer and of Bishop Reginald Pecock show. These essays, presented to Gerald Harriss, who has done so much to illuminate the history of the period, show not only how power was exercised but also how men of the time thought about it. Contributors: Rowena E. Archer, Christine Carpenter, Jeremy Catto, Rosemary Horrox, R.W. Hoyle, Maurice Keen, Dominic Luckett, Philippa Maddern, S.J. Payling, Edward Powell, Anthony Smith, Simon Walker, Christopher Woolgar, Edmund Wright.

This is the first comprehensive study of one of the most important aspects of the Reformation in England: its impact on the status of the dead. Protestant reformers insisted vehemently that between heaven and hell there was no 'middle place' of purgatory where the souls of the departed could be assisted by the prayers of those still living on earth. This was no remote theological proposition, but a revolutionary doctrine affecting the lives of all sixteenth-century English people, and the ways in which their Church and society were organized. This book illuminates the (sometimes ambivalent) attitudes towards the dead to be discerned in pre-Reformation religious culture, and traces (up to about 1630) the uncertain progress of the 'reformation of the dead' attempted by Protestant authorities, as they sought both to stamp out traditional rituals and to provide the replacements acceptable in an increasingly fragmented religious world. It also provides detailed surveys of Protestant perceptions of the afterlife, of the cultural meanings of the appearance of ghosts, and of the patterns of commemoration and memory which became characteristic of post-Reformation England. Together these topics constitute an important case-study in the nature and tempo of the English Reformation as an agent of social and cultural transformation. The book speaks directly to the central concerns of current Reformation scholarship, addressing questions posed by 'revisionist' historians about the vibrancy and resilience of traditional religious culture, and by 'post-revisionists' about the penetration of reformed ideas. Dr Marshall demonstrates not only that the dead can be regarded as a significant 'marker' of religious and cultural change, but that a persistent concern with their status did a great deal to fashion the distinctive appearance of the English Reformation as a whole, and to create its peculiarities and contradictory impulses.