Dr Ian Forrest

CUF Lecturer, Late Medieval History

Oriel College

Email: ian.forrest@history.ox.ac.uk

Research Interests

I am interested in the social history of religion and the institutions of the church in the later Middle Ages, roughly 1200-1500. My book - The Detection of Heresy in Late Medieval England (OUP, 2005) - explores the canon law of inquisition and the social processes by which heresy was identified. I am now working on a social history of Christianity between 1275 and 1425, exploring how language, landscape and social interaction shape and are shaped by the evolving Christianity of this period. This research focuses on the episcopal and capitular archives of Hereford and Lincoln dioceses. I am editing sets of visitation records from both dioceses. I am also interested in popular politics, desperation, and all forms of collective action amongst peasants and townsmen. The research network that I co-ordinate with Dr Sethina Watson (University of York) - 'The Social Church' - gathers together post-doctoral and early career historians interested in the social history of religion between 700 and 1500. We meet annually in either York or Oxford.

Supervision Interests

Social and institutional aspects of the church, religion, and canon law, 1200-1500. Wyclif and lollardy; late-medieval European heresy and inquisition. Popular politics and social history generally, in the same period.

Selected Publications:

• 'The archive of the official of Stow and the ‘machinery’ of church government in the late-thirteenth century', Historical Resarch. Vol http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-
• 'Anti-Lollard Polemic and Practice in Late Medieval England' in The Fifteenth Century III: Authority and Subversion . Vol 3 (Woodbridge , 2003) pp. 63-74
• The Detection of Heresy in Late Medieval England. (Oxford, 2005) 277pp.
• 'The Dangers of Diversity: Heresy and Authority in the 1405 Case of John Edward ' in Discipline and Diversity (Papers read at the 2005 summer meeting and the 2006 winter meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society). (2007) pp. 230-240
• 'The Politics of Local Protest in Late Medieval England' in . (http://oxhistonline.modhist.ox.ac.uk/publications/10/, 2007)
• 'William Swinderby and the Wycliffite attitude to excommunication', Journal of Ecclesiastical History. Vol 60 (2009) pp. 246-69
• 'Defamation, Heresy and Late Medieval Social Life' in Image, Text and Church, 1380-1600: Essays for Margaret Aston. (Toronto, 2009) pp. 142-61
• 'The politics of burial in late medieval Hereford', English Historical Review. (2010)

Future Publications:

Research Interests and Activities

• Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages