Professor Gervase Rosser: List of publications

This is the first collection of translated sources on towns in medieval England. It draws on the great variety of written evidence for this significant and dynamic period of urban development, and invites students to consider for themselves the challenges and opportunities presented by a wide range of primary written sources. The introduction and editorial commentary situate the extracts within the larger context of European urban history, against a longer chronological backdrop and in relation to the most up-to-date research. Suggestions for further reading enable the student to engage critically with the materials and encourage new work in the field. Collectively, the texts and commentary provide an overview of English medieval urban history, while the emphasis throughout is on the particular character and potential of each type of written evidence, from legal and administrative records to inventories of shops, and from letters and poetry to legendary civic histories.

Traditionally confined to the sphere of the State and of auctoritas, the phrase the “Common Good” is set to conquer the cities in the late Middle Ages and at the beginning of the Early Modern period. But can we compare a kingdom like France where the cities defend their “Common Good” by making reference to the interest and benefit of the Kingdom with principalities like Flanders where, despite their fierce desire for autonomy, the cities use the notion with much greater reservation than their Italian counterparts? This volume traces the intellectual and theoretical roots that have led to the emergence of the notion of the “Common Good” in the urban world of Western Europe by analysing the practical forms of its manifestations.

The papers in this volume were read at the symposium held at Harlaxton Manor in 2004 in honour of Professor Caroline M. Barron. The conference theme of 'London and the Kingdom' borrows its title from that of the classic work of 1894-5 by R. R. Sharpe, and it closely reflects Caroline Barron's wide-ranging and important contributions to the study of medieval London, and to medieval history generally. The papers develop this in a number of ways, in studies of literary and visual sources for the history of London, from chronicles to seals, to funerary monuments. Other contributors focus on merchants, women, children and apprentices in medieval London, using a wide range of newly mined sources to illuminate their lives and experiences. London's economic role is brought out in several papers, which examine themes such as the links between the city and Westminster Abbey, incidents of smuggling through the port of London, and the supplying of materials and goods to the royal court in the sixteenth century. Others look at the changing religious climate before and after the Reformation, including the fortunes of communities of nuns displaced by the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

The Virgin Mary makes only brief appearances in the gospel narratives, but over the centuries has been one of the most significant features of Christianity. Her status and role were debated in the Christological controversies of the fifth century; since the Reformation attitudes to Mary have defined confessional identity. With the emergence of feminism, Mary's function as female role model and status as antidote to Eve has provoked further debate and controversy. These articles survey and contribute to the continuing discussions of the role of Mary in the Church and its historical development. Ranging from early Byzantium to modern Ethiopia, examining issues including Reformation debates, local Genoese cults, and Victorian poetry, the volume demonstrates that Mary has constantly been a dynamic and formative influence throughout the history of the Christian religion.

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.

This essay examines the nature and role of mythical histories in English medieval towns. Myths concerning the origins and special destinies of particular cities were widespread and long-lasting. For contemporaries they acquired meaning through their interaction with changing historical circumstances. Evidence for their circulation in both elite and popular domains is reviewed. Their significance was not unambiguous; they were, rather, contested territory, a means through which townspeople articulated their particular views about the nature and purpose of urban society. Their effect, therefore, could be to assist both in the formation and in the transformation of that society. Issue is taken with the argument that the early modern period saw a weakening of the potential force of such myths.

Much evidence has been brought to light recently to demonstrate the vitality of religious life among the English laity on the eve of the Reformation. Attention has been drawn to the fact that, in the period before the advent of Protestantism, lay men and women evinced a high degree of commitment to their church. The religious changes of the sixteenth century are as pressing a historical problem as ever; moreover, they provide a valuable litmus with which to test the qualities of the late-medieval church. Nevertheless, there is a danger that the fascination of the Reformation question, together with the bias of documentary sources on lay religion towards the latter end of the medieval period, may impoverish our appreciation of the ways in which, for a thousand years, Christians in Britain had been shaping their religious lives. To take a long view of religious voluntarism may help to put the developments of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in a proper perspective. There has also been a tendency, in discussion of lay religious life in the late middle ages, to accept the institutional framework as given. Yet in practice that framework was both adjustable and expressive of a wide range of lay initiatives in religion. That men and women were prepared to lend material support to a variety of religious institutions is apparent from any medieval collection of wills or set of churchwardens' accounts. But what, exactly, was expressed by such support? This is not an easy question to answer. Any assessment calls for an understanding of the medieval parish, not as a legal abstraction, nor yet as a supposedly ‘natural’ community of inhabitants, but as a more or less adaptable framework shaped by, and in turn shaping, the lives of the members. The evidence of religious activity, from processions to church-building, is, so far as it goes, not hard to find. But what of the parochial structure which gave meaning to these gestures, and which could in turn be modified by them?

As a royal capital, Westminster was unique: a small town, characterized by a complex economy and society, but lacking legal incorporation. Gervase Rosser examines the nature of the urban community. Given social diversity and competing interests, what forces existed to contain tensions and ensure continuity? The regular expressions of shared interests and common identity - in local government, parochial life, and the activities of guilds - are perceived to be essential to the survival of the town. Gervase Rosser's argument has implications not only for the history of the small town, but for the history of urbanization throughout the medieval and early modern period.