This volume challenges the persistent association of the Middle Ages with closure and fixity.
Literary Criticism
Temporal dislocation in material for spiritual exchange
February 2021
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Chapter
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Medieval Temporalities: the Experience of Time in Medieval Europe
Time and Temporality in Mystical Lyric and Religious Song
February 2021
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Chapter
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Medieval Temporalities: the Experience of Time in Medieval Europe
Introduction
January 2016
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Book
This chapter addresses clerical abuse as a perennial topos for medieval polemicists. It was a theme visited and revisited across many sung poems of the High Middle Ages also, including those sung in motets. The chapter explores how a motet’s musical setting could inflect the experience of its polemical poetry for listeners and singers, through a close analysis of a polyphonic song known from a rich variety of thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century sources and in several different polyphonic adaptations. The motet is a genre which needs some introduction. It seems to have been born at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, when texts were added to the expansive melismatic phrases of rhythmically measured polyphony found in the cathedral’s liturgical compositions. The fund of aesthetic devices available in the genre could be used for other purposes, among them, polemical ones. The liturgical context of a chant serves as a thematic point of departure for the motet voices composed against it.
Polemic: Language as violence in medieval and early modern discourse
January 2016
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Book
If terms are associated with particular historical periods, then ‘polemic’ is firmly rooted within early modern print culture, the apparently inevitable result of religious controversy and the rise of print media. Taking a broad European approach, this collection brings together specialists on medieval as well as early modern culture in order to challenge stubborn assumptions that medieval culture was homogenous and characterized by consensus; and that literary discourse is by nature ‘eirenic’. Instead, the volume shows more clearly the continuities and discontinuities, especially how medieval discourse on the sins of the tongue continued into early modern discussion; how popular and influential medieval genres such as sermons and hagiography dealt with potentially heterodox positions; and the role of literary, especially fictional, debate in developing modes of articulating discord, as well as demonstrating polemic in action in political and ecclesiastical debate. Within this historical context, the position of early modern debates as part of a more general culture of articulating discord becomes more clearly visible. The structure of the volume moves from an internal textual focus, where the nature of polemic can be debated, through a middle section where these concerns are also played out in social practice, to a more historical group investigating applied polemic. In this way a more nuanced view is provided of the meaning, role, and effect of ‘polemic’ both broadly across time and space, and more narrowly within specific circumstances.
The polemic of reform in the later medieval english church
January 2016
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Chapter
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Polemic: Language as Violence in Medieval and Early Modern Discourse
Forasmuch as manifest sin, vicious, carnal and abominable living is daily used and committed among the little and small abbeys, priories and other religious houses. .. whereby the governors of such religious houses, and their convent, spoil, destroy consume and utterly waste [their churches, lands and ornaments] to the high displeasure of Almighty God, slander of good religion, and the great infamy of the King’s highness and his realm if redress should not be had thereof. .. Act suppressing the lesser monasteries, 1536 So opened the statute which inaugurated the wholesale dissolution of the monasteries in England between 1536 and 1540. e text allows no virtue to these houses, continuing that all eorts ‘for an honest and charitable reformation of such unthriy, carnal, and abominable living’ have failed. e only solution is to close them down and commit the religious to greater monasteries ‘where they may be compelled to live religiously, for reformation of their lives’.
Political Society in Later Medieval England A Festschrift for Christine Carpenter
July 2015
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Book
'The Beauchamp Affinity: A Study of Bastard Feudalism at Work', English
Historical Review, 95 (1980), pp. 514–33 'Sir ... 729–34 'Law, Justice and
Landowners in Late Medieval England', Law and History Review, 1/2 (1983) pp.
205–37 ...
History
Locality and Ecclesiastical Polity: the Late Medieval Church between Duality and Integration
July 2015
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Chapter
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Political Society in Late Medieval England
Christine Carpenter's influential work on late-medieval English society aspires to encompass a wide spectrum of human experience. Her vision of "total" history embeds the study of politics in a multi-dimensional social framework which ranges from mentalities and ideology to economy and geography. This collection of essays celebrates Professor Carpenter's achievement by drawing attention to the social underpinning of political culture; the articles reflect the range of her interests, chronologically from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth, and thematically from ideology and culture, through government and its officials, the nobility, gentry and yeomanry, the law and the church, to local society. The connection between centre and locality pervades the volume, as does the interplay of the ideological and cultural with the practical and material. The essays highlight both how ideas were moulded in political debate and action, and how their roots sprang from social pressures and interests. It also emphasises the wider cultural aspects of topics too-easily conceived as local and material.
Introduction
March 2015
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Chapter
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Polemic: Language as Violence in Medieval and Early Modern Discourse
Church and State, Clerks and Graduates
January 2015
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Chapter
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Government and Political Life in England and France, c.1300-c.1500
Polemic, Language as Violence in Medieval and Early Modern Discourse
January 2015
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Edited book
Prelates and the Alien Priories
September 2014
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Chapter
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Prelates in England and Europe, 1300-1560
High ecclesiastical office in the Middle Ages inevitably brought power, wealth and patronage. The essays in this volume examine how late medieval and Renaissance prelates deployed the income and influence of their offices, how they understood their role, and how they were viewed by others. Focusing primarily on but not exclusively confined to England, this collection explores the considerable common ground between cardinals, bishops and monastic superiors. Leading authorities on the late medieval and sixteenth-century Church analyse the political, cultural and pastoral activities of high-ranking churchmen, and consider how episcopal and abbatial expenditure was directed, justified and perceived. Overall, the collection enhances our understanding of ecclesiastical wealth and power in an era when the concept and role of the prelate were increasingly contested. Dr Martin Heale is Senior Lecturer in Late Medieval History, University of Liverpool. Contributors: Martin Heale, Michael Carter, James G. Clark, Gwilym Dodd, Felicity Heal, Anne Hudson, Emilia Jamroziak, Cédric Michon, Elizabeth A. New, Wendy Scase, Benjamin Thompson, C.M. Woolgar
Knowles and the Alien Priories: a Missed Opportunity
January 2014
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Chapter
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Keeping the Rule: David Knowles and the Writing of History
The English Parliaments of Henry VII, 1485–1504 . By P. R. Cavill. Oxford Historical Monographs. Edited by, P. Clavin et al. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Pp. xvi+296. $110.00.
December 2011
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Journal article
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The Journal of Modern History
4303 Historical Studies, 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology
The Fourteenth Century
November 2010
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Chapter
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Ely: Bishops and Diocese, 1109-2009
The diocese of Ely, formed out of the huge diocese of Lincoln, was established in 1109 in St Etheldreda's Isle of Ely, and the ancient Abbey became Ely Cathedral Priory. Covering at first only the Isle and Cambridgeshire, it grew immensely in 1837 with the addition of Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire and West Suffolk. The latter two counties left the diocese in 1914, but a substantial part of West Norfolk was added soon after. Until the nineteenth century Ely was one of the wealthiest dioceses in the country, and in every century there were notable appointments to the bishopric. Few of the bishops were promoted elsewhere; for most it was the culmination of their career, and many had made significant contributions, both to national life and to scholarship, before their preferment to Ely. They included men of the calibre of Lancelot Andrewes in the seventeenth century, the renowned book-collector John Moore in the eighteenth, and James Russell Woodford, founder of the Theological College, in the nineteenth. In essays each spanning about a century, experts in the field explore the lives and careers of its bishops, and their families and social contacts, examine their impact on the diocese, and their role in the wider Church in England. Other chapters consider such areas as the estates, the residences, the works of art and the library and archives. Overall, they chart the remarkable development over nine hundred years of one of the smallest, richest and youngest of the traditional dioceses of England.
Religion
Performing Parliament in the Rotuli Parliamentorum
April 2010
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Chapter
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Aspects of the Performative in Medieval Culture
The volume assesses performative structures within a variety of medieval forms of textuality, from vernacular literature to records of parliamentary proceedings, from prayer books to musical composition.
History
Prelates and Politics from Winchelsey to Warham
November 2004
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Chapter
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Political Culture in Late Medieval Britain
The concept of "political culture" has become very fashionable in the last thirty years, but only recently has it been consciously taken up by practitioners of late-medieval English history, who have argued for the need to acknowledge the role of ideas in politics. While this work has focused on elite political culture, interest in the subject has been growing among historians of towns and villages, especially as they have begun to recognise the importance of both internal politics and national government in the affairs of townsmen and peasants. This volume, the product of a conference on political culture in the late middle ages, explores the subject from a variety of perspectives and in a variety of spheres. It is hoped that it will put the subject firmly on the map for the study of late-medieval England and lead to further exploration of political culture in this period.
Monasteries, Society and Reform in Late Medieval England
November 2002
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Chapter
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The Religious Orders in Pre-Reformation England
It continues to be assumed in some quarters that England's monasteries and mendicant convents fell into a headlong decline - pursuing high living and low morals - long before Henry VIII set out to destroy them at the Dissolution. The essays in this book add to the growing body of scholarly enquiry which challenges this view. Drawing on some of the most recent research by British and American scholars, they offer a wide-ranging reassessment of the religious orders on the eve of the Reformation. They consider not only the condition of their communities and the character of life within them, but also their wider contribution - spiritual, intellectual and economic - to English society at large. What emerges is the impression that the years leading up to the Dissolution were neither as dark nor as difficult for the regular religious as many earlier histories have led us to believe. It was a period of institutional and religious reform, and, for the Benedictines at least, a period of marked intellectual revival. Many religious houses also continued to enjoy close relations with the lay communities living beyond their precinct walls. While their role in the devotions of many ordinary lay folk may have diminished, they still had a significant part to play in the local economy, in education and in a wide range of social and cultural activities.
The Wars of Edward III: Sources and Interpretations
February 2002
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Journal article
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The English Historical Review
4303 Historical Studies, 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology
The Book of the Foundation of Walden Monastery, Diana Greenway and Leslie Watkiss
April 2001
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Journal article
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The English Historical Review
4303 Historical Studies, 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology
Introduction: Monasteries and Medieval Society
May 1999
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Chapter
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Monasteries and Society in Medieval Britain: Proceedings of the 1994 Harlaxton Symposium
Sixteen contributions from the 1994 Harlaxton Symposium which investigate the deeply entrenched and mutually beneficial relationship between monasticism and society that lasted for 1000 years. The wide-ranging papers consider, amongst other subjects, the role of minsters and monasteries in Anglo-Saxon England and Pictish Scotland, the influence of sculpture, art and manuscripts on the secular church, the relationship between Peterorough and its abbey between 1200 and the 1530s, almonry schools, Chaucer's nuns, the monks of Ely at Cambridge University and English and Welsh monastic bishops.
Monasteries and Society in Medieval Britain Proceedings of the 1994 Harlaxton Symposium
January 1999
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Book
However, it seems clear enough that the last English monk-bishop to qualify as a
demonstrably original writer and thinker was Philip Repyngdon, also the last
medieval English monk to be made a cardinal.43 Ironically enough, Repyngdon's
...
England
SHORTER NOTICES
November 1996
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Journal article
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The English Historical Review
4303 Historical Studies, 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology
The Reign of Henry VII: Proceedings of the 1993 Harlaxton Conference
January 1995
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Book
This volume offers an important new interpretation of a reign pivotal to English historiography, the recent interpretative debate around which is encapsulated in its elusive central figure. Was Henry the mean-minded and anti-noble bureaucrat who signed his accounts himself, or the lavish patron of the arts living in a splendid court? Was he a `new' or a traditional monarch? Many of the fourteen essays here amplify the recent trend towards seeing Henry in the latter context, amidst his churches and building projects, the stained glass he commissioned for them, his books, courtiers and even the music sung for him. Yet they also go beyond the public face: we are enabled to get closer to Henry the man, his family and the atmosphere of his court through piety, poetry and iconography, which reveal a sombre tone alongside the public splendour. Indeed both suggest a reign of constant paranoia and endemic insecurity, which negated the achievements of some of its medieval predecessors. Nevertheless, the reign may have inadvertently laid the foundations for a new monarchy after all.
The Laity, the Alien Priories and the Redistribution of Ecclesiastical Property
July 1994
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Chapter
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England in the Fifteenth Century
There are fifteen essays here covering a wide variety of fifteenth-century life. Several of the papers are biographical studies or contain a prosopographical emphasis. In addition to well-known figures such as Caxton and Richard III there are more marginal individuals such as Lisota Walshewoman, Henry Frankenberg and John Allone. Two major themes are the mechanics of patronage and friendship and the impact of the book, both manuscript and printed, on fifteenth-century cultural life: included here is Anne Sutton's extensive study of Caxton's relationship with the London Mercer company.
Free Alms Tenure in the Twelfth Century
June 1994
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Chapter
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Anglo-Norman Studies XVI: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 1993
Papers on a very wide range of subjects include, for the first time, one on music, on changes in English chant repertories in the eleventh century; book migrations are examined over the same period, and one of the two papers on the Bayeaux Tapestry looks at changing representations of the "burgheat". There are important papers on law and church administration and the relations of Normandy and England with other regions. The development of Rouen is compared with that of Paris; William the Conqueror's relations with Blois and Champagne are discussed; papers on the frontier with the Scots and on Rhys ap Teudur, king of Deheubarth are included. Domesday studies, chronicles and poetry are also represented with new research.
Monasteries and Their Patrons at Foundation and Dissolution: The Alexander Prize Essay, Proxime Accessit
January 1994
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Journal article
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Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
IN June 1536 Thomas Starkey, a royal chaplain, humanist, and ‘commonwealth man’, wrote to Henry VIII concerning the Act passed in the spring of that year suppressing monasteries worth less than £200:
many ther be wyche are mouyd to iuge playnly thys acte of suppressyon of certayn abbays bothe to be agayne the ordur of charyte & iniuryous to them wych be dede bycause the foundarys therof & the soulys departyd seme therby to be defraudyd of the benefyte of prayer & almys dede ther appoyntyd to be done for theyr releyffe …
—to which he argued that the common weal of all took precedence over arrangements made for the private weal of the individual. Moreover, in answering those who would argue for ‘rather a just reformatyon then thys vthur ruynose suppressyon’, he went on,
for though hyt be so that prayer & almys dede be much to the comfort of them wych be departyd, & though god delyte much in our charytabul myndys thereby declaryd, yet to conuerte ouer much possessyon to that end & purpos, & to appoynt ouer many personys to such offyce & exercyse, can not be wythout grete detryment & hurt to the chrystian commynwele … & though hyt be a gud thyng & much relygyouse to pray for them wych be departyd out of thys mysery, yet we may not gyue al our possessyonys to nurysch idul men in contynual prayer for them …
Starkey was certain that the possessions of monasteries had been given to the ‘end and purpose’ of providing spiritual benefits for the ‘founders’, to help the passage of their souls through Purgatory.
Habendum et Tenendum: Lay and Ecclesiastical Attitudes to the Property of the Church
August 1991
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Chapter
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Religious Belief and Ecclesiastical Careers in Late Medieval England: Proceedings of the conference held at Strawberry Hill, Easter 1989
This book derives from a conference held in 1989. It reflects current research on ecclesiastical organisation and on aspects of religious belief from the Black Death to the English Reformation. On the wider front, there is an account of the diplomatic relations between the Pope and those who ruled for the infant Henry VI. Regional studies focus on Carthusians in Somerset, and the continued attraction of the eremitical life; on the canons of Exeter cathedral and on the foundation of chantries and the endowment of churches. Taken together, these essays show how late medieval religious belief was undermined by a variety of factors, and point up the contrast between the humanity and sensitivity of medieval religion and the nature of the faith which replaced it.
The Statute of Carlisle, 1307, and the Alien Priories
October 1990
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Journal article
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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History
Throughout its history the institutionalised Church has sought in different ways to define its position with respect to the ‘world’, in order to give meaning to the injunction to be ‘in’ this world but not ‘of’ it. During the Middle Ages, the tension was acute because the Church, in its narrow definition of the clergy, claimed to be a separate, spiritual order, set apart from the temporal world. The tangible results of this dichotomy are particularly evident with respect to the real property held by ecclesiastical institutions. Property gave the Church the security to be independent from the lay power and the aristocracy; hence the Church claimed varying degrees of immunity for its property from secular jurisdictions.