Search results for ""Author Benjamin Thompson""
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Religious Orders in Pre-Reformation England
Essays provide evidence for the vigour and involvement of religious orders in the years immediately prior to the reformation. 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 religiousorders 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 societyat 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. Whiletheir 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. Contributors:JEREMY CATTO, JAMES G. CLARK, GLYN COPPACK, CLAIRE CROSS, PETER CUNICH, VINCENT GILLESPIE, JOAN GREATEX, BARBARA HARVEY, F. DONALD LOGAN, MARILYN OLIVA, MICHAEL ROBSON, R.N. SWANSON, BENJAMIN THOMPSON.
£80.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Religious Belief and Ecclesiastical Careers in Late Medieval England: Proceedings of the conference held at Strawberry Hill, Easter 1989
Papers reflecting current research on orthodox religious practice and ecclesiastical organisation from c.1350-c.1500. 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. Contributors: CLIVE BURGESS, ROBERT W. DUNNING, MICHAEL J. HAREN, MARGARET HARVEY, D.N. LEPINE, COLIN RICHMOND, ROBERT N. SWANSON, BENJAMIN THOMPSON.
£75.00
York Medieval Press The Prelate in England and Europe, 1300-1560
An investigation into the role of the high-ranking churchman in this period - who they were, what they did, and how they perceived themselves. 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, justifiedand 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 inLate 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
£85.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Ely: Bishops and Diocese, 1109-2009
Despite its size, Ely has always been one of the most wealthy and important dioceses in the country. The essays here focus on the careers of its bishops, with additional chapters on its buildings and holdings. 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 grewimmensely 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 manyhad 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 Moorein 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. Peter Meadows is manuscript librarian in Cambridge University Library. Contributors: Nicholas Karn, Nicholas Vincent, Benjamin Thompson, Peter Meadows, Felicity Heal, Ian Atherton, Evelyn Lord, Frances Knight, Brian Watchorn
£45.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Political Society in Later Medieval England: A Festschrift for Christine Carpenter
Essays on the connections between politics and society in the middle ages, showing their interdependence. 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 frameworkwhich 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 reflectthe 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. BENJAMIN THOMPSON is Fellow and Tutor in History at Somerville College, Oxford; JOHN WATTS is Professor of Later Medieval History at the University of Oxford and Fellow and Tutor of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Contributors: Jackson Armstrong, Caroline Burt, Tony Moore, Richard Partington, Ted Powell, Andrea Ruddick, Andrew Spencer, Benjamin Thompson, John Watts, Theron Westervelt, Jenny Wormald.
£80.00