Church And Society In The Medieval North Of England

English history has usually been written from the perspective of the south, from the viewpoint of London or Canterbury, Oxford or Cambridge. Yet throughout the middle ages life in the north of England differed in many ways from that south of the Humber. In ecclesiastical terms, the province of York, comprising the dioceses of Carlisle, Durham and York, maintained its own identity, jealously guarding its prerogatives from southern encroachment. In their turn, the bishops and cathedral chapters of Carlisle and Durham did much to prevent any increase in the powers of York itself. Barrie Dobson is the leading authority on the history of religion in the north of England during the later middle ages. In this collection of essays he discusses aspects of church life in each of the three dioceses, identifying the main features of religion in the north and placing contemporary religious attitudes in both a social and a local context. He also examines, among other issues, the careers of individual prelates, including Alexander Neville, archbishop of York and Richard Bell, bishop of Carlisle (1478-95); the foundation of chantries in York; and the writing of history at York and Durham in the later middle ages.

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

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.

What impact did the Church have on society? How did social change affect religious practice? Within the context of these wide-ranging questions, this study offers a fresh interpretation of the relationship between Church, society and religion in England across five centuries of change. Andrew Brown examines how the teachings of an increasingly 'universal' Church decisively affected the religious life of the laity in medieval England. However, by exploring a broad range of religious phenomena, both orthodox and heretical (including corporate religion and the devotional practices surrounding cults and saints) Brown shows how far lay people continued to shape the Church at a local level. In the hands of the laity, religious practices proved malleable. Their expression was affected by social context, status and gender, and even influenced by those in authority. Yet, as Brown argues, religion did not function simply as an expression of social power - hierarchy, patriarchy and authority could be both served and undermined by religion. In an age in which social mobility and upheaval, particularly in the wake of the Black Death, had profound effects on religious attitudes and practices, Brown demonstrates that our understanding of late medieval religion should be firmly placed within this context of social change.

From the impact of the first monasteries in the seventh century, to the emergence of the local parochial system five hundred years later, the Church was a force for change in Anglo-Saxon society. It shaped culture and ideas, social and economic behaviour, and the organization of landscape and settlement. This book traces how the widespread foundation of monastic sites ('minsters') during c.670-730 gave the recently pagan English new ways of living, of exploiting their resources, and of absorbing European culture, as well as opening new spiritual and intellectual horizons. Through the era of Viking wars, and the tenth-century reconstruction of political and economic life, the minsters gradually lost their wealth, their independence, and their role as sites of high culture, but grew in stature as foci of local society and eventually towns. After 950, with the increasing prominence of manors, manor-houses, and village communities, a new and much larger category of small churches were founded, endowed, and rebuilt: the parish churches of the emergent eleventh- and twelfth-century local parochial system. In this innovative study, John Blair brings together written, topographical, and archaeological evidence to build a multi-dimensional picture of what local churches and local communities meant to each other in early England.