History Of The Church From The High Middle Ages To The Eve Of The Reformation

The Church was the central institution of the European Middle Ages, and the foundation of medieval life. Professor Lynch's admirable survey (concentrating on the western church, and emphasising ideas and trends over personalities) meets a long-felt need for a single-volume comprehensive history, designed for students and non-specialists.

Francis Oakley addresses late-medieval church history in its own terms, pointing out not only discontinuities but also continuities with earlier medieval experience. "By doing so," he writes, "I hope to have avoided the distortions and refractions that occur when that history is seen too obsessively through the lens of the Reformation."

The Handbook of European History 1400-1600 brings together the best scholarship into an array of topical chapters that present current knowledge and thinking in ways useful to the specialist and accessible to students and to the educated non-specialist. Forty-one leading scholars in this field of history present the state of knowledge about the grand themes, main controversies and fruitful directions for research of European history in this era. Volume 1 (Structures and Assertions) described the people, lands, religions and political structures which define the setting for this historical period. Volume 2 (Visions, Programs, Outcomes) covers the early stages of the process by which newly established confessional structures began to work their way among the populace.

In this fascinating survey, F. Donald Logan introduces the reader to the Christian church, from the conversion of the Celtic and Germanic peoples through to the discovery of the New World.