Conceptualizing Difference: English Society in the Late Middle Ages - English Society in the Later Middle Ages: Class, Status and Gender. By S. H. Rigby. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995. Pp. xii+408. $49.95 (cloth). - Popular Piety in Late Medieval England: The Diocese of Salisbury, 1250–1550. By Andrew D. Brown. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Pp. x + 297. $55.00 (cloth). - Fifteenth-Century Attitudes: Perceptions of Society in Late Medieval England. Edited by Rosemary Horrox. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xii + 244. $54.95 (cloth).

1997 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-139
Author(s):  
Shannon McSheffrey
2003 ◽  
Vol 76 (194) ◽  
pp. 431-449
Author(s):  
M. R. V. Heale

Abstract Much remains obscure about the many small monasteries of late medieval England, and it is generally thought that they made little contribution to the religious life of the country. The large collection of accounts surviving from St. Leonard's priory, Norwich (a daughter house of the cathedral priory), however, presents an interesting picture of a priory sustained almost entirely by offerings to its image of St. Leonard. This cult continued to attract broad support throughout the later middle ages, with its income reaching a peak at over forty pounds per year in the mid fifteenth century. Almost the entirety of this windfall was set aside for a systematic renovation of the monastery, which can be chronicled in some detail. Although the cult was on the wane by 1500, the importance of the priory for the popular religion of the region emerges clearly.


1985 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 203-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginia Davis

Throughout Europe in the late middle ages there was a perceptible interest in the way of life and ideals believed to have been followed in the early centuries of Christianity. There was little that was new in this interest; reform movements within the Church from the eleventh century onwards had frequently followed such a path. Accompanying this interest however was a desire by laymen to live in a pious and holy fashion; not to enter the coenobitic life rejecting the world as they might have done in earlier centuries but to live a religious life while remaining attached to the outside world. Perhaps the best known manifestation of this spirit was in the emergence of the Brethren of the Common Life in Northern Europe in the fifteenth century; another manifestation of the same kind can be found in the lower echelons of English society in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries with the widespread appearance of men who vowed to adopt the lifestyle of the desert fathers while performing labouring functions useful to society – as hermits, following the rule of Saint Paul the first hermit.


1993 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben R. McRee

When officers of Ludlow's Palmers' Gild composed their reply to a royal inquiry into the state of English gilds in 1388–89, they included the following description of their organization's plan for assisting indigent brothers and sisters:When it happens that any of the brothers or sisters of the gild shall have been brought to such want, through theft, fire, shipwreck, fall of a house, or any other mishap, that they have not enough to live on; then once, twice, and thrice, but not a fourth time, as much help shall be given to them, out of the goods of the gild, as the rector and stewards, having regard to the deserts of each, and to the means of the gild, shall order; so that whoever bears the name of this gild, shall be upraised again, through the ordinances, goods, and help of his fellows.The same gild also offered aid to sick, aged, and wrongfully imprisoned members and set aside money for dowries so that daughters of families that had experienced unexpected misfortune might marry or enter nunneries.The Palmers' Gild was a religious fraternity, a type of voluntary association that enjoyed tremendous popularity during the late Middle Ages. These gilds were lay associations of men and women that devoted themselves to a variety of religious and social undertakings. Unlike the more well known craft fraternities, religious gilds drew their members from a variety of professions and made no attempts at industrial regulation.


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