J. R. H. Moorman was one of the foremost Anglican scholars of the English church in the middle ages, and especially of the Franciscan order. First published in 1945, Church Life in England in the Thirteenth Century provides a social history of the medieval English church. Two per cent of the population were then in religious orders of some kind, and church authority was at least as powerful as that of the state for the rest of the population. In the first part of the book, Moorman uses original sources to give a picture of the life of the secular clergy, their organisation, finances, training, and the different roles they filled with regard to the laity. The second part concentrates on the monastic orders, arguing that, with the exception of the friars, the great days of the monasteries were over, and that they had entered a period of consolidation and inevitable decline.
