Elizabeth A New – författare

First printed edition of crucial material for our understanding of the pre-Reformation church.Meeting in the crypt of Old St Paul's in the decades before the Reformation, the Jesus Guild, an expression of "cutting-edge" orthodox devotion, not only attracted members from the top ranks of London society but also derived support from men and women of all degrees across the whole country. As well as shedding welcome light on aspects of the devotional life shared by some of London's most influential citizens, its records illustrate many facets of the City's economy, of its citizens' inter-personal relationships and can, indeed, assist in determining linguistic developments at a critical juncture. This volume reproduces for the first time all the extant records surviving for the Guild in the early sixteenth century, giving pride of place to the twenty consecutive years of its surviving accounts. Alongside the records for the guild, the volume presents the 1552 inventory of goods in St Faith's church and the expenses incurred by that parish when it moved into the space previously occupied by the Guild. These records reveal the influences of the religious changes of the 1550s on the crypt chapel and some of the Guild's possessions. The documents are edited with accompanying notes and glossary, complemented by an introduction that places them in a broad context and by biographies of the Guild wardens identified in the text.

This book provides a highly illustrated exploration of late medieval English society and culture through the prism of seals and sealing practices.Drawing on over twenty years work and a range of historical and scientific methodologies, Seals and the Culture of Sealing in Medieval England explores the ways in which men and women, especially from the under-investigated middling and lower levels of society, used seals as a means of identification and representation, and investigates sealing practices in relation to social, cultural, and legal interactions and exchange. The book also considers agency, performance, technology, and trade, as revealed through the matrices and the wax mixture into which seals were impressed, and the places in which the act of sealing was carried out.As Elizabeth A. New explains, seals in medieval England acted in a similar way to modern signatures, credit cards, and logos, and were as familiar a part of everyday life as these things are to us. Yet seals conveyed far more than signing your name or wearing a designer brand, with these dense little packages of image and text identifying and representing individuals from royalty to peasants, as well as offices and institutions. New convincingly argues that seals conveyed carefully constructed messages about power, status, occupation, family, humour, piety, and connections from the very local to the international, and that these small but powerful objects can provide us with fresh perspectives on medieval society as a whole.