John A. F. Thomson – författare

From its origins in the ancient world as a rival to traditional paganism, Christianity has become one of the great world religions. How the Church took over spiritual control of Western Europe to become the foundation of medieval life, setting the moral agenda of society and dominating its intellectual world, is the guiding enquiry at the heart of this book. Covering the period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Reformation, the account is structured in three chronological blocks, starting with the gradual development of unity within the Western Church up to the 11th century, followed by the period of centralization between the 11th and 13th centuries, and concluding with the break-up of this centralization in the later Middle Ages. Organizational developments and changes in spirituality and doctrine are examined, and the history of the papacy is situated in the wider context of both ecclesiastical and lay society. Intellectual developments and the rise of heresy, at both elite and popular levels, are the focus of an exploration of the mental world of medieval Christendom.

This text surveys all aspects of the Church's structure, role and relationship with the laity in the period 1485 to 1529. The picture that emerges is far from the corruption and instability of conventional wisdom and the varied sources also provide a vivid insight into Tudor life.

This book, originally published in 1980, examines the history of the papacy in the century between the end of the Great Schism and the start of the Reformation, and considers how, and at what price, the popes were able to re-establish their power after the troubles of the years from 1378 to 1417. The author approaches the subject analytically rather than chronologically, covering such themes as theories of authority in the late Middle Ages, the problems of papal government and the potential areas of conflict between the popes and the secular princes. By concentrating on the period before 1517, the author stresses the importance of seeing the fifteenth century Church as the product of the conciliar crisis rather than as the cause of the Reformation although he suggests that the concession made by the papacy in this period created the political situation which made possible the divisions of Christendom in the sixteenth century. This work will be of interest to historians of the late medieval and early modern period, particularly those specialising in conciliar thought and Church history.