Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: New Series – Serie

This is a detailed study of the large and important diocese of Lincoln under three sixteenth-century bishops, Smith, Wolsey and Atwater. Little detailed work of this kind has been done on the state of the clergy before the Reformation. General studies have tended to rely on the literature of the time, and consequently more is known about what contemporaries thought of the Church, particularly of its shortcomings, than about the actual state of the church itself. Mrs Bowker has used a wide range of diocesan material to fill in this side of the picture. She describes the machinery of diocesan administration and the organization of the ecclesiastical courts, and indicates the extent to which benefit of clergy was abused. There is an important analysis of the reasons for non-residence and its effect on the parishes. Mrs Bowker discusses the educational opportunities and requirements of the priesthood, and the impact on clerical education of the introduction of the printing press.

Sovereignty has always been an important concept in political thought, and at no time in European history was it more important than during the perplexed conditions of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Universal government was a fading dream, giving way to the new conception of the national state and the whole basis of political thought was being reorientated by the influx of Aristotelian ideas. Dr Wilks's book is an attempt to clarify the more important problems in the political outlook of the period. He shows that at this time the theologians and literary writers, especially Augustinus Triumphus of Ancona, had built up a complete theory of sovereignty in favour of the papal monarchy, based on a neo-Platonic, Augustinian view of the church as a universal and totalitarian state.

No tax in Europe can compare with tithes in its duration, the extent of its application and the economic burden it imposed. In this study Professor Constable considers the tithes paid to and by monks in the Middle Ages. In particular he examines why, by the twelfth century, most monks received tithes and many of them were freed from payment, in spite of earlier theory and practice by which monks, as distinct from the clergy, were usually forbidden to receive tithes and required to pay them. In the early Middle Ages monastic tithes were a matter not only of economics, but of doctrine, canon law and monastic theory. Their history lies in the borderland between theory and practice and Professor Constable studies them against a background of changes in property relationships, in the theory of tithing and in the nature of the monastic order.

Gilbert Foliot, successively Abbot of Gloucester and Bishop of Hereford and London, and archenemy of Archbishop Thomas Becket, is a figure of the first importance in the English Church of the twelfth century. Dom Adrian Morey and Professor Christopher Brooke's study of Foliot's life and works, Gilbert Foliot and his Letters, was published in 1965. Foliot left a substantial collection of letters and charters which are a valuable source for the period. This edition consists of a critical Latin text with footnotes; all the known manuscripts have been collated, the letters dated (often for the first time) and all the circumstances of their composition discussed. The letters are arranged chronologically, except for a few groups which have been kept together; the charters alphabetically by cathedrals and monastic houses. In their introduction the editors discuss the various manuscripts, and appendices include biographical notes on the chief people mentioned in the text. There is a substantial bibliography.

The intellectual history of the fourteenth century is still little known. Apart from the great figures like Ockham and Wyclif we have no detailed knowledge of the leading thinkers or the movements which may be deduced from their work. Dr Leff explains Bradwardnie's system of thought and relates it to the ideas of his contemporaries; these contemporaries are shown to have had their own differences of outlook, and the fourteenth century as a whole is also shown to have differed greatly from the thirteenth.

A study of the formation of a large estate by Ely Abbey during the tenth and eleventh centuries and of the various social groups on that estate after the foundation of the bishopric in 1109 and down to the mid-fourteenth century. A central theme is the way in which this estate reflected the great movement of economic expansion during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: the agricultural operations of the bishops themselves, the fortunes of their peasant tenants and the relationships between the bishops as landlords and their tenants. In this connexion the problems of estate management are also discussed and the formation and character of a managerial class. The bishops, however, were more than merely landlords: they were also feudal lords and possessed extensive local government powers. The book, therefore, also deals with their feudal as well as their agricultural tenants and with the exercise by the bishops of 'public' powers. In this sense it tries to give a complete picture of the secular influence of the bishops, which was one of the dominating influences in the society of Eastern England.

Peter Abelard conducted many analyses of Scriptural and Patristic teachings, and achieved an extensive rapprochement between Christian and pagan thought. His public career was ended in 1140 by an ecclesiastical condemnation, but this touched upon the central issues facing the early leaders of the medieval scholastic movement and Abelard's own teachings continued to be controversial. Dr Luscombe considers the influence of Abelard's principal teachings among his contemporaries and successors. his aim is to explain the conflicting estimates of Abelard which were current in the twelfth century and later, and to provide a full account of the writings and varied fortunes of Abelard's disciples. He also examines the manuscript tradition of Abelard's work and that of his followers. The condemnation of 1140 repudiated Abelard's leading doctrines. This led some of Abelard's disciples to partly retreat from the position of their master, whereas some chose to adapt and extend his teachings.

Dr Robson gives a full account of Wyclif's career as an Oxford don - the little-known period of his life before in 1372 he became a controversialist - so answering the question, why was Wyclif when he became a public figure already acknowledged the leading master in Oxford? Part I of the book examines scholastic theology at Oxford from 1330 to 1370, with special emphasis on Bradwardine and Fitzltalph, the two great influences on Wyclif. Part II analyses Wyclif's most important work of philosophy, the Summa de Ente. The last chapter discusses the survival of realist metaphysics at Oxford after Wyclif's condemnation. The book is therefore a study in scholastic philosophy and theology, which helps us to understand the later Wyclif, and throws light on intellectual life at Oxford in the fourteenth century.

Professor Vaughan's book on the life and works of Matthew Paris is a full-scale study of one of the most important of the medieval chroniclers of European as well as British history. First published in 1958, it is re-issued in recognition of its continuing importance as an essential reference for all students of medieval and ecclesiastical history. A supplementary bibliography has been added to take account of updated scholarship.

This is a revised edition of R. C. Smail's classic account of the military achievements of the Crusaders in the context of a 'feudal society organized for war'. A new bibliographical introduction and an updated bibliography have been provided by Christopher Marshall, while the original plates section has been replaced by a series of new subjects. In covering the period 1097-1193, this edition also complements Dr Marshall's own Warfare in the Latin East, 1192-1291, also available in a paperback edition.

The early historians of the Franciscan order traced the causes of the troubles of the order in their time to Elias, a contemporary and friend of St Francis and an early Minister General. Elias was blamed for opening the way to all relaxations of discipline and disregard of the founder's teaching, and all conflicts and persecutions. Mrs Brooke shows that responsibility cannot be placed on one man, but on many of the early friars. She gives a more historical account of Elias, showing that he was never as dominant a figure as has been supposed. The early conflicts of the order are shown to have been more complex, more interesting and more probable than the fourteenth-century controversialists would allow. The second part of the book describes the achievements of Elias's successors as Minister General, and the important laws they passed. Mrs Brooke has been able to reconstruct the early constitutions, now lost, in greater detail than has previously been attempted.