Ideas and Solidarities of the Medieval Laity: England and Western Europe

by Susan Reynolds

Overview

This book contains essays written over the past 25 years about medieval urban communities and about the loyalties and beliefs of medieval lay people in general. Most writing about medieval religious, political, legal, and social ideas starts from treatises written by academics and assumes that ideas trickled down from the clergy to the laity. Susan Reynolds, whether writing about the struggles for liberty of small English towns, the national solidarities of the Anglo-Saxons, or the capacity of medieval peasants to formulate their own attitudes to religion, rejects this assumption. She suggests that the medieval laity had ideas of their own that deserve to be taken seriously.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032340418
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/13/2022
Series:	Variorum Collected Studies , #495
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	5.88(w) x 8.81(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Contents: Social mentalities and the case of medieval scepticism; Medieval origines gentium and the community of the realm; What do we mean by ’Anglo-Saxon’ and ’Anglo-Saxons’?; Eadric Silvaticus and the English resistance; Magna Carta 1297 and the legal use of literacy; The history of the idea of incorporation or legal personality: a case of fallacious teleology; English towns of the 11th century in a European context; Towns in Domesday Book; The rulers of London in the 12th century; The farm and taxation of London, 1154-1216; Decline and decay in late medieval towns: a look at some of the concepts and arguments; The forged charters of Barnstaple; 1483: Gloucester and town government in the middle ages; Medieval urban history and the history of political thought; The writing of medieval urban history in England; Space and time in English medieval towns; Index.

Editorial Reviews

A collection of previously published essays on the collective activities of medieval lay people and the solidarities that underlay them. The author's thesis is that the capacity of the medieval laity for rational and independent thought has too often been underestimated by those who see the middle ages through the eyes of the clergy and academics of the time. Among the topics in 16 essays: social mentalities and the case of medieval skepticism; Magna Carta 1297 and the legal use of literacy; and English towns of the eleventh century in a European context. Distributed by Ashgate. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews