PUBLICATIONS

Missed Opportunities? Religious Houses and the Laity in the English 'High Middle Ages' by Dave Postles is published in October.

Missed Opportunities? Religious Houses and the Laity in the English 'High Middle Ages'

New publication by Dave Postles, University Fellow in the School of English

The efflorescence of foundations of religious houses in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in England offered the prospect of religious revitalization. Those opportunities are recounted and examined in detail in this book. Ultimately, it all ended in disappointment as the religious failed to fulfill both their obligations and the expectations of them.

The volume republishes a collection of papers which previously appeared in Haskins Society Journal, Journal of Medieval History, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Historical Research, Cambridge Law Journal, The Irish Jurist, and elsewhere. A new introduction lends coherence to the volume and discusses the gift economy and gift-exchange, association and neighbourhood society, and ritual.

Dave Postles is a University Fellow in the School of English and was Marc Fitch Research Fellow in the University (1988-2005).

Contents:

Introduction.

Part I.

1. Religious houses and the laity in eleventh- to thirteenth-century England: an overview;
2. Lamps, lights and layfolk: 'popular' devotion before the Black Death;
3. Monastic burials of non-patronal lay benefactors;
4. Small gifts, but big rewards: the symbolism of some gifts to the religious;
5. Pittances and pittancers;
6. The Austin Canons in English towns, c. 1100-1350;
7. Heads of religious houses as administrators;

Part II.

8. Gifts in frankalmoign, warranty of land, and feudal society;
9. Seeking the language of warranty of land in twelfth-century England;
10. Tenure in frankalmoign and knight service in twelfth-century England: interpretation of the charters;
11. Choosing witnesses in twelfth-century England.

• Title: Missed Opportunities? Religious Houses and the Laity in the English 'High Middle Ages'

• Author: Dave Postles

• Publisher: New Academia Publishing

• Price: £16

• Pages: 292 pages

• Published: October 2009

• ISBN: 978-0-9823867-5-0