The Medieval Church
Seminar and Essay Questions
- How effectively did the Church minister to the spiritual needs of the laity in the middle ages?
- What were the reasons behind anti-clerical sentiment in the Middle Ages?
- Why were popes, from the time of Gregory VII onwards, so keen to reform the Church?
- Why was monasticism popular?
Documents
- Tales of Relics
- The Parson from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
- Odo of Rigaud, The Habits of Priests in Normandy
- William of Newburgh: Of the prodigy of the dead man, who wandered about after burial
- Rule of St Benedict: extracts (from Documenta Catholica Omnia)
Introductory Reading
Barber, The Two Cities, chapters on the papacy, monasticism and friars and popular religion
Bartlett, The Making of Europe, 243-269, 270-280
Power, The Central Middle Ages, 121-148
Swanson, R.N., 'The Pre-Reformation Church' in A. Pettegree, ed., The Reformation World (London, 2000), pp. 17-24
Waley and Denley, Later Medieval Europe, 41-43
e-resources
- Gregory VII, Dictatus Papae 1090
- The Internet Medieval Sourcebook has sections on the medieval church and the papacy.
- Nelson, Lynn H., The Owl, the Cat, and the Investiture Controversy
- The Holy See
- The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church
- Documenta Catholica Omnia (includes English translations of important texts such as the full text of Unam Sanctam)
- Measuring the Miraculous
- The Cathars
- Cathar castles (interactive map)
- The Cathedral of Albi: a virtual tour
- 'Greyfriars and Blackfriars'. In Our Time. BBC Radio programme, Thursday 10 November 2005.
- St Francis of Assisi: The Canticle of the Creatures
- The Franciscan Archive
- Dominican Central
- 'Dante's Inferno'. In Our Time. BBC Radio programme, Thursday 23 October 2008.
Further Reading
General
Gorski, Philip S., 'Historicizing the Secularization Debate: Church, State, and Society in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 1300-1700', American Sociological Review 65 (2000), 138-67.
Head, T., and R. Landes (eds), The Peace of God: Social Violence and Religious Response in France Around the Year 1000 (Ithaca, 1992)
Lynch, Joseph H., The Medieval Church: A Brief History (Harlow, 1992)
Oakley, Francis, The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 1980)
Ozment, Steven, The Age of Reform 1250-1550 (New Haven, 1980)
Southern, Richard, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Harmondsworth, 1970)
Tellenbach, Gerd, Church, State, and Christian Society at the Time of the Investiture Contest (Toronto, 1991)
Van Engen, John, 'The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem', American Historical Review 91 no. 3 (1986), 519-52.
Religion and Religious Life
Barber, Malcolm, The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (Cambridge, 1994)
Bossy, John, Christianity in the West, 1400-1700 (Oxford, 1985)
Brooke, C.N.L., and Brooke, R.B., Popular Religion in the Middle Ages: Western Europe 1000-1300 (London, 1984)
Brown, Peter, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, 1981)
Bynum, Caroline Walker, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1982)
Hamilton, Bernard, Religion in the Medieval West (London, 1986)
Lawrence, C. H., Medieval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (Harlow, 1989)
Le Goff, Jacques, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (London, 1984)
Russell, Jeffrey Burton, Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 1984)
Swanson, R.N., Religion and Devotion in Europe c.1215 - c.1515 (Cambridge, 1995)
Vauchez, Andre, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1997)
Vauchez, Andre, The Laity in the Middle Ages: Religious Beliefs and Devotional Practices (Notre Dame, 1993)
The Papacy
Barraclough, Geoffrey, The Medieval Papacy (London, 1968)
Burns, J.H., and Thomas Izbicki (eds. and trans.), Conciliarism and Papalism (Cambridge, 1997)
Duffy, Eamon, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes (New Haven, 1997)
Morris, C., The Papal Monarchy: the Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (Oxford, 1989)
Partner, Peter, The Lands of St Peter (London, 1972)
Robinson, I.S., The Papacy 1073-1198: Continuity and Innovation (Cambridge, 1990)
Sayers, Jane, Innocent III: Leader of Europe 1198-1216 (London, 1994)
Ullmann, Walter, A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages (London, 1974)
Ullmann, Walter, The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages, 3rd ed. (London, 1970) [2nd ed online]
Heresy
Barber, Malcolm, The Cathars: Dualist Heretics in Languedoc in the High Middle Ages (Harlow, 2000)
Biller, Peter, 'Through a Glass Darkly: Seeing Medieval Heresy', in Peter Linehan and Janet Nelson (eds), The Medieval World (London, 2001), pp. 308-326.
Cohn, Norman, The Pursuit of the Millennium, rev. ed. (London, 1993)
Eco, Umberto, The Name of the Rose, trans. William Weaver (London, 1984)
Hamilton, Bernard, The Medieval Inquisition (London, 1981)
Kamen, Henry, The Spanish Inquisition: An Historical Revision (New Haven, 1998)
Kieckhefer, Richard, Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century (University Park, 1998)
Kieckhefer, Richard, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1989)
Kors, Alan, and Edward Peters, eds., Witchcraft in Europe, 1100-1700: A Documentary History (Philadelphia, 1972)
Lambert, Malcolm, The Cathars (Oxford, 1998)
Lambert, Malcolm, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1992)
Leff, Gordon, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages, 2 vols (Manchester, 1967)
Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel, Montaillou, trans. Barbara Bray (London, 1978)
Wakefield, W, Heresy, Crusade and Inquisition in Southern France, 1100-1250 (London, 1974)
Wakefield, Walter L., and Evans, Austin P. (eds. and trans.), Heresies of the High Middle Ages (New York, 1969) [An important collection of documents]
The Friars
Armstrong, Regis J., and Brady, Ignatius C. (eds.), Francis and Clare: The Complete Works (New York, 1982)
Armstrong, Regis J., et al. (eds. and trans.), Francis of Assisi: Early Documents: The Saint (Hyde Park, NY, 1999)
Eco, Umberto, The Name of the Rose, trans. William Weaver (London, 1984)
Hamilton, Bernard, The Medieval Inquisition (London, 1981)
Kamen, Henry, The Spanish Inquisition: An Historical Revision (New Haven, 1998)
Lawrence, C.H., The Friars (Harlow, 1994)
