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This edition of the building accounts is put into a wider context
with a study of its founder, Richard Fox. Corpus Christi College,
Oxford, was founded in 1517 by Richard Fox, bishop of Winchester.
He intended it to educate students in classical Greek, Latin and
Hebrew, and their literature; Erasmus praised it as a scholarly
achievement, and a beacon of Renaissance classical learning. The
heart of this book is an edition of the original fortnightly
building site accounts of 1517-1518, giving us a window onto a
late-medieval building site, with its detailsof early
sixteenth-century building materials, craft techniques, project
management skills and working conditions, including siesta periods
and sub-contracting. The introduction describes Fox's long road to
1517: his motives far more complicated than a bishop looking for
worldly fame and heavenly reward. Born into a Lincolnshire yeoman,
Fox studied law at Oxford, rebelled against Richard III and became
Henry VII's closest political adviser. Taken together,they provide
a detailed account of the foundation of the College, both literal
and metaphorical.
Examinations of the culture - artistic, material, musical - of
English monasteries in the six centuries between the Conquest and
the Dissolution. The cultural remains of England's abbeys and
priories have always attracted scholarly attention but too often
they have been studied in isolation, appreciated only for their
artistic, codicological or intellectual features and notfor the
insights they offer into the patterns of life and thought - the
underlying norms, values and mentalite - of the communities of men
and women which made them. Indeed, the distinguished monastic
historian David Knowles doubted there would ever be sufficient
evidence to recover "the mentality of the ordinary cloister monk".
These twelve essays challenge this view. They exploit newly
catalogued and newly discovered evidence - manuscript books,wall
paintings, and even the traces of original monastic music - to
recover the cultural dynamics of a cross-section of male and female
communities. It is often claimed that over time the cultural
traditions of the monasteries were suffocated by secular trends but
here it is suggested that many houses remained a major cultural
force even on the verge of the Reformation. James G. Clark is
Professor of History at the University of Exeter. Contributors:
DAVID BELL, ROGER BOWERS, JAMES CLARK, BARRIE COLLETT, MARY ERLER,
G. R. EVANS, MIRIAM GILL, JOAN GREATREX, JULIAN HASELDINE, J. D.
NORTH, ALAN PIPER, AND R. M. THOMSON.
This volume includes the works of three Englishwomen: Julian of
Norwich (1342-c.1416) whose Revelations were first printed in 1670;
Margery Kempe (c.1373-c.1438) from whose Boke of Marjorie Kempe a
few extracts were printed in 1501 and again in 1512; Juliana
Berners (possibly c.1388) whose treatise on hawkyng and huntyng was
first printed in 1486, with a second edition containing an
additional treatise on fishing. The writings of these three women
are brought together in this book because they are amongst the
earliest female writers in the English language, they each
reflected everyday lives, and reveal with passion, insight and
compassion spiritualities not separate from the physical world but
entwined with it. Julian of Norwich brings contemplative insights
of God's love to a sinful and suffering humanity; Margery Kempe
actively weeps for her own sin and the sins and suffering of the
world and Juliana Berners lives actively with expertise and
serenity in the world of nature.
This gendered translation of the Benedictine Rule for women in 1517
is also a handbook for women on exercising authority, management
skills and the art of good governance, including monastic property
and relations with the outside world. Barry Collett here provides a
modern facsimile edition of Fox's translation, written in the
tumbling phrases of passionate prose that make Fox stand out as a
literary figure of the English Renaissance. Collett also provides
an extensive introduction that argues that Fox's experience as an
administrator and senior political adviser with special
responsibility for foreign affairs, mainly with Scotland and
France, the political situation in 1516, and social concerns Fox
shared with Thomas More, all provide keys to understanding this
translation of the rule. Richard Fox was king's secretary, Lord
Privy Seal and Bishop of Winchester, and founder of Corpus Christi
College in Oxford. He was an administrator who reflected much on
the proper exercise of authority and responsibility at all levels,
especially through negotiated co-operation. He strongly supported
monastic reforms, and when a group of abbesses requested a
translation for sisters unable to understand Latin, this was his
response. It provides a unique window into the world of female
spirituality just a few months before Luther's reformation began.
The exercise of God-given authority by women is described in the
same-possibly stronger-terms as for men. Fox expressed no
reservations about the exercise of authority by women. His
indifference to sexual distinctions arose, paradoxically, from his
preoccupation with the skilful use of God-given functioning of
authority in a hierarchical society.
European history from 1480 to 1570 was a period of turbulent
change, political upheaval, profound moral questioning, and urgent
philosophical speculation. This book explores the intriguing role
of the almost-forgotten Congregation of Benedictine monks of Italy
and southern France in the events of these tumultuous years. From
archival and published records, the picture emerges of a
closely-knit order of humanist scholars whose religious and
philosophical studies later put them in a unique position to
understand the Reformers. The book also casts light on the monks'
fascinating reaction to the Reformation, as they poured out a
stream of academic books, tracts, sermons, and poems in their
attempt to heal the deepening rift between Rome and the Reformers.
Critized and misunderstood by all sides, the Congregation gradually
fell into decline until it was finally suppressed under the
Napoleanic invasions.
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