Monasteries and Society in the British Isles in the Later Middle Ages. Edited by Janet Burton and Karen Sto ¨ber. Studies in the History of Medieval Religion XXXV. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2008. xiv þ 258 pp. $95.00 cloth.

摘要

The fifteen essays in this volume are a sample of the issues that are of concernnto historians of monasticism in the post-Knowles period. Of course, thenDissolution of the monasteries cannot be entirely left out of a volume thatndeals with the later Middle Ages and the conditions leading up to it, but itndoes not occupy center stage. These essays are tied together by a commonninterest in relations between the monasteries and the laity. They arenorganized into six topics, beginning with the “Meeting of the Worlds” andncontinuing with “Religious Houses and their Patrons and Benefactors,”n“Female Communities: Nuns, Abbesses and Prioresses,” “Monasteries andnEducation,” “Monasteries and Urban Space,” and “Religious Houses in thenRegions.” Of these, the first and last contain papers that differ from onenanother, but that is not to say that they do not make interesting contributionsnto the collection.