A Monastic Renaissance At St Albans

Author : James G. Clark
Publisher : Clarendon Press
ISBN 13 : 0191515310
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.16/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Monastic Renaissance at St Albans written by James G. Clark and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2004-12-09 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Monastic Renaissance at St Albans is a study of intellectual life at the abbey of St Albans - one of Britain's greatest Benedictine monasteries - during the lifetime of Thomas Walsingham (c.1340-1422), one of the most prolific scholars of the later middle ages. It has always been assumed that the monasteries fell into decline long before the dissolution and that cultural and intellectual activities were largely abandoned as the monks surrendered themselves to high living and low morals. This study challenges this view. Drawing on a wide variety of manuscript sources, it shows that education, independent study, and even the co-ordinated copying of books continued to flourish at St Albans (and its affiliate houses) for much of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In fact the abbey emerged as one of the country's most influential centres of learning, a clearing-house for books and ideas in Ricardian and Lancastrian England. Thomas Walsingham himself played a key part in this renaissance in monastic studies; his works were copied and circulated throughout the St Albans network and his influence acted upon the next generation of monastic readers and writers. Walsingham was not only a compiler of contemporary chronicles but also a Classical scholar of extraordinary originality. His commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses, his re-working of the histories of Alexander of Macedon and the Trojan War, and his Genealogia deorum gentilium, are discussed in detail here for the first time. Walsingham's interest in the Classics was shared by many of his St Albans colleagues, and they in turn were members of a wider circle of literary scholars, which included the London schoolmaster, John Seward. The work of these scholars, monastic and secular, points towards a revival of Classical and literary scholarship in England long before Italian humanism and other traces of the continental Renaissance first found their way into the country.

Author : James G. Clark
Publisher : Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN 13 : 0199275955
Total Pages : 329 pages
Book Rating : 4.53/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Monastic Renaissance at St Albans written by James G. Clark and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2004-12-09 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Monastic Renaissance at St Albans is a study of intellectual life at the abbey of St Albans - one of Britain's greatest Benedictine monasteries - during the lifetime of Thomas Walsingham (c.1340-1422), one of the most prolific scholars of the later middle ages. It has always been assumed that the monasteries fell into decline long before the dissolution and that cultural and intellectual activities were largely abandoned as the monks surrendered themselves tohigh living and low morals. This study challenges this view. Drawing on a wide variety of manuscript sources, it shows that education, independent study, and even the co-ordinated copying of books continued to flourish at St Albans (and its affiliate houses) for much of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In fact theabbey emerged as one of the country's most influential centres of learning, a clearing-house for books and ideas in Ricardian and Lancastrian England.Thomas Walsingham himself played a key part in this renaissance in monastic studies; his works were copied and circulated throughout the St Albans network and his influence acted upon the next generation of monastic readers and writers. Walsingham was not only a compiler of contemporary chronicles but also a Classical scholar of extraordinary originality. His commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses, his re-working of the histories of Alexander of Macedon and the Trojan War, and hisGenealogia deorum gentilium, are discussed in detail here for the first time. Walsingham's interest in the Classics was shared by many of his St Albans colleagues, and they in turn were members of a wider circle of literary scholars, which included the London schoolmaster, John Seward. The work of these scholars,monastic and secular, points towards a revival of Classical and literary scholarship in England long before Italian humanism and other traces of the continental Renaissance first found their way into the country.

Author : Sylvia Federico
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
ISBN 13 : 1903153638
Total Pages : 218 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Classicist Writings of Thomas Walsingham written by Sylvia Federico and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2016 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comparative reading of the literary works of Thomas Walsingham, highlighting his reaction to contemporary historical events.

Author : Jonathan Hughes
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350146293
Total Pages : 441 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Dante’s Divine Comedy in Early Renaissance England written by Jonathan Hughes and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-02-24 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dante's Divine Comedy in Early Renaissance England compares the intellectual, emotional, and religious world of Dante in 13th-century Florence with that of a group of English intellectuals gathered around Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, uncle of the King, Henry VI. Here, Jonathan Hughes establishes that there was a Renaissance in 15th-century England, encouraged by the discovery and translations of works of Greek philosophers and developments in science and medicine; and that vernacular writers in Gloucester's circle, such as John Lydgate and Robert Hoccleve, were of fundamental importance in exploring the meaning of the self and man's relationship with the natural world and the classical past. However, the appearance in 15th-century England of Dante's 'Commedia', the most popular work of the Middle Ages, served to remind writers and readers of the cost of intellectual enquiry: the loss of faith in a harmonious and beautiful world; the redemptive power of the love of a woman; and the tangible presence of an afterlife. Engagingly written and meticulously researched, this innovative study shines a new perspective on Dante scholarship as well as offering a unique anaylsis of intellectual thought and culture in 15th-century England.

Author : Claude Jenkins
Publisher : Legare Street Press
ISBN 13 : 9781020901737
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.3X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Monastic Chronicler and the Early School of St. Albans a Lecture written by Claude Jenkins and published by Legare Street Press. This book was released on 2023-07-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a fascinating glimpse into the early history of the medieval monastery at St Albans, and its role in the development of English literature and culture. With insightful analysis and engaging storytelling, the author brings to life the people and events that shaped this important institution. Whether you're a scholar of medieval history or simply interested in the roots of English culture, this book is a must-read. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Author : Claude Jenkins
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 110 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Monastic Chronicler and the Early School of St. Albans written by Claude Jenkins and published by . This book was released on 1922 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Martin Biddle
Publisher : Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
ISBN 13 : 1803277092
Total Pages : 565 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book St Albans Abbey: The Excavation of the Chapter House 1978 written by Martin Biddle and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2024-06-13 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excavations at the site of the medieval chapter house of St Albans Abbey in 1978 uncovered fragments of decorated floor tiles of the Anglo-Saxon abbey and associated burials, along with the magnificent floor of relief-decorated tiles of the medieval chapter house, and the graves of 16 known figures of the late 11th-to 15th-century abbey.

Author : Thomas Walsingham
Publisher : Boydell Press
ISBN 13 : 9781843831440
Total Pages : 484 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham, 1376-1422 written by Thomas Walsingham and published by Boydell Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Translated by David Preest with introduction and notes by James G. Clark Thomas Walsingham's Chronica maiora is one of the most comprehensive and colourful chronicles to survive from medieval England. Walsingham was a monk at St Albans Abbey, a royal monastery and the premier repository of public records, and therefore well placed to observe the political machinations of this period at close hand. Moreover, he knew the monarchs and many of the nobles personally and is able to offer insights into their actions unmatched by any other authority. It is this narrative, transmitted through the popular Tudor histories of Hall, Stow and Holinshed, which provides the principle source for Shakespeare's sequence of history plays. Covering almost fifty years, the narrative provides the most authoritative account of one of the most turbulent periods in English history, from the last years of Edward III (1376-77) to the premature death of Henry V (1422). Walsingham describes the many dramas of this period in vivid detail, including the Peasants' Revolt (1381), the deposition and murder of Richard II (1399-1400), The Welsh revolt of Owain Glyn Dwr (1403) and Henry V's victory at Agincourt (1415); they are brought to life here in this new translation.

Author : Michelle Still
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351895303
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Abbot and the Rule written by Michelle Still and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: St Albans was one of the greatest Benedictine abbeys of medieval England, and the early 14th century was a period during which the concerns of the community and the role of the abbot emerge particularly clearly. Yet the history of the abbey during this period has received little attention since general surveys undertaken over eighty years ago, and the manorial history by Levett in 1938. Basing herself on the unique and relatively unexploited Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani, Michelle Still examines the position of St Albans in both the secular and monastic worlds, with a focus on the period 1290-1349. The study includes discussion of the role of the abbot as a feudal landlord, a provider of education (at the abbey's grammar school), and a dispenser of charity. In conclusion, she notes the pivotal importance of the personality and influence of the abbot of St Albans in ensuring the strict observance of the Rule of St Benedict in an age when traditional monasticism was increasingly challenged. Through the detailed study of this one abbey, this book makes an important contribution to the overall picture of monastic life in medieval England.

Author : James G. Clark
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
ISBN 13 : 1783270764
Total Pages : 1009 pages
Book Rating : 4.67/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Deeds of the Abbots of St Albans written by James G. Clark and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2019 with total page 1009 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Deeds of the abbots of St Albans records the history of one of the most important abbeys in England, closely linked to the royal family and home to a school of distinguished chroniclers, including Matthew Paris and Thomas Walsingham. It offers many insights into the life of the monastery, its buildings and its role as a maker of books, and covers the period from the Conquest to the mid-fifteenth century. The Deeds of the abbots of St Albans is the longest continuous chronicle of a medieval monastery in England, following its fortunes from its first foundation in the wake of the first Viking raids to its status as a proud and prosperous pillar of the church establishment more than six centuries later. More than merely a common, conventual annal, the Deeds drew contributions from the most accomplished chroniclers of the St Albans school including Matthew Paris, Thomas Walsingham and perhaps William Rishanger. It is a history of one of the most important abbeys, under royal patronage and always at the apex of the church hierarchy; it also offers a glimpse of life inside the monastic community from the Conquest to within a century of the Dissolution. There are detailed descriptions of the building, and rebuilding, of the abbey church, and recounts the abbey's commitment to the making of books, from thefirst flowering of the scriptorium in the twelfth century - when a famous psalter was made for the anchorite Christina of Markyate - to its Indian summer in the years before 1400 under Thomas Walsingham himself. There are rare snapshots of the daily routine of the monks, their liturgical observances, their interactions with their staff, tenants, townspeople and guests. And it captures the colour and character of the celebrated figures seen at the abbey, from King John to Edward the Black Prince.