Shannon McSheffrey studies the communities of the late medieval English heretics, the Lollards, and presents unexpected conclusions about the precise ways in which gender shaped participation within t
Awarded honorable mention for the 2007 Wallace K. Ferguson Prize sponsored by the Canadian Historical AssociationHow were marital and sexual relationships woven into the fabric of late medieval societ
Seeking Sanctuary explores a curious aspect of premodern English law: the right of felons to shelter in a church or ecclesiastical precinct, remaining safe from arrest and trial in the king's courts.
In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Coventry harboured a community of Lollards, adherents of medieval England's only popular heresy. Allowed to flourish relatively unmolested for decades, the Coventry Lollards came under close episcopal scrutiny in 1511 and 1512 when Geoffrey Blyth, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, began a concerted effort to uncover and eradicate their community. This volume presents a remarkable record of the testimony compiled during Blyth's crackdown, along with all other surviving evidence for heretical activities in Coventry. The documents, offered here both in their original languages of Latin and Middle English and in modern English translation, give new insights into the nature of religious dissent in the years just prior to the first stirrings of the English Reformation.
