Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Translations of the cloister: regulating spiritual aspiration
- Chapter 2 Dialogic form and clerical understanding
- Chapter 3 Lordship, pastoral care, and the order of charity
- Chapter 4 Clerical widows and the reform of preaching
- Conclusion: Spiritual guides in fifteenth-century books: cultural change and continuity
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 June 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Translations of the cloister: regulating spiritual aspiration
- Chapter 2 Dialogic form and clerical understanding
- Chapter 3 Lordship, pastoral care, and the order of charity
- Chapter 4 Clerical widows and the reform of preaching
- Conclusion: Spiritual guides in fifteenth-century books: cultural change and continuity
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE
Summary
SPIRITUAL CAPITAL AND RELIGIOUS DISCIPLINE IN THEORY
Material success and the search for spiritual certainty often went hand in hand for the lay faithful in later medieval England. Acts of endowment such as chantry foundation and donation to monasteries, where masses were said periodically for the benefit of individual souls, enabled the laity to benefit from the activities of religious professionals, tapping into the network of services dedicated to amassing and distributing the treasury of spiritual merit. For some fortunate laity, earthly life may have presented greater time and opportunity not only to cultivate the active penitential life, but also to pursue the “spiritual life”: what P. S. Jolliffe calls “the whole of a Christian's life insofar as it is directed towards that perfection which God demands from him, in which prayer is central and in the course of which sins are purged and virtues implanted.” But as numerous scholars of the period have observed, living a life of perfection was easier said than done, and “the desire to meld an authentic spiritual life and a prosperous worldly existence constituted a site of genuine cultural struggle in late-medieval society.” Texts written to transform this struggle into productive modes of practice are the subject of this study.
In a late medieval English culture characterized by the frequent “intersection of piety and prosperity,” some prosperous laity looked to religious professionals for models of the religious discipline that might eventually lead to perfection.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009