Medieval Popular Religion, 1000-1500

Book excerpt: Medieval Popular Religion, 1000-1500: A Reader, second edition, brings together a unique collection of 82 sources that casts light on the beliefs and practices of ordinary Christians in the Middle Ages whose religious lives have often been overlooked by historians and theologians. Documents new to this edition include a new translation of the English peasant Thurkill's thirteenth-century vision of hell, a substantial excerpt from the twelfth-century Play of Adam, two pilgrims' travelogues to Jerusalem, and a complete translation of a thirteenth-century handbook for administering confessions. Comments: "Anyone who wants to know what Christianity felt like--and looked, sounded, and smelled like--in the Middle Ages need only plunge into the readings gathered in John Shinners' Medieval Popular Religion. This splendid collection offers an unrivalled introduction to the lived religion of medieval Europe. One would think it could hardly have been bettered, and yet it has been.Further enriched by the addition of ten new sources, from recipes for love spells to a handbook for confessors, this new edition is a marvelous teaching tool and true feast for the intellectually curious." - Daniel Bornstein, Professor of History, Texas A&M University "Now at last, we have a collection that casts a fresh and original eye on medieval Christianity, presenting a wide range of documentation on practice and piety from the eleventh to the sixteenth century. Wisely eschewing conventional boundaries between superstition, heresy, and orthodoxy, the editor includes evidence of witchcraft and protest as well as of earnest efforts to educate the pious. More than a book about religion as belief and debate, this is a book about religion as life." - Caroline Walker Bynum, Professor of Western European Middle Ages at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey John Shinners, Professor of Humanistic Studies at Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana, has written a variety of studies on medieval religion and parish life, including Pastors and the Care of Souls in Medieval England (co-edited with William J. Dohar, Notre Dame, 1998).