C.N.L. Brooke
Few historians are as well-qualified to add to our understanding of both the medieval church as an institution and of the men and women who served it as Christopher Brooke. His work, based on an exceptionally wide study of the original texts, combines a knowledge of the church throughout the middle ages with an awareness of how art, architecture and imaginative literature can be made to serve the historian's needs. His ability to combine text and synthesis make the essays in this collection both illuminating and readable. Churches and Churchmen in Medieval Europe penetrates many regions of the medieval church, dealing with institutions buildings personalities and literature. Christopher Brooke explores the origins of the diocese and the parish and traces the history of the see of Hereford and of York Minster. He discusses the arrival of the archdeacon, the Normans ans cathedral builders and the kings of England and Scotland as monastic patrons. The studies of monastic life deal with the European question of monastic vocation and with St Bernard's part in the sensational expansion of the early twelfth century. An epilogue takes us to the fourteenth century, contrasting Chaucer's parson with an actual Norfolk rector.
