The Church as Sacred Space in Middle English Literature and Culture [Hardcover]

This book presents an exciting new approach to the medieval church by examining the role of literary texts, visual decorations, ritual performance and lived experience in the production of sanctity. The meaning of the church was intensely debated in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This book explores what was at stake not only for the churchs sanctity but for the identity of the parish community as a result. Focusing on pastoral material used to teach the laity, it shows how the churchs status as a sacred space at the heart of the congregation was dangerously  but profitably  dependent on lay practice. The sacred and profane were inextricably linked and, paradoxically, the church is shown to thrive on the sacrilegious challenge of lay misbehaviour and sin.Laura Varnam is Lecturer in Old and Middle English Literature at University College, OxfordThis book presents an exciting new approach to the medieval church by examining the role of literary texts, visual decorations, ritual performance and lived experience in the production of sanctity. The meaning of the church was intensely debated in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This book explores what was at stake not only for the churchs sanctity but for the identity of the parish community as a result. Focusing on pastoral material used to teach the laity, it shows how the churchs status as a sacred space at the heart of the congregation was dangerously  but profitably  dependent on lay practice. The sacred and profane were inextricably linked and, paradoxically, the church is shown to thrive on the sacrilegious challenge of lay misbehaviour and sin.Introduction: reading sacred space in late medieval England
1 The church consecration ceremony and the construction of sacred space
2 The Book of the Foundation of St Bartholomews Church: consecration, restoration, and translation
3 Sacred and profane: pastoral care in the parish church
4 What the church betokeneth: placing the people at thl“0