Day 7: Churches: Ashby St Ledgers & Watford
I: Dr Paul Barnwell (English Heritage): 鈥楳aking Space for Souls in Purgatory: The Use of Space in the Late-Medieval Parish Church鈥� 
Surviving liturgucal texts from the middle ages almost all relate to the greater churches (cathedrals and monasteries), and devotional literature was only available to those with education and money. It is therefore difficult to understand the religious experience of ordinary people in unexceptional parishes. Detailed analysis of the evolving form of medieval parish churches, largely based on a systematic survey of those in Northamptonshire, can provide primary evidence for the local impact of changes in the nature of belief, liturgy and devotion, particularly in relation to the Eucharist, to images, and to the fate of the soul after the death of the body.
Some Suggested Reading
P S Barnwell, 鈥楾he Laity, the Clergy and the Divine Presence: The Use of Space in Smaller Churches of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries鈥�, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 157 (2004), pp. 41鈥�60
P S Barnwell, 鈥楾he Use of the Church: Blisworth, Northamptonshire, on the Eve of the Reformation鈥�, Ecclesiology Today, 35 (2005), pp. 43鈥�62: freely available at www.ecclsoc.org/ET.35.pdf
P S Barnwell, C Cross and A Rycraft, eds, Mass and Parish in Late Medieval England: The Use of York (Reading: Spire Books, 2005): includes a rubricated translation of the Requiem Mass in the York Use
E Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traidtional Religion in England 1400鈥�1580, 2nd edn (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005)
J Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984; Aldershot: Ashgate, 1990)
M Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)
II: OnSite: Ashby St Ledgers & Watford (Northamptonshire)
Location via GoogleMaps: