Publisher's Synopsis
This is the first comprehensive survey of the religious, social and cultural life of late medieval and reformation parishes.;This collection introduces the reader to the large number of anthropological, literary, socio-economic and quantitative approaches. It features studies of individual communities and larger areas, illuminates the parish through a great variety of records (parochial, manorial, municipal, diocesan and legal) and explores the most important neighbouring disciplines (literature, art history, archaeology).;This volume covers town and country, northern as well as southern communities, and it provides an indication of the European setting.;For the first time, the parish is studied through the period just before and just after the enormous social and religious changes of the sixteenth century.;All the contributors present their topics not as 'parochial', but as local history in the widest sense of the word, by both reflecting and contributing to current historiographical issues.
