Book Review: GOING TO CHURCH IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND by Nicholas Orme

 I finally finished this book and just submitted a review of it to Amazon where I originally ordered it.  It forms the basis of my two previous blog articles, and may inspire yet more. The book was published by Yale University Press, copyrighted in 2021and put into paperback just last year in 2022. Below is my review:

It took me about a half a year, picking the book up again and again, but that does not indicate lack of interest.  From forward to end the book encompasses around 400 pages, and the print is relatively small, as one reviewer noted.  This is a social history of the institution of the medieval church, and in chapter 9, "Reflections," Dr. Orme describes for the reader the honest challenges of constructing such a history.  As I read this history I was struck at times by how much of medieval practice and architecture has survived in one way or another in our modern times.  My rural American Lutheran church was built in the early 1950s in what might be loosely considered a neo-Gothic style.  Yet I could see the lingering influences even in this modern reproduction.  His information on liturgics was particularly fascinating to me, in part, because that comprises some of my graduate studies; done, I might add, at an Anglo-Catholic seminary, rich with tradition.  I wish, now, that this book had been published when I began my studies, for my thesis would probably have taken a different turn.

I read this book with a pencil in hand, underlining profusely.  It is clearly a book not just to be read, but reread.  I would suspect that it is probably one of the most thorough collections of this sort, pulling together a wealth of information gathered from a great variety of source material that is not easily accessible to the non-scholar without an extensive library and the luxury to spend copious amounts of time in serious research of primary sources.  I am grateful to Dr. Orme for this project.  Admittedly I am not only a self-avowed anglophile, but also have a deep interest in the Middle Ages, and that, coupled with my vocation as a pastor, made this book a treasure trove of information that I will now begin to review and study more deeply.  

If you are looking for a quick and relatively simple summary of the church of the Middle Ages, this is clearly not your book.  Orme did not cut corners but took seriously the rich variety in medieval church life, as well as the issues associated sometimes with a dearth of material to construct a complete pictures (Again, see the last chapter).  But it is an honest history and will become a standard for those looking in the future for good reference material in the social history of medieval England.   The book is also well illustrated throughout with color plates of reproductions and photos, and the binding, for a paperback, is surprisingly sturdy. The book also uses heavier quality paper.

 

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