Modus Vivendi
Religious Reform and the Laity in Late Medieval Europe
edited by Miri Rubin
pp. 152, € 39,00
Viella, 2020
ISBN: 9788833137063
Modus Vivendi is a collection of essays by scholars who
seek to discover lay men and women within the projects of reform and
renewal in later medieval Europe. Religious life was never without
change, yet religious orders, preachers, and institutions of learning
proclaimed their desire to make religious life more sincere. In doing
so, they occasionally developed a mission to lay people alongside
professional religious. Such encounters with the laity – through the
writing of theology in the vernacular, in the delivery of charismatic
preaching, in the operation of inquisition into heresy, in the
composition of new liturgies, and through networks of patronage –
created modes of living religion – modus vivendi – of
creativity as well as discipline. They contributed to religious life
beyond the routine provisions of parish life, and often included women
in novel ways. Modus Vivendi spans European regions across the period
1350-1500 in its studies, based on texts, objects, and images which have
been little studied so far.
Miri Rubin is Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History at Queen Mary University of London. Her most recent books are Cities of Strangers: Making Lives in Medieval Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2020), and the translation/edition in Penguin Classics, Thomas of Monmouth, The Life and Passion of William of Norwich (Penguin Press, 2014).
