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Reviews 187 functions in aristocratic society? I think not, and neither does LoPrete, w h o skilfully and knowledgeably explores those functions. Adela played a major role throughout the forty or so years of her marriage and rule of Blois-Chartres in defending the domains of her affinal family against the pretensions of others, especially the Angevins and the Capetians. She was a powerful, adroit, and determined mler. In the interests of her own house, she played a decisive role in 1105 in the reconciliation ofAnselm of Canterbury and Henry I that cleared the way for Henry's conquest of Normandy and thus by keeping Maine in the AngloNorman orbit continued to protect her western borders from Anjou. In the spring of 1106 at Blois, she hosted magnificently the marriage of Philip I's daughter Constance to the hero of the First Crusade, Bohemond ofTaranto. One could go on, but it is not necessary. A s LoPrete writes: 'Contemporary observers acknowledged that Adela exercised the same authoritative powers as her male peers' (p. 27). She was also literate in Latin, by the by, and had extensive relationships with important ecclesiastics. The only criticism I have of this volume is its continuation of the pernicious practice of using endnotes, combined for allfivecontributions at the end of the book, which necessitates constant skipping backwards and forwards between text and notes. In this age of electronic submission and camera-ready copy, such a practice is simply annoying and unnecessary. John H. Pryor Centrefor Medieval Studies and Department ofHistory University of Sydney French, Katherine L., The People of the Parish: Community Life in a Late Medieval English Diocese (The Middle Ages Series), Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press 2001; cloth; pp. vii, 316; appendix; maps. R.R.P.£42.00, US$59.95; ISBN 0812235819. This book is a contribution to the present widespread attempt to consider E religious culture in the period leading up to and surrounding the Reformation from the perspective of the laity in both urban and rural parishes. It reinforces the increasingly widely held view that the laity in the Middle Ages participated extensively in religious affairs at the parish level. The control of resources, whether they were managed by religious guilds or churchwardens, gave lay 188 Reviews people a significant influence. This counters the arguments sometimes made that it was the coming of Protestantism which opened up religion to active lay involvement. Much, of course, depends on the historian's perspective and focus. Dr French does not argue that the laity played more than a passive role in the purely sacerdotal aspects of daily religious observance such as the mass. What she does suggest is that all the evidence of its role in building and maintaining the fabric of the nave of the church, including such responsibilities as the carving of the rood screens, and carving on the pews that were being introduced in the fifteenth century and the wall paintings and statuary implies a good understanding of the Christian message and a clear view of what they wanted from the artisans they employed to provide them. Her account of the interaction of laity and clergy in providing a suitably reverend and impressive liturgical practice which would maintain orthodoxy has to depend on what can be discovered about the bishops' ordinances and instructions, their attempts to promote clerical education, the licensing of preaching and the occasional evidence of wills or images in surviving stained glass windows. She describes in some detail the religious year with its locally specific calendar, ceremonies and processions. She documents as far as possible the provision by the laity of the required mass and liturgical books, and their interest in providing peals of bells. All this gives a good impression of what the co-operation of clergy and laity at its best may have been. The title of the book, however, is somewhat misleading. Dr French has not managed tofindenough material to enable her to re-animate the people whose names appear on the Somerset parish registers which are the focus of her study The range of expenditure and the sources of income which they reveal, which she has conscientiously analysed, provide a good basis for...

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