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  • The Late Medieval English College and Its Context
  • Charles Fonge
The Late Medieval English College and Its Context. Edited byClive Burgess and Martin Heale. Rochester, NY: York Medieval Press in association with Boydell & Brewer Ltd. 2008. Pp. xviii, 290. $90.00. ISBN 978-1-903-15322-2.)

The secular college, in comparison to the monastery or parish community, has languished in relative historiographical obscurity. A basic form of ecclesiastical organization, its malleability, attendant problems of definition, a focus on patronal benefits, and blunt distinctions between "monastic" and "secular" institutions have tended to isolate the college and obscure our understanding of its wider place in late-medieval religion, society, and culture. This important collection of twelve essays seeks to remedy such an oversight and forms a stimulating, comprehensive, and long-overdue survey of the college as well as its role and influence.

Clive Burgess provides a critical examination of our perception of the English college, its development, and resurgence from the fourteenth century, and demonstrates the importance of the college's liturgical functions in involving and embracing patrons, parishioners, pupils, and others: these and its charitable and educational roles being harnessed not only for the benefit of the patron but also society and the Crown—promoting stability and orthodoxy in the wake of the Black Death and Hundred Years' War. Essays by Jerome Bertram and Helen Brown explore colleges in their Western European and Scottish contexts. These contexts commonly echo the English experience, although Scotland's later foundations and the significance of the nobility's cultivation of the form provide useful contradistinctions. Martin Heale brings the secular college out of the monastery's shadow and challenges the long-held perception of the two as rivals, arguing that they were sufficiently distinctive as to be able to coexist in comfort. Further contextual essays examine some of colleges' core functions. Alison McHardy analyzes the college as a source of patronage and the contributions its patronage networks made to the support of administrations, the clerical estate, and, ultimately, the realm. Julian Luxford examines the college as a mausoleum, describing differences in the arrangement of monuments across the constitutional categories of college. Patricia Cullum explores trends in the charitable functions associated with collegiate churches, while essays by James Willoughby and Magnus Williamson further reflect on colleges' educational and liturgical functions, surveying the provision and collection of books and the place of musicians in the collegiate structure and ethos. The volume concludes with three useful case studies. Anne Sutton investigates the hospital of St. Thomas of Acre of London during the mastership of John Neel (1420–63). Sutton demonstrates a dynamic network of support that extended beyond its original endowment [End Page 818]and patronal relationships to links with civic society, the Mercers' Company, fraternities, and a local campaign for schoolmasters—a unity of purpose in improving the liturgy and educational provision engendering mutuality as much as rivalry among those competing for benefactions. Winifred Harwood discusses the college as a school and details the development and structure of Winchester College, while the final years and music of Fotheringhay College, one of England's largest chantry colleges, prior to its dissolution in 1548, are studied by David Skinner. Skinner's careful analysis shows that a college like Fotheringhay was still a vibrant and even optimistic institution on the very eve of Dissolution and, far from an anachronism, continued to develop its music and liturgy to reflect Cranmer's more evangelical reforms and used its allies in the royal household to attempt, albeit vainly, to stem the political tide.

Together, the essays in this volume form an invaluable and most welcome contribution to our understanding of the late-medieval English college and its extensive sphere of influence. The volume succeeds in helping us reappraise the light in which this secular institution has traditionally been viewed and (it is to be hoped) will reintegrate it into our wider understanding and consideration of religious communities and structures in the later Middle Ages.

Charles Fonge
University of York

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