The Call to Read: Reginald Pecock's Books and Textual Communities

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“This book is a study of the surviving writings of the mid-fifteenthcentury English bishop Reginald Pecock and the ambitious program of lay education he devised in response both to the explicit threat represented by the Lollards and the more insidious threat presented by orthodox counter-attacks against their views. The Call to Read represents the most promising attempt to encompass Pecock as an intellectual that I have seen, as well as the most lucid and sheerly interesting study of his writings.The book is a notable achievement and will be an important contribution to late medieval religious studies.” —Nicholas Watson, Harvard University “The Call to Read argues that Reginald Pecock’s writings offer us a new view of the fifteenth century as a dynamic period in which writers, preachers, and poets were provoked by the threat of heresy to come up with new ways of thinking about the very foundations of belief and practice in the Christian community. By looking at Pecock in this way, the book contributes to the current reappraisal of the fifteenth century in terms of analyzing the effects of the Lollard heresy on vernacular culture.” —Vincent Gillespie, University of Oxford “An important contribution to our developing understanding of the complexity and diversity of fifteenth-century vernacular theologies. The first extended study of Pecock’s work to be published in twentyfive years, Campbell’s book both builds on, and greatly extends, our burgeoning understanding of fifteenth-century religious, intellectual, and literary culture.” —Fiona Somerset, Duke University Kirsty Campbell is professor of English at John Abbott College in Montreal, Canada. UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 undpress.nd.edu The Call to Read Reginald Pecock’s Books and Textual Communities K I R S T Y C A M P B E L L ...