Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to cover a longer period allowing more scope to explore historical development, comparisons and contrasts over the longue duree. It examines the subject from a wider range of disciplinary perspectives, including not only history and literature but also art/architectural history and musicology. The book explores how laity financially supported the clergy’s delivery of pastoral care, notably rich patrons of parish churches who worked with their clergy to rebuild these churches and install glazing schemes there in late medieval Norfolk. It shows that Anglo-Saxon reform initiatives in the eleventh century also followed older traditions of local ecclesiastical reform. The book argues that Handlyng Sin might have been read aloud by clerks for groups of lay listeners in church or outside, even at manorial entertainments, or used by private readers in households.