Shannon McSheffrey studies the communities of the late medieval English heretics, the Lollards, and presents unexpected conclusions about the precise ways in which gender shaped participation within the movement. While much recent scholarship has contended that heresies offered medieval women opportunities for religious and social expression that they could not find in orthodoxy, Gender and Heresy demonstrates that the Lollard movement provided no such outlet. Within Lollardy, challenges to orthodoxy did not lead to questioning of dominant medieval gender categories. McSheffrey examines the archival and printed sources for the later Lollard communities to analyze the activities, relationships, and beliefs of the individuals who made up these groups. Her study emphasizes how complex interactions between socioeconomic status, gender identities, and religious culture shaped participation in religious movements.
Author(s): Shannon McSheffrey
Series: The Middle Ages Series
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Year: 1995
Language: English
Pages: 272
City: Philadelphia
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
Gender and Religious Deviance
Lollardy
Sources
The Communities
2. The Lollards of Coventry
The Lollard Prosecutions in Coventry
The Coventry Conventicles
Coventry's Civic Oligarchy and the Lollard Community
The Coventry Lollard Community in Perspective
3. The Lollard Communities
Schools and Conventicles
Lollard Activities Outside the Conventicles
Lollards and Recruitment to the Sect
4. Lollards and the Family
Lollard Beliefs and the Family
Family Relationships in the Lollard Communities
5. Gender and Social Status
Prominent Women in Lollardy
Prominent Men and Elite Men in Lollardy
6. Conclusion: Lollardy, Gender, and Late Medieval Religious Culture
Women and Late Medieval Religion
Lollardy and Orthodoxy
Gender and Religion
Appendix. The Lollard Communities
Alnwick's Prosecutions in East Anglia, 1428–31
Chedworth's Prosecutions in the Chiltern Hills, 1462–64
Langton's Prosecutions in the Diocese of Salisbury, 1485–91
J. Blythe's Prosecutions in the Diocese of Salisbury, 1499
Audley's Prosecutions in the Diocese of Salisbury, 1502–21
Prosecutions and Detections in the Dioceses of Salisbury and Winchester Before Bishop Longland, c. 1521
Smith's and Longland's Prosecutions in the Diocese of Lincoln, 1500–1530
Prosecutions in London and Environs and Hertfordshire, 1500–1530
Prosecutions in Essex and Hertfordshire, 1500–1530
Warham's Prosecutions in the Diocese of Canterbury, 1511–12
Hales's and G. Blyth's Prosecutions in Coventry, 1485–1512
Totals
Notes
Works Cited
Index
