Commemoration in Medieval Cambridge: (History of the University of Cambridge)

An examination of how academic colleges commemorated their patrons in a rich variety of ways. WINNER of a 2019 Cambridgeshire Association for Local History award. The people of medieval Cambridge chose to be remembered after their deaths in a variety of ways - through prayers, Masses and charitable acts, and bytomb monuments, liturgical furnishings and other gifts. The colleges of the university, alongside their educational role, arranged commemorative services for their founders, fellows and benefactors. Together with the town's parishchurches and religious houses, the colleges provided intercessory services and resting places for the dead. This collection explores how the myriad of commemorative enterprises complemented and competed as locations where the living and the dead from "town and gown" could meet. Contributors analyse the commemorative practices of the Franciscan friars, the colleges of Corpus Christi, Trinity Hall and King's, and within Lady Margaret Beaufort's Cambridge household; the depictions of academic and legal dress on memorial brasses, and the use and survival of these brasses. The volume highlights, for the first time, the role of the medieval university colleges within the family ofcommemorative institutions; in offering a new and broader view of commemoration across an urban environment, it also provides a rich case-study for scholars of the medieval Church, town, and university. JOHN S. LEE is Research Associate at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York; CHRISTIAN STEER is Honorary Visiting Fellow in the Department of History, University of York. Contributors: Sir John Baker, Richard Barber, Claire GobbiDaunton, Peter Murray Jones, Elizabeth A. New, Susan Powell, Michael Robson, Nicholas Rogers.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: In Fellowship with the Dead - Christian Steer Monuments and Memory: A University Town in Late Medieval England - John S. Lee The Commemoration of the Living and the Dead at the Friars Minor of Cambridge - Michael Robson The Foundation of Corpus Christi College Cambridge and the City of London - Richard Barber Patrons and Benefactors: The Masters of Trinity Hall in the Later Middle Ages - Elizabeth A. New and Claire Gobbi Daunton A Comparison of Academical and Legal Costume on Memorial Brasses - John Baker Commemoration at a Royal College - Peter Murray Jones Cambridge Commemorations of the Household of Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443-1509) - Susan Powell 'The Stones are all disrobed': Reasons for the Presence and Absence of Monumental Brasses in Cambridge - Nicholas Rogers Bibliography

About the Author :
CHRISTIAN STEER is Hon. Visiting Fellow in the Department of History at the University of York. CHRISTIAN STEER is Hon. Visiting Fellow in the Department of History at the University of York. Michael Robson is an emeritus fellow of St Edmund's College, Cambridge. RICHARD BARBER has had a huge influence on the study of medieval history and literature, as both a writer and a publisher. His first book on the Arthurian legend appeared in 1961, and his major works include The Knight and Chivalry (winner of the Somerset Maugham Award in 1971), Edward Prince of Wales and Aquitaine, The Penguin Guide to Medieval Europe and The Holy Grail: the History of a Legend which was widely praised and was translated into six languages. ELIZABETH A. NEW is Reader in Medieval History at Aberystwyth University, and has published widely on Christocentric devotion, the material culture of medieval religion, and medieval seals and sealing practices. PETER MURRAY JONES is a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, UK.

Review :
Will be useful to those interested in late medieval urban commemorative practice, and it offers some genuinely new insight into the peculiar commemorative environment created by the colleges and their unique educational/spiritual/social role. This is an extremely interesting collection of essays that add up to rather more than the sum of their parts. [An] excellent and thought-provoking volume. A fine production. Splendidly informative. The authors of this book have created a piece that attempts to push our understanding of the dynamics within town and countryside and their effects on networks of commemoration. A well-executed volume that serves as the first foray in contextualizing a university town against the multiplicity of commemorative strategies that were available in pre-Reformation England. In a book that draws heavily on material culture, the accompanying images and map are both necessary and excellent. This volume is a significant contribution to the study of commemoration in all its various guises and your reviewer has no hesitation in recommending this to all who study commemoration in the Middle Ages.