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Religion and Devotion in Europe, c. 1215-c. 1515. By R. N. Swanson. [Cambridge Medieval Textbooks.] (NewYork: Cambridge University Press. 1995. Pp. xv, 377. $69.95 clothbound; $18.95 paperback.)
This volume presents a general survey of Latin Christianity from the Fourth Lateran Council to the eve of the Reformation. Aimed at a general audience of undergraduates and scholarly non-specialists, it eschews all but essential footnotes and documentation.Yet by condensing the disparate themes of late medieval Christianity into a compact and orderly synthesis, it also offers specialists many useful reminders of how particular issues and movements reflected the underlying dynamics of the era.
As the title suggests, the book focuses less on institutional Christianity than on the ways people understood and lived their religion. However, the Church as "the body of the faithful" still plays the dominant role in Swanson's approach: for him the crucial...