Description: Matthew Paris is one of the most remarkable and renowned figures in the cultural history of medieval England. A career-monk at the influential Benedictine abbey of St Albans, Paris' creative work bears witness to the rich intellectual, artistic, social and political environment of the monasteries and their lasting impact on the wider world. His compelling accounts of recent history and the lives of legendary saints and churchmen are a distinctive and valuable guide to the emergence of the English kingdom and its place in European Christendom. His accomplished and vivid artwork brings into focus both the craft skill and visual sensibility stimulated by the medieval Church. This systematic survey, the first published for almost seventy years, brings together expert scholarship and offers fresh, interdisciplinary perspectives on Paris', his life's work as writer, artist, cartographer and maker of manuscript books, and its enduring legacy.
Brief description: James G. Clark is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. He has written widely on the culture, intellectual and religious life of monasteries in medieval England and their legacies after the Reformation. His books include A Monastic Renaissance (2004), The Benedictines in the Middle Ages (2011) and The Dissolution of the Monasteries (2021).
Review Quotes: 'A compelling collection of essays that brings together scholars to shed new light on the highly distinctive monk of St Albans: Matthew Paris, historian, chronicler, biographer, hagiographer, cartographer, scribe, and artist. There is an appealing freshness here, that enriches our understanding of the breadth and depth of Matthew's achievements, his abilities acutely to observe those with whom he came into contact, his understanding of his own environment and the world around him, and to convey the 'lived experience' of one of England's great Benedictine abbeys.' Janet Burton, Professor Emerita, University of Wales Trinity Saint David