David Knowles

Bare ruined choirs : the dissolution of the English monasteries

This is a paperback edition of a classic work: David Knowles abridgement of Volume 3 of The Religious Orders in England. Opening with vignettes of monastic life in the early Tudor period, the book examines the changing economic and religious climate as a prelude to the sombre story of the Suppression. The fate of the monastic buildings and lands and of the religious themselves is described in full, and numerous engravings and photographs illuminate this account of the transition from splendour to desolation.

The Evolution of Medieval Thought.

The legacy of the Ancient World the Renaissance of the eleventh and twelfth centuries the new universities the rediscovery of Aristotle the achievement of the thirteenth century the breakdown of the medieval synthesis.