Living and Dying in England, 1100-1540: The Monastic Experience (The Ford Lectures, 1989)

This is a fascinating account of daily life in Westminster Abbey, one of medieval England's most important monastic communities. It is also a broad scholarly exploration of some major themes in the social history of the Middle Ages by one of its most distinguished historians. Barbara Harvey exploits the exceptionally rich archives of the Benedictine foundation of Westminster to the full, offering numerous vivid insights into the lives of the Westminster monks, their pensioners, and their patrons. She examines their charitable practices, their food and drink, illness and death, the abbey servants and the institution of corrodies--a key aspect of the abbey's finances. Harvey sets her findings in the context both of other religious institutions and of the secular world. Full of color and interest, Living and Dying in England is a highly readable and authoritative contribution to medieval history.