The Abbot and the Rule: Religious Life at St Albans, 1290–1349 (Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West)

Founded in 793 and dissolved in 1539, from the mid-12th-century onwards St Albans laid claim, with some justification, to being the premier Benedictine monastery in England. This book is intended as one piece of a jigsaw, ultimately aiming at providing a picture of monastic life in England. It studies the internal history of the abbey at its most powerful, dealing with both the organization of monastic life and monastic spirituality. Since a monastery has no life apart from its monks, there is a particular focus on the individual abbots during the period of the establishment's greatest prosperity.