One and Many: Parish Church Planning in Late Medieval England

Abstract

Recurrent in architectural historiography is the notion that large-scale building projects in premodern societies were inherently elite undertakings. In One and Many: Parish Church Planning in Late Medieval England, Zachary Stewart examines a well-known but inadequately studied exception to this rule: themedieval parish church. He focuses on formally integrated parish churches built in England during the two centuries between the Black Death (1348–49) and the HenricianReformation (1534–47), a paradigmatic example being the grandmarket church of St. PeterMancroft inNorwich (ca. 1440–65). Analysis of the facture, form, and function of these buildings, whose flexible configuration can be compared to the modern “open plan,” suggests that they empowered a broad spectrum of individuals to negotiate the complex relations that defined the parish as a one-and-many social entity.