The Rites of Durham

The importance of the Rites of Durham as a description of a monastic cathedral on the eve of the Dissolution has long been recognized. This new edition, the first for over a century, includes an introduction, placing the Rites in the context of the religious tensions of the Reformation and attributing it to the late sixteenth-century Durham antiquary, William Claxton; a new text based on manuscripts not known to previous editors and giving the full range of variants; a detailed commentary explaining the text and testing out its accuracy against other evidence, including traces in the fabric of the cathedral and its precinct; thirty-six plates showing early drawings of the cathedral and its precinct, surviving objects relating to those described in the text; and manuscript illuminations casting light on the descriptions to be found there; and five plans to facilitate understanding of the text. In addition, a series of appendices contains a full edition of the related text which describes the windows of Durham Cathedral and its precinct; the first ever edition of the letters of William Claxton; an edition of the descriptions of the bells and the organs of the cathedral added to the Rites by the Durham antiquary James Mickleton the elder (1638-93); and a detailed analysis of the earliest surviving manuscript of the Rites, which is in the form of a paper roll. The volume is completed by a comprehensive index. MARGARET HARVEY has had a distinguished career in Durham University, with a particular research specialism in the medieval papacy; she is an authority on the religious history of late medieval and early modern Durham. After teaching medieval history and archaeology, especially of the Church, to adult students, LYNDA ROLLASON co-edited the Durham Liber Vitae (2007) and the Thorney Liber Vitae (2015); she has published a series of papers on medieval ecclesiastical history.