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John Mirk's Festial

Edited from British Library MS Cotton Claudius A. II, Volume 2

Susan Powell editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:18th Aug '11

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

John Mirk's Festial cover

The Festial, most probably composed in the late 1380s by the Augustinian canon, John Mirk, of Lilleshall Abbey, Shropshire, was the most popular and influential collection of sermons in English in the late medieval and early Tudor period, surviving in many copies, and printed by Caxton and his successors. The collection was designed to be accessible and entertaining, as well as orthodox, to counter the success of Lollard preaching, and taught both the priests who used the sermons, as well as their audiences, the fundamentals of the Christian faith and doctrine, illustrated by many stories. The Festial is the only English sermon collection to be printed in England before the Reformation and is probably the most frequently printed work of its time before religious change made it unacceptable.

ISBN: 9780199590377

Dimensions: 223mm x 149mm x 45mm

Weight: 792g

514 pages