John Mirk's Festial: Orthodoxy, Lollardy, and the Common People in Fourteenth-Century England. By Judy Ann Ford. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006. Pp. iv + 168. $80.

Judy Ann Ford's book reopens the issue of whether Mirk's Festial is a response to Lollardy. She argues that "An analysis of the narratives in Mirk's Festial reveals that he was engaged in a program of eroding public receptivity to the threats to the establishment posed by Lollardy and rebellion" (p. 147). The main body of her book provides a close analysis of the exempla and other narratives within the sermons to reveal their underlying theology and ecclesiology. There are, she argues, three strands to Mirk's attack on Lollardy and rebellion: his support of, first, the sacerdotal authority of the clergy, second, the authority of the secular rulers and, third, the authority of Christian tradition over that of the Bible (p. 147). Additionally, the book considers the Festial in relation to late-medieval lay piety.

Valerie Edden
University of Birmingham