Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Richard Whitford: The Pipe or Tun of the Life of Perfection

Richard Whitford: The Pipe or Tun of the Life of Perfection

Alakas, Brandon

Hardcover

Series: Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies

Medieval & Renaissance HistoryLiterary Criticism

ISBN10: 1835537693
ISBN13: 9781835537695
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Published: Jan 6 2026
Pages: 560
Weight: 2.72
Height: 1.69 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

Richard Whitford's Pipe or Tun of the Life of Perfection is the most important text produced at Syon Abbey in the period immediately preceding the English Reformation. A member off the spiritually elite community of Birgittine priest brothers, Whitford wrote the Pipe to assist his initial audience of female religious, first, to better understand their vocation and, second, to defend religious life against increasingly forceful attacks from evangelical reformers. Published in 1532, three years before Henry VIII's break with Rome, Whitford's Pipe provides a detailed vision of late medieval monastic spirituality, as well as responses to evangelical critiques of religious life and the Catholic Church. The Pipe was read by both religious and lay audiences and highlights how Whitford and the Birgittine community blended traditional monastic practice with humanist pedagogy and piety to encourage religious renewal on the cusp of the English Reformation.

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