Felicity Hill - Excommunication in Thirteenth-Century England: Communities, Politics, and Publicity

The research for this book was made possible initially by doctoral funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (via the University of East Anglia), then by fourth-year funding from the Scouloudi Foundation via the Institute of Historical Research. I was able to begin the process of turning the PhD thesis into this book as a Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. I am enormously grateful to supervisors, colleagues, and friends from my undergraduate degree at Manchester, my MA at University College London, my PhD at UEA, my year at the Institute of Historical Research, my postdoc in Cambridge, and finally now to my colleagues at St Andrews. I have benefitted throughout from encouragement and generosity without which I could never have produced this book. John Sabapathy has provided invaluable advice throughout the last decade, at each stage of this books development. He generously read almost the entire manuscript; his comments have improved the text in a great many places. I am likewise grateful to John Hudson for reading a full draft and for his comments. Ian Forrest, who has revealed that he was one of the reviewers for OUP, provided me both with much appreciated encouragement and with helpful suggestions for improvements. The recommendations of the anonymous reviewers were also invaluable. John Arnold kindly read some chapter drafts. I have benefitted a great deal from Johns kindness and counsel in Cambridge and since. I would further like to thank my PhD supervisor Nicholas Vincent, who of course read the text in its earlier thesis form, for giving me free rein as a doctoral student, and for his help and guidance since. The process of turning the thesis into a book was greatly facilitated by the suggestions of my examiners, Sarah Hamilton and Tom Licence. Sarah has been generous with her time on numerous occasions. Ben Savill honoured the writing pact. David dAvray, who piqued my interest in excommunication back in 2011, has been consistently kind and supportive throughout my studies and beyond. He helped a great deal with both appendices, providing editorial assistance with the second.

I am grateful to a great many more people with whom I had discussions, from whom I received advice, and who helped make the process of researching and writing a PhD then a book enjoyable. These include Sophie Ambler, Rob Bartlett, David Carpenter, Stephen Church, Peter Clarke, Emily Corran, Caitlin Ellis, Will Eves, Caroline Goodson, Julia King, Donald Logan, Stephen Mossman, Simon Parsons, Danica Summerlin, Alice Taylor, Emily Ward, Sarah White, the fellows of Corpus Christi College, and all my colleagues in the Department of Medieval History at St Andrews. Emily, Lesley, and Sam, as well as Caitlin, helped me to keep writing (about social isolation) through lockdowns. In addition to various university libraries, the IHR, Warburg Institute, and British library provided indispensable resources. The estate of the late Jeffrey Denton kindly gave me many of his books, which have been much appreciated and used. Finally, I would like to thank my friends and family, in particular Gemma, my parents, and my grandmother, who sadly never got to see the book completed.

December 2021