My buddy Clive Burgess, who has died aged 71, was an authority on late medieval spiritual practices and beliefs in England.
Through the years he had various lecturing and analysis posts in a variety of organisations, primarily at Royal Holloway, College of London, the place in 2005 he was appointed as a everlasting lecturer in medieval historical past. He remained there till his retirement as a reader in 2019, and was subsequently made professor emeritus.
He was additionally an everyday participant on the Harlaxton Medieval Symposium, a world multidisciplinary convention on the center ages at which, in 2019, he was introduced with a quantity of essays in his honour. In retirement he continued his analysis and writing, most not too long ago learning the spiritual patronage of Dick Whittington, lord mayor of London within the late 14th and early fifteenth centuries.
Clive was born in Chatham, Kent, the second son of Frank, a mechanical engineer, and Kathleen (nee Henshall), a secretary. Rising up in close by Strood along with his elder brother, Keith, he attended Sir Joseph Williamson’s Mathematical faculty in Rochester, after which he gained a historical past diploma at Corpus Christi Faculty, Oxford, in 1974.
He remained at Corpus to undertake postgraduate analysis on the data of the parish of All Saints in Bristol – a wealthy archive that helped him to construct up a very detailed image of non secular life there within the final century earlier than the Reformation. That work shaped the idea not solely of his 1982 doctorate, however of a protracted interval of analysis and writing that culminated in his 2018 e book The Proper Ordering of Souls.
Clive’s educational achievements had been matched by his steadfastness as a colleague, instructor and buddy. He was warm-hearted, sensible and type, a wordsmith with a eager thoughts and a prepared wit, by no means happier than when main mates on certainly one of his well-known “church crawls” or placing the world to rights over dinner. He had an eclectic style in music that ranged from Mozart to Dusty Springfield and the Rolling Stones.
He’s survived by his sister-in-law, Barbara, and his niece, Alex.
