‘Rites of Passage’ was the theme of the Second York Interdisciplinary Conference on the Fourteenth Century, organized by Dr P.J.P. Goldberg (to whom we owe the theme) and the editors of this volume and held at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, in July 2001. This occasional series of conferences is intended to draw together scholars working in different disciplines in order to share information, ideas, methodologies and problems relating to the field of fourteenth-century studies. The event proved as productive as its predecessor, and demonstrated once again the special value of the interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary approaches promoted by the Centre for Medieval Studies at York.

All the contributors to this volume presented papers at the 2001 conference, and most of the articles published here comprise revised versions of those papers. We are especially grateful to all the delegates (including those who gave papers not included here) for the intellectual stimulation of the conference and for the encouragement and commitment that has led to publication. This is a fitting place to express our special thanks to Jeremy Goldberg for his leadership within the conference and his guidance in publication planning, Louise Harrison for administrative support, to Isabel Davis for assistance with copy-editing, and to Caroline Palmer at Boydell & Brewer for her usual enthusiasm and support.