Training in Superstition? Monasteries and Popular Religion in Late Medieval and Reformation England

2007 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARTIN HEALE
Keyword(s):  
Popular Religion ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Important Ingredient ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Popular Piety ◽  
Reformation England ◽  
Religious Lives ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
Financial Measure

The monasteries of late medieval England are regularly viewed as marginal to the religious lives of the laity, and have been largely omitted from the revisionist depiction of the pre-Reformation Church. Similarly the Dissolution has often been seen primarily as a financial measure, with limited religious motivations or consequences. This article seeks to challenge both these conclusions by drawing attention to the role played by religious houses of all sizes as centres of national and local pilgrimage. It is argued that monasteries exerted a strong and enduring influence over popular piety through their saints' cults, and as a result attracted the hostility of both Erasmian and evangelical reformers in Henrician England. This hostility should be seen as an important ingredient in the Dissolution.

Superior Spirituality Versus Popular Piety in Late-Medieval England

2006 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 89-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. K. McHardy
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Popular Piety ◽  
John Wycliffe ◽  
Church Life ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Late Medieval England

When K. B. McFarlane wrote his biography of John Wycliffe he was surprised to find that the hero who emerged was not Wycliffe himself but his implacable opponent, William Courtenay, the archbishop of Canterbury from 1381 to 1396. ‘Justice has never been done to Courtenay’s high qualities, above all to the skill and magnanimity with which he led his order through the crisis that now threatened it’, he wrote admiringly, adding by way of explanation that, ‘Since the reformation his has been the unpopular side.’ The impression McFarlane gave is that there were two ecclesiastical camps in late fourteenth-century England: heretical and orthodox. The fabric of English church life was fractured then, for ever, by the beliefs and work of Wycliffe and his adherents; was not McFarlane’s biography entitled John Wycliffe and the Beginnings of English Nonconformity? Yet McFarlane’s assessment of heresy was that this was far from being a monolithic movement; indeed, in a private letter he wrote, ‘Wycliffe was merely an extremist in a widespread reform movement.’

Veneration and renovation at a small Norfolk priory: St. Leonard's, Norwich in the later middle ages*

2003 ◽  
Vol 76 (194) ◽  
pp. 431-449
Author(s):  
M. R. V. Heale
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Popular Religion ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Large Collection ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
The Many

Abstract Much remains obscure about the many small monasteries of late medieval England, and it is generally thought that they made little contribution to the religious life of the country. The large collection of accounts surviving from St. Leonard's priory, Norwich (a daughter house of the cathedral priory), however, presents an interesting picture of a priory sustained almost entirely by offerings to its image of St. Leonard. This cult continued to attract broad support throughout the later middle ages, with its income reaching a peak at over forty pounds per year in the mid fifteenth century. Almost the entirety of this windfall was set aside for a systematic renovation of the monastery, which can be chronicled in some detail. Although the cult was on the wane by 1500, the importance of the priory for the popular religion of the region emerges clearly.

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