'The most contentious of terms': Towards a New Understanding of Late Medieval `Popular Religion'

2003 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Salvador Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Popular Religion ◽  
Late Medieval

The Nativity of Christ

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linden Bicket
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Popular Religion ◽  
Fine Art ◽  
Late Medieval

This chapter explores Brown’s depiction of the babe of Bethlehem in his winter ‘homilies’, or festive journalism. The chapter examines Brown’s fusion of the folkloric and magical rituals of late medieval popular religion with the modern short story form. It outlines Brown’s knowledge of nativity poetry, fine art, and drama, and studies the ways in which he inserts these earlier traditions into his nativity poetry and prose. It focuses especially on the Eucharistic implications of Brown’s nativity poetry.

The treatment of women in the historiography of late medieval popular religion

1996 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 345-360
Author(s):  
Becky R. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Popular Religion ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Common

AbstractThe study of medieval European popular religion is broad and diverse, drawing upon a variety of sources and addressing a multiplicity of questions. Underlying that diversity, however, is a single quest: to unearth and analyze religion as it was experienced and practiced by the "common folk".1 For the past twenty years women have been explicitly and deliberately included in that analysis. Evident in the literature, however, are diverse and divergent opinions concerning both the ways by which to ascertain and interpret women's practices and beliefs, and their significance for the study of popular religion. This article explores those opinions and some of their implications.

The Most Traversed Bridge: A Reconsideration of Elite and Popular Religion in Late Medieval Ireland

2006 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 120-129
Author(s):  
Salvador Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Popular Religion ◽  
Traditional Religion ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Social Orders ◽  
Medieval Ireland

Recent years have witnessed the study of late medieval religion change and develop almost beyond recognition. In particular, the phenomenon of ‘popular’ or ‘traditional’ religion has increasingly been placed under the microscope. A succession of studies has questioned the view that an unbridgeable chasm existed between the religious sensibilities of the privileged echelons of society (the higher clergy and members of the nobility) and those of the lower social orders. The apparent sea-change in our understanding of how many expressions of belief and devotion were shared across a wide social spectrum has led, however, to more questions than answers.

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.

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.

Popular and Elite Religion: Feastdays and Preaching

2006 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 162-179
Author(s):  
David D’Avray
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Popular Religion ◽  
Church History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Books Of Hours ◽  
Similar Point ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
Great Force

In rejecting the distinction between elite and popular religion, Eamon Duffy’s presidential address echoes a much earlier contribution to Studies in Church History. Arnaldo Momigliano found the dichotomy misleading where Christian historians of Late Antiquity were concerned, as Dermot Fenlon points out later in this volume, showing that the other historians too were thinking along the same lines. In the present volume Professor Duffy makes a similar point with great force for a different time and place, late medieval England. Here and in his Stripping of the Altars the liturgy has a key role in his argument. He observes that Books of Hours or Primers are a form of the monastic office. Taking his thought further on lines he clearly intends, one could argue that the psychology of prayer is similar in the two cases and similar to the rosary also. In all three cases thoughts need not be about the words, for the focus of the prayer may be different, but the words work as a mantra to shut out distractions and create a devout frame of mind.

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