Parochial Conformity and Voluntary Religion in Late-Medieval England

1991 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 173-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gervase Rosser
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Church Building ◽  
Late Medieval England

Much evidence has been brought to light recently to demonstrate the vitality of religious life among the English laity on the eve of the Reformation. Attention has been drawn to the fact that, in the period before the advent of Protestantism, lay men and women evinced a high degree of commitment to their church. The religious changes of the sixteenth century are as pressing a historical problem as ever; moreover, they provide a valuable litmus with which to test the qualities of the late-medieval church. Nevertheless, there is a danger that the fascination of the Reformation question, together with the bias of documentary sources on lay religion towards the latter end of the medieval period, may impoverish our appreciation of the ways in which, for a thousand years, Christians in Britain had been shaping their religious lives. To take a long view of religious voluntarism may help to put the developments of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in a proper perspective. There has also been a tendency, in discussion of lay religious life in the late middle ages, to accept the institutional framework as given. Yet in practice that framework was both adjustable and expressive of a wide range of lay initiatives in religion. That men and women were prepared to lend material support to a variety of religious institutions is apparent from any medieval collection of wills or set of churchwardens' accounts. But what, exactly, was expressed by such support? This is not an easy question to answer. Any assessment calls for an understanding of the medieval parish, not as a legal abstraction, nor yet as a supposedly ‘natural’ community of inhabitants, but as a more or less adaptable framework shaped by, and in turn shaping, the lives of the members. The evidence of religious activity, from processions to church-building, is, so far as it goes, not hard to find. But what of the parochial structure which gave meaning to these gestures, and which could in turn be modified by them?

Arbitration, Delegation, Conservation: Marginalized Mechanisms for Dispute Resolution in the Pre-Reformation English Church

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 165-181
Author(s):  
R. N. Swanson
Keyword(s):  
Dispute Resolution ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Practical Importance ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Reformation England ◽  
Late Medieval England

The records of diocesan and peculiar courts of late medieval England have received extensive academic scrutiny, generating a reasonably clear picture of a hierarchical pyramid ultimately headed by the papal curia. However, that picture is an incomplete depiction of the totality of the ecclesiastical mechanisms of dispute resolution. Existing scholarship largely ignores the use of arbitrated extra-curial settlements to avoid litigation (or, alternatively, a formal sentence). Concentration on the provincial court hierarchy also marginalizes the more directly papal courts of judges delegate and assorted local agents with judicial powers, which functioned within England between 1300 and the Reformation and bypassed the normal fora. Drawing on a wide range of scattered source material, this article introduces these neglected elements of the church's legal system, including the resident papal conservators appointed at the request of petitioners to exercise a general delegated papal judicial authority on their behalf, whose existence has been almost completely unnoticed. It suggests the significance of arbitration, delegation and conservation within the wider structure, and the need to give them much more attention if the practical importance of canon law in pre-Reformation England is to be properly understood and appreciated.

Albrecht Ritschl and the Unfinished Reformation

1980 ◽  
Vol 73 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 337-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
David W. Lotz
Keyword(s):  
Religious Life ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
The Reformation

On 10 November 1883, addressing his Göttingen colleagues and students in academic celebration of the quadricentennial of Luther's birth, Albrecht Ritschl (1822–89) delivered this remarkable verdict: “The genuine ideas of the Reformation were more concealed than disclosed in the theological works of Luther and Melanchthon.” The Wittenberg reformers themselves, not merely their epigones, had failed to systematize and safeguard those original epoch-making ideas by which they had effected their dramatic reform of religious life within the late medieval church.

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.

II. Some Aspects of the History of the Chantries during the Reign of Edward III

1932 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-50
Author(s):  
Kathleen L. Wood-Legh
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Black Death ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
Edward Iii ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of

Of all the institutions that grew up in the medieval church none has received so little attention from English scholars as the chantries. That they played an important part in the religious life of this country before the Reformation is indeed generally recognised; but our historians have done little more than to indicate the purposes for which chantries were founded, and to point out that their numbers increased greatly towards the end of the Middle Ages. In the present essay an attempt is made to render our knowledge of the chantries less vague by discussing at length some of the more important problems of their history, giving a detailed account of them during a single half century. For this purpose the reign of Edward III has been chosen, partly because its close is practically contemporaneous with our most important literary references to the chantries, those of Chaucer and Langland, but mainly because, since the Black Death occurred within a few years of the middle of this period, it affords an opportunity of studying the effects of the pestilence on this phase of English life.

Charity and Gild Solidarity in Late Medieval England

1993 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben R. McRee
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The State ◽  
Voluntary Association ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
Brothers And Sisters

When officers of Ludlow's Palmers' Gild composed their reply to a royal inquiry into the state of English gilds in 1388–89, they included the following description of their organization's plan for assisting indigent brothers and sisters:When it happens that any of the brothers or sisters of the gild shall have been brought to such want, through theft, fire, shipwreck, fall of a house, or any other mishap, that they have not enough to live on; then once, twice, and thrice, but not a fourth time, as much help shall be given to them, out of the goods of the gild, as the rector and stewards, having regard to the deserts of each, and to the means of the gild, shall order; so that whoever bears the name of this gild, shall be upraised again, through the ordinances, goods, and help of his fellows.The same gild also offered aid to sick, aged, and wrongfully imprisoned members and set aside money for dowries so that daughters of families that had experienced unexpected misfortune might marry or enter nunneries.The Palmers' Gild was a religious fraternity, a type of voluntary association that enjoyed tremendous popularity during the late Middle Ages. These gilds were lay associations of men and women that devoted themselves to a variety of religious and social undertakings. Unlike the more well known craft fraternities, religious gilds drew their members from a variety of professions and made no attempts at industrial regulation.

The Word Eclipsed? Preaching in the Early Middle Ages

Traditio ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 77-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Emmet Mclaughlin
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The City ◽  
Aesthetic Preferences

The modern interest in and study of medieval sermon literature was first driven by a combination of confessional acrimony and professional scholarship. L. Bourgain, Albert Lecoy de la Marche, Richard Albert, Rudolf Cruel, Anton Linsenmayer, and G. R. Owst combed through the archives to uncover the written remains of medieval preaching, and what they discovered came as a surprise to those who had been raised on the Protestant black legend of a mute medieval Church. For quantity and variety the period from the twelfth century to the Reformation must count as one (or several) of the great ages of pulpit activity. In fact, on the eve of the Reformation there was some concern that too much was being preached too often. For example, as a result of complaints by laity and clergy alike, in 1508 the Bishop of Breslau ordered a limit on the number of sermons preached in the city. To be sure, modern judgments concerning the quality of that preaching in both style and content vary with the confessional stance and aesthetic preferences of the individual scholar. But of the late medieval dedication to preaching in season and out there can be no doubt.

Matthew Cheung Salisbury, Worship in Medieval England. Past Imperfect Series. Croydon: ARC Humanities Press, 2018, 92 pages.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 315-318
Author(s):  
Jane Beal
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Liturgical Studies ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
The University

Matthew Cheung Salisbury, a Lecturer in Music at University and Worcester College, Oxford, and a member of the Faculty of Music at the University of Oxford, wrote this book for ARC Humanities Press’s Past Imperfect series (a series comparable to Oxford’s Very Short Introductions). Two of his recent, significant contributions to the field of medieval liturgical studies include The Secular Office in Late-Medieval England (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015) and, as editor and translator, Medieval Latin Liturgy in English Translation (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2017). In keeping with the work of editors Thomas Heffernan and E. Ann Matter in The Liturgy of the Medieval Church, 2nd ed. (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2005) and Richard W. Pfaff in The Liturgy of Medieval England: A History (Cambridge University Press, 2009), this most recent book provides a fascinating overview of the liturgy of the medieval church, specifically in England. Salisbury’s expertise is evident on every page.

Monastic Apostasy in late Medieval England

1981 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Harper-Bill
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
Late Medieval England

References to apostates from the monastic life appear frequently in ecclesiastical and governmental records of the later Middle Ages, yet little attempt has been made to examine motives for flight or the measures which were adopted to recapture the fugitives. The problem of apostasy regularly attracted the attention of the legislators of the Orders, bishops were anxious both to restrain the culprits and to mitigate the severity of vengeful superiors, and the crown lent the weight of the secular arm to attempts at coercion, although an appeal to Rome might often avert the worst consequences of flight. The ecclesiastical authorities were, of course, concerned that no religious should prejudice his hopes of salvation by the rejection of his profession. Those who without the licence of their superior emigrated to another Order, accepted a secular benefice, or wandered off in search of carnal pleasure or spiritual benefits must be restrained, and those sinners and criminals who sought to evade the jurisdiction of their superiors must be punished. Most serious, however, were those cases in which apostasy was a symptom of dissension within the community and polarisation into factions, and where the fugitive sought from outside the walls to disrupt the life of the cloister until he might return to dominate his monastery.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document