Abstract
Thus we come to the end of our tale. I have not attempted to rewrite the history of work, only to clarify and deepen our understanding of the role religious played in advancing new attitudes toward work and workers. This does, however, further our understanding of medieval society during the crucial eleventh through thirteenth centuries. Damian, the greatest eleventh-century innovator of religious thought and life, was the first to encourage people to look at work differently, and, fortunately, they did so. Slowly but surely medieval religious society’s perception of work changed, and this change paralleled the larger society’s new and more creative engagement with the material world. Damian’s attitudes were more appreciative of the positive aspects of work and consequently rendered more respect for the worker than was common prior to the millennium. Manual labor in particular was rescued from predominantly negative connotations and from the understanding that it was mainly punitive and fit chiefly for the lower classes. Instead, work was now seen also as rewarding and as an opportunity for all classes to take advantage of To work was to follow in the footsteps of the Son and to participate in the creative activity of the Father. To work was to live the vita apostolica, to perfect the image of God within, to strive for imitatio Christi. Thus, by promoting the sanctifying aspects of work religious provided a new motive for labor.
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Notes
See André Vauchez, “Lay People’s Sanctity in Western Europe: Evolution of a Pattern (Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries),” 21–32, in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, eds. R. Blumenfeld-Kosinski and T. Szell (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990).
Francis , Testament, 20–22, in Francis and Clare: The Complete Works, trans. Regis Armstrong and Ignatius Brady (New York: Panlist Press, 1982) p. 155.
James Doyne Dawson, “Richard FitzRalph and the Fourteenth-Century Poverty Controversies”,Journal of Ecclesiastical History 34:3 (July 1983), 320 [315–44].
Besides their stance on strict adherence to the Rule and Testament, the Fraticelli also accepted many of the eschatological tenets of Abbot Joachim of Fiore. See. Decima Douie, The Nature and the Effect of the Heresy of the Fraticelli (Manchester: University Press, 1932).
Petri Iohannis Olivi, Tractatus de usu paupere, ms Assisi 677; 2.9, 80vb, 84 vb, cited in David Burr, Olivi and Franciscan Poverty (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), p. 191.
Maria A. Moisa, “Fourteenth-Century Preachers’ Views of the Poor: Class or Status Group?” in Culture, Ideology, Politics, ed. Raphael Samuel and Gareth Jones (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), p. 166.
David Aers, “Piers Plowman: Poverty, Work and Community,” in David Aers, Community, Gender and Individual Identity: English Writing 1360–1430 (London, Routledge, 1983) p. 25.
This is the title given chapter twelve in Michael Mollat, The Poor in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthus Goldhammer (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), pp. 251–93.
Huguccio, Summa, cited in Brien Tierney, “The decretists and the ‘undeserving poor,’” Comparative Studies in Society and History 1 (1958–59): 370.
Rufinus, Sermons on ‘Decretum,’ cited in ibid., 369. See also Miri Rubin, Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 69: “Teutonicus stated that: ‘the Church need not provide for those who can work. One must take into account wholeness of body and strength of constitution when alms are dispensed.’”
Brian Tierney, Medieval Poor Law (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959), p. 119.
Cited in Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie, Montaillou, trans. Barbara Bray (New York: Randon House, 1979), p. 340. For full discussion of friars and property rights see Virpr Mäkiner, Property Rights in the Late Medieval Discussion on Franciscan Poverty (Leuven: Peeters, 2001).
Aubrey Gwynn, “Richard Fitz Ralph, Archbishop of Armagh, Pt. VI,” Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review of Letters, Philosophy and Science, 26 (1937): 51–52. During this period Edward III issued a writ to London sheriffs to seize friars’ property.
See A. G. Little, “A royal inquiry into property held by the mendicant friars in England, 1349 and 1350,” in A.G. Little, Franciscan Papers, Lists and Documents (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1945), pp. 144–45.
B. H. Putnam, The Enforcement of the Statute of Labourers during the First Decade after the Black Death, 1349–1359 (New York: AMS Press, 1970), p. 11.
Kate Crassons, “The Workman is Worth his Mede’: Poverty, Labor, and Charity in the Sermon of William Taylor,” in The Middle Ages at Work, ed. Kellie Robertson and Michael Uebel (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 95.
Lawrence Clopper, “Songes of Rechelesnesse”: Langland and the Franciscans (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997), pp. 82–85.
Kelli Robertson, Laborer’s Two Bodies: Literary and Legal productions in Britain, 1350–1500 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 99.
Epstein , Wage, Labor, and Guilds in Medieval Europe (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 1991), p. 1156.
George Ovitt, The Restoration of Pefection: Labor and Technology in Medieval Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987), p. 163,
and Jacques LeGoff Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 114–115, both acknowledge that the church “modified its millennium-old ideal of spiritualized, communal, and inner-directed labor” (Ovitt, ibid.), but neither explore how the message of work theology permeated the work place.
See Gervase Rosser, “Going to the Fraternity Feast: Commensality and Social Relations in Late Medieval England,” Journal of British Studies 33 (October 1994): 431–32;
and Ben R. McRee, “Religion, Guilds, and Civic Order: The Case of Norwich in the Late Middle Ages,” Speculum 67 (1992): 70.
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© 2006 Patricia Ranft
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Ranft, P. (2006). Epilogue. In: The Theology of Work. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-12145-5_10
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