Abstract
A fifteenth-century confessor, possibly from the north Midlands, wrote down the following advice for an unknown married man.1 It might have seemed depressing. Like everyone else, he was a sinner: unlike the ‘innocent dog’, he continually provoked the Lord; as a lowly ‘dog’, not a man, he might presume to enter a church. But there was hope. He could ask for mercy: his tears, even if those of his heart alone, might wash the feet of Jesus on the cross. He was to hear mass reverently, and while the clerks were singing, look at the books of the church — especially the Gospel and the Legend of Saints. On weekdays, when returning home, he was to say the Psalter of the Virgin Mary, and at dinner silence was to be broken only by readings in the vernacular to edify his wife and children. Further meditation could continue with confessors until vespers; after supper — a light one, to avoid gobbling — he was to go up to his ‘cell’ to pray. When finally in bed, he was advised to search his heart for the evil and good he had done that day.
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Notes
W.A. Pantin, ‘Instructions for a Devout and Literate Layman’, in Medieval Learning and Literature: Essays Presented to Richard Wilson Hunt, ed. J.J.G. Alexander and M.T. Gibson (Oxford, 1976), pp. 398–422.
For the following see especially: C. Morris, The Papal Monarchy. The Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (Oxford, 1989);
G. Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1996); Southern, Western Society and the Church;
J.A.F. Thomson, The Western Church in the Middle Ages (London, 1998), part ii.
A. Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (1988; Cambridge, 1997), pp. 22–57.
For the following see: P.J. Geary, Furta Sacra: Theft of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton, 1978), esp. pp. 25–8;
B. Abou-el-Haj, The Medieval Cult of Saints. Formations and Transformations (Cambridge, 1994), esp. pp. 16, 31;
T. Head (ed.), Medieval Hagiography. An Anthology (New York, 2000)
A. M. Kleinberg, Prophets in their own Country. Living Saints and the Making of Sainthood in the Late Middle Ages (Chicago, 1992), pp. 21–39;
K. Ashley and P. Sheingorn, Writing Faith. Text, Sign and History in the Miracles of Saints (Chicago, 1999), esp. chap. 2;
R.C. Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in Medieval England (London, 1977), chap. 11;
M. Bull, The Miracles of Our Lady of Rocamadour (Woodbridge, 1999), esp. p. 29.
Quoted in J. Sumption, Pilgrimage. An Image of Medieval Religion (London, 1975), p. 44.
For a recent general survey: J. Burton, Monastic and Religious Orders in Britain 1000–1300 (Cambridge, 1994), chaps 2–6.
H. Leyser, Hermits and the New Monasticism. A Study of Religious Communities in Western Europe 1000–1150 (London, 1984), pp. 1–4 and passim.
R. Foreville and G. Keir (eds), The Book of St Gilbert (Oxford, 1987), pp. 16–18;
B. Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertine Order c.1130-c.1300 (Oxford, 1995) esp. chap. 1; and for numbers of Gilbertine houses, ibid., pp. 448–9.
For a general survey, see C.H. Lawrence, The Friars. The Impact of the Early Mendicant Movement on Western Society (London, 1994).
For the following see: A. Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1978), pp. 337–42. Vauchez, Sainthood, esp., chaps 11, 12, 13.
But for continuities with earlier penitential practices, see S. Hamilton, The Practice of Penance 900–1050 (Woodbridge, 2001), esp. pp. 202, 209.
M. Chibnall (ed.), The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis (6 vols; Oxford, 1969–80), iv, 102–9;
D. Greenway (ed.), Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum (Oxford, 1996), 702 (x, 2).
D. Crouch, ‘The Culture of Death in the Anglo-Norman World’, in Anglo-Norman Political Culture and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, ed. C. Warren-Hollister (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 157–80.
Quoted in R. Bartlett, England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings (Oxford, 2000), p. 592.
J. Le Goff, La naissance du purgatoire (Paris, 1981);
R.W. Southern, ‘Between Heaven and Hell: A Review of J. Le Goff La Naissance du Purgatoire’, Times Literary Supplement (18 June 1982), pp. 651–2.
C. Burgess, ‘“A Fond Thing Vainly Invented”: An Essay on Purgatory and Pious Motive in Late Medieval England’, in Parish Church and People: Local Studies in Lay Religion, 1350–1750, ed. S.J. Wright (London, 1988), pp. 56–84.
Ibid., p. 61; H. Leyser, ‘Hugh the Carthusian’, in St Hugh of Lincoln, ed. H. Mayr-Harting (Oxford, 1987), p. 13.
J-C. Schmitt, Les revenants: les vivants et les morts dans la société médievale (Paris, 1994), esp. pp. 79–83, 110.
R.W. Southern, St Anselm. A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 95, 181–6, 344–5.
H.W. Saunders (ed.), The First Register of Norwich Cathedral Priory (Norfolk Record Society, xi; London,1939), pp. 30–3.
For the following see C.R. Cheney, From Becket to Langton: English Church Government 1170–1213 (Manchester, 1956);
M. Brett, The English Church under Henry I (London, 1975).
For the council at Windsor in 1070, see D. Whitelock, M. Brett and C. N.L. Brooke (eds), Councils and Synods with Other Documents Relevant to the English Church (1981), ii, pp. 577–80.
F. Barlow (ed.), English Episcopal Acta XI, Exeter 1041–1184 (Oxford, 1996), ii, No. 188.
J.E. Burton (ed.), English Episcopal Acta V, York 1070–1154 (Oxford, 1988), No. 22.
L.E. Boyle, ‘The Fourth Lateran Council and Manuals of Popular Theology’, in T. Heffernan (ed.), The Popular Literature of Medieval England (Knoxville, 1985), pp. 30–43.
J.T. McNeill and H.M. Gamer (eds), Medieval Handbooks of Penance (New York, 1928; repr. 1963), p. 354.
M. Haren, Sin and Society in Fourteenth-Century England. A Study of the Memoriale Presbitorum (Oxford, 2000), esp. chap. 12.
F.M. Powicke and C.R. Cheney (eds), Councils and Synods with Other Documents Relating to the English Church (1205–1313) (2 vols; Oxford, 1964), i, pp. 72.
M.D. Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background (Oxford, 1963), pp. 134–8, and passim;
C. Cannon, ‘Monastic Productions’, J.V. Fleming, ‘Friars and Literature’, M. Curry Woods and R. Copeland, ‘Classroom and Confession’, in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. D. Wallace (Cambridge, 1999), chaps 12–14.
M. Camille, Mirror in Parchment. the Luttrell Psalter and the Making of Medieval England (London, 1998), esp. p. 177. Although the text is in Latin, Camille argues that we need to recognize the importance of French and English in the way that Geoffrey would have understood the visual clues (ibid., pp. 160–72).
E.W. Tristram, English Wall Painting of the Fourteenth Century (London, 1955), p. 265.
Southern, Grosseteste, pp. 272–91. For late medieval English bishops: R.G. Davies, ‘The Episcopate’, in Profession, Vocation and Culture in Later Medieval England: Essays Dedicated to the Memory of A.R. Myers, ed. C.H. Clough (Liverpool, 1982), pp. 51–89.
R.W. Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1970).
A.E. Malden (ed.), The Canonization of St Osmund (Wiltshire Record Society; Salisbury, 1901), pp. 35–45, 55–83.
For the following two paragraphs see: Sumption, Pilgrimage, esp. chaps 6, 7, 15; D. Dyas, Pilgrimage in Medieval English Literature 700–1500 (Cambridge, 2001), esp. pp. 2–6, 247–9;
D. Webb, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in the Medieval West (London, 1999), chaps 1–3;
D. Webb, Pilgrimage in Medieval England (London, 2000), chap. 5.
G. Dickson, ‘The Crowd at the Feet of Pope Boniface VIII: Pilgrimage, Crusade and the First Roman Jubilee’, Journal of Medieval History xxv (1999), pp. 279–307.
See W.A. Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge, 1955), pp. 189–262;
J. Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries: Religion and Secular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire (Woodbridge, 1988), chap. 3;
C. Harper-Bill, ‘English Religion after the Black Death’, in The Black Death in England, ed. W.M. Ormrod and P. Lindley (Stamford, 1996), pp. 79–123;
W.J. Dohar, The Black Death and Pastoral Leadership. The Diocese of Hereford in the Fourteenth Century (Penn Press State, 1995).
See R.N. Swanson, Religion and Devotion in Europe c.1215-c.1515 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 59–71.
P.H. Barnum (ed.), Dives and Pauper (Early English Text Society, cclxxv; London, 1976), p. 189.
F.M.M. Cowper (ed.), The Book of the Craft of Dying and Other Early English Tracts Concerning Death (London, 1917);
A.C. Cawley (ed.) and A. Rooney, Everyman and Medieval Miracles Plays (London, 1993).
R.N. Swanson, Catholic England. Faith, Religion and Observance Before the Reformation (Manchester, 1993), pp. 14–18.
H.G. Hewlett (ed.), Chronica Rogeri de Wendover qui dicitur Flores Historiarum (3 vols; Rolls Series; London, 1886–9), ii, pp. 16–35 (esp. p. 19).
J.A. Brundage, ‘Enclosure of Nuns: the Decretal Periculoso and its Commentaries’, Journal of Medieval History xx (1994), 143–58;
S.K. Elkins, Holy Women of Twelfth-Century England (London, 1988), pp. 105, 117–20, 144, 161–2; though for more positive assessments of the religious life for women, see
D.M. Kerr, Religious Life for Women c.1100-c.1350 (Oxford, 1999), pp. 238–9.
R. Brentano, Two Churches. England and Italy in the Thirteenth Century (Princeton, 1968), pp. 207, 221–2, 226, 288.
A. Vauchez, ‘Female Prophets, Visionaries, and Mystics in Medieval Europe’, in The Laity in the Middle Ages: Religious Belief and Devotional Practices, ed. D.E. Bornstein, trans. M.J. Schneider (Notre Dame, Ind., 1993), pp. 219–29.
M. Rubin, ‘Europe Remade: Purity and Danger in Late Medieval Europe’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society sixth series, xi (2001), pp. 101–24.
D. Hay, ‘The Church of England in the Later Middle Ages’, History liii (1968), pp. 35–50.
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© 2003 Andrew Brown
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Brown, A. (2003). The Universal Church and the Laity c. 1050–1500. In: Church and Society In England 1000–1500. Social History in Perspective. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4039-3739-1_3
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