Peasants and Religion

Abstract

As in previous chapters, a study of the religious experience of English peasantry in the late Middle Ages illustrates the potential interconnectedness of the peasantry with worlds which extended not only beyond localities and regions but also beyond nations. There were clearly differences of access to religion between those living in towns and those living in the countryside but, in essentials, there were no fundamental distinctions of faith or understanding between the majority of rural dwellers and urban townspeople. Where differences did exist, as for instance in attendance at the sermons of the greater preachers of the day, they were consequences of the relative immediacy of urban life, and, importantly, rural dwellers could still enjoy occasional access, as sermons directed at the peasantry clearly reveal.¹ The argument of this chapter is that both through personal enquiry and through the institutions of church, the peasantry was integrated into far-reaching religious and intellectual communities. There were, of course, local peculiarities to that experience and, generally speaking, religious expression in the countryside lacked the sophistication of that in towns but these differences of scale were likely to be less significant than the shared beliefs and assumptions which such universal membership helped generate.