European World 11/15
Beat Kümin
Religious Life c. 1500
Key message: religion played a crucial role in people’s everyday lives
1. Late medieval theology
Within a system known as Scholasticism, theologians debated different concepts
of salvation (dividing into a more ‘optimistic’ via moderna and a more ‘pessimist’
Augustinian school). Christ’s death on the cross had saved mankind collectively,
but individual justification was by no means assured. Following judgement, souls
were either sent to hell or to Purgatory to cleanse them of the blemishes of sin
before entry into heaven (prayers could reduce the required time, which created
strong bonds between the living and the dead). Saints offered assistance as
helpers, role models and intercessors. Official doctrines (like transubstantiation,
the transformation of bread/wine into body/blood of Christ during mass) were
disseminated through a combination of oral, written, visual and musical media.
2. Church and clergy
Up to ten per cent of a town’s population could be in holy orders. Clergymen
enjoyed privileges like exemption from taxation and separate law courts. Secular
priests participated in the cure of souls, regular clergy (who lived in a community
according to a regula/rule) prayed and worked in monasteries (first founded by St
Benedict), friaries (St Francis of Assisi) and nunneries. In return for financial
support through tithes, fees and voluntary payments, people expected the parish
clergy to reside. Priests received no ‘professional’/seminary training, but growing
numbers spent some time studying at universities.
3. Lay religious life
Princes and cities gradually encroached on ecclesiastical powers in the late Middle
Ages. From the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), lay people had to attend their
parish church regularly (and to take communion at least at Easter), to lead a
Christian life (within the framework of the seven deadly sins and the seven works
of mercy), to partake of the sacraments (all of which needed clerical mediation),
and to perform good works (charity, prayers, pilgrimages etc, depending in
character and extent on people’s wealth and status). Around 1500, sources like
wills and churchwardens’ accounts reveal a flurry of pious activities in parishes.
4. Challenges to the system
‘Anticlerical’ feelings – which varied greatly in extent – could be triggered by
political preoccupations (popes like Alessandro Farnese/Paul III), financial abuses
(the sale of indulgences by e.g. Johannes Tetzel) and by immorality/negligence
among the lower clergy. Internal challenges included the Great Schism, disputes
between popes and councils, mysticism, Humanist calls for reform and blurred
borderlines to ‘pagan’ practices; external attacks came from ‘heretics’ like the
Czech Hussites and English Lollards (both with strong emphasis on the Bible).
Assessment
Most historians now accept that the Reformation was not ‘inevitable’. The evidence
shows structural problems and strong criticism of the Church, but also pious fervour
and reform initiatives. Was it a case of too much (diverse) piety rather than too little?
Quotes
‘Scholasticism strove for ‘the demonstration of the inherent rationality of Christian
theology … and the demonstration of the complete harmony of that theology by the
minute examination of the relationship of its various elements.’ (McGrath, Thought, 68)
‘I Jone Brytten of the parrische off Saynt Michaels in Wodstrete, syke in my body, be
quethe my sole unto Allmyghty God and unto Owre Blessid Lady and unto all the
holli company in hevon …. [Out of the proceeds of my goods, I desire:] … my body
to be byrid within the parrische chyrche … undur a stone ther preparid all redy for me
…. at the tyme of mi biriall halffe a trintall of massis … 6 pristes bysyd the parson ….
[and] 5 lb. Tappres [carried by] 5 children … 4 s. to be shared in halfpenny bread at
the tyme off mi birriall … a prist shall syng for mi sole … and all Cristin soles … for
one halffe ere …’ (Sheils, Reformation, document 13)
‘I … willingly acknowledge … that I have had in my keeping divers books containing
heresies and errors against Christian faith and the determination of all holy church,
which book I have read and declared … before many divers persons, … teaching
against the blessed sacrament of the altar …, also against the sacrament of confession
to priests and penance for satisfaction of sins. … Also I have read and declared
against our holy father the pope, …and against the veneration and worship of images
standing in churches, calling them idols…’ (Harper-Bill, Church, 115)
Master Kartner, ‘St Michael Weighing Souls’ (1480)
Bijsterveld, Arnoud-Jan, ‘Reform in the parishes of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century North Brabant’, in:
B. Kümin (ed.), Reformations Old and New (Aldershot, 1996), 21-38
Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c. 1400-1580 (2nd edn,
New Haven, 2005)
Gurevich, Aron, Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception (Cambridge, 1988)
Harper-Bill, C., The Pre-Reformation Church in England (London, 1989)
Huizinga, Johan, The Waning of the Middle Ages: a Study of the Forms of Life, Thought, and Art in
France and the Netherlands in the 14th and 15th Centuries (Harmondsworth, 1972)
Le Goff, Jacques, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (London: Scolar, 1984)
McGrath, Alister E., Reformation Thought: An Introduction (3rd edn, Oxford: Blackwell, 2000)
Sheils, W. J., The English Reformation (London, 1989)
Strauss, Gerald (ed.), Manifestations of Discontent in Germany on the Eve of the Reformation: A
Collection of Documents (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1971)
The English Parish Church Through the Centuries, Interactive CD-ROM, ed. D. Dyas (2010)