Polluting the Sacred: Violence, Faith and the 'Civilizing' of Parishioners in Late Medieval England

Polluting the Sacred

Later Medieval Europe Managing Editor

Douglas Biggs University of Nebraska – Kearney

Editorial Board Members

Kelly DeVries Loyola College

William Chester Jordan Princeton University

Cynthia J. Neville Dalhousie University

Kathryn L. Reyerson University of Minnesota

VOLUME 3

Polluting the Sacred Violence, Faith and the ‘Civilizing’ of Parishioners in Late Medieval England

By

Daniel E. Thiery

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2009

Cover illustration: The Murder of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, December 29, 1170: Book of Hours, Shelfmark/Page Add. 17012, f.28v. © The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thiery, Daniel Polluting the sacred : violence, faith, and the “civilizing” of parishioners in late medieval England / by Daniel E. Thiery. p. cm. -- (Later medieval Europe, ISSN 1872-7875 ; v. 3) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-17387-3 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Violence--Religious aspects--Christianity--History of doctrines--Middle Ages, 6001500. 2. Violence--England--History--To 1500. 3. England--Church history--10661485. I. Title. II. Series. BR747.t45 2009 274.2'05--dc22 2009001598

ISSN 1872-7875 ISBN 978 90 04 17387 3 Copyright 2009 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS

Dedicated to mom and dad for their constant love and support

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ................................................................................ ix Abbreviations ....................................................................................... xi Introduction: Religion and the ‘Civilizing Process’...............................1 PART I

LESSONS ON THE VALUE OF VIOLENCE Introduction to Part I ..........................................................................21 Chapter 1: The Contra: Recognizing a Role for Violence .................25 Chapter 2: Sacred Space and Ritual: Creating an Expectancy of Restraint ...............................................39 Chapter 3: The Eucharist and the Clergy: Fostering Charity Incarnate .........................................................77 Chapter 4: Sermons, Confessions and Private Meditation: Learning that Vengeance Disturbs the Divine .............91 Conclusion to Part I: Do Think Twice, It’s Not Alright ...................101 PART II

PARISHIONERS’ PRAXIS Introduction to Part II.......................................................................107 Chapter 5: Sacred Space and Ritual: Finding Variation yet Common Expectation.................................................111 Chapter 6: The Eucharist: Demanding a Dreadful Peace ................139 Chapter 7: The Clergy: Swinging both Plowshares and Swords ......153 Conclusion to Part II: The Reality of ‘Civility’ Spurred by Religion ....173 Conclusion: Finding Religion in Restraint ........................................175 ManuscriptS ources...........................................................................181 Primary S ources ................................................................................182 Secondary S ources ............................................................................185 Index .................................................................................................193

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As I have progressed in my studies to the completion of this book, I have benefited from the guidance, inspiration and support of many people; a debt of gratitude that can never be expressed properly in so few words, or even in words alone. First, I wish to thank the editorial board of the “Later Medieval Europe” series for their support of my project from the initial proposal to the more focused study that it has become. I especially thank Doug Biggs for encouraging me to submit a proposal to the series and for supporting my scholarship as an organizer of numerous sessions at the International Congress of Medieval Studies. Furthermore, I owe a debt of gratitude to Marcella Mulder and Ellen Girmscheid for their ready advice, keen eye for detail and support of my study from proposal to publication. I also wish to thank the anonymous external reader whose supportive suggestions have greatly helped to hone both the arguments and structure of this book. I have also benefited greatly from the inspiration, education, advice and aid of many institutions and individuals. I am very grateful for the advice and support of Mark Meyerson. Both his scholarship and his mentorship helped to inspire and hone my studies as a graduate student. Moreover, his continued wisdom and encouragement have proved invaluable to my scholastic life beyond U. Toronto. I would also like to thank those scholars whose influence inside and outside of class on my development as both a teacher and scholar has proved a precious gift. Such is especially true of Joseph Duffy and Richard Grace, whose teaching and guidance provided me with my earliest and most formative paragons. For similar influence and inspiration, I also wish to thank Tony Esolen, Connie Rousseau, the late Rodney Delasanta, and the Providence College Liberal Arts Honors Program. Likewise, I owe a debt of gratitude to Natalie Zemon Davis [inspiring not only for her multitude of accolades but also for her enduring intellectual curiosity and disarming affability], Jennifer Mori, Nicholas Terpstra, Joe Goering, Anne Hutchison and the program of the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto. My scholarship has also greatly benefited from support—either in the form of scholastic fora, ready advice or financial aid—from: the White Hart Society and its members; Maryanne

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Kowaleski and the Medieval Studies Program at Fordham University; the Richard III Society [especially the Schallek Scholarship]; and my fellow participants at the “Fifteenth-Century Conferences”. I am also grateful for the support of both my colleagues and the administration at Iona College, especially those in the Department of History and Honors Program. I also benefited greatly from the opportunity to ruminate over some of the religious teachings, court cases and themes found in this study in two previously published articles: “Plowshares and Swords: Clerical Involvement in Acts of Violence and Peacemaking in Late Medieval England,” found in Albion: A Journal of British Studies 36:2 (2004) and “Welcome to the Parish. Remove your Cap and Stop Assaulting your Neighbour,” in the Brill publication, Reputation and Representation: Essays on the Late Middle Ages (2004). Lastly, this study would have never come to fruition were it not for the ever helpful and incredibly efficient staff at the then Public Record Office, now National Archives at Kew Gardens. Day after day and, sometimes, hour by hour, the staff kept me supplied with my research limit of three rolls from the King’s Bench or Star Chamber. Along with those who have helped me on a professional level, I also owe a personal thanks to those closest to me whose love and support have been constant for so many years. Thanks first to my friends from Toronto and Providence: Marc Saurette, Mike Doherty, Martin and Martina Nemoianu, Keith Christensen, Joe Berlinghieri, Dave Mastro and Mike Stewart as well as my dearest friends from home, Dave Gates, and especially, Alan Lizarraga and Josh Drury. Finally, my warmest gratitude goes to my family whom I can always count on for love and support: to my brother and sisters, Howard, Mary, Jane and Sarah, who have always looked out for ‘their little brother’ and never ceased to support me no matter how great or small the matter; to my wife, Catherine, not just throughout this project but at all times, my friend, my joy and my refuge; and to my parents, Howard and Rita, whose steadfast guidance, quiet example and constant encouragement have given me all the confidence and skills that I shall ever need in life. It is to them that I most happily dedicate this work. DT

ABBREVIATIONS

CCML CYS EETS YASRS

Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis Canterbury and York Society Early English Text Society Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series

INTRODUCTION

RELIGION AND THE ‘CIVILIZING PROCESS’

I am afeard there are few die well that die in battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument? –Shakespeare, Henry the Fifth1

Why do most in the ‘modern West’ now regard the use of violence, especially when justified by religious beliefs, as barbaric, degenerate and pathological, when for most of history, it was esteemed as an honorable way to resolve conflicts and win acclaim? With the possible exception of military or police action on the part of recognized political authorities, most of us recoil from the sight of violence. When confronted by news reports of suicide bombings, drive-by murders, or schoolyard beatings, we are often flooded by feelings of dismay, disapproval and most importantly, a sense of distance that hinders our empathy for violent individuals. Genetic predisposition cannot fully explain away such seemingly visceral reactions. Though a society solely governed by natural instinct might be more than a Hobbesian nightmare of violence and predation, it would, nevertheless, still be a place in which social bonds were both fostered and hindered by intense and often-times aggressive competition. For most scholars, our acceptance or rejection of violent behavior has far more to do with nurture than it does with nature.2 Indeed, this 1 W. Shakespeare, Henry the Fifth in The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans et al. (Boston, 1972), IV: i.142–143. This quotation is a remarkable voice of doubt amidst the hyper-justification of Henry’s impending battle against the French. It shows that by the end of the sixteenth century, when Shakespeare penned these words, concerns about the use of violence as an impediment to salvation were important enough to be addressed and debated within the play itself. 2 Anthropologists have provided historians with pertinent interpretive schemata for studies of violence as a social force. See for instance: J. Black-Michaud, Cohesive Force: Feud in the Mediterranean and the Middle East (New York, 1975); P. Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. R. Nice (Cambridge, MA, 1984); —, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. R. Nice (Cambridge, 1977); J.G. Peristiany, ed., Honor and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society (Chicago, 1966); D. Gilmore, Aggression and Community: Paradoxes of Andalusian Culture (New Haven, CT, 1987); —, ed., Honour, Shame and the Unity of the Mediterranean (Washington, 1987); J.K. Campbell, Honour, Family and

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INTRODUCTION

academic consensus about the influence of environment on character development has moved well beyond the confines of the college campus. If forced to explain the causes of violence at home or abroad, many people quickly point to a deplorable conglomeration of psychological, social, economic and political factors. However, while now we might seem ready to accept that violent behavior is quite often a product of nurture, we still have not given full attention to, nor truly begun to grasp, the historical process that has fostered our current abhorrence of interpersonal aggression as well as our often reflexive rejection of religious belief as an acceptable excuse for violence. If we initiate our quest for greater understanding in general studies of the relationship between Christianity and violence, we will soon notice two opposing schools of thought: the ‘essentialists’,3 who regard Christianity as fundamentally peaceful, and the ‘critics’, who contend that violence is inherent in Christian dogma. By exploring the arguments of both schools, we can attain a broader, if still incomplete, perspective on the interaction between Christian faith and a society’s attitude toward the legitimacy of violence. On the one hand, the ‘essentialists’, such as J. Harold Ellens or the much-heralded René Girard, regard Christianity as essentially a religion of peace, love, compassion and forgiveness.4 The studies of ‘essentialists’ often contrast the ethos of

Patronage: A Study of Institutions ad Moral Values in a Greek Mountain Community (Oxford, 1964); M. Gluckman, Custom and Conflict in Africa (Oxford, 1956); P. Marsch and A. Campbell, eds., Aggression and Violence (New York, 1982); D. Riches, ed., The Anthropology of Violence (Oxford, 1986); A. Wierzbicka, “Human Emotions: Universal or CultureSpecific?” American Anthropologist 88 (1986), 584–594; C. Boehm, Blood Revenge: The Anthropology of Feuding in Montenegro and Other Tribal Societies (Lawrence, KS, 1984). Philosophers, psychologists and biologists have also weighed in on the subject of violence as a social force. See for instance: J. Elster, “The Norms of Revenge,” Ethics 100 (1990), 862–885; M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. A. Sheridan (New York, 1979); J. Gilligan, Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and its Causes (New York, 1996); F.B.M. Waal, Peacemaking among Primates (Cambridge, MA 1989); A.J. Reiss, K. Miczek and J. Roth, eds., Understanding and Preventing Violence: Biobehavioral Influences (Washington, 1994). See also the classic philosophical discussions of violence and society by Hobbes and Hume: T. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. A.D. Lindsay (London, 1914); D. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. A.D. Lindsay (London, 1911). 3 The label ‘essentialist’ is from a thorough overview of scholarship on religious beliefs and violence by Hector Avalos. Avalos’ work provides both a comprehensive and critical overview of theories about human violence and also theories about religious violence. See, H. Avalos, Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence (Amherst, NY, 2005), pp. 17–92. 4 Though often approaching the study of religion from a wide variety of scholastic disciplines, the following studies are fundamentally ‘essentialist’ in nature: R. Girard, Job: The Victim of his People, trans. I. Freccero (Stanford, 1987); —, La violence et le sacré

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3

the Old Testament, based on ‘the law of talion’5 [i.e. an ‘eye for an eye’], against an ethos of agape, brotherly love, expounded upon and exemplified by Christ in the New Testament. Furthermore, they regard Christ’s instructions to ‘turn the other cheek’, ‘pray for your enemy’ and ‘love your neighbor’ as the essential elements of Christian kerygma, and therefore, they often consider violence associated with Christian belief, such as the crusades, to be either extremist or outright erroneous interpretations of Christ’s message.6 Thus, for the essentialists, even violence sanctioned by the medieval Church can be regarded as a perversion of the ‘true essence’ of Christianity. On the other hand, while the ‘critics’, such as Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer or Hector Avalos, do not disparage religious beliefs to the hyperbolic point of the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, they do contend that violence is inherent to the religions of the West because the sacred writings upon which they are based often

(Paris, 1972); “Violence Renounced: Response by René Girard,” in Violence Renounced: René Girard, Biblical Studies and Peacemaking, ed. W.M. Swartley (Telford, PA, 2000); J. Harold Ellens, ed., The Destructive Power of Religion: Violence in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, 4 vols. (Westport, CT, 2004). This collection of essays by scholars from a variety of scholastic disciplines often returns to the arguments of Girard which regard Christianity as the acme of concord and conciliation; J. Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (New York, 2003); M.E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, The Fundamentalism Project, 5 vols. (Chicago, 1991–1995); C. Glock and R. Stark, Christian Belief and Antisemitism (New York, 1966); R. Stark, One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism (Princeton, 2001); M. Gopin, Holy War, Holy Peace: How Religion Can Bring Peace to the Middle East (Oxford, 2002); C. Kimball, When Religions Become Evil (San Francisco, 2002). 5 For a thoughtful study of the law of talion (lex talionis), see, W.I. Miller, An Eye for an Eye (Cambridge, 2005). 6 The studies of René Girard have often been referenced by scholars who study violence and religion. His work has certainly done a great deal to illuminate how religion can subsume and/or channel violent impulses. Girard considers religion to be a fundamental element of mankind because religion stabilizes society by transferring the violence, which members, fueled by mimetic desire, might inflict upon each other, onto a “scapegoat”; i.e. a sacrificial victim. Girard argues that there is hardly any form of violence that “can not be described in terms of sacrifice”. (La Violence, p.1). Girard believes that unlike other religions, in which the sacrificial victim is not fully innocent nor society totally guilty [because the choosing of victim is entirely subjective and random], Christianity breaks the cycle of violence and scapegoating because the victim in Christianity was completely innocent and the persecutors truly guilty. (Violence Renounced, p. 313). Like Freud, Girard’s reading of ancient Greek and Biblical texts is very selective, if not outright idiosyncratic. Though provocative and commendable for its illumination of how religious rituals can channel violent impulses, Girard’s theory about sacrifice through the scapegoat is not an adequate theoretical model for our study. For our study, anthropological analyses of religious rituals and peacemaking offer more grounded approaches than Girard’s intriguing but not solidly supported theory of sacrifice. For a solid critique of Girard’s theories, see, H. Avalos, Fighting Words, p. 75–78.

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INTRODUCTION

contain sanctions of violence.7 For most of these scholars, violence associated with Islam, Christianity and Judaism is not the product of an erroneous or extremist interpretation but simply a competing and legitimate interpretation. Like the ‘essentialists’, the ‘critics’ are quite selective in their use of evidence—focusing on instances where Christ said he comes to ‘bring a sword’ or when he ‘cleansed the temple’. Moreover, in their attempt to overshadow the idealistic views of some ‘essentialists’, the ‘critics’ tend to fixate on outstanding instances of interfaith violence, while ignoring the role which most religions play in the formation of a more ordered and often more peaceful society. While religions can sanction violence, they also tend to ameliorate vengeance and feud among believers by instilling both a sense of fellowship and social discipline. Yet, as some of the ‘critics’ rightly note, religions can often legitimize violence by their very promotion of brotherhood—brotherhood too often implying otherhood.8 In other words, religions foster fellowship among the faithful but just who comprises ‘the faithful’ can be contested or quite exclusive.9 Thus, we would do well to keep in mind that while a sense of fellowship, like the Christian ideal of charity, problematizes the use of violence for the settling of commonplace conflicts among believers, it can also legitimize violence by placing some beyond the bounds of such fellowship, such as infidels, heretics, papists, or the ungodly. Though scholars of late medieval England have mainly allowed the influence of religious beliefs on the formation of social discipline to remain unexamined, some recent scholarship on early modern culture has noted that clerical institutions and religious beliefs did play important roles in constructing customary notions of propriety, civility and, 7 For studies which consider violence to be inherent in the major religions of the world, see: Avalos, Fighting Words; J. Nelson Pallmeyer, Is Religion Killing Us: Violence in the Bible and Koran (New York, 2003); R. Schwartz, The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (Chicago, 1997); T. Gorringe, God’s Just Vengeance: Crime, Violence and the Rhetoric of Salvation (Cambridge, 1996); R. Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York, 2006). For an earlier critique of religion, see A. Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays, trans. E.F.J. Payne, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1974). 8 J. Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1985), p. 62. Bossy recognizes that his use of the “otherhood” versus “brotherhood” phrase is based on Max Weber’s “inside” versus “outside” moralities as well as Benjamin Nelson’s famous work on usury, The Idea of Usury: From Tribal Brotherhood to Universal Otherhood (Chicago, 1969). 9 Though I do not agree with Hector Avalos’ argument that Christ’s message encourages violence as much as it does peace, I do find fascinating his contention that religious beliefs can create a ‘scarcity’—indeed scarcity of an abstract commodity, salvation. This contention should be kept in mind as we explore how the Christian notion of charity was taught to parishioners. Charity could become a prized commodity that, more often than not, motivated physical restraint instead of violence.

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especially, deviancy.10 In various studies, early modernists have pointed out that in the late sixteenth and throughout the seventeenth centuries, Church courts’ focus on morality, enforcement of attendance at services, and promulgation of standards concerning proper membership worked in tandem with the state’s concern for criminality and vagrancy to foster a greater sense of social discipline. Indeed, by 1700, many considered religion to be the law’s “helpmate”.11 Yet, while early modern scholars have been willing to credit religion with an influence on attitudes toward proper comportment, their references have mostly been made in passing. They have not focused on the specific ways that religion has influenced the formation of social discipline and societal norms, nor have they provided a complete schema by which society came to encourage restraint and discourage violent agency. The groundbreaking work of the early twentieth-century sociologist, Norbert Elias, has helped the most to advance our comprehension of the process which spurred European society to shun aggressive and petulant individuals. In his sweeping study, The Civilizing Process, Elias argues that in the sixteenth century, humanist education and centralized monarchies caused a significant shift in cultural norms, especially norms governing emotional display and physical violence.12 Instead of martial prowess, humanist handbooks emphasized courtesy, wit and restraint as prime determinants of personal honor. Mirroring closely Freud’s theory about the development of id and super-ego, Elias considers such a shift to be evidence of the internalization of social discipline; i.e. inhibitions which repress extroverted behavior.13 Concurrent with humanist education, centralized governments steadily, and sometimes belligerently, appropriated the right to use violence by creating strong standing armies 10 Much more than their medievalist peers, early modern scholars have explored the formation of methods of social control and social discipline. The contents of this study will establish a very detailed context to their passing references to the importance of religion in the formation of social discipline in the 1600’s. See, for example, H. Roodenburg and P. Spierenburg, eds., Social Control in Europe: 1500–1800, 2 vols. (Columbus, 2004); J. Delumeau, Le Peur in le occident (Paris, 2003); —, Le Catholicisme entre Luther et Voltaire (Paris, 1996); J. Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2001); J. Sharpe, Crime in Early Modern England, c.1550–1750 (New York, 1999); —, “Social Control in Early Modern England: The Need for a Broad Perspective,” in Social Control in Europe, pp. 37–55; L. Braudy, From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity (New York, 2005); Bossy, Christianity. 11 Sharpe, Crime, p. 215. 12 N. Elias, The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners (Cambridge, 1994). 13 S. Freud, The Id and the Ego, trans. J. Riviere (London, 1927); Civilization and its Discontents, trans. J. Strachey (New York, 1999).

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INTRODUCTION

and more encompassing judicial systems. This two-pronged attack by rulers and writers helped stigmatize the use of violence to solve interpersonal conflict as criminal, barbaric and, in many instances, dishonorable.14 Prior to these changes, at least in Elias’ opinion, medieval culture was characterized by an unfettered, extroverted and aggressive emotionalism, most manifest in incidences of violence. No social or political institution was strong enough to check the demonstrative passions of medieval folk. Indeed, according to Elias, “the only threat, the only danger that could instill fear was that of being overpowered in battle by a stronger opponent”.15 Elias’ conception of an emotionally unfettered, almost flippant, medieval culture is neither supported by current scholarship on medieval social order nor by anthropological studies of social relations in premodern cultures.16 Medieval rulers did try to keep the peace and establish an ideal of law even if their reliance on the cooperation of local authorities and their lack of a professional police force meant that they often acted more as “referees of conflict” than as inescapable forces of justice and restraint.17 For the warrior class, codes of chivalry also demanded restrained comportment as a mark of honor in certain situations, or at the very least (and as was more often the case), such codes demanded the payment of lip service to an ideal of self-control that hardly reflected reality.18 Moreover, the violence of medieval individuals, as in other premodern societies, was controlled by various regulatory mechanisms such as custom, kinship, social status and the cycle of feud. Fear of royal or social censure, reluctance to attack kin and apprehension about commencing or continuing a bloodfeud could all give irate individuals pause to consider whether violence would be the most rewarding course of action. Still, as one recent study on medieval 14 The increasing body of historiography on the duel suggests that some forms of violence remained ‘honorable.’ See F. Billacois, The Duel: Its Rise and Fall in Early Modern France (New Haven, 1990); V.G. Kiernan, The Duel in European History: Honor and the Reign of Aristocracy (Oxford, 1989). 15 Elias, pp. 162–163. 16 B.H. Rosenwein, “Controlling Paradigms,” in Angers Past, ed. B.H. Rosenwein (Ithaca, 1998), pp. 237–244; P. Maddern, Violence and Social Order in East Anglia, 1422– 1442 (Oxford, 1992); Gluckman, Custom and Conflict; Michaud, Cohesive Force; Bordieu, Outline of a Theory. 17 I owe this term to conversations with Mark D. Meyerson. 18 While chivalry clearly existed as an ideal of conduct and as a literary theme, scholars have often noted that it is quite difficult to find any evidence for the application of its principles in the actions of the warrior class during their conflicts. See for instance, R. Kauper, Chivalry and Violence (Oxford, 1999); M. Keen, Chivalry (New Haven, 1984).

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violence contends, “however medievalists and others have criticized and qualified the work of Elias, it is difficult to avoid concluding that medieval people used and understood violence differently and that [as Elias astutely judged] what separates us from our medieval forbears is not just the greater efficacy of modern states in controlling and suppressing violence but, more importantly, fundamental modifications in mentality and behavior”.19 While monarchs and humanists certainly played a part in the alteration of society’s conviction about the use of aggression, they do not comprise all of the factors involved in the ‘civilizing process’. In fact, Elias discards a crucial influence on the formation of cultural norms, religious beliefs. He contends that scholars have erroneously associated the concerns of a relatively small group of powerful and educated clerics for salvation with the concerns of all medieval society.20 For Elias, religion cannot influence social values because its ideals always become enmeshed in the norms and priorities of its followers. As he argues, “religion, the belief in the punishing or rewarding omnipotence of God, never has in itself a ‘civilizing’ or affect-subduing effect. On the contrary, religion is always exactly as ‘civilized’ as the society or class which upholds it”.21 This is far too dismissive. Consider the source characteristics for social influence laid out by the pioneering social psychologist, Herbert C. Kelman, in an edition of the Journal of Conflict Resolution: expertise, trustworthiness and power.22 On the whole, the medieval Church possessed all three of these elements and thus its clergy and teachings could, and did, have a profound influence on societal attitudes.23 While he insightfully illuminates the normative status of violence

19 M. Meyerson, D. Thiery, and O. Falk, eds., A Great Effusion of Blood? Interpreting Medieval Violence (Toronto, 2004), p. iv. 20 Elias, Civilizing Process, p. 165. Like Elias, Gerhard Oestreich asserted that the Church was unable to check the increasing problem of violence and aggression in the late Middle Ages. Therefore, the municipal authorities in a piecemeal and unplanned fashion slowly came to provide for public order and control individual behavior by forming ever stronger police systems, bureaucracies and standing armies. See, G. Oestreich, Neostocism and the Early Modern State, ed. B. Oestreich and H.G. Koenigsberger, trans. D. McLintock (Cambridge, 1982); —, “Strukturprobleme des europäischen Absolutisimus,” Viertelsjahreschrift für Wirtschafts-und Sozialgeschichte 55 (1968), 329–347. 21 Elias, Civilizing Process, p. 169. 22 H. Kelman, “Compliance, Identification, and Internalization: Three Processes of Attitude Change,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 1 (1958), 51–60. 23 Arguably, for a man like Chaucer, the late medieval clergy may not have been entirely trustworthy but as we shall see in the next subsection, recent scholarship has clearly shown the vitality and centrality of parochial religion in late medieval England.

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INTRODUCTION

in medieval society and the importance of developments in social discipline, Elias fails to see that long before Erasmus put pen to paper or King Francis formed a standing army, the rituals, teachings and proscriptions of Christianity encouraged individuals to value personal restraint and question the legitimacy of violence. Well before humanistic codes of courtesy, early monastic rules and customaries lauded physical and emotional restraint as upright and propitious. Moreover, pastoral care movements of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries not only ushered in the development of a ‘guilt culture’—an internal sense of self based on criteria that often differed from the visible markers valued in the contemporary honor culture—but also translated monastic notions of reverent restraint and pious comportment into parochial fora. Thus, as early as the 1100’s, the rituals, teachings and proscriptions of traditional religion fostered an expectation of and esteem for restraint. Over the centuries, such expectation and esteem, held by clerics and parishioners alike, slowly forged a negotiated but discernible reality in everyday life.24 In Sin and Fear, the panoramic cultural study of the famed French historian, Jean Delumeau, we can see how the rituals and teachings of the late medieval Church promoted a more introspective environment than Elias would credit to the late medieval period.25 Rather than depicting the late Middle Ages as a time of instinctive and altogether extroverted passions, Delumeau considers this era to be a time of heightened anxiety and growing guilt culture—a time when individuals would be more likely both to defer to those with ‘expertise’ and to internalize their advice.26 He argues that the late medieval Church initiated an “unprecedented movement toward introspection and the development of a new moral conscience,” in particular the notion of guilt, hidden away from all but God.27 Two religious sentiments helped catalyze these 24 This expectation and esteem is what social psychologists would regard as the Church’s informational social influence translating into normative social influence (i.e. when one conforms to be included and appreciated by members of a specific group, especially one that includes one’s peers). See, E. Aronson, T.D. Wilson, and A.M. Akert, A.M, Social Psychology (Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2005); A. Hendrickson, H. Kelman et al. eds., Social Psychology of Group Identity and Social Conflict: Theory, Application and Practice (New York, 2004). 25 J. Delumeau, Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture 13th–18th Centuries, trans. E. Nicholson (New York, 1990). 26 For studies which link crisis/anxiety and the internalization of ‘expert information’, see, E. Aronson et al. Social Psychology; H. Kelman, “Compliance, identification and internalization”. 27 Delumeau, Sin and Fear, p. 1.

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developments, the horror of sin and an obsession with damnation.28 At the same time that the Church clarified its frightful doctrines of sin and damnation, it also organized the antidote to such fear, the process of confession and penitence.29 While the confessional provided parishioners with redemption, it also spurred their development of personal conscience and an increased sensitivity to private intentions [as opposed to the contemporary honor culture which encouraged a heightened sensitivity to public perceptions of character]. In short, developing notions of penance and sin as well as burgeoning anxiety over salvation helped to turn parishioners attention away from just the consequence of their actions on temporal things, like personal repute, toward the effect of their actions upon spiritual matters, such as their state of grace. Though Delumeau, like Huizinga before him, shrouds society in too somber and gloomy a cloak, he does provide a compelling counter to Elias’ depictions of an uninhibited medieval mentalité. Nevertheless, the ambitious scope of Delumeau’s work leaves a great deal of room for further study of this alleged movement toward introspective anxiety and social discipline. With the exception of a brief chapter on penitential literature, Delumeau does not explore the specific ways by which Christianity sought to encourage believers to scrutinize their seemingly honorable aggression. Moreover, he never ventures away from proscriptive literature into the traditional sources of social history such as court records. This omission leaves entirely unexplored the social consequences of traditional religion’s links to introspective and restrained comportment. Just how did parishioners advocate, negotiate or reject teachings that often debased the use of violence and lauded self-restraint? Through an extensive investigation of primary sources, from ritual handbooks and sermons to court rolls and letter collections, this study will investigate both the ways that Christianity, as it existed under the aegis of the clergy at the parochial level, problematized late medieval parishioners’ acceptance of aggression as a legitimate means of dispute-resolution, as well as the ways that parishioners did or did not put religious teachings into practice. We shall see that in spite of the persistence of social and religious norms that gave license to violent conduct, beliefs about the sinfulness of violence and honor of charitable restraint did have a discernible influence on the actions and attitudes of parishioners. Religious rituals and clerical instructions 28 29

Ibid., p. 3. Ibid. p. 195.

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INTRODUCTION

encouraged self-restraint and challenged parishioners to consider seemingly ‘licit’ violence as sacrilege, a direct impediment to the salvation of the whole parish as well as the piety and public reputation of the offender. Once parishioners started to discredit aggression and value charitable relations within their churches or during holy rituals, they began to widen and pave the existent footpath of the ‘civilizing process’. For just as late medieval parishioners, conscious of their state of Christian charity, first problematized violence among the sacred, so too would they, in due course, begin to question the legitimacy of aggression in other settings. Indeed, this late medieval link between violent conduct and impiety would fertilize the blossoming association between violence and criminality and, eventually, help sprout our modern connection between violence and pathology. The Plan of Attack: Comparing Knowledge and Praxis The ‘civilizing process’ involves a complete change of mentality toward one’s daily composure and thus it is most important to look at the commonplace (albeit commonplace acts of violence!) for inklings of such change. Therefore, this study will focus primarily on the relationship between religion and violence in the everyday lives of those who can be roughly categorized as ‘orthodox’ parishioners rather than of those who composed a small minority of heterodox parishioners, such as Lollards. There are many solid studies of the beliefs as well as the persecution of such groups and, as Eamon Duffy noted well, the repeated focus on such statistically small heterodox communities tends to overshadow the more representative existence of the majority.30 Furthermore, the attitudes of heterodox groups about the use of violence as well as the majority’s attitude about the use of violence against them were often the exceptions to the rule. Moreover, the violence in question is primarily quotidian acts of aggression, whether verbal or physical, rather than 30 E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven, 1992), p. 2, 6. For this same reason, I have found René Girard’s groundbreaking study to be of little use in my analyses. Girard is one of the first scholars to point out how ‘peaceful’ religious rituals are often infused with violence but his theory of the ‘scapegoat’ does not apply very well to my material. His theory applies well to studies of how the religion of a majority will often impact, and further marginalize, already marginal members of a community I have found the anthropological studies mentioned earlier (see n.2) to be of far more value in understanding how religion promotes and prevents violence. See: R. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. P. Gregory (Baltimore, 1972).

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large scale events such as wars, mass rebellions, or, as quickly comes to mind, crusades. The influence of religious belief on attitudes toward quotidian violence has never been adequately explored and indeed, has often been obscured by the focus of scholars on more spectacular instances of interfaith conflict, like ‘The Crusades’ or ‘The Inquisition’. Yet, it is clear from both present day conflicts and past studies that as religions develop, they marginalize violence against fellow believers long before they ever, if at all, question the valorization of violence against those of a different faith/denomination/sect. Indeed, it seems important to understand first how a religion’s teachings on intrafaith conflict affect societal norms in order to comprehend more clearly how a religion devalues or values violence in interfaith conflict. Religions are often about both peace and war but, since scholars tend to fixate on the spectacular, the long, slow slog toward a seemingly ‘more civil’, or at least more restrained (some might argue, repressed) society remains almost entirely unexamined. Religious beliefs, state-formation, military changes, educational developments, and other as yet unidentified elements have helped to fashion a fairly common notion of ‘civility’ in day to day affairs; if still not in war and other exceptional events. Yet, up to this point, no one has detailed how, if at all, religious beliefs played a part in a ‘civilizing process’ in medieval Europe. In sum, this study certainly does not deign to be a comprehensive investigation of the relationship between Christianity and violence nor does it at all deign to be the last word on this subject. However, it does intend, by focusing on late medieval England, to help establish a norm, a ‘baseline’ so to speak, that one may use to compare with the relationship between religion and violence in other regions, eras, or in bigger, more notorious intra and interfaith conflicts, like riots and crusades, or in particular social strata, like the warrior class. Moreover, this study does hope, in the end, to incite debate by broaching broad ideas and suggesting patterns that will compel scholars to consider more thoroughly the influence of religious beliefs of any creed upon attitudes toward aggression, as well as the nature, or perhaps illusion, of a ‘civilizing process’ in history. “Part I: Lessons on the Value of Violence” will illuminate the origin, content and variety of instruction about the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the use of violence by ‘pious’ parishioners. Using anthropological studies of ritual and religion as a methodological framework, this section illuminates the many rituals, writings, sermons and proscriptions, created by various levels of clergy or, on occasion, lay folk, which sought to teach that both violent action and sentiment were sinful and shameful

12

INTRODUCTION

dangers to offender’s souls, their public repute as well as the spiritual health of the entire parish. Though there were numerous outlets in late medieval religion for the agonistic impulses of parishioners, many cherished avenues of spirituality gave no quarter to those who were aggressive with their neighbors. This first part will also explore the ideal characteristics of parish clerics in order to see how, in theory, they too were to be examples and conduits of peace. “Part II: Parishioners’ Praxis” will explore how the actions of parishioners, whether lay or clerical, reveal their internalization of notions about the impiety of violence and honor of restraint (as informed by the media explored in Part I). By examining an extensive range of court cases, as well as some anecdotes from letter collections, Part II reveals how the ideals and teachings fostered by parish life and clerical media influenced the attitudes of parishioners toward the use of violence as a legitimate means of conflict-resolution. Specifically, it will examine how parishioners’ conception of sacred space, holy ritual, the Eucharist, religious observance, peacemaking, and dispute reveal their internalization and negotiation of spiritual demands for charity/self-restraint with the demands of interpersonal conflict. In so doing, Part II will provide answers to the following questions: How did parishioners’ internalization of ideas about charity, restraint and introspection affect their behavior in both church and society? How, if at all, did they tailor their aggression during conflict and how do their narratives of such events reveal their regard for religious values? Lastly, did parishioners have a notion of ‘honor’ which incorporated religious values or was it still entirely rooted in martial might and agonistic social norms? The Setting: Religion and Violence Make the World Go ’Round Before implementing the latter ‘plan of attack’, we should briefly consider the roles of religion and violence in the everyday lives of late medieval Englishmen and women. One must keep in mind that in the late Middle Ages, violence and aggression were part of the fabric of normative social relations.31 The adjective ‘normative’ does not depend on the 31 The argument over the frequency of violence has shifted from those who considered conflict to be pervasive to those who considered conflict to be extraordinary and finally, the most recent arguments consider violence to be normative even when statistically infrequent. For studies which consider late medieval and early modern England to be rife with conflict based on either anecdotal or statistical evidence, see J. Huizinga,

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statistical frequency of acts of aggression, but rather on the idea that late medieval men and women valued violence as a way to resolve disputes, compete for status and maintain social order.32 The quotidian behavior of Englishmen was guided by an honor-code which legitimized The Waning of the Middle Ages (New York, 1989); L. Stone, Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 (New York, 1979); —, “Interpersonal Violence in English Society, 1300–1980,” Past and Present 101 (1983), 22–33; J.G. Bellamy, Crime and Public Order in England in the Later Middle Ages (Toronto, 1973); J. Given, Society and Homicide in ThirteenthCentury England (Stanford, CA, 1977); B. Hanawalt, “Violent Death in Fourteenth- and Early Fifteenth-Century England,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 18 (1976), 297–320; M.K. McIntosh, Controlling Misbehavior in England, 1300–1600. (Cambridge, 1998). Other scholars stress the various mechanisms of dispute settlement and social control which contained conflict and individual violence. See for example, E. Powell, “The Settlement of Disputes by Arbitration in Fifteenth-Century England,” Law and History Review 2 (1984), 21–43. Some scholars of continental Europe have also argued that society was not characterized by disorder. See for example: A.J. Finch, “The Nature of Violence in the Middle Ages: An Alternative Perspective,” Historical Research 70 (1997), 249–268. 32 Other studies of violence have stressed the fluidity of the meaning of violence and its normative status in society. In these studies, interpretations and perceptions of violence are more important than its statistical frequency. See for instance, R. Manning, “Violence and Social Conflict in Mid-Tudor Rebellions,” Journal of British Studies 17 (1977), 18–40; Manning illuminates the gentry’s use of enclosure riots to disrupt the activities of their rival rather than to protest the actual economic system of enclosure. C. Phythian-Adams, “Rituals of Personal Confrontation in Late Medieval England,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 73 (1991), 65–90; Phythian-Adams’ study is an insightful examination of the very ritualized method of personal confrontation in fifteenth and sixteenth-century England. His study also raises interesting questions about the role of the clergy during affrays between laymen. J.A. Sharpe, Crime in Early Modern England, 1550–1750 (New York, 1999); —, “Such Disagreement betwyxt Neighbors: Litigation and Human Relations in Early Modern England,” in Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West, ed. John Bossy (New York, 1983), pp. 167–187; Sharpe does not condone the use of statistics due to the legal system’s and community’s changing perception of what constituted a criminal act. He does not consider actual physical violence to be very pervasive in English society but he does assert that late medieval and early modern individuals were quite aggressive in defense of their rights and honor, especially through the law courts. Therefore, for Sharpe, aggression was normative even if physical violence was not. B. Hanawalt, Of Good and Ill Repute: Gender and Social Control in Medieval England (Oxford, 1998); shifting away from her examination of crime through statistics, Hanawalt reveals how violence was a socially acceptable way for city officials and social classes to maintain order. S. Amussen, “Punishment, Discipline and Power: The Social Meanings of Violence in Early Modern England,” Journal of British Studies 34 (1995), 1–34; Amussen offers a Foucaulvian interpretation of violence which provides some interesting insights into the alterations of society’s understanding of violence. M.E. James, English Politics and the Concepts of Honour: Past and Present Supplement no. 3 (1978); this essay examines how the honor code helped legitimize the use of violence and how religion fit into the pursuit of honor. Some discerning studies of violence in late medieval England have been done by Phillipa Maddern. She carefully considers letters and court records in order to show that violence was normative in many respects and therefore would not have been considered criminal behavior. The use of violence increased in legitimacy in proportion to one’s social status. The higher social classes

14

INTRODUCTION

the employment of both physical and verbal violence for the defense of personal or familial status. Even the most menial of male and female parishioners worked to maintain their own as well as their family’s reputation and this maintenance sometimes necessitated aggressive acts such as litigation, slander or physical assault.33 Within this agonistic world, martial prowess was a prime means of gaining or upholding honor and thus many late medieval Englishmen bore arms, and either marched about with or became militant retainers. By comparison, the reputation of female parishioners largely centered on their avoidance of sexual impurity, including even the rumor of it, as well as their diligent governance of domestic space. Even when matters did not directly concern their reputation, late medieval parishioners believed that physical or verbal violence could be employed licitly in three other situations: to enforce commonly perceived social and gender hierarchies, to fulfill one’s duties as a servant or to execute one’s obligations as an officer of the courts. Indeed, violent conduct was not seen as pathological behavior and, unlike modern society where violent offenders are removed from the general population and ‘corrected’ in prisons, reform schools or mental wards, rarely did the use of violence result in the ostracism of an individual from his or her community. To most medieval folk, society needed violence—enacted not only by royal authorities, like constables were allowed to use violence to enforce their position. I do not agree with Maddern that physical confrontation was necessarily low since many conflicts would not have been brought to trial. Moreover, her contention that honor among the gentry involved solely litigation is interesting but seems to be only one part of the puzzle of honor. The gentry in many Star Chamber cases seem quite ready to use violence even if actual physical blows never occur. See, P. Maddern, “Honor among the Pastons: Gender and Integrity in Fifteenth-Century English Provincial Society,” Journal of Medieval History 14 (1988), 357–371 and see also, Violence and Social Order. Other interesting contributions have been made by historians of continental Europe. Scholars of France and the Mediterranean region have been far ahead of English historians in terms of studies concerning the roles of violence in social cohesion and decay as well as the use of anthropology to understand violence in history. See, for instance, the studies of R. Muchembled and N.Z. Davis for France, M.D. Meyerson and D. Nirenberg for Spain, and T. Cohen and E. Cohen, G. Ruggiero, R. Davis and E. Muir for Italy. For some general or collective studies of violence, see, W.I. Miller, Humiliation (Ithaca, NY, 1993); J. Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe; R. Kaeuper, ed., Violence in Medieval Society (Woodbridge, 2000); Meyerson, Thiery and Falk, eds., A Great Effusion of Blood?; G. Halsall, ed., Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West (Rochester, 1998). 33 While many studies of violence have shown how men were preoccupied with the preservation of honor and shame, some recent studies have especially helped to illumine both the societal attitudes toward as well as the agency of female parishioners within the context of an honor and shame culture. See, K.L. French, The Good Women of the Parish: Gender and Religion after the Black Death (Philadelphia, 2008); S.M. Butler, The Language of Abuse: Marital Violence in Late Medieval England (Leiden, 2007); S. McSheffrey, Marriage,

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and sheriffs, but also ‘average individuals’—lest it fall into chaos. Social order, social status and even social relations might be subverted unless someone was willing to use violence to preserve or restore the divinely ordained status quo. But just who or what determined the ‘status quo’? To answer this question, one must recognize that violence is, by its very nature, “perspectival”.34 The determination of whether to label an act as violent or not often varies between the victim, the victimizer and the witnesses, whether direct or indirect. Overall, it is the third party, the witnesses, who most often have the final say in deciding either to label an action with some derogatory term, such as ‘bloodthirsty’, or some laudable term, such as ‘brave’. As we have heard so often in our own age, one person’s ‘terrorist’ is another person’s ‘freedom fighter’. Yet, third parties are variable as well. For example, in our study, there are three overarching groups who could be ‘third parties’: the lay parishioners who witnessed or heard about an act of violence, as well as clerical authorities and the royal authorities who may not only have witnessed the act of violence but also been involved in the prosecution of the participants. By the late medieval period, the clergy and the crown were growing into the prime determinants of acceptable violence, but these two groups still lacked the police forces and resources of modern governments and thus, they lacked complete control over the appropriation of the right to use violence. An examination of the historical records of acts of violence often reveals official and popular, as well as competing or complementary, interpretations of an event. Moreover, the demarcation between ‘officially sanctioned’ acts and personal whim can be quite blurry at times. The aggression of priests, constables or other parish elites could often be couched in terms which implied that their actions were ‘approved’ by some source of authority, be it God, king, manor lord or lineage. In general, the acceptability of violence was, like medieval society itself, on a scale skewed toward elites and those in power. The higher up the social ladder one was, the more permissible it was to use violence against those on the rungs below.35 Though late medieval parishioners valued violence as a useful tool, nothing was more important to them than religion for it alone was the

Sex and Civic Culture in Late Medieval London (Philadelphia, 2006); S. Bardsley, Venomous Tongues: Speech and Gender in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia, 2006). 34 See, Miller, Humiliation, pp. 55–60. 35 See for instance, Maddern, Violence and Social Order.

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INTRODUCTION

caretaker of their souls. Setting aside the arguments of ‘Dickensian’ historians, scholars have clearly shown the vitality and centrality of religion in late medieval English society.36 Indeed, modern scholarship has shown quite well that despite their vulnerability to blandness, error and abuse, religious expression and participation was quite popular at the parish level. Christianity was an important part of late medieval English social life even if worldly ideals and aspirations, such as the pursuit of family honor or political influence, sometimes became integrated with holy rituals and traditions.37 As John Sommerville asserts, late medieval 36 The pater familias of scholars who depict late medieval religion in England as decrepit and decadent is A.G. Dickens, The English Reformation (London, 1989). In his study of the English Reformation, he asserts that late medieval society was alienated from religious life and increasingly discontent with the clergy’s hollow rituals and corrupt character. Religious ideas could not influence the behavior of the masses because religion in general had grown blind to the needs of the parish community. Despite the flaws in his methodology which stem from his interpretation of history through a smattering of powerful, largely Protestant, individuals, Dickens’ ideas still resonate in popular perceptions of the origins of the English Reformation. However much the image of a decadent and remote religion remains in the mentality of the general public, scholars have long since abandoned such sweeping assumptions about the state of religion in late medieval England. The lack of scholarly support for Dickens’ ideas about the exhausted state of religion is important for my own study because if religion was still a respected part of late medieval culture, then it could still effect social change. More specifically, if religion was responsive to community needs, then it could have altered lay attitudes toward violence. 37 Without much concern for the origins of the Reformation and with less focus on England, Huizinga assesses late medieval religion as a means through which cruel reality could be veiled by “apparent harmony.” In short, religion was a disguise for melancholy and pessimism, a source for ritual without depth of meaning; Huizinga, Waning, p. 55. The importance of religious observance lay not in its ability to transform society into a greater collective but rather in its ability to cover society’s flaws by hollow observance of formulas. As Huizinga states, religious observance was “like dancing a minuet”; pp. 47–48. Despite his scorn for religion’s lack of depth, Huizinga does acknowledge that it was an integral aspect of society. Unlike Dickens who considers abuse to be a symptom of religion’s decay and irrelevance, Huizinga attributes religious abuse and excess to the “unshaken faith” and deep “religious culture” of the period; pp. 156–160. Another group of scholars argue that late medieval religion was bland but pervasive. See, C. Carpenter, “The Religion of the Gentry in Fifteenth-Century England,” in England in the Fifteenth Century, ed. D. Williams (Woodbridge, 1987), pp. 53–74. Besides her assertion that religion in late medieval England was entirely conventional, Carpenter notes that religion, as a very public matter, was used by the gentry to display their honor. She confesses that the origins of the Reformation are a complete mystery because there is no sign of decay or dissatisfaction. See also, C. Richmond, “Religion of the FifteenthCentury English Gentleman,” in The Church, Politics and Patronage, ed. B. Dobson (New York, 1984), pp. 193–208; —, “Religion,” in Fifteenth-Century Attitudes, ed. R. Horrox (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 183–201; M.G.A. Vale, Piety, Charity and Literacy among the Yorkshire Gentry: 1370–1480 (York, 1976). These scholars employ a wide range of sources to reveal the widespread participation of individuals in church affairs. At the same time, they note that parishioners’ religious observance was almost entirely devoid of innovation

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England was a “religious culture”—individuals did not consider consciously how even the smallest of actions related to their faith because religion infused all aspects of life. Likewise, Huizinga, adhering to his pattern of cultural and social decay, contended that the demarcation between secular and sacred was almost completely obliterated in the late Middle Ages. Every aspect of medieval life was highly ritualized and spiritualized.38 As with many of Huizinga’s ideas, there is a core of truth in his hyperbole about late medieval life. In this still largely visual and oral society, ritual action was the foremost means of religious expression. Though its ability to unite parishioners has been overemphasized on occasion, ritual could in some respects harmonize parishioners from all walks of life in thought and deed. In his thorough and notable study of the English Reformation, The Stripping of the Altars, Eamon Duffy argues for this harmony by asserting that the meaning of religious symbols and rituals was shared by both elites and peasants— though the elites sometimes gained further understanding from their literacy. Indeed, parish records attest to the fact that the laity actively participated in parish rituals and activities for both their sacred and social benefits.39 The most important ritual was the mass because it was and enthusiasm; the rituals and places of religion were employed in conventional and formulaic ways. From these scholars, we gain deeper insight into the routines of religion which defined lay spirituality but we must beware of linking ‘blandness’ with impotency in terms of the ability of religion to effect social change. 38 C.J. Sommerville, The Secularization of Early Modern England: From Religious Culture to Religious Faith (Oxford, 1992), p. 3. In his overarching examination of the ‘secularization’ of society, Sommerville dubs the transition of medieval religion into Reformation religion, a movement from a “religious culture” to “religious faith”. In the late Middle Ages, religion was about the “real world” and all actions and things related to religion without much conscious consideration of how they did so. After the Reformation, religion was a matter of conscious belief, a matter of import for only one’s most philosophical and poetic moments. The ideals and institutions of religion were separate from the real world. R. Scribner and K. Thomas show how the laity employed sacred rituals and objects for purposes far beyond those which the clergy intended. Despite the false dichotomy which Thomas makes between learned use and ‘popular’ use of the sacred—N. Davis argues that the use of the supernatural for mundane ends was shared by priests and peasants alike—his and Scribner’s focus on the social value of lay concepts of the sacred provide useful models of historical inquiry. See, Huizinga, Waning; R. Scribner, “The Reformation, Popular Magic and the Disenchantment of the World,” in Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23:3 (1993), 475–494; K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Oxford, 1997); N.Z. Davis, “Some Tasks and Themes in the Study of Popular Religion,” in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion, ed. C. Trinkaus and H.A. Oberman (Leiden, 1974), pp. 307–338. 39 Many scholars have rebutted the idea that religion was merely a monotonous set of exhausted rituals. The foundational proponents of late medieval religion as vibrant and varied are John Bossy and Eamon Duffy. For scholars like Duffy and Bossy, social values

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INTRODUCTION

then that parishioners encountered the body of Christ and prayed for the souls of the dead. However, parish life was composed of numerous aspects which ranged from the high holiness of the mass to the quasiholiness of a church ale. Processions, plays, baptisms, marriages, masses, holiday feasts and fires, guilds, fraternities, funerals, chantries, church ales, church courts, church bells, and devotional literature familiarized even the most unenthusiastic of parishioners with the vast and fluid framework of late medieval and early modern religion. Religion was the very foundation of cultural and social life. Thus, religion was one of only two elements during this time period—the other being the royal judicial system—that could significantly influence society’s attitude toward the use of violence. In the following pages, we shall see just how much or how little traditional religion problematized the use of violence and aggression among parishioners and in turn, just how parishioners chose to play with the hand that their faith had dealt them.

and social change at all levels were intimately linked with religion. Their approaches, especially Bossy’s, eschews an investigation of religion through its institutions and politics. Instead, they analyze religion as ‘social relations.’ In numerous studies, Bossy details the importance of religion to the formation of social bonds and to the temporary restructuring of social hierarchy. As will be explored in more detail later, Bossy lucidly conveys the prominent place that ritual held in lay spiritual life and in lay social life. Through ritual, the clergy pacified aggression and stabilized social relations. Duffy contends that both ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture readily understood the symbolic capacity of religious ritual. Moreover, Duffy argues that varied forms of religious ritual satiated society’s spiritual needs and helped to make late medieval religion a highly important aspect of social life. Duffy does perhaps attribute too much depth to the lower class’ understanding of ritual but nevertheless, his overall depiction of a religious community without clearly defined distinction between the religion of the elite and the religion of the masses is well conceived. See, Bossy, Christianity; —, “The Mass as a Social Institution 1200–1700,” Past and Present 100 (1983), 29–61; —, “Blood and Baptism: Kinship, Community and Christianity in Western Europe from the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth centuries,” Studies in Church History 19 (1973), 129–143; Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars; —, The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (New Haven, CT, 2001). Also see, French, The Good Women.

PART I

LESSONS ON THE VALUE OF VIOLENCE

INTRODUCTION TO PART I In his landmark study of the liturgical ritual known as the ‘passing of the pax’, John Bossy made plain the place of religion within the agonistic world of late medieval England: “The parish priest, the parish church and the institution of the church had a very clear role to play… to assist in the creation of peace in the feud”.1 This seemingly obvious statement requires more rumination than one might expect for it links a comprehension of parochial religious practices to a greater understanding of a wide spectrum of late medieval mentalities; from attitudes about violence to notions of honor and shame. Bossy especially emphasized the role of parochial religion as a peacemaker and instrument of social discipline, at a time when most studies still focused on earlier, and often less pervasive, efforts against violence. Indeed, long before the maturation of parishes into the bedrock of social and cultural life, some clerics and laity were preoccupied by the problem of violence and aggression between Christians. By the tenth century, leading ecclesiastics, though themselves still inclined to “bloody constraint” on occasion, were increasingly determined to check the behavior of society’s less contemplative elements.2 The tenets, known by historians as the Peace and Truce of God, dating from around the late tenth-century Synod of Charroux and the early eleventh-century statutes of the bishop of Terouanne, ushered in a new era of efforts to curb conflict among Christians.3 The papal call for crusade further spurred the channeling 1

Bossy, “Blood and Baptism,” 139. For examples of warring bishops during this period of religious peace movements see, Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, ed. M. Chibnall (Oxford, 1978), vi, pp.73–75, 530–534, 551; The phrase ‘bloody constraint’ comes from the dramatic ode to chivalric violence, Shakespeare’s Henry V, II.iv.97 in The Riverside Shakespeare. 3 For insightful investigations of early clerical efforts to curb violence, especially chivalric violence see, R. Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1999), pp. 41–88; H.E.J. Cowdrey, “The Peace and Truce of God in the Eleventh Century,” Past and Present 46 (1970), 42–67; G. Duby, “The Laity and the Peace of God,” in The Chivalrous Society, trans. C. Postan (Berkeley, 1977), pp. 122–133; J. Martindale, “Peace and War in Early Eleventh-Century Aquitaine,” in Medieval Knighthood, ed. R. Harvey and C. Harper-Bill (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 147–176; T. Head and R. Landes, eds., The Peace of God: Social Violence and Religious Response in France around the Year 1000 (Ithaca, NY, 1992). It should be noted that the clergy themselves enacted violence through holy rituals during this time period. See, B. Rosenwein, “Feudal War and Monastic Peace: Clunaic Liturgy as Spiritual Aggression,” Viator 2 (1971), 129–157; P. Geary, “Humiliation of Saints,” in Saints and their Cults, ed. S. Wilson (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 123–140. 2

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of aggression into ‘pious and proper’ endeavors—as noted earlier, an example of brotherhood bolstered by hatred towards an ‘other’. As Urban II is alleged to have declared in 1095 at the council of Clermont, “Let those who are accustomed to wage private wars wastefully even against Believers, go forth against the Infidels … let those, who until recently existed as plunderers, be soldiers of Christ”4 After the establishment of these checks and channels, the clergy, sometimes with the support or even at the behest of embattled laity, began to develop or further emphasize rituals, laws and literature which, among other things, promoted the development of social discipline through self-restraint, as well as the enhancement of harmony among Christians. Only recently have scholars, following the pioneering concerns of Bossy, attempted to illuminate the enduring methods of conflictresolution found at the parish level.5 Other historians have bravely struggled to disentangle the complex cultural web that informed parishioners’ understanding of violence and how such an understanding related to their faith.6 Nevertheless, these studies, still too scarce in

4 Fulcher of Chartes, Chronicle of the First Crusade, trans. M.E. McGinty (Philadelphia, 1941), p. 16. 5 See, R.B. Dobson, “Politics and the Church in the Fifteenth-Century North,” in The North of England in the Age of Richard III, ed. A.J. Pollard (New York, 1996), pp. 1–18; Dobson insightfully comments on the role of the clergy as stabilizers of the feud-filled North; Hanawalt, Of Good and Ill Repute; in chapter three, Hanawalt examines how spiritual language and ritual infused the peacemaking process of late medieval London; M.E. James, English Politics and the Concepts of Honor; James argues that the clergy’s restraint of violence was minimal in the late middle ages due to the compartmentalization of religion and honor. Instead, James locates the clash between secular and sacred norms in the Reformation; P. Hyams, “Feud in Medieval England,” Haskins Society Journal 3 (1991), 17–20; Hyams provides an overview of his exhaustive study of feud in early and high medieval England; —, Rancor and Reconciliation in Medieval England (Ithaca, 2003); B. Kümin, “Parishioners in Court Litigation and the Local Community, 1350– 1650” in Belief and Practice in Reformation England, ed. S. Wabuga and C. Litzenberger (Brookfield, 1998), pp. 20–39; Kümin recognizes both the potential for conflict in the community and the rapid response of parishioners to quell such conflict; K. Petkov, The Kiss of Peace: Ritual, Self and Society in the High and Late Medieval West (Leiden, 2003). 6 Bossy, Christianity; —, “The Mass as a Social Institution”; —, “Blood and Baptism”; James, “Politics of Honor”; Maddern, Violence; Maddern’s third chapter is particularly poignant; K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline; R. Muchembled, La Violence au village: sociabiltité et comportements populaires en Artois du XVe au XVIIe siecle (Brussels, 1989); N.Z. Davis, “The Rites of Violence in Society and Culture in Early Modern France,” in Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, 1975), pp. 152–188; For an investigation of the link between religion, honor and violence among Jews and Conversos in late medieval Valencia, see, M. Meyerson, “The Murder of Pau de Sant Marti: Jews, Conversos, and the Feud in Fifteenth-Century Valencia,” in A ‘Great Effusion of Blood ’?, ed. Meyerson, Thiery and Falk, pp. 190–215.

INTRODUCTION TO PART I

23

number, require significant supplementation and synthesis in order to provide a better perspective of the various ways in which late medieval religion curbed, channeled or compelled the reconsideration of parishioners’ aggression. Through an analysis of a variety of sources, particularly English synodal statutes, sermon-collections, liturgical manuals, confessors’ handbooks and even some lay religious poems, Part I will illumine the range of spiritual media, accessible to late medieval parishioners, that problematized the use of violence by encouraging a zeal for charity, an admiration for self-restraint, a concern for spiritual condition as much as if not more than public repute and a degradation of some violent action as dishonorable and impious. We shall quickly see that late medieval religion was not as compartmentalized and ‘otherworldy’ as some scholars have contended.7 Indeed, the sources show that the clergy were quite aware that religious observance took place within the context of aggressive social competition. While the values of the contemporary honor culture promoted ostentation, pride, concern for appearances and public reputation, temporal gain, readiness to use violence and, on occasion, bombastic posturing, Christianity in its theology and liturgy accented charity, poverty, humility, asceticism, concern for spiritual purity and eternal reward.8 Unlike the latter temporal glories which valorized aggression, the propagation of these spiritual ideals taught that there was no place of honor, in this world or the next, for those who lacked a sense of restraint or used violence against their fellow Christian. In English parishes, the inculcation and expression of such spiritual ideals primarily took five forms. First, the clergy through both canon law and religious rite emphasized the sinfulness and shame of violence perpetrated on sacred ground. Second, in both theological discourse and liturgical practice, the Church taught that charity and humble reverence were integral to worthy witness or reception of the Eucharist and hence, its unparalleled blessings were forbidden to the violent. Third, sermons, didactic literature and penitencia, while recognizing the existence of an aggressive, vengeance-minded honor culture, sought both to delegitimize the personal impulses which led to acts of retributive

7

James, “Politics of Honor,” 8. All parishioners participated in the honor culture of late medieval England because they all sought in some manner to earn ‘good repute’ and avoid’ ill repute’ on a daily basis. However, as with most honor cultures, English parishioners generally cared most about the estimation of their social and economic peers rather than those below them. 8

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violence and to elevate piety as a determinant of worldly reputation. Fourth, though many aspects of late medieval religion stressed humility, parish life did offer avenues for agonistic parishioners to proclaim their personal status without stepping beyond the bounds of charity. Lastly, parish clergy sought to promote harmony and humility through lifestyles that were, ideally, far different than those of most male parishioners. While, in reality, its clerics sometimes failed to live up to the ideal of charity and its authorities continued to sanction some forms of violence, the late medieval Church did try through ritual, deed and word to suppress aggression, address anxieties about social status and foster a charitable sense of community among parishioners; in other words, through a variety of media, late medieval religion encouraged lay and clerical parishioners ‘to think twice’ about the benefits of violent conduct.

CHAPTER ONE

THE CONTRA: RECOGNIZING A ROLE FOR VIOLENCE Before we can undertake a fresh exploration of the myriad ways that parochial religion denigrated and problematized the use of violence, we must first cover the more familiar and expected role of the medieval Church; that is as the ‘Church militant’, promoter of violence. The clergy did preach to parishioners that on occasion, violence and aggression were both commendable and holy. In one of his many keen insights, Huizinga remarked that the Church softened the violent impulses of men through its emphasis on mercy but at the same time, it sanctioned violence by compelling retribution for sin: The Church, on the one hand, had inculcated gentleness and clemency, and tried, in that way, to soften judicial morals. On the other hand, in adding to the primitive need of retribution the horror of sin, it had, to a certain extent, stimulated the sentiment of justice. And sin, to violent and impulsive spirits, was only too frequently another name for what their enemies did.1

Indeed, Christianity, despite the apparent meekness and passivity of its founder, has never been a religion of complete pacifism. Early in its growth, it readily accepted its Old Testament inheritance of a vengeful God who punished sinners and it also, under the aegis of Christ’s command to ‘render to Caesar what was Caesar’s’, as well as Augustine’s reluctant tolerance of the City of the Man, readily accepted the right of the existing political structure to enforce social order.2 These two points provided a foundation upon which the medieval Church built an intricate ideology about the licit and illicit use of violence. The essence of this ideology argued that God would, or society could, on occasion, justifiably resort to violence to avenge wrongs or restore order.3 The most well-known and well-studied applications of this ideology were the 1

Huizinga, Waning, pp. 23–24. Augustine noted in the City of God that the secular power helped maintain peace. This was a necessary evil for Christians because it allowed them to focus on religion rather than an attack by enemies. For other early Christian notions of accomodation with the Romans, see, T. White, From Jesus to Christianity (San Francisco, 2004), pp. 259–290. 3 For a good overview of the development of the idea of sanctified violence, see, T. Asbridge, The First Crusade (Oxford, 2004), pp. 21–39. 2

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crusades and the clergy’s attachment of religious values to the codes of chivalry.4 The ideal of crusade lauded violence as both retributive and purgative. Violence done against the infidel was an act of divine retribution through human agents and at the same time, an act that purged the crusader of sin.5 Also, the religious rituals of initiation into knighthood, and the rituals that composed some of its ‘peacetime’ activities, like masses or processions before tournaments and duels, certainly helped to sanctify the violence of the warrior class. While these rituals were designed to make ‘rough and tumble’ warriors into champions of the Church, as Huizinga alluded earlier, some knights failed to grasp the distinction between their personal will and the will of the Church—to some, the sacred blessings infused in chivalric rituals were all too easily seen as an unconditional license to cudgel and kill rather than a clarion call for conscientiousness and self discipline. As participants in parish life, most late medieval men and women would have been exposed to the Church’s sanction of violence in a few notable ways. First, some portrayals of God and Christ in images and text reinforced contemporary ideas about admirable aggression and vengeful violence. Also, in their sermons and handbooks, the clergy lauded the visible punishment of sin and the maintenance of order through either divine wrath or human agency. In a similar vein, the effort of prelates and monarchs to stamp out the late medieval heresy known as Lollardy brought the ideology of crusade to the attention of average parishioners. Furthermore, the clergy promoted litigation as a justifiable form of confl ict resolution and in their courts, they employed shame-based punishments that relied on, and therefore tacitly sanctioned, the contemporary culture’s emphasis on external appearance. Lastly, the violence of hagiographical tales taught that victimization could be a blessing even if the violence itself was sinful. These various points provided parishioners with a more subtle understanding of the role of violence in the construction of their society and parish. They learned through a variety of media that in God’s eyes, not all violence was insolent, sinful, and sacrilegious. Parochial Expositions of Valid Violence God, in the perception of medieval individuals, was a mysterious combination of mercy and justice but, more often than not, God the Father 4 5

See, Asbridge, First Crusade; Kaeuper, Violence and Chivalry, pp. 41–88. Asbridge, First Crusade, pp. 1–39.

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was an angry God who held the exclusive right to wreak vengeance. Sermons, handbooks and even rituals, like the reconciliation of sacred space, reminded parishioners that God’s wrath escalated as each sin affronted his honor. His ire would certainly descend on the soul of the deceased sinner but it could also manifest itself in the temporal world. For both theologians and medieval society in general, divine violence was unquestionably just and even the suffering caused by natural disasters was a product of his righteousness. No one was safe from the Father’s wrath, not even Christ.6 Christ, usually associated with the ideals of charity and mercy, was also the center of extensive violent imagery. Foremost, Christ was the victim of divine wrath for the sins of man. Phillipa Maddern, in her insightful study of the conceptual context of violence in England, argues that fifteenth-century society considered the violence done to Christ a necessary evil, one that created eternal peace and lasting order.7 Those who made a living on violence quickly associated their trade with the restorative brutality of Christ’s passion. Their placement of armor and weapons at the offertory of a requiem or in images of Christ’s passion gave religious value to vehicles of pain and conflict.8 Moreover, descriptions of the crucifixion usually played upon contemporary notions of an honorable demise; such as Christ dying on the cross while valiantly fighting against the devil.9 Fashioning such as this made Christ Himself seem to be a player in the struggle for honor and dishonor. For late medieval parishioners, Christ was not just a reputable householder, he was the most reputable householder from the most reputable family. He allegedly even kept up with the craze for heraldry. The symbols of the passion such as the crown of thorns and the lance formed His unique coat of arms for which Yorkshire nobles and gentry seemed to show quite an affinity.10 Like fifteenth-century Englishmen, Christ would not always suffer the stings of His enemies with kindness and charity for, as John Bossy remarks, “the meek Lamb of the Apocalypse” would also be a “vehicle of wrath” at the final judgment.11 This apocalyptic view of a vengeful Christ was placed within the context of chivalric romance. Christ was often depicted in literature as a knight who quested for the 6

Maddern, Violence and Social Order, p. 78. Ibid., p. 81. 8 Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries: Religion and Secular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire (Woodbridge, 1988), p. 32. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., p. 31. 11 Bossy, Christianity, p. 6. 7

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souls of men and won possession of them through battle against the devil. Remarkably, one Middle English sermon lauds Christ’s use of violence against demons who themselves caused violence by sowing sinful and wicked bloodshed among men.12 Thus, for the clergy and society, violence had a dual nature, both divine and demonic, which was determined by both the motives and authority of the agent of aggression. Depictions of ‘Christ, the warrior’, valorized and sanctified the use of violence for divine purposes and, in turn, gave significant leeway to the actions of many monarchs and even peasants in their aggression against enemies. Maddern argues that “fifteenth-century people had, it seems, a profound sense of the necessary place of violence in the universe, confirmed beyond—sanctified almost—by the violence suffered and used by God”. Complete pacifism was an act of defiance, an attempt to place oneself above God.13 The moral values of the unseen world of the holy (how God is supposed to be) provide a sacred sanction for those of the material human world.14 In other words, if God and Christ could use violence and vengeance, could not humans also do so as long as they acted in accord with the divine model? The medieval understanding of God’s wrath and Christ’s passion fostered further notions of justifiable violence in the temporal world. Violence that punished sin, defended the Church or restored order in society was based on a divine model of behavior. God could either use violence Himself to punish offenders or He could employ humans as agents of His destruction. That such a notion penetrated into medieval culture is quickly discernible in the famous retort of Henry V to the friar who dared to question the monarch’s use of violence against fellow Christians: “I am the scourge of God, sent to punish the people of God for their sins”.15 Monarchs were not the only ones who were taught that violence was a licit and divinely sanctioned response to sin and disorder. Average English parishioners were exposed to an array of literature that detailed licit, indeed commendable, exercises of violence in the temporal world. According to didactic literature and sermons, parishioners were obliged to punish sin and correct excessive disobedience through violence. 12 Hughes, Pastors, pp. 30–32; Middle English Sermons, ed. W.O. Ross (EETS, o.s. 209, 1940), p. 37. 13 Maddern, Violence and Social Order, pp. 82–83. 14 E. Nottingham, Religion and Society (New York, 1961), p. 7. 15 First English Life of King Henry the Fifth, ed. C.L. Kingsford (Oxford, 1911), pp. 130–131, 133.

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In one particular sermon against the vice of wrath, the writer distinguished between just and unjust application. He argued that some wrath was a sin and some was not, for God Himself was called wrath at times in the Psalms. Sinful wrath was when a man tried to avenge something which pertained only to his own problems or causes. For God’s cause, a man could be wrathful and not sin, but in personal matters, he was to love his enemies.16 The Book of Vices and Virtues counseled parishioners to “understand well” that besides sinful wrath, there was an anger that “goode holy men” had against evil. In fact, it was a “virtue” to destroy evil.17 The author of Handlyng of Synne noted that: with resun, mayst þou þe wraþþe and flyte A3ens vyleynye and synne, 3yf þou ne mayst do oþer bote þerynne; wraþþe þe with mannys vylenye, But nat with his gode ne hys body. þat God loveþ, þou shalt love… þat God never louyd, þou shalt hate18

The writer further decreed that though God loved every creature, “But þe synne þat ys wroght, /þat loued he neuer noght”. Like God, the faithful were called to love the sinner and hate the sin; “loue euery man yn hys gode dede; /hys wykkednes shalt þou hate & drede”. Hatred of sin, or, in the case of a disobedient wife, ‘disorder’ should lead to active correction through chastisement, “wurdys smerte”, or physical punishment, as long as wrath was not in the heart of the corrector.19 Unlike sermons and textual passages which linked regular attendance, restrained comportment and charitable intention during religious observance to proper piety and honor, these didactic works associate proper piety and honor with outright aggression toward sinners. Despite the growing concern of both late medieval clerics and parishioners with the crime/ sin of scolding, the writers of these works expect parishioners to chastise, nag and police their neighbors.20 How could parishioners distinguish between scolding/assault and pious correction? Clerical writers were well aware of the seeming incongruity between their stance on wrath and their understanding of the correction of sin. 16

Middle English Sermons, p. 51. The Book of Vices and Virtues, ed. W.N. Francis (EETS, o.s. 217, 1942), p. 25. 18 Robert of Brune, Handlyng of Synne, ed. F.J. Furnival (EETS, o.s. 119, 1901), p. 129. 19 Ibid.; Butler, Language of Abuse, pp. 30–68. 20 Bardsley, Venomous Tongues. 17

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As seen in the Handlyng of Synne, they tried to resolve the difference by emphasizing the absence of true hate for the sinner in the heart of the corrector.21 As with Kantian morality in a much later century, no personal gain could be involved in the correction of another. Dives et Pauper admonished that violence should never be performed for worldly goods or fame.22 Other works even warned husbands and fathers that their use of violence to ‘maintain order’ within their family had to be free of selfish intention.23 For some writers, the best proof of selfless intention was the approval of one’s action by ecclesiastical or royal authorities; i.e., an act of violence by official of the law, whether archdeacon, sheriff or executioner.24 In order to illustrate sanctified wrath, many exempla recount moments of divine vengeance on earth. These tales allegorized the clergy’s faith in the righteousness of divine violence that would purge the world of sin. They also exposed parishioners to instances of justifiable violence which, unlike the mundane use of violence, provided the aggressor with both temporal vindication and spiritual reward. In the story of St. Thomas, Mirk conveys the message that God would quickly avenge injuries to the devout. St. Thomas, struck in the face by a butler, cried out, “I nyll not ryse of thys place, tyll that same hond be gnawen wyth dogges and be broght hedyr befor me”. This tale would have been of interest to ‘honor-sensitive’ parishioners who endured similar slights through ritualized acts of physical abuse. Rather than seek to strike the butler himself, Thomas vowed to revel in his shame until he had been avenged by God and soon enough, his divine patron in heaven sent dogs to attack the butler and gnaw off his hand.25 In a particularly poignant warning to maliciously litigious Englishmen or women, Mirk describes how St. Andrew bellowed to his mother who had falsely accused him in court, “veniaunce wol fall apon the!” and, sure enough, God struck her down with a bolt of lightning.26 Forgoing lightning, God also struck

21 As Kant, without reference to religion, would later try to do when he defined true moral action as entirely ‘selfless’. 22 Dives et Pauper, ed. P.H. Barnum (EETS, o.s. 280, 1976–80), ii, pp. 55–57. 23 Sara Butler’s discussion of clerical attitudes toward domestic abuse—it could be legitimate but should not be disproportionate—shows how clerics tried to find a via media between sanctioning and controlling parishioners’ right to use violence. See, Butler, Language of Abuse, pp. 30–68. 24 The Book of Vices and Virtues, p. 3. 25 J. Mirk, Mirk’s Festial, ed. T. Erbe (EETS, e.s. 96, 1905), p. 19. 26 Ibid., p. 7.

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down Ananias and Sapphira for their sins by his words alone.27 Unlike the petty ‘give and take’ world of mortal aggression, divine vengeance was decisive and without room for reprisal. However, as parishioners sometimes experienced first hand, divine vengeance was not always immediate—though the narrative pattern in these tales tends to conflate time so that the payback comes soon after the slight. Therefore, parishioners who chose to place their hope in the divine would have to endure momentary, if still all too hurtful, shame. In one particular tale, Mirk directly tackled the problem of patient endurance from initial affront to decisive vengeance by the divine. He described the murder of a merchant by an honorable but poor knight who needed money to marry a rich woman. When the knight went back to the grave of the merchant, the body rose out of the ground and prayed, “Lorde þat art ryghtwys juge, þou wreke me apon þis man þat haþe þus falsly slayne me”. The heavens replied, “Thys day þrytty wyntyr, þou shalt haue vengeans”. Many days passed and no vengeance came. The knight married and, as a man of high standing, he gathered as many retainers as possible for a feast. As a harpist played a melody for the guests, a stranger marched out of the kitchen and smeared the harp with grease causing the music to become discordant. The angry musician chased the stranger out of the castle. The unknown assailant vanished and when the musician turned around, he saw the castle falling to the ground, consumed in fire. With this Mirk warned, “Thus 3e may se, þagh God abyde longe, at þe last he smytyth sore. … for he sees þat no man may scape his dome vndampned”.28 The discord created by the greasing of the harp is remarkably reminiscent of an analogy in the lay didactic text, Jacob’s Well, which compared a wrathful man to a poorly strung, and hence discordant, harp.29 Harmony simply could not exist in the murderous knight’s house and, though it took quite a long time, he would not escape unpunished. These tales tend to emphasize direct intervention on God’s part and in so doing, they retained the traditional insistence on God’s exclusive

27

Dives, p. 49; Maddern, Violence and Social Order, pp. 79–80. Mirk, Festial, pp. 88–89. These lines may be loosely translated as follows: “Lord who is righteous judge, let me have vengeance upon this man who falsely slew me”. The heavens answered, “This day you shall have vengeance”. Mirk’s warning may be rendered as follows: “You may see here that God will abide injury for long but in the end he will have vengeance. … for he sees that no man escapes his doom unpunished”. 29 Jacob’s Well: An English Treatise on the Cleansing of Man’s Conscience, ed. A. Brandeis (EETS, o.s. 115, 1900), p. 90. 28

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right to vengeance. The aggrieved used passive aggression such as praying or cursing, then they simply waited until God decided when and how the aggressors would be punished; some even lasting until the end of their mortal life only to be punished for all eternity.30 However, these hagiographical pieces also show that violence in the temporal world was not always a demonic and evil force but also a cleansing, retributive action given sanction by heaven. For sometimes, God did not act directly but, instead, chose humans as agents of his wrath. That Henry V believed in this idea is without question. Echoing the idea that God placed the keys to violence in the hands of some humans, Dives et Pauper argued that God endowed temporal lords with “the sword” to punish the wicked.31 Yet, even commoners could be seen as divinely inspired agents of wrath, such as when villagers rose up in 1381 to attack the wicked servants of Richard II.32 Having been forewarned of divine vengeance through an earthquake, Margery Kempe was allegedly told by God that His vengeance could also be done through warfare.33 Such an interpretive framework, which sees the hand of God behind acts of violence, was hardly new in Judeo-Christian thought.34 Yet, it must be remembered that on many occasions, such as with the sack of Rome by the Goths, the crucifixion of Christ or the defeat of the Israelites by the Babylonians, the perpetrators of violence were not considered to be morally upright. They were agents of God but not ‘pious’ agents. Only a ‘servant of God’ could claim to be both justifiably violent and properly pious too. God did assure Margery Kemp that he would punish those who rejected his servants. When his vengeance struck the impious, God would tell them, “I made my servants pray for you and you despised their deeds and their lives”.35 Margery’s narrative conveys the common belief of medieval and early modern Europeans that violence in defense

30

M. Goodich provides a detailed study of vengeance miracles and how they convey the decay of social order. He asserts that victims of aggression looked to divine aid when hope of other aid such as the legal system or clerical intervention was lost (p. 27). See, M. Goodich, Violence and Miracle in the Fourteenth Century: Private Grief and Public Salvation (Chicago, 1995). 31 Dives, p. 13. 32 Maddern, Violence and Social Order, p. 83. 33 The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. and trans. B. Windeat (New York, 1994), pp. 83–84. 34 See, for example, the writings of Augustine or Symachus in the late Roman Empire or in the Old Testament, the tale of the Hebrew flight from Egypt in the Book of Exodus or the prophecies of Jeremiah. 35 Book of Margery Kempe, p. 84.

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of the faith was a meritorious act. Of course, this idea has its prime example in conflicts such as the crusades, or more poignantly for English parishioners, the royal and clerical attack on Lollardy. Banned and burned as heretics by Henry IV, implicated in a plot to kill Henry V and derided by many parishioners as nagging neighbors,36 Lollards were feared as the ultimate threats to the social, political and divine order of late medieval England. Even if most parishioners never would have encountered a real Lollard, they still would have been aware from public proclamations and preaching that their religion was ‘under attack’. The ideal of crusade against heresy was no longer restricted to marching off to the Holy Land and while the primary duty of parishioners was to support the inquisitions and injunctions of their royal and episcopal authorities, they might, at some point, have to resort to violence in order to insure the purity of religious rites. In fact, Mirk urged the patrons of a parish to be ready to defend their church with violence, if necessary, so that their fellow parishioners could worship in peace and God’s service could be done “without disturbance”. In illustration of his point, Mirk remarked that in Surrey, when the gospel was read, “anon yche knyght þat ys yn þe churche draweth out his sword, and soo holdyþ hit nakyd yn his hond” till the Gospel was concluded. This show of might was designed to display the readiness of parishioners to “feght wyth a man þat wyll come and chalanch oght þat ys red yn þe gospell”.37 Though Mirk certainly intends to promote a crusader’s spirit, if we consider that he introduced his recollection of the Surrey tradition with some warnings about the disturbance of divine service, it seems plausible that he had in mind both a defense against heretics and a defense against unrestrained parishioners. Like depictions of the warrior, Christ, fighting against the devil, Mirk pitted just violence in defense of the Church against the discordant violence of heretics and polluters of the sacred. The taint of sacrilege or heresy put parishioners in a tenuous position for they stood outside of the community of faithful, a position where the peaceful ideals of Christian charity and harmony often lost out to the demand for the punishment of evil and restoration of God’s order.

36 See, for instance, P. Strohm, England’s Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation, 1399–1422 (South Bend, 2006); S. McSheffrey, Gender and Heresy: Women and Men in Lollard Communities (Philadelphia, 1995); Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, ed. N.P. Tanner (Camden Society, 20, 1977). 37 Mirk, Festial, p. 241.

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For clerical thinkers, the dual nature of violence as divine or demonic stemmed from its ability to foster order or disorder. Divinely inspired violence purged society of evil and restored order while the vice of wrath only created discord and strife. This emphasis on order implied that one of its most potent arbiters, law, lay behind just violence.38 The clergy, who at the time had a legal system unparalleled in its history and complexity, determined whether violence was demonic or divine on the basis of its relationship to the law. The author of Dives et Pauper noted that God did not prohibit all killing but only killing which was against the law. Unlawful killing involved those slain without guilt, those killed without due process of the law and those killed without assent of their lord.39 Thus the clergy shared the right to judge licit and illicit violence with the existing lay mechanisms of social order, the lord and the legal system. As one late medieval poet argued, lay folk should set aside personal anger, embrace charity and let common law provide the outlet for their grievances.40 The author of Dives maintained that the execution of a criminal after due process, death due to the law of arms, and the slaying of the guilty by officers of the court or the Church were all part of licit violence.41 Again, the emphasis on law and the custodians of the law is apparent. Sermons and handbooks also saw the law as a determinant of rectitude. One sermon told parishioners to “slee no man—that is to seye, with-owte lawe”.42 Likewise, the Book of Vices and Virtues counseled parishioners that murder of an evildoer was allowable provided that the killer did only as the “lawes askeþ”.43 By linking righteous violence to the maintenance of law and order, these concepts placed the use of violence into the hands of those in power. Just as Foucault noticed in early modern penal institutions, the late medieval clergy deplored the private use of violence while legitimizing its use by the forces of law and order.44 In the words of Maddern, a “moral structure” of violence

38

Maddern, discusses the ways that order and reason could determine the legitimacy of violence: Maddern, Violence and Social Order, pp. 84–98. She does not go into detail on the ways that the legal system provided a framework for clerical notions of just violence. 39 Dives, p. 13. 40 Twenty Six Political and Other Poems, ed. J. Kail (EETS, o.s. 124, 1904), p. 81. “Godre not in propre, world is good; /that nes no religieous, but world is reve. /The herre degre, the mekere the mood. /Tak no vengeance, though folk a-reve. /Let Comon lawe stonde as hit stood, /Loke no proude herte thy charyte meve”. 41 Ibid., pp. 36–37. 42 Middle English Sermons, p. 24. 43 The Book of Vices and Virtues, p. 3. 44 Foucault, Discipline and Punish.

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developed which allowed those in power to use violence and those below to suffer: the moral structure of violence acted to uphold the entire (theoretical) system of godly, hierarchical social order. Violence was explicitly justified as God’s sanction against His rebels. This sanction was placed in the hands of upper-class males, who were thus responsible for maintaining order—protecting the innocent and meting out appropriate chastisement of the wicked. Their violence was both an instrument and a sign of their power. People of lower status, such as women and servants, tended to be justified in suffering, rather than executing violence.45

As seen in depictions of Christ’s passion and here in their discussions of law, the clergy recognized that violence was sometimes a necessary catalyst of order. The law was not only important as a determinant of just and unjust violence but also as a channel of aggression. The clergy saw that the English legal system, with its largely complementary secular and ecclesiastical courts, was a potent mechanism for order and a powerful force for social discipline. Though the dichotomy between his genteel violence and the physical violence of the street-fighting Mediterranean man tends to be overemphasized by scholars, the late medieval and early modern Englishman was, without doubt, extremely fond of the legal system as a channel for aggression and a gauge of family honor.46 While James Sharpe has noted that early modern society considered excessive litigation to be a sinful sign of “poor neighborliness”, the lay instructional text, Jacob’s Well, implies that parishioners’ use of the legal system could be a just means of reprisal, not a product of wrath. The author commanded his readers to abandon wrath out of religious duty and the need for salvation. Nevertheless, parishioners were not bound to abandon their legal quarrels with neighbors; the abandonment of legal action was only required of those who sought spiritual “perfeccyon” and for such merciful souls, two heavenly crowns lay in wait!47 It should come as no surprise that the clergy, who controlled a vast legal network and profited from legal expenses, would not find fault with litigation but of more important note is the clerical sanction of an already important channel for aggression. Through the legal system, rivals for power and prestige

45

Maddern, Violence and Social Order, p. 110. Maddern, “Honor among the Pastons”, 357–371. Maddern acutely observes the ways that the Pastons derived honor from the successful use of the legal system. 47 Sharpe, “Such Disagreement” p. 169; Jacob’s Well, pp. 91, 97–98. 46

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could be vanquished at the same time that the need for physical aggression was somewhat abated. The law allowed parishioners to compete against each other within a highly controlled forum that made room for open, face to face confrontation amidst the execution of legal writs, distraint, fiscal sanction and, of course, public punishment. Few legal punishments dishonored a rival as much as the shamebased punishments of the royal and clerical justice system. Ecclesiastical courts enforced religious tenets and morals but mainly handled cases of marriage legitimacy, slander, defamation, violence against clerics, pollution of sacred areas, tithe disputes and clerical discipline. Punishments, as found in the clerical court books, range from private prayer, to public penitence, to excommunication. For example, polluters of churches or churchyards were made to process before parishioners and sometimes publicly beaten and then forced to make an offering during the mass.48 The Speculum Sacerdotale ordered that all “grete and horrible synnes” such as manslaughter should be punished by standing in front of the parish church praying each Sunday for three successive years.49 Public chastisement such as these took advantage of the contemporary honor code in order not only to purge the inner soul but also to shame the physical body of the offender before the rest of the local community.50 A sentence of excommunication, with ringing bells and thrown candles, was the clergy’s most supreme method of punishing and shaming offenders. Its reach extended even to absent parishioners and, in theory, it made the punished a dishonored outcast of both the temporal and spiritual world. Through forced processions, drab clothing, and spiritual expulsion, the ecclesiastical courts stripped the offender of his or her identity in order to both humiliate and correct. At the same time, the insertion of the penitential punishment into the daily religious rituals of the parish gave the act of shaming a transcendental quality that helped ease the tension between the penitent’s need for restoration, the victim’s need for retribution and the parish’s need for social control.51 48 Lincoln Diocese Documents, 1450–1544, ed. A. Clark (EETS, o.s. 149, 1914), pp. 126–128. 49 Speculum Sacerdotale, ed. E.H. Weatherly (EETS, o.s. 200, 1936), p. 79. 50 For examples of public punishments see, Whalley Act Book. Act Book of the Ecclesiastical Court of Whalley, 1510–1538, ed. A.M. Cooke (Chetham Society, 44, 1901), p. 23; The Courts of the Archdeaconry of Buckingham 1483–1523, ed. E.M. Elvey, (Buckhinghamshire Record Society, 19, 1975), pp. 200–205. 51 G. Ruggiero, Violence in Early Renaissance Venice (New Brunswick, 1980), pp. 43–48. Ruggiero discusses how Venice’s use of ritual alleviated the tension between the need for reprisal and the need for social control. His idea seems applicable to the punishments of ecclesiastical courts as well.

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Besides punishments, the ecclesiastical system also shamed parishioners by publicly censuring them, should they refuse to appear in church courts, or perform public penance. The parish priest would read out the citation during the Sunday services so that community pressure could cajole the recalcitrant into reconciliation. As will be seen later, these proclamations seem to have been a particular point of friction between parishioners and priests because they publicly shamed the victims before they could argue their case. The obligation of parish priests to cite offenders could clash with parishioners’ desire to maintain their reputation. Clerical writers and leaders condemned the contemporary honor code, which so prized outward appearance, as immoral and shameful but, at the same time, its existence was essential to the effectiveness of their punishments. Both ecclesiastical and secular courts in the late medieval and early modern period used ritual acts of shame as punishments. By employing shame as a means of control over sin, the Church lent some credibility to parishioners’ quotidian acts of aggression which were designed to do the very same thing to their rivals. In instances when the public penitent was the victim of malicious litigation, the lines between justice and vengeance could become quite blurry, and in essence, the ‘impartial’ court system became a mere weapon for the wrathful. For example, many cases of slander in the church courts of Yorkshire were the product of malicious litigation designed to annoy rival claimants in existing land disputes.52 Thus clerical courts, like their royal counterparts, could be just another channel for aggression rather than a preventative or conclusive check upon violence. Finally, one of the most popular forms of entertainment and religious instruction, collections of saints’ lives, presented a world in which wicked acts of violence were a blessing because they gave true Christians the ultimate opportunity to demonstrate their faith.53 The renderings of grotesque acts of violence by pagan authorities on blissfully demure martyrs were designed both to enthrall the audience and to win their

52

Sharpe, “Such Disagreement”, pp. 167–173. South English Legendary, ed. C. d’Evelyn and A.J. Mill (EETS 235, 236, 244, 1956– 1959); J. Voraigne, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. W.G. Ryan (Princeton, NJ, 1993); S. Wilson, ed., Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore, and History (Cambridge, 1983); K.A. Winstead, Virgin Martyrs: Legends of Sainthood in Late Medieval England (Ithaca, NY, 1997); R. Blumenfeld-Kosinski and T. Szell, eds., Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe (Ithaca NY, 1991); B. Crachiolo, “Seeing the Gendering of Violence: Female and Male Martyrs in the South English Legendary”, in Meyerson, Thiery and Falk, eds., A Great Effusion of Blood ?, pp. 147–163. 53

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admiration for the power of faith in the face of danger. While hagiographers certainly branded the violence and the perpetrators of that violence against their heroes and heroines as sinful and heinous, they also perceived it as generative of a greater good. The perpetrators who roasted St. Lawrence or sliced Juliana were destined to suffer in hell, but the very actions which damned them gave their victims the coveted crown of martyrdom. Though it is difficult to determine the exact intention of medieval collections of saints’ lives—just how much were these works meant to be didactic texts which called for pious imitation by victimized laity and how much were they meant to be fantastical entertainment based on stories from a distant past which had no true analogue in contemporary times—these stories of pain and suffering, like the notions of warfare seen earlier, showed the laity that even demonic violence could at times have a positive role in the temporal world. Conclusion Though the Church very often encouraged the suppression of violent sentiment and action by parishioners, it also taught that violence had an important place on earth. At some point in their lives, parishioners might have to wreak vengeance on behalf of their deity. Portrayals of God and Christ, theories about God’s chastisement of heresy and sin, as well as the implementation of judicial punishments all helped to condone violent action. In contrast to images of sinful and demonic violence, these images, texts and punishments revealed the existence of divinely sanctioned violence which purged society of sin, punished the wicked and restored order. While most religious teachings about acceptable violence compelled parishioners to recognize that its allocation could only come from their royal and clerical authorities, the most muddling aspect for these men and women, who, as we shall see, were told time and again through parochial media that their use of violence was an affront to God and the ideal of charity, was the allowance for human agency in the scheme of divine wrath. In their struggle to negotiate the tension between the demands of the secular and spiritual worlds, some parishioners might have considered that theories about divine violence and the necessity of shaming validated their violence. Yet, such considerations would not have been made lightly for along with a stream of lessons about legitimate violence, parishioners were exposed to a torrent of teachings about the need for Christian charity and humble restraint.

CHAPTER TWO

SACRED SPACE AND RITUAL: CREATING AN EXPECTANCY OF RESTRAINT Churches were, without doubt, the most noticeable, most tangible and most ubiquitous signs of Christianity in late medieval England. While many parishioners only received the Eucharist once a year, these same individuals would have loitered, processed and worshiped in their parish churches and churchyards on close to a weekly basis. Moreover, at some point in their lives, many parishioners would have helped repair, fund and even manage their parish churches. Only the most reclusive and antisocial would have lacked familiarity with their local house of worship because, with the exception of taverns, churches were often the only public buildings in a village or ward. Churches and their accompanying yards were fundamentally much more than recreation centers; they were sacred spaces which required those who stood within their bounds to accept a set of values that greatly differed from those lauded by the contemporary culture. These holy spaces were, in theory, ‘violence-free zones’ for those who stood within them were to be committed to the ideals of Christian charity and pious restraint. Indeed in contrast to theories of just war or crusade, which offered a spiritual sanction for particular forms of violence, the clergy’s establishment of sacred space entailed an outright prohibition of aggression. Like their counterparts in other societies, such as the ‘man of the earth’ among the Nuer in Africa or the Muslim faqih in late medieval Valencia, Christian clergy used rituals to establish sanctuaries of peace amidst social conflict.1 1

Anthropology has made some very important contributions to historians’ understanding of the role of ritual and religion in the settlement of social conflict. See, M. Gluckman, Custom and Conflict; Essays on Ritual and Social Relations (Manchester, 1964); —, “Peace in the Feud,” Past and Present 7 (1955), 1–14. Other anthropologists have explored in detail the role of ‘holy men’ as mediators. See, Michaud, Cohesive Force; E. Gellner, Saints of the Atlas (London, 1969); R. Jamous, Honneur et Baraka: Les Structures sociales traditionnelles dans le Rif (Cambridge, 1981). For an anthropology influenced study of the role of Muslim clerics in fifteenth-century Valencia see, M. Meyerson, The Muslims of Valencia in the Age of Fernando and Isabel: Between Coexistence and Crusade (Berkeley, 1991) and unpublished article “Clerical Violence in Late Medieval Valencia.” Natalie Davis provides some insightful notes on the uses of anthropology, symbolic analysis of liturgy and other forms of worship in order to reveal the underlying social relationships

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The Church further associated sacred space with physical restraint through laws, letters and proclamations which denied the legitimacy of violence within God’s hallowed halls and fields. Through ritual and law fashioned by elite clergy, as well as through admonition and instruction given by local pastors, churches were primarily defined as otherworldly havens which, ideally, removed parishioners from contemporary norms of behavior and presented them with a new perspective on social relations—one in which violence and aggression were shameful, charity and self-restraint, honorable. Yet, parish churches were undoubtedly vehicles for social aspiration as well as centers of worship. Rarely were the motives of those who came to worship or funded parish projects “uncluttered by everyday concerns, for churchgoing was closely meshed with the anxieties and values of society at large”.2 The meaning of ‘parish community’ and its exact relationship to medieval society have been topics of considerable importance in recent scholarship.3 Scholars have tended to present the and core societal beliefs. See, Davis, “Some Tasks and Themes in the Study of Popular Religion”; —, “The Rites of Violence”; —, “The Sacred and the Body Social in Sixteenth-Century Lyon”, Past and Present 90 (1981), 40–70. 2 This quotation regarding eighteenth-century parish life also holds quite well for earlier centuries. J.M. Triffit, “Believing and Belonging, Church Behavior in Plymouth and Dartmouth, 1710–1730,” in Parish, Church and People: Local Studies in Lay Religion 1350–1750, ed. S.J. Wright (London, 1988), p. 196. 3 For specific arguments about the existence of a ‘parish community,’ see, French, The People, pp. 21–43; Kümin, “Parishioners in Court Litigation and the Local Community, 1350–1650,” pp. 20–22; Shaping, pp. 13–64. Beat Kümin and Katherine French offer a multivalent image of community acknowledging the emphasis which medieval society itself placed on unity and harmony within the parish despite the fact that they did not always live up to such an ideal. As French notes (p. 22), “Although the parish was a coercive unit in some senses, it was also a place where lay activity in a variety of forms—which were needed and encouraged—allowed individual choices. The result was a sense of belonging, a sense of community.” Previous scholars emphasized, perhaps to the point of overemphasis, the harmony and unity fostered by parish ritual and activity, see, Bossy, “Blood and Baptism,” 129–143; G. Rosser, “Communities of Parish and Guild,” in Wright, Parish, Church and People, pp. 29–55; Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 131–154. In reaction to scholars’ overemphasis of community and harmony, Miri Rubin admonished that historians must beware of forming a ‘static notion’ of the medieval parish which obscures conflicts and distinctions among parishioners. See, M. Rubin, “Small Groups: Identity and Solidarity in the Late Middle Ages,” in Enterprise and Individuals in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. J. Kermode (Gloucester, 1991), pp.134–136. Katherine French has further illumined how parish life provided women with vehicles for satisfying both their social and spiritual aspirations. See, French, The Good Women of the Parish. My particular reading of community regards the late medieval parish as a source of harmony which in its attempt to foster stability sometimes helped to exacerbate existing interpersonal tensions. Parish life provided a general sense of belonging but some obviously believed that they belonged more to the parish than others. Moreover, external tensions easily filtered into religious observance.

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parish as either a source of ineluctable harmony, a center of negotiation and conflict or some subtle form between these two extremes. As one of the few public spaces in medieval society, a parish church offered an unrivalled forum for displays of personal status. Even if Christianity was arguably egalitarian at its roots, parishes soon came to accommodate many ritual and architectural traditions that both proclaimed individual or familial status and, at the same time, reinforced the ideal of a sacred community whose needs stretched beyond the wants of the few. These traditions maintained a careful balance between the need to satiate parishioners’ hunger for public reckoning of their reputations and the need to satisfy God’s demand for humility, charity and concord. Creating, Preserving and Enforcing Sacred Space The dedication of a church is one of the oldest and richest of Christian rituals. William Durandus, the most authoritative medieval compiler of the consecration ceremony, considered the tradition of dedicating a church to stem from the Book of Exodus when Moses consecrated the Tabernacle and altar.4 From its inception, Christianity adhered to this Mosaic tradition of consecration and, as the fledgling religion slowly assumed a pivotal role in European society, the Church developed a profoundly symbolic dedication ritual that would remain virtually unchanged between the end of the thirteenth century and the end of the Second Vatican Council in 1965.5

4

W. Durandus, The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments, ed. and trans. J.M. Neale and B. Webb (New York, 1973), pp. 111–113. For a perspective on the history of the dedication ritual, look over the following four volume collection of medieval Pontificals: M. Andrieu, ed., Le Pontifical Romain au Moyen-Age (Vatican City, 1938–1941). For a detailed history of the dedication ritual in England, see, W. Maskell, ed., Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 3 vols. (London, 1846–1847), i, pp. cccxxvi–cccxxxviii. 5 For a collection of ecclesiastical and secular laws pertaining to the process of dedicating of a church, especially for England, see, E. Gibson, ed., Codex Iuris Ecclesiastici Anglicani (Oxford, 1861), I, pp. 188–190; Maskell, Monumenta, i, pp. cccxxvi–cccxxxviii. During the early middle ages, the ritual process for dedicating churches evolved from a very simple ritual centered around only the celebration of a mass to one which by the tenth century, had many local variants, but few major differences in theme and intent, to the pre-Vatican II ritual. The slight variations within the early forms, dating from c. 500 to c. 950, can be seen in the dedication rituals collected in E. Martene, ed., De Antiquis Ecclesiae Ritibus Libri (Antwerp, 1736), II, pp. 668–789. In the last years of the thirteenth-century, William Durandus composed his Pontificale which became the de facto, though unofficial, ritual handbook for all ecclesiastical ceremonies throughout Europe. The later official Pontificals of 1485 and 1595, called the Roman Pontificals

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A bishop created sacred space through a public rite of consecration involving the liberal sprinkling of holy water, solemn processions, sacred inscriptions, burial of relics, recitation of prayers and, lastly, a mass.6 These rituals transformed the mundane structure of the church into a sacred place, wholly imbued with the divine and more spiritually potent than any other public or private space.7 Since it was to be a place for public worship, the dedication itself was intended to be a public affair. Parishioners were encouraged to witness the process in order to partake of its blessings as well as pay heed to its emphasis on the sacred distinctiveness of their parish grounds.8 While there has been notable scholarship on the legal development of sanctuary and its prohibitions of violence, historians have tended to overlook the rich detail of the dedication rite.9 By investigating the ritual itself, we can see more clearly

and licensed by Pius II and Clement VIII respectively, basically adopted Durandus’ text and from then the dedication and reconciliation rituals remained virtually unchanged until 1965. See, P. Puniet, The Roman Pontifical (New York, 1932), pp. 9–57. Nevertheless, the Pontifical of 1485 was not made the exclusive text of Christendom (the 1595 Pontifical was decreed to be exclusive) and therefore, some English bishops continued to use rites which were an amalgam of ancient versions and Durandus’ text. 6 Durandus, Symbolism, pp. 116–122; D. Davies, “Christianity,” in Sacred Place, ed. J. Holm (London, 1994), p. 43. For the analysis of the dedication process I will be using multiple medieval sources that detail the ceremony. Since the pontifical of Durandus was the primary, but not official, model for most of the period of this study, the dedication ritual in England does show some slight variation and therefore, I will give preference to English sources for the dedication process. For the ‘local falvor’ of the ritual, I will reference three works, the Pontifical of Edmund Lacy, bishop of Exeter (1420– 1455), Liber Pontificalis of Edmund Lacy, Bishop of Exeter, ed. R. Barnes (Exeter, 1847), pp. 11–32, the Sarum Pontifical found in Maskell, Monumenta, i, pp. 196–240 and the Pontifical of Christopher Bainbriedge, Archbishop of York (1508–1514), Liber Pontificalis Christopher Bainbirdge, Achiepiscopi Eboracensis (Surtees Society, 61, 1875), pp. 53–80. I will also refer on occasion to the older rituals found in Martene (see n. 5) as well as The Pontifical of Magdalen College, ed. H.A. Wilson (Henry Bradshaw Society, 39, 1910), pp. 98–124. While I will not give extensive detail for slight variations in placement or wording, I will make note of where particular prayers or themes appear in the official Roman Pontifical as found in two sources: Ritus Solemnis pro Dedicatione Ecclesiae et Consecratione sive Unius sive Plurium Altarium, ed. F. Pustet (New York, 1890) and Pontificale Romanum: editio princeps 1595–1596, ed. M. Sodi and A.M. Triacca (Vatican City, 1997). 7 Durandus, Symbolism, pp. 101–102. 8 Ibid., pp. 114–115. Durandus specifically notes when the “people” saw miracles during the dedication and when the “people” should follow the clerical procession. 9 The studies of sanctuary and immunity usually are oriented toward a legal history perspective rather than a cultural/anthropological perspective but nonetheless, these studies offer very significant information on the ingrained understanding of sanctuary which began in Antiquity and became more and more explicit in the Middle Ages. See, B. Rosenwein, Negotiating Space: Power, Restraint and the Privileges of Immunity in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca, 1999), pp. 27–41; P.T. Duclaux, Le Droit d’Asile (Paris, 1939).

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into clerical concern over violence and how such concern was conveyed to attendant parishioners. The dedication created an area that was considered liberated from all violence, both worldly and otherworldly. By chanting an array of prayers and psalms throughout the ritual, the bishops and his attendants implored God to be merciful and restrain his righteous wrath.10 For example, the ritual commenced with a solemn recitation of Psalm 85 which appeals to God’s infinite mercy and begs Him to hear the prayers of the faithful.11 Moreover, the recitation the Seven Penitential Psalms notably evinces the clergy’s effort to make the church a sanctuary from divine punishment. In the very first Psalm of these ancient prayers, which were so integral to the Lenten season, the bishop and attendant clerics implored God, “Domine, ne in furore tuo arguas me, neque in ira tua corripias me./Miserere mei Domine quoniam infirmus sum—Lord, in your fury, do not rebuke me nor in your wrath, attack me/Have mercy on me Lord for I am weak” and they repeated the first half of this quotation again in their later recitation of Psalm 37.12 This conception of churches as havens from divine wrath was even reflected in secular laws, such as the thirteenth-century royal statute against markets within church grounds. This edict argued that the true purpose of a church was to appease God’s wrath by providing a place for prayer, liturgy and supplication.13 In fact, some laity took this idea a step further by making the obverse true: a deteriorating building must be a sign of God’s increasing ire. For example, when a stone fell on Margery Kempe while she prayed in church, the public judged her to be a victim of God’s wrath.14 Such laws and prayers highlight the late medieval

10 See, for example, Liber Pontificalis Lacy, pp. 12–13, 17; Maskell, Monumenta, i, pp. 199–203, 211, 214, 226–227; Liber Pontificalis Bainbridge, pp. 53–80. 11 Liber Pontificalis Lacy, p. 12; Maskell, Monumenta, i, p. 199. “Inclina, Domine, aurem tuam et exaudi me,/quoniam inops et pauper sum ego./ …. Quoniam tu domine suavis et mitis,/Et multae misericordiae omnibus invocantibus te”. 12 The Seven Penitential Psalms were Psalms 6, 31, 37, 50, 101, 129, and 142. See, Liber Pontificalis Lacy, p. 17; Maskell, Monumenta, i, pp. 196–240; Liber Pontificalis Bainbridge, pp. 53–80; Ritus Solemnis Dedicatione, pp. 3–4; Pontificale Romanum, p. 304. 13 Gibson, ed., Codex Iuris, p. 191. (52 Henry III 1268): “Omnipotens Dominus, qui cum propter peccata nostra irascitur, non obliviscitur misereri, sciens se posse ac debere placari per contritorum, et humiliatorum gemitus et orationes, Templa et Oratoria construi voluit, in quibus convenientes fideles abstracta a cunctes exterioribus actibus et seipsos, clausis corporis sensibus, in suis conscientiis, per Oblationes et Hostias et praecipue per Sacrificia contriti cordis et Orationes … iram justi Judicis mitigarent …” 14 Book of Margery Kempe, p. 57.

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perception of God as a paragon of righteous violence, a source of justice and order rather than a font of unconditional love. The dedication ritual assuaged this menacing deity and fashioned a haven from his righteous wrath. While prayers and supplication might ward off divine wrath, in order to prevent violence by mere mortals, the dedication also expressed two of the most fundamental Christian arguments against conflict and aggression: the importance of the ideal of charity and the exclusive right of God to wreak vengeance. First, through prayers and ritual action, the church was made a distinct center of peace and charity, a sacred counterpoint to sites of violence, like streets or taverns. After he had performed a ritual cleansing of the outside and stood at the door, ready to enter the interior, the bishop prayed that demons would be put to flight and “angels of peace” enter with him.15 The bishop then entered the church and linked the newly sanctified area to peace through his first words, “Peace be to this house”.16 The choir then responded with prayers for peace. In early versions of the ritual, they sang, “Peace be to this house, and to all who dwell in it: Peace to those who come in and those who go out”.17 In the Pontifical of Edmund Lacy, Bishop of Exeter (1420–1455), the bishop chants, “Peace be to this house” and the choir responded, “May eternal peace come from the Eternal Father to this house: Pious comforter let peace in this house”.18 According to the Sarum Pontifical, after the bishop’s initial call for peace, the choir cried out, “Let eternal peace be to this house from the Eternal One. Word of the Father, may lasting peace be to this house. May the Pious Comforter grant peace to this house”.19 Shortly

15 Liber Pontificalis Lacy, pp. 16–17; Maskell, Monumenta, i, p. 206; Liber Pontificalis Bainbridge, pp. 56–57. The Roman Pontifical has a slightly different prayer located at another point in the ritual. See, Ritus Solemnis Dedicatione, p. 36; Pontificale Romanum, p. 326; “ac per multitudinem propitiationis tuae visitatoribus domus sit pax cum abundanti.” 16 Liber Ponitificalis Lacy, p. 17; Maskell, Monumenta, i, p. 207; Liber Pontificalis Bainbridge, pp. 57; Martene, ed., De Antiquis, pp. 688, 711–712; Magdelene College, p. 103; Ritus Solemnis Dedicatione, p. 19; Pontificale Romanum, p. 313. 17 Martene, ed., De Antiquis, pp. 688, 711–712. “Pax huic domui, et omnibus habitantibus in ea, pax ingredientibus et regredientibus alleluja.” 18 Liber Ponitificalis Lacy, p. 17; Maskell, Monumenta, i, p. 207; Liber Pontificalis Bainbridge, pp. 57–58. 19 Maskell, Monumenta, i, p. 207; Ritus Solemnis Dedicatione, p. 19; Pontificale Romanum, p. 313. “Pax aeterna ab aeterno Patre huic domui: pax perennis, verbum Patris, sit pax huic domui: pacem pius consolator huic praestet domui.”

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after this invocation, the bishop prayed for the Holy Spirit, “the source of life, inspiration and charity” to fill the audience’s hearts with love.20 These prayers helped to mold the still malleable space into a sacred center of peace in which parishioners were to set aside their wrath and embrace charity. Indeed, the space of the church was linked to more than a simple notion of peace. It was also intimately aligned to the cardinal virtue of charity. The modern idea of charity as the giving of alms is only a minute part of the medieval concept. The medieval understanding of charity was more in accord with modern notions of fellowship or platonic love. It entailed concord with, if not sincere love of, all parishioners as well as the absence of envy, wrath and spite. Such attributes sharply contrasted with the posturing and one-upmanship of the contemporary honor culture. As he circled the church and cleansed it of vice, the bishop petitioned God aloud “to give your servants… the unbreakable bonds of charity”.21 This prayer evinces one of the most dominant themes in the clergy’s day to day assault against aggression—charity as an alternative means of association and community. Pastors taught that charity could establish and affirm social bonds without violence, or as anthropologists call it, ‘cohesive force’, ever being required.22 Temporal violence was unnecessary because charity was the virtue which assuaged God’s wrath and the angel who defended the faithful against their enemies.23 The association between the peacefulness of the faithful and the protective violence of God would resound even louder in other sections of the dedication ritual. References to violence form a significant part of the sacred rite because they reminded parishioners that violent agency was God’s prerogative. Like the singing of the Antiphon in the later stages of the ceremony indicated, God is the most powerful

20

Liber Pontificalis Lacy, p. 17; Liber Pontificalis Bainbridge, p. 62; Ritus Solemnis Dedicatione, p. 20; Pontificale Romanum, p. 316. 21 Liber Pontificalis Lacy, p. 16; Maskell, Monumenta, i, p. 205; Liber Pontificalis Bainbridge, p. 56; Ritus Solemnis Dedicatione, p. 17; Pontificale, p. 310; “da famulis tuis per haec nostrae devotionis officia indissolubile vinculum caritatis”. 22 Michaud, Cohesive Force, pp.12–85; Gluckman, “Peace in the Feud,” 1–8. 23 Liber Ponitificalis Lacy, p. 15, 17; Maskell, Monumenta, i, p. 207, 213. Psalm 37 of the initial Seven Penitential Psalms: “Non est sanitas in carne mea a facie irae tuae: non est pax ossibus meis a facie peccatorum meorum. See also, Ritus Solemnis Dedicatione, p. 37. The Roman Pontifical has a prayer that links the protective angel to charity; “mereamur habere nobiscum Angelum pacis, castitatis et caritatis, ac veritatis, qui semper ab omnibus malis nos custodiat, protegat et defendat.”

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one who girds his sword at his side, fires sharp arrows and lays waste to his enemies.24 Numerous prayers throughout the ritual contended that this omnipotent warrior would provide justice to those who clung fast to charity instead of revenge.25 In the recitation of Psalm 50 of the Seven Penitential Psalms, the corruption of temporal bloodshed was deplored while the protective power of God was implored; “God, You the God of my salvation, free me from bloodiness [blood guiltiness] and my tongue will extol your justice”.26 Other prayers assured that God, like the newly sanctified church, would protect the devout, save them from the blows of their enemies and even take vengeance for them. One particular prayer implored God to send an angel from heaven who would “watch over, nourish, protect, visit and defend all those who resided within” the church.27 Once he had exorcised the outside of the church with holy water, the bishop prayed that the newly cleansed space would be free from all evil and immune to all attack.28 In a highly dramatic gesture, just prior to making a sacred inscription on the floor, the bishop marched to the middle of the church and with his minister carrying a processional cross, prayed, “May the Cross drive out the enemy. May the Cross of Christ defend those praying here. May the Cross of Christ triumph here and in eternity”.29 Near the end of the ritual, another chant reminded that only “an idiot” would plot against the 24

Such martial qualities are attributed to God in Psalm 44 (noted as such or simply as “Psalmus Eructavit”). See, Maskell, Monumenta, i, p. 221; Liber Ponitificalis Lacy, p. 22; Ritus Solemnis Dedicatione p. 65. “Accingere gladio tuo super femur tuum, potentissime. … Sagittae tuae acutae, populi sub te cadent, in corda inimicorum regis.” 25 For early espousals of the same idea see, Martene, ed., De Antiquis, p. 712; Magdalene, p. 109; Ritus Solemnis Dedicatione, pp. 5–6, 8–9, 14, 37, 40, 62–63. 26 Maskell, Monumenta, i, p. 207, 223; Liber Ponitificalis Lacy, pp. 17, 27; Ritus Solemnis Dedicatione, p. 6, 40. “Libera me de sanguinibus Deus, Deus salutis meae: et exsultabit lingua mea justitiam tuam.” 27 Liber Pontificalis Lacy, p. 13, 15, 17; Maskell, Monumenta, i, pp. 199–200, 202–203, 207, 214; Liber Pontificalis Bainbridge, p. 84; Ritus Solemnis Dedicatione, pp. 8–9, 14, 37, 62–63; “Exaudi nos, Domine Sancte, pater omnipotens, eterne Deus et mittere digneris sanctum angelum tuum de celis, qui custodiat, foveat, protegat, visitet et defendat omnes inhabitantes in hoc habitaculo.” 28 Liber Pontificalis Lacy, p. 13; Maskell, Monumenta, i, p. 201; Ritus Solemnis Dedicatione, p. 14; “ut quicquid ex eo tactum vel aspersum fuerit, careat omni immundicia, omnique impugnacione sit defensa spiritualis nequicie.” We must remember that even when the text discusses evil spirits, the notion that evil works through human agency was accepted at the time and therefore, not only the violence of wicked spirits but also human violence is repelled in this prayer. 29 Liber Pontificalis Lacy, p.17; Maskell, Monumenta, i, pp. 207; Liber Pontificalis Bainbridge, p. 57.

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faithful for God would surely destroy him.30 These prayers, taken together, contended that God was the supreme armigerus, who barred the unrestrained and malicious of both this world and the infernal one from entrance in the church.31 The clergy’s insistence on God’s exclusive right to use violence intriguingly parallels the developing notion in royal circles that violent agency was the monarch’s prerogative. Beginning as early as the high medieval period, both secular and religious authorities, considering themselves to be representatives of God’s order, sought to monopolize the right to use violence. In pursuit of salvation and social order, the Church and the monarchy, through their court systems, laws and warnings, attempted to place the right of violent agency beyond the reach of most parishioners. Acts of interpersonal aggression that popular mores condoned were increasingly vilified by clerical and royal authorities as offensive to both God and man. In the monarch’s case, individual aggression was criminalized, while in the Church’s case, violent agency was demonized. This demonization of violence can be seen in a common aspect of the dedication ritual. Through a threefold cleansing of the outside and inside of the church with holy water and a hyssop branch, the bishop performed an exorcism in order to rid the space of demons. While most modern scholars, influenced by anthropology and sociology, regard violence as a natural product of social relations, the medieval clergy considered aggression to be an invasive force.32 Violence and discord were actual entities that could be driven from both the hearts and physical spaces of the faithful. The exorcism of the dedication ritual freed the church from demonic influence, including the demons of wrath and envy who were always armed with their preferred weapons of physical

30 Maskell, Monumenta, i, p. 226; Ritus Solemnis Dedicatione, pp. 62–63. “Vir insipiens non cognoscet: et stultus non intelliget haec … Quoniam ecce inimici tui Domine, quoniam ecce inimici tui peribunt: et dispergentur omnes, qui operantur iniquitatem … Et despexit oculus meus inimicos meos; et insurgentibus in me malignantibus audiet auris mea./Justus, ut palma florebit …” 31 Armigerus was the legal and social term for a middle to upperclassman who was allowed to carry a sword in public and use it if necessary. 32 Anthropology generally espouses the idea that violence is a natural product of social relations. See n. 7. See also, Michaud, Cohesive Force; Gluckman, Custom and Conflict; Bordieu, Outline of a Theory. Peter Brown discusses the attitude of the early medieval church toward violence as an invasive, demonic entity. See, P. Brown, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 1981), pp. 124–126.

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and verbal violence.33 In short, late medieval witnesses of the consecration ceremony were reminded that unlike the tainted parish depicted in Piers Plowman, Wrath was no longer welcome to sit in the middle of a pew amongst the gossiping laity.34 Through consecration, the clergy separated the sacred from the mundane, creating a space where customarily condoned violence became both objectionable and unacceptable. By stressing the ideal of charity and God’s exclusive right to violent agency, the dedication ritual classified aggression by the sheep as a sinful usurpation of the supreme shepherd’s rights. The space of the church, and consequently parishioners’ conduct inside it, should be thoroughly different from the temporal world and its norms of behavior. As the choir sang, “O, how this place should be feared: Truly this place is nothing other than the House of God and the gate of heaven”.35 Nevertheless, this message, which so eloquently heralded the naissance of a church, did not always prevent drops of blood from desecrating the same ground that had been made sacred by droplets of holy water. According to both Biblical tradition and canon law, bloodshed in churches or cemeteries polluted their sacredness and suspended their efficacy as media to the divine. Biblically, the Church still respected and cited Leviticus 14 and 15 that forbid the bleeding or bloodstained from entering the Temple.36 The Decretum of Gratian, as well as later synodal statutes and clerical treatises, required that a bishop, or his appointee, expeditiously reconcile any church which had been defiled by blood. Moreover, all sacraments and burials were to be suspended until the reconciliation was performed.37 Neglect of the reconciliation process

33 For exorcism prayers, see, Ritus Solemnis Dedicatione, pp. 29–31; Liber Pontificalis Lacy, pp. 13–16; Maskell, Monumenta, i, pp. 199–220. For studies of medieval beliefs concerning spirits, see, K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline; R. Scribner, “The Reformation, Popular Magic and the Disenchantment”; “Popular Piety, and Modes of Visual Perception in Late Medieval and Reformation Germany,” Journal of Religious History 14 (1989), 448–469; Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 136, 268–269. 34 W. Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman, ed. H. Wells (New York, 1945), lns. 277– 280. The character Wrath says, “I am wont to worship with wives and widows, Imparked in pews.” 35 Liber Pontificalis Lacy, p. 18; Maskell, Monumenta, i, p. 211; Liber Pontificalis Bainbridge, p. 79; Ritus Solemnis Dedicatione, p. 42; “O quam metuendus este locus iste: vere non est hic aliud nisi domus Dei, et porta coeli.” 36 See, Durandus, Symbolism, p. 132–135. 37 Gratian, Decretum Magistri Gratiani. ed. E. Friedberg (Leipzig, 1879), P. II, C. XXIV, Q. III, c. i–xvi, pp. 987–995. See also, Councils and Synods with Other Documents Relating to the English Church AD. 1205–1313, ed. F.M. Powicke and C.R. Cheney (Oxford, 1964),

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was intolerable because the suspension of sacraments endangered the soul of every parishioner. Late medieval episcopal registers show that acts of violence involving the sacred did occur on occasion and that bishops stood ready to counter the sacrilegious and disruptive force of bloodshed through a ritual of reconciliation.38 Upon notice of a potentially polluted church or cemetery, the bishop would send investigative commissions to determine whether rededication was truly required. One of the most conscientious bishops, or simply the most troubled, was the aforementioned Edmund Lacy, Bishop of Exeter. In 1426, Lacy issued four different commissions which inquired into alleged pollution of churches through bloodshed from brawls.39 The efficiency of Lacy’s inquiries can be seen in the commission issued on November 23, 1426 which licensed the archdeacon of Exeter and master Henry Webber to inquire on oath whether the chapel of All Hallows at Hoynton was polluted by bloodshed, and whether William Faryngdon inflicted violence on Sir John Lyghtfote, chaplain. If the chapel was polluted, divine worship was to be suspended until the space had been reconciled. On November 30, the commission declared that the chapel had not been polluted in any way by an effusion of blood from the brawl between Faryngdon and Lyghtfote.40 Lacy’s register contains other alleged cases of aggression in churches or cemeteries: in 1436 the diocese investigated the pollution of Hemyock church by bloodshed during the fight between Richard Orchard and J. Baureman; in 1437, Lacy inquired about the pollution of the cathedral of Exeter by violence between Giles Haddon and Hugh Lucas, laymen; in 1438, an infirm Lacy ordered a subordinate bishop to perform a vast array of duties mostly involving the formation or maintenance of sacred space. The appointee was to consecrate the church, altar and churchyard of St. Mary’s Callington, to reconcile the church and churchyard of

pp. 35–36, 93, 110, 135,195, 230, 297, 444, 519. For a history of the reconciliation ritual in England, see, Maskell, Monumenta, i, pp. cccxxxviii–cccxlvi. 38 Registrum Iohannis Gilbert, ed. J.H. Parry (CYS, 18, 1915), pp. 68–69, 94; Registrum Thome Spofford, ed. T. Bannister (CYS, 23, 1919), p. 177; Registrum Iohannis Stanbury, ed. A.T. Bannister (CYS, 25, 1919), pp. 47, 70,94,97; Registrum Edmund Lacy, ed. G.R. Dunstan (CYS, 60–63, 1863), i, pp. 29,111,157,161,191,305; ii, pp. 15, 62, 88, 108– 110, 163, 198, 228, 266,282, 305, 360, 374, 408; iii, pp. 4, 21, 34, 38, 42, 56, 68, 155, 160, 203; Registrum Roberti Hallum, ed. J.M. Horn (CYS, 72, 1982), pp. 96, 118. 39 Registrum Lacy, i, pp. 29, 111, 157, 191. 40 Ibid., p. 191. “dicunt … per sanguinis effusionem inter dominum J. Lyghtfote capellanum et W. Faryngdon minime fuisse pollutam.”

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St. Thomas which had been befouled by bloodshed and, lastly, to reconcile various other churches in Exeter which also had been sullied by bloodshed.41 The register of John Stanbury, Bishop of Hereford (1453–1474), offers further insight into clerical conceptions of pollution and violence. For example, in 1459, Geoffrey, Bishop of Kildare, was commissioned to reconcile the churchyard of Titley which had been polluted by the bloodshed of John Rode of Staunton. Geoffrey was also given permission to give absolution to Rode after he had been formally punished by the ecclesiastical court.42 This twofold order shows that Stanbury clearly wished to condemn the sin while forgiving the sinner. By focusing on the act of bloodshed as well as the agent, his commission further reveals the clerical notion of violence as a demon, which could be driven from the parish and parishioners. Less than three years later in 1461, Stanbury commissioned John Greenway to receive the purgation of Henry Ward and his son from the charge of pollution through violence. The two perpetrators were indicted for desecrating the church with “manus sacrilegas et violentas”.43 As if to make the offenders expressly aware of the bishop’s particular disdain for their sin, the letter emphasized that their hands were not simply “violent” but also “sacrilegious”. Throughout these letters, Stanbury brands violence a disruptive and illegitimate force that required not only individual but also communal atonement. While there was significant reconstruction and redecoration of churches in the fifteenth century, most of them were consecrated in centuries past and therefore, the majority of late medieval parishioners would never have witnessed the ritual of dedication and its prohibitions against aggression. Yet, as the bishops’ registers testify, a greater percentage would have witnessed the process of reconciliation at some point in their adult lives. The ritual itself involved multiple rites of atonement, cleansing and restoration that conveyed a variety of messages about the consequences of violence. The first part of the ritual entailed

41

Registrum Lacy, ii, pp. 15, 62, 108. Registrum Stanbury, p. 40. “Johannes etc., venerabili in Christo … Quia, ut certitudinaliter informamur, cimiterium ecclesie parochialis de Tytteley, nostre diocesis; per injuriosam sanguinis humani effusionem, per quemdam Johannem Rode … de parochia de Stauntone, in dicto cimiterio nuper factam et perpetratam, violatum et pollutum existat….ad reconciliandum igitur et reformandum dictum cimiterium, prefatumque Johannem Rode, coram vobis de stando mandatis ecclesie juratum, debite absolvendum et penitenciam salutarem pro commissis suis huiusmodi injungendam.” 43 Registrum Stanbury, pp. 70–71. “sacrilegious and violent hands.” 42

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a ritual cleansing by sprinkling water consecrated with salt, wine and ashes around the bounds of the church and especially in the areas which were defiled by bloodshed. Upon completion, the liturgy of the mass was performed in order to finalize the return of both the offensive space and its parishioners to holiness. Like the dedication, the ritual process of reconciliation contained words and actions that conveyed a concern for the eradication of violence within sacred space and the mitigation of violence among the parishioners.44 There are prayers for peace within the church, prayers imploring God to free the attendant faithful from bloodshed, prayers invoking God as the defender of the devout, and an exorcism of demons who spread discord among parishioners.45 However, in a more distinct manner than the dedication, the reconciliation ritual elucidates the clergy’s demonization of violence, the clerical understanding of the contemporary world of honor and how God functions within such a system, as well as the continued effort to counter arguments for the legitimacy of violence by emphasizing the ideal of charity. Clerical leaders and writers, though sanctioning some violence, contended that most aggression was a product of the devil, a thoroughly sinful deed which had no merit in God’s eyes. This contention appears time and again within the reconciliation ritual. One poignant prayer in the ritual petitions God that should anything in the church or churchyard be tainted and corrupted by the “foul cunning” or “other daily harassments of the devil” may it be purged by “heavenly sanctification and reconciliation”.46 Lay and clerical parishioners alike were to consider bloodshed among the holy to be a product of the devil’s artifice, his “foul cunning”, and thus, they should be wary of trying to justify its occurrence. 44 For early examples of reconciliation rituals between 500 and 900 AD, see, Martene, ed., De Antiquis, pp. 793–802. The primary texts that I have used for describing the reconciliation ceremony are the Pontifical of Edmund Lacy, the Sarum Pontifical, the Pontifical of Christopher Bainbridge and the official Roman Pontificals: Ritus Solemnis de Benedictione et Impositione Primarii Lapidis Pro Ecclesia Aedificanda, de Coemeterii Benedictione, de Ecclesiae et Coemeterii Reconciliatione, de Reconciliatione Coemeterii sine Ecclesiae Reconciliatione et de Benedictione Signi vel Campanae, ed. F. Pustet (New York, 1892), pp. 48–72; Pontificale Romanum, 479–494; Magdalene, pp. 127–131; Liber Pontificalis Lacy, pp. 46–53; Liber Pontificalis Bainbridge, pp. 92–103, 346, and, Maskell, Monumenta, i, pp. 254–264. 45 Ritus Solemnis Reconciliatione, pp. 48–72; Liber Pontificalis Lacy, pp. 47–53; Maskell, Monumenta, i, pp. 254–264; Liber Pontificalis Bainbridge, pp. 92–103, 346. 46 Maskell, Monumenta, i, pp. 258; Liber Pontificalis Lacy, p. 48; Liber Pontificalis Bainbridge, p. 97; Ritus Solemnis Reconciliatione, p. 60. “et quicquid virosa calliditate cotidianis vel aliis diaboli infestacionibus maculatum hic corruptumve fuerit, efficiatur celesti sanctificacione ac reconciliacione purgatum.”

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The reconciliation commenced within a barren setting which emphasized the absence of God from the church and the need for atonement: an altar stripped bare of all ornaments and candles, two vases of water, one of wine, one of salt and one of ashes placed in the church and one vase of water in the cemetery, if it was also in need of reconciliation.47 The stark setting indicated to onlookers that the polluted parish had become offensive to God. His house had been defiled by insolent individuals who failed to recognize that violence was God’s exclusive right. For both clerical and lay parishioners, the problem was apparent. Bloodshed in a church dishonored God and justifi ed divine wrath. This belief was poignantly elucidated when the bishop with hands across his heart chanted: Omnipotent Father and eternal God whose goodness and mercy has neither beginning nor end. Most filled with mercy, you choose to rebuild in us what has been ruined rather than to smite us with damnation. And if either negligence has polluted, wrath committed, drunkenness incited, or lust subverted, you, merciful one, endure, so that you purify more through grace than you punish through rage and just as you governor, foreseeing your work, choose to build a place of relief instead of punishing the damned; therefore, we, humbly begging you Lord, pray that … all spiritual vileness be eliminated here and gone from here in the future and all the hostility of the ancient enemy, the ill will of the devil of course, be extinguished and the company of the devil with his deceptions be driven far away….let nothing hereafter that is purged through the infusion of the Holy Spirit do harm due to the defect of the former contagion nor remain polluted by the deceit of the enemy.48 47 Liber Pontificalis Lacy, p. 46; Maskell, Monumenta, i, pp. 254–255; Liber Pontificalis Bainbridge, p. 92; Ritus Solemnis Reconciliatione, p. 48. According to Durandus, the water symbolizes the parishioners, the wine God, the ashes Christ’s passion, and the wine mixed with water the union of Godhead and Manhood. See, Durandus, Symbolism, p. 131. 48 Liber Pontificalis Lacy, pp. 50–51; Maskell, Monumenta, i, pp. 258–259; Liber Pontificalis Bainbridge, p. 346; Ritus Solemnis Reconciliatione, pp. 61–64. “Pater omnipotens, eterne Deus, cujus bonitas sicut et pietas nec habet principium ita nec habet finem, set pietate completes magis eligis in nobis restituere perdita, quam percutere peritura. Et si quid quod negligencia polluit, aut ira committit, aut ebrietas stimulat, aut libido subvertit, tu pius sustines, ut ante purifiees per graciam, quam percutias per furorem, et sicut operis tui providus gubernator, eligis pocius erigere jacencia, quam punire dampnata; te ergo Domine supplices deprecamur, ut hujus ecclesie et cemiterii receptaculum placatus sanctifiees et quicquid infestantis inimici pollutum, per infusionem benedictionis tue reconciliando clementer purifiees, et purificatum possideas: absint in posterum omnes nequicie spirituales, eliminentur hinc et extinguantur omnes inimicitie hostis antiqui, scilicet serpentis invidie, et cum fraudibus suis diaboli turma procul pellatur. Efferat hine secum maculam quam ingessit, in perhennibus quandoque suppliciis deputandis, operum suorum semina sua hine secum coffigat peritura. Nichil hic quesumus, Domine, postmodum noceat culpa preteriti contagii, nichil hic remaneat inimici fraude pollutum quod per Spiritus sancti infusionem est purgatum.”

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The pleading posture of the bishop and as well as his use of words, such as punire, percutias and furorem, reminded parishioners of the violent power of God, a power that they should neither tempt nor usurp. Only supplication, purification and humble mortification would provide a proper restoration and suspend God’s impending revenge.49 However, the clergy’s message not only resided in the idea that God had an exclusive right to use violence but also that, even after the vile pollution of his domain, God chose charity over justifiable vengeance. Implicitly, parishioners were encouraged to do the same lest they reject the divine model of behavior. Once again the theme of ‘respecting charity instead of violence’ appears as part of the effort to counter contemporary norms which denigrated physical restraint as unmanly and dishonorable. Just as God, the most powerful and honorable of all, had allowed the offensive church back into his grace, so too should parishioners respond charitably to conflict in their homes, their community and, especially, God’s house. The ritual ended with the celebration of the mass, the ultimate exposition of the ideal of charity. At the conclusion of the mass, the bishop prayed that “this temple and cemetery may remain by Your blessing pure and sanctified from the defilement of the unfaithful, and our hearts pure from all filth of vice”.50 With these closing words, the bishop reiterated to the attendant parishioners that their notions of proper behavior in the temporal world were not applicable to the otherworldly space of the church. The reconciliation not only resanctified the church but also exposed parishioners to ideas about the importance of their church ground as a place of peace and restraint, a charitable counterpoint to the violence and the extroverted expressions of rage in the spaces beyond. Indeed, like the dedication, the reconciliation ritual was purposely a public ceremony. In his work, De Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, Bishop Durandus discussed the symbolism of the reconciliation ceremony and

49

Liber Pontificalis Bainbridge, p. 95; Ritus Solemnis Reconciliatione, p. 57. “Deus, parce poenitentibus, propitiare supplicantibus, et mittere digneris sanctum Angelum tuum de coelis qui bene dicat, et sanctificet hos cineres, ut sint remedium salubre omnibus nomen sanctum tuum humiliter implorantibus,ac pro conscientia delictorum suorum accusantibus, ante conspectum divinae clementiae tuae facinora sua deplorantibus …” 50 Liber Pontificalis Lacy, p. 52; Liber Pontificalis Bainbridge, p. 103; Maskell, Monumenta, i, p. 264; Ritus Solemnis Reconciliatione, p. 71; “ut templum hoc vel cimiterium barbarorum vel iniquorum inquinamentis emundatum tua benedictione maneat sanctificatum, et pectora nostra ab omni sorde vitiorum alienata tibi devota semper assistant.”

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emphasized that all parishioners should attend the ritual in order that they might pay heed to the clergy’s admonition against the sin of aggression.51 This idea is also expressed in a letter found in the Register of John Stanbury. On July 31, 1464, Stanbury ordered that Richard Bolion and Richard Neste, who had polluted a church through violence, must participate in the solemn processions of the public reconciliation.52 In 1468, the bishop of Lincoln compelled Thomas Worthby, another desecrator by violence, to attend the reconciliation of Grantham churchyard. The barefooted Worthby was to be struck by the priest with a rod during the procession and to offer a candle upon the altar during the mass.53 As mentioned in the prior chapter, parishioners’ preoccupation with public reputation was integral to shamebased punishments such as Worthby’s. Church leaders and writers did not entirely disdain concern over one’s fama, but they did believe that reputation should, first and foremost, be based on one’s adherence to spiritual ideals of charity and humility, not one’s ability to ‘one up’ a fellow believer through violent words or deeds. Such rituals, in which both offenders and parishioners participated, taught distinct lessons about both God’s right to punish and shame sinners as well as the illegitimacy of violence among the sacred; a church was the ‘antechamber of heaven,’ a place where respectful, humble and charitable demeanor earned one credit in the eyes of God and, ideally, in the eyes of one’s fellow man as well. There was one annual point at which parishioners would have been exposed to themes found in the dedication and reconciliation rituals. Each year, a church which had been solemnly dedicated was entitled to celebrate the anniversary feast of its consecration. The celebration was very elaborate and involved the participation of all the priests who were attached to a church. A procession before the mass specifically accentuated the church as a holy place which should inspire reverential dread and pious posture. The chorus sang in the opening line, “This is the house of God, a place of peace.” They followed each verse of the

51 Durandus, Symbolism, p. 134. “For reconciliation is performed for an example and warning, that all who behold the church, which hath in no wise sinned, washed and purified for the delict of another, may reflect how they themselves must work out the expiation of their sins.” Durandus’ words show that the clergy wanted the attendant parishioners to question their own use of violence as they watched the reconciliation of a church defiled by bloodshed. 52 Registrum Stanbury, pp. 97–98. 53 Lincoln Diocese Documents, pp. 126–128.

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procession with the response, “Dreadful is this place”.54 Upon the commencement of the mass, the priest prayed, “Dreadful is this place, here is the house of God and the gate of heaven and it is called the hall of God.”55 After the first reading, the choir sang, “O how truly should this place be respected and feared for it is nothing other than the house of God and the gate of heaven”.56 Notably, the message of these Latin hymns was reiterated in vernacular sermons intended for the dedication anniversary. In one prominent collection of late medieval sermons, the priest explained that the church was a place of prayer and of sanctification. Devils were driven out, the guilty were delivered and the sick were made whole: In it is the habitacion of God, concourse of angels, reconciliacion of man, and the lowenes of erthe is in it fellashipid to the hyenes of heuene. And this place is holy hous of God and gate of heuene. O Lord, what this place is gretely to be a-dredde! …. And who-so-ever fowleth that temple of God [speaking of the church itself and the human body] the lord God schall destroye hem.57

The Festial of John Mirk, a very popular collection of vernacular sermons, emphasized that the church was hallowed for the cleansing of parishioners so that they might live in charity and peace. Mirk argued that “the chyrch ys a place ordeynet that cryston pepull schull come togedyr yn charyte, forto worschyp hor God yn rest and yn pees, ych on wyth othyr.” God would reside among the parishioners as long as they exercised forgiveness and restraint. The devil hated parishioners who lived in charity and he would try his best to sow dissent among them. For that very reason, the sermon argues, the clergy hallow churches so that the devil, his malice and his seeds of discord would be driven out. Yet, though thwarted by the dedication ritual, the devil could still return when “a wykkud lyuer” came into the church; for as long as a parishioner was out of charity, “the fende [was] yn hym”.58 Therefore, every

54 Sarum Missal, ed. J. Wickham Legg (Oxford, 1916), p. 202. “Hec est aula dei pacis locus… Terribilis est locus iste.” For a symbolic analysis of the ceremony of the feast of the dedication, see, W. Durandus, De Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, ed. A. Davril and T.M. Thibodeau (CCCL, 140B, 2000), pp. 127–130. 55 Sarum, p. 202. “Terribilis est locus iste hic domus dei est et porta celi et voacbitur aula dei.” 56 Sarum, p. 203. “O quam metuendus et venerandus est locus iste vere non est hic aliud nisi domus dei et porta celi.” 57 Speculum Sacerdotale, pp. 163–164. 58 Mirk, Festial, pp. 277–278.

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parishioner had a responsibility to protect the sanctity of their parish church and the spiritual health of their fellow parishioners by preserving their state of charity. Alongside rituals and sermons, canon law and episcopal injunctions reinforced the sacredness of churches and churchyards by delineating their boundaries and establishing punishments for violators. Numerous synodal statutes from the thirteenth century prohibited violence and bloodshed within sacred spaces. These statutes as well as canon law sought to curb the bearing of arms within churches, but their core message needed reiteration with each new generation of parishioners.59 In July of 1430, the bishop of Durham wrote to the chaplain of Langchester concerning reports of parishioners carrying arms into the church and befouling it through their squabbles. The bishop explained that this behavior would no longer be tolerated for it offended the honor of the Church, the “teacher of charity and peace”.60 More importantly, in all parishes, curates were required four times a year to admonish in a clear voice, which “all men” could understand, that “alle þat leyne hand on preste or clerke, or man or womman lerud or lewode, off religiose professed or vnprofessed, wit-in chirche or chirche-yarde, willynge in vyolens to do harme” would be punished.61 Minor excommunication and public censure awaited all violators. Lastly, the enduring concept of sanctuary, supported by both ecclesiastical and royal law, conditioned many parishioners to view their churches as exceptional havens from all violence—even for a just cause. The concept itself, in which individuals guilty of crimes or seeking to escape persecution can flee to a holy place for protection, is neither exclusive to Western Europe nor to the medieval period, but rather is evident in numerous societies throughout the world from ancient times to the present age.62 While initially the right of sanctuary applied only to

59 Councils and Synods, pp. 35–36, 93, 110, 135, 195, 230, 297, 444, 519; Gratian, Decretum, pp. 987–995; Gregory IX was also concerned with bloodshed in churches and trying to eliminate any association of churches with blood and aggression. See, Decretalium Collectiones, ed. E. Friedberg (Leipzig, 1879), L. III, T. LIX, pp. 654–657; Decretales Gregorii IX, ed. W. Merlin, W. Desboys and S. Nivellium (Paris, 1541), pp. 1531–1538. 60 Depositions and Other Ecclesiastical Proceedings from the Courts of Durham, ed. J. Raine (Surtees Society, 21, 1845), p.23–24. 61 J. Mirk, Instructions for Parish Priests, ed. E. Peacock and F.J. Furnivall (EETS, o.s. 31, 1969), pp. 60–61. 62 For studies on sanctuary in the medieval period, see n.9 as well as S. Friar, A Companion to the English Parish (Stroud, Gloucestshire, 1996); J.C. Cox, The Sanctuaries and

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cathedral churches and was often limited to a specific distance from the actual seat of the bishop, by the end of the early Middle Ages, all churches were considered, by their very nature as sancti loci [inviolate places], to be suitable sanctuaries for the guilty and the oppressed.63 Sometimes, the right of sanctuary extended beyond a church and churchyard to include nearby fields and other areas, provided that they were specifically noted by writ or custom (their boundaries often being marked by crosses or other signposts). While all late medieval churches were sui generis inviolate, some had the support of royal writs which enhanced their appeal as asylums from just or unjust violence.64 By a decree of William I in 1070, twenty two powerful episcopal or monastic churches, such as Beverley, Battle, Colchester, Durham, Westminster or York, could offer asylum seekers safe haven from reprisal for life, instead of the customary 40 days before abjuration of the realm. Furthermore, in churches both great and small, the right of sanctuary was often made tangible by fixtures or furnishings, such as special knockers, hagodays, or seats, such as the frith stool, which were designated for use by sanctuary seekers. Just as holy relics or the host did so well, such tangible signs of sacred sanctuary must have inflamed the imaginations of late medieval parishioners, goading them to recognize the exceptional amidst the agonistic and aggressive. Ironically, these same powerful reminders of sanctuary may also have shaded parishioners’ concern for self-restraint. Since custom often dictated that asylum seekers should grab hold of special knockers or sit in specifically designated seats, some parishioners may have developed a gradation of offensiveness or even a tendency to view violence against seekers who failed to fulfill the ‘letter of the law’ as legitimate. Perhaps, just as the timing of violence, such as during the mass, could exacerbate its offensiveness, so too could the timing of an act, such as before the seeker has reached the knocker, enhance its validity.

Sanctuary Seekers of Medieval England (London, 1911); R. Kaueper, “The Right of Asylum,” in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. J. Strayer, vol. 1 (1982), pp. 632–633; S. Hamilton and A. Spicer, “Defining the Holy: The Delineation of Sacred Space,” in Defining the Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Burlington, 2006), pp. 1–20; N.M. Trenholme, The Right of Sanctuary in England (Columbia, MO, 1903). 63 The Council of Orange in 441 dealt with sanctuary, Pope Leo I discussed it in 460 and King Ethelbert issued decrees on it in 600. 64 Often these same places were appealing as sanctuaries because they were holy ground and also because their holders had the right to enact justice in their land (thus blocking the king’s writs from enforcement in their lands). In theory, any land where a lord exercised the right of iura regalia, whether sacred space or not, could be used as an asylum.

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Venues for Transcendent and Worldly Recognition Though laws, rituals, sermons and quarterly admonitions certainly made known that violence within sacred space was sacrilegious, parishioners’ comprehension of the holiness of their churches may have been further shaded by the canonical distribution of parochial maintenance, the theological emphasis on a hierarchy of sacrality and the customary segregation of parishioners by gender and status.65 For instance, synodal statutes required that the clergy maintain the structural integrity of the sanctuary and chancel, while the laity support the upkeep of the nave.66 For some parishioners, a duty to maintain the nave translated into a sense of ownership and a tendency to use the space for more worldly activities such as local courts, games and church ales.67 Theological arguments further fostered the idea of a less sacred nave. Durandus asserted that the sanctuary was more holy than the chancel and the chancel more holy than the nave, just as virgins are more holy than the continent and the continent more holy than the married.68 This graduated analogy to purity made the sanctuary the most pure and the nave, the least pure of all church space. Therefore, just as the notion of sanctuary might spur parishioners to factor timing into their assessment of offensiveness, so too might this graduated sense of sacrality help spur parishioners to consider the pollution of church space more or less offensive depending on the specific section. Indeed, for the clergy, the chancel was the locus of God’s power made visible in the Eucharist. It was a place of intense dread and fear from which the ill prepared laity must be shielded.69 Conversely, the chancel had to be protected from defilement by ignorant laymen. In laws as early as the Council of Tours in 567 and later in thirteenth-century English statutes, the laity were excluded from the chancel lest they defile

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How all of these matters could lead to conflict will be taken up in Part II. Councils and Synods, pp. 82, 128, 367, 400, 497–498, 512–513, 600, 766–767, 771, 1003, 1123, 1208. See also: C.P. Graves, “Social Space in the English Medieval Parish Church,” Economy and Society (1989), 301. 67 D.M. Hayes, “Mundane Uses of Sacred Places in the Central and Later Middle Ages with a Focus on Chartres Cathedral,” Comitatus 30 (1999), 10–36; M. Aston, “Segregation in Church,” Studies in Church History 27 (1990), 246–248; J.G. Davies, “Playing Games in Churches,” in The Recreational Use of Churches, ed. J.G. Davies (Birmingham, 1978), pp. 13–19. 68 Durandus, Symbolism, p. 24–25; Synodal statues echoed this idea. See, Councils and Synods, p. 297. 69 For a similar discussion see, Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 111. 66

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the area and disrupt the efficacy of the liturgy.70 Nevertheless, these laws did, on occasion, allow lay patrons and nobles to sit beside clerics in the choir.71 Such an allowance most likely created quite a proud sense of propriety among these privileged parishioners. Yet, this feeling probably did not sully their sense of sacredness, for such a sentiment would have derived directly from an initial premise that the chancel was a most holy place—a place that ‘lower’ laity were not allowed to enter. Even lay seating in the nave was not uniform.72 Both the clergy and lay custom segregated women to the north or west side of the church. Durandus tried to rationalize the separation of men and women by notingt hat: In church, men and women sit apart: which, according to Bede, we have received from the custom of the ancients: thence it was that Joseph and Mary lost the Child Jesus: since the one who did not behold Him in his own company, thought Him to be with the other. But the men remain on the Southern, the women on the Northern side: to signify that the Saints who be most advanced in holiness should stand against the greater temptations of the world: and they who be less advanced, against the less: or that the bolder and the stronger sex take their place in the position fittest for action …73

The universal custom of a North/South split is more difficult to understand than a more logical East/West split in which men would be closer to the chancel.74 In a detailed study of church seating through the centuries, Margaret Aston contends that, barring the oddity of an exclusive Southern entrance to a church, the implied element of danger in a North/South divide is not at all clear. Durandus has possibly misread a long held custom that was not tied to protection but rather to the position of Mary on the rood screen. Since Mary was usually located on the North side of the screen, some parishes seated their female members in line with her.75 70 Councils and Synods, pp. 174, 275, 297, 443; Aston, “Segregation,” 244–245; Rosenwein, Negotiating, p. 40. 71 Aston, “Segregation,” 245; P. Brown, Body and Society (London, 1989), p. 355. 72 For a general overview of the history of parish seating and of the divisions between lay space and clerical space from their inception to the reign of Victoria, see, N.J.G. Pounds, A History of the English Parish (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 430–510. 73 Durandus, Symbolism, pp. 36–37. 74 In the East/West split, notions of purity and desecration come into play. The community wanted to keep menstruating women away from the holiest sections. See, Aston, “Segregation,” 241–244. Her article as a whole is a detailed investigation of seating over a broad period of time. See also, French, The Good Women of the Parish, pp. 85–117; Douglas, Purity, p. 53; A. Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (London, 1977), p. 2. 75 Aston, “Segregation,” 241–242, 274–275. French, The Good Women, pp. 85–102.

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Segregated seating slowly began to accede to family pews by the end of the fifteenth century. As churchwardens began to re-pew sections of the nave, families bought or rented seats to sit together. Katherine French notes that for the parish of Yeovil, Somerset, sitting as a family had become an option by the early sixteenth century and quite popular by the eve of the Reformation.76 Though segregation of the sexes waned, segregation by status continued to flourish as both male and female parishioners rented, and jockeyed for, pews based on their income, social standing and parochial/civic position.77 Wealthy parishioners placed their pews as close to the altar as possible in order to obtain both an optimal view of the sacring and a prime position for social preening. Whether and where one stood or sat became a display of one’s honor and prestige. For example, the Liber Albus of London contains a strictly structured seating arrangement for leading citizens who attended mass together on certain feast days.78 To preempt the potential quarrels that would ensue from struggles over seating, Henry VII, mirroring earlier clerical decrees, noted that “the church is common to all … no place belongs more to one person than another.”79 This law did not slow the production of pews for gentry and yeoman families and, consequently, some quarrels over seating began to be settled by the court of Star Chamber. Clearly, not all parishioners were created equal and in the opinion of some of them, neither was the space of the church. As anthropologists have learned, communities without social divisions and distinctions are quite rare and the presence of pews in late medieval parishes shows that English society was no exception. Many long wooden benches were laced on their ends with not only imagery from religious stories or morality tales but also heraldry.80 Besides reminding some parishioners of their social and economic inferiority, family pews could further hinder parochial harmony by obstructing other

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K.L. French, The People of the Parish: Community Life in a Late Medieval English Diocese (Philadelphia, 2001), p. 168. 77 French, The People, pp. 167–170; —, The Good Women, pp. 99–117; Graves, “Social Space,” 311–322; B. Kümin, Shaping of a Community: The Rise and Reformation of the English Parish, c. 1400–1560 (Brookfield, 1996), pp. 47, 49, 92, 170, 231, 233. 78 Liber Albus: The White Book of the City of London, ed. and trans. H.T. Riley (London, 1861), pp. 24–26. 79 Aston, “Segregation,” 251–254. She points out that in 1287, Bishop Quevil of Exeter declared that the church was for all and no one person could claim a section of it. See, p. 251. 80 French, The People, pp. 163–167; —, The Good Women, p. 96; C. Platt, The Parish Churches of Medieval England (London, 1981), p. 132.

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parishioners’ view of the host and forcing the alteration of traditional processional routes.81 A family’s claim to an existing pew, or their desire to build a new one, could prove confrontational because a pew made a section of communal space, the nave, into the metaphorical house of one family, a space that according to the decrees of the court of Star Chamber, could not be trespassed in any manner.82 Though the rental or purchase of pews could obviously cause tension by their obstruction of parish space and advertisement of personal status, Beat Kümin reminds scholars that these benches also benefited the parish community. He notes that parishes frequently levied pew rates in order to raise money for projects that served the needs of the whole parish. Families felt compelled to purchase a pew appropriate to their status and thus pew rates were, to some extent, a graduated parish tax.83 Significantly supporting this idea, Katherine French has found that rural parishes which used inclusive forms of fundraising, such as church ales, did not tend to sell seats.84 These points are important reminders that while pews did advertise familial status and the hierarchical nature of medieval society, their presence could also, in however small a manner, be employed for the preservation of the parish community. Like pews, the proliferation of chantries in late medieval England has been considered by some historians to be a product of a vapid, aristocratic attitude toward salvation, a willingness to use money to achieve spiritual honor in the same manner that families used money to attain temporal glory.85 Chantries were “arrangements founded by individuals or groups providing for a priest to celebrate mass daily” as an offering for the souls of deceased family members.86 These masses were usually performed at an existing altar in the parish church but sometimes they 81 French, The Good Women, pp. 85–117. Graves, “Social Space,” 315–317. Graves points out that the idea of “prime view” would change as the focus of the liturgy switched from the altar to the pulpit in the Reformation. 82 Margaret Paston grew quite disturbed by her neighbor who leaned over into her pew, see, Paston Letters, ed. N. Davis (Oxford, 1971), i, pp. 32–37; French, The Good Women, pp.85–117. French argues that female parishioners often considered their pews to be an extension of their homes, and thus both a means for them to uphold or enhance familial reputation through their careful direction. 83 Kümin, Shaping, pp. 47, 49, 233; French, The Good Women, pp. 85–117. 84 French, The People, p. 170. 85 Hughes, Pastors, p. 45. Hughes presents the link between honor and chantries and also discusses their communal character. Moreover, he does not agree with the idea of chantries as a form of social control. 86 C. Burgess, “For the Increase of Divine Service: Chantries in the Parish in Late Medieval Bristol,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36 (1985), 49.

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were done in a newly created chapel on the sides of the parish church or in a wooden parclose in the aisles.87 First and foremost, chantries were usually established out of a genuine yearning on the part of individuals or families to aid their own and their kin’s quest for salvation. To assert anything less is to analyze medieval culture with twenty-first century cynicism and to disregard how late medieval individuals understood the merits of chantries.88 Yet chantries also had secondary benefits for living members and for those deceased who cared about the endurance of their temporal repute. Filled with heraldry and plaques on the walls, tombs and windows, chantries reminded the parish community on a daily basis that a respectable and rich family lived and worshipped in their midst. In the parish of Dowlish Wake, Sir George Speke left instructions, upon his death, for “an elaborate tomb for himself and his wife” to be built in the church and it was to have “our pictures there in copper, [and] resting above the said tomb is scripture of copper [listing] who lies there.” This type of bequest is quite standard and can be seen in other regions besides Somerset.89 Chapels, such as Speke’s, must have fostered some sense of exclusion and hierarchy within the communal space of the church. They also could disrupt established parish traditions by forcing the rerouting of processions.90 New chapels and altars meant that the procession before each mass had to make room for the chantry priest in its line, move through another aisle and bless another altar. Thus, the benefactor was able to rework the liturgy in a way that reminded parishioners of his or her family’s presence, power and prestige.91 Also, on occasion, the intensity with which late medieval society pursued post-mortem salvation was played upon by families who sought the patronage of a powerful noble. The family would endow a chantry for the noble from whom they wished patronage and in so doing they exchanged “the currency of prayer” for

87

Hughes, Pastors, pp. 37–42. For heightened sensitivity to late medieval society’s sense of connection between the “quick and the dead,” see, Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 299–376, particularly, pp. 338–376. 89 French, The People, p. 171; Hughes, Pastors, provides similar examples of chantries from Yorkshire, pp. 32–61; Pounds, History, discusses some very elaborate family chapels in parish churches, pp.393–394. 90 Graves, “Social Space,” 311–317; C. Richmond, “Religion of the FifteenthCentury English Gentleman,” in The Church, Politics and Patronage, ed. Barrie Dobson (New York, 1984), pp. 195–208. 91 French, The People, p. 171; Graves, “Social Space,” 315. 88

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the currency of patronage.92 In these respects, chantries gave individual ambition a prominent place in parish life. They helped to make much of the nave “a hodge-podge of private or quasi-private spaces reflective of parishioners’” myriad interests, concerns, and identities”.93 However, chantries also served a communal purpose and aided the spiritual struggle against violence. The most significant contribution of chantries to communal harmony was their augmentation of daily masses.94 Chantry priests provided the parish with daily masses and the chantries themselves often allowed parishioners uninhibited views of the sacring.95 Many founders of chantries desired that their resting places not only benefit them but also the community as a whole. On the eve of the Reformation, Robert Ashtroke endowed a chantry priest who would “helpe to mayntayne the servyce off God”.96 Numerous wills from Bristol testify that the benefactors wished to augment the number of clergy and the number of masses available to the parish.97 Priests were typically required to aid in the singing of canonical hours, to assist parish services and to participate in the choir during Sunday masses. The other parishioners also expected chantry priests to serve them as well as the benefactor.98 As Clive Burgess argues, “chantry priests were far from being isolated servants of the rich dead”.99 Though they served to remind parishioners of their benefactor’s status, chantry priests and chantries augmented, rather than enervated, communal worship. Indeed, we must be wary of polarizing ‘individual’ and ‘community’ identity for the two were tightly intertwined in late medieval and early modern Europe. The formation of communal identity, as seen in processions or Sunday masses, involved exhibitions of personal status within the context of a unified and harmonious whole. Conversely, the formation of personal identity, as seen in a funeral procession or a squabble over honor, relied upon the opinion and participation of the community.100

92

Graves, “Social Space,” 39. French, The People, p. 171. 94 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 114–115, 139–141; Burgess, “Increase,” 48–65; Kümin, Shaping, p. 160. 95 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 96–100. 96 Ibid., p. 140. 97 Burgess, “Increase,” 54–65. 98 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 140–141. 99 Burgess, “Increase,” 60. 100 This is not meant to imply that medieval and early modern individuals had no sense of self but rather that we must beware of contrasting too much individual aspirations and status with community aspirations and status. The two often worked hand in hand. 93

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Besides augmenting communal worship, chantries and funerals also problematized parishioners’ use of violence by providing them with another reminder of the need for charity. No one who died in a state of hostility with their neighbors could hope to benefit from chantry masses or the funeral dole.101 Both rich and poor parishioners were needed by the testator for intercession and, sometimes, continued funding of the chantry priest. Living relatives were obliged to ensure that their dead brethren were returned posthumously to a state of charity. Folklore held that those who died outside of charity would, as purgatorial spirits, pester their living relatives to make peace with their old enemies. The inescapable fact, as witnessed by the funeral dole, chantry masses and even folklore, was that dead parishioners, whether reputable or disreputable, needed the charity of the living if they were to have salvation in the afterlife.102 Temporal repute gained by aggression would be of little service for escaping the pains of Purgatory. Other physical structures of the church gave families a medium for proclamation of status, while still fostering parish unity. Rood screens, the barriers which separated the realms of the clergy and the laity by dividing the chancel from the nave, were usually painted with saints and signs determined by the parish. Their construction involved intense communal interaction in the form of fundraising, long term planning, and perhaps visitation of other churches for construction ideas. Yet, individuals could make large bequests for the erection of screens. Sometimes, the donors were allowed to choose the images for sections of the screen and to have their names written within the painting.103 The chancel screen at Worstead in Norfolk contains an inscription that it was built at the expense of John Arblaster and Agnes, his wife, parishioners of Worstead.104 Though an inscription such as this certainly proclaimed the prestige of the Arblaster family, the rood screen itself was still a didactic and inspirational source for other parishioners. Heraldic devices on chapel walls, windows and parish ornaments also proclaimed the worthiness of parish families to other parishioners.105 Just as prayer had collective merit for the souls of the living and deceased,

101

Hughes, Pastors, pp. 45–55. Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 354–366. 103 French, The People, pp. 155–162. 104 Platt, The Parish, p. 135. 105 French, The People, p. 172; Beat Kümin, Shaping, pp. 18; Platt, The Parish, pp. 46, 98–106; 102

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coats of arms were symbols of the collective honor of families accumulated through generations of both peaceful and aggressive effort.106 In order to commemorate the marriage of John Newton of Yatton and Isabel Cheddar, Isabel’s father endowed his parish church of Cheddar with a window bearing an image of St. John with the Cheddar arms impaled by the Newton arms.107 More frequently than marriage commemorations, heraldry accompanied burial sites within a church. For example, John Pyme of Kent had his relatives’ coats of arms inserted into the windows of the nave of his burial church.108 On its external walls and prominently above its entrances, the parish church of Lavenham in Suffolk contains an extravagant set of emblems of the De Vere family who, in part, paid for the rebuilding of the church.109 Jonathan Hughes remarks that the affinity of Yorkshire gentry and nobles for heraldry in churches made many parishes resemble “private mausolea”.110 Heraldry announced the presence of an honored family in the local community but, unlike pews, it did not diminish communal space. Moreover, like the sponsorship of prominent civic events by local corporations in modern times, these heraldic images were not just silent reminders of power but also overt displays of a desire to contribute to the community in a significant manner. “Competitive gift giving” through donations and wills was a normal facet of religious life since the beginning of the thirteenth century.111 Synodal statutes from the thirteenth century required the laity to provide proper ornaments such as vestments and chalices but by the beginning of the fifteenth century, affluent families were doing much more than mere provision of plain ornaments, they were donating elaborate ornaments as signs of their familial piety and prestige.112 The garments and ornaments of family chapels and chantries usually contained both religious symbols and memorials of the donor’s family. These designs carefully linked the spiritual and communal world of religious observance with the agonistic world of public exposition.113 In 1473, John 106

Hughes, Pastors, pp. 13–19. French, The People, p. 172; C. Woodford, Stained Glass in Somerset: 1250–1830 (Oxford, 1946), p. 99. 108 Hughes, Pastors, pp. 13–14. 109 Pounds, History, p. 409. 110 Hughes, Pastors, p. 15. 111 Platt, The Parish, pp. 46, 102. 112 Councils and Synods, pp. 1122–1123, 1385–1388. 113 Hughes, Pastors, p. 11; Platt, The Parish, p. 101; French, The Good Women, pp. 1–49. 107

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Shipward created a chantry for himself and his family which also included the donation of two missals, a silver-gilt chalice and six suits of vestments to be used by the parish and the chantry priests. The presence of the donor was usually etched on the donation such as when John Bailey and his wife donated a chalice which read, “pray for the souls of John Bailey and Elizabeth, his wife.” Similar requests for prayers are found on other chalices.114 On occasion, the donation of an item was explicitly made for the unification of the parish. In Bristol between 1460 and 1470, a dispute arose between the churchwardens and John Sharp. Once the dispute was settled, Elizabeth Sharp, John’s wife, immediately after she had presented the holy loaf to the parish, proclaimed to the parishioners that in order to commemorate the reconciliation of her husband and the churchwardens, she would donate a beautiful houseling-cloth, a long cloth for catching crumbs of the host at communion, “to serve the parysshens of an Estur day”. Sharp would hold onto the cloth until her death and then it would go to into the possession of the parish. Each Easter Sunday, the parish clerk was to go to her house to fetch the cloth from her.115 Elizabeth’s donation richly combines her family’s desire for personal pageantry with their longing for communal harmony.116 By retaining the cloth until she died, Sharp made sure that recognition of her family was intimately connected with the greatest feast day of the liturgical calendar. She also made sure that her donation did not go unnoticed by calling the parson and parishioners to her as they readied to hear matins. However, her donation was also a personal expression of her belief in the ideal of charity. First, she chose to announce her donation after she had delivered the holy loaf, the bread whose distribution to every parishioner provided a token of membership and unity. Second, she wished the cloth to be a commemoration of her husband’s return to a state of charity with the parish, for it was to be used on Easter day, the one day when mandatory communion pushed the need for charity to the forefront of all parishioners’ minds. Donations, however selfish the donor, always had some communal value and therefore were a tenuous,

114

Platt, The Parish, pp. 101–102. Quotation and detail of case found in Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 128. 116 Katherine French has explored in detail the ways that female parishioners contributed to the spiritual life of a parish, and sought social recognition, by performing a variety of tasks, such as candle making, and by donating household items for the creation of liturgical ornaments. See, French, The Good Women. 115

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but efficacious, channel for the competitive ambitions of both male and female parishioners. The most characteristic architectural feature of the church that expressed both personal honor and parish unity was the bell tower. These “liturgically useless” towers were the focus of particular support by late medieval parishioners because they advertised in a most conspicuous manner a family’s lordship to the entire countryside.117 In the late fifteenth century, Sir Henry Trecarrell, searching for a unique display, constructed at his own expense a “Somerset style” tower with clearly defined stages, traceried panels, louvred openings, fretted parapets and pinnacles, in the parish of Probus, Cornwall, a county where plain, unbuttressed towers dominated the landscape.118 The gothic tower and church of Lowick, Northhamptonshire was due in large part to the funding of the Green family from the late fourteenth through the fifteenth century.119 According to Katherine French, Robert Sambourne, canon of Wells, financed the entire rebuilding of the parish church of Yeovil, Somerset, “probably as a personal memorial, but also perhaps as a way of either reconciling or confronting the town’s burgesses with whom he had quarreled for several years”.120 Here French clearly has in mind the dual nature of many gifts as both communications of power and charity. If families were not wealthy enough to fund the whole tower, they typically contributed a sum of money to its construction or they funded the production of bells for the tower.121 Whether or not towers and bells advertised the prestige of one particular family, they always manifested the honor of the parish. The mania of parishioners for bells and tall towers was not an intraparish competition but rather an interparish competiton.122 Each parish longed for the tallest tower and most distinctive bells. The late fifteenth-century west tower at Helmingham church in Suffolk was built to surpass the towers of neighboring churches at Framsden and Brandeston.123 117 Quotation found in C. Carpenter, “The Religion of the Gentry,” p. 66. For discussions of church towers and their relation to the community, see, Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 132; French, The People, pp. 146–154; Platt, The Parish, pp. 90–94; Pounds, History, pp. 388–392. 118 For descriptions of Somerset towers see, Pounds, History, pp. 388–389. 119 Platt, The Parish, p. 107. 120 French, The People, p.153. 121 Ibid., pp.146–147; Richmond, “Religion” in Horrox, Fifteenth-Century Attitudes, pp. 184–186. 122 French, The People, pp. 146–154; Platt, The Parish, pp. 90–94; Pounds, History, pp. 388–392. 123 Platt, The Parish, p. 91.

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Parishioners also tried to have their bells sound unique because their peal “was part of what identified a parish, and a mismatched sound was unpleasant and humiliating.” The wardens of Basingstoke, Hampshire sued a bell maker in Chancery because the peal of the new bells did not harmonize with the old bells.124 Rich and poor parishioners bequeathed money for bells and towers. Despite a significant number of privately funded towers, most projects were communally funded and took place over a long period of time. Standing tall and ringing clear, towers and bells fostered parishioners’ identification with their parish and offered a creative channel for aggression by shifting the struggle for honor away from local, individual concerns toward distant, sometimes wholly unseen, rivals. The united struggle of parishioners against unseen forces was also carried out through rituals, such as the Rogation procession.125 Usually held on the fifth Sunday after Easter, these processions were known as the ‘beating of the bounds’ because the whole parish, both laity and clergy, with bells, banners, and crosses marched along the sacred borders of the parish chanting prayers and litanies in order to drive out the demons which sowed discord and ruined crops. Like the rituals that created and reconciled sacred space, the demonization of violence is made clear in the Rogation. One of Mirk’s sermons, likening the processions to the march of a bellicose king with banners flying, argued that the processions would drive out the demons who sowed discord, caused debate between neighbors, and even incited violence.126 The parish was to stand united in its assault against divisive demons and those who failed to attend the processions were considered slothful and wayward neighbors.127 The Rogation ritual united parishioners in a spiritual brotherhood that was quite tribal in nature. The procession annually demarcated the bounds of the parish, thus setting the parishioners against those, earthly and unearthly, beyond their newly sanctified borders. Since parochial tribalism ran at a fever pitch on such days, there was a strong potential for conflict with any outsiders who dared to disrupt or threaten the integrity of a procession.128

124 125 126 127 128

French, The People, pp. 146–147. Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 136–138; Pounds, History, pp. 77–79. Mirk, Festial, pp. 150–151. Mirk, Festial, p. 149; Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 136. Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 136.

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Besides spiritual unification against the forces of evil, the Rogationtide procession involved other aspects that bolstered parish unity and temporarily curbed interparishioner aggression. The act of processing itself entailed not just solemn litanies but also convivial activity, such as drinking and eating, along the route. Rich parishioners usually assumed some of the financial obligations for the provision of food and drink but all householders who resided on the route were obliged to provide some supplies. Many testators left funds in their will for the communal activities of the Rogation, as when John Absolon ordered his wife to continue providing drink on Rogation day just as he had done.129 Like other important communal displays of unity, e.g. St. John’s Eve fires and Corpus Christi processions,130 Rogations were moments when the “mantle of holy peace and charity” was thrown over the “the structures and pecking order of village life”.131 With the exception of Easter communion, these processions were the “most explicitly parochial ritual” of the year.132 For one day, individual aggression was suppressed, communal cohesion affirmed and the bonds of charity made manifest. The orderly and unified example of the Rogation was mirrored each week inside the churches themselves through the rituals of the pax and holy bread.133 At the urging of both clergy and many lay parishioners, the pax, a smooth decorated piece of wood or metal with a handle and usually an image of the Lamb of God or the crucifixion, was employed in the late medieval period as a substitute for the reception of communion. Passing from the priest to attendant clergy to parishioners, the pax compelled the manifestation of a desire for charity. In turn, each parishioner kissed the pax as a sign of unity with their fellow men and women. 129 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 138–139. Absolon’s command is intriguing because it evinces Katherine French’s argument that late medieval society expected men to actively engage in acts of charity, like providing food and drink, while women, unless protected or authorized by their husbands, should let opportunities to perform a ‘work of mercy’ come to them. See, French, The Good Women, pp. 183–199. 130 C. Phythian-Adams, “Ceremony and the Citizen: The Communal Year at Coventry, 1450-1550,” in The Early Modern Town, ed. P. Slack (London, 1976), p. 112. Corpus Christi processions will not be discussed because they have received adequate attention in previous studies. See, M. Rubin, Corpus Christi (Cambridge, 1991); M.E. James, “Ritual, Drama and Social Body in the Late Medieval English Town,” Past and Present 88 (1983), 3–29. 131 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 137. 132 Ibid., p. 139. 133 For detailed analysis of the pax and the laity’s promotion of the passing of the pax, see, Bossy, “The Mass as a Social Institution”; Rubin, Corpus Christi, p. 74. For a discussion of the use of holy bread, see, Pounds, History, p. 258; Kümin, Shaping, p. 158; Rubin, Corpus Christi, pp. 72–74.

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This act was the prototype for the sign of peace, whether a kiss or a handshake, which is still in many Christian denominations prior to the reception of communion. Yet, unlike the ritual today in which random parishioners of closest proximity are wished peace, the late medieval ritual was hierarchical, with the more distinguished families at the front of the nave venerating the pax first and the less reputable poorer, householders venerating the pax last. This ritual formed a delicate balance which, like processions and pews, promoted parochial unison at the same time that it acknowledged social distinction. The holy or blessed bread was another substitute for the reception of communion and, therefore, an alternative means of displaying charity. Householders were sometimes obligated by synodal statute to provide in rotating order a loaf, or loaves, of bread which would be blessed and distributed at the end of the mass.134 The bread, sometimes called the ‘pax bread’,135 further highlighted its association with parish harmony, since it was given to all the parishioners. Even though, once again, hierarchy tended to prevail in the order of distribution, the portions themselves were roughly the same and thus every parishioner received his or her share. Evidence that parishioners regarded the blessed bread as a significant symbol of unity is found in the dispute of 1455 between the people of Leigh-on-Mendip and their parish of Mells. In an effort to show their lack of unity with Mells and to promote their chapel in Mendip as the source of their spiritual community, the villagers refused to provide bread for Mells. These rebellious parishioners, who knew how to display their estrangement quite effectively, were brought before the Bishop of Bath and Wells who compelled them to continue providing bread in turn.136 The ritual of unity could not be broken by individual or group aspirations for the portion of blessed bread provided a token of membership in the parish community, which in some sense constituted “a fraternity”.137 Along with renting pews, overseeing family chapels and donating money or ornaments, married women of the parish could also garner recognition of their own and their family’s good standing through the

134

Councils and Synods, p. 513. French, The People, p. 25; F.A. Gasquet, Parish Life in Medieval England (London, 1906), p. 157. 136 French, The People, p. 25; Register of Thomas Bekynton: Bishop of Bath and Wells, 1443– 1465, ed. M.C.B. Dawes (Somerset Record Society, 49–50, 1934), pp. 153–154. 137 Beat Kümin, Shaping, p. 159. 135

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ritual of churching.138 Though this ritual emphasized a traditional concern for purity among the sacred, in which new mothers were regarded as unclean and potential polluters, by the late medieval period, the rite also emphasized communal recovery and celebration of the new mother who had come safely through the dangerous ordeal of childbirth. After an approximately four to six week period of confinement for recovery in which fellow parishioners helped with household duties, the veiled mother was joined by female friends, neighbors and kin for a procession through the churchyard. Then, with candle in hand, she knelt before the priest at the church door for a blessing and sprinkling with holy water. Having been ritually cleansed, the mother, her female parishioners, and sometimes some male relatives, went inside the church for mass. At the offertory, the mother, escorted by female attendants, gave a donation of one penny and a candle and returned the baptismal cloth. At the conclusion of the service, all of the women who attended the churching would receive the blessed bread before anyone else. When one remembers the longstanding Christian conception of the physical body as the spiritual temple, the parallels between the churching ritual and the reconciliation of sacred space become quite comprehensible. However, one should not push the connection too far because the ritual of churching was far more celebratory than the reconciliation which demanded humble mortification and supplication by all attendant parishioners. The liturgy of churching was “malleable enough” for families to use both to celebrate parochial brotherhood and sisterhood and “to express concerns for family ambition, a successful birth, promotion of lineage and social status”.139 Families could choose the number and types of attendants, the number of candles, the dress of the new mother and the size of post ritual festivities. Each detail allowed a family 138 Scholars have engaged in a vigorous debate about the meaning of churching to both society and the female parishioners who appear to have treasured it. For a variety of interpretations, see, French, The Good Women, pp. 61–65; B. Lee, “Men’s Recollection of a Women’s Rite: Medieval English Men’s Recollections Regarding the Rite of Purification of Women after Childbirth,” Gender and History 14 (2002), 224–241; G. McMurray Gibson, “Blessing from Sun and Moon: Churching as Women’s Theatre,” in Bodies and Disciplines: Intersections of Literature and History in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. B. Hanawalt and D. Wallace (Minneapolis, 1996), pp. 139–154; S. Karrant-Nunn, Reformation of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early Modern Germany (London, 1997); Thomas, Religion and the Decline, pp. 38–39; A. Wilson, “The Ceremony of Childbirth and Its Interpretation,” in Women and Mothers in Pre-Industrial England: Essays in Memory of Dorothy McLaren, ed. V. Fields (London, 1990), pp. 68–107; D. Cressy, “Purifications, Thanksgiving and the Churching of Women in Post-Reformation England,” Past and Present 141 (1993), 106–146. 139 French, The Good Women, p. 64.

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to advertise their pride of place while, at the same time, the ritual as a whole expressed their desire to be part of a supportive, harmonious parish community. An excursus of the means through which parishes provided avenues for the propagation of familial status while still promoting otherworldly harmony must not overlook the most popular vehicle for religious observance outside of Sunday worship; parish guilds and fraternities. These were associations of layfolk, who joined together to venerate specific saints, arrange for the funeral as well as memorial prayers and masses of members, and provide for customary festive and charitable activities. Fraternities flourished in late medieval England until the Chantries Acts of 1545 and 1547 eliminated their primary purpose, namely memorial prayers. London had over 200 guilds from 1350 to 1547 while York’s largest guild had about 70,000 members over the course of the Middle Ages.140 The role of guilds in parish life has generated considerable scholarship; therefore, the details of guild life need not be reiterated here.141 Guilds could be exclusive in some respects. By their foundation of private chapels, distribution of liveries and offerings of candles, they made their distinct presence felt in the parish, but nevertheless, the separation between guilds and the parish community should not be overestimated. Male and female guilds tended to enhance existing rituals and activities rather than detract from parish worship. E.J.G. Pounds argues that many people participated in guilds as a form of social insurance—to pay for that which they could not have paid for on their own and to form a supplementary kin network of companionship and support in times of trouble.142 Katherine French has further highlighted how guilds 140

Kümin, Shaping, p. 151. For guilds and their relationship to parishes and towns, see, Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 141–154; Kümin, Shaping, pp. 148–159; French, The People, pp. 170–173; Pounds, History, pp. 273–276, 391–393; M.C. McClendon, The Quiet Reformation (Stanford, 1999), pp. 121–129; James, “Ritual Drama and the Social Body”; K. Wrightson, “The Politics of the Parish Church in Early Modern England,” in The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England, ed. P. Griffiths, A. Fox and S. Hindle (New York, 1996), pp. 10–45; B. McCree, “Peacemaking and its Limits in Later Medieval Norwich,” English Historical Review 33 (1994), 35–68; —, Religious Guilds and Civic Order: The Case of Norwich in the Late Middle Ages,” Speculum 67 (1992), 69–97; Phythian-Adams, “Ceremony and the Citizen”; G. Rosser, “Communities of Parish and Gild in the Late Middle Ages,” in Parish, Church and People, pp. 29–55. 142 Pounds, History, pp.275–276; G. Rosser, “Going to the Fraternity Feast: Commensality and Social Relations in Late Medieval England,” Journal of British Studies, 33 (1994), 430–446. 141

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provided single and married women from many social classes with ways to “support the parish in substantial, positive and socially approved ways”.143 Moreover, exclusivity, like that of the St. George guild in Norwich, was not always the norm.144 Beat Kümin points out that guilds could sometimes comprise a significant part of, if not the entire population of a village, town or parish. In large and heavily differentiated communities, such as those of medieval Norwich, guilds tended to be more exclusive and divisive but in a more coherent parish “the similarities in office holding, religious orientation and social life must have outweighed the differences”.145 Guilds functioned within the ritual life of the English church not outside or against it. They offered a peaceful channel for members to express their piety, and sometimes their prestige, more profoundly. Conclusion By custom, law and ritual, the clergy endeavored to make sacred space an inviolable place of peace and charity, a true sanctus locus, but due both to their own design as well as to their acceptance of some contemporary customs, they never fully fashioned parish churches into otherworldly havens, free from earthly concerns for gender, status and reputation. Clerics and concerned laity both knew that in their age, as in generations prior, there was only a slim chance that humble and communal acts of piety would fully supplant traditional and more aggressive methods for upholding reputation. Therefore, in order to avoid disruption and defilement of the sacred by status-sensitive individuals, clerical and lay parishioners found ways for daily religious life to allow for exhibitions of personal status while retaining a sense of parochial harmony. Through a myriad of furnishings, rituals and traditions, parishioners could express both their commitment to the ideal of parish harmony as well as their concern for distinction as individuals or families. Good repute through piety, rather than bellicose bravado and degradation of 143

French, The Good Women, p. 155. McCree, “Religious Guilds and Civic Order.” 145 Kümin, Shaping, pp. 154–158. French provides some direct examples of the elitism of some guilds and the openness of others. The guilds of Crosscombe were divided by sex into maiden’s and young men’s guilds as well as fullers and weavers. The Trinity guild in Wells attracted a town elite and acted as a stepping stone to leadership. Yet, in rural Somerset, guilds like that of St. Mary in Trull encompassed most parishioners. See, French, The People, pp. 172–173. 144

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one’s peers, could be derived in numerous ways from simply attending divine service or Rogation to funding the construction of an entire church. The clergy hoped that parishioners who thirsted for public appreciation of their social status would drink from the limitless pool of piety and shed their anxiety over the limited honor of the mundane world. Acts, such as competitive donations and inclusive religious rituals, helped to form a spirituality that married the seemingly polarized demands of parish life, the need for charitable harmony and the need to preserve personal repute, into one bond that, ideally, expressed one clear point to God above and all others below; ‘Here is a pious and peaceful parish’. Moreover, at the most rudimentary of levels, many of the teachings about the need for self-restraint and charitable mind within sacred space, though certainly nuanced, were tied to a basic notion of pollution or dread of some tangible sacred object, whether the floor of the church or the handle of a hagoday. Such connections to the tangibly sacred, such as those found in the customs of sanctuary-seeking, reveal a rather common characteristic of late medieval popular religion and, to some extent, humanity in any era; as now, so then, people were moved more by the tangible and physical than the intangible and abstract. Might late medieval parishioners have been more motivated to uphold the inviolate nature of the tangible, whether it be a person saved by holding a knocker or a floor safe from drops of blood, more than the integrity of the intangible, such as the state of charity between parishioners?146 Certainly the end result would be the same—a valuation of reverent restraint—even if the depth of parishioners’ understanding of why they ought to value self discipline may have been limited to a basic notion of pollution of the tangible, rather than a deeply introspective idea of pious propriety. Though concerns for the preservation of sacred objects, gender and status could potentially shallow parishioners’ understanding or shade their regard for churches as uniformly transcendent spaces, an exploration of the rituals, laws, and instructions associated with sacred spaces suggests that very few, if any, could claim to be unaware of the close ties between their churches and the importance of charitable spirit and reverent restraint. Seats, secondary uses or an emphasis on the protection of sacred objects did nothing to alter the core message conveyed by high and low clerics alike: churches were 146 As we explore letters and court cases in Part II, we shall see how parishioners’ praxis answers this question.

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God’s house and violence in God’s dwelling place was an abominable and insolent pollution of the sacred. Through a variety of media and messengers, parishioners were implored to heed this latter point and thus, to prize restraint and forgiveness to a degree that many were not inclined to do elsewhere. Even in the early stages of Christianity, the clergy had a strong reason for trying to protect churches from pollution. They sought to abide by the Old Testament tradition of individual purity and sanctuary within God’s temple. Durandus reveals this basic intention when he supports the proscription of pollution by quoting Psalm 89; “Thy Temple have they defiled and made Jerusalem a heap of stones”.147 Yet, as the late medieval Church increasingly defined orthodoxy in relation to the doctrine of transubstantiation, their prohibitions against violence in God’s dwelling place garnered further justification. The spaces, ornaments and people associated with the very body of Christ had to be preserved from defilement lest the sacrifice of the mass fail to save anyone at all.

147

Durandus, Symbolism, p. 133; Douglas, Purity, p. 53.

CHAPTER THREE

THE EUCHARIST AND THE CLERGY: FOSTERING CHARITY INCARNATE Like sacred space, the ritual of the mass and the presence of the Eucharist necessitated charity and reverent restraint on the part of lay and clerical parishioners. Communal harmony was a prerequisite for the proper execution of the mass because the liturgy itself was intended to be a ritual of communal worship, with the priest and parishioners each having a role in ensuring that both they and the sacred sacrifice proved pleasing to God.1 By the late Middle Ages, a vast array of liturgical and quasi-liturgical rituals were centered around the host as the most significant sign of God’s power and presence on earth. For most parishioners, the liturgy of the Eucharist, especially the Sunday mass, was their most common point of contact with the clergy and their teachings about salvation through proper piety. No other sacrament or clerical ritual was as familiar or as desired.2 Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the Eucharist became a powerful force in the clergy’s call for conscientiousness. Through two potent methods, clerical leaders, writers and pastors encouraged their flock to question the use of violence and to respond to the sight of the Eucharist with visible indications of charity and restraint: they required that parishioners embrace, in both private thought and public gesture, the ideal of charity in order to be worthy recipients of God’s grace and they affirmed through the doctrine of transubstantiation that the bread was truly the body of Christ and thus, parishioners’ posture should display their deference to its daunting presence. Concurrently, clerical writers and leaders emphasized restrained and reverent comportment on the part of parish priests, who were the creators and caretakers of the awe-inspiring Eucharist. In the thirteenth century, parish pastors underwent a critical transition in identity from mere members of the village to semi-detached individuals who had to abide by the values of a more unified and doctrinally authoritative 1 2

Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 126–130. Ibid., p. 91.

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Church.3 As the Church, from about 1215 onward, increasingly defined itself by the sacraments, and the doctrine of transubstantiation in particular, its leaders and theologians began to emphasize the priesthood as a distinctive and sacred conduit of God’s power. Thus, as far as clerical leaders were concerned, once he was part of the clergy, the initiate was to slough off his previous persona and then, reformulate his identity based on his inclusion in a new kinship group of sublime and supragendered peacemakers. Requiring a Charitable Spirit The mass, especially the high mass of Sunday, offered parishioners an unparalleled moment to witness God and to receive His grace. Though confession granted them absolution, most parishioners regarded the mass as their prime means of salvation.4 Each week, the attendant faithful muttered prayers, shifted restlessly, and glanced at the side altar or rood screen until one of two moments, the elevation of the host at the moment of consecration, called the sacring, or the distribution of communion. At such times, God’s saving grace was made available to those whose hearts had embraced charity and whose posture and gestures made manifest their spiritual fitness. By the thirteenth century, theologians had firmly linked the Eucharist with the ideal of charity and its incumbent duty to ‘forgive and forget’ previous wrongs.5 Since the host was considered the most perfect manifestation of charity, parishioners were admonished to shed their aggressive sentiments before the miracle of transubstantiation occurred at the sacring as well as before participation in communion. Since many parishioners only dared to receive the host on Easter Sunday, the ritual gestures of the mass played a more dynamic role than communion in their daily spiritual lives. The sacring, the ringing of bells and elevation of the host after the words, ‘this is my body’ [hoc est enim corpus meum] became the central moment of blessing for attendant parishioners.6 The fervor of 3 J. Goering, “The Changing Face of the Village Parish II: The Thirteenth Century,” in Pathways of Medieval Peasants, ed. J. Ambrose Raftis (Toronto, 1981), pp. 323–324. 4 Duffy argues that most villagers cared about and attended parish mass. He even goes so far as to argue that attendance at daily mass “was commonplace”. While that contention is not easily proven, Duffy’s emphasis on the centrality of parish ritual and the mass to most villagers is well founded. See Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 99–100. 5 Rubin, Corpus Christi, p. 102. 6 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 97–102.

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the laity for witnessing the sacring compelled them to dash from one part of their church to the other in hope of snatching a glimpse of the elevation at a side altar or at the high altar. Staggered masses rewarded such rushing to and fro as astute parishioners could witness several sacrings in one outing. Indeed, the Lollard preacher, William Thorpe, despite his radical and mellifluous speech, could not deter his audience from rushing away when the sacring bell was wrung.7 For such fleeing parishioners, the blessings bestowed upon those who saw the Eucharist far outweighed the benefits of hearing a rousing sermon. However, foot-speed was not the only quality that parishioners needed for observing the Eucharist. They also needed to have suitable spirits. In contrast to churches, which could be made displeasing to God through pollution by some physical substance, parishioners could make themselves unworthy of blessing by merely thinking vengeful or hateful thoughts. Only those, who embraced charity by both forgiving and seeking forgiveness from their neighbors, were fit to observe the elevation. As Bossy has shown, in an effort to manifest their desire to pardon and be pardoned, lay and clerical parishioners across late medieval England employed a ritual known as the ‘passing of the pax [or paxbread]’. After the sacring and before the Pater Noster, the pax, a decorated board that was a precursor to the modern ‘sign of peace’ in the liturgy of many Christian denominations, was kissed and passed from one parishioner to the next.8 As it was passed, the rhyming Lay Folks Mass Book, taught its readers to recite this prayer for charity: Goddes lombe, that best may, Do the synne of þis worlde away, On vs thu haue mercy and pité, And graunt vs pes and charité.9

Though the passing of the pax did delineate worldly reputations by being handed from the ‘better’ parishioners to the ‘more meagre’, the 7 “The Testimony of William Thorpe” in Two Wycliffite Texts, ed. A. Hudson (EETS, 301, 1993), p. 53. 8 Bossy, “The Mass as a Social Institution,” 48–61. Bossy argues that although clerical authorities certainly wanted to instill a sense of charity among the laity at mass, it was lay parishioners who were instrumental in making the passing of the pax an important part of the liturgy. 9 Lay Folks Mass Book, ed. T.F. Simmons (EETS, o.s. 71, 1879), pp. xxvii–xxviii, 49. The editor contends that later manuscripts of the work show that the scribes wished to shift the use of the book from just the devotions of upper class laity in their private chapels to the silent devotions of a more general audience in their parish churches. See also, Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 118–119. I believe that the rhyming character of

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latter prayer shows well that this parochial ritual was, first and foremost, meant to manifest the worthiness of all to have witnessed, or on some days to receive, their Lord.10 For the majority of parishioners who hastened to mass each Sunday, or for some each day, reception of the Eucharist was the most important aspect of late medieval spirituality and the pinnacle of their journey through the liturgical year to Easter Sunday.11 Yet, as theologians warned in spiritual handbooks and parish priests admonished aloud during the mass, this much anticipated reception of God’s grace could only be gained through the acceptance of charity. One popular vernacular sermon recounts a cautionary tale of a woman who feigned charity with her hated neighbor in order to receive communion on Easter day. When she later boasted of her deception, a devil appeared and strangled her.12 The wrathful and violent rejected the ideal of charity and consequently, God would, either in the present life or the next, reject them too. In fact, no one who remained wrathful was supposed to receive the host because their reception would constitute a willful act of self-damnation.13 Parish priests specifically instructed parishioners before the reception of communion that they must eschew wrath and make peace with their neighbors: Good men and women, y charge yow by the Auctoryte of the holy churche, that no man nother woman that this day proposyth here to be comenyd [communicated] that he go note to Godds bord … lase he be of ys synns clen confessyd, and for hem contryte … Furthermore, I charge yow yf ther be eny man or woman, that beryth yn his herte eny wrothe or rancor to eny of his evencristen [fellow christians] that he be not ther howselyd, ther to the tyme that he with hym yn perfyte love and cheryte, for ho so [whoso] beryth wrethe or evyll wyll in herte, to eny of hys evencristen [fellow christians], he ys note worthy hys God to receyve; and yf he do, he reseyvythe his dampnacyon, where he schuld receyve his salvacion.14

this text shows its intent to be read aloud on occasion or at the least, its intent to facilitate memorization so that the reader could both remember the prayer during service and teach the prayers to others without reliance on the text. 10 Rubin, Corpus Christi, pp. 152–154; Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 119. 11 See, Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 99–100. 12 Middle English Sermons, p. 62. 13 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 92–94. 14 Maskell, Monumenta, iii, pp. 348–349. A similar admonition occurs in Mirk, see, Festial, pp. 130–131; another admonition can be found in Middle English Sermons, p. 62; Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 94.

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One popular guide to parish worship even referenced the common use of livery badges by reminding that parishioners should receive communion, “arrayde in Godys lyvere, clothyd in love and charyte rather than arrayed in the fendys lyvere, clothyd in envy and dedly wrath”.15 In an age when ‘livery and maintenance’ was commonplace, this gentle reminder goaded parishioners to see themselves as the retainers of God. They could expect to enjoy the blessings of his patronage as long as they defended his good name by avoiding the very things that were often necessary for defending their own reputations. Such a close connection between spiritual fitness and charity must have prompted some parishioners, concerned about their worthiness before the host, to consider restraining their darker impulses and, no doubt, prompted some of them to question how they could reconcile their acceptance of violence and aggression in worldly affairs with their admiration for restraint and fellowship during spiritual moments. Demanding Dreadful Composure Alongside parishioners’ duty to embrace charity, clerical leaders and writers also stressed humble and reserved posture before the Eucharist. Pride and petulancy angered God and disrupted the liturgy. Synodal statutes, confessionals and lay liturgical books all emphasized that parishioners should kneel reverently during the mass and bow their heads during the sacring.16 In his popular handbook for parish priests, John Mirk advised pastors to instruct their flock not to lean on the wall or chatter during the mass but instead, to kneel reverently in the presence of God.17 A late medieval vernacular sermon implored parishioners to leave behind their worldly aspirations and avoid taking notice of others’ presence or absence during the service; “And ther-fore, frendes, counte not hem that are absente fro the churche, ne beholde hem nowgth that goyth owte, but only when thou arte comon to the churche prey to God”.18 Such a petition provides intriguing evidence that parishioners were inclined to tally who had maintained their ‘worship’, the contemporary 15

Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 94–95; Mirk, Festial, pp.131–132. Mirk, Instructions, p. 10; Councils and Synods, p. 143; Book of Vices and Virtues, pp. 237– 239; N. Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, ed. M. Sargent (Exeter, 2005), pp. 223–239. 17 Mirk, Instructions, pp. 8–9. 18 Middle English Sermons, p. 154. 16

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term for honor, by attending divine services. While the clergy certainly desired parishioners to value public displays of piety as a mark of good repute,19 they could not condone parishioners’ infatuation with tallying others’ worldly reputations to the extent that they avoided meditating on their own spiritual fitness. In a similar vein, the popular Lay Folks Mass Book, recognizing the potential for quarrels between parishioners milling about the nave, counseled, “Til a Masse was seid to ende/A Mon schulde talke with fo nor frende/But holde him stille as ston”.20 Even early Tudor didactic texts for householders lauded pensive and inoffensive mannerisms during divine services.21 The poignant image of parishioners kneeling with bowed heads before the host, purposefully forgetting friend and foe alike, conveys the important message that religion would provide a more peaceful system of social relations, one that would not require the maintenance of reputation through public confrontation and conflict. Moreover, the clergy’s advocacy of respectful and restrained comportment before the host encouraged the development of both social and spiritual discipline by demonstrative and honor-conscious parishioners. Like vassals kneeling before their social superiors in an act of fealty, parishioners’ bodies and minds had to be properly prepared for the arrival of their Lord and Savior. If we again take into account Christian writers’ enduring association of the human body with “God’s temple”,22 the clerical concern for parishioners’ spirit and posture takes on greater depth. Just as the churches in which they stood had been set up to assuage God’s righteous wrath by offering venues for prayer and supplication, so too did parishioners’ bodies and minds have to be in proper order to merit salvation from an omnipotent, and thus potentially most violent and destructive, deity. Indeed, intense respect for the host was often based on an intense dread of the divine. Decades ago, Huizinga opined that power in this period was contingent upon an ability to inspire “religious awe”.23 The Eucharist was certainly capable of such inspiration. For example, the fact that most parishioners only received communion on Easter day can be directly attributed to their anxiety about unworthy 19

This desire will become even more evident in the devotional texts explored in Chapter 4. 20 Lay Folks Mass Book, p. 138. 21 R. Whytford, A Werke for Householders: A Dayly Exercyse and Experyence of Dethe, ed. J. Hogg (Salzburg, 1979), p. 34; Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 118. 22 Paul in 1 Corinthians makes this connection. See, 1 Corinthians, 3:16. 23 Huizinga, Waning, p. 28.

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reception of such an awesome power.24 The elaborate protection of the host by a canopy and monstrance during solemn processions, such as on the feast of Corpus Christi or on Maundy Thursday, reinforced parishioners’ sense of wonder at the bread that had been miraculously transformed into the Body of Christ. Lay access to the Eucharist was largely limited to glimpses of it and thus, in comparison to churches, there was less chance that many parishioners would develop a shaded or jaded notion about the holiness of the host.25 Respect for the divine power and presence of God was of paramount importance. The early fifteenthcentury cleric, Nicholas Love, in his popular didactic treatise, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, instructed his readers that God would only bestow the grace of the Eucharist upon those who dread him. Parishioners who failed to fear God were entirely unworthy to receive communion because their lack of fear was a sign of their lack of love or, as one sermon noted, “Love also maketh a man dredefull and aferde to mysplese God”.26 In essence, dread of divine violence, and the manifestation of such dread through restrained and respectful comportment, became a prerequisite of eucharistic piety.27 Fear would preserve fallible parishioners from offending God through sin and it would make them amenable to the Church’s teachings, as Love argued: This mete is that preciouse gostly mete of the blessede body of oure lorde Jesu in the sacrament of the awtere that he of his souereyn mercy giveth every day in the forme of brede to alle thoo that trewly dreden him as hir lorde god, by the whiche drede, thei kepen hem out of deadly sinne, & meekly standen in the steadfast byleve of holi chirch.28

This connection further illustrates that the late medieval cultivation of introspection was often fertilized by reinforcement of a visceral fear of God’s judgment. Ideally, one singular, yet powerful, passion that 24

Rubin, Corpus Christi, pp. 63–65. For a brief discussion of the dread which the host could inspire, see, Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 107–108. 25 With the exception of a small minority of Lollards, most late medieval parishioners appear to have accepted the clergy’s teaching that the host was the Body of Christ. For confirmation of this point, see, for instance, the works of Duffy, Marsh and Rubin. Even quasi-magical uses of the host by parishioners show that they considered the host to be a potent connection to divine power. 26 Love, Mirror, pp. 223–224; Middle English Sermons, pp. 34–35. 27 As will be seen in Part II, the ability of the host to inspire fear and restraint provided clerics and parishioners with an effective deterrent of physical aggression and even an immediate defense against impending conflict. 28 Love, Mirror, p. 223.

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motivated concern for salvation would curtail the array of seemingly petty passions that motivated conflict and discord. One need only glance over the code of Hammurabi to see that intimidation and fear have a long history as methods for motivating men and women to think and behave in a particular manner. Yet, what is remarkable is that the clergy, who were also fearful and anxious about their worthiness before God, used an emotion to compel parishioners to undertake a rational process, the reconsideration of contemporary norms of conduct.29 As will often prove the case in our exploration of parochial media, a product of ‘the appetites’, fear, was employed to promote the rational reconsideration of the merit of violence and aggression, in order to achieve a suprarational prize, salvation after death. Making the Heavenly Stars of God As the sole possessors of the power to make the blessed and dreadful sacrament of altar, parish priests had to be free of sexual and sanguinary pollution. Though they spent most of their days in the company of their fellow parishioners, late medieval parish clerics were to exemplify an ideal Christian life by remaining removed from the social mores that governed the behavior of lay contemporaries. This was quite a task for unlike monastic child-oblates, who often knew little but the cloister from birth to death, most parish curates lived all their life caught “between two millstones”,30 the diurnal demands of village life and the transcendent 29 Jean Delumeau conveys well in his studies that the clergy as anxious about spiritual fitness as the laity. See, Delumeau, Sin and Fear. 30 R.N. Swanson, “Problems of the Priesthood in Pre-Reformation England,” The English Historical Review 105 (1990), 846. Most studies of the priesthood in late medieval England intend to prove whether society was anticlerical or proclerical, pro-reform or anti-reform, based on the supposed laxity or attentiveness of the clergy as religious leaders. There is little scholarship which explores the social history of priests and lay expectations of them without getting excessively caught up in general arguments about clerical reform. However, there are some very insightful studies of clerical behavior and their role in social relationships by both medieval and early modern scholars. See, R.N. Swanson, “Problems of Priesthood”; —, “Angels Incarnate: Clergy and Masculinity from Gregorian Reform to Reformation,” in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. Dawn M. Hadley (New York, 1999), pp. 160–177; A.K. McHardy, The Age of War and Wycliffe: Lincoln Diocese and Its Bishop in the Later Fourteenth Century (Lincoln, 2001), pp. 29–41; “The English Clergy and the Hundred Years War,” in Studies in Church History: The Church and War, ed. W.J. Shiels, 20 (1983), 171–178; P.H. Cullum, “Clergy. Masculinity and Transgression in Late Medieval England,” in Masculinity, ed. Hadley (New York, 1999), pp. 178–196; H. Kamen, “Clerical Violence in a Catholic Society: The Hispanic World, 1450–1720,” in SCH, ed. Shiels 20 (1983), 201–216; Mark D. Meyerson, “Clerical

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demands of religious life. Indeed, in contrast to holy men of some other faiths, medieval Christian pastors were not sacred by lineage but rather by their admission into holy orders and their participation in its attendant rituals. A sacred and distinct status was chosen by and given to someone who had been, up to that point, a normal man of a particular kinship, class and community.31 Such basic elements of identity formation constantly tugged at the consciences of parish priests as they tried to forge new lives as holy men. The following passage aptly exemplifies the belief that spurred the many canonical prohibitions against the wearing or use of weapons by clerics: Since the safety of an innocent Christian lies firmly in the weapons of virtue, the Apostle [Paul] teaches that we should be clothed with the armament of God and invested with the sword of the [Holy] Spirit, because ours is not a struggle against [an enemy of] flesh and blood, but against the princes of darkness, who can not be attacked with iron weapons but rather with prayers, tears and virtuous deeds. 32

For the Church, the role and duties of a priest were as clear “as is the summer’s sun”.33 By rite of ordination, he was the sacred representative of God who administered the sacraments and taught his flock the basic doctrines of Christianity.34 According to one middle English sermon, priests performed their works on earth but in reality they were heavenly beings because of their power to bind and loose sins, administer the sacraments, and, above all else, make the Eucharist.35 Another sermon writer asserted that the priesthood was “more excellent” than all other positions for priests were the “heavenly stars” of God who alone held His secrets.36 Violence in Late Medieval Valencia,” (unpublished paper presented at International Congress of Medieval Studies, 2001); Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence, pp. 41–88; J. Goering, “The Changing Face,” pp. 323–334; Bossy, “Blood and Baptism”, 129–143; —, Christianity; James, “English Politics”; J. Aberth, Criminal Churchmen in the Age of Edward III (University Park, PA, 1996). 31 The holy men of the Atlas mountains and some other Islamic tribes consider sacredness based on ancestral descent from the Prophet. See, E. Gellner, Saints of the Atlas (London, 1969), pp. 74–80. 32 Councils and Synods, pp. 751–752. 33 Shakespeare, Henry the Fifth, I:ii. p. 86. 34 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 57; Heath, English Clergy, p. 3; Kümin, Shaping, p. 225. 35 Middle English Sermons, pp. 280–283. 36 Speculum Christiani, ed. Gustaf Holmstedt (EETS, o.s. 182, 1933), p. 174. Priests “conteyn the prive thynge of god”.

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The ultimate secret was the power of consecration. This power put parish pastors in the position of ‘God-makers’ among men.37 In order to preserve the purity of their priests as sublime conduits of God’s grace, Church leaders promulgated numerous laws against clerical involvement in popular culture and conflict.38 For example, the Fourth Lateran Council strictly prohibited clerics from participating in such popular pursuits as gambling, excessive drinking, hunting and concubinage. Besides these bans, writers and canonists devoted particular attention to violence because it directly tainted a pastor’s state of charity. Gratian argued that quarrelsome priests should not even be ordained because they would never be able to spread harmony among their parishioners.39 Likewise, the author of the popular treatise, Dives et Pauper, contended that the same sins that separated a pastor from charity would also lead to “spiritual murder” if his flock foolishly followed his unholy example.40 Moving from concern for a peaceful parish to concern for the integrity of the sacraments, the author of Dives asserted that prelates must be men of peace, mercy and pity lest they jeopardize the efficacy of the Eucharist by their lack of charity. In the text, the character, Pauper, informs his acquaintance, Dives, that in the time of the Old Testament, the sword “was grantyd to þe prestis & mynystrys” but now, under the “newe lawe” priests were forbidden to use violence because Christ, who had given the apostles the power “to makyn þe sacrament” of the altar, commanded Peter to sheath his sword in the garden of Gethsemane. Priests, who shed blood, were “irreguler & vnable to makyn þe sacrament of þe auter” because they could only sow separation and strife whereas the host marries the soul and the body through charity.41 This argument leans rather close to the early heresy known as Donatism, which preached the worthlessness of sacraments performed by priests who had sinned, but it does use the word ‘irregular’ which was the orthodox term for the state of polluted priests. The Church taught that irregular priests were not supposed to say the mass—however, it also 37

Swanson, “Problems,” pp. 855–859. See in particular Canons 15, 16 and 18 from the Fourth Lateran Council in The Disciplinary Decrees of the General Council, trans. Henry J. Schroeder (St. Louis, 1937), pp. 252–253, 256–260, 262. For laws regulating attire, involvement in secular affairs and conflict see, Councils and Synods, pp. 63, 110, 116, 151, 188, 230, 251–252, 272, 348–349, 405–407, 431, 519, 602, 647, 696–697, 751–753, 805, 852, 944,949. See also, Cullum, “Clergy” and, Swanson, “Angels Incarnate”. 39 Gratian, Decretum, P. I, D. XC, pp. 313–315. 40 Dives, ii, pp. 18–21. 41 Ibid., pp. 37–40. 38

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instructed that if an impure priest had the temerity to administer the sacraments, they were still valid vehicles of God’s grace. Adding to these arguments about impurity and the sacraments, the author of the Speculum Christiani employed a rhetorical question first raised by St. Paul: when a sinful priest sang the mass, “how may his prayer profette other men to helthe?”42 Thus, a priest’s relationship to aggression was closely tied to his ability to bring salvation to his parishioners. Like the desecration of a church by violence, a priest’s engagement in aggression polluted his soul, pulling him out of charity and threatening both the integrity of the mass and the souls of his parishioners. In order to avoid such problems, just as the clergy used laws and lessons to try to keep their churches free of violence, so too did they attempt to keep their brethren unsullied by conflict. In 1268, the Legatine Council at London decreed that no one in clerical orders was to carry weapons or use violence, “even in the defense of justice or revenge.” Instead, the clergy were to fight wickedness with the spiritual weapons of “prayers and tears”. Any who failed to take this course of action would incur instant excommunication.43 Paraphrasing this law in his Instructions to Parish Priests, John Mirk metrically mentored, “Baselarde ny bawdryke were thow non”.44 Yet the author of Dives took a more practical stance. He contended that clerics could bear weapons when the route of their travel was going to be full of thieves or when they were supposed to be acting as temporal lords. Nevertheless, these allowances were merely superficial because the author also demanded that weapons-carrying clerics avoid striking anyone.45 Such decrees made clear that priestly repute hinged on pastoral care not pugilism. This promotion of such a sublime and spotless identity illuminates an interesting contrast between the seemingly serene and lofty worlds of theologians and bishops, who were detached enough to place parish life within the abstract context of a ‘spiritual struggle against the forces of evil’, and the far grittier, grayer world of parish priests, who seemed to face quite fleshly foes wielding quite solid weapons. Indeed, when one couples clerical leaders’ prohibitions against arms with their continued

42 Speculum Christiani, p. 178. Mirk also counseled the avoidance of sin in order to celebrate the mass. See, Mirk, Instructions, p. 54. 43 Councils and Synods, pp. 751–752. For other laws against bloodshed or carrying arms, see, pp. 272, 307, 349, 407, 431, 519, 602, 657, 696–697, 752, 944, 949. 44 Mirk, Instructions, p. 2. “Swords and bucklers you should not have.” 45 Dives, ii, pp. 40–46.

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concern for chastity, one can see that priests were, ideally, to be ‘supragendered beings’.46 While prayers and tears were meritorious for saving of one’s soul, they were certainly not so useful for saving one’s hide in the heat of conflict. Indeed, such actions would have been considered ‘womanly’ and ludicrous by many a male contemporary. Popular culture readily allowed, even encouraged, an ‘honorable’ man to resort to violence when affronted by another man of equal or inferior status. However, as far as clerical leaders and thinkers were concerned, priests were to be above the mundane standards of behavior that guided, or misguided in their opinion, the rest of humanity. As sublime figures, pastors were to fashion new identities based on the angels and saints. One of the biggest steps toward such an identity was the removal of concern for contemporary definitions of manliness or womanliness. Prayers and tears may have seemed nonsensical and womanly, but, for religious leaders, there were many things about the heavens which humans failed to grasp or mislabeled. What was one more thing? Priests were to be wholly beyond the community of honor. As Mervin James argues, clerics were supposed to have “no part in honor loyalties and attachments and were denied the coercive and militant role to which the man of honor aspired”.47 Their exclusive power to consecrate, and sometimes their economic rights of tithe, mortuary and oblation distinguished them from contemporary laity and helped to remove them from the norms of the secular world.48 These sacred and economic rights sometimes brought prestige, wealth, and reverence, but they also increased expectations of upright behavior. True pastors were to lead their flock out of the mire of sin and strife, not wallow in it. Though idealistic, clerical leaders were not ignorant of the problems inherent in parish life. Having forbidden physical self-defense and encouraged disregard for masculine norms, the Church sought to protect its clergy by prohibiting any aggression against them. Four times a year during the solemn recitation and publication of ‘The Great Curse’, parish priests were instructed to tell their parishioners in the vernacular that anyone who attacked a cleric was anathema. Mirk described this proclamation as a preventive strike against sin in which the priest’s

46 The enforcement of chastity was a significant part of the Gregorian Reform program of the high Middle Ages. Church courts and parishioners themselves continued to be concerned with their curate’s chastity throughout the late medieval period. 47 James, “English Politics,” p. 8. 48 Swanson, “Problems,” pp. 855–859; Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 109–110.

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tongue was “goddus swerde” slicing against the soul just as a real sword “de-partuth þe heued frome þe body”.49 In essence, Mirk and others, who propagated prayer and curses as resolutions to conflict, were arguing the ancient assertion that God is omnipotent and therefore, no one in their right mind would dare pick a fight with his closest kin. Such arguments were readily derived from examples in the Old Testament and were often employed in the early days of Christianity when barbarian chiefs, like Clovis, or Roman leaders, like Constantine, were convinced that the Christian God would bring victory. Though priests had to struggle to cast off their old familial and masculine identities, such shedding gave them elite membership in a divine clan whose reach, and thus ability to avenge wrongs, extended not only farther than any other kinship network but also beyond this earthly life. The only drawback was that conscientious clerics would have to be willing to endure momentary shame in exchange for the surety of divine, and sometimes, eternal vengeance. Conclusion As the central object of late medieval spirituality, the host manifested the ideal of charity, the need for reverent restraint, and the awesomeness of God’s power to attendant parishioners. While the sounds, smells and gestures found in the liturgy of the mass communicated the otherworldliness of the moment to literate and illiterate parishioners alike, these ritual means of communication were all the more effective because the clergy coupled them with verbal and textual messages which reminded that the unparalleled blessings of the host were only available to the charitable and humble of heart. In comparison to churches and churchyards, there are not as many characteristics associated with the host that could have caused parishioners to qualify the need for restraint and charity. Even prior to the sacring, when the host was still considered a piece of bread, parishioners had to embrace charity and show restraint lest they pollute their souls by gazing unworthily on God. Of course, after the sacring, the host was an object of dread whose favor could only be gained by charitable and reserved demeanor. Indeed, unlike churches 49

Mirk, Instructions, pp. 60–61. With candles, bells and a parish packed with parishioners, the priest read aloud the list of prohibitions. For discussion of the penance for striking a cleric, and for a detailed list of the exceptions to the rule, see, Speculum Christiani, pp. 80–82.

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and churchyards whose very natures fixed the need for charitable and reserved comportment to specific locations, the Eucharist was a free sanctus locus, a mobile ‘violence-free zone’ with far more potential for inspiring parishioners to problematize bombast and aggression. Sacred space was God’s house, but the host was God himself, who upon the action of the clergy could be present among parishioners in church or on the street. Ideally, whenever and wherever the host was present, its witnesses had to understand that the state of both their worldly repute and their eternal soul depended upon their ability to foster charity in both thought, which God would scrutinize, and action, to which both God and man could attest. While witnesses and recipients of the Eucharist had to embrace charity and show deference to the divine, the men whose words and actions turned the bread into the Body were held to an even more challenging set of requirements. Parish priests were to somehow transcend the allegedly flawed social and gender norms of their fellow parishioners while fully functioning alongside and in close cooperation with these same people. They had to try to live lives whose emphasis on peacemaking and pious suffering often seemed both emasculating and more easily accomplished in a contemplative cloister than in the agonistic world of an English parish. Though challenging, the rewards were great for parish priests, who promoted peace and dutifully administered the sacraments, were considered God’s closest kin, and thus he would provide for them. The question remained, however, whether aggrieved pastors would always look to their heavenly patron to resolve their disputes or would they be willing to negotiate between the demands of their deity and the needs of their present life?

CHAPTER FOUR

SERMONS, CONFESSIONS AND PRIVATE MEDITATION: LEARNING THAT VENGEANCE DISTURBS THE DIVINE The fourteenth-century didactic text, Speculum Christiani, commences its discussion of wrath with this metrical avowal of vengeance: I Chide and Fyght and manas faste. Al my fomen I wyl doune caste, Mercy on hem wil I none have, Bot veniaunce stronge, so god me saue.1

Though produced by clerics in environs that were far more insular and contemplative than a typical parish, religious literature hardly ignored the milieu of conflict that often characterized late medieval social relations. Instead, the writers of moral treatises, penitencia and sermon collections sought to detail the contemporary culture of conflict, to rebut its claims to legitimacy and finally to provide an alternative method for maintaining honor that did not involve belligerency or one-upmanship. In these texts, which were used by parish priests, itinerant preachers and literate laity in both public and private settings, clerical writers worked to counter contemporary valorization of violent and extroverted behavior by heralding the temporal and spiritual merit of both charitable demeanor and deference to the divine. Dissecting and Devaluing Wrath As early as Augustine and Gregory the Great, clerical writers attempted to define, detail and classify the sin of wrath. Wrath was regarded as one of seven deadly sins that could inhibit both the afflicted individual and others from sanctity and salvation.2 It is interesting that instead of focusing on the metaphysical aspects of wrath, some late medieval didactic

1

Speculum Christiani, p. 62. Late medieval handbooks for clerics and laity were fond of compiling the thoughts of revered Christian theorists on particular subjects such as wrath. See, Speculum Christiani, pp. 62–63; Speculum Laicorum, ed. J.T. Welter (Paris, 1914), pp. 68–69. 2

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texts take pains to discuss its manifestation in society. In these discussions, the authors argue repeatedly that parishioners’ conscious cultivation of wrath is the primary cause of interpersonal violence and conflict.3 The acuity of some writers’ observation is worth particular note. The poetic lines that commenced this chapter capture the pervasive belief among parishioners that vengeance without mercy was an acceptable response to an affront.4 In verse, the Lay Folks Catechism details the stages of vengeance beginning with seething and slander, “striving and flitying”, in order to take away the honor, “gode fame”, of the foe, then escalating to physical assault and sometimes even murder.5 Mirk counseled parish priests to probe the levels of wrath during confession by asking if the sinner had injured others with “bytter” words, had gladly gossiped about their foe and, lastly, had assaulted or killed out of anger.6 The moral treatise for the laity, called Jacob’s Well, classified the levels of wrath in great detail, starting with harboring anger and hatred for another, which was itself a form of spiritual manslaughter. According to the author, wrathful individuals usually did not remain at this stage but instead progressed to gossip and verbal recognition of their hatred. Then they would move to a final stage that involved an active attempt at revenge through verbal or physical assault.7 These previous examples remarkably detail the stages of feud and violence on par with modern anthropological and historical scholarship about the escalation of interpersonal conflict up to physical assault.8 As Charles Phythian-Adams has shown, interpersonal violence in late medieval England was highly ritualized. It usually entailed an escalating encounter from simple affront, to bombastic verbal exchange, to, on occasion, physical violence.9 The similar descriptions found in didactic texts show that late medieval authors did not turn a blind eye to the mundane world of social conflict, but instead, they examined it,

3

Lay Folks Catechism, ed. T.F. Simmons and H.E. Nolloth (EETS, o.s. 118, 1901), p. 90; Speculum Christiani, pp. 62–63; Speculum Laicorum, pp. 68–69; Book of Vices and Virtues, pp. 3, 25; Mirk, Instructions, pp. 35–36; Jacob’s Well, pp. 89–103; Brune, Handlyng of Synne, pp. 127–130. 4 Speculum Christiani, p. 62, 5 Lay Folks Catechism, p. 90. 6 Mirk, Instructions, pp. 35–36. 7 Jacob’s Well, pp. 89–91. 8 Phythian-Adams, “Rituals of Personal Confrontation”; Meyerson, The Muslims of Valencia; Miller, Humiliation; Muchembled, Violence au Village; Michaud, Cohesive Force; Gluckman, “Peace in the Feud”. 9 Phythian-Adams, “Rituals of Personal Confrontation,” 88–89.

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conceptualized it and sought to provide a preventative measure based upon their ‘third party’ perspective. As one might expect, most authors grounded their preventative measures against violence in appeals to parishioners’ sense of charity and reminders of God’s prohibition against murder found the Fifth Commandment.10 Indeed, medieval writers liberally interpreted God’s law against killing. They argued that the presence of wrath or hate in a parishioner’s heart, even when not put into violent action, was still “spiritual murder”.11 By encouraging readers to worry about the effect of their personal sentiments as much as their public actions, these writers added their voice to the chorus of calls for parishioners, so conditioned by contemporary culture to tallying others’ good and ill repute, to value personal introspection. Since God could see all, one’s actions ought merely to be byproducts of one’s private sentiment. In an effort to clarify how a parishioner’s personal sentiment could hinder the state of charity of an entire parish, the writer of the popular vernacular treatise, Jacob’s Well, analogizes the presence of a wrathful man to a harp strung with wolf and sheep gut. He points out that the harp will never be in tune because of its dissonant strings and likewise, “gode men & malycyous men” will never be able to live in accord.12 As seen previously in arguments against violence in sacred space or before the Eucharist, this analogy contends that what modern scholars dub ‘interpersonal conflicts’ between parishioners were not regarded by medievals as very ‘personal’ matters, but rather, they were public concerns because they covertly, in the case of violent sentiment, or overtly, in the case of violent action, made hash of the harmony of the whole parish. Anyone, who is familiar with the medieval view of heresy, will recognize the similarity between arguments for the purgation of heresy and arguments for the eradication of violent sentiment. What today we would classify as a ‘personal belief’, such as one’s religious views or feelings for one’s classmates and colleagues, were considered by medieval parishioners, clergy and laity alike, to be potential dangers to the public for they regarded such sentiments as we do malignant tumors; if they were not eradicated, they would spread to other, spiritually healthy, i.e. charitable, parishioners.

10 Brune, Handlyng of Synne, pp. 47–49; Jacob’s Well, pp. 90, 99; Mirk, Instructions, p. 29; Speculum Sacerdotale, p. 79; Lay Folks Catechism, p. 90 11 Book of Vices and Virutes, p. 3. Maddern, Violence and Social Order, p. 75. 12 Jacob’s Well, p. 90.

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Instead of an analogy to music, the author of the text, The Handlyng of Synne, referenced a miracle tale to show his readers that the most spiritually and temporally rewarding course of action was not to escalate a conflict in a ‘manly’ expression of one-upmanship but rather to diffuse discord by appealing to Christian fellowship. He recounts a story about a knight who, in continuation of a feud, had killed his longstanding foe. On his way to church one day, the knight was confronted by the son of his slain foe. Rather than face the wrathful son in combat, the knight declined to fight out of love for Mary and Jesus. Dumbstruck by the knight’s plea for fellowship, the son immediately forgave his enemy. According to the author, the former enemies then went to church “in parfyte charyte” and as they venerated the cross, Christ bent down and kissed the son. The whole parish was amazed by this miraculous event and word of the son’s blessed act of charity soon spread.13 Many sources allude to the potential for violence inherent in Sunday worship due to the public setting of the church and the free time that parishioners had to seek vengeance.14 The author of the Handlyng must have hoped that the tale of the charitable son would provide a poignant rebuttal to parishioners’ sanction of slander and physical violence in defense of their own or their kin’s honor. Christ’s kiss is a crucial moment in the tale because it manifests the appreciation of the son’s reputation without the subsequent detraction of the knight’s honor.15 Even though the knight was seemingly ‘ahead’ in the feud, the son’s decision to embrace charity marked him as honorable before both God and the gossiping parishioners. In their discussions on the merits of private prayer, clerical authors also found opportune moments to problematize parishioners’ use of violence. As Duffy notes, late medieval parish life involved more than liturgical ritual. Beyond “and even within the liturgy, there flourished another world of devotion, sharing much ground with the official worship of the church but distinct from it”.16 The importance of private 13

Brune, Handlyng of Synne, pp. 130–133. Part II will concern itself entirely with assaults and affrays involving sacred places or rituals but for a quick reference to the fact that attendance at Sunday service was not always relaxing, see, Paston Letters, i, pp. 32–37. For examples of clerical complaints about violence which could be done on Sundays or in churches, see, Middle English Sermons, pp. 118–119; Book of Vices and Virtues, p. 26. 15 This is a facet of the clergy’s insistence on the maintenance of honor through piety and the notion that honor did not have to be a ‘zero sum game’. This point will be taken up in more detail later in the chapter. 16 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 209. As Duffy notes, such a world can be well seen in the Book of Margery Kemp. 14

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prayer in the religious lives of late medieval parishioners is evinced by the flood of devotional literature created during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.17 In these works, the clergy’s ideas about the efficacy of private prayer mirrored their thoughts about the efficacy of liturgical worship. In both instances, they argued that violence or violent sentiment severed the ties between worshipers and the divine. Priests instructed parishioners in confessionals and sermons that God would turn a deaf ear to the pleas of the wrathful. Mirk counseled that during confession, parish priests should warn wrathful parishioners that their anger causes angels to flee them while devils rush to embrace them.18 A sermon from the late fourteenth century remarked that prayers would only be heard when parishioners refrained from hurting their neighbors.19 Likewise, the author of the popular vernacular treatise, Dives et Pauper, argued that prayers and processions had not been effective recently because parishioners had done them with great pride and with desire for vengeance against their enemies still in their hearts.20 Just as violence destroyed the sanctity of the church, the physical temple, so too violence sacked the sacredness of the spiritual temple, the body, and thus God would accept offerings from neither.21 This notion of inefficacy due to a lack of charity was more explicit in discussions about the Pater Noster. The most ancient prayer of Christianity was the source of significant discussion in many primers and sermons. Each line of the prayer was analyzed and explicated so that parishioners would understand what exactly they were asking of God and of themselves. When preachers and writers came to the petition, “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” discussion of violence could not be avoided. One sermon writer questioned whether a parishioner could justifiably say the Pater Noster when he was fighting with his neighbors. The answer was a resolute ‘no’.22 Mirk concurred with his anonymous counterpart when he remarked that parishioners’ tendency to tear down

17

For an overview of the world of prayer and private devotion see, Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 209–298. 18 Mirk, Instructions, pp. 48–49. “How aungelus, when he ys wroth, /From hym faste flen and goth, /And fendes faste to hym renneth.” 19 Middle English Sermon, p. 213. 20 Dives, pp. 197–199. 21 For a confessional which focuses specifically on the body and its susceptibility to wrath, see, R. Grosseste, Templum Dei, ed. J. Goering and F.A. Mantello (Toronto, 1984), pp. 46–48. 22 Middle English Sermons, pp. 11, 209.

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the reputation of their neighbors through defamation and discord inhibited the legitimate recitation of the Pater Noster.23 All ire, hate and anger must be cast out before this petition, lest the petitioner risk pitting himself against God who commanded Christians to love their enemies. It was better for the malicious to stay quiet than to pray “forgive us” and incur God’s wrath.24 From these instructions, we can see that both the fitness of the world of private prayer and public observance were contingent upon parishioners’ ability to foster the ideal of charity and thus, their refusal to make room for aggression in thought or deed. To pray with malice still in one’s heart was to reject Christ’s and God the Father’s model of behavior which predicated charity over ‘justifiable’ vengeance. Following God’s Example For late medieval authors, parishioners’ response to vendetta should mirror the divine because God also existed within a world of honor and dishonor. In fact, as St. Jerome argued and late medieval preachers echoed, even the smallest “sin unworchyppyth25 God and He would be justified to have smytyn [the sinner] wyth hys swerde of venegans.” God could be justifiably vengeful but He is not in order to show His grace, for though sin offends him, “he woll not smyte anon”. Besides, as one sermon writer notes, if God was inclined to seek vengeance, the world would have been annihilated long ago.26 The suffering of Christ became the ultimate example of self-restraint, as the author of Piers Plowman wrote: Among Christian men this mildness should be lasting; Have this in heart in all times of anger: That though they suffered all this, God suffered for us more, In example that we should do so and take no vengeance on the falseness of our foes.27

By referring to God’s rejection of a fundamental premise of the contemporary honor code, the belief that an affront legitimizes a violent response, preachers and writers clearly wished to provide parishioners 23 24 25 26 27

Mirk, Festial, p. 284. Book of Vices and Virtues, pp. 111–113. better translated as “detracts from his honor” than “shames him”. Mirk, Festial, p. 87. Langland, Piers Plowman, p. 201.

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with a suitable paragon of behavior. Those who rejected this model and remained tied to the contemporary rules of wrath would confront a different deity upon their deathbed. Clerics pointed out that God still despised the dishonor of sin and while He refrained from vengeance against the living, He would not be so restrained with the dead. Indeed, numerous sermons and handbooks warned that God would punish the unrepentantly vengeful.28 The clergy taught time and again that wrath was God’s prerogative and so they warned parishioners not to pursue their quarrels but instead, to leave vengeance to God on the Last Day.29 In order to make their argument more discernible, both sermon collections and lay handbooks employed the tale of a quarrelsome maid who cast dissension and discord wherever she went. When this maid died and was buried, her upper body shriveled and burnt in the tomb as a sign of the “wretthe and angyr” in her heart. The preacher then cautioned that a similar fate awaited those who continued to cling to anger and violence.30 Parishioners should pray that God stayed his revenge so that they might make amends for their affront.31 If the contemporary maintenance of honor through aggression was an affront to the honor of the divine, how were parishioners to find public satisfaction, rather than shame, in their self-restraint? As an alternative to the aggressive maintenance of secular ‘worship’, the English term for honor, the clergy promoted religious worship. Attendance at divine service and expressions of piety accrued lasting honor in the eyes of God and also, at least in clerical opinion, the eyes of society. Mirk equated the honor acquired through penance to the honor gained by a battle-scarred knight. He wrote: For ryght as a knyght scheweth the wondys that he hathe yn batayle, yn moche comnedyng to hym; ryght so all the synns that a man hath schryven hym of, and taken hys penans for, schull be ther y schewet yn moch honowre to hym and moche confucyon to the fende.32

Likewise, the aforementioned tale of the charitable son in The Handlyng of Synne posits dutiful, religious observance as a viable alternative to 28 Jacob’s Well, p. 95; Mirk, Festial, pp. 5, 88–89; Book of Vices and Virtues, pp. 64–65; An Alphabet of Tales, ed. M.M. Banks (EETS, o.s. 126–127, 1904), pp. 276–277; Brune, Handlyng of Synne, p. 127. 29 Mirk, Festial, p. 5. 30 Jacob’s Well, p. 95; An Alphabet of Tales, p. 277. 31 Mirk, Festial, p. 74. 32 Ibid., p. 2.

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reputation won through violence. According to the author, the whole parish saw or heard about the miracle of Christ’s kiss and they gossiped about the event just as they would have gossiped about the details of an old feud. They even went so far as to imitate the two former adversaries by forgiving each other and worshipping in peace.33 Besides its emphasis on peacefulness, the spiritual honor code differed from the worldly code by its boundlessness. In other words, it was not, as many historians and anthropologists describe cultures of honor and shame, a ‘zero sum game’. In the estimation of its clerical proponents, every parishioner could gain honor through piety without consequently diminishing the honor of their peers. The author of the popular vernacular text, Dives et Pauper, contended that common prayer allowed all parishioners to work together to combat the devil rather than to surpass their peers.34 As long as the final arbiter of honor and dishonor was an infinite deity, the supply of ‘worship’ that could be gained by parishioners was limitless. The fact that religious honor was not a ‘zero sum game’ meant that, ideally, communal identity and collective accumulation of honor took precedence over individual status and aspiration. The writers were well aware that the promotion of honor through religious observance could create an extremely tenuous balance between piety and pride. Indeed, the author of Dives et Pauper lamented the plague of excessive pride in religious observance which was solely designed to accrue worldly status. He complained that in England the making of churches, religious ornaments and services seem to be done more for “pompe and pride of this world, to han a name and a worschepe therby in the contre or for envye that o town hat to [an] othre, nought for devocion but for the worschepe and the name that they sen hem han”.35 Meekness was the key to maintaining the balance between piety and pride, for, in the words of one sermon, meekness spurred the faithful to scorn even the “most [honorable] place”. Only men who “folowith the feende set there hertes most on wordely worschippe”.36 Yet, despite such declarations to the contrary, it is clear from most of these teachings that clerical writers desired parishioners to retain a healthy anxiety about their good or ill repute as long as proper religious observance constituted 33 34 35 36

Brune, Handlyng of Synne, pp. 132–133. Dives, pp. 200–202. Ibid., pp. 188–189. Middle English Sermons, pp. 107, 115–116.

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an important part of their private and public tally of respectability. Ideally for these late medieval writers, regular attendance and participation in religious rites would stand alongside, or even take precedence over, extroverted masculine prowess, demure feminine comportment, civic and royal service, household and family organization, confraternity and guild membership, as well as legal and business acumen as a means for parishioners to acquire honor and gauge others’ repute.37 Conclusion In lessons repeated in a wide variety of textual media—read aloud in public spaces, like town squares, churchyards, churches, or guild halls, or ruminated over in private spaces, such as at home or during confession— clerical writers directly addressed the problem of aggression and vengeance among parishioners. Reflecting similar messages to those found in the teachings and rituals of sacred space or the Eucharist, writers sought to problematize the use of violence by explaining in as forthright and lucid a manner as possible why violence threatened each parishioner’s personal relationship with God and the spiritual health of the parish too. Mere thoughts of violence against a fellow Christian violated the ideal of charity and God’s exclusive right to vengeance, creating a rift between God and man that, if left broken, would result in both the spread of sin to other parishioners and the eternal damnation of the vengeful parishioner. Moving beyond simple proscription of violence as a serious sin, writers also promoted pious comportment and regular religious observance as an ideal, ‘win-win’ situation, a positive tally for one’s temporal and spiritual repute. This promotion, which is mainly to be found in the textual media of this chapter, provides us with a more clear conception of how parochial religion could influence parishioners’ attitudes toward violence. Besides trying to condition parishioners to respect sacred 37

Whether out of a desire for piety or a desire for status, this clerical association of good repute with consistent religious observance did take root in parish culture by the sixteenth century. Even for the most menial householder, “the church and religion were important as markers of status,” or “touchstones of respectability.” M. Ingram, The Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570–1642 (Cambridge, 1987), p. 123. The phrase “touchstones of respectability” comes from Teresa Watt’s summary of Ingram’s argument. See T. Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety 1550–1640 (Cambridge, 1991), p. 72. For a recent study which shows that notions of repute were closely tied to parish attendance in the late medieval period, see, French, The Good Women.

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objects, places and rituals by refraining from violence and embracing charity, clerical writers also hoped to reorder, if not outright change, the criteria by which parishioners judged good and ill repute. While these same writers often chastised vanity and concern for appearances, since it was one’s inner state that should matter, they also sought to develop more spiritually sensitive parishioners by harnessing their potent concern for worldly status. At best, clerical writers hoped that parishioners would regard tendencies toward restraint and introspection, the enduring monastic ideals, as characteristics of an ‘upright’ layman or woman. At least, clerics hoped to take one small step toward a more spiritually sensitive society by stoking parishioners’ concerns for the public appearance of proper piety. If parishioners could just begin to regard participation in parochial rituals and pious posture during those rituals as significant signs of good repute, then maybe they would place less value on their participation in conflict and aggression in other settings.

CONCLUSION TO PART I: DO THINK TWICE, IT’S NOT ALRIGHT Though competition and conflict often characterized the everyday relationships of medieval parishioners, their participation in parochial religion exposed them to teachings and ideals that problematized or outright prohibited aggression, encouraged concord and necessitated self-restraint. Ideally, sacred spaces, religious rituals, pastoral example and vernacular admonitions during mass or in confession reminded all parishioners of the need for reverent reservation, Christian conscientiousness and charitable spirit. In addition, didactic texts, when read privately, instructed literate parishioners about the dangers of wrath and the blessings of charity, and, when read publicly as they were often intended to be, taught the same to unlettered parishioners of households and guildhalls. Thus, through a variety of media, parishioners were goaded to associate the use of aggression with shameful sacrilege and self-restraint with upright standing before both God and man. Furthermore, both parish pastors and their lay followers attempted to foster pious avenues for parochial competition, while elite but informed clerical writers in sermons and didactic works presented religious observance as an alternative and open-ended means of augmenting honor outside of the ‘zero sum game’ of the contemporary code. Through their advocacy of such avenues, teachings and rituals, clerics and practicing parishioners alike decried their contemporaries’ esteem for the use of violence, denigration of physical restraint and over emphasis on extroverted behavior to the detriment of a more developed Christian conscience. Yet alongside such criticisms, lingered notions of sanctified violence. By their theories of divine wrath and proper punishment of sin, the clergy granted that violence had a justifiable role in the temporal world. Nevertheless, even their teachings about licit violence show that the Church, along with Crown, endeavored to determine the merits, demerits and overall place of aggression in society. Clerical leaders and writers demanded that all parishioners, whether lay or clerical, look to them and to their sovereign, not to each other, for the rules that governed the use of violence. Interestingly, many of the rituals and lessons that lauded the suppression of sinful emotions, such as anger and wrath, did so by appealing to

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another entrenched emotion, fear; fear of worldly disrepute, fear of pollution and fear of eternal damnation. As Delumeau noted, fear has long been a primary catalyst in the formation of ‘western guilt culture’ and its accompanying social discipline. The previous chapters have made plain that late medieval bishops, pastors and writers encouraged in their parishioners a zeal for the ideal of charity, with its consequent emphasis on self-restraint and forgiveness, by stoking their fears of disrepute and damnation. In an age when many were unclear or uninformed about theological nuances, such as God’s exclusive rights or the difference between Donatism and ‘irregularity’, it is not surprising that the clergy appealed to emotions in order to instill a basic sense of discipline and charitable spirit among as many laity and pastors as possible. The ultimate goal of such appeals, as always, was the inculcation of the necessary qualities for salvation, and thus, no catalyst toward that end was neglected.1 Dread of God, meant fear of damnation and, ideally, fear of damnation would induce an affinity for appropriate attitudes and actions. On the other hand, appeals to parishioners’ fear of disrepute are more problematic. As mentioned earlier, the clergy derided the contemporary honor culture’s emphasis on appearances, and the violence which ensued due to that obsession, but their promotion of piety as an unlimited source of good repute as well as their shame-based punishments required parishioners to modify Christ’s original admonition; they should continue to ‘judge others’ and worry that they too will ‘be judged’. God would judge the worth of one’s soul, their fellow parishioners could only judge one as a ‘reputable parishioner’ by one’s appearance and actions; a bowed head at the sacring, restrained demeanor during the mass, known attempts to make peace with neighbors and even to promote concord among other quarreling parishioners. Thus, even though the clergy and their teachings about proper piety relied on contemporary concern for appearances, they did seek to radically alter its use by making it a means toward a more charitable, pious and introspective society instead of a contentedly agonistic one. Indeed, the importance of introspection becomes quite apparent when we consider the theoretical efficacy of teachings about the dangers of violence and merits of self-restraint. Some places, people and 1 It is too easy to loose sight of this basic reason for the clergy’s existence, to guide the ‘flock’ to salvation and instead, regard the clergy’s relationship to the laity solely in terms of a Hegelian ‘master-slave’ relationship.

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moments were both perceptibly and canonically more sacred than others. Thus, parishioners could perhaps more easily conceive of clerical teachings about charity and restraint during such moments, before such people or in such places and, perhaps, more easily put them into practice. Before or amongst the sacred, an easily inculcated fear of offending God and polluting the tangibly holy would seem sufficient motivation for the alteration of conduct and attitude. Consequently, parishioners might have been likely to compartmentalize their esteem for restraint and forgiveness to only sacred moments and spaces. The extension of their esteem for restrained demeanor into spaces and moments beyond the holy would appear to hinge on their cultivation of introspection, a willingness to reflect on and reassess their everyday actions and attitudes. Instead of being catalyzed by an instinctive fear of polluting sacred materials, men or moments, parishioners would have to contemplate two things in order to value restraint and conflictavoidance among the ‘mundane’: one, the contrast between their ‘Christian conduct’ amongst the holy and their actions beyond, and, two, the impact of all their actions and attitudes on important, but abstract, concepts, their state of charity and their souls. Overall, it does become evident that, at least in theory, the lessons found in late medieval religious media about the use of violence promoted both aspects of a ‘civilizing process’—a change in mentality and a monopolization of the right to use violence. By idealizing charity and restraint, even if through a basic appeal to fear, they sought to influence parishioners’ attitudes toward the legitimacy of violence as a means of conflict-resolution. By heralding the exclusive rights of God and his earthly servants, the Crown and the Church, to use violence and wreak vengeance, they tried to advance the monopolization of violent agency. However, only an exploration of descriptive sources will illumine the extent to which parishioners, whether lay or clerical, internalized both the teachings of their faith and the demands of its leaders that together encouraged such ‘civility’.

PART II

PARISHIONERS’ PRAXIS

INTRODUCTION TO PART II On a Sunday in September 1453, Laurence Caterall was quietly listening to divine service in Gargrave church (Yorkshire) when an armed gang led by Richard Percy charged into the building and headed straight for him. Frightened into action, Caterall scrambled through the house of God, right past the vicar, and into a vestibule near the altar. Percy and his cohort, shouting threats and brandishing swords, pursued their prey into the chancel and then leapt upon the altar to corner him. The vicar was more than a bit disturbed, as he now stared at the feet of the alleged “enemy of Christ”1 and over the head of the cowering Caterall. Fearing for both the sanctity of his church and his own safety, he ceased the mass, picked up the host in his hand and in the name of God commanded all before him to forsake their wickedness. Without further violence, Percy climbed off the altar, led Caterall out of the church and carried him to confinement in Cockermouth castle (Cumberland).2 Cases like this one poignantly reveal the interpretive chasm between ideals and praxis. Percy’s mostly middle and upper class gang would have been informed by a variety of media about the necessity of restraint, but they clearly had little regard for prohibitions against violence in a church. However, at the sight of the host, these same callous characters became reverent and restrained. Faith and piety are such abstract entities that any attempt to document their impact on the actions and attitudes of society can quickly become a fruitless endeavor. Indeed, Susan Brigden, who has managed to locate evidence of religion’s influence on behavior, rhetorically questioned whether it is “ever possible to find the scruples of faith palpably affecting social relations”.3 The answer can be a resounding ‘yes’ if we do not attempt to fashion social history out of proscriptive literature but instead, form a framework of understanding by investigating the repetitive and often reticent narratives of ecclesiastical and secular court records and focusing on those instances where such narratives and the concerns of proscriptive material overlap. Ecclesiastical and secular court rolls reveal that, despite 1

“Inimici Christi” in the court record. KB 9/149/34; KB 9/149/55. 3 S. Brigden, “Religion and Social Obligation in Sixteenth-Century London,” in Past and Present 103 (1984), 68. 2

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the myriad of remonstrances, rituals and texts that prohibited aggression and lauded charity, acts of physical and verbal aggression involving sacred persons, spaces or rituals were not entirely foreign to parish life. Rather than discarding these cases as manifestations of parishioners’ indifference to clerical teachings and spiritual values, we should carefully examine them in order to understand how parishioners negotiated between the teachings of their faith and the pressing demands of their interpersonal conflicts. An anthropological analysis of acts of aggression recorded in ecclesiastical and secular court rolls as well as in a few surviving letters can unearth the depth and breadth of parishioners’ praxis. We can glimpse the myriad of ways in which lay and clerical parishioners advocated, adapted, manipulated or rejected ideas about the sinfulness and shamefulness of violence, the piety and honor of restraint and, of course, the need to stay within the bounds of charity. While Part I could point to the studies of John Bossy for insights into how parish religion tried to foster harmony and social discipline, little scholarship exists which even remotely examines the influence of religious teachings about violence on parishioners’ praxis. Indeed, court cases and letters involving violence and religion have, for the most part, been overlooked by historians as significant sources of social and cultural history. Two early modern historians, Martin Ingram in his study of church courts and parishioners’ maintenance of morality and James Sharpe in his study of defamation, have discussed at some length the religious values that informed late sixteenth and seventeenth-century notions of neighborliness.4 Nevertheless, their studies were not concerned within contextualizing such cases within a ‘civilizing process’, let alone religion’s influence on such a process. For the most part, historians of late medieval England have only looked to court rolls and chronicles to describe the involvement of the clergy or religious rituals in the maintenance of social order, particularly in acts of arbitration and binding.5 While these studies are invaluable for understanding the role of parish

4

Sharpe, “Such Disagreement”, pp. 168–179; Ingram, Church Courts, pp. 118–123. See, Hanawalt, Of Good and Ill, pp. 35–53; Dobson, “Politics and the Church,” pp. 3–17; S. Hindle, “The Keeping of the Public Peace,” in The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England, ed. P. Griffiths, A. Fox and S. Hindle (New York, 1996), pp. 210–232. Dobson’s work is a very strong piece which explores the pivotal role of the Church as peace-keeper in the north of England. Hindle’s work briefly explores religious language in acts of binding while Hanawalt briefly explores religious language in acts of arbitration. 5

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life in peacemaking, they delve but briefly into exploration of cultural norms and mentalities. Lastly, most scholars, who have referenced instances of aggression by parishioners, have done so in order to provide passing anecdotal evidence of the social importance of a particular instrument of religion such as pews, processions or paxes.6 By examining an extensive range of court cases, as well as some anecdotes from letter collections, Part II will reveal how the ideals and teachings fostered by parish life and religious media influenced the attitudes of parishioners toward the use of violence as a legitimate means of conflict-resolution. Specifically, it will examine how parishioners’ conception of sacred space, the mass, religious observance, peacemaking, and dispute reveal their internalization and negotiation of their faith’s teachings with the demands of interpersonal conflict. In terms of geography, chronology and court system, I have cast my net widely in order to find as many examples as possible of parishioners’ convictions about the relationship between violence and their faith. This wide-ranging search is based on two particular points. First, most records, with the exception of Star Chamber accounts, are quite laconic and, second, religion in England prior to the Reformation was fairly uniform from county to county.7 The chronology of the cases ranges from around 1400 to the issuance of the Royal Injunctions in August of 1536. These decrees spearheaded by Cromwell ushered the Reformation into parish life and began the theological alteration of religious observance in a significant manner. Geographically, many of cases originate in the North of England, particularly Yorkshire, but pertinent material from throughout the kingdom has also been employed.8 In terms of sources, the cases can be found in the records of both ecclesiastical and secular courts, primarily Star Chamber, King’s Bench, episcopal visitations and

6 See, for instance, Duffy, Stripping of the Altars; K. French, The People; —, The Good Women; Kümin, Shaping. 7 There are many studies of late medieval religion at the parish level. While these works have shown that some local variation in religious practice, such as the relationship of the fraternities to the parish, does exist, they also point to a similarity in basic beliefs and practices. 8 The inadvertent bias in material from the more ‘rowdy’ North of England is actually helpful in this instance as it provides us with a good glimpse of how religious beliefs can affect even the most ‘unrestrained’ of parishioners. Unfortunately, the lack of detailed cases and spotty nature of surviving material allows for only a qualitative assessment of the evidence and even inhibits geographical comparison. I do indeed hope that the broad based arguments of this book will spark more specific studies of violence and religion in particular regions or even particular parishes.

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consistory courts.9 The remarkable detail in these sources provides answers to some important questions about the influence of religion on the actions and attitudes of parishioners: How did parishioners’ internalization of ideas about charity, restraint and introspection affect their behavior in both church and society? How, if at all, did they tailor their aggression during conflict and how do their narratives of such events reveal their regard for religious values? Lastly, did parishioners have a notion of ‘honor’ that incorporated religious values or was it still entirely rooted in martial affectation, agonistic attitude and extroverted behavior?

9 The extent of my manuscript research for the secular courts and ecclesiastical courts comprises an exploration of all cases of violence involving sacred space, rituals or priests in the following: all Star Chamber cases from the reign of Henry VII through Edward VI, all King’s Bench records found in special inquiries records (KB 9) from Henry IV through Henry VIII, select material from the King’s Bench rolls (KB 27) between Henry IV and Henry VI and the Cause Papers of the Archbishop of Yorkshire (CP 40) between 1450 and 1553. I have also incorporated a vast array of edited cases published in various antiquarian, historical and legal works.

CHAPTER FIVE

SACRED SPACE AND RITUAL: FINDING VARIATION YET COMMON EXPECTATION While religious rituals, laws and lessons proclaimed that churches were the hallowed homes of God which necessitated both reserved and reverent demeanor, court records reveal remarkable variation in parishioners’ internalization of this message. Indeed, numerous cases which provide examples of disregard for the purity of churches also present countervailing evidence in the form of the statements of plaintiffs, defendants’ objections, the testimony or actions of witnesses, as well as the important, but unspoken, assumptions of litigants. Such variance strongly cautions against the rigid categorization of a case as a merely another example of parishioners’ indifference to instructions given through religious media. Upon closer inspection, many instances of aggression within churches or during holy rituals actually display parishioners’ negotiation of, concession to or promotion of prohibitions against violence as well as their esteem for self-control. Though there is significant variation in behavior, the words, deeds and implicit assumptions in many tales of violence illumine the pervasiveness of a shared expectation of upright behavior among the holy. Unleashing Violence among the Sacred There are, of course, cases of violent behavior in churches in which the perpetrators seem to have no explicit concern for spiritual ideals or religious prohibitions. If even the zealously pious Margery Kempe thought that a mob was coming to attack her while she prayed in church, we can assume, in spite of Margery’s propensity for paranoia, that lay parishioners did not always believe in the ability of the sacred to deter violence.1 In their explorations of attitudes toward the sacred, scholars have shown that the laity continually tested the order of officially recognized sacred places and that medieval folk possessed a more fluid

1

Book of Margery Kempe, p. 56.

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conception of sacred and profane than their post-Reformation counterparts.2 Parishioners found their parish churches to be convenient places for public business, predictable places for confronting rivals and suitable places for displays of individual and familial prestige. Though parishioners expected a greater degree of reverence and restraint from those who stood on blessed ground than they did from those who stood on a muddy street, just as sermons warned about devils who would creep back into hallowed churches through “wykud” parishioners, the worldly concerns and activities of parishioners could loose violence among the sacred. To the dismay of pastors and parishioners alike, familial markers of status within the hallowed and, ideally, harmonious environ of the parish church were quite susceptible to friction. Some of the rub lay in what Colin Richmond sees as a proprietary attitude toward religion among laity of late medieval England. Richmond has argued that the nobility and gentry’s ownership of pews, chantries, chapels and other religious instruments brought with it “the pride of possession” which muddled the distinction between “eternal values” and “worldly ones”.3 Though Richmond leans a bit too far toward a portrayal of late medieval religious life as proprietary and hollow, he does justifiably argue that lay possession was potentially disruptive to notions of harmony. Since ownership of pews, chapels and chantries proclaimed personal and familial prestige to other parishioners, they tended on some occasions to become sites of conflict. As noted, chantries benefited the souls of the deceased, the honor of living relatives and the communal worship of parishioners. In spite of the advantages that they offered to parishioners, the association of chantries with particular families and their obstruction of communal space made them potential sources of conflict.4 For instance, the enemies of Sir Richard Cornewall invaded Gainsborough church in Lincolnshire and threatened to cast down the walls of his chapel. In a more detailed case, Thomasyne Lane recounted how she had dutifully

2 See, Kümin, Shaping, p. 53; Hayes, “Mundane Uses,” 12; Sommerville, Secularization, pp. 19–32; Huizinga, Waning, pp. 200–225; French, The Good Women. 3 Richmond, “Religion” in Horrox, Fifteenth-Century Attitudes, pp. 197–199. 4 For threats to destroy a chantry due to hostility toward the chantry priest or the family who has endowed the chapel see, STAC 2/7/225–28, 2/9/189, 2/10/34. In 1411, a violent struggle over the manor of Thorngumbald, Yorkshire both parties used ownership of a chapel as a sign of ownership over the contested manor. See, Select Cases in King’s Bench, pp. 201–203.

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built a chapel for her husband on the side of their parish church in Devonshire. She proudly remarked that the chapel benefited the entire parish by giving them a place to sit, kneel and walk. Nevertheless, Humphrey More and others soon took to abusing the chapel door and then on the Feast of the Epiphany, the agitators tried to bury the body of a crazed vagrant, a “franticke woman” in Thomasyne’s words, next to John Lane.5 Whether these allegedly improvisational grave-diggers considered themselves to be officials of the parish is not noted in Thomasyne’s complaint but her shame and outrage at the attempted burial of the vagrant next to her husband is readily apparent. Such a burial not only shamed Thomasyne by putting someone else into her eventual resting place but also, in her opinion, equated a prized source of honor for the Lane family with a pauper’s grave. A further example of how familial displays of status could incite conflict is seen in pew ownership. Possession of pews was often contested physically and litigiously by parishioners who were “quick to see nuances of vulnerability and signs of strength” in gestures and language.6 A lower family or parishioner sitting in a better position than their supposed social superiors challenged the existing social hierarchy and, in the minds of some, required correction by force. On February 2, 1510, John Colyns was sitting in his customary pew in the parish of Stoke Climsland, Cornwall, when his enemies John Pyper and John Toker came into the church and sat down in the same seat. Declaring that Clyns should not dare to sit in the pew any longer, Pyper drew a dagger and forced Colyns to flee.7 Cases such as this suggest that the goal of aggressors was not so much to possess the pew as to humiliate the owners by driving them out of their privileged place. Furthermore, in late medieval and early modern society, acts of shaming generally centered on the disfigurement or disenfranchisement of property, such as assaulting a house, or in its most heinous instance, assaulting a female family member. For example, in late medieval Spain, Christians, Muslims and Jews all performed ritualized acts of home invasion against intrafaith rivals in which the goal was to shame male rivals by not only violating the boundaries of their home, but also either by implying violation, or actually violating by slashing, female family 5

STAC 2/25/142. Hanawalt, Of Good and Ill, p. 22. See for instance: STAC 2/3/163–168, 2/10/ 135–136, 2/12/220, 2/17/208, 2/12/224–226, 2/24/149, 2/28/54. 7 STAC 2/10/135–136. 6

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members.8 Likewise, since most parishioners, and especially female parishioners, tended to consider their pews to be extensions of private, domestic space, these furnishings were assaulted and violated by aggressors intent on directly and indirectly shaming their rivals.9 On October 12, 1530, in the parish church of Hepton Stall, Yorkshire, the customary pew of Richard Waddesworth was smashed to pieces by his enemies under the command of James Stanfeld. A carpenter was hired to repair the pew, but on October 19, the armed gang returned and assaulted him, ordering him never to work for Waddesworth again. The following day, they came again and finished smashing the pew. Stanfeld and his gang were certainly not concerned with taking over the pew but rather with eradicating the symbol of Waddesworth’s prestige which, in the latter’s formulaic words, had endured “out of tyme of remembraunce of man”.10 Some parishioners even regarded pews as the metaphorical extensions of their owner’s body and thus, as legitimate targets of violence as the owner himself. For example, in a case from 1533, the prestige and prowess of the Dobell family was tainted when Walter Soley, Robert Coke and others came armed into the parish church of Minehead and assaulted Margery, the wife of Gylles Dobell. The assailants dragged her out of the pew and beat her in the aisle. The next day, Soley, Coke and his companions came again to the church and attacked the Dobell’s pew even though Margery was still sitting in it. Having already shamed Margery and called into question Gylles’ ability to protect her, the impious antagonists turned their attention to the pew itself as a surrogate for their enemy’s body, crying out as they hacked at the wood, “where is that knave thy husband and yf he were here we would have of hym a legge or an arm!” Interestingly, their language provided a double blow. It not only threatened Gylles with physical harm but also called into question his piety by bringing attention to his lack of attendance at divine service. In their defense, the aggressors claimed that Coke had purchased the pew six years before the incident and that he had charitably allowed the Dobells to sit at the end of the pew despite the fact that they were from outside the parish and that soon after this allowance, the Dobells began to behave as if the pew were their own. Such 8 M. Meyerson, “Assaulting the House: Interpreting Christian, Muslim and Jewish Violence in Late Medieval Valencia,” (unpublished). 9 Agnes Paston was clearly agitated when Warne Harman leaned over the back of her pew. See, Paston Letters, ii, p. 36. See also, French, The Good Women, pp. 85–117. 10 STAC 2/24/149.

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was particularly true of Dobbell’s wife. Using some passive aggression to uphold her family’s pride of place, Margery would refuse to move from the pew, forcing Coke to jump out of it when he wanted to leave. This passive tact was a shrewd one because it allowed Margery to maintain a semblance of proper comportment among the sacred, i.e. meek and mild demeanor, while still firmly fighting for both her own and her husband’s privileged position. Her allegedly obstinacy quickly spurred conflict as the two families quarreled in court and in public over ownership of the pew.11 Finally, some aggressors appear to have used pews to toy with their fellow parishioners’ sensitivities to gender codes and spatial hierarchy. By placing themselves in positions which others would find intrusive, aggressors tried to prick their rival’s sense of honor and incite them to use violence.12 Two apt examples provide chronological book-ends. One is the violent exchange in London spawned by the squabbling of two families over seating which began on Easter morning and ended violently at vespers in 1417. Sir John Trussle and Richard Lord Lestrange exchanged insults and blows, eventually killing one of Lestrange’s servants, because at vespers Trussel had dared to sit next to Lady Lestrange. Trussel’s violation of what was, at that time, an exclusively female preserve, was reflected in Lady Lestrange’s incendiary comment, “Herst thou Trussell thou shall aby, this bargane thou bouthist never none so dere”.13 As often happened in interpersonal conflicts, a gesture of insult, such as Trussel’s sitting, spurred verbal violence, such as Lady Lestrange’s threat, and then physical conflict.14

11 STAC 2/12/224–226. Katherine French has explored in detail the ways that men and women, including the Dobells, used pews to uphold familial status. See, French, Good Women, pp. 85–117. 12 W. I. Miller insightfully points out that a person can occupy space which others find intrusive due to the lowness of the person’s rank. See, Miller, Humiliation, pp. 141–142. 13 Aston, “Segregation,” 266. Aston analyses the possibility of Trussel’s violation and notes that Lady Lestrange’s comment lit the fuse of the conflict. Her reference to a bargain ostensibly refers to his attempt to sit next to her. The phrase “never none so dere” aludes to the temerity of the act since it was surely going to incur the wrath of Lord Lestrange. For primary accounts of the conflict see, Register of Henry Chichele, ed. E.F. Jacob (Oxford, 1938–1947), pp. 169–175; R. Baker, A Chronicle of the Kings’ of England, (London, 1653), pp. 254–255. 14 Lady Lestrange’s incendiary comment was typical of female participation in medieval feuds. Much to the concern of judicial officials and moralizers, women often participated in the defense of family honor by using their speech to threaten and slander their rivals as well as to goad male family members to action. For discussion of women and slander in the late medieval period, see, Bardsley, Venomous Tongues.

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The other example comes from Quegley church in Gloucester, most likely just prior to the Injunctions which ushered in major Protestant changes to parish life. Richard Barowe, though not a local parishioner, allegedly came into Quegley church on Sunday morning to hear divine service. As the deposed Alexander Dobyn pointed out, there were many convenient places for Barowe to sit if he had been well disposed but instead, out of disdain for Arthur Porter, he sat himself directly behind Porter’s pregnant wife, Alicia. Barowe then began to lean over the pew until Alicia became noticeably upset, thus agitating not only Porter’s wife but also his future offspring. Alerted by his wife’s distress, Porter approached Barrowe and, in Dobyn’s opinion, quietly asked him to stand, lean or kneel somewhere else. Violence between the two men soon ensued.15 The similarities between the Trussel incident and this one are striking. Parishioners felt compelled to defend private spaces, such as pews, and more importantly the family members who resided in them just as clerical leaders also struggled to defend churches and their primary resident, the Body of Christ, from pollution. Indeed, along with the conspicuous presence of rivals and their privileged or contested pews, the presence of the divine may have helped to foster these highly charged conflicts. Parishioners’ sensitivity to slights was perhaps heightened because their reputations were being affirmed before not only their fellow parishioners but also before God. Of course, through varying degrees of participation, parishioners possessed many ways to proclaim their status while safely remaining within the bounds of charity and propriety among the sacred. Even simple attendance at parish rituals provided parishioners with a chance to confirm their status as upright householders and to reinforce their membership in the larger body of believers, regardless of their personal social status. Parishioners scrupulously maintained the trappings of piety and spiritual fervor as a Venetian chronicler noted in 1500: They [the English] all attend Mass everyday, and say many Paternosters in public (the women carrying long rosaries in their hands, and any who can read taking the office of our Lady with them)… they always hear mass on Sunday in their parish church, and give liberal alms, because they may not offer less than a piece of money … nor do they omit any form incumbent on good Christians; there are, however, many who have various opinions concerning religion.16

15

STAC 2/3/163–168; French, The Good Women, p. 115. A Relation of the Island of England, ed. C.A. Sneyd (Camden Society, o.s. 37, 1847), p. 23. 16

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The chronicler was well aware that external manifestations of piety did not always match internal sentiment. Rituals, such as the passing of the blessed bread and pax or the Rogation procession, could lose their value as vehicles of charity due to a parishioner’s preoccupation with personal status. In London in 1494, Joana Dyaca threw the pax to the ground because another woman of the parish had dared to kiss it before her. By tossing aside the ideals of peace and harmony, Joana acted out against the vehicle for her dishonor. In a more aggressive manner, John Browne of Essex smashed the pax over the head of the holy water clerk because he had dared to offer this symbol of parish peace to another family before his own.17 In 1518, John Kareles of Hereford was indicted by his fellow parishioners for taking portions of the blessed bread which were so large that other parishioners did not get any piece at all.18 For this matter to have been presented at the episcopal visitation, the parishioners must have been quite disturbed by Kareles’ actions. If he was poor and hungry, they most likely would have noted it in their presentation.19 Their willingness to present this incident suggests that they considered Kareles’ avarice to be an act of aggression against the unity of the church and a brazen attempt to make a symbol of equality—all parishioners received a portion of the bread—into a sign of exclusivity. In a similar vein, after William Fairfaxe, sheriff of York county, had arrested Richard Freeman, Richard Gybson and Richard Jackson at 9 a.m. on a Sunday in Tadcaster church, the prisoners escaped and returned to the parish. Then seeing Fairfaxe standing in the door of the church ready to take a piece of the holy bread, they attacked him and threw him through one of the gates of the churchyard.20 This act of violence suggests that both the assailants and the narrator understood the import of holy bread as a symbol of peace and unity. The attackers denied Fairfaxe’s claim to membership in Tadcaster parish and both literally and symbolically expelled him from their parish. In turn, Fairfaxe’s notation in court of the timing of his victimization highlights the assailants’ impious aggression at a heightened moment of harmony. 17 W. Hale, A Series of Precedents and Proceedings In Criminal Causes, extending from the year 1475 to 1640 (London, 1847), pp. 53–54; Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 126–127. 18 Visitations in the Diocese of Lincoln, 1517–1531, ed. A.H. Thompson (Lincoln Record Society, 33, 35, 37, 1940–1947), i, p. 6. 19 Presenters tended to note when absentees of divine service were so poor that they did not have proper attire and thus it’s logical to deduce that they would also have noted if Kareles was a vagrant. 20 STAC 2/31/18.

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Like the rituals of the pax and blessed bread, processions, such as those of Rogationtide and Corpus Christi, offered parishioners a chance to affirm the ideal of parish harmony and proclaim their personal status. Yet, these pious progressions could also turn foul when zeal for parochial or personal status took precedence over charity. For instance, guilds squabbled over their places in Corpus Christi processions and their particular productions in play-cycles.21 Like squabbles over precedence, personal grudges could also hinder the unifying force of religious processions. During one such celebration in King’s Lynn, an unnamed, and quite agitated, upper class woman loudly questioned the authenticity of Margery Kempe’s piety as she passed in the procession.22 These latter verbal confrontations were minor matters compared to evidence found in another court record. According to a Star Chamber case from 1503, a hermit whose home obstructed a Rogation procession found himself and his domicile under attack by the priest and parishioners.23 The procession devolved into a wild brawl when the hermitage of Thomas Walterkyn blocked the processional route. The hermit charged in his bill before Star Chamber that he had been brutally attacked by the processing priest and parishioners of St. Pancras on Rogation Sunday in 1503. According to the defendant vicar, he and the parishioners of St. Pancras in the Field attacked Walterkyn and his home because he had allegedly blocked their procession with pales and dikes, refused to remove the pales and struck at the processors when they tried to pass.24 The vicar’s defense actually appears to condone his parishioners’ aggression because the hermit had dared to disrupt such an important ritual. For this vicar, repelling demons and preserving the harmony of his parish took precedence over a wider sense of charity and brotherhood. Fora for Sanctioned and Sinful Accusation Like streets or taverns, the public nature of churches made them liable to become venues for violence. As a public space and hub of social activity each Sunday, parish churches offered convenient fora for 21

James, “Ritual Drama,” 15–19. Book of Margery Kempe, p. 167. 23 Select Cases before the King’s Council in the Star Chamber, 1477–1509, ed. I.S. Leadam (Selden Society, 16, 1902), pp. 164–168. 24 STAC 1/51; Select Cases in Star Chamber, pp. 164–168. 22

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confronting rivals with grievances or fists. In these instances, the ideal of charity strongly conflicted with contemporary norms of aggression that encouraged open acts of violence before others. At the most basic level, churches were convenient and predictable places for confrontation. Parishioners who sought redress or revenge knew that their adversaries, or their familial charges, could most likely be found at church on Sunday mornings and possibly evenings as well. When the Paston family erected a wall on their property in 1451, disgruntled parishioners soon informed them that the wall blocked a customary way through Paston manor.25 On four separate days, parishioners confronted Agnes Paston or her servants in the churchyard and church with demands that the wall be removed. On another day, some parishioners went and attacked the wall while Agnes was at church26 and although the barrier was still mostly intact, others were quick to take advantage of the Pastons’ misfortune. Warne Harman on the Sunday after Hallowmas just after evensong declared in the churchyard that even if he was far away from Paston manor, he wished that Agnes would hold him responsible for striking down the wall.27 On yet another Sunday at church, Harman, Agnes Ball and Clement Spencer violated Agnes Paston’s sense of privacy by surrounding her as she sat in the family stall. They then accosted her verbally with demands that the wall be removed from the king’s way. The angry group even followed Agnes through the church, asking her about the wall and land transactions before finally leaving her alone and departing into the churchyard.28 The same stall that gave Agnes and other Pastons pride of place in their parish church also provided their enemies with knowledge of exactly where and when they could best confront and denigrate their foe. By its very nature, defamation requires the dissemination of its contents to others in order to be an effective vehicle of shame and

25

Paston Letters, i, pp. 33–37. Ibid., pp. 34–35. 27 Ibid., pp. 35. 28 Ibid., pp. 36–37. Others who relied on the predictability of church-attendance were more malicious than the quarrelsome villagers of Paston. For example, just prior to 1400, John Hosier and William Walranson were accused of draping themselves in white sheets and laying in wait along the side of the church of St. Mary’s, Grimsby in Lincolnshire. Though dressed in the traditional garb of ecclesiastical punishment, the two stalkers unrepentantly attacked John Locksmith and his servant when they entered the churchyard. Heedless of the spiritual dangers to their souls, the assailants in such cases seem to have quite enjoyed the convenience of churchyards and the predictability of church attendance. Their bloodlust pulverized any sense of proper piety or spiritual fellowship. 26

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correction. Consequently, Sunday and holy days, with parishioners gathering inside and outside of the church, provided an opportune moment for verbal vengeance.29 In 1416 before the court of the dean and chapter of Norwich, Peter Brodehouse admitted that he had declared to others in the church of Hindolverston that John Grewes had caused him to lose his suit before the steward of the manor.30 Successful litigation was a mainstay of honor for Englishmen.31 By accusing Grewes before other tenants of the manor, Brodehouse tried, albeit unsucessfully, to shift the shame of his loss onto another. On the eve of Easter in 1424, John Rayner stood just outside the doors of the parish church of Cottingham, Yorkshire and yelled to Thomas Robyson, “False sideglance thief, did you say that you did not beat me?” With these words, Rayner tainted Robynson “in the presence of many trustworthy persons”.32 The charge of “many trustworthy persons” tends to be formulaic but the timing and location—specifically the church doors, customary sites for challenges, debate or the posting of written indictments—could not have been more suitable for such public clamor. Paradoxically, Holy Week, with its crowded religious rites, seems to have fostered both vengeance and charity. Parishioners with whom one sought forgiveness or a fight could be conveniently located and thus, the clergy’s increased demand for charity during this week appears to have had a practical side effect for parishioners beyond the spiritual benefit of a clean conscience. Defamation inside or at the doors of a church distinctly contradicted associations of hallowed ground with charity and peace. Yet not all acts of shame in churches and churchyards were frowned upon by parishioners or clerical authorities. Indeed, the Church sought to curb the use 29

The rise of defamation cases beginning at the end of the fifteenth century and steadily increasing through the sixteenth century has been the focus of significant scholarly attention. Gender norms, notions of honor and neighborliness, and the notorious litigiousness of the early modern English have all been investigated through analyses of defamation. See, Sharpe, “Such Disagreement,”; —, Defamation and Sexual Slander in Early Modern England: The Church Courts at York (York, 1980); L. Gowing, “Language, Power and the Law: Women’s Slander Litigation in Early Modern London,” in Women, Crime and Courts in Early Modern England, ed. J. Kermode and G. Walker (Chapel Hill, 1994), pp. 26–48; M. Ingram, “Scolding Women Cucked and Washed: A Crisis in Gender Relations in Early Modern England?” in Women, Crime and Courts in Early Modern England, ed. J. Kermode and G. Walker (Chapel Hill, 1994), pp. 70–75; Select Cases of Defamation to 1600, ed. R.H. Helmholtz (Selden Society, 101, 1985); Bardsley, Venomous Tongues. 30 Select Cases of Defamation, pp. 18–19. 31 Maddern, “Honor among the Pastons,” 357–371. 32 Select Cases of Defamation, pp. 6–11.

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of aggression by heaping official opprobrium upon aggressors. Just as slanderers relied on the dissemination of slander by shocked parishioners, so too did the Church rely on public witness of its punishments and citations in order to alter the behavior of both the punished and parishioners. For instance, in reward for his aforementioned slanderous efforts, Peter Brodehouse was humiliated in front of his fellow parishioners by a threefold whipping and procession around his parish church on a Sunday.33 Parishioners who witnessed such punishments learned well that slander and wanton disregard for charity were not only punishable but also shameful offences. Along with public punishment, general citation was integral to the ecclesiastical court system.34 Parish priests were obligated to stand in the pulpit and summon parishioners to court. If the summoned parishioner remained recalcitrant, curates were to repeat the process of citation up to three times; then they would proclaim a sentence of minor excommunication upon the absentee. Parishioners, thus cited, did not always take these proclamations kindly, for even if innocent of the charges, they still had to try to shed the taint of impiety. Two cases from Star Chamber illumine some parishioners’ scorn for public citation as well as the ways that such censure could spur violence within a church.35 During the reign of Henry VII, a wild affray occurred in Thatcham church in Berkshire because Geoffrey, the vicar, had dared to call John Stanshaw to appear before the bishop of Sarum. Stanshaw was present at mass that day and after the service, witnesses could see that he was not pleased with the citation. Parishioners were so concerned by Stanshaw’s agitation that the constable paid him a visit to try to pacify him before evensong. In recognition of the Church’s right to make citations, Stanshaw told the constable that he could not hate someone who only did what was lawful and right. Yet when he readied himself to go to evensong, allegedly in order to obtain a copy of the citation from the vicar, Stanshaw took a noticeably large number of armed retainers with him. By the time witnesses had arrived at the church, the vicar and Stanshaw were locked in combat in the 33 Select Cases of Defamation, pp. 18–19. This punishment once again shows how the clergy relied upon the secular values of honor and shame to enforce their standards in their parish. Shaming rituals such as public whipping and procession lent some sense of legitimacy to the aggressive world of ‘tit for tat’ shaming in which parishioners lived. 34 For clear and concise summary of the ecclesiastical court system see, Ingram, Church Courts, pp. 28–65. 35 For a similar case from the fifteenth century see, KB 9/205/3/118.

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chancel—Stanshaw with sword in hand and the vicar with crucifixtopped staff in defense. The cause of this melee was disputed by the two combatants but the depositions of eye-witnesses clearly convey that the citation had agitated Stanshaw enough for him to enter armed into the church.36 Not only was Stanshaw humiliated by the public citation but he also clearly saw the vicar as allied with his enemies and intent on shaming him. While it is important to note that he did claim to have gone peacefully to evensong, Stanshaw’s actions hint that he did not distinguish, or at the very least, prioritize between the sacred—in the forms of the vicar, the holy mass and the church—that demanded peaceful comportment, and the mundane—in the form of his foe, the affront of citation and the public forum—that, according to contemporary norms, begged for an aggressive response. Another detailed case of violence involving citation came before Star Chamber in 1532. In this instance, the curate was at the center of conflict. During an enduring tithe-dispute, Henry Kyng, Thomas Bradley and other parishioners of Hayes in the county of Middlesex initiated innumerable acts of violence in order to drive the vicar away and disrupt his tithing. As the conflict escalated, the vicar publicly declared an injunction against Bradley to which Bradley replied by marching up to the vicar and threatening him, “by godde soule thou art but a wretch and it is pety thou levyst and that even thou were a vycare here.” Other parishioners uttered similar threats, crying, “I would see who dare be so bold to declare any such commandment here” and the parish became abuzz with predictions of the vicar’s impending doom. In a desperate effort to make peace, the constable came to the vicar and implored him in the King’s name “that thou dost not declare my Lorde commandment for yf thou dost here will be manslaughter.” Others similarly implored the vicar to refrain from further citation. On the last day of July, Bradley attended high mass, watched as the vicar read the gospel and then, goaded by his own sense of security and his servants’ support, proclaimed the injunction for a third time. Bradley rose to his feet and cried, “Thou shall not declare my Lorde commandment her for if thou

36 STAC 1/9 and 2/14/113–115. This case possesses other remarkable points about parishioners’ negotiation of sacred and secular values but its primary theme is the humiliation caused by citation before other parishioners. As will be seen later, even Stanshaw possessed a personal blend of impiety and piety for he clearly attended church and even after he assaulted the vicar, he asked to hear evensong (a request which the vicar denied by canceling evensong that day).

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dost we shall pluke the and thy brother bothe out of the churche by the ere!” Other parishioners, including a few belligerent women, also echoed Bradley’s threat. When the priest asked the constable for help, he merely retorted, ‘I told you this would happen!’37 Cases such as this one make clear the difficulty that parishioners had in regarding citations as a proper procedure of an ‘impartial’ court. Indeed, in the above instance, the act of citation was hardly impartial. Instead, it was a seen as a weapon for the pastor to wield against his obstructionist and bellicose flock. These examples of citation display both parishioners’ understanding of the judicial process and the limits of their docility in church. Although Stanshaw gave pretense to the notion of official, impartial justice, his actions, like those of Bradley, reveal that the clergy and royal officials had not yet convinced parishioners to settle all their conflicts in ‘impartial’ secular or ecclesiastical courts. For many laymen, litigation and its accompanying element of public citation was just another means of aggression to which they felt obliged to respond in kind, whether through more litigation or physical violence. Citations took advantage of the public and peaceful nature of religious observance and therefore, some parishioners considered them to be no more than acts of aggression on the part of their enemies. For these angry villagers, sacred space did not always inhibit further violence. Concern for status and impulses to violence overcame thoughts of proper piety and restraint. In this world of honor and shame, public affront called for public response and some parishioners evidently felt compelled to heed this convention even as they stood on hallowed ground. However, it should be noted that some of these cases that seem to show the heedlessness of lay parishioners may actually evince their recognition of the holy nature of churches. Some parishioners may have chosen to assault or slander their enemies in church precisely because it was church, a holy place where acts of violence were prohibited and where shame was registered by both God and fellow parishioners. Thus, the decision of assailants to compound the significance of their attack by committing sacrilege in some respect intensifies rather than detracts from shared associations between holiness and church spaces. 37 STAC 2/8/78–94, 2/9/29–32, 2/18/254, 2/18/277, 2/19/128. 2/24/413. The primary narrative and quotations of this tale are from STAC 2/8/78–85. The constable simply restated that he had warned the vicar in the King’s name not to read the injunction because it would result in manslaughter.

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Leashing Violence among the Sacred The evidence does not paint a universal picture of impudent and pugnacious parishioners. On the contrary, letter collections and court cases suggest that most parishioners expected their peers to show some restraint and try to foster fellowship in churches and churchyards. For example, an exploration of parochial methods of conflictresolution displays parishioners’ willingness to promote the ideals charity and harmony by harnessing the potency of sacred spaces and rituals. Though contention and strife characterized their social relations, parishioners tried hard to settle their differences and make peace through extra-judicial means such as arbitration and intervention.38 Lay folk looked to their parish leaders and sacred rituals for ways to settle their conflicts without excessive external interference or unrestrained violence.39 By providing them with a chance to confirm their settlements before both God and their fellow man, rituals of peacemaking within sacred space offered parishioners an appealing alternative to openended conflict or litigation. Parishioners often exercised a variety of mechanisms for mending potentially polluting rifts. For example, some churches required parishioners to display their charity by making donations on their patron saint’s feast day, fined those who did not keep the peace or even formed frankpledge-like groups to coerce proper conduct.40 Moreover, parish guilds sometimes demanded that their members first seek conciliation before their fellow guildsmen rather than external officials.41 Yet, these methods pale in comparison to the most common way that parishioners manifested the ideal of harmony within their parishes, the ritual of arbitration. Most legal and parish scholars agree that, though often lamentably unrecorded, acts of arbitration occurred quite frequently in late medieval 38 Kümin, Shaping, pp. 37–38; McSheffrey, Marriage, pp. 150–163; Hanawalt, Of Good and Ill, pp. 40–41. Numerous cases of arbitration are found in the Act Book of Buckinghamshire. See, The Courts of the Archdeaconry of Buckingham 1483–1523, ed. E.M. Elvey, (Buckhinghamshire Record Society, 19, 1975). 39 R. Dobson contends that in the late middle ages, the Church acted as the prime source of stability in the North of England. Clerics arbitrated difficult feuds, like the violent Heron case of 1428, and did far more than the monarch to prevent the North from deteriorating into incessant feuding. See, Dobson, “Politics and the Church,” pp. 1–18. 40 Kümin, Shaping, pp. 50–51. 41 Mcsheffrey, Marriage, pp. 150–163.

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parishes. The religious elements in the ritual of arbitration provided more secure measures than simply a rival’s promise. Religious rituals, language and settings in acts of arbitration gave a sense of gravity to parishioners’ very mundane, sometimes petty, disputes and thus helped neutralize past friction by placing the participants under the threat of divine punishment.42 By having the arbitration take place in church, parishioners made sure that their temporal decisions were sanctified before God. Even settlements made outside of church were often confirmed later with a mass.43 Adding further spiritual potency to their agreement, the participants swore to embrace charity over the Gospels or over holy relics. Through these rites, promises and pacts were sanctified and placed under the threat of divine sanction. Moreover, the recasting of the dispute into a form of piety allowed parishioners to embrace charity while backing away from further conflict—a facesaving measure to some extent. As anthropologists have shown, arbitration allows those who are unable to continue a feud to gain temporary reprieve without excessive loss of reputation.44 Thus, arbitration as a religious ritual was palatable to parishioners because it placed public emphasis on both parties’ commitment to charity rather than the dominance of one disputant over the other. Though they may have lost some honor through their concessions to rivals, participants in arbitration rituals hoped to gain both worldly and heavenly credit through their public displays of piety. A poignant example of the links between arbitration, religion and honor lies in the slander case of 1509 between Thomas Moberlay and Thomas Morpath of Yorkshire. Weary of the hostility between Moberlay and Morpath, some “honest men of Pontefract” tried to arbitrate a settlement within the lady chapel of the parish church on Easter Day. Their assembly could not have been more opportune for it was the one day of the year when all parishioners were to receive communion, and hence, were supposed to be in charity. Amplified by the sacred duty to forgive in order to communicate, the pressure to reconcile must have been intense. Yet Morpath did not bend. Instead he cried out, “Thomas Moberlay, thou art a heretic and I will not be agreed with thee”.45 With

42

Hanawalt, Of Good and Ill, pp. 40–41. Ibid.; McSheffrey, Marriage, pp. 150–154. 44 E. Powell, “Settlement of Disputes by Arbitration in Fifteenth-Century England,” Law and History Review 2 (1984), 21–43; Michaud, Cohesive Force, pp. 90–93. 45 Select Cases of Defamation, p. 13. 43

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such words, Morpath questioned Moberlay’s orthodoxy and dishonored him. By placing Moberlay outside the bounds of the Christian community, Morpath legitimized his continuance of hostility on Easter Day and denied Moberlay a chance to preserve his reputation through the appearance of piety. If Morpath had not challenged Moberlay’s identity as a Christian, he would have had no choice but to make peace and allow Moberlay to gain credit by participating in the religious rituals of their settlement. On the other hand, Moberlay’s charge of slander against Morpath before the court shows that he considered displays of piety and orthodoxy to be integral to his reputation. This one episode of slander reveals how tightly religion was entwined with conflictresolution and how parishioners did accept piety as an important component of their credit. By forming sacred bonds, those who used religious arbitration accepted charity as an alternative system of social relations and affirmed the idea that continued conflict ran contrary to one’s private and public reputation for piety. Clerical and communal pressure made parishioners realize that arbitration offered a safe solution for those who wished both to remain reputable and to keep their souls in saving order. An examination of cases involving arrest and distraint provides another important perspective on parishioners’ negotiation between the teachings of their faith and their desire for fisticuffs. The proclivity of court officers to deliver writs and make arrests in church reflects not only the practical idea that most villagers could easily be found in their parishes on Sundays but also an assumption that attendance made parishioners more passive and less quarrelsome.46 While in church, fear of God and fear of public contempt for those who disturbed the divine service helped blunt the aggressive impulses of targeted parishioners. In one particular Star Chamber case, the sheriff expressly noted that he delivered his writ into the church because he knew that the usually hostile recipient would be more docile. In 1532, John Curley, constable of the parish of Gamlingay, Cambridgeshire, explained to the court that he and John Casse had tried and failed to serve writs to Edward Slade 46 For an interesting case of arrest in church, see, STAC 2/30/38. This case involves violence in a Yorkshire parish before 1513 due to an officer’s attempt to arrest John London. In a reversal of the typical ‘arrest narrative’ in which the arresting officer is assaulted, London charges that the officer assaulted him in church while the defendant, John Rowth, claims that he had obtained a writ of capias against London but does not know how or when the officer executed his duty. See also: Yorkshire Star Chamber Proceedings, ed. W. Brown (YASRS, 41, 1909), p. 122.

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on many other occasions. Curley thought that unless he served the writ in church, Slade would forcibly resist and perhaps hurt him. Therefore, Curley attempted to serve the writ in a “quiet manner” between the low and high masses. Displaying his sensitivity to sacred surroundings and his awareness of a common expectation of restraint, Curley specifically noted that Slade tried to stab him “in the church” and then strike him with a staff “in the church”.47 For this constable and for likeminded parishioners, sacred space required discretion on the part of both the officer and the arrested. A lack of such discretion was clearly a shame and sin worth citing in court. Likewise, attention to such matters was a point of pride also worth mentioning. Officers and apparitors certainly knew that outside of a sacred setting, parishioners were not inclined to submit to arrest ‘like a sheep before a shearer’. For example, Mary Walworth and Richard Kyle violently slammed a door shut on an approaching apparitor and Thomas Benester threatened to kill one with the words, “Thou horson knave woute thou tell me who set the awerke to summon me to the courte, by Godes woundes and by this gold I shall breke thy hede”.48 Conversely, indicted parishioners realized that going to Sunday services could all too easily lead to imprisonment. Fearing the execution of a royal writ against him, Edmund Sterre was alleged to have avoided attending his parish church of Beconsfield, Lincolnshire. Ironically, his avoidance of royal prosecution resulted in Sterre’s citation for absenteeism in episcopal court.49 Arrests and writ-deliverance in church were so frequent in the late Middle Ages and Reformation that by the seventeenth century, Richard Gough safely classified such actions among the quaint customs of “those days”.50 The presence of a common expectation of restraint, despite actual belligerency on the part of arresting officers or their victims, is further illuminated in two late medieval letters. In a plaintive letter to Agnes 47 STAC 2/26/336. Curley’s precise timing and reference to “quiet manner” further evince his understanding of peacefulness among the sacred. 48 Hale, Precedents, pp. 96–98. 49 Visitations in the Diocese of Lincoln, ii, p. 13. 50 The execution of writs in church would continue well into the seventeenth century. In Richard Gough’s History of Myddle, Reese Wenlock on behalf of Thomas Bradocke tried to deliver a writ to William Tyler but Tyler slammed the door on him. Wenlock put his foot in the door and then tried to jump on Tyler but was pulled off. Later Bradocke sent a tenant to serve a writ to Tyler in church “for in those days all writs and processes might bee served on the Lord’s day.” See, R. Gough, Human Nature Displayed in the History of Myddle, ed. W.G. Hoskins (London, 1968), pp. 110–112.

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Paston, Sir Robert Williamson, the vicar of Paston, lamented the lawsuit that had been brought against him after he and other parishioners had attempted to stop the sheriff of Bromholm from making an arrest in church. Williamson emphasized both the exasperation of the entire congregation and the sinfulness of the aggressors whose violence caused them to “stand out of peril of soul”.51 Making full use of the laity’s commensurate concern for restrained conduct in church and proper execution of divine service, the cleric wished to pin the sin of sacrilege on the arresting officer and elicit both sympathy, and more importantly, legal aid from Agnes. In a similar vein, the Armburgh letters recount how a local rival in 1443 delivered a subpoena to Robert Armburgh in the abbey church of Westminster only to be struck ill by God for the “offence that he dyde in the holy place”.52 This account displays both a conviction on the part of the rival that those who attended church would be more passive and a belief on the part of the Armburgh family that sacred spaces prohibited all aggression, even matters concerning litigation. With each foray into church, officers and arrested toed the line between piety and impiety while attendant parishioners and priests took note of those who chose shameful sacrilege, instead of or in addition to, pursuit and seizure. Besides cases of arrest and distraint, the court records yield still other examples of parishioners’ negotiation between the needs of interpersonal conflict and the demands of their faith. On numerous occasions, those who wished to commit acts of aggression tried first to drag their victims out of church.53 Once the aggressors had separated their prey from prayer, verbal and physical assault frequently ensued. For instance, on the Feast of the Holy Innocents in 1478, John Roche, gathering with a gang of armed men, marched into a parish church in Yorkshire and

51 Paston Letters, ii, p. 18. Furthermore, in the mid sixteenth century, the vicar and parishioners of Hayes, Middlesex, were angered and shocked when Henry Kyng and his friends threatened an approaching apparitor right out of the church with the cry, “It would be well done to make the sayd apparitor to eate the sayd citation,” see, STAC 2/8/78–80. 52 The Armburgh Papers, ed. C. Carpenter (Woodbridge, 1998), p. 64. 53 KB 9/349/94; STAC 2/7/210, 2/15/51, 2/15/316, 2/16/229–234, 2/19/248, 2/19/284, 2/19/319, 2/26/336, and to some extent 2/7/167 (the defendant is accused of waiting by the open door until the mass was over so that he might attack the plaintiff in the churchyard). See also, Yorkshire Star Chamber Proceedings (41), pp. 73–74; Yorkshire Star Chamber Proceedings, ed. H.B. McCall (YASRS, 45, 1911), pp. 116–117; Lancashire and Cheshire Cases in the Court of Star Chamber, ed. R. Stewart-Brown (Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society, 71, 1916–17), pp. 65–66.

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proceeded to drag out John Wylkinson, the vicar, and William Hamerston. Then the angry cohort beat Wilkinson and Hamerston, the two ‘holy innocents’ so to speak, until they were visibly wounded.54 Similarly, in Chester on the Sunday after the feast of St. Anthony in 1519, Thomas Browne and his family were first dragged out of their church and then threatened at knife-point by Thomas Massy until other parishioners intervened.55 Sometimes, the cries of aggressors made clear their intent to avoid violence in church, yet still shame and capture their enemies, by dragging them away. In the disputed arrest of Edward Slade at Gamlingay, one pro-Slade deponent charged that armed servants of his enemy, Thomas Chechyley, came into the church and grabbed Slade while yelling, “pull him out of the church, pull him out of the church”.56 Likewise, when some parishioners of Hayes revolted against their tithes, they angrily shouted that the priest should not be so bold as to declare the bishop’s injunction against them lest they “pluke [him and his servant] bothe out of the church by the ere”.57 Even though physical assault was usually delayed rather than denied in cases such as these, there is still a clear indication that parishioners tried to avoid bloodshed in their churches. For these parishioners, violence was an acceptable means of dispute-resolution as long as it remained in a more ‘worldly’ setting. Probing still further, we can see that in some cases, parishioners’ fear of churches as God’s hallowed home was strong enough to check their aggression completely. Often these cases concerned the right of sanctuar y.58 In one instance, Thomas Pakeman and his servants, who were tireless troublemakers in Staffordshire during the reign of Henry IV,

54

KB 9/349/94. STAC 2/7/210; Lancashire and Cheshire Cases in the Court of Star Chamber, pp. 65–66. 56 STAC 2/26/336. 57 STAC 2/8/78–85. The wife of Thomas Creymer, rolling up her sleeves to her elbows, added, “You men gett ye hens and let us wyffs … pluck them out of the churche and cast theym on the walle.” See also: STAC 2/8/86–91. These same parishioners showed in a later incident that when they could not pull their victims all the way out the church, they at least tried to avoid the most holy space of the chancel. In a later scuffle of Hayes parish, one irate individual, named Vincent, threatened to pull the priest out of the chancel and smack him on the ear with his own surplice. See, pp. 147–148,162. 58 For an example of the process of sanctuary and how the secular authorities had to deal with it, see, Select Cases in the Court of King’s Bench under Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V, ed. G.O. Sayles (London, 1971), pp. 1–3. For analysis of sanctuary seekers and their actions, see, Trenholme, The Right of Sanctuary. For records of those who sought sanctuary at Durham or Beverley, see, Sanctuarium Dunelmense et Sanctuarium Beverlacense, ed. J. Raine (Surtees Society, 5, 1837). 55

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attacked the families of Rudolph Webb and John Percy, but when they fled to the parish church, Pakeman dropped his malicious designs. In a twist on the oft-employed and formulaic legal phrase, “and he would have killed him had not some unknown persons intervened,” the besieged Webb and Percy explicitly associated their safety from Pakeman with their decision to seek refuge in the church; “and he would have murdered [them] had they not sought refuge in the church”.59 These two plaintiffs were convinced that sacred space had saved them from savagery. Though he was willing to invade the house of his enemy, Pakemen was not inclined to lay siege to the house of God. Moreover, as happened with Webb vs. Pakeman, by providing temporary protection in their churches, religious leaders hoped to stay the hands of vengeance until secular or clerical courts could channel the conflict into their far less sanguine fora.60 In a subtler instance, we can see not only parishioners’ reverence for the sacred as a place of restraint, but also their hope for charitable demeanor. On the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, John Man approached Robert Gatell in the churchyard of Ouseburn, Yorkshire and asked him about his release of a distrained horse. Gatell answered that the owner, Brian Bentley, had pledged surety for his unknown offense and, moreover, that he personally had no knowledge of any crime committed by Bentley “nor wold he loke” for any upon Man’s request. Angered by Gatell’s indifference, Man challenged him to come out of the churchyard so that he could make “amendes for the hurtes.” Then, with grim determination, Man stepped out of the churchyard and yelled to Gatell, “Come out, come out!” While Gatell refused to budge, Randolph Warde, who was also standing in the churchyard, attempted to pacify the situation by appealing to both Man’s sense of charity and his sense of shame. He said, “John, this is an yll fashyon of you to be after this fasshyon amonges neighbors.” Man only grew angrier and challenged Warde that if he was going to take Gatell’s side, then he too should come out and fight. Warde assured Man that he only wanted to make peace, not take sides. Then he tried to come out of the churchyard but Man attacked him. As some parishioners separated Warde and Man, Gatell came out of the churchyard and, allegedly fearing for his life, smacked Man on the back of his head with a staff.61 59 60 61

KB 9/113/40. Rosenwein, Negotiating, pp. 27–41; Gellner, Saints, pp. 160–180. STAC 2/17/170; Yorkshire Star Chamber (41), pp. 176–178.

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While Man’s reluctance to fight within the churchyard is apparent, Gatell’s awareness of contemporary expectations of peacefulness on hallowed ground is more subtle. By refusing to come out, Gatell avoided physical confrontation and also the stigma of cowardice. Despite lay and clerical calls for charity and the presence of a highly structured and available judicial system, refusing a fight in secular space could still incur significant shame.62 Gatell avoided the damaging taint of cowardice by using sacred space to his advantage (of course, he also seemed to recognize an opportune moment for a cowardly attack in secular space). Man’s reluctance to strike in the churchyard, Warde’s call for charitable demeanor and Gatell’s initial avoidance of a fight all reveal a profound understanding of teachings about fellowship and self-restraint among the sacred. An analysis of diction in other cases suggests that Gatell and Man’s concern for the avoidance of bloodshed in order to maintain the purity of hallowed space was not so peculiar. At least in their legal discourse, some jurors, plaintiffs and defendants acknowledged the sacrilege of violence and the virtue of restraint in church63 In the act books of Buckinghamshire from 1483, jurors recounted the wild affray between John Prynce and John Chapyn which purportedly involved the flow of blood from Chapyn’s head and right ear in the cemetery. Yet, the jurors were quick to note that the bloodshed had not occurred in the cemetery but rather “about an hour’s journey” from the holy ground. Even if, as is most likely the case, the judge had questioned the jury about the location of the affray, the record still represents an infiltration of religious teachings into lay conscience. Jurors learned that the location of bloodshed was as important as the violence itself. Plaintiffs also voiced their concerns about the deleterious effect of bloodshed on sacred space. In the tenth year of Henry VIII, William Gybbys, who had already been bound to keep the peace, tried to attack William Oliver in the parish church of Rattery, Devonshire. According to the plaintiff’s plea, Gybbys would have “polluted the church” if someone had not kept the chancel door shut against him. Such references to ‘pollution’ cannot be overestimated for they suggest an adoption by parishioners of the primary term that the clergy used to stigmatize violence on hallowed 62 STAC 2/18/163. In 1521, Thomas Delaryvar of Braunsby, Yorkshire fled from a sudden attack by his enemies at Sterysley field. Thereafter, the assailants slandered him, especially by calling him a coward. 63 The Courts of the Archdeaconry of Buckingham, p. 11.

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ground.64 Like their clerical leaders, parishioners associated violence in church with sacrilege and therefore, they sought to punish offenders through citation in a court of law as well as the court of public opinion. Besides concern for pollution of the sacred, the pleas of parishioners during moments of physical or legal conflict also reveal their regard for self-restraint in church. When litigants filed a plea before an ecclesiastical or secular court, they sought to present their actions in the best light possible while still working within the legal formulae of the age. Just as Natalie Davis found in her influential study of pardon narratives in sixteenth-century France, some English cases deliberately bring into play what contemporaries considered to be appropriate piety.65 In their pleas before the court, plaintiffs tried to emphasize their apparent sanctity and lawfulness in order to underscore the barbarity of their assailants. For example, in the record of Richard Percy’s violence in Gargrave church, the plea makes special note that Laurence Caterall was not only listening to divine service but also “in the peace of God ”.66 Just after evensong on the Feast of Corpus Christi in Tamworth church, Warwickshire, Sir Humphrey Ferreys attacked William Bett. When Robert Gretwyde implored him to remember his surroundings and the veneration due to God, Ferreys stormed off muttering, “I wager I am as well as thou”—thus revealing that Gretwyde’s appeal to proper piety had stung the honor of the assailant quite effectively.67 With even greater reference to self-restraint, Humphrey Fitzhibbert countered a charge of assault in the chancel by noting that he had “peaceably” placed his hands on the vicar “in the nave of the church” because he was guilty of violence against John Fitzhibbert and therefore should not have performed his duties until he was reconciled with the offended. Still other respondents emphasized their peaceful intentions by arguing that they had not been violent in church but rather had walked the aisles “in a peaceable” or “sober” manner, had approached other parishioners “softly,” had only come “to hear evensong” or had meekly come to hear

64 STAC 2/21/158. See also, STAC 2/15/51. Thomas Folksyngham was assaulted in his parish church by Tom Myllys against “the laws of polluting a church.” Also see, KB 9/121/21. In this case of assault in church, the lay plaintiffs directly tie the violence of the aggressor to the “pollution” and “suspension of the church.” 65 N.Z. Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and their Tellers (Stanford, 1987), p. 40. 66 KB 9/149/34. “adtunc in pace dei in ecclesia”. 67 STAC 2/4/176–179.

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divine service with just “a child”.68 These defenses show a common expectation of charity and self-restraint for they either reveal a genuine anxiety about aggression in churches, or at the very least, the litigants’ recognition that they should appear anxious in their narratives before ecclesiastical or secular judges. In these cases, the defendants certainly knew that the use of violence amongst the holy harmed their status as ‘honorable’ Christians and corrupted the sanctity of the church. Moreover, their comments reveal a shared set of values that enjoined physical restraint on the part of worshiping parishioners. Indeed, the narrators readily assumed that the audience of their plea, both the officials who heard their testimonies in court and parishioners who heard their tales in the tavern, would be similarly distressed by acts of violence on hallowed ground. One remarkable case from Herefordshire in 1457 divulges parishioners’ awareness of the deleterious effect of violence on holy space and the means by which such damage could be amended. In an inquest into the death of Roger Vaughan, the jury had nothing to say but they did add that Vaughan and John ap Harry, armigeri, came arrayed into their parish church and began to threaten some of them who were there listening to the mass. As their threats grew more intense, Walter Grace, the vicar of the church, halted his prayers and commanded the two agitators to stop their belligerence out of reverence for the holy space of the church, God’s name and Christ’s body. Agitated and embarrassed by the plea for reverence, Roger and John began to push and strike

68 STAC 1/9. Likewise, another defendant claims that he did not come to church out of anger but only to attend divine service with just a dagger and one servant. See, STAC 2/26/257; STAC 2/3/163–168. When Richard Barowe provokingly sat himself behind the pregnant wife of Arthur Porter in Quedgeley church, Gloucester, Alexander Dobyn, Porter’s servant, asserted that Arthur had approached Barowe “in a peaceable manner,” “softly” took him by the sleeve and asked him to sit elsewhere. For his part, Barowe cited the links between church space, charity and peace by claiming that Porter had tried to remove him from peaceful prayer despite the fact that the church was as free to him as to anyone. See also: STAC 2/12/224–226; Proceedings in the Court of Star Chamber in the Reign of Henry VII and Henry VIII, ed. G. Bradford (Somerset Record Society, 27, 1911), pp. 121–126. In a similar appeal to proper conduct among the sacred, Robert Coke and Robert Hewarde responded to the charges of Gylles Dobell, concerning an assault against him and his wife in their pew at Minehead parish, by retorting that they had acted on many occasions in a “sober manner” in order that “the sayd parishe shuld not be ynquyetyd or trowbelyd by theym.” The defendants argued that in spite of the Dobell’s constant offenses, they had always tried to avoid violence in the church and especially any conflict which would lead to murder. The defendants argued that when a blossoming conflict seemed apparent, they acted “for the quyetyng of the sayde parishe” and “for the avoydynge of murder.”

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Grace until he began to bleed. As each drop of the cleric’s blood desecrated the church, the two assailants hastily tried to avoid the consequences of their violence by forcing the battered and bleeding vicar to continue celebrating the mass before the now stunned and offended parishioners.69 This case evinces a rich mixture of beliefs about violence and the sacred. In his failed attempt to stop John and Roger, the vicar tried to remind them verbally that their very identity as Christians required peace and charity. He demanded that they stop their violent behavior out of a general respect for God, and more specifically out of reverence for Christ’s body and for the sacred space in which they stood. Although the vicar’s admonition referred to the three aspects of late medieval Christianity which, more than anything else, obliged complete reverential restraint, his reminder only succeeded in transferring the assailants’ aggression onto his own person. Unlike his counterpart in Yorkshire who, as noted in the episode that commenced Part II, employed the powerful visual stimulus of the host, the Herefordshire vicar only relied on verbal and physical confrontation as a means of intervention. Though he himself was sacred by rite of ordination and, as will be shown later, by his presence in the ritual of the mass, Grace could not hope that his own bodily intervention would induce the same visceral reaction as the sight of the Eucharist. Nothing was more potent as a symbol of peace and piety for late medieval Christians than the host and thus, the verbal admonishments of Grace were far less effective than the Yorkshire cleric’s ritualized elevation of the Eucharist. No matter how much literacy among the laity and sermonizing by mendicants had increased in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the majority of society was still tied tightly to ritual and its symbols as the prime means of communication and association. Only later in the Reformation, when sermons and admonishment became the central facet of weekly worship, would parishioners grow to expect exhortation as much as ritualized gesture from their parish priests.70 Yet, the most interesting facet of this case lies in the actions of Roger and John after they have wounded the vicar and, ipso facto, polluted the church. Afterwards, according to the jury’s indictment, they “forced the 69

KB 9/35/60. While print culture did not supplant the oral and ritual culture of the populace, Reformation religion certainly shifted its focus toward exhortation through sermons rather than commentary through liturgical ritual. 70

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vicar just after [his] beating to say the mass against his will to the disquiet of the people in church (ibidem prefatum vicarium recenter post illam verberacionem ad missam suam dicendum contra eius voluntatem cogerunt in perturbacionem populi domini). This is an exceptional statement for cases which involve violence against a clergyman or violence in a church. The usual phrase charges the exact opposite; that the violence of the aggressor forced the disruption of the mass to the disturbance of the priest and people. The word perturbacionem conveys the profound agitation and unease of the parishioners who clearly understood the effect of bloodshed on the holiness of the mass and the sacredness of the church. With such a visibly disturbed group standing around them, the two aggressors needed to make amends quickly. If we recall that a mass was the final aspect of the reconciliation ceremony and that all masses had to cease if a church was polluted, Roger and John’s actions become more comprehensible. Either they were trying to reconsecrate the church ad hoc or they were trying to prove that the church was not polluted and hence lessen their offense. Most likely, they were trying to mitigate the impact of their violent and sacrilegious actions by having the mass continue. Ironically, even though they recognized that their brutality had disturbed the divine, they sought to resolve the crisis through further violence, figuratively speaking, a ‘shotgun mass’. Such seemingly irrational behavior might not have been as baffling to contemporary witnesses, for Roger’s and John’s actions reveal a discernment of the distinctions between restorative violence and contaminating violence. Restorative or purgative violence, as best seen in Christ’s passion, mended the social order and humanity’s relationship with the divine while contaminating violence tore the social fabric asunder and provoked the wrath of God.71 The Church and lay society recognized both forms of violence and they applauded the former while condemning the latter. Standing self-consciously before the clearly agitated parishioners, Roger and John realized that their initial harassment of the vicar was inexcusable and therefore they hastily tried to enact their own loutish form of restorative violence. Their misguided attempt at atonement only exacerbated their original sin of sacrilege and increased the disgust of onlookers. A detailed case such as this one makes plain that though some parishioners were clearly less adept than 71 Both Phillipa Maddern and Renee Girard explore the idea of licit, purgative violence versus contaminating, discordant violence. See especially: Maddern, Violence and Social Order, pp. 75–87, 98; Girard, Violence and the Sacred.

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others at negotiating between their desire to settle a score and the demands of their faith, their actions during moments of conflict or the reactions of others brightly illumine a common awareness that unbridled aggression among the holy was just not acceptable. Finally, some parishioners expressed their concern for concord within their parish through direct intervention in burgeoning conflicts. In the court rolls, the phrase “and he would have killed your said plaintiff had not some parishioners/neighbors etc. intervened” is very common in cases of interpersonal confrontation.72 These hasty and, on occasion, life-saving interventions show parishioners’ anxiety over unchecked aggression and, more importantly, the fact that their anxiety over conflict was not always limited to sacred settings. Of course, those who chose to intervene may have done so for a variety of commonplace reasons, besides or in addition to a profound sense of the need for charitable restraint. Yet, we should not rule out that in these instances of intervention, for at least some parishioners, the preservation and enhancement of the ideals of charity and fellowship were important enough to trump any contemporary valuation of violence as a means of dispute-settlement. Conclusion Despite their continued proclivity to mix spiritual and secular pursuits in church, parishioners also displayed in their actions and attitudes a discernible anxiety about violence and aggression on hallowed ground. From subtly altered aggression to outright denigration of violence as a sinful and shameful course of action, parishioners expressed with varying intensity their expectation that sacred spaces and rituals should be venues of concord, conscientiousness and self-restraint. Moreover, these expressions of regard in the court rolls and letter collections lie alongside the silent majority of parishioners who behaved themselves in church and hence avoided written records all together. Hoping to preserve their worldly reputation as ‘pious parishioners’ and protect their souls from the sin of sacrilege, most men and women thought it proper to exercise restraint and promote peace in church; even if they could

72 See for example: Yorkshire Star Chamber Proceedings (45), p. 68; —, (51), p. 26, 63, 149. These acts of intervention are discussed briefly by Phythian-Adams, see, “Rituals of Personal Confrontation,” 84–85.

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not always leave worldly concerns at the church door or live up to ideals of charity and self-restraint as much as the clergy or their more conscientious peers may have wished. Furthermore, the narratives of offended parishioners or victims of assault within sacred space or during holy rituals subtly convey the convergence of lay and clerical concerns for harmony and charity. In the records themselves, the actions of enemies and assailants were shrouded in terms that emphasized impiety, ignorance or even fiendishness. Such terms lent “a sense of gravity to even the most petty of disputes” and also allowed plaintiffs to dissociate their own pious actions from the unrighteous actions of their foes.73 Even if prone to embellishment, these narratives of conflict still reveal “verisimilitude and moral truth”;74 namely that parishioners recognized the existence of two competing value systems, one which centered on expositions of charity, piety and humility, and the other which turned upon displays of antagonism, bluster and aggression. They also seem to have acknowledged, at least before the courts, that aggression detracted not only from one’s reputation for piety but also from one’s repute in general. The clamor of parishioners in the court rolls against those, who entered the sacred yet failed to set aside their personal animosity, reveals their shared anxieties. Plaintiffs and presenters would not have made such noise about offenses against them if they did not assume that their fellow parishioners and court officials would have been equally disturbed by such sacrilegious acts. This assumption manifests a general belief that within religious settings and rituals, aggression and personal ambition were not admirable; they literally were damnable. In word, deed and especially, expectation, most parishioners contended that violence in churches and churchyards, when not doled out by legitimate authorities, held little value in their eyes and no value in the eyes of God.

73 74

Hanawalt, Of Good and Ill, p. 43; Maddern, Violence and Social Order, p. 89. Davis, Fiction, p. 3.

CHAPTER SIX

THE EUCHARIST: DEMANDING A DREADFUL PEACE Through a wide array of media, from didactic texts to pax rituals, the mass was heralded as the most significant opportunity for parishioners to commune with the divine. Through the miracle of transubstantiation, the priest transformed the bread and wine into Christ’s own body and blood. In order to worthily witnesses, or, on some days, receive their Lord and Savior, parishioners had to not only attend the divine service but also assume a humble and charitable demeanor, which, of course, entailed an appreciation for forgiveness and self-restraint. An investigation of court rolls and letter collections reveals that parishioners did emphasize restrained comportment and acceptance of charity before the host and during the liturgy of the mass. Though violence before the Eucharist or during divine services was not unprecedented, parishioners’ words and deeds illuminate a marked anxiety over such events. Their concern for expressions of charity and restraint, so as to view or receive the host fittingly, shines through in their specific indication of the timing and setting of violence, their avoidance of disturbance and desecration, as well as in their efforts to make peace and restore charity among fellow parishioners. Respecting the Liturgy of the Eucharist While many acts of violence receive little elaboration in the court rolls as to their timing or location, aggression which took place during mass was specifically singled out by plaintiffs and presenting jurors. The author of Dives et Pauper argued that Sundays were “days of the devil” when lechery, gluttony, manslaughter, robbery, backbiting, perjury and other sins ruled.1 Though medieval parishioners might not have been as sensitive to sin as the anonymous author of Dives, they too showed an anxiety over disturbance of the mass.2 This anxiety stemmed from their 1

Dives, pp. 274-276. For some of the many examples of citation for disturbing divine service through aggression, see, Hale, Precedents, pp. 26,43, 71, 80; Visitations in the Diocese of Lincoln, i, 2

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recognition that violence jeopardized the spiritual health of the parish by offending God, consequently alienating him from the church and goading him to reject the sacrifice of the mass. Even if they did not articulate fully or not know all the theological reasons why violence was prohibited during the mass, parishioners still feared God and thus abhorred disruptions of the sacred sacrifice of the altar. For example, when an affray broke out in Bromholm church during the liturgy, the vicar, Sir Robert Williamson, expressed his horror in a plaintive letter to Agnes Paston: “And the great fray that they made in the time of mass it ravished my wits and made me full heavily disposed; I pray Jesu give them grace to repent them therof, that they caused it may stand out of peril of soul”.3 In this lament, Williamson indirectly illuminates a solid consensus between clergy and laity about the need for physical restraint and charitable demeanor during mass by his assumption that Agnes Paston would be as horrified as he was by the belligerent disruption of divine service. For priests, like Williamson, and ‘reputable’ parishioners, like the Pastons, violence during the mass was impudent, sinful and shameful. Though the act itself could not always be prevented, future recollections could still denigrate the deed and stigmatize the offenders. With similar intent, though with less eloquence than the latter cleric, lay parishioners also singled out and censured disturbers of divine service. Thomas Nash was presented before the consistory of the bishop of London in 1491 for interrupting mass with his slander, while in 1493 John Smyth was presented for quarreling during divine service and consequently disrupting it.4 At the episcopal visitation of 1519, parishioners of Althorpe, Lincolnshire presented John Davy and Alexander Nelson for quarreling in the cemetery during divine service while two others parishioners from Gainesborough were also presented by their wardens for arguing during mass.5 Likewise, Thomas Lake mentioned in his plea to Star Chamber that Richard Sandford had assaulted him in church during “high mass tyme”.6 Such statements reflect not the quirks of one or two men but rather, the concerns of the parish community for they pp.1, 42, 69, 70, 71, 92, 97,98; An Episcopal Court Book for the Diocese of Lincoln, 1514–1520, ed. M. Bowker (Lincoln Record Society, 61, 1967), pp. 63,84,86–87; STAC 2/7/167, 2/10/153, 2/15/233–237, 2/18/290, 2/19/248, 2/23/95; Act Book of Whalley, p. 58. 3 Paston Letters, ii, p. 18. 4 Hale, Precedents, pp. 26, 43. 5 Visitations in the Diocese of Lincoln, i, pp. 97–98. 6 STAC 2/30/54.

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appeal to an unspoken consensus that unrestrained parishioners were serious enough threats to require both spiritual and temporal chastisement. In sermons and didactic texts, the clergy encouraged parishioners to make proper religious observance a factor in their tally of good and ill repute and, based on their choice of words, parishioners appear to have done so. An emphasis on appropriate piety and participation appears in the diction of many court records concerning violence during divine services. In these instances, the plaintiff proudly records that he or she was in church hearing divine service “as [he or she] ought to do” or “as [he or she] was bound to do”.7 Others made known to officials that they could not be properly pious because they were hindered by the threat of aggression. For example, John Frende complained to Thomas Stonor in 1426 that he was being harassed daily by his enemies and therefore he “dere not go to cherche or to chepyng”.8 Echoing the messages of textual and liturgical lessons about the need for charity and restraint before God, other narratives charge antagonists with willful irreverence on Sundays and holy days. In one plea, Thomas Savell challenged the ‘godliness’ of Henry Savell when he remarked that Henry’s armed spectacle outside of hallowed ground still violated the requirements of Palm Sunday. Thomas stigmatized Henry’s display of force as a sign of ignorant impiety on a day “when every true Christian man shuld have been in parfite love and charite”.9 In a similar fashion, a writ of inquiry from King’s Bench charged rioters in mid fifteenth-century Norwich with failure to keep the Sabbath holy.10 Inverting the formulaic narrative mentioned above, which lauds certain actions with the phrase ‘as Christians ought to do,’ these charges label some actions as willfully impious with the tag, ‘as Christians ought not to do.’ Thus, these latter works taint the repute of defendants by challenging not only their piety but also their identity as upright Christians. These are just a few of the allusions to the duties and holiness of those who professed themselves to be ‘reputable Christians.’ With such phrases, plaintiffs clearly wished not only to proclaim their own spiritual excellence but also to call into the question their enemy’s reverence. 7

See for example: STAC 2/8/153, 2/10/135–136, 2/12/224–226, 2/23/95. The Stonor Letters and Papers, ed. C.L. Kingsford (Camden Society 3rd series, 29–30, 1919), i, pp. 56–57. For charges of inhibiting church attendance, see also: STAC 2/15/233–237, 2/19/248. 9 STAC 2/29/158. 10 KB 9/84/1/3. 8

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However, like pews, paxes and processions, even attending divine service ‘as one ought’ could become entangled in proprietary concerns that fostered individual gain at the expense of communal harmony. In the episcopal visitation of the diocese of Lincoln, the resentful wardens of Sixyll complained that the vicar favored the Moigne family so much that he would delay divine service if they were not in attendance. Likewise, the vicar would start mass if the Moignes were present yet all the other parishioners absent.11 The mass was supposed to be a moment of unity and harmony, shared by powerful and poor alike. As far as the churchwardens were concerned, the vicar’s favoritism flouted this sense of unity by making their parish seem to be the Moigne’s private chapel. A more violent example of proprietary control over divine services can be found in the rolls of the King’s Bench in the Easter Term of 1411. On the Feast of St. Clement, Robert Tyrwhitt, his son, William, and the tenants of Thorngumbald, Yorkshire went to hear matins and mass at the local chapel. Following matins, Robert asked the priest to ring the bell for mass. At that very moment when the priest was readying to call the manor together, Robert Holme accompanied by an armed horde appeared in the churchyard. Standing in warlike array, Holme demanded that neither Robert nor the chaplain should deign to ring the bell for mass before John Holme, his father, had arrived to attend divine worship. He further threatened that if Tyrwhitt dared to knock down a wall of his manor again, he would “seriously repent” it.12 In this instance, the mass and its commencement became part of a larger conflict over land. Robert Tyrwhitt, one of the king’s justices and a man already known to have brought a retinue of armed retainers to a ‘love day,’ alleged that John Holme and an armed gang had assaulted his men, including his son William Tyrwhitt, at the manor of Thorngumbald, Yorkshire.13 Holme denied the charge and countered that in fact, he was lord of the majority of Thorngumbald and that William Tyrwhitt was the true troublemaker. Tyrwhitt, Holme claimed, had intentionally knocked down a wall of his messauge on one occasion, and would have done it again had not a kinsman of Tyrwhitt’s urged the two parties to arbitration. Robert Tyrwhitt replied that his son William was lord of all

11

Visitations in the Diocese of Lincoln, i, p. 63. Select Cases in King’s Bench, pp. 200–201. 13 Ibid., pp. xiii–xiv. Tyrwhitt allegedly brought 500 armed men to the ‘love day, a day of ritual acts of concord which were intended to settle conflicts and pacify feuds without recourse to ‘official’ channels such the royal courts. 12

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of Thorngumbald and, therefore, he not only owned the disputed messuage but also the chapel where the arbitration allegedly was held. He then went on to recount the purported threats of Robert Holme about the commencement of the mass. For the two litigants, control over the mass was of the utmost importance, for whoever controlled its commencement appeared to control the manor of which the chapel was part. Moreover, the two parties sought to use religious practice to shame one another. Tyrwhitt’s request for the mass to commence without Holme sought to deny him the honor of religious observance while Holme’s demand to postpone the commencement sought to highlight Tyrwhitt’s proprietary attitude toward a communal aspect of religion. In each case, the symbols of a charitable community became vehicles for shame. While most escaped censure by the courts and their fellow parishioners because they managed to keep a demure, or at least nonviolent, demeanor during divine services, there are some cases of assault that actually show how parishioners attempted to avoid violence during the mass. In his recounting of the arrest of Edward Slade in church, constable Curley emphasized his discretion by noting that he tried to serve his warrant “in a quiet manner” after the low mass and before the high mass.14 During a protracted dispute over ownership of the parsonage of Hutton Wandesley in Yorkshire, Sir Oswald Wylstrop came to church in order to assail the parson but when he found the priest already praying the mass, Wylstrop exclaimed, “you horson prest, if I hadd come betyme I would have naylyd thy cote to thy backe with my dagger.” Faithful to his words, if not those of the ‘Great Curse’, Wylstrop waited for the liturgy to conclude and then attacked the curate without remorse!15 While Curley’s caution reflects his concern for the integrity of the mass, Wylstrop’s words reveal his apprehension toward disturbing divine service and, as will be discussed in the next chapter, his fear of desecrating a priest engaged in a holy ritual. Respecting the Eucharist Itself Besides references to disturbance of divine service, parishioners also singled out blatant disrespect for Eucharist in their narration of violent 14 15

STAC 2/26/336. STAC 2/10/153.

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acts.16 Aggression before the Eucharist overtly shunned the ideal of charity and brazenly flouted the potent presence of Christ. Therefore, plaintiffs, who so often failed to include details in their complaints other than a date and village or town name, took extra care to cite the impudent impiety of their attackers because they understood that both their official and their popular audience shared their concern for the integrity of the sacred. For example, Edward Slade charged in his plea against Thomas Chicheley that he was attacked “to the disturbance of divine service…. as [he] knelt before the crucifix” just after the “the sacring of the mass was done”.17 In another record, Thomas Lake charged that George Sandford had attacked him in Condover church as he piously stood “before the sacrament”.18 Likewise, Thomas Flokyngham alleged that Tom Myllys attacked him in Hougham church, Lincolnshire, without “regarding the holy sacrament”.19 Lastly, in 1454, four men of Norfolk were indicted by the royal commission of oyer et terminer for both arguing and assaulting each other during the sacring and in the same circuit of inquiries, two others were indicted for making an affray with daggers “at the time of the elevation of the body of Christ”.20 Such specific references to disrespect and timing suggest that late medieval parishioners regarded aggression before the host as a marked display of barbarity, impudence and impiety.21 They would not let such uncivilized and sinful behavior pass without both official and popular chastisement. In order to see how an internalized notion of restrained and humble comportment before the host could influence the action of even the most quarrelsome, let us return to the wild affray that commenced the introduction to Part II: On a Sunday in September 1453, Laurence Caterall was quietly listening to divine service in Gargrave church (Yorkshire) when an armed gang led by Richard Percy charged into the building and headed straight for him.

16

See for instance: KB 9/12/2/182, 9/85/131, 9/149/34; STAC 2/8/78–94, 2/14/113–115, 2/15/151, 2/30/54. 17 STAC 2/26/336. Others stressed their pious position “before the crucifix.” See, STAC 2/19/319. 18 STAC 2/30/54. 19 STAC 2/15/151. The phrase “without regard for the holy sacrament” also appears in STAC 2/14/113 and STAC 2/8/78. 20 KB 9/85/1/31, 9/12/2/183. 21 An interesting comparison of the narratives can be found in indictments of Lollards. See for instance: KB 9/77/15 which indicts some alleged Lollards for taking a pix with the hosts still inside. The language is similar to the cases involving assault before the sacrament. Both defendants are seen as violators of the holy and profaners of Christ.

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Frightened into action, Caterall scrambled through the house of God, right past the vicar, and into a vestibule near the altar. Percy and his cohort, shouting threats and brandishing swords, pursued their prey into the chancel and then leapt upon the altar to corner him. The vicar was more than a bit disturbed, as he now stared at the feet of the alleged “enemy of Christ”22 and over the head of the cowering Caterall. Fearing for both the sanctity of his church and his own safety, he ceased the mass, picked up the host in his hand and in the name of God commanded all before him to forsake their wickedness. Without further violence, Percy climbed off the altar, led Caterall out of the church and carried him to confinement in Cockermouth castle (Cumberland).23

When Percy rushed headlong into the church to capture Caterall, he brought not only his sword, but also his assumptions about the legitimacy of violence and associations between sacredness and self-discipline. Had he rushed into the street to waylay his prey, Percy’s aggression would have been largely acceptable according to contemporary codes of conduct.24 First, he sought, as Caterall’s social superior—indeed as the brother of Thomas Percy, the baron of Egremont—to enforce his will on a lesser subject in spite of Caterall’s position as bailiff of the wapentake. Second, Percy’s seizure and confinement of Caterall suggest that he, like many medieval assailants, used force as an alleged ‘officer of the court’. Lastly, Caterall appears to have been part of the Neville affinity and thus a participant, however small, in the PercyNeville feud, a protracted and implacable vendetta, which formed the subject of numerous inquests by the Court of King’s Bench. In fact, according to one inquest, Richard’s impious assault was allegedly performed at the behest of his baronial brother. Provided that Caterall was indeed a participant in the feud, then Percy’s aggression would have been still more legitimate, even honorable, in the eyes of many of his contemporaries. Whereas associations between sacred space and nonviolence did not inhibit Percy and his gang, their fear of the host certainly did. The vicar’s use of the host did not initiate a perfect Pavlovian response, in which Percy immediately climbed off the altar, knelt down and bowed his 22

“Inimici Christi” in the court record. KB 9/149/34; For context of the Percy-Neville feud, see: P. Booth, “Men Behaving Badly? The West March Towards Scotland and the Percy-Neville Feud,” in The Fifteenth Century III: Authority and Subversion, ed. L. Clark (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 95–116; R.A. Griffiths, “Local Rivalries and National Politics: The Percies, the Nevilles and the Duke of Exeter, 1452–1455,” Speculum 43(1968), 589–632. 24 Maddern, Violence and Social Order, p. 110. 23

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head, but there are nevertheless clear signs of pacification. In fact, this particular account is the most detailed version of the case and it still does not charge Percy with further aggression inside the church.25 When the vicar lifted up the Eucharist as he would have done for the sacring, he confronted Percy with a fearful sight that required the immediate assumption of a more reverential demeanor. Indeed, the presence of the host sharply reminded late medieval parishioners of their Christian identity at a time when both the Church and Crown were vigorously attempting to eradicate Lollardy and its challenge to the doctrine of transubstantiation. By the mid fifteenth century, both the clergy and laity suspected individuals of Lollardy if their actions or words lacked respect for the Eucharist.26 Only the most negligent or impudent of orthodox laity would be so unbridled before the host as to endanger their reputation as upright and true Christians. Percy may have been belligerent, but he was no fool. His actions—and the late medieval obsession for viewing the sacring for that matter—make it apparent that more than other spiritual media, the sight of the host induced a visceral urge toward peace with one’s fellow Christian and, most notably, a fearful urge toward self-restraint which could overpower even the most bellicose of desires.27 This profound internalization of teachings about dread of the divine and the importance of charitable comportment can be seen in an even more colorful and violent instance. On the afternoon of April, 13, 1458, the humdrum rhythm of urban life on Fleet Street temporarily came to a halt when an encounter between some local denizens and a bevy of lawyers raged into an all-out brawl. With a venom and intensity that would make most modern fisticuffs seem like an evening at the opera, the conflict stormed up and down the street with seemingly implacable fury. Using everything from their fists to bows and arrows, the men of

25

Another account of the Percy indictment is found in KB 9/149/55. See for instance: Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, 1428–1431, ed. N.P. Tanner (Camden Society 4th series, 20, 1977), pp. 45, 67, 199. Most Lollards publicly questioned transubstantiation and some even belittled the sacring as a conjuration or an idolatry of the simple minded. 27 Such examples were apparently not isolated to England. In late medieval Valencia the tranquil relationships between Christians and Jews in Morvedre was shattered by clerical processions. In 1314, Jews who had sought refuge from the approaching processions in the houses of their Christian friends were cast into the street by these same friends because they did not want to appear ‘un-Christian’ before the host. See, M. Meyerson, Jews in an Iberian Frontier Kingdom: Society, Economy and Politics in Morvedre, 1248– 1391 (Leiden, 2004). 26

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the Street pounded the men of the Inns for close to three hours while the bells of both St. Dunstan’s and St. Brides ceaselessly pealed backwards in a traditional and desperate cry for “succuor from the citie”. As the afternoon drew to a close and many on both sides lay dead or wounded, the inhabitants began to overpower their enemies, driving the would-be lawyers off toward Cliffords Inn. However, just as they readied to route their litigious foes, a hastily organized line of clergy bearing the Eucharist appeared on the street. As the procession moved through the throng of combatants, the once uncontrollable grew docile.28 The riot ceased and the mobs dispersed. Their rage was no match for their deference and dread of the Eucharist. The behavior of the Fleet Street rioters, as well as that of Percy, makes clear that until the denial of the doctrine of transubstantiation during the Reformation, the presence of the host was not only a clarion call for conscientiousness, but also an unrivaled weapon for would-be peacemakers. While teaching about the need for charity helped to gradually alter parishioners’ valuation of violence, triggering their dread of the divine through an exposition of the Eucharist provided an immediate relief from violence and strife. Recourse to the tangibly sacred in order to promote peace was not novel. The Peace and Truce of God movements of the tenth century often relied on the exposition of holy relics in order to make belligerent warriors aware that a higher, holier and indestructible authority would hold them accountable for their misdeeds. However, in the late medieval period, the diffusion of the doctrine of transubstantiation gave even the smallest of parishes access to the greatest of tangibly sacred objects. Any upstanding priest could create it, and, as the Body of Christ himself, it trumped all other holy objects; neither the knuckles of St. George, nor any other sacred relics, were needed for confronting pugnacious parishioners with sacred force. Embracing a Charitable Spirit While the actions of aggressors within the previous cases show their concern for restraint due to their fear of the host, the diction of complaints in other records reveals that by regarding aggression as a sign of the

28 Six Town Chronicles of England, ed. R. Flenley (Oxford, 1911), pp. 146–147; S. Bridgen, “Religion and Social Obligation,” 77. In 1422, a similar brawl had occurred between the men of court and men of the street;

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aggressor’s lack of charity, parishioners did tend to conceptualize violent behavior as not only disrespectful to God but detrimental to personal and parochial spirituality. In one instance, Thomas Browne charged Thomas Massy with attacking him and his wife during mass in the parish church of Burton in 1519 “without any cause reasonable but only of his cruel and uncharitable mind”.29 This narrative shows that parishioners did regard violence, at least before the host and during divine service, as a severance of the bonds of charity and consequently, an unholy hazard to the efficacy of the Eucharist. Since parishioners understood well that charity was a prerequisite for participation in sacrifice of the mass, they sought to redress their own and others’ grievances by gentle persuasion, or even aggressive clamor, so that they might maintain their public repute, the spiritual efficacy of communion and, most importantly, their personal state of charity. Reflecting a rather belligerent concern for charity, Johanna Carpenter grabbed Margaret Chamber by the arm as she was heading to communion and said, “I pray you let me speke a worde with you, for you have nede to axe me forgyuness, before you reseyve your rights.”30 Carpenter’s aggressive action should be seen in light of the methods of church officials who relied heavily on public censure as a means of producing penitence. As she had seen church officials do to others, Johanna sought, as a ‘reputable’ parishioner, to restore a ‘sinner’ to a state of charity through public chastisement. While her words show that parishioners were well aware of the need for charity, it is not clear, and seems unlikely, that Carpenter hated the sin, yet loved the sinner. Perhaps, Johanna sought to avenge herself by alleging that Margaret had hypocritically, and sinfully, dared to try to receive the host. In the end, Johanna’s pious correction, and possibly shrewd vengeance, resulted in her citation in the church courts for disrupting divine service.31 A more benign and communal effort to enforce parochial charity can be found in a case from 1530. After service on Easter Sunday, Nicolas Tyting came weeping into the churchyard of Little Plumstead in Norfolk 29 STAC 2/7/210. Similarly, another plaintiff pointed out that before he was assaulted by Ralph Fawse in the parish church of chipping Norton, he had been “thinking no hurte to any creature.” See, STAC 2/7/167. For another example of concern for charity, see, STAC 2/29/158; Yorkshire Star Chamber Proceedings, ed. J. Lister (YASRS, 70, 1927), pp. 44–46. 30 Hale, Precedents, p. 109; Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 95. 31 Besides a concern for the integrity of divine services, Carpenter’c citation may also reflect the increasing concern of late medieval society with ‘scolding’ by women. See, Bardsley, Venomous Tongues.

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because he had not received communion, “his rightes”, because “the parson and he could not agree.” Despite the parishioners’ hasty attempts to make amends between the two, the parson refused to “meddill with him”.32 Tyting was perhaps as upset over his loss of honor as he was over his spiritual loss but the other parishioners appear to have been more concerned with Tyting’s and the parson’s state of charity. The presence of conflict in the parish was a serious threat to salvation because it disallowed communion to any parishioners who were involved. For this reason, the parish community sought to redress grievances as quickly as possible lest the contagion of conflict place more of them beyond charity and consequently beyond salvation.33 One last anecdote, derived from both an early sixteenth-century case found in the records of the Consistory Court of the Bishop of Norwich as well as from knowledge of the social and religious context of the age, conveys quite well how deeply late medieval parishioners had internalized the notion that a state of charity was a precondition for effective communion. In the early hours on Easter Sunday, 1512, Walter Southgate and his wife hustled off to attend mass at the parish church of Worlingham Magna (Suffolk). While the Pascal candle flickered against the shadowy interior, Walter and his wife joined their fellow parishioners in prayer and celebration of the most hallowed day of the liturgical year, the day that commemorated the core of Christian theodicy. For a precious few hours, the Southgates were encouraged to experience a wide array of emotions. They bowed their heads amidst the clouds of incense while the joyous rhythym of the exultet echoed through the nave. They probably shifted restlessly and glanced curiously around at their neighbors, like Thomas Betlynton, as psalm after psalm was chanted. They both wondered and shuddered as they ruminated on the power of a God, who had conquered Sin and Death. Then, as the liturgy of the Eucharist began, they fell upon their knees, anxiously anticipating the two most important moments of the entire mass. First, as bells chimed, Walter and his wife sought blessing by snatching a glimpse of the sacring. Then, shortly after, the vicar moved to the edge of the chancel and admonished the attendant parishioners in English that before they receive the sacrament, they must be confessed and within the bounds of charity. 32 Norwich Consistory Court Depositions, 1499–1512, 1518–1530, ed. E.D. Stone and B.C. Hardy (Norfolk Record Society, 10, 1938), case 428. Duffy discusses this case in some detail, see, Stripping of the Altars, p. 94. 33 For an exploration of violence and conflict as a contagious threat to society, see, R. Girard, Violence and the Sacred.

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After this warning, Walter and his wife, like most of their fellow parishioners, knelt before their parish priest and, as obliged by canon law, waited to receive communion. For most parishioners, this reception was a joyous moment; a one time opportunity when, having confessed their sins in days prior, they dared to receive the body of Christ. It was also a moment, when parochial harmony displaced the norm of agonistic and aggressive social relations, what John Bossy dubbed decades ago, ‘the social miracle’. But for the Southgates, this moment was far from a miraculous time of conciliation and concord. As they knelt before the body of Christ, they fretted over what seemed to be a most sinister situation. Indeed, just as the vicar had warned, what should have been one small step toward salvation appeared, to them, as well as to others in the know, to be a giant leap toward the snarling maw of hell. For the couple knew well that they were not fit to receive their Lord and Savior. Yet, they still took communion—possibly out a mixture of desires, ranging from a sublime longing for a sense of salvation to a commonplace concern for their wordly reputation. As the mass drew to a close, Walter must have wondered and worried about his actions. Was his soul blackened by his reception? Was he to blame for his unworthiness? Did any others actually know of his existent grudge and thus, regard him as a sacrilegious hypocrite? Three days later, Walter could no longer contain his anger and anxiety. Having encountered the source of his sacrilege, the parson of the church, one Sir Hugh Witterans, he lashed out, slandering him with these words, “Sir Hugh yo arte the cause that I and my wife receyved ye sacrament of ye autr at Easter even in synne without love and charyte.” Now, as anyone who has had the chance to peruse court rolls can attest, late medieval slander usually does not entail such theological nuance. It tends to entail less subtle and more sexual diction, like ‘whoreson’, ‘knave’, ‘false thief’, etc. Indeed, in a conversation with Betlynton sometime prior to Holy Week, Walter, who was disgruntled over tithes and other perceived slights, had called both Witterans as well as the vicar “whoreson priests who use his goods to keep their brothels”. Yet, Walter’s furious words to Witterans himself were weighed as slander in the consistory court of the bishop of Norwich34 and it is those words that place into stark relief the burgeoning potency of an introspective, or guilt

34 Norwich Consistory Court Depositions, case 166. The third person narrative is my own design based on knowledge of the social and religious context of the period.

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culture. Southgate was so shamed by internal strife, as well as the potential for disrepute, that he openly tried to transfer the culpability for a seemingly private sin onto his rival. Southgate’s slander shows how much late medieval parishioners were the products of centuries of Christian kerygma that both promoted and demanded the vigilant maintenance of one’s personal state of charity. Reminded through various media, like pax rituals, didactic handbooks and public sermons, to think on death and dread God’s might, parishioners and clerics alike recognized that a state of charity was integral to their worthy reception of the sacraments, divine blessing and consequently, their welcome into paradise. Gradually but discernibly notions of sin and salvation were shifting parishioners’ anxieties away from their public reputation alone to their private standing with God, in particular the condition of their own souls. Parishioners’ concern for self-restraint and charitable state so that they might receive communion or observe the Eucharist aptly reflects the movement toward introspection identified by Delumeau and, consequently, the ‘civilizing process’ at work, for such anxiety about spiritual health meant a greater emphasis on according honor to restraint and fellowship instead of bravado and belligerency. Conclusion An exploration of acts of violence at the time of the mass and/or before the host reveals a few important points about parishioners’ praxis. Though violence during mass or before the host was not entirely exceptional, late medieval parishioners do appear to have internalized many teachings about proper participation and reverence. Their citations and censures in letters and court rolls show that they considered violence and wrath to be wholly irreconcilable with proper and honorable piety. Moreover, both male and female parishioners considered pious, charitable and respectful comportment before the host to be factors in the establishment of worldly repute and eternal salvation. Since they accepted the mass, and the host in particular, as their prime vehicle of redemption, parishioners advocated restrained demeanor during divine service and before the Eucharist lest the ritual of the mass, their souls and their reputations be tainted by sacrilege. As is often the case, fear was a prime motivator in the inculcation of self-discipline and Christian conscientiousness. Indeed, parishioners dread of the host, and the divine punishment that could befall the belligerent, was so great that it gave

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clerics an advanced means of quelling conflict. By confronting angry parishioners with the host, clerics could immediately appeal to their hearts instead of their heads; diffusing one emotion with another. Furthermore, parishioners’ concern for the integrity of the mass and the honor of the host led them to stigmatize violent offenders as quasiheretical, disreputable Christians whose pollution of the sacred placed their own and others’ souls in jeopardy. For such parishioners, the presence of the Eucharist, whether at mass or in the street, was the most demanding moment for self-restraint and charity; a dreadful moment when a lack of discipline had no positive value for an observant parishioner, a moment that ‘civilized’ the body while saving the soul.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE CLERGY: SWINGING BOTH PLOWSHARES AND SWORDS At the beginning of the sixteenth century, during a lengthy and often violent conflict among the parishioners of Thatcham (Berks.), one of the protagonists uttered this retort to a fellow parishioner who tried to encourage peace between the feuding factions: “My men should use their swords and bucklers … but if John Stanshaw is in one alehouse then I will be in another”.1

To historians of medieval and Reformation England, these lines should not be all that surprising. Throughout the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the heyday of livery and maintenance, ritualized effrontery was quite in vogue among societal elites. Such parochial or national ‘bigwigs’ often moved about with armed retinues of servants and retainers as signs of their potency and prestige. However, it may surprise some to learn that the above statement was uttered by a priest, Geoffrey Elys, vicar of Thatcham. Though the leaders, thinkers and authors of the late medieval Church tirelessly struggled to convince their flock of the wickedness of interpersonal aggression, their own servants were not always the best examples of an alternative honor culture based on the practice of piety and self-restraint. As R.N. Swanson cautions in his study of parish priests, the clergy “can be considered as a group; but they were also individuals who created their own careers and had their own personal relations with their parishioners”.2 Indeed, the conduct of clerics in their parish communities, especially their violent conduct, can be quite baffling if one only evaluates it by the criteria of ecclesiastical proscription and fails to recognize that such proscription was just one thick strand of an intricate web of relations and expectations. Bound by their ecclesiastical duties yet steeped in temporal values, parish clergy tried to establish their sacred identities within a world of “unrestrained

1 STAC 1/9. This quotation is a first person recreation of the third person narrative found in the documents from Star Chamber. 2 Swanson, “Problems,” p. 845.

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passion and unseemly violence”.3 An exploration of instances of clerical violence found in descriptive sources, such as letter collections and court rolls, reveals some of the ways in which clerics negotiated between secular and ecclesiastical codes of conduct. The focus of this chapter will mainly be on the actions of rectors, chaplains, vicars, parsons and parish priests because these men functioned directly within parish communities—with varying degrees of attachment to lay values and the lay society. On occasion, instances involving monks, canons, or powerful ecclesiastics will be referenced in order to show the pervasiveness of a particular belief, but for the most part, the focus remains on parish priests whose power to consecrate, abstention from violence and vow of celibacy made them, ideally, sublime and supragendered members of society. Each letter and court case offers unique insight into the attitudes of late medieval clerics toward violence and the extent to which they struggled to be both holy men and just plain men. These pieces of evidence also illuminate lay attitudes toward violence on the part of, or against, their parish pastors. Contemporary concerns such as gender norms, class affinities, and economic rights encouraged conflict between parishioners and clergy, or between clerics themselves. Parish curates’ involvement in religious rituals helped to curb their entanglement in violence and enhance their role as peacemakers yet, at the same time, it also helped to inflame lay anger toward overly ‘worldly’ parish curates. In short, when a cleric was a victim of an act of violence, it was usually because parishioners saw him as just another member of the village who struggled along with them for both tangible gain, like property rights, and intangible gain, like good repute. However, sometimes, it was precisely because a parish cleric was supposed to be something more than just another agonistic villager—he was to be a sacred, unspoiled conduit of God’s grace—that lay parishioners either behaved aggressively toward him or, in contrast, tried to leave him out of acts of violence altogether. The Armed Stars of God Though both their leaders and handbooks demanded that they be the meek and mild shepherds of their sometimes goat-like, sometimes 3 Peter Heath, The English Parish Clergy on the Eve of the Reformation (Toronto, 1969), p. 8.

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sheepish, parishioners, some late medieval clerics refused to lay down their arms. Contemporary gender norms, royal demands, and class customs all gave parish clergy reasons to put aside their walking staffs and take up their swords. As scholars have recently shown, a priest’s inability to carry arms or engage in sexual relations dissociated him from the most fundamental aspect of medieval masculinity, martial prowess.4 Moreover, ecclesiastical authorities limited the defensive weapons of a cleric to the ‘womanly’ measures of language and lamentation.5 Such demands and ideas could lead to a direct and humiliating association between clerics and women. For instance, during one heated conflict in 1530, the women of Hayes, Middlesex, viewed themselves as the suitable adversaries of their pastor when they cried aloud to their male counterparts, “you men gett ye hens and let us wyffs [put] harness on and we shall pluck [the priest and his servants] out of the churche and cast theym over the walle”.6 Unwilling to suppress their notion of manly propriety, some priests continued both to bear arms and use them when prompted. Prelates lamented that many clerics walked about arrayed “in a military rather than clerical dress” that did not distinguish them from the laity.7 Visitation records also contain complaints against clerics who were unwilling to employ prayers and tears as their weapons of choice.8 In the Yorkshire diocese, Richard Kirkeby and William Wyvell, respectively a deacon and a chaplain of York Minster, were charged with walking around the streets of York at night with poleaxes and helmets.9 Some of the vicars choral and other ministers of Southwell were admonished repeatedly for carrying weapons inside and outside the minster. These offenses aroused the indignation of the archbishop of York, Laurence Booth, who in 1478 decreed that no ministers or vicars choral of Southwell were to carry arms (armicudium sive gestrum) unless they had received direct permission from the chapter to do so for journeys into

4 Cullum, “Clergy,” p. 182; Swanson, “Angels,” p. 168; Meyerson, “Clerical Violence”. 5 Butler, Language of Abuse, pp. 30–49; Bardsley, Venomous Tongues, pp. 89–105. 6 STAC 2/8/83. G.R. Elton has woven together a nice account of this incredibly detailed (and extremely well documented though scattered) conflict. See, G.R. Elton, Star Chamber Stories (New York, 1958), pp. 174–220. 7 Edward Cutts, Parish Priests and their People in the Middle Ages (London, 1898), pp. 164–166. 8 Swanson, “Angels,” p. 168. 9 Cullum, “Clergy,” p. 187.

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the countryside.10 Despite this injunction, in 1484, John Bull and Thomas Cartwright were charged with secretly wearing daggers under their cloaks. In the Bishop of Lincoln’s visitation of 1518, the vicar of Hartford was presented for marching around town with a sword and shield and even going into church armed.11 The actions and appearance of these militaristic clerics degraded their brethren’s emphasis on peaceful comportment and passive introspection while reinforcing contemporary attitudes which valorized public image and bellicose bravado. However, late medieval lay folk would not have been completely astonished by the spectacle of clerics with swords, daggers, bows and sometimes even full suits of armour. The need for civil defense during the Hundred Years War prompted the Crown, or sometimes the bishops themselves, in anticipation of a royal writ, to issue musters of the clergy throughout the late fourteenth and early to mid fifteenth centuries.12 As A.K. McHardy explains, by the mid fourteenth century, the bishop of Lincoln had created a standard set of requirements for his clergy. All healthy clerics between the ages of 16 and 60 were to come armed to Lincoln or other county centers to train and parade. The weapons and armament were to be as follows: Any clerk having a benefice worth between £40 and 100 marks (66£.13s.4d) a year was to be armed … with plates to protect both breast

10 Visitations and Memorials of Southwell Minster, ed. Arthur Francis Leach (Camden Society, 48, 1891), pp. 39–40. Prior to his decree, an affray between two dagger carrying clerics had occurred in the churchyard during the Archbishop’s residency there. He was not pleased and therefore, issued his angry injunction barring the carrying of arms. 11 Visitations in the Diocese of Lincoln, i, pp. 6. Similarly in 1519, the curate of Hardwik parish was charged with pulling out a sword on Thomas Bek and on another occasion using it to strike Henry Ships. See, i, p. 43. 12 Among others, musters of the clergy were officially issued by royal writ in 1386, 1400, 1415 and 1418. For an example of the clerical muster of 1415, see, Registrum Roberti Mascall, ed. Joseph H. Parry (CYS, 21, 1917), p. 87. “Item vicesimo nono die Junii, anno supradicto [1415], dominus recepit breve regium pro monstro faciendo cleri sue diocesis, tam regularibus quam secularibus, exemptis et non exemptis, uniendis et convocandis, ac sufficienter araiari faciendis, prout eorum suppetant facultates, ita quod prompti sint et araiati ad resistendum protervie malicie et infestacioni inamicorum sancte matris, ecclesie, regisque eciam et regni sub forisfactura omnium queque forisfacere poterunt. Que omnia et singula juxta dicti brevis exigenciam fuerunt adimpleta. Et certificatum fuit ad cancellariam domini regis tercio die Julii.” See also, Cullum, “Clergy,” pp. 188–189; McHardy, The Age of War, pp. 29–37; Bruce McNab, “Obligations of the Church in English Society: Military Arrays of the Clergy, 1369–1418,” in Order and Innovation in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of Joseph Strayer, ed. William C. Jordan, Bruce McNab, Teofilo F. Ruiz (Princeton, NJ, 1976), pp. 299–304. McNab notes that in 1418, a year in which Henry V mustered the clergy, a group of Worcester clergy were armed “cum loricis et palletes ac curteis lanceis vel pollaxis.”

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and back, a helmet with visor, protective armour for the stomach, arms, thighs, knees and lower legs, and with gloves of mail; but as a substitute for this expensive plate-armour he could wear a leather tunic and an over-shirt of chain mail. He was also to provide a lance, shield, sword, knife and three horses. A clerk with an annual income of 100 marks but less than £100 was to be accompanied by an armed man whose equipment was little different from his master’s….Clerks whose income was between £20 and £40 were to be armed like their richer colleagues, or to send a similarly equipped man in their place, but they were not expected to provide a horse. Benefices worth less than £20 a year would provide the equipment for an archer only, so the poorer clergy were ordered to prepare themselves for archery service, or to find a deputy. All chaplains skilled in the art of archery were to be ready to give the same service … 13

Remarkably, these royal efforts to marshal the clergy aroused very little debate among ecclesiastics and for the most part clerics “acted like laymen in the prosecution of war”.14 Religious leaders, perhaps looking on these occasions to commentaries on civil defense within a just war more than to commentaries on clerical abstention from bloodshed, seem to have distinguished between the violent social conduct of armed clerics in the parish and violent struggles against enemies of the realm. While the bishop of Norwich flouted all canonical codes of conduct by leading an army into Flanders in 1383, the bishop of Lincoln, John Buckingham, called the clerics of his diocese to arms in 1369, 1377 and 1386. In this period, parades of militarized clergy were held in Lincoln, Bedford, and Rutland.15 Also, in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, armed watches of clerics were employed in York and Durham—a legacy of defense against the Scots—and such clerical patrols may have been used in other areas such as Worcester.16 Though, in reality, attendance was often lax and the martial skill of those who did attend was often anything but adept, these clerical musters must nonetheless have influenced their attitudes toward the use of arms. Having been provided with royal and episcopal validation of martial posturing, some clerics, who were charged in court with carrying weapons well after the threat of invasion,

13

McHardy, The Age of War, p. 36. McHardy, The Age of War, pp. 29–37; —, “English Clergy,” 176. Quotation found in, Cullum, “Clergy,” pp. 188-189. 15 McHardy, The Age of War, pp. 33–36. 16 McHardy, “English Clergy,” 173–174; Cullum, “Clergy,” pp. 188–189. Cullum believes that the clerics of York Minster who were caught walking around the city with poleaxes and helmets were also acting as mustered clergy. 14

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may still have believed that they were ‘doing their duty’ or, at the least, that they were acting within their rights. Class codes of conduct also played a role in arming the clergy, for as gentry and knightly families began to compose a greater portion of parish curates and family chaplains in the early sixteenth century, the notion of clerics as a ‘weapons-carrying’ class could only have become stronger. Indeed, as Patricia Cullum argues, the classification of the clergy as spiritual gentlemen may “in part have sprung from an increased acceptance of their right to bear arms”.17 This circular argument only further abetted contemporary acceptance of a cleric’s right to use arms; a cleric bore arms because he was a gentleman and he was a ‘gentleman’ because he bore arms. Court records show that those clerics who wore weapons, did not do so simply for their ornamental value. The most obvious reason for carrying arms was self-defense. On Ascension Day in 1512, John Baker, the rector of Bowers Gifford, Essex, chased away a menacing William Hare by putting his hand on his sword (gestrum) and unsheathing it almost to its point.18 When the previously mentioned Geoffrey Elys found himself unarmed before the impending attack of John Stanshaw and his servants, he grabbed a crucifix-topped staff and shook it furiously at his foes.19 Even clerical authorities recognized that their members could be left with no recourse but physical violence. In 1515, the bishop of Hereford absolved John More, a priest of the parish of Whitborn, from the charge of murder after More had defended himself with a bill against the relentless onslaught of an unnamed layman. More was allowed to return to his privileges after he had endured a brief suspension of his duties.20 When faced with a potentially deadly conflict, some curates, like their lay contemporaries, responded with force. Almost any perusal of ecclesiastical or secular court records will reveal some priests who enacted violence for personal gain rather than for self-defense. Personal conflicts over property and positions encouraged priests to resort to violence as a means of dispute-resolution.

17 Cullum, “Clergy,” p. 189; For discussion of knights and gentry providing incumbent priests, see, Heath, English Clergy, pp. 136–137. 18 Heath, English Clergy, pp. 10–11. 19 STAC 1/9. The offenders of Southwell Minster, John Bull and Thomas Cartwright, probably wore concealed daggers because they tended to absent themselves from the chapter and most likely, frequent areas of potential conflict such as taverns. See, Visitations and Memorials, pp. 50–51. 20 Registrum Ricardi Mayew, ed. A.T. Bannister (CYS, 27, 1921), pp. 218–219.

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Excepting tithe-disputes, which will be discussed in more detail below, these conflicts over property and positions meant violence and aggression against fellow clerics.21 As in other pre-industrial societies, competition over scarce resources, including honor, was often group or class specific in medieval Europe.22 Like their lay contemporaries, pastors were willing to use litigation, intimidation, and outright physical violence to gain an upper hand in their conflicts over property. For instance, late in the reign of Richard II, John de Boynton, a vicar of Bevereley Minster, was arrested forcefully “in his habit within the said [c]hurch” through the alleged machinations of a John Seggefeld who coveted Boynton’s “Prebend of St. Katherine” in the same church.23 In a more violent encounter in 1520, John Veysey, parson of Lytchett Matravers, was attacked and imprisoned by William Roll and John Carter, rival claimants to a lucrative chantry.24 For some parish priests, just as for some laity, property was worth a fight both inside and outside of court. Service and Violence Mirroring the actions of their lay brethren, some clerics also used servants to do their ‘dirty work’.25 Middle and upper class laity tried to attract large retinues in order to show their potency and respectability during public confrontations. Those priests who were wealthy enough to have servants seem to have had similar sentiments toward displays of force. In a belligerent eviction case from 1530, the servants and chaplain of Thomas Hunt, parson of Brede, Sussex, attacked John Payne, chaplain, who, at the time of the assault, was leasing Brede parsonage 21 Property and economic gain may have been the motivating factor in many poorly attested cases of assault between clerics in the late Middle Ages. See for instance: Episcopal Court Book for the Diocese of Lincoln 1514–1520, pp. 31–32, 33; Yorkshire Sessions of the Peace, 1361–1364, ed. B.H. Putnam (YASRS, 30, 1939), p. 83; Rolls of the Warwickshire and Coventry Sessions of the Peace 1377–1397, ed. E.G. Kimball (Dugdale Society, 16, 1939), p. 33; Hale, p. 54. 22 See, Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory; Michaud, Cohesive Force. 23 Select Cases in Chancery, 1364–1471, ed. William P. Baildon (Selden Society, 10, 1896), pp. 92–93. 24 STAC 2/18/290. For similar incidents of violence involving positions and property, see, STAC 2/7/93, 2/23/311. 25 Given, Society and Homicide, p. 179; H.S. Bennett, The Pastons and their England (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 226–228; Thomas V. and Elizabeth S. Cohen, Words and Deeds in Renaissance Rome (Toronto, 1993), pp. 65–70, and 135–139; Debra Blumenthal, “Defending their Master’s Honor: Slaves as Violent Offenders in Fifteenth-Century Valencia,” in A ‘Great Effusion of Blood’?, ed. Meyerson, Thiery and Falk, pp. 34–56.

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from Hunt.26 Likewise, the vicar of Thatcham firmly believed that armed servants were a permissible and effective manifestation of his power among parishioners. In a fierce conflict between the vicar and John Stanshaw, both parties employed armed servants for intimidation and physical violence. One deponent alleged that the vicar had sent his servants to attack Stanshaw in the church while the vicar himself charged that Stanshaw, already angered by a public citation recently made against him, had come with his servants to evensong and wildly charged into the chancel. Another deponent asserted that when the constable had tried to pacify the situation, Stanshaw told him to tell the vicar that his servants would do well not to go about the parish armed, trying to pick a fight. When the constable delivered this threat, the vicar replied that his servants would wear their swords and bucklers like anyone else, but if Stanshaw and “his companie” were in one alehouse then he and his servants would be in another.27 Like his religious superiors, who also used servants for violence and aggression, this vicar was quite comfortable with public displays of force.28 Indeed, it seems quite possible that clerics, like the vicar of Thatcham, were inclined to use servants for the sordid tasks of interpersonal conflict so that they would not be sullied—and their clerical status put at risk—by the shedding of blood. Just as many laity enacted violence as ‘court officials,’ some servants of clerics justified their aggression by noting their status. In one instance from the late fourteenth century, a group of Yorkshiremen countered a charge of assault and battery against the servants of William Risby by arguing that as the attendants of William Strode, parson of Brantingham, they were obligated to help him maintain the “correction of the souls of all those who work on holidays.” Since these pious policemen had noticed Risby’s servants working on numerous holidays, they attempted to coerce their appearance before the parson for correction.29 In this case, very little of the language differs from cases of aggression in which

26 STAC 2/29/53; Abstracts of Star Chamber Proceedings, ed. P. Mundy (Sussex Record Society, 16, 1913), pp. 73–74. 27 STAC 1/9, 2/14/113–115. 28 For violence on the part of the servants of the Abbot of Eynesham and the bishop of Ely, see, PRO STAC 1/26, 1/34, 1/63. Select Cases before the King’s Council in the Star Chamber, pp. 38–42, 109–113, 136–162, 236–253. 29 Select Cases of Trespass from the King’s Courts, 1300–1399, ed. Morris Arnold (London, 100 and 103, 1985–87), i, p. 25.

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lay servants claimed to be acting under the orders of their master or in which alleged officers claimed to have right of distraint and arrest. On the other hand, clerics themselves could be servants. Court records and letter collections reveal that some family chaplains and lower clerics enthusiastically enacted violence on behalf of their patrons. Many middle and upper class householders had a resident chaplain to perform spiritual and secular duties for their families.30 The author of Piers Plowman noted this trend when he wrote, “some [clergy] serve as servants to lords and ladies and sit in seats of steward and butler”.31 In his enduring study of pre-Reformation clerics, Peter Heath asserts that “economic pressure, personal insecurity and social subservience stirred in many chaplains a frenetic desire” for a benefice or some form of employment.32 Those who were fortunate enough to receive employment from a lay benefactor tended to show a zealous loyalty to their employer, even to the point of using violence against local parishioners.33 The chaplain of Margeret Paston, James Gloys, was not only the family accountant but also the family ‘enforcer,’ who on at least one occasion, lay in wait to attack an intransigent resident of Paston manor. In a lengthy letter to John Paston, Gloys conveyed his dogged determination on behalf of the family. His enthusiasm for the chase shone through his words: for I lay on wayte vp-on hym on the heth as he shuld haue comen humward, and if I myght haue met with [hym] I shuld haue had Bettes from hym; but he had leyd such wetche that he had aspied vs or he cam fully at vs, and he remembered Wymdhams manhood, that iiii swyft fete were better than ii handes, and he toke his hors with the spores and rode to Felbrygge Hall as fast as he myght rydyn.34

For the most part, the affection that chaplains like Gloys held for their patrons came at the expense of their representation of the Church and 30

Phythian-Adams, “Rituals of Personal Confrontation”, 83; Bennet, Pastons, pp. 226–228; Heath, English Clergy, p. 26. A lay patron was an invaluable means of power and prestige. Sometimes, a cleric’s loyalty was paid tenfold such as when a Yorkshire layman attacked an entire priory in order to get his selected man made a chaplain. See, Yorkshire Sessions of the Peace, p. 83. 31 Langland, Piers Plowman, lns. 92–96. 32 Heath, English Clergy, p. 26. 33 Bennet, Pastons, pp. 215–218. 34 Paston Letters, i, pp. 64–67; Bennet, Pastons, pp. 228–229. The Stonor family also used their chaplains for many secular duties, including as a representative in litigation. See, Stonor Letters, i, pp. 127–128. For other cases of chaplains as belligerent servants of the laity, see, STAC 2/3/143–148, 2/3/286–287.

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its values. These men were personal servants and therefore their use of violence was mostly within the context of their duties as retainers, not within the context of their duties as holy men. However, on occasion, a chaplain’s role as both personal servant and holy man could be of use to his patron for acts of aggression. In his insightful article on the ritual of personal confrontation, Charles Phythian-Adams briefly notes the frequent appearance of chaplains in acts of group violence, particularly in gentry raiding parties against family foes. Puzzled by the presence of these clerics, Phythian-Adams hypothesizes that they may have joined these raids in order to act as intermediaries, to provide last rites to the dying, to legitimize their patron’s actions, or perhaps to act as literate and eloquent witnesses in future litigation.35 Other evidence suggests some additions to PhythianAdams’ original propositions. The author of Dives et Pauper points out the tendency of Englishmen to take priests or clergy with them on their hunting expeditions in order that they might fare well; a sinful act in the author’s opinion.36 Similarly, chaplains may have been asked to join raids in hope that their spiritual blessings spurred mundane success. This idea can be seen on a national level when Henry V invaded Normandy with a large band of clerics in tow. These chaplains rode with the royal train in order to provide for the spiritual needs of the army and also to give the troops earthly victory through heavenly blessing.37 On a local and a national level, a chaplain’s presence during acts of violence was a welcome spiritual weapon—praying for victory, blessing the combatants, and cursing the enemies of their patron—rather than a welcome means of peace. Moreover, the presence of chaplains may have been for more than temporal success through spiritual benediction. Just as Henry V brought his clerics for spiritual legitimization of his war, so, too may have gentry for validation of their interpersonal conflicts. By taking chaplains with them on their forays, lay parishioners could assuage their unease about the shedding blood, an act that was, without a doubt, morally and spiritually problematic. The late medieval Church through its rituals, 35 Phythian-Adams, “Rituals of Personal Confrontation,” 83–84. For examples of chaplains in raiding parties, see, KB 9/349/65; KB 27/861/104; Lancashire and Cheshire Cases in the Court of Star Chamber, pp. 10, 32, 47, 56, 70–71, 89, 110, 120; Yorkshire Star Chamber Proceedings, 45, pp. 51–52. 36 Dives, i, pp. 186–187. 37 One chaplain detailed his participation in Henry’s army all the way to Agincourt. See, Gesta Henrici Quinti: The Deeds of Henry V, ed. and trans. F. Taylor and J.S. Roskell (Oxford, 1975).

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rhetoric and canons struggled to convince parishioners that aggression was impious. One product of these efforts to form a parochial community grounded in charity was the clergy’s increasing monopolization of the right to use and sanction violence. The presence of chaplains, in however small a way, both sanctioned their masters’ actions and gave a modicum of spiritual legitimacy to what was, by most theological doctrines, a spiritually depraved act. However, aggression by chaplains does not adequately illustrate parochial clergy’s negotiation of temporal and otherworldly values. As personal servants whose first affinity was to the needs of their patrons and whose values mostly developed within secular society, family chaplains lacked the alterity of parish priests. They did not have to struggle with the nebulous sense of separation yet association that defined the identities of parish curates. Also, it would appear that for some family chaplains, the bonds of charity were not as difficult to maintain as those of parish pastors. While parish priests had to stay in charity with all their parishioners in order to be effective administrators of the sacraments, chaplains only seemed to be concerned with the opinion of their patrons. Why did lay patrons not appear to be concerned with the lack of charity of their chaplains? Although Margaret Paston was a very pious woman, she never expressed any dismay at the aggression of her faithful chaplain, Gloys. Perhaps the laity believed that personal chaplains only had to stay in charity with their employer’s kin or perhaps they realized that some clerics did not have to be spiritual leaders. Indeed, Gloys was not Margeret Paston’s only means of salvation. Her family had many other chaplains from whom she might receive the sacraments and she could also attend her parish church where the Paston family had owned a stall for many years. Therefore, patrons may not have relied on their chaplains for their personal spiritual needs as much as they relied on their parish priests and chantry clerics. The Laity and their Parish Priests Parishioners seem to have tolerated clerical concessions to masculine honor and personal defense as long as the spiritual demands of the parish were also met.38 Visitation records reveal that the laity tended to 38 Swanson, “Problems,” 848–849; Cullum, “Clergy,” p. 189; Meyerson, “Clerical Violence”; Heath, English Clergy, p. 133.

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distinguish between the personal peccadilloes of their priests and more serious spiritual offenses. However, when parish priests became overly involved in conflict or overly brazen in their shows of force, parishioners became more anxious because a curate’s lack of charity tarnished his participation in parish rituals. Of course, theologians had long argued that a priest’s state of grace was not integral to the efficacy of the sacraments, but it was quite difficult for parishioners to make such nuanced distinctions when their pastor was irritating and violent. For example, William John and Richard Percy defended themselves against charges of assault upon Robert Philipson, vicar of Braughing church, Herefordshire, by arguing that the vicar had attacked Humphrey Fitzhibbert earlier in the day and that, therefore, his sinful state required him to refrain from performing his duties as a priest until he had been ‘reconciled’ for laying violent hands on a parishioner. According to the defendants, when they tried to escort the vicar out of the church, he forcibly resisted.39 This narrative aptly reveals two important contemporary assumptions about parish priests. First, just as the laity considered violence in churches to be sacrilegious, they also considered a parish priest’s involvement in violence to be a desecration of his holy status or at the least, they considered their curate to be ‘irregular’ and thus in need of reconciliation by the bishop. Second, lay parishioners assumed that an impure parish priest was a spiritual liability, a direct impediment to the efficacy of the sacraments and hence a direct impediment to the salvation of all parishioners. Thus, the laity’s demand for parish priests to preserve their state of charity or, having offended, to repent their sins was quite intense. Personal violence by parish priests was simply too consequential. The laity hoped that parish priests would avoid excessive conflict because they, like Church authorities, expected their clergy to act as peacemakers. As an individual whose sacred status and clerical values set him apart but did not fully alienate him from the society, a parish priest was a convenient and appealing source of mediation.40 Even when Christianity was in its infancy, the laity looked to local holy men for 39

STAC 2/19/319. For anthropological studies of holy men as mediators whose status outside of the social system enhances their ability to arbitrate, see, Michaud, Cohesive Force, pp. 93–94; Gellner, Saints, p. 74; R. Jamous, Honneur et Baraka: les structures sociales traditionnelles dans le Rif (Cambridge, 1981), p. 89; Gluckman, “Peace in the Feud,” 17. Historians have also explored the role of clergy and holy men in acts of peacemaking. See, K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Oxford, 1997), p. 154; R.B. Dobson, “Politics and the Church,” pp. 12–13; Swanson, “Problems,” 846–847; Bossy, “Blood and Baptism,” p. 139; Brown, Society and the Holy, pp. 122–126. 40

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mediation and for performance of rituals that would keep violence in check.41 Likewise, in the late Middle Ages, ecclesiastical rituals, such as the mass, curbed violence through charity, sanctified secular acts of arbitration, and made the priest an important part of parish peacemaking. Moreover, on a less formal level, the parish priest was expected to quell conflict through good example and personal intervention. Visitations and court records show both lay expectations of priestly peacemaking as well as clerical efforts to live up to such demands. Priests were expected to sow concord not discord. Those who did not were called to account for their lack of charity before their bishops. In 1404, the parishioners of Saltash, Devonshire, complained that their curate was a quarrelsome litigator who had caused some parishioners to be outlawed and others to be exiled.42 The parishioners of Burmington, Warwickshire complained in 1484 that, among other offenses, their priest argued too much.43 In early sixteenth-century Lincolnshire, the curate of Hardwick was charged with being overly litigious and with threatening parishioners with his sword.44 Just as canon lawyers had encouraged prelates to do,45 the laity rejected quarrelsome or belligerent parish priests because they only spread conflict and cleared a path for violence. Moreover, the laity worried that their quarrelsome curates were so tainted by a lack of charity that they could not be an effective mediator between them or between the whole parish and God. On occasion, the court records bear witness to peacemaking on the part of priests. Though their interventions sometimes went awry or only postponed corporal confrontation, some clerics displayed a willingness to stand against violence physically as well as spiritually. The foremost reason for clerics to pacify aggressive parishioners was the preservation of sacred spaces and rituals. For example, around 1536, the pastor of Flixton church, Suffolk, stepped away from his reading of the Gospel and attempted to pacify a heated quarrel between Richard Carre and Thomas Bateman.46 A quarrel in the church was a potential source of 41

Brown, Society and the Holy, pp. 124–130. Swanson, “Problems,” p. 845; Excessive litigation was frowned upon by most communities. See, Sharpe, “Such Disagreement,” p. 179. 43 Registrum Annalium Collegii Mertonensis, 1483–1521, ed. H.E. Salter (Oxford Historical Society, 76, 1923), pp. 33–34. John Shinners and William J. Dohar, eds., Pastors and the Care of Souls in Medieval England (Notre Dame, 1998), pp. 268–270. 44 Visitations in the Diocese of Lincoln, i, p. 43. For other citations of quarrelsome priests, see, i, pp. 128, 148. 45 Gratian, Decretum, pp. 453–457. 46 STAC 2/8/153. 42

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sacrilege and, therefore, priests had to make a special attempt to stop them from occurring. Even outside of a sacred setting, some priests sought to quell conflict before it escalated to bloodshed. In 1512, Robert Bylterring, the chaplain of Bawdeswell, Norfolk, successfully intervened in a confrontation along a road in his parish.47 Similarly, in Yorkshire in 1530, Sir William Gascoigne was poised to assault John Sampoole “savynge that his chappleyn dyd holde hym”.48 Remarkably, Gascoigne’s chaplain overcame the self-serving impulse to abet his patron’s actions and, instead, chose to intervene in the conflict before it came to blows. These clerics frowned upon conflict in any environment, not just in sacred space. For clergy and laity of a similar ilk, violence was impious no matter where it took place. As one might expect, the laity did not always restrain their aggression when faced with the decision of either attacking a priest or remaining respectful. Disputes over tithing, mortuaries, parish customs, as well as other administrative or economic matters sometimes made parish curates the direct targets of assault. For example, in a dispute over parish funds between the parishioners of Didcot and their prodigal priest, the mother of John Pepwite and John himself, who earlier had been attacked by the priest’s servants, stood up in church and slandered their curate “amonge all the parisshe”.49 As this example aptly illustrates, these disputes often involved violence on the part of the priest as well as the laity. No matter how much ordination, clerical duties, and canon law had sanctified him, a priest’s involvement in conflicts over money and parish politics rapidly secularized him and, in the eyes of his rival lay parishioners, blurred any distinction that he held as a sacred ‘untouchable’. Moreover, parishioners’ anger was unquestionably exacerbated by their recognition that priests, like the curate of Didcot, who used violence for temporal gain had grossly failed to live up to the standards of a holy man. In some cases, lay attackers overtly attempted to deprive their priest of his sacred identity and authority by removing his symbols of holiness, desecrating his personal space within the church, and even asserting that he was an ineffectual ritual-leader. By chipping away at the trappings of clerical holiness, assailants slowly made their enemies seem to be 47 48 49

Norwich Consistory Court Depositions, case 163. STAC 2/18/181; Yorkshire Star Chamber Proceedings (45), pp. 50–54. Stonor Letters, i, pp. 67– 68.

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merely mundane annoyances, fit for physical correction. When control over a parish or its funds was in question, an easy means of subverting a curate’s claims to power was to remove the ornaments of ecclesiastical ritual such as the chalice and vestments.50 If removing ornaments was not a strong enough measure, there were other means of humiliation and denigration. One set of belligerent disputants in a mortuary case used their status as excommunicants to force the cessation of Christmas mass and consequently, deprive the priest of Christmas oblations.51 In other attacks on parish priests, the assailants sought to desecrate the chancel, the sacred preserve of the priest and a few select laity, by any means available—from filling the choir stalls with family members and foul-mouthed, singing servants to unleashing a pack of dogs all around the nave and chancel.52 By flouting the cleric’s control over the chancel, aggressors attempted to impose their authority over the priest and his domain. Once again the tithe-dispute of Hayes offers a fitting example. When the vicar admonished a group of agitators sitting in his choir stalls to keep quiet so “that the service of Godd might there reverently be done or else to avoid the chancell,” Mathew Kyng angrily grabbed him by the chest, put his hand on his dagger and yelled, “Wilt thou command us oute of the chancell? We will not avoyde for the for we have as good authority to be here as thou hast”.53 In some obvious and some less than obvious ways, parishioners tried to gain the upper hand on their clerics by attacking the symbols that most set them apart from society and, hence, most conveyed their authority over the parish. These aggressive acts of denigration not only eliminated a priest’s ability to function as a pastor but also jeopardized parishioners’ souls by causing the suspension of sacraments. Anxiety about such sacrilege seems to have varied according to the level of parish animosity against the priest, which itself was based on the encompassing nature of the conflict. A tithe-dispute or a struggle over parish customs would have involved many parishioners while a mortuary conflict may have simply involved the aggrieved family and the priest. The fact that some priests included the removal of ornaments and the consequent suspension of rituals in their pleas before the court suggests that those who were not involved directly in the conflict 50 STAC 2/7/93, 2/8/78–94, 2/10/153, 2/27/41; Hale, Precedents and Proceedings, p. 42. 51 Select Cases in Chancery, pp. 23–25. 52 STAC 2/8/78–94, 2/17/131; Yorkshire Star Chamber Proceedings (41), pp. 166–172. 53 STAC 2/8/85–90.

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would have been disgusted by assailants’ unilateral suspension of the sacraments just as they were disgusted by the suspension of divine service through violence.54 Yet, in some instances, parties in a dispute not only challenged the worldly rights of their priests but also their spiritual ability. Returning again to the incredibly detailed tithe-dispute of Hayes, Thomas Bradley told the warden to take away the priest’s ornaments and not to return them on pain of dismissal from his post. He then told the parishioners “to here masse in some other place.” Later, when the perseverant vicar attempted to perform the mass without all of the liturgical ornaments, an enthusiastic lay participant in the conflict stood up and declared that he would rather hear mass “in a sheep-cotte than to here [the vicar’s] masse”.55 Most likely, this contention that parishioners would be better off receiving sacraments from some other cleric stemmed from both simple disrespect and also a distrust of a priest whose willingness to engage in conflict had placed him beyond charity. On the other hand, in some poignant instances lay aggressors revealed their profound respect for priests as sacred beings. The clothing and ritual actions of a priest made him a holy individual who, just like the host that he held, was untouchable by human hands. Clothing received particular attention from clerical authorities because outer garb was considered a visible sign of spiritual purity. In his 1342 letter on clerical conduct, Archbishop John Stratford argued that “external costume often shows the internal character”.56 Likewise, the Speculum Christiani asserted that “Vestimentes ordeynde to prestes techen vs hou a preste awe to be arayde inwardly [or] in soule that so honestly es arrayde withoute”.57 As part of papal efforts to make the clergy a more distinct group, Canon 16 of the Fourth Lateran Council forbade the clergy to dress ostentatiously.58 For Church leaders, humility was to take precedence over overt displays of power. While a cleric’s everyday clothes were an important sign of his humility and peacefulness, his liturgical vestments directly symbolized his holiness and piety. Every item that a priest put on before celebrating the mass was a symbol of his connection to Christ and his purity of soul.59 54

Select Cases in Chancery, pp. 23–25. STAC 2/8/78–94. 56 Cutts, Parish Priests, p. 164. 57 Speculum Christiani, p. 180. 58 The Disciplinary Decrees, pp. 256–260. This law was repeated in English councils. See, Councils and Synods, pp. 752–753. 59 Speculum Christiani, p. 180; Mirk, Instructions, p. 56; Durandus, pp. 191–193; Dives, ii, pp. 227–229. 55

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An apt example of this rich symbolism is the stole. It was particularly important for a priest’s involvement in any clerical ritual, but especially the mass. Mirk advised his readers to don a stole before mass, and if they had forgotten, to go back and retrieve one.60 The stole was fundamental to the performance of the mass because it symbolized the charitable state of the priest, ready “to saffre maliciose wrongys”.61 Clerical vestments like the stole created such a strong ethereal identity that priests felt compelled to shed their liturgical garb before they took part in any secular matter. For example, the previously mentioned vicar of Flixton removed his vestments before coming down from the altar and attempting to pacify two quarreling parishioners in the nave.62 Remarkably, this priest chose safety from desecration over the advantageous sense of awe that his clothing would have inspired in the two disputants. Vestments were too expensive and too important to an effective performance of the mass to be placed in danger of pollution through bloodshed. The symbolism of liturgical vestments significantly affected the meaning of violence for the laity and clerical officials. While records of assault against clerics found in episcopal registers emphasized that the victims were noticeably clothed in religious garb in order to cast aside any claims of mistaken-identity,63 the laity seemed to have been more concerned with liturgical vestments rather than tonsure and gown as distinctive signs of sacred authority. A priest who wore vestments was no longer a simple man, instead, he was an untouchable holy one, standing apart from the temporal world and its pollution. The pervasiveness of this idea can be seen in potential acts of violence against pastors. In Somerset, 1397, a priest named William Bawe and some laity came armed into the parish church of Pawlett as David Usque was “vested for mass” and demanded that Usque step out of the pulpit, remove his vestments, and “talk” with them (in other words, meekly accept their extortion).64 Even when not lead by clerics, lay aggressors appear to have respected priests in liturgical clothing. In early fifteenth-century Cumberland, William de Egremont, parson of Workington, claimed that his enemies “did horribly assault [him in the church], of their own 60 Mirk, Instructions, p. 56. Durandus also emphasized that a priest must have his stole for any ritual from praying to baptizing except in urgent circumstances. See, Durandus, p. 192. 61 Speculum Christiani, p. 180. 62 STAC 2/8/153 63 See for instance: Registrum Roberti Hallum, pp. 220–221; Registrum Thome Spofford, pp. 9–10, 141–142; Registrum Iohannis Gilbert, pp. 12–15. 64 Select Cases in Chancery, pp. 34–35.

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wrong, and would have taken or killed [him] if he had not at that time been vested for divine service”.65 These cases show once again how parishioners came to link violence, whether any type or specific types such as bloodshed, with sin and sacrilege. A vested priest was just too sacred to be profaned by violence. As we have seen in the prior chapter, the ritual process of the mass also commanded the respect of lay aggressors. Every parishioner understood that during the mass, the celebrant was acting as God’s conduit. At that moment, the priest was Christ at the Last Supper and some aggressors were unwilling to play the part of Judas. To violate the solemnity of the mass and to desecrate the sacred being of the priest was beyond the imagination of these angry parishioners. In Lincolnshire, William Brown seems to have lamented both the sacred status and the timing of his intended victim when he came upon him celebrating the high mass. He declared to the vicar, William Mosse, “Thow art a reade headed foxxe; and iff thow wer a nother maner man I wold vse the after a nother maner”.66 More explicitly, around 1530 in Yorkshire, Oswald Wylstrop, knight, and Leonard Counstable, priest, violently quarreled over Counstable’s right to be parson of Hutton Wandesley. Having tried previously to overthrow and replace Counstable, Wylstrop angrily came into the church one Sunday and seeing that the parson was already saying the mass, yelled, “you horson prest if I hadd come betyme I would have naylyd thy cote to thy backe with my dagger.” Sure enough, Wylstrop attacked the priest after he had finished the mass.67 In tribal societies, the members of the community often regard the leaders of rituals as sacred beings who only return to their human state upon conclusion of the ceremony. Likewise, for Englishmen like Wylstrop, it was the priest’s function within the ritual of the mass, not his ordained status as a cleric, that transformed him into an untouchable.68 Thus, attacking a cleric after he had finished the mass was acceptable while attacking him during the service was not. We would do well to remember the actions of men like Wylstrop when analyzing acts of violence against clerics before and after the Reformation. 65

Ibid., pp. 55–56. Visitations in the Diocese of Lincoln, i, p. 139. 67 STAC 2/10/153. 68 See, C. Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System,” in Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. M. Banton (London, 1966), pp. 3–49; M. Gluckman, Essays on Ritual and Social Relations (Manchester, 1964), pp. 7–52; Victor Turner, The Ritual Process (London, 1969). 66

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On at least one occasion, lay aggressors took explicit care not to harm a priest simply because he was a cleric.69 In Yorkshire, 1524, Sir Robert Constable and a gang of armed men came into the homestead of Ralph Rokeby in order to kidnap Anne, Ralph’s wife. As they spread through the house with their weapons drawn, they came upon Thomas Morley, “prest and chapelyn” to Rokeby and caretaker of the manor. Armed and willing to intervene, Morley slammed a door shut on Anne’s wouldbe abductors and then, according to Rokeby, he defended himself against the attackers with “his swerd”. As his servants struck at the priest, Constable yelled, “Prest thou art a foole to resist me, for I assure the I have an hundreth persones abowt this house, and therfore it is best to yeld the, and make no more besynes.” With the help of his servants, Constable smashed the door open, beat up the chaplain and made off with Anne. In his defense, Constable charged that he was well aware that Morley was a priest but he was also aware that Morley had drawn his weapon. Therefore, he “commanded [his servant] to suffer Morley only to enter, and not to strike him, because he was a priest.” When Morley lunged at his servant, Constable commanded him to fight back with “flatlings,” blows with the flat side of the sword, “by reason whereof Morley had little or no harm.” Whether Constable had truly exercised such restraint in the heat of combat cannot be proven with certainty but his narrative nonetheless assumes that his listeners would have sympathized with his actions. In short, his narrative draws upon a believable and recognizable reality. Constable did not claim to have avoided violence altogether. Instead, he boasted of his via media, which allowed for violence but did not excessively harm the cleric to the point of pollution through bloodshed. Such a claim effectively encapsulates the laity’s attitude toward violence against priests. The sacredness of a priest, which was mostly manifested in his clothes and rituals, demanded respect, but the humanity of the priest, which was all too apparent in unjust tithes or armed blockades of a door, was an acceptable target of violence. Conclusion Just as the laity negotiated and slowly adopted connections between violence and impiety, so too did priests struggle to adopt their superiors’ association between spiritual purity and external conduct. Gender 69

STAC 2/29/44; Yorkshire Star Chamber Proceedings, (70), pp. 28–36.

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norms, class codes, economic aspirations, and duty to patrons compelled priests to use violence, or at least, to flaunt their willingness to do so by traveling with weapons and servants. Parishioners might accept such bellicose behavior, especially if it was done by family chaplains, but they were also quick to censure, or, ironically, act aggressively against parish priests whose excessive involvement in conflict polluted their identity as the conduits of God’s grace. Since a parish priest was responsible for the souls of many, parishioners tended to complain vociferously about his use of violence more than they did that of chaplains and unbeneficed clerics. Accordingly, parishioners also tended to limit their own use of aggression against parish priests unless their dispute had grown so heated that they no longer acknowledged the sacredness of their pastor. For parishioners, the priest was very much like their churches and churchyards—his identity, despite what religious leaders and writers wished, was more fluid than fixed. When decorated and involved in sacred ritual, he was not to be trifled with but when engaged in more worldly dealings, he was fair game. Moreover, just as a church was to be free of pollution, so too did parishioners expect their priests to be unsullied by bloodshed and sexuality so that the sacraments could be administered without any doubts about their efficacy. While some clerics certainly engaged in violence, the relative paucity of cases of aggression involving clerics in relation to the sheer number of parish priests and masses celebrated suggests that most priests were able to internalize the links between piety and external peacefulness. In general, clerics successfully labored to provide pastoral care without polluting their souls through violence. Correspondingly, most parishioners were never indicted for having attacked clerics because they revered their priests as holy men and never considered them to be proper targets of aggression. These unrecorded dutiful masses stand alongside the remarkable actions of those aggressors who recognized that, no matter how angry they were, they could not use violence unless their target “wer a nother maner man”.

CONCLUSION TO PART II: THE REALITY OF ‘CIVILITY’ SPURRED BY RELIGION An exploration of archival and printed sources reveals an assortment of moments when parishioners encouraged, negotiated or outright rejected spiritual values during the heat of conflict. Without quantitative evidence (which would always be unsound due to the nature of the records), it is difficult to assert with certainty whether by the eve of the Reformation, parishioners’ valuation of violence as a legitimate means of conflictresolution matched the depreciated assessment presented in parochial rituals, priestly admonitions and didactic texts. Certainly, like the generations before them and the generations after, parishioners on the eve of the Reformation did not fully embrace an alternative, spiritual based, code of honor founded entirely on restrained comportment, charitable demeanor and expressions of piety, nor did they fully accept the argument, made by their clerical and secular leaders alike, that all conflicts should be settled through the judicial system. To both the clergy and king’s chagrin, parishioners were still quite accepting of violent conduct in many situations as long as they were not on the receiving end of it. Yet, all in all, qualitative evidence strongly suggests that late medieval parishioners, whether out of favor or fear for the judgment of their peers and their God, did especially associate aggression among the sacred with impiety and did prize self-restraint before the holy as a mark of good repute. For one, jurors and litigants, who often failed to recount or record details of other acts of violence beyond the necessary legal formulae, took pains to cite violent offenders of the sacred, even for the audiences in ‘secular’ courts. Furthermore, an analysis of cases involving religious rituals or spaces also suggests that many parishioners amended their behavior during conflict or avoided violence altogether in order to minimize or elude the stigma of ill repute as well as the sin of sacrilege. Whether parishioners of a ‘lower sort’, such as the residents of Fleet Street, or those of a ‘better’ kind, like Agnes Paston, late medieval men and women evinced a common wariness about violence among the sacred; even if some elements of late medieval religion, most notably the Eucharist, were far more effective than others at suppressing aggression, encouraging self-restraint and provoking a reconsideration of the merit of violent conduct. Lastly, the diction and conduct of antagonists and antagonized implicitly and explicitly convey the general

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attitude of the most numerous ‘third party’, the parishioners who heard about or observed an act of violence among the sacred. They did not tolerate and certainly did not venerate aggression that in their eyes was injudicious, at best, and demonic, at worst. The lessons of their faith about fearing God and prizing charity had palpably affected their attitude toward a precious prerogative, violent agency. In many instances, parishioners, whether lay or clerical, acted as fervent proponents of peaceful and reverent restraint because these two aspects helped to preserve the purity of the objects, rituals and individuals necessary for salvation. Over the years and indeed, over the centuries, as church teaching and public pressure mounted in terms of maintaining a composed and charitable demeanor while standing in the church or churchyard, attending mass, receiving communion, participating in procession or just conducting daily activities, all-too-often extroverted parishioners were compelled to consider how the intent of their actions impacted their spiritual state, rather than just how such actions affected their economic or social position. As they developed such introspective tendencies, the problematic nature of their use of violence became more noticeable. In short, as parishioners more strongly equated expositions of proper piety with both upright repute and the integrity of the sacred, they would have felt quite compelled to marginalize their acceptance of conflict within their community; an incremental, but remarkable, waning of the normative status of violence. The recognition that in some circumstances the use of violence was illegitimate, ineffective and sinful is a fundamental step in the ‘civilizing process’ for such recognition reveals that the shift in attitude toward extroverted behavior and violent agency, which Elias largely credited to humanism, was catalyzed earlier and more extensively by religious beliefs. Parishioners’ beliefs about the necessity of charity, the propriety of self-restraint and the importance of respect for God and ‘God’s things’ helped forge a negotiated sense of social discipline, still rough when compared to an ideal world of Christian fellowship, yet still remarkable when compared to the rough reality of late medieval life.

CONCLUSION

FINDING RELIGION IN RESTRAINT If it were not for the Church of Christ there would be nothing to restrain the criminal from evil-doing, no real chastisement for it afterwards; none that is but the mechanical punishment spoken of just now, which in the majority of cases only embitters the heart; and not the real punishment, the only effectual one, the only deterrent and softening one, which lies in the recognition of sin by conscience. . . . Why . . . all these sentences of exile with hard labour, and formerly with flogging also, reform no one, and what’s more deter hardly a single criminal…. If anything does preserve society, even in our time, and does regenerate and transform the criminal, it is only the law of Christ speaking in his conscience. It is only by recognizing his wrong doing as a son of a Christian society—that is, of the Church—that he recognizes his sin against society—that is, against the Church. –Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov1

So, how have we come to disdain, decry and dehumanize violent individuals, when for so many centuries, we bestowed honor and glory upon such persons? A proper answer to this question must begin with a discussion of the influence of religion and religious institutions, especially the influence of faith at its most basic level. Slowly over the course of medieval history, Christianity, as its ideas were expressed and received at the parish level, goaded parishioners, for whom violence was a normative part of life, to consider violence against their fellow believers or against the holy materials of their faith as not only sinful, but also markedly dishonorable. The rituals, sermons and laws of late medieval religion reminded parishioners that they should not let contemporary norms, which lauded the use of violence and concern for external appearance, go unquestioned. Parishioners’ recognition of the ‘problem of violence’ is reflected in their uneasiness with some acts of aggression and vengeance, particularly those involving the sacred, for they understood well that protracted and unrepentant impiety meant sure censure by their neighbors and, in the end, damnation by God.

1

F. Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. C. Garnett (New York, 1945), p. 72.

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While most can easily fathom trepidation over a tainted reputation as a motive, in order to fathom why warnings about divine doom spurred parishioners to oppose or, at the very least, question contemporary norms which condoned the use of violence, we must recognize the extraordinary depth of their spirituality, a depth which was in part created by a distinct familiarity with the struggles of life and death. Late medieval parishioners’ acute awareness of their mortality incubated their anxiety over the impact of their actions and attitudes on their spiritual worthiness for divine reward or damnation. While some parishioners evinced their anxiety through sporadic or even fleeting recognition of the ideals of charity and restraint, as this study has shown, many others through their words and deeds outright promoted spiritual ideals as well as notions of honor and piety that denigrated usually laudable belligerency. As the elder from the Brothers Karamazov understood, fear of ‘crime and punishment’ is a byproduct of the development of a religious conscience. Medieval Christianity certainly contributed to society’s alteration of attitude toward violence, so crucial to the ‘civilizing process’, but it did not do so through a reigning in of passions by the development of pure reason; there is no unadulterated platonic ideal to find here. In other words, the ‘civilizing process’ should not be seen as the long, slow triumph of reason over emotions. It is not a teleological march toward Kantian ethics. By checking one emotion, violent sentiment, and its expression, extroverted conduct, with another, fear of a mainly suprarational God and his anointed persons, rites and objects, and its expression, self-restraint, the late medieval church was able to influence a great portion of the population—even if, by the standards of a pure Platonist, most of those influenced were still living ‘in the cave’. Indeed, Christianity’s influence on parishioners’ problematization of violent agency entailed at least two stages. One, which we have seen in this study, is the marginalization of violent action and sentiment primarily from sacred spaces and moments. The second stage began in the medieval period but increased in intensity in the early modern for it entailed the widening of parishioners’ concern for pious comportment, and hence self-restraint, into more worldly settings.2 As late medieval parishioners internalized notions of proper behavior among the holy, 2

Along with benefiting from the catalysts of self-restraint discussed in this study, Protestant reformers concern for ‘godly’ [restrained] conduct melded with other preexisting trends. Most notably, S. McShefferey and S. Bardsley have shown that in fifteenth and early sixteenth-century England, a ‘bourgeoisie’ conception of honorable and

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for the benefit of both their souls and their temporal prestige, some of them must have begun to question contemporary norms of behavior outside of churches and religious rites. If they took seriously the call for charitable and reserved conduct among the sacred, as the court cases and letters suggest, then, at some point, their conflicts with fellow parishioners outside of religious settings must have become quite glaring; perhaps so glaring that some parishioners avoided physical and verbal violence in their secular affairs so that their peaceful conduct among the holy did not appear a sham and gross hypocrisy to their neighbors and most important, to God who held their souls in the balance. This emphasis on restrained comportment outside of sacred settings would grow stronger in the Reformation as Protestant leaders cut the cordon sanitaire by arguing that no material object or time was more holy than another. The comportment and demeanor so desired by late medieval parishioners among the sacred became more desirable in all settings and relations; thus explaining the lexical early modern catchall for proper comportment and conduct, ‘godliness’. The equation between violence and shameful impiety, whether merely for sacred settings or in others, marks a significant step toward the repression and stigmatization of interpersonal violence in wider society; for what was then dubbed impiety is now dubbed pathology—the transition has taken a long time but the two are certainly along the same path. Of course, this study does not argue that Christianity, as defined and promoted by conscientious clerics and parishioners, was entirely successful in debasing the use of violence for the resolution of interpersonal conflict. As the court cases reveal, when the demands of faith required a leap, parishioners and pastors did not always jump, at least not as high as required. They often negotiated between the demands of their faith and contemporary norms that mandated contradictory conduct. Moreover, just as Elias proposed that the ‘civilizing process’ began first with the upper levels of society, so too did the religious element in this process. The middle and upper levels of society, who, as parish and judicial officials, often played a vital part in clerical and royal efforts to appropriate violent agency, most likely adopted the ideology which linked emotional and physical restraint to one’s reputation for piety and honor more quickly than the lower levels of society because, as Elias himself has shameful comportment which emphasized self-restraint in speech (especially for women) and sexual conduct (even for men) was gaining traction. See, McSheffrey, Marriage; Bardsley, Venomous Tongues.

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shown, the very fora in which upper and middle class parishioners competed for honor and shame were changing dramatically in this period. On the other hand, religious media that promoted the spiritual ideals of charity and self-restraint reached far more Englishmen and women than changing notions of military valor or humanist lessons on table manners and family life ever would or could. While one need only cast a simple glance over the day’s newspaper to see that violence is still used to solve both personal and national conflicts and thus the struggle to ‘civilize’ continues, the teachings and ideals of Christianity certainly abetted the process through which most modern acts of violence are seen as morally unacceptable. By convincing many parishioners that violence was nothing more than demonic and shameful impiety, Christianity plowed the same field which the early modern State and sixteenthcentury humanist educators would nurture and harvest. While this study has shown that late medieval Christianity, through manifold media available to and often supported by parishioners, prompted society to at the very least question and, at times, abstain from the use of violence, the influence of religion on peacemaking, channeling agonistic impulses and debasing violent agency certainly began long before the ‘autumn of the Middle Ages’. Indeed, a study of this influence in other centuries, venues or even in other faiths, whether it be eleventh-century monasteries or the eighteenth-century parishes, Judaism or Islam, would significantly aid our understanding of the role which a religion plays in shaping a society’s conception and interpretation of violence. Moreover, as with most religions, lessons against conflict with those within one’s faith are often developed and heeded long before arguments for harmony with those of a different faith. For instance, the denigration of violence between Christians studied in such detail here often took root at the same time that clerics preached for the use of violence against heretics, apostates and infidels at home and abroad. What requires more exploration are the links or tensions between Christian ideologies that lionized violence against other faiths and the concurrent teachings about charity and harmony illuminated in this study.3 When, if at all, did teachings about charity and self-restraint 3 While much work still needs to be done, there have been some significant studies of Christian attitudes toward the use of violence against other faiths. See for example, B.Z. Kedar, Crusade and Mission: European Approaches toward the Muslims (Princeton, 1988); C.J. Nederman, A World of Difference: European Discourses of Toleration, c.1100–1550 (University Park, 2000). For England, a recent study by Alexandra Walsham has helped to advance an understanding of interdenominational coexistence and conflict. See, A. Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500–1700 (Manchester, 2006).

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compel clerics or laity to question the piety and honor of acts of violence against ‘nonbelievers’? If they did question the merit of interfaith aggression, what factors made them do so? Were only radical sects associated with complete pacifism? Finding a complete answer to these questions remains a challenge for future studies. There is more to do before we fully understand both the positive and negative impact of religious beliefs on the ‘civilizing process’. However, the starting point of these future efforts is the realization that spiritual ideals can indeed have a discernible influence on attitudes toward the use of aggression. Religion can sometimes be more civilized than the society that seeks to practice it. It first works to create a set of expectations and then, ever so slowly, as its members negotiate its lofty intentions, creates a nuanced reality. Having conceded this point, let us conclude by paraphrasing the dismissal in the liturgy of many Christian denominations, ‘this study is ended, go in peace’.

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INDEX

anthropologists, studies of violence (see violence) arbitration 108 n.5, 124–126, 142–143, 165 Armburgh (family) 128 Avalos, Hector 2 n.3, 3, 4 n.9 Bardsley, Sandra 176 n.2 bell towers 67–68 body (human), and the sacred 36, 55, 71–72, 82–83, 86, 95, 97 association with pews 114 Book of Vices and Virtues 29, 34 Bossy, John 4 n.8, 17 n.39, 21–22, 27, 79, 108, 150 Brigden, Susan 107 Brothers Karamazov 175–176 Butler, Sara 30 n.23 Carpenter, Johanna 148 Caterall, Laurence 107, 132, 144–145 censure (see also chastisement) 6, 56, 121, 140, 143, 148, 151, 172, 175 Chamber, Margaret 148 chantries 18, 61–66, 72, 112–113, 159, 163 charity, ideal of 4 n.9, 10, 12, 23–24, 27, 33–34, 38, 39–74 passim, 77–81, 86–90, 93–96, 99–103, 108, 110, 116–121, 124–126, 130–131, 133–137, 139, 141, 144, 147–149, 151–152, 163–165, 168, 174, 176, 178 chastisement 29, 35–36, 38, 100, 141, 144, 148, 175 Christ, portrayals of 25, 26–28, 33, 35, 38 as merciful victim 27, 96 as warrior 27–28 Christianity, modern scholarship on violence 1–12 role in late medieval society 15–18 churches (see sacred space) churching, ritual of 70–72 citation (see ecclesiastical courts) civility 4, 11, 103, 173

civilizing process 5, 7, 10–11, 103, 108, 151–152, 174, 176–179 community, sense of 10 n.30, 14, 16 n.37, 24, 33, 36, 40–41, 45, 59 n.74, 62–63, 65, 70, 72, 85, 126, 140, 43, 149, 163, 170, 174 confession 9, 78, 80, 92, 95, 99, 101, 149–150 Constable, Sir Robert 171 crusade 3, 11, 21–22, 25–26, 33, 39 Curley, John, constable of Gamlingay parish, 126–127, 143 damnation 9, 38, 52, 80, 99, 102, 137, 175–176 Davis, Natalie Zemon 17 n.38, 39 n.1, 132 Dawkins, Richard 3 dedication, ritual of 41–48, 50–51, 53, 54 anniversary of 54–56 defamation 36, 96, 108, 119–121 Delumeau, Jean 8–9, 84 n.29, 102, 151 Dives et Pauper 30, 32, 34, 86–87, 95, 98, 139, 162 Dobell (family) 114–115, 133 n.68 donations, as expressions of unity 65–66, 70–71, 74, 124 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 175 Duffy, Eamon 10, 17–18, 78 n.4, 94 Durandus, William 41–42, 52 n.47, 53, 54 n.51, 58–59, 75 ecclesiastical courts 30, 35–37, 50, 107–109, 120–123, 132, 149–150, 158 citations/summons of 37, 121–123, 160 punishments of 36–37, 50, 120–121 Elias, Norbert 5–9, 174, 177 Elys, Geoffrey, vicar of Thatcham 153, 158 Eucharist, and need for charity 12, 23, 77–81, 89–90 dread of 77, 81–84, 89–90

194 influence on violence 12, 77–84, 139–152, 173–174 and need for restrained comportment 81–84, 107, 143–147, 151–152 as a mobile sacred force 90, 147 excommunication 36, 56, 87, 121, 151 fear, as motivation for restraint 6, 8–9, 48, 55, 58–59, 83–84, 101–103, 126, 129–130, 140, 143, 145–147, 151–152, 173–174, 176 fellowship 4, 45, 81, 94, 119 n.28, 124, 31, 136, 151, 174 Festial of John Mirk (see Mirk, John) Fifth Commandment 93 Fleet Street, riot 146–147 fraternities (see guilds) French, Katherine L. 40 n.3, 60–61, 66 n.116, 67, 69 n.129, 72, 73 n.145, 115 n.11 Freud, Sigmund 3 n.6, 5 Gargrave church, violence within 107, 132, 144 Gatell, Robert, and violence in churchyard 130–131 Girard, René 2, 3 n.6, 10 n.30, 135 n.71 Gloys, James, chaplain of the Pastons 161, 163 God, as a model of forgiveness 53, 96–99 as a violent/vengeful force 25–38, 43–48, 52–54, 80, 82, 89, 96–97, 99, 102–103, 128, 135, 175 godliness, notion of 4, 35, 141, 176 n.2, 177 Grace, Walter, vicar, assault on 133–134 Gratian 48, 86 Great Curse 56, 88–89 guilds 18, 72–73, 99, 118, 124 guilt culture 8, 102, 151 Hanawalt, Barbara 13 n.32, 22 n.5, 108 n.5 Handlyng of Synne 29–30, 94, 97 Hayes, parish 122–123, 128 n.51, 129, 155, 167–168 Henry V, King of England 1 n.1, 28, 32–33, 156 n.12, 162

INDEX

heraldry 27, 60, 62, 64–65 heresy (see also Lollardy) 4, 26, 33, 38, 86, 93, 125, 152, 178 Hobbes, Thomas 1 Holme, Robert 142–143 holy (blessed or pax) bread 66, 69–71, 79, 117–118 honor (see also piety) 1, 5–14, 16, 21, 23, 27, 29–31, 35, 36–37, 40, 45, 51–53, 56, 60–61, 63, 65, 67–68, 74, 82, 88, 91–92, 94, 96–99, 101–102, 108, 110, 112–113, 115, 117, 120, 121 n.33, 123, 125–126, 132–133, 143, 145, 149, 151–153, 159, 163, 173, 175–179 Ingram, Martin 99 n.37, 108 Injunctions (Royal, 1536) 109, 116 Instructions to Parish Priests (see Mirk, John) interpersonal conflict, stages of 92–93 Jacob’s Well 31, 35, 92–93 James, Mervyn 13 n.32, 22 n.5, 88 Kant, Immanuel 30, 176 Kempe, Margery 32, 43, 111, 118 King’s Bench, Court of 109, 110 n.9, 141–142, 145 knighthood, rituals of 26 Christ and (see Christ, as warrior) Kümin, Beat 22 n.5, 40 n.3, 61, 73 Lacy, Edmund, Bishop of Exeter 42 n.6, 44, 49 law (see ecclesiastical courts and litigation) Lay Folks Mass Book 79, 82 Lestrange (family) 115 litigation, attitudes toward 13 n.32, 14, 26, 30, 35, 37, 120, 123–124, 128, 132–133, 159, 162, 173 Lollardy 10, 26, 33, 79, 83 n.25, 144 n.21, 146 Love, Nicholas 83 Maddern, Philippa 13 n.32, 27–28, 34, 135 n.71 Man, John 130–131 McHardy. A.K. 156 Meyerson, Mark D. 6 n.17 Mirk, John 30–31, 33, 55, 68, 81, 87–89, 92, 95, 97, 169 Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ (see Love, Nicholas)

INDEX

Moberlay, Thomas 125–126 Morpath, Thomas 125–126 parish, modern scholars’ conception of 40–41 parochial media (see specific media such as Eucharist, sacred space, Mirk, priests etc.) Paston (family) 35 n.46, 61 n.82, 114 n.9, 119, 128, 140, 161, 163, 173 Pater Noster 94–96 pax, passing of 69–70, 79, 109, 117–118, 139, 142, 151 Peace and Truce of God 21, 147 peacemaking, rituals of (see arbitration) pews (see also sacred space, seating within) 48, 60–61, 65, 70, 109, 112–116, 133 n.68, 142 pollution, notion of 33, 36, 48–50, 52–54, 58, 71, 74–75, 79, 84, 86–87, 89, 102–103, 116, 124, 131–132, 134–135, 152, 169, 171–172 Percy, Richard 107, 132, 144–147 Percy, Thomas, baron of Egremont, 145 Phythian-Adams, Charles 13 n.32, 92, 162 Piers Plowman 48 piety, and reputation 10, 12, 24, 29, 65, 73–74, 82, 94 n.15, 97–100, 102, 108, 114, 116–118, 121, 123, 125–126, 128, 132, 137, 141, 144, 151, 153, 168, 171–179 Porter (family) 116, 133 n.68 prayer (private), efficacy of 94–96 priests, as agents of violence ch. 7 passim clothing 168–171 God’s kin 78, 89–90 ideal qualities of 77–78, 84–90 irregularity of 86, 164 lay attitudes toward 163–172 attempts at peacemaking 165–166 musters of 156–157 as sacred spaces 172 as servants/use of servants 159–163 as victims of violence ch. 5–7 passim Psalms, Seven Penitential 43, 45 n.23, 46 reconciliation, ritual of 27, 42 n.5, 48–54, 68, 71, 135 Reformation, The 16 n.36, 37, 17, 22 n.5, 60, 61 n.81, 63, 109, 112,

195

127, 134, 147, 153, 161, 170, 173, 176–177 revenge (see vengeance) Richmond, Colin 112 Rogation 68–69, 74, 117–118 rood screens 59, 64 sacred space (see also dedication, pollution and reconciliation) divisions of 58–64 execution of writs within 126–127 influence on attitudes toward violence 39–76, 102–103, 107–108, 111–138, 173–174 qualities of 39–68, 73–75, 89–90 restraint within 39–76, 102–103, 107, 124–138, 145, 165–166, 173–174 as sanctuary 42–43, 56–58, 74–75, 129 seating within (see also pews) 58–61, 74, 113–115 saints Andrew 30 Augustine 25 lives of 37–38 Thomas 30 sacrilege 10, 26, 33, 49–50, 58, 101, 123, 128, 131–132, 135–137, 150–151, 164, 166–167, 170, 173 sacring 60, 63, 78–79, 81, 89, 102, 144, 146, 149 Shakespeare, William 1, 21 n.2 Sharpe, James 13 n.32, 35, 108 Slade, Edward 126–127, 129, 143–144 slander (see also defamation) 14, 36–37, 92, 94, 115 n.14, 121, 123, 125–126, 131 n.62, 140, 150–151, 166 sin, correction of (see also reconciliation) 8–9, 25–37, 38, 50, 54, 96–97, 99, 101, 127, 135, 140, 144, 148, 151, 164, 175 Southgate, Walter 149–151 Speculum Christiani 87, 91 Stanbury, John, Bishop of Hereford 50, 54 Stanshaw, John 121–123, 153, 158, 160 Star Chamber, Court of 14 n.32, 60–61, 109, 110 n.9, 118, 121–122, 126, 140 Swanson, R.N. 153

196

INDEX

tangibility, of the sacred 39, 57, 74, 103, 147 Thatcham, parish 121, 153, 160 Thorngumbald, dispute over 142–143 transubstantiation, doctrine of 75, 77–78, 139, 146–147 Trussel, Sir John 115 Tyrwhitt, Robert 142–143 Tyting, Nicolas 148–149 Vaughan, Roger 133–135 vengeance 4, 23, 25–32, 34 n.40, 37–38, 44, 46, 53, 79, 87, 89, 91–92, 94–97, 99, 103, 119–120, 130, 148, 175 violence, anthropologists’ studies of 1 n.2, 6, 11, 14 n.32 clerical condemnation of passim demonic nature of 28, 32, 34, 38, 44, 47, 50–51, 68, 174, 178

in didactic texts and sermons 91–100 divine nature of 25–38 as God’s prerogative (see God, as a violent/vengeful force) in interfaith conflict (see also crusade) 4, 11, 178–179 late medieval attitude toward 6–10, 12–15 modern attitude toward 1–2 Warde, Randolph 130–131 Williamson, Sir Robert, vicar of Paston 128, 140 Worthby, Thomas 54 wrath 26–35, 37–38, 43–45, 47–48, 52, 80–82, 91–97, 101, 115 n.13, 135, 151 Wylstrop, Sir Oswald 143, 170