Chapter 6 Flashcards
Status of Catholicism in the country at this time
During the reign of Henry VIl all English people belonged, at least theoretically, to the Catholic Church and were under the jurisdiction of the Pope in Rome. Prayers in the Mass were always said for the Pope.
Role of Churches in local communities
Lives were lived and regulated according to the Church’s major ceremonies.
The parish church, of which there were over 8000, was the focus of religious experience. The church provided the focus of popular entertainment. Its festivals, which were closely linked to the agricultural year, provided much-needed enjoyment and its guilds and confraternities offered charity, good fellowship and the chance for ordinary people to contribute to the good of their local community.
How did the Church help social control be maintained?
The Church made it easier for the social and political elites to maintain social control through its encouragement of good behaviour, obedience and stress on the values of community. It also provided employment opportunities and, for a few like Cardinal Wolsey, the opportunity to advance themselves socially through the attainment of high office in Church and State.
What were guilds and confraternities?
voluntary associations of individuals created to promote works of Christian charity or devotion
What was the political role of the Church?
The political role of the Church was significant, both in terms of international relations and in domestic matters. The highest position in the Church was held by the Pope in Rome, who not only wielded considerable spiritual power but was also the head of a substantial state in northern Italy.
Power balance between Pope and king and example?
It is typical both of Henry VI’s carefulness and the Pope’s influence that he sought, through Thomas Morton, a dispensation to marry Elizabeth of York. On the other hand, successive popes did little at this time to interfere directly with the running of the Church in England; the relationship between Church and Stafe was Brastian. The king was firmly in control and popes were generally eager to grant the favours demanded by the king.
The papacy had no objection to the way in which Henry used the wealth of the Church to reward those churchmen to whom he had given high
political office.
Info about clergy in political positions and examples :
It was common for senior clergy to participate at a high level in the political process. During much of the medieval period it was normal for the most senior figures within the Church in England to be drawn from the senior ranks of the aristocracy. Margaret Beaufort’s great uncle, for example, had been a cardinal and bishop of Winchester. The two churchmen who exercised most power under Henry VII were John Morton
and Richard Fox.
Some offices of State, especially that of the chancellor (the highest adviser to the king), were monopolised by clergymen. The most senior clergymen were, on the whole, highly competent and conscientious professionals, often with legal training, who performed their duties to both Church and State effectively. The abbots, who were heads of the wealthiest religious houses, ehered membership of the House of Lords with the bishops. They also had to possess a range of management and administrative skills to keep their complex Organisations running efectively, as well as demonstrating the spirituaity necessary to maintain the reputation of their houses. Not all heads of house lived up to all of these demands, and criticisms of the monastic life were increasing.
Spiritual role of local Parishes
The parish church was central to religious experience and this period was, according to Eamon Duffy, emphatically the age of the parish church and of those who worshipped there. The church provided the outward structures of community life. A late-medieval community was a religious one, which believed that the prayers made together, as part of the collective unit of the parish, were more powerful than those from the individual alone. The church provided a framework for controlling how an individual thought, reasoned and behaved. Its function was not only to spread and uphold Christian teaching, it also offered various ways by which an individual could acquire grace in order to reach heaven and minimise the time a soul would spend in purgatory.
What were the seven sacraments?
• Baptism, which welcomed the newly born infant into the community.
• Confirmation, which marked the transition from childhood to adulthood.
• Marriage, in which the community could witness two individuals pledging themselves to each other.
• Anointing of the sick, which prepared the dying for their passage into the next world.
• Penance, during which the individual sought God’s forgiveness for the sins which s/he had committed.
Holy Orders, the process by which the priest himself became empowered to deliver the sacraments (rituals) to others.
•Eucharist, in which church members received Christ’s body and blood in the form of bread and wine to be nourished physically and spiritually and brought closer to God.
Importance of the Catholic Mass
The central religious experience of the Catholic Church came with the Mass, during which the priest would perform the sacrament of Holy Communion, also known as the Eucharist (thanksgiving). The climax of this ceremony was the point where the priest consecrated the bread and the wine (i.e. declared it to be sacred). Catholics believed that at the point of consecration, the bread and the wine were transformed figuratively and literally into the body and blood of Christ, a process known as transubstantiation. The priest consumed both the bread and the wine; lay members of the congregation
For which two reasons was Mass important?
- It was a sacrifice performed by the priest on behalf of the community
- It was a sacred ritual in which the whole community participated
Laity’s investment into churches
The communal aspects of late-medieval religion were emphasised by the investment which many lay people made into their parish churches. In addition to funding the lavish rebuilding of many churches, it was largely lay people who paid for the objects which accompanied services. The dying would often leave money to the parish church, which had a triple purpose: to enhance the beauty of worship, to ensure the remembrance of the benefacto. and to reduce the time the benefactor would spend in purgatory.
Laity’s investment into Chantries
Benefactors would leave money for the foundation of chantries. Usually chantries were financed from property bequeathed in someone’s will for that purpose. According to Eamon Duffy, ‘the central function of a chantry pries was intercession for the soul of his patron? Benefactors saw their donations as a way of benefiting the religious experience of themselves and their community. This is important for understanding why the dissolution of the chantries by Henry VIII caused so much distress.
Info about religious guilds
Another significant expression of communal religious influences was the confraternity (also known as a religious guild or lay brotherhood. These were groups of men (and sometimes women) who gathered together, usually in association with the parish church, to provide collectively for the funeral cost of members, to pay chaplains for Masses for their members, to help maintain church fabric, to make charitable donations and to socialise. Guilds were enormously popular (the small rural parish of Saile in Norfolk had seven).
They also varied greatly in size and wealth. Wealthier guilds could be sources of local patronage and power. Some of them ran schools and almshouses, maintained bridges, highways and sea walls, or, as in Louth in Lincolnshire, paid for expensive projects such as the building of the spire at the parish church. Many parishes in the south and the south Midlands raised funds through church-ale festivals, which involved much drinking and a range of entertainments. Ale made and donated for the event was the chief drink.
Importance of pilgrimages
Religion’s social role was evident in a number of other ways. Going on pilgrimage was another way in which the individual could gain relief from purgatory. A pilgrimage could involve visiting the tomb of a saint, such as Thomas Becket at Canterbury, or a shrine built where there had been a reported visitation of the Virgin Mary, such as at Walsingham in Norfolk.
There is evidence to suggest that England’s primary pilgrimage site, the tomb of Thomas Becket at Canterbury, was losing some of its popularity, and some late-medieval religious writers such as Thomas à Kempis were critical of pilgrimage as a practice. However, the vast number of pilgrimage sites made access relatively easy, and the practice of pilgrimage was, in Eamon Duffy’s description, exuberant. A simpler form of pilgrimage happened on Rogation Sunday (Rogationtide) when the whole community would ‘beat the bounds of the parish (walking around the parish boundaries to pray for its protection), carrying banners and the parish cross to ward off evil spirits and reinforce the parish property. This event emphasised the importance of the parish as the key focus of local community in the lives of ordinary people at the time.