Chapter 6 - Religion, humanism, arts and learning Flashcards
what were guilds and confraternities?
voluntary associations of individuals created to promote works of christian charity or devotion.
how many parish churches were there?
over 8000
what was the focus of religious experience?
the parish church
why was the church often the centre of the community?
the church provided the focus of popular entertainment. its festivals, which were closely linked to the agricultural year, provided much needed enjoyment and 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 make 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.
what does erastian mean?
the view that the state should have authority over the church
what is a diocese?
an area under the pastoral care of a bishop in the christian church.
what role did the papacy play within the English Catholic Church?
the pope was the supreme head of the church but they did little else and the king was firmly in control.
how was the Church of England administered?
through two province (Canterbury and york) and through 17 dioceses.
what was common for senior churchmen to do?
to enjoy positions of significant influence and power within the kingdom.
during the medieval period where were most senior figures in the church drawn from?
the ranks of the aristocracy.
who were the two churchmen who exercised the most power under Henry VII?
John Morton and Richard Fox
why did churchmen often have important political roles?
senior churchmen were generally highly competent and conscientious professionals, often with legal training, who performed their duties effectively.
what does grace mean?
the pure state a soul needed to be in to enter heaven.
what is purgatory?
in traditional Catholic thinking, purgatory was the state in which the souls of the dead were purged of their sins before they could enter the kingdom of heaven.
what framework did the church provide?
the church provided a framework for how an individual thought, reasoned and behaved.
how did people try and reach heaven?
by observing as many of the seven sacraments as possible.
what is transubstantiation?
the Christian belief that the substance of bread and wine completely changed into the substance if christ’s body and blood by a validly ordained priest during the consecration at Mass.
what was the centre of the catholic religious experience?
the mass
why was the mass important? (two reasons)
- it was a sacrifice performed by a priest on behalf of the community.
- it was a sacred ritual in which the whole community participated.
what is corpus christi?
literally meaning the ‘body of christ’, Corpus Christi is a feast of the Catholic Church which celebrates the ‘blessed sacrament’ and whose importance developed from the thirteenth century with the increasing emphasis on transubstantiation.
what is a benefactor?
a person who makes a charitable donation
what are chantries?
chapels where masses for the souls of the dead took place
what does intercession mean?
the action of saying a prayer on behalf of another; in traditional catholic thinking it was the role of the priest to intervene with God on behalf of an individual.
why would the dying often leave money to the church?
to enhance the beauty of worship, to ensure the remembrance of the benefactor and to reduce the time the benefactor would spend in purgatory.
what would benefactors often leave money to?
chantries
what was the central role of the chantry priest according to Eamon Duffy?
‘the central function of a chantry priest was intercession for the soul of his patron’.
what is an example of communal religious influences?
confraternity (also known as a religious guild or lay brotherhood)
what did confraternities do?
they gathered together, usually in association with a parish church, to provide collectively for the funeral costs of members, to pay chaplains for masses for their members, to help maintain church fabric, to make charitable donations and to socialise.
how did benefactors see their donations?
as a way of benefiting the religious experience for themselves and for their community.
what is an example of just how popular guilds were?
the small rural parish of Salle in Norfolk had seven
what did some guilds do?
some 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.
what is a pilgrimage?
a journey to a place of religious devotion
what was rogation Sunday (rogantide)
the whole community would ‘beat the bounds’ of the parish (walking around the parish borders to pray for its protection), carrying banners and the parish cross to ward off evil spirits and reinforce the parish property.
what did rogation Sunday emphasise?
the importance of the parish as a key focus of local community in the lives of ordinary people at the time.
what is the estimate for the number of monks in the UK by c1500?
around 1% of adult males
what was the oldest and most common religious order?
the benedictines
where did a large proportion of monks from the larger houses come from?
the wealthier parts of society.
where did orders of friars tend to recruit from?
lower down the social scale
what were the three main orders of friars?
Dominicans, the Franciscans and the Augustinians
why did nunneries receive less prestige?
they were mostly populated by women deemed unsuitable for marriage
what is heresy?
the denial of the validity of the key doctrines of the catholic church
what is anticlericalism?
opposition to the church’s role in political and other non-religious matters.
what does laity mean?
refers collectively to those who were neither priests nor members of a religious order.
what did lollards place stress on?
understanding the bible and therefore favoured its translation to English
what did lollards believe?
they were sceptical about transubstantiation and the principles of the Eucharist, and considered the Catholic Church to be corrupt. also denied the idea of the special status of the priesthood.
why was lollardism in decline and geographically restricted?
because of the failed lollard uprising of 1414
what was the renaissance?
a cultural and intellectual movement which beginning in Italy, emphasised a revival of interest in classical learning and the arts.
what did humanists believe?
they were concerned with establishing the reliability of latin and greek translations in order to purify the ideas of religious texts. humanists were Catholics and particularly believed in the notion of free will.
who were the earliest humanist scholars of significance in England?
William Grocyn and Thomas Linacre
who was John colet?
he was a humanist, his one surviving sermon is highly critical of the clergy, this had led many historians to assume that his views foreshadow those who favoured the growth of protestantism.
at the time of Henry VII’s reign, had humanism and the renaissance had a significant impact?
no, English intellectual life continued to be dominated by the traditional medieval scholastic philosophy.
what is scholasticism?
a system of philosophical analysis in the medieval period.
what did ‘song schools’ and ‘reading schools’ do?
they provided elementary education to the very young
where did ‘secondary’ education take place?
grammar schools
how many grammar schools were founded between 1460 and 1509?
53
for ordinary people, what did their access to education depend on?
where they lived
when was the beginnings of the humanistic approach to teaching latin seen?
the 1480’s
why did Cambridge found more colleges in this period than Oxford?
it benefited from the generosity of Lady Margaret Beaufort who founded Christ’s college and St John’s college
what was the most important popular art form?
drama
how were plays sometimes presented?
in association with church ale festivals, e.g. at Bishop’s Stortford in Hertfordshire in 1490
what were the most famous dramas?
the mystery plays performed at the feasts of Corpus Christi by the guilds of towns and cities such as York, Lincoln, Wakefield and coventry.
what was the importance of plays?
they set out straightforward moral and religious messages for the moral improvement of the audiences.
how did choral music undergo the beginnings of a renaissance?
single-line chants gave way to polyphonic choral music.
what is the most important surviving source for Choral music?
the Eton choir book, compiled around 1505, it was a collection of 93 separate musical compositions.
what was the significance of the two most important composers in the Eton choirbook?
they both had very close links with the political establishment of Henry VII’s reign
what does secular mean?
something not connected with religious or spiritual matters
what does gothic mean in relation to architecture?
a style of architecture prevalent in Western Europe in the twelfth to sixteenth centuries, characterised by pointed arches and large windows; English gothic architecture is divided into Early English, Decorated and perpendicular categories.
what does chivalric mean?
refers to the code of conduct for medieval knights of the realm; the code of chivalry emphasised bravery, military skill, generosity in victory, piety and courtesy to women.
what was the perpendicular style of architecture?
the dominant form of church architecture in England from the later fourteenth, to the early sixteenth, century, so-called because of its emphasis on vertical lines; the most famous perpendicular building is probably the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge.
what is the vast number of churches built in the gothic perpendicular style an indication of?
the scale of investment which took place.
what was the new industry of printing concerned with?
it was still only concerned with traditional medieval culture, for example Chaucer’s Canterbury tales
when was the first printing press established in England?
1476 by William Caxton.
how had tastes in art and literature changed by Henry’s death in 1509?
humanist influences had reached England.
how did the historian Jack Lander describe the emergence of humanist literature over traditional medieval literature?
the ‘humanist contempt for chivalric literature’
how did the speed of cultural change appear in Henry VII’s reign?
quite slow
how was the church seen during Henry VII’s reign?
positive, effective at fulfilling people’s spiritual needs and in little need of reform
