Henry VII - Religious

Question 1

How did the church change ordinary people’s lives?

Answer 1

Focus on religious experience
Provided popular entertainment - festivals linked to agricultural year
Employment opportunities Made it easier for political elites to maintain social control

Question 2

How many Parish churches were there?

Answer 2

Over 8000

Question 3

What was the relationship between church and state?

Answer 3

Erastian

Question 4

What was the political role of the church?

Answer 4

Henry used wealth of church to reward churchmen
Senior ranks within the church were drawn from senior ranks of the aristocracy
Abbotts had membership in the house of lords

Question 5

How could you reach heaven?

Answer 5

You had to perform the seven sacraments

Question 6

What was mass?

Answer 6

Central religious experience where the Eucharist was performed. Transubstantiation was where bread and wine was transformed into the blood and body of Christ
It was a ritual in which the whole community participated

Question 7

What was the social role of the church?

Answer 7

The dying would often leave money for the Parish church as it would reduce the time spent in Purgatory

Question 8

What were confraternities?

Answer 8

They would gather and pay for the funerals and masses of their members and make donations

Question 9

What were guilds?

Answer 9

A source of patronage and power

Question 10

What was the role of a pilgrimage?

Answer 10

A way an individual could gain relief from purgatory
Visiting the tomb of a saint - Thomas Becket at Canterbury
Where there had been an individual from the virgin Mary - Walsingham in Norfolk

Question 11

What was Rogation Sunday?

Answer 11

The whole community would walk around the Parish bounds to pray for its protection. This would ward off evil spirits and reinforce the Parish property.

Question 12

What was lollardy?

Answer 12

Sceptical of the Eucharist and considered the Catholic church to be corrupt. Denied the idea of the special status of priesthood.

Question 13

What was heresy?

Answer 13

The denial of the validity of key doctrines of the church

Question 14

What was anticlericalism?

Answer 14

Opposition to the church’s role in the political and other non-religious matters

Question 15

What was laity?

Answer 15

Refers collectively to those who weren’t priests or members of a religious order

Question 16

What was humanism?

Answer 16

Developed in the Renaissance.
Founded on the rediscovery of the original Greek and Latin texts. Wanted to establish the reliability of those texts in order to purify the ideas.

Question 17

Who were the earliest humanist scholars?

Answer 17

William Grocyn and Thomas Linacre

Question 18

Who were some other humanist scholars?

Answer 18

John Colet
Desiderius Erasmus
Sir Thomas Moore

Question 19

How many people were monks?

Answer 19

1% of adult males

Question 20

How many religious communities were there?

Answer 20

900 across England

Question 21

Who were the Benedictines?

Answer 21

Benedictines - founded by St Benedict. Some larger Benedictine houses like Durham, also operated as cathedral churches of their diocese.

Question 22

What other monastic orders were there?

Answer 22

Cistercians and Carthusians. Monasteries were situated in remote rural areas, including the Yorkshire houses of Fountains and Mount Grace

Question 23

What were the orders of the friars?

Answer 23

Three main orders were the Dominicans, the Franciscans and the Augustinians. Christopher Harper-Bill has argued that by the late 15th century, the great days of the friars were over.

Question 24

What was the most influential nunnery?

Answer 24

Nunneries enjoyed much less prestige, but a notable exception was the Bridgettine foundation at Syon near Isleworth in Middlesex

Question 25

Where was lollardy?

Answer 25

Founded by John Wycliffe. Persisted in parts of south Buckinghamshire and around Newbury in Berkshire

Question 26

Who was Grocyn?

Answer 26

Lectured at Oxford on the ideas of Plato and Aristotle

Question 27

Who was Linacre?

Answer 27

Influenced by scientific thinking which he acquired in Italy, and took a medical degree at the university of Padua

Question 28

Who was John Colet?

Answer 28

He used his humanist views as a way of reforming the church from within. After following a large academic career, he became Dean of St Paul’s, and refounded St Paul’s school in 1512. His one surviving sermon was highly critical of the standards of the clergy, his views foreshadow those who favoured the growth of Protestantism

Question 29

Who was Erasmus?

Answer 29

First visited England in 1499. Wrote the Handbook of a Christian Soldier, published in 1504. This sought to regenerate Christianity through emphasis on education and rejected some of the Church’s traditional ceremonies. Satirical works are highly critical of the abuses of the church.

Question 30

Who was Sir Thomas More?

Answer 30

Lawyer and humanist scholar who wrote Utopia. He was a valued counsellor to Henry VIII and was appointed Lord Chancellor in 1529 but resigned in 1532 due to Henry’s religious changes. He was executed for treason.

Question 31

How many new grammar schools were founded?

Answer 31

53 were founded between 1460 and 1509

Question 32

What was the school curriculum like?

Answer 32

Central was the study of Latin. The 1480s saw the beginning of the humanistic approach, particularly at Magdalen college in Oxford

Question 33

What was Oxford and Cambridge like?

Answer 33

Cambridge had several new colleges during this period, benefitting from the generosity of Lady Margaret Beaufort who was responsible for the formation of Christ’s College and St John’s College

Question 34

What were plays like?

Answer 34

Presented in association with church ale festivals, for example at Bishop’s Stortford in Hertfordshire in 1490. Troupes of players, sponsored by the members of the nobility, toured the country

Question 35

What were the most famous dramas?

Answer 35

Mystery plays performed at the feasts of Corpus Christi by the guilds of towns and cities such as York, Lincoln, Wakefield and Coventry.

Question 36

What is an important source for music?

Answer 36

Eton Choirbook, compiled around 1505, a collection of 93 separate musical compositions.

Question 37

Who were important composers represented in the choirbook?

Answer 37

Thomas Browne was employed in the household of the Earl of Oxford and Robert Fayrfax benefitted regularly from the patronage of Lady Margaret Beaufort

Question 38

How were churches built?

Answer 38

In the Gothic perpendicular style - the most famous being the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge

Question 39

What other buildings were in the perpendicular style?

Answer 39

Places of worship such as St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol and the major wool churches of East Anglia, such as Lavenham and Long Melford. Henry approved this architectural style for the Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey in 1502

Question 40

When was the printing press established?

Answer 40

William Caxton created his printing press in 1476 which printed works such as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. By the time of Henry VII’s death in 1509 humanist works were more popular and the works printed by Caxton became unfashionable.