Religion and Humanism Flashcards
What Church did most people belong to in Henry VII’s reign ?
- Catholic church
- Under jurisdiction of the pope in Rome
- Central to the lives of ordinary people, was their own religious experience
What was the function of the Parish Church ?
- Was the focus of religious experience
- Provided entertainment and festivals
- Its guilds and confraternities offered charity and a chance for people to contribute to their community
How did the Church help social and political elites maintain control ?
- Church’s encouragement of: good behaviour, obedience and stress on values of the community
- Provided employment
- Opportunity to advance themselves socially through attainment of high office in Church and State
What was the role of the pope in the church ?
- Church held by the pope in Rome
- Pope generally eager to grant favours demanded by the king
- Had no objection to how Henry used wealth church to reward churchmen
What was the relationship between the Church and State ?
- Erastian
- State had authority over the church
- Pope had little influence, king in control
How was the Church administered ?
- Through 2 provinces: Canterbury and York
- Each under jurisdiction of an archbishop
What was the position of the senior clergy ?
- positions of significent influence and power
- high in politics
- drawn from senior aristocracy
- usually had legal training
Who were the 2 most important churchmen ?
- John Morton
- Richard Fox
What was the role of abbotts ?
- heads of the wealthiest religious houses
- shared membership of the House of Lords with the bishops
- possessed management and admin skills
- demonstrated spirituality
How did the church control people ?
- upheld christian teaching
- provided a framework for controlling how people thought, reasoned and behaved
What did the church believe about reaching heaven ?
- An individual needed to acquire grace
- minimise the time the soul would spend in purgatory
- necessary to observe the 7 sacraments
- the church offered way to achieve these
What were the 7 Sacraments ?
- Baptism
- Confirmation
- Marriage
- Anointing of the Sick
- Penance
- Holy Orders
- Eucharist
What was Mass in the Catholic Church ?
- Priest would perform sacrament of Eucharist
- Catholics believed transubstantiation, bread and wine changed into Christ’s body and blood
- Priest consumed both bread and wine
What was the importance of the Mass ?
- Sacrifice performed by the priest on behalf of the community
- Sacred ritual in which the whole community participated
- Importance of bread emphasised at feast of Corpus Christi
How did the Church get its funding ?
- Lay people made investments into parish churches
- In south, raised through church ale festivals
- dying people who left money for church to minimise time spent in purgatory
What was church funding invested in ?
- funded rebuilding of churches
- paid for objects which accompanied services
What were benefactors and their importance ?
- person who makes charitable donation
- would leave money for chantries
- saw donation as a benefit to their religious experience and community
What was the Confraternity/ Religious Guild/ Lay Brotherhood?
Groups of men who gathered to :
- provide collectively for funeral costs of members
- pay chaplains for masses for their members
- help maintain church finance
- make charitable donations
- socialise
What were Guilds ?
- Groups of people promoting works of christian charity
- wealthier guild sources of local patronage and power
- some ran schools, maintained bridges and paid for expensive projects
What were Pilgrimages ?
- Way an individual could gain relief from purgatory
- Involved visiting tomb of a saint
- Rogonation Sunday
- Community walk around parish boundaries to protect it
How many of adult males were monks ?
- 1% of adult males in England were monks living in monasteries
- Mostly drawn from wealthier parts of society
What was the most common religious order in the monasteries `?
- The Benedictines
- Large houses (durham)
What were friars ?
- Worked among lay people
- supported by charitable donations
- recruited from lower down the social scale
What were nunneries ?
- Much less prestige
- populated by women, deemed unsuitable for marriage
- poor
What was Lollardy ?
- Placed stress on importance of understanding bible
- favoured its translation to english
- sceptical of transubstantiation
- considered catholic church to be corrupt
- not big enough to cause issues
What was heresy ?
- going against teachings of church
- lollards views considered heresy
What was anticlericalism ?
-opposition to churches role in political and non-religious matters
What was Humanism ?
- Development of the Renaissance
- People rediscovering greek and latin original texts
- establishing reliability of translations to purify religious texts
- Humanists were believers of catholic faith
Who was John Colet ?
- Famous Humanist
- Refunded St Pauls school in 1512
- Saw the need of reforming the church from within
Who was Erasmus ?
- Famous humanist
- Sought to regenerate Christianity through education
- Saw need to reform church
Who was Thomas More ?
- Distinguished lawyer
- humanist scholar
- valued councillor to Henry VIII
What were developments in education ?
- widening educational opportunities
- 53 new grammar schools created between 1460-1509
- study of latin central to grammar school curriculum
- 1480’s saw intro of humanistic approach
- university education rested with the ancient universities of oxford and cambridge
What were developments in drama ?
- plays presented in association with church ale festivals
- most famous drama were mystery plays performed at the feasts of Corpus Christi
- Plays set out moral and religious messages
What were developments in music ?
- Enjoyed at various levels in 15th century
- at festivals
- performed at court or in homes of the wealthy
What were developments in art and architecture ?
- massive amount of building and rebuilding of parish churches
- vast number of churches built in gothic perpendicular style
- new industry of printing, traditional medieval culture
- tastes change in 1509- humanism reached England
