Religion - Medieval

The Catholic Church was the only church in Europe during the Middle Ages, and it had its own laws and large coffers. Church leaders such as bishops and archbishops sat on the king's council and played leading roles in government. Bishops, who were often wealthy and came from noble families, ruled over groups of parishes called "diocese." Parish priests, on the other hand, came from humbler backgrounds and often had little education. The village priest tended to the sick and indigent and, if he was able, taught Latin and the Bible to the youth of the village.

As the population of Europe expanded in the twelfth century, the churches tha 818v2123i t had been built in the Roman style with round-arched roofs became too small. Some of the grand cathedrals, strained to their structural limits by their creators' drive to build higher and larger, collapsed within a century or less of their construction.

Medieval Churches and Monasteries

Apart from the manor, the church was the main focus of community life. Church parishes were usually the manor villages.

The parish priest was appointed by the lord of the manor and was given a house. He was obliged to carry money for alms with him, keep up the church, and provide hospitality to travellers.

Priestly Duties. The priest was usually a commoner by birth, though serfs were tied to the land and were not allowed to become priests. The priest officiated at church services, weddings, baptisms, funerals, and visited the ill. He earned his living from the income for parish lands, fees for services, and tithe money.

Tithing. Tithing was a system whereby each person was expected to give 1/10 of their earnings to support the church. The tithe income was divided up evenly between the parish priest, the church maintenance fund, the poor, and the bishop.

Uses of the Church. The chancel (where the altar is) belonged to the lord. The nave and the tower belonged to the people of the parish. Manor courts were often held in the nave, and tenants came there to pay their rent, or scot. A free meal was given to those who paid their scot, hence our term, "scot free".

The church tower occasionally served double duty as the priest's residence and often was built to be defended in times of trouble. School was held in the church porch or in a room over it. The church's role went far beyond religion; it was the centre of village community life.

Gifts of barley to the church were common. The church reeve would hare the barley brewed into ale and sold to raise money for the upkeep of the church. The term "church ale" is still used today to describe fund-raising for the church.

Church Services and Plays. Originally, people stood in the nave to hear the church service. Pews were not introduced until the 15th century. Because few could read, Biblical stories were often acted out for the congregation in the form of miracle plays. These plays evolved into cycles or collections, beginning with the Creation and ending with the Last Judgement.

The plays were performed in the churchyard or porch. In the 15th century morality plays appeared, in which moral ideas combatted (e.g. Virtue vs. Vice).

Church Markets. In the 12th and 13th centuries markets were often held in the churchyard, though this practice was officially banned in 1285. A special hut, or Tolbooth, housed a court which regulated the affairs of the market. In time the Tolbooth became a permanent fixture of the Town Hall.

Monasteries. Monasteries were the other main form of church presence. They were self-contained enclaves where monks or nuns chose to live a simple life of prayer and work. At least that was the theory. In practice monks at least were often criticized for their laxity and concern with worldly affairs.

The first monasteries adhered to the Benedictine Rule, established by St. Benedict in the 6th century. In the early 12th century the Cistercians, under St.Bernard of Clairvaux, advocated a return to simplicity and a rededication to simplicity in monastic life and in the architecture of the church buildings themselves. Cistercian monasteries were established in remote areas to emphasize this ideal. Today they are the among the most interesting and evocative ruins of the Middle Ages.

Monks and Books At Gloucester Cathedral, which was originally a Benedictine monastery church, can be seen the carrels, or individual study nooks, built into the cloister. There the monks would study their precious books. As the numbers of books increased with the advent of the printing press, special library rooms were built, usually over the cloister walk. These were long narrow halls with booths for reading set at right angles to frequent windows. Books were chained to the desks for safety.

Friars. Friars first appeared in the 13th century. They were clergy not attached to any particular parish, and indeed had no visible means of support. They rejected the monastic ideal of seclusion, and went to live among townspeople and survived by begging. These mendicant friars were enormously popular, much more so than priests or monks, who were often seen as rich and indolent. The main orders of mendicant friars were the Dominicans and the Franciscans

Life in a Medieval Monastery

Early monasteries originated in Egypt as places where wandering hermits gathered. These early "monks" lived alone, but met in a common chapel. By the fifth century the monastic movement had spread to Ireland, where St. Patrick, the son of a Roman official, set out to convert the Irish to Christianity.

The Irish monks spread Christianity into Cornwall, Wales, and Scotland. St. Ninian established a monastery at Whithorn in Scotland about 400 AD, and he was followed by St. Columba (Iona), and St. Aidan, who founded a monastery at Lindisfarne in Northumbria.

Celtic monasteries. These Celtic monasteries were often built on isolated islands, as the lifestyle of the Celtic monks was one of solitary contemplation. There are no good remains of these early monasteries in Britain today.

The Benedictine Rule. The big change in this early monastic existence came with the establishment of the "Benedictine Rule" in about 529 AD. The vision of St. Benedict was of a community of people living and working in prayer and isolation from the outside world. The Benedictine Rule was brought to the British Isles with St. Augustine when he landed in Kent in 597 AD.

The Different Orders. Over the next thousand years a wide variety of orders of monks and nuns established communities throughout the British Isles.

These orders differed mainly in the details of their religious observation and how strictly they applied those rules. The major orders that established monastic settlements in Britain were the Benedictines, Cistercians, Cluniacs, Augustinians, Premonstratians, and the Carthusians.

The first buildings of a monastic settlement were built of wood, then gradually rebuilt in stone. The first priority for rebuilding in stone was the chancel of the church. This way of proceeding meant that the rest of the monastery was at risk of fire, which accounts for the fact that many of the monastic remains you can visit today are in the later Gothic style of architecture.

Daily Life. Although the details of daily life differed from one order to the next (as mentioned above), monastic life was generally one of hard physical work, scholarship and prayer. Some orders encouraged the presence of "lay brothers", monks who did most of the physical labour in the fields and workshops of the monastery so that the full-fledged monks could concentrate on prayer and learning.

The Daily Grind. The day of a monk or nun, in theory at least, was regulated by regular prayer services in the abbey church. These services took place every three hours, day and night. When the services were over, monks would be occupied with all the tasks associated with maintaining a self-sustaining community.

Abbeys grew their own food, did all their own building, and in some cases, grew quite prosperous doing so. Fountains Abbey and Rievaulx, both in Yorkshire, grew to be enormously wealthy, largely on the basais of raising sheep and selling the wool.

Learning. Throughout the Dark Ages and Medieval period the monasteries were practically the only repository of scholarship and learning. The monks were by far the best educated mermbers of society - often they were the only educated members of society. Monasteries acted as libraries for ancient manuscripts, and many monks were occupied with laboriously copying sacred texts (generally in a room called the scriptorium).

Illuminated manuscripts. In the areas where Celtic influence was strongest, for example in Northumbria, the monks created "illuminated" manuscripts; beautifully illustrated Bibles and prayer books with painstakingly created images on most pages.

These illuminated manuscripts, such as the Lindisfarne Gospel (now in the British Museum), are among the most precious remnants of early Christian Britain.

The Abbey hierarchy. The abbey (the term for a monastery or nunnery) was under the authority of an abbot or abbess. The abbot could be a landless noble, who used the church as a means of social advancement. Under the abbot was the prior/prioress, who ran the monastery in the absence of the abbot, who might have to travel on church business. There could also be a sub-prior. Other officers included the cellerar (in charge of food storage and preparation), and specialists in the care of the sick, building, farming, masonry, and education.

Pilgrims. One of the main sources of revenue for monasteries throughout the medieval period were pilgrims. Pilgrims could be induced to come to a monastic house by a number of means, the most common being a religious relic owned by the abbey. Such a relic might be a saint's bone, the blood of Christ, a fragment of the cross, or other similar religious artefact. The tomb of a particularly saintly person could also become a target for pilgrimages.