Life in a Medieval Village

by Frances Gies

  The Church did not condone such excesses as that of Bogo, whom Archbishop John Pecham called “a robber rather than a rector.”6 Efforts were made to limit the number of benefices a man could hold, and bishops visited their parishes to check on conditions. In 1172 Pope Alexander III decreed that vicars must have adequate job security and must receive a third of their church’s revenues. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) further denounced the custom whereby “patrons of parish churches, and certain other persons who claim the profits for themselves, leave to the priests deputed to the service of them so small a portion that they cannot be rightly sustained,” and pronounced that the rector when not himself residing must see that a vicar was installed, with a guaranteed portion of the revenues.7

  By the end of the thirteenth century there were about nine thousand parishes in England, perhaps a quarter of them vicarages. Rich parishes tended to attract men in search of income, leading to vicars in many market towns and large villages, and rectors in small ones.8

  The “poor parson” of the Canterbury Tales was the brother of a plowman who had carted “many a load of dung…through the morning dew.” This parson “did not set his benefice to hire/ and leave his sheep encumbered in the mire…/ He was a shepherd and no mercenary.” Despite his peasant background, Chaucer’s parson was “a learned man, a clerk/ who truly knew Christ’s gospel.”9 His colleagues in the country parishes were not all so well versed. Archbishop Pecham charged priests in general with an “ignorance which casts the people into a ditch of error.” Roger Bacon (c. 1214—c. 1294) accused them of reciting “the words of others without knowing in the least what they mean, like parrots and magpies which utter human sounds without understanding what they are saying.” The chronicler Gerald of Wales amused his readers with stories about the ignorance of parish priests: one who could not distinguish between Barnabas and Barabbas; another who, confusing St. Jude with Judas Iscariot, advised his congregation to honor only St. Simon at the feast of St. Simon and St. Jude. Still another could not distinguish between the Latin for the obligations of the two debtors in the parable (Luke 7:41-43), one of whom owed five hundred pence and the other fifty. When his examiner pointed out that if the sums were the same, the story had no meaning, the priest replied that the money must be from different mints, in one case Angevin pennies, in the other sterling.10

  Bishops ordaining candidates for the priesthood, or visiting parishes, often found both candidates and ordained clergy illiteratus—unlettered, meaning lacking in Latin and thus ignorant of the Scriptures and the ritual. Laymen were less severe. The dean of Exeter, touring parishes in Devon in 1301, found the parishioners almost universally satisfied with their priests as preachers and teachers.11

  Facilities for the education of priests were scarce, and many aspiring novices could only apply to another parish priest for a smattering of Latin, the Mass, and the principal rites. The lucky few who were able to attend cathedral schools, monastic schools, and the universities were more likely to become teachers, Church officials, or secretaries in noble households than parish priests. A priest might, however, occasionally obtain a leave of absence to study theology, canon law, and the Bible.12

  The appearance in the thirteenth century of manuals and treatises for the guidance of parish priests marked a new stage of clerical professionalism. One of the most widely circulated was the Oculus Sacerdotis (Eye of the Priest), written by William of Pagula, vicar of Winkfield, Berkshire, in 1314. John Myrc’s vernacular, versified Instructions for Parish Priests, was a free translation of a portion of William of Pagula’s book, intended to inform the reader

  How thou shalt thy parish preach

  And what thou needest them to teach,

  And what thou must thyself be.13

  Whether the income of the parish church was collected by a resident or an absentee rector, it came from the same sources. Three kinds of revenue were very ancient in England: plow-alms, soul-scot, and church-scot. The first was a charge on each plowteam, payable at Easter; the second was a mortuary gift to the priest, and the third a charge on all free men, paid at Martinmas, always in kind, usually in grain. These were all relatively small charges. The chief support of the church was the tithe or tenth, familiar in the Old Testament, but only becoming obligatory in the Christian Church in the Middle Ages. Gerald of Wales told a story about a peasant who owed ten stone of wool to a creditor in Pembroke at the time of shearing, and when he found that he had only that amount, sent a tithe of it, one stone, to his church, over the protest of his wife, and the remaining nine to his creditor, asking for extra time to make good the deficiency. But when the creditor weighed the wool, it weighed the full ten stone. By this example, Gerald said, “the wool having been miraculously multiplied like the oil of Elisha, many persons…are either converted to paying those tithes or encouraged in their readiness to pay.”14

  Tithes were spelled out in detail in a number of the Ramsey Abbey extents: in Holywell, the rector received from the abbot’s demesne tithes of sheaves from six acres of a field called Bladdicas, including two acres of wheat, one of rye, one of barley, and two of oats; and tithes of sheaves from the peasants in Southfield and “in the field west of the barns at Needingworth”; and “in the name of tithes” from the peasants, a penny per year for each chicken, an obol for a calf or a sheep, a quarter-penny for a kid, “and if they have seven sheep or kids, the rector will have one of them and [make up the difference] in silver, according to the value of a tenth part.” He received a tenth of the milk every day in the year.15 At Warboys the rector was also entitled to a tenth of the wool, linen, pigs, geese, and garden products.16

  Tithes were collected as a kind of income tax from the rector’s living. From his spiritual jurisdiction over the villagers he collected voluntary offerings, or oblations, at Mass, on the anniversaries of a parishioner’s death, at weddings and funerals, and from penitents after confession. Offerings might be in kind: the bread for communion, wax and candles, eggs at Easter, cheese at Whitsuntide, fowls at Christmas. At Broughton, at the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Mary, all the parishioners, free as well as villein, gave as many loaves of bread as they had plow animals, one-third of which went to the church, two-thirds to the paupers of the parish.17

  Finally, the rector had the income of his “glebe,” the land pertaining to the church which he held as a free man, owing no labor services or servile dues, and which he cultivated as a husbandman. Traditionally, the glebe was twice the normal holding of a villein, though in practice it varied. In 1279 the rector of the Elton church held a virgate, probably distributed in the fields, and, adjacent to the church, ten more acres and a farmstead.18 Surveys of other Ramsey Abbey villages list the rector’s lands in more detail. At Warboys, he held two virgates of land, a house and a yard, and common pasture “in the wood, the marsh, and other places.”19 The rector of Holywell held a virgate, “half a meadow which is called Priestsholm,” three acres of meadow distributed in “many pieces,” a tenth of the villagers’ meadow, and shares of a pasture and a marsh.20 In Abbot’s Ripton, the rector had a virgate, a parsonage, three houses with tenants, and “common pasture in Westwood.”21

  The rector of Elton also rented a piece of land called le Brach. The manorial court took unfavorable notice of certain of his activities, the jurors complaining that he “made pits on the common at Broadmoor,”22 and again that he “dug and made a pit and took away the clay at Gooseholm to the general nuisance.”23 He may have been digging marl for fertilizer or clay to mend his walls. Medieval moralists were occasionally concerned lest the priest’s role as husbandman crowd out his spiritual life, and that “all his study [become] granges, sheep, cattle, and rents, and to gather together gold and silver.”24 Perhaps for this reason the glebe was sometimes farmed out to a layman, who paid rent to the rector and made a profit on the sale of the crops.

  Nothing is known about the rectory at Elton in the thirteenth century, but some information has survived about other rectories, a handful of
which, built in stone, still stand, though usually much altered. In size and characteristics the medieval parsonage evidently fell roughly between a manor house and a decent peasant house. That at Hale, Lincolnshire, was described as a hall house with two small bedchambers, one for residents and one for visitors, and a separate kitchen, bakehouse, and brewhouse.25 When the monks of Eynsham Abbey built a vicarage in 1268 for a church they had appropriated, they specified construction of oak timbers and a hall twenty-six feet by twenty with a buttery at one end and at the other a chamber and a privy.26 Like any other farmhouse, the rectory or vicarage included barns, pens, and sheds.

  Records mention several persons assisting the rector or vicar in his professional work and daily life—chaplain, curate, clerk, page—without disclosing whether these were full- or part-time aides, or how they were compensated. Not infrequently there was also a wife or concubine. Clerical celibacy was a medieval ideal more often expressed than honored. Although two Lateran councils in the twelfth century prescribed it, a modern canon-law authority comments that in the thirteenth century “everyone who entered the clergy made a vow of chastity but almost none observed it.”27 Gerald of Wales states that “nearly all” English priests were married, though other sources indicate that only a minority were.28 Concubinage, usually entirely open, was more common. Robert Manning tells the tale of a woman who lived with a “right amorous priest” for many years and bore him four sons, three of whom became priests, the fourth a scholar. After their father died, the four sons urged the mother to repent her “deadly sin.” The mother, however, declared that she would never repent “while I have you three priests to pray and chant for me and to bring me to bliss.” The mother died “sooner than she willed.” For three nights her sons sat by her body at the wake. On the first, at midnight, to their terror, “the bier began to quake.” On the second night it quaked again and suddenly a devil appeared, seized the corpse, and dragged it toward the door. The sons sprang up, carried it back, and tied it to the bier. On the third night at midnight a whole host of fiends invaded the house and

  Took the body and the bier

  With loathly cry that all might hear

  And bore it forth none knows where,

  Without end forevermore.

  The scholar son then roamed the world advising women not to become “priests’ mares,” lest they suffer his mother’s fate.29

  The Lanercost Chronicle relates a less cautionary story: a vicar’s concubine, learning that the bishop was coming to order her lover to give her up, set out with a basket of cakes, chickens, and eggs, and intercepted the bishop, who asked her where she was going. She replied, “I am taking these gifts to the bishop’s mistress who has lately been brought to bed.” The bishop, properly mortified, continued on his way to call on the vicar, but never mentioned mistresses or concubines.30

  The importance of the parish church in the village scheme was permanently underlined by the rebuilding of nearly all of them in stone, a process that began in the late Anglo-Saxon period and was largely completed by the thirteenth century. Many medieval village churches survive today, in whole or, as in the case of Elton’s chancel arch, in part. In the smaller villages, the church often remained a single-cell building with one large room. In larger parishes, as at Elton, the church was often two-cell, the nave, where the congregation gathered, linked by an arched doorway to the chancel, where the altar stood and the liturgy was performed. Sometimes lateral chapels flanked the chancel, and side aisles were added to the nave.31

  In 1287 Bishop Quinel of Exeter listed the minimum furnishing of a church: a silver or silver-gilt chalice; a silver or pewter vessel (ciborium) to hold the bread used in Communion; a little box of silver or ivory (pyx) to hold the remainder of the consecrated bread, and another vessel for unconsecrated bread; a pewter chrismatory for the holy oils; a censer and an incense boat (thurible); an osculatorium (an ornament by which the kiss of peace was given); three cruets; and a holy-water vessel. The church must have at least one stone altar, with cloths, canopy, and frontal (front hanging); a stone font that could be locked to prevent the use of baptismal water for witchcraft; and images of the church’s patron saint and of the Virgin Mary. Special candlesticks were provided for Holy Week and Easter, and two great portable crosses served, one for processions and one for visitation of the sick, for which the church also kept a lantern and a hand bell.32 To these requirements a list dictated by Archbishop Winchelsey in 1305 added the Lenten veil, to hang before the high altar, Rogation Day banners for gang week, “the bells with their cords,” and a bier to carry the dead.33 Conspicuously missing were benches, chairs, or pews; the congregation stood, sat on the floor, or brought stools.

  The church was supposed to have a set of vestments for festivals and another for regular use. Bishop Quinel recommended a number of books to help the priest: a manual for baptism, marriage, and burial; an ordinal listing the offices to be recited through the church year; a missal with the words and order of the Mass; a collect book containing prayers; a “legend” with lessons from the Scriptures and passages from the lives of the saints; and music books, including a gradual for Mass, a troper for special services, a venitary for the psalms at matins, an antiphoner for the canonical hours, a psalter, and a hymnal. Books and vestments were stored in a church chest.34

  The churchyard with its consecrated burial ground was a source of village controversy. In the name of those who lay “awaiting the robe of glory,” priests decried its use for such sacrilegious purposes as “dances and vile and dishonorable games which lead to indecency,” and court trials, “especially those involving bloodshed.” An often-repeated injunction demanded that the churchyard be walled and the walls kept in repair, to ensure that the graves “are not befouled by brute beasts.”35 Robert Manning told the story of a villein of Norfolk who rebuked a knight whose manor “was not far from the church,” for allowing his animals to enter the churchyard, since “as oft befalls,/ Broken were the churchyard walls.” The peasant addressed the knight:

  “Lord,” he said, “your beasts go amiss.

  Your herd does wrong and your knaves

  That let your beasts defile these graves.

  Where men’s bones should lie

  Beasts should do no villainy.”

  The knight’s reply was “somewhat vile”: Why should one respect “such churls’ bones”?

  The villein replied:

  “The lord that made of earth earls,

  Of that same earth made he churls…

  Earls, churls, all at one,

  Shall none know your from our bones.”

  The knight, abashed, repaired the churchyard walls “so that no beast might come thereto to eat or defile.”36

  Three services were normally celebrated in the parish church on Sunday: matins, Mass, and evensong. Mass was also said daily, and the priests were supposed to say the canonical hours at three-hour intervals for their own benefit.37 Sunday Mass was the best-attended service. Robert Manning pictured a man lying abed on Sunday morning and hearing the church bells ring, “to holy church men calling,” and preferring to

  …lie and sweat

  And take the merry morning sleep;

  Of matins rich men take no keep.

  A devil whispers in his ear, urging him to ignore matins:

  “Betimes may you rise

  When they do the Mass service.

  A Mass is enough for you.”38

  Vanity sometimes caused women to be late for Mass, like the lady of Eynsham described by a fourteenth-century preacher, “who took so long over adornment of her hair that she barely arrived at church before the end of Mass.” One day the devil in the form of a giant spider descended on her coiffure. Nothing would dislodge it, neither prayer, exorcism, nor holy water, until it was confronted with the Eucharist. The spider then decamped, and presumably the lady thenceforth arrived at church on time.39

  William of Pagula declared that it was hard to get people to church at all: “Anon he will make hi
s excuse and say, ‘I am old or sickly, or the weather is cold and I am feeble.’ Or else he will excuse himself and say thus, ‘I have a great household,’ or else he has some other occupation to do, but for all these excuses, if a man would come and hear him and say, ‘I will give good wages [for going to church],’ then will they take all manner of excuses back and come to the divine service according to their duty.”40

  The Mass was said in Latin, with little participation by the congregation, and communion was usually administered only at Easter. Moralists complained that the people chattered, gossiped, and flirted at Mass. John Myrc inveighed against casual worshipers who leaned against a pillar or wall instead of kneeling. When the Gospel was read, they should stand; when it was finished, they should kneel again. When the bell rang at the consecration, they should raise their hands and pray.41

  Sermons were infrequent in the thirteenth century. Instead, the priest might devote time to a lesson, instructing the congregation about the Articles of the Faith, the seven deadly sins, or the sacraments, or he might read from a collection of sermons in English, though such books were not yet widely distributed.

  The art of preaching, however, was undergoing a revival, led by the mendicant friars, the Dominicans and Franciscans. Arriving in England in the 1220s, these roving brothers preached in the parish church with the permission of the rector, or failing that, in the open air, where their sermons offered a lively alternative to the routine of Sunday services. Illustrated with personal experiences, fables, and entertaining stories, they encouraged the participation of the congregation. A preacher might call out, “Stop that babbling,” to a woman, who did not hesitate to reply, “What about you? You’ve been babbling for the last half hour.” Such exchanges brought laughter, applause, and more friendly heckling.42