Abstract
This substantial, comprehensive volume is a monumental piece of scholarship and the most important work to appear in this field since Eamon Duffy’s The Stripping of the Altars (1992). It marks the culmination of a lifetime’s research by the distinguished and prolific historian, Nicholas Orme, Emeritus Professor of History at Exeter University. Its engaging and accessible style masks the author’s remarkable command of primary and secondary sources across disciplines as varied as anthropology, archaeology, art history, architecture, folklore, history, liturgy, music, and theology. Drawing on his publications on neglected areas of English social and religious history, Orme ensures that the experience of insiders and outcasts, men, women and children, are all explored and the result is a fascinating, multi-faceted overview of English religious experience(s) from the coming of Christianity in the fourth century to the Reformation.
The volume is beautifully produced and makes judicious use of colour illustrations throughout. It is divided into eight chapters and concludes with a set of insightful reflections that recapitulates the salient points and suggests further avenues of research. In addition to a select bibliography and comprehensive index, it also contains an extensive glossary of technical terms used in the text.
The first chapter gives a concise overview of the origins and spread of Christianity in England. It explores the impact of the new faith on society as it spread from the towns and rural villas of the Roman colonists. The influx of Germanic invaders in the fifth century forced the church to adapt its structure and led to the development of ministers: communities of clerics, monks and occasionally of nuns, that provided a focus for worship and ministry. The growth of smaller churches and the consolidation of landholdings saw a nascent parochial system emerge, something evident in tithe laws enacted by King Edgar in 960–62 (p. 14). In a development reminiscent of the Irish situation, Christianity also impacted the English landscape as pagan shrines were subsumed and natural features like caves, springs, and high places were incorporated into the Christian cult.
The personnel who staffed these structures, the clergy, form the subject of the second chapter. Orme surveys the various types of clergy, their status and rank and how they were supported. At the top of the parochial food chain were those who held the entire body of rights and revenues that came with a parish or benefice. Individually, they were known as ‘rectors’ or ‘parsons’ and their residences as rectories. It was more common, however, for the rights of a parish to belong to a religious or corporate body like a monastery, a cathedral chapter or a collegiate church. In this case a deputy (vicarius) was appointed who attended to the parishioners’ pastoral needs in return for a stipend, while the majority of the parochial income went to the corporate rector. At the lowest end of the scale were chaplains: priests who often led a hand-to-mouth existence grubbing for income from bequests and chantry establishments, or functioning as chaplains and administrators to noble households and guilds. The clergy were mostly recruited from the ranks of prosperous peasants or the lower middle classes and although afforded the honorific ‘Sir’ (or ‘Master’ if university graduates), they did not rank amongst the social elite. A small number received their education at Oxford or Cambridge, more attended grammar schools in towns but many, perhaps a majority, were formed ‘on the job’ by assisting a priest in the exercise of his ministry until their own ordination. The role of parish clerks, choirboys, and patrons is also explored, along with that of the churchwardens: men (and occasionally women) who administered the finances of the church and maintained its fabric.
England had over 9,500 parish churches and even more chapels by 1300. In addition to their religious roles, they also served as centres of social life for their communities. The third chapter traces the development of church buildings from the simple structures of the central Middle Ages to the more elaborate and expansive structures of the 14th and 15th centuries. Orme shows how internal divisions within the buildings indicated status and rank and discusses the various secular uses to which the church buildings and churchyards were put. Despite clerical protests, these included activities as diverse as ale drinking, archery, court cases, courting, dancing, and wrestling. Similar activities are recorded in Ireland, occasionally requiring the reconsecration or reconciliation of sacred spaces when matters got out of hand.
The volume’s most original and insightful material occurs in chapters four to seven, which explore the impact of religion on the everyday lives of the laity. These ran the gamut from the devout to the deviant and ranged across all social groups, with church attendance increasing amongst those with more leisure. Works of etiquette like Daniel of Beccles Urbanus Magnus gave instruction on how to behave properly in church, instructing its young male readers to pay attention, not to cross their legs at services, and to uncover their heads on entering the building (p. 166). Prayer and devotion also found physical expression in kneeling, prostration, and the raising aloft of or joining together of hands. Each Christian was expected to know the Pater noster, the Ave Maria, and the Creed in Latin, and they were to be examined on these when they went to confession. Godparents were enjoined to see that their charges were instructed in these and in the basic tenets of the faith. Christianity also impacted the marking of time with the services of the Divine Office and the celebration of Mass punctuating the day and the week. The sounding of bells for services created a distinctive soundscape, stirring people to devotion even when distant from the church, while the emergence of mechanical clocks by the end of the 13th century gradually standardized notions of time (pp. 225–31). The cycle of the year was sacralized by the commemoration of Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection. Likewise, the celebration of saints’ feast days added colour and respite to the drabness of the daily grind. Other rituals, like Rogation or Corpus Christi processions, saw religion take to the streets and helped foster a sense of parochial identity, sometimes in opposition to that of neighbouring communities. However, the impact of religion was felt most intensely in those rites that marked key moments in the human lifecycle. Orme identifies these as the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, marriage, and unction and the rituals of churching women after childbirth and the burial rites. The parish church, he concludes, was for most people ‘the scene of all the major events of human life. The first “epiphany” after birth at baptism, first confession and first communion in adolescence, marriage, churching, and funeral punctuated by innumerable visits to services’ (p. 347).
The final chapter examines the impact of the Reformation on this comprehensive belief system. By emphasizing the gradual and hesitant nature of religious change from the 1530s onwards, Orme counsels against viewing it in apocalyptic terms, a view some readers may find challenging. However, change was difficult and sometimes resented and resisted as events like the 1549 ‘Prayer Book’ rebellion demonstrated.
Orme has produced a masterly account of a vanished world in which religion formed part of the warp and weft of daily life. It will be interesting to see how his insights and conclusions will be applied, perhaps even to the situation in medieval Ireland.