Life in a Medieval Village (21 page)

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.”
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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William of Pagula declared that it was hard to get people to church at all: “Anon he will make his 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.”
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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.
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Sermons were infrequent in the thirteenth century. Instead, the priest might devote time to a lesson, instructing the congre
gation 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.
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When sermons were delivered, either by parish priest or friar, they followed an elaborate formula. The preacher announced his Scriptural text
(thema),
then commenced with the
antethema,
usually a prayer and invocation, or “bidding prayer,” like the following (for the day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin):

Almighty God, to whose power and goodness infinite all creatures are subject, at the beseeching of thy glorious mother, gracious lady, and of all thy saints, help our feebleness with thy power, our ignorance with thy wisdom, our frailty with thine sufficient goodness, that we may receive here thine help and grace continual, and finally everlasting bliss. To which bliss thou took this blessed lady this day as to her eternal felicity. Amen.
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The theme was then repeated, followed by an introduction which might begin with an “authority,” quoted from the Bible or from a Church Father, or a message for the particular occasion or audience, or an attention-getting “exemplum,” an illustrative story (“Examples move men more than precepts,” advised St. Gregory). The story might be merely “something strange, subtle and curious,” or a terrifying tale about devils,
death-bed scenes, and the torments of hell. Sources abounded: fable, chronicle, epic, romance. One story that must have had a particular appeal to peasant women began, “I find in the chronicles that there was once a worthy woman who had hated a poor woman more than seven years.” When the “worthy woman” went to church on Easter Day, the priest refused to give her communion unless she forgave her enemy. The woman reluctantly gave lip service to the act of forgiveness, “for the shame of the world more than for awe of God,” and so that she could have her communion.

Then, when service was done…the neighbors came unto this worthy woman’s house with presents to cheer her, and thanked God highly that they were accorded. But then this wretched woman said, “Do you think I forgave this woman her trespass with my heart as I did with my mouth? Nay! Then I pray God that I never take up this rush at my foot.” Then she stooped down to take it up, and the devil strangled her even there. Wherefore ye that make any love-days [peace agreements] look that they be made without any feigning, and let the heart and the tongue accord in them.
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The body of the sermon was usually divided into three sections: an exposition on three vices, or symbolic meanings of the Trinity, or symbolic features of some familiar object—a castle, a chess game, a flower, the human face.

The sermon ended with a flourish, sometimes a smooth peroration, merely summing up the text and discourse, sometimes, especially if the congregation had dozed, a rousing hellfire diatribe. The priest might compare the agony of a sinner in hell with being rolled a mile in a barrel lined with red-hot nails. Devils were favorite descriptive subjects, with their faces “burned and black.” One devil was so horrible that “a man would not for all the world look on him once.” Hell rang with the “horrible roaring of devils, and weeping, and gnashing of teeth, and wailing of damned men, crying, ‘Woe, woe, woe, how great is this darkness!’” If one of them longed for sweetmeats
and drink, he got “no sweetness, nor delicacy, hut fire and brimstone…If one of them would give a thousand pounds for one drop of water, he gets none…There shall be flies that bite their flesh, and their clothing shall be worms…and in short, there are all manner of torments in all the five senses, and above all there is the pain of damnation: pain of privation of the bliss of heaven, which is a pain of all pains…Think on these pains; and I trust to God that they shall steer thee to renounce thy drunken living!”
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Sometimes the closing peroration pictured the Last Judgment and the doom that preceded it: fifteen days of terrible portents, tidal waves and the sea turning to blood, earthquakes, fires, tempests, fading stars, yawning graves, men driven mad by fear, followed by the accounting from which no man could escape, by bribes, or influence, or worldly power, “for if thou shall be found in any deadly sin, though Our Lady and all the saints of heaven pray for thee, they shall not be heard.”
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Or the preacher might close by reminding his congregation of their mortality. “These young people think,” cried one preacher, “that they shall never die, especially before they are old!…They say, ‘I am young yet. When I grow old I will amend.’” Such persons were reminded to “Go to the burials of thy father and mother; and such shalt thou be, be ye ever so fair, ever so wise, ever so strong, ever so gay, ever so light.” Death was the inevitable end, and none too far off. Man’s earthly being was in fact insignificant and not very comely: “What is man but a stinking slime, and after that a sack full of dung, and at the last, meat for worms?”
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Even without sermons, the medieval parishioner was reminded of his fate by the paintings decorating the church walls, only a few of which have survived.
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In these murals often over the chancel arch, a symbolic gateway between this world and the next, Christ sat in stern judgment, graves sprang open, and
naked sinners tumbled into the gaping mouth of a beast with great pointed fangs, or, chained together, into the claws of demons.

A major function of the parish priest was that of instructing his parishioners. It was up to him to teach the children the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the
Ave,
and the Ten Commandments. William of Pagula recommended that the priest give not only religious instruction but practical advice: telling mothers to nurse their own children, not to let them smother in bed or tie them in their cradles or leave them unattended; advising against usury and magic arts; giving counsel on sexual morality and marriage. Marriage was a topic well worth discussion, William pointed out: a horse, an ass, an ox, or a dog could be tried out before it was bought, but a wife had to be taken on trust. A poor wife was difficult to support; living with a rich one was misery. Was it better to marry a beautiful wife or an ugly one? On the one hand, it was hard to keep a wife that other men were pursuing, on the other it was irksome to have one that no one else wanted; but on balance an ugly wife brought less misery.
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