Parish life in mediæval England

by Francis Aidan Gasquet

It is unnecessary to follow the Sunday congregation of a pre-Reformation church through the singing of the parochial Mass. The church itself, as the bequests in the wills of the fifteenth century and other documents show, will have been gay with a profusion of candles burning on the rood beam, on the altars, and before each picture or shrine or image, whilst in many places the great “rowell,” or candle-wheel, would have been lit up, and with its crown of candles have added to the general appearance of festivity, which the people of mediæval England loved so much to see in their churches.

At the end of the Mass a loaf of bread, called the “holy loaf,” or “holy bread,” was brought into the chancel, and, after being blessed by the priest, was cut into small pieces and distributed to the people. Then all came up to the chancel steps and received the morsel from the celebrant, whose hands they kissed. This blessed bread signified the fraternal love that always ought to bind Christians together, and the practice of distributing it at the principal Sunday Mass continued until the religious changes in the reign of Edward IV. That the custom should be restored to them was one of the demands of the Devonshire insurgents in that reign. The churchwardens’ accounts contain many references to this pious practice: the purchase of baskets for the distribution of the bread, for instance, is recorded at St. Michael’s, Cornhill, St. Mary the Great, Cambridge, at Cratfield, and elsewhere. At Bromley, in Surrey, the churchwardens collected from the people the money to furnish the bread. In 1523, for instance, they acknowledge a collection of 2s. for this purpose, and double that amount the following year. Evidently, however, the custom which still prevails in France, of families taking it in turn to give the bread to be blessed, was not unknown in England in pre-Reformation days. Dr. Rock quotes from some churchwardens’ accounts of Stamford-in-the-Vale, Berks, to show that the custom was revived in Queen Mary’s days. A piece of land there, “called Gander’s,” provided at least a portion of the expense.

“The whole value of the chargis,” says the document, “comyth to 2½d. and it is thus divided. They offer to the curatis hand too penyworth of bread with halfepeny candull—brought uppe to the preste at the highe altar. Of the too penyworthe of breade they reserve a halfepenny lofe whole for to be delyvered to the next that shul geve the holy lofe, for a knowledge to prepare against the Sonneday followyng.”

The remainder of the Sunday, with the exception of the time—from half an hour to three-quarters—spent in taking part in the Evensong or Vespers, which were probably sung about two or three o’clock in the afternoon, was devoted to rest and reasonable recreation, about which something will be said in a subsequent chapter. For the priest Sunday was the day when by law he had to visit the aged, infirm, and sick in his parish. “Let the priests,” says the Constitution of Gilbert, Bishop of Chichester, in 1289, “see the sick every Sunday and feast day, and let them visit them with diligence. Let them take heed that they make no difficulty about attending to the sick at whatever hour they may be asked for.” This same order is repeated in the Constitutions for the Province of York in 1518, more than two centuries after.

From the earliest times work was prohibited on Sundays and holy days. Lyndwood, in his gloss on the Constitution of Archbishop Chicheley prohibiting on such days “all servile work in any city or place of the Province of Canterbury,” explains at some length the nature of the prohibition. When the work was genuinely necessary, as might be in the case of a barber, or a blacksmith, or a cook, then it was excused by the necessity, and did not come under the law. But where the work could be done on another day, or could have been easily anticipated or postponed, then it was prohibited by ecclesiastical law. This applied to the fairs and markets, which were so often held on feast days, and which the authorities in the fourteenth century were so much concerned to suppress, and the prohibition affected as well those who sold as those who bought at them. The Constitution of John Thoresby, Archbishop of York in 1367, was the first order against the growing practice of holding markets and fairs on the Sundays, and the misuse of the cemeteries in this respect. The following year Archbishop Simon Langham sent out a general monition for the Province of Canterbury, and a special prohibition against certain abuses in the Isle of Sheppey, where, “for the noise of the people, the solemnities of the Mass in the church” were disturbed, and where, on account of the attraction of the market, people were induced to neglect their duty of being present at the Divine Service. The prohibition against selling and purchasing, however, did not apply to the ordinary necessaries of life, as bread, meat, etc., so long as the sale or purchase did not interfere with the religious obligations of the parties, and did not prevent them from going to church.

In another place the same canonist states, as he says, “briefly,” what kind of work was to be considered “servile,” and as such was prohibited to the people in mediæval England. This includes all mechanical, agricultural, and mercantile work, as well as the holding of courts or legal inquiries of every kind, unless “reasonable necessity or charity” required that any such work should be undertaken. In the cause of charity, however, it was held to be lawful on the holy days to assist to till, etc., the lands of the really poor, after all religious duties had been fulfilled. The obligation of resting from servile work on the Sunday or festival was reckoned from the Vesper hour on the Saturday, or the eve.

The instruction given to the people as to servile work was very clear and well understood. In Dives and Pauper it is thus put:—

“Every deadly sin is servile work, and such servile work God defendeth every day, but most on the Holy day. For he that doth deadly sin on the Holy day he doth double sin, for he doth sin and thereto he breaketh the Holy day against God’s precept. Also servile work is called every bodily work done principally for lucre and worldly winning, as buying, selling, sowing, mowing, reaping, and all craft of worldly winning, also markets, fairs, sitting of Justices and of Judges, shedding of blood and execution, of punishing by law, and all works that should draw men from God’s service. Nevertheless, if sowing, reaping, mowing, carting, and such other needful works (are done) purely for alms, and only for heaven made, and for need of them that they are done to on holy days, then are they not servile works nor the holy day broken thereby. Nevertheless, on Sundays and great feasts, such works should not be done, but if great need compel men thereto and deeds of great charity.”

Then, after saying that certain tradesmen and merchants are permitted the preparation of wares and foods that must be ready on the Monday, the author of Dives and Pauper proceeds: “Also messengers, pilgrims, and wayfarers that might well rest without great harm are excused, so that they do their duty to hear Matins and Mass, if they mown, for long abyding in many journeys is costful and perilous.” Any tendency to grow slack in the observance of the Sunday was noted, and strictly repressed by the authorities. In one instance a bishop directs the priest to put a stop to the shoemakers in his parish working on the Lord’s day, as he has heard they did; in another an inquiry is ordered upon a denunciation being made against an individual; and in a third a parson is directed to denounce a parishioner from the pulpit for having been proved to have worked without reason on a holy day.

Before concluding this brief sketch of the Sunday and week-day in an English mediæval parish from the point of view of religion, notice must be taken of one regular feature of that life—the Angelus. The Angelus bell, the Ave bell, or the Gabriel bell, as it was variously called in England, probably grew out of the Curfew, which originally was a civil notification of the time to extinguish all lights; but in the thirteenth century it was turned into a universal religious ceremony in honour of Our Lord’s Incarnation and of His Blessed Mother. In 1347 Ralph de Salopia, Bishop of Bath and Wells, desired the cathedral clergy to say, the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night, five Aves for all benefactors living or dead. Some few years before that time, Pope John XXII. had urged the habit of saying three Aves at Curfew time. The practice soon spread to England, and grew as it spread, and Archbishop Arundel of Canterbury, in 1399, at the earnest request of King Henry IV., ordered the usage of saluting the Mother of God the first thing in the early morning and the last thing at night, to be universally adopted in the province—“at daybreak and at the Curfew,” and the bell that was then rung was called by our English ancestors the “Gabriel Bell,” in memory of that archangel’s salutation of Our Blessed Lady. By a fortunate chance we are able to know the actual time at which this Angelus bell was rung, for a casual note in a Bury St. Edmund’s book gives the times of the tolling in that city as at 4 a.m. and 9 p.m. in summer, and 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. in the winter.