Parish life in mediæval England

by Francis Aidan Gasquet

And hit afereth ye feonde for such is ye myghte

may no grysliche gost glyde ther hit shadeweth.”

Rogation Days.—During the entire week of Easter all work not actually necessary was ordered to be laid aside, that the people might have time for spiritual rejoicing. During this time also, in most of the larger churches, after Evensong, a procession with all the ministers vested in albs was formed to the newly hallowed font, which, wreathed with flowers and evergreens, was censed by the parish priest, and a “station” for prayer was held at that spot.

On the three days before the feast of our Lord’s Ascension, the ancient practice of going in procession singing the litany of the Saints was kept up in every church, unless it was one of the churches in a cathedral city, for in that case the various parishes had to attend at the Mother church and join together in one procession. These “rogations,” as they were called, passed out of the church precincts, and wound their way about streets or country roads of the parish, unless bad weather confined them to the church itself.

“Gode men,” says the Liber Festivalis, “theis thre dayes suying, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, ye schall faston and com to chyrche, husbond and wyfe and servaunde, for alle we be syners and neduth to have mercy of God.... So holy Chyrch ordaineth yt none schall excuson hym from theise processions yt may godely ben there.”

The celebrated Richard FitzRalph, Archbishop of Armagh, in 1346, when Dean of Lichfield, preached to the people at St. Nicholas’ Chapel on the meaning and obligation of these days of intercession, or rogation, and explained why men prayed to the Saints, and why they sang their Miserere to God. He also told the people why the cross went at the head of the procession, and why the image of a dragon with its tail out was carried the two first days before the procession and the third day without its tail after the procession. It is to those standards that the Sarum processional refers in regard to these litanies, and to the same are to be referred the items to be found in church accounts, such as those of Salisbury, where in 1462 boys are paid “to carry the poles and standards on Rogation days.”

The rest of the Christian year, with its round of feasts, does not here require to be specially noted. The celebration of one differed from that of another merely in the degree of splendour with which the people decked their churches and brought forth their precious vestments. At Whitsuntide and Corpus Christi day; on Assumption and on All Hallows, as well as on its own dedication day, each church endeavoured to outdo its neighbour by the splendour of its services. In the processions of Corpus Christi day, not unfrequently several churches united their forces together, and made a brave show in honour of the most Blessed Sacrament with their various processional crosses and banners, torches and thuribles, not to speak of the amalgamated choirs and the throng of devout worshippers who accompanied the Sacred Host in a triumphant progress through the streets of our English cities, or along the roads and lanes of rural England.

CHAPTER IX

THE SACRAMENTS

This account of parochial life in pre-Reformation England requires some brief description of the Sacramental system, which had its effect on every soul in the district. From the time of his baptism as a child of the Church, till his body was laid to rest in its tomb, each parishioner was the constant recipient of some one of those mysterious rites, by which, as he was taught by the Church and as he believed, God’s grace was received into his soul to enable him to lead the life of a good Christian. In the administration of these Sacraments, nothing is more clear in the teaching of the Church of the Middle Ages than that there was to be no question of money. They—the Sacraments—were spiritual things, and to sell them for fees would be plain simony, which was prohibited by every law of God and man. If the administrator was permitted to take an offering, it was only with the plain understanding that the payment was made in regard to the service rendered, for which the recipient desired to make some return; and that the Sacrament should be given without the fee. In the case of such a Sacrament as Penance, for example, where the acceptance of a fee or offering might lead to a misunderstanding of the judicial character of the rite, and so bring it into contempt, the reception of money was altogether prohibited by the ecclesiastical authorities, and any such abuse was sternly repressed. Thus, to take an example, in the acts of the Synod of Ely in 1364, the bishop, Simon Langham, says, “We have heard, and greatly grieve to have done so, that some priests exact money from the laity for the administration of penance or other Sacraments, and that some, for the sake of filthy lucre, impose penances” which bring in money to them. “These we altogether prohibit.”