Mediæval London, Volume 2: Ecclesiastical

by Walter Besant

When we think of the great mass of people of Mediæval London, when we think of their laborious and industrious days, the precarious nature of their lives, the perils which attended them, far greater to our thinking than those of the present day—dangers ever present, of fire, famine, plague, pestilence, and war, we are moved to inquire into the ideas and beliefs which controlled the minds of this apparently inarticulate mass. There were ideas on religion, on superstitions, on manners and customs, on war, and on government. As regards their religion, there was no doubt, or question, or hesitation whatever, as to the one leading doctrine which influenced them. They were all, of course, absolutely certain that after death came either the pains of purgatory or the torments of hell. How could there be either doubt or question, when they could see depicted on the walls of the churches the Day of Judgment with the devils receiving souls and hurling them into the flames? They could see the souls themselves plunged to the neck in yellow flames, in torments unspeakable and endless, with bodies unconsumed and indestructible: the golden Heavens, the saints sitting with crowns upon their heads and harps in their hands. On these points there could be no doubt. Since every man, as the priests told them, was continually committing all kinds of sin, both carnal and venial, there was no chance for any one to escape except through the pains of purgatory. These, of course, could be procured as a substitute for the other place by the kind offices of the Church. For this reason, and among the great mass of the people for no other reason, not because the Church cultivated morality and honesty, peace and mercy and righteousness, but simply and solely in order to secure purgatory which, at least, however terrible, did offer a termination after many years: with this object in view, and with no other, the rich men built their churches, founded chantries, masses, almshouses, paid pilgrimages, gave rich presents to the Church, and built colleges for the priests.

TORMENTS OF HELL
From twelfth-century MS. executed at Convent of Hohemburg. MS. destroyed in the fire of Strasburg Library, 1870.

At first a man was sufficiently fortified by the last offices ordered by the Church itself: he died in hope when he had received extreme unction. Presently, however, people became a little doubtful; the fear arose that the service of the Church for the dying might prove by itself insufficient to ensure for the soul entrance into purgatory. Accordingly, therefore, new precautions were invented. Men thought that it would be safer for them if they were buried in consecrated ground within, not outside, the walls of the church: again, it would certainly be safer to be laid as near the high altar as possible. Then again, it was discovered that the church of the monastery was more sacred, and therefore still safer than the parish church. After this, it was believed that some monasteries were even safer than others. Thus the Greyfriars Church in London was esteemed a much more desirable place of interment than St. Paul’s: it was therefore crammed from east to west with monuments of kings and princes, great lords and great ladies. Here they all lay buried in the habit of a Franciscan, hoping either to step into Heaven in the guise of a Friar, or at least, being in such a guise, to get off at the Last Day with a shorter allowance of purgatory than that due to them, or even without any purgatory at all.

It seems to us, with our ideas of equality, a most monstrous belief that a rich man should be able to buy himself out of purgatory, while a poor man must endure the full weight and penalty of his sins. I do not think that the poor man considered the matter in this way at all. On the contrary, it was one of the attributes of wealth and rank that they should make the conquest of Heaven more easy. The poor accepted the situation. Their poverty was imposed upon them with all its consequences. They could not, however they tried, rise out of it: between nobility and villeinhood there was an impassable gulf: well for them that the Lord had left open a way even after many thousand years of purgatory.

As regards the doctrines of the Church, the great mass of the people knew very little, and questioned not at all. The history of the Saints and of the Old and New Testaments they partially understood, because on the walls and in the windows of their parish churches were everywhere represented the acts of Christ and of the Apostles and those of the Saints. Moreover, as we have seen, in the mysteries or sacred plays, the scenes from the Old Testament were performed with grotesque, and even burlesque, imitations in the open air for all the world to see.

The influence of the Church on morals was probably no greater in the Middle Ages than it is now. Certainly men were no more moral than they are now. In saying this, one is not attacking the moral influence of the Church. In a time of greater rudeness, greater ignorance, greater lack of self-command, greater violence, one would expect what actually happened, viz. that there were times when the power of the Church seemed lost, e.g. in the Civil Wars of King Stephen’s reign. As for the City, much the same cheating went on in trade, and there was quite as much laxity in morals of every other kind as we can boast of in our own time. Moreover, it is always difficult to decide when the law punishes an evil-doer-whether it is the law or the preaching of the Church which restrains others from becoming evil-doers.

As regards the superstitions of the people of London. They were at all times believers in magic and sorcery, but, as always happens, many of the popular beliefs seemed often to sleep or to be dead. It was only from time to time that there occurred an outbreak of belief showing that superstition of this kind still existed among them. The most notable case, for instance, is that of Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, whom we heard of at p. 210: she was accused of attempting to compass the death of Henry the Sixth by means of a magic image. Everybody seems to have firmly believed this story, which, indeed, may have been perfectly true. She, however, did penance in the City of London, and was confined for life in Chester Castle, and the woman who assisted her was put to death. Later on, Richard the Third endeavoured to make out that Elizabeth Woodville had been guilty of magic and sorcery.