Yale University Press first edition - 2022
This is a big book, almost hernia-inducing; but it is well worth persevering to the end. After the 406 pages of text, a further 77 follow with a List of Technical terms (a few of which I didn't know: e.g. commination - a service cursing evildoers; and hosel - communion in the form of holy bread); Endnotes - 47 pages of these; Bibliography; and Index.
A useful Foreword sets out Orme's canvas. The focus of the book is on people in church. It examines who organised the worship and religious affairs of a parish: the officiating clergy and the laity who assisted them. It describes the buildings to which people went, and the significance of their shapes and furnishings. It asks how far a parish church helped to mould its worshippers into a community, and how far other factors caused the community to divide into smaller groups. It tries to explore the extent to which parishioners went to church or did not go, what they experienced when they came, and how they behaved in church...
By about 1200 England possessed some 9,500 churches - either in the form of minsters, staffed by groups of clergy, or local parish churches, run by single clergy. There was a significant increase in the latter after about 900, which came to be known as 'field churches'. Later these were outnumbered by chapels (after capella, borrowed from the church in France that took its name from its famous relic: the capella or cloak of St. Martin.) Being usually small in size, these chapels could be built on town gateways, on bridges and by ferries.
Bridge chapel at St. Ives
Chapter 2 deals with the Staff of the Church: parish clergy, whose basic word 'rector' meant one who had the absolute 'rule' of his parish, over both the cure of souls and benefice rights. His benefice and home were known as a rectory. An alternative word for him was persona, 'parson'. Deputy clerics were known as vicars. Below them were the chaplains (known in modern times as curates). An interesting section deals with the issue of celibacy, by no means universal in the Middle Ages, whether up front or clandestine. Then there were the deacons, parish clerks and other assistants - often young boys.
Chapter 3, on Church Building, details the point of, and use of, the chancel, nave, transept, vestry, porch and tower. I knew the background to most of this, if not the specific details. Why did churches face East? Whatever the original reason, it came to be rationalised as representing the place where the sun rises and where the earthly paradise lies. Jesus apparently ascended into heaven to the east of the disciples and would return to judge the world from that direction. For that reason Christians were buried facing east so as to rise before him when he arrived. Chancel is derived from cancellus, which means a screened off area. The author rather punctures the idea that most of the mini chapels in the nave and elsewhere were 'chantry chapels'. I didn't know that placing metal cockerel on the spire or roof symbolised watchfulness since such birds crowed in the night. Another interesting section deals with seating (or not) in churches. They seems to be allotted often to keep men and women in separate areas; seating was the invention of the laity, most likely for reasons of comfort and status. A seat gave a distinct and reserved place in church which, if boarded in, might be warmer. As the popularity of seating grew, it was adaptable to the current understanding of social distinctions. Seating tended to make people's behaviour more uniform, and it eventually made possible the static services with their emphasis on teaching (preaching) that characterised the Reformation. One might summarise a church site as consisting of three zones. The churchyard was the frontier, which anyone might enter at any time. The next zone inwards, the nave, was holier than the churchyard...locked at night but open during the day. Further inside were the chapels and altars, still more restricted in access, and finally the chancel, the most sacred section.
Chapter 4 concentrates on the Congregation.
The question of how many people attended church is almost impossible to answer. Not until the mid-19th century were anything like accurate figures recorded. It is clear from various accounts that many people refused to attend, quite apart from those who were unable to - such as those with ill-health, or those on the sea etc. Naturally, historians know more about the attendance of the better off. Orme has a fascinating section on (usually ill) behaviour. One's posture in church was one of standing, sitting, kneeling/bending the knee and, less often, lying prostrate. Praying with one's hands together may well have imitated the etiquette of feudalism. There were three main prayers by the early 13th century: the Paternoster (Lord's Prayer), the Apostles' Creed; and the Ave Maria. These three basic prayers formed one of the great continuities in Christian life from about the 1240s until the 1540s. The 'pair of beads' (later the 'rosary') came to consist of 55 beads on a string, made up of five groups of ten beads, each of which was a prompt to say the Ave Maria. Every ten of these was followed by a larger bead at which one said the Paternoster, and the Creed was pronounced when all the beads had been counted. Not being a Roman Catholic, I did not know this.
The 'pair of beads' or Rosary
Books/texts used included the Latin Psalter, the Hours of the Virgin (known as the 'matins book' or primer), as well as other liturgical matter. The Lollards were to bring alternative beliefs in an intellectual way to the forefront of debate after the early 1380. The document of 1395, now known as 'The Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards', struck at the heart of several Roman Catholic fundamentals - the denial of the Real Presence in the eucharist; no image veneration; priests could marry; the pope was Antichrist, and so on.
I have now reached page 197 out of 406 pages of text; virtually halfway. A break is needed, simply because the sheer mass of information becomes too much to assimilate in any meaningful way. Orme has delivered a tour de force which is invaluable for coming to grips with the material. His intense sympathy - almost empathy - for his subject is clear and the wealth of his research is made understandable due to his ease of description. I will return, but not just yet!
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