Life in a Medieval Parish

“Parochial Christianity,” writes Mark Greengrass (Christendom Destroyed), “was more than a religious experience. It was a set of rights to benefices which were the key to monopoly revenues (the tithe, collected in various forms) in which patrons, collators and clergymen all had interests. And behind every parish church lay wardens who cared for the fabric of the church, managed the parish chest and organized the patronal feast. In the urban world, the role of the parish in local life was perhaps not as great as it once was, but wills attest to an attachment to the church where one was baptized, and where often one’s ancestors were buried.”

Parish life was “the place of religious duty, but not necessarily devotion.” Greengrass notes one bit of evidence: “The incumbent vicar of a small parish outside Mainz on the eve of the Reformation explained that nine out of ten of his flock did not confess their sins and therefore did not receive Christ’s body at Easter” (317). Or at and other time, presumably. This raises some questions about Greengrass’s claim that all was well with the late medieval church: “There is no sign that the coming of the Reformation can be explained by the ‘abuses’ of the Church. All the evidence . . . is that it was flourishing” (319-20). Flourishing – except for the fact that in some places a majority of Christian’s didn’t participate in the defining rite of Christian life.

Greengrass doesn’t think the priests were bad either. There were diocesan visitations, and the church “noted clerical absenteeism . . . and, where it was brought to their attention by locals, clerical incontinence and incompetence.” Besides, the people didn’t need or want a “zealous, chaste, over-educated” priest: “The priest’s role was more that of a notable, settling family quarrels, drafting wills and providing rural credit. Locals wanted someone who would understand them” (317). No doubt, and no doubt the communal leadership of priests was very important. But surely settling family squabbles doesn’t exhaust the vocation of a parish priest.