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Clerical Dissent, Popular Piety, and Sanctity in Fourteenth-Century Peterborough: The Cult of Laurence of Oxford

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Laura Wertheimer
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , January 2006 , pp. 3 - 25
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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2006

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References

1 Lincoln, Lincolnshire Archives Office (LAO), Episcopal Register 3, fols. 276v, 279, 280v, 281v, 283, 285, and 289v. The letters spanned late June to early November 1313.

2 One of the greatest challenges confronting ecclesiastical historians is the meaning of the term “the church,” which can imply a monolithic unity of beliefs, practices, and institutions that did not exist in the Middle Ages. This article uses “the church” or “institutional church” to refer collectively to the clerical hierarchy meant to enact the Christian beliefs and practices established through channels such as canon law, papal and conciliar decrees, and university scholarship. See Macy, Gary, “Was There a ‘The Church’ in the Middle Ages?” in Studies in Church History, ed. Swanson, R. N. (Oxford, 1996), 32:107–16Google Scholar; and Swanson, R. N., “University and Diversity, Rhetoric and Reality: Modeling ‘the Church,’” Journal of Religious History 20, no. 2 (December 1996): 156–74Google Scholar.

3 The historiographical literature on this topic is extensive. For discussion see in particular Van Engen, John, “The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem,” American Historical Review 91 (June 1986): 519–52Google Scholar; also Davis, Natalie Zemon, “From ‘Popular Religion’ to Religious Cultures,” in Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research, ed. Ozment, Steven (St. Louis, 1982), 321–41Google Scholar; Rubin, Miri, “Religious Culture in Town and Country,” in Church and City, 1000–1500: Essays in Honor of Christopher Brooke, ed. Abulafia, David, Franklin, Michael, and Rubin, Miri (Cambridge, 1992), 3–22Google Scholar; Schmitt, Jean-Claude, “Religion, Folklore, and Society in the Medieval West,” in Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings, ed. Little, Lester K. and Rosenwein, Barbara H. (Malden, MA, 1998), 367–87Google Scholar.

4 For example, see Ginzburg, Carlo, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, trans. John, and Tedeschi, Anne (New York, 1982)Google Scholar, and The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, trans. John, and Tedeschi, Anne (Baltimore, 1992)Google Scholar; and Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel, Montaillou, the Promised Land of Error, trans. Bray, Barbara (New York, 1979)Google Scholar.

5 It should be noted that the vocabulary of this field, particularly use of the word “popular,” is highly contentious: see Boyle, Leonard, “Popular Piety in the Middle Ages: What Is Popular?” Florilegium 4 (1982): 184–93Google Scholar; and Schmitt, “Religion and Folklore,” 377–78.

6 Van Engen, “Christian Middle Ages,” 521–22, 528–31.

7 Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c. 1400–1580 (New Haven, CT, 1992)Google Scholar; Rubin, Miri, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1993)Google Scholar. For discussion and critique of Duffy see French, Katherine L., “Competing for Space: Medieval Religious Conflict in the Monastic-Parochial Church at Dunster,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27, no. 2 (1997): 215–44Google Scholar.

8 Van Engen, , “The Future of Medieval Church History,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 17 (September 2002): 517Google Scholar; Schmitt, “Religion, Folklore, and Society,” 382.

9 Scott, , Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT, 1990), 4–16Google Scholar.

10 For the religious life see Burton, Janet, Monastic and Religious Orders in Britain, 1000–1300 (Cambridge, 1994)Google Scholar; Knowles, David, The Monastic Order in England, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1963)Google Scholar, and The Religious Orders in England, vol. 2, The End of the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1961)Google Scholar; and Still, Michelle, The Abbot and the Rule: Religious Life at St. Albans, 1290–1349 (Aldershot, UK, 2002)Google Scholar.

11 A brief history of the abbey may be found in Serjeantson, R. M. and D. Adkins, W. Ryland, eds., The Victoria County History of the County of Northampton (London, 1906), 2:83–95Google Scholar (hereafter cited as VCH Northants.).

12 The house had eighty monks in the early thirteenth century, but only sixty-four at the onset of the plague in 1348. King, Edmund, Peterborough Abbey, 1086–1310: A Study in the Land Market (Cambridge, 1973), 93Google Scholar; VCH Northants., 2:26.

13 King, Edmund, “Benedict of Peterborough and the Cult of Thomas of Becket,” Northamptonshire Past and Present 9, no. 3 (1996–97): 213–20Google Scholar.

14 Pounds, N. J. G., A History of the English Parish: The Culture of Religion from Augustine to Victoria (Cambridge, 2000), 50–54Google Scholar. See also Hartridge, R. A. R., A History of Vicarages in the Middle Ages (New York, 1968)Google Scholar; and Rasche, Ulrich, “The Early Phase of Appropriation of Parish Churches in Medieval England,” Journal of Medieval History 26, no. 3 (2000): 213–37Google Scholar.

15 King, Peterborough Abbey, chaps. 1 and 8; Biddick, Kathleen, The Other Economy: Pastoral Husbandry on a Medieval Estate (Berkeley, 1989)Google Scholar.

16 VCH Northants., 2:421–27; Mellows, W. T., ed., Peterborough Local Administration: Parochial Government before the Reformation, Churchwardens’ Accounts, 1467–1573, with Supplementary Documents, 1107–1488, Publications of the Northamptonshire Record Society 9 (Kettering, Northants., 1939), xi–xviiGoogle Scholar.

17 Placito de Quo Warranto Temporibus Edw. I. II. & III (London, 1818), 551–52Google Scholar.

18 LAO, Episcopal Register 3, fol. 415v.

19 A donation charter he issued in 1308 referred to his brothers and sisters, both in the plural. Walteri de Whitlesey, Historia Coenobii Burgensis, in Historiae Anglicanae scriptores varii, ed. Sparke, Joseph, 2 vols. (London, 1723), 2:158Google Scholar.

20 Edmund King has demonstrated that the land market around Peterborough in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries produced a prosperous “kulak class” among the abbey's serfs; Benedict presumably belonged to this group. King, Peterborough Abbey, 110. The source, Henry Pytchley, did not name the sister, but a notation in Dalderby's register granted an indulgence to those praying for the souls of Benedict of Eye and his wife Silverona. This article assumes that Silverona was Godfrey's sister rather than a later wife. Henry of Pytchley's Book of Fees, ed. Mellows, W. T., Northamptonshire Record Society 2 (Kettering, UK, 1927), 142Google Scholar; LAO, Episcopal Register 3, fol. 415v. For Richard's role in the abbey's administration see King, Peterborough Abbey, 137–38.

21 Walter Whittlesey's description of Godfrey as “Godefridus venerabilis monachus Burgi et professus, natus et vocatus de Croyland” (retaining Sparke's punctuation) can be translated to indicate that Godfrey was professed either at the monastery of Crowland or at Peterborough. Sandra Raban, in her introduction to Godfrey's register, uses the former reading, but Whittlesey's description of several other Peterborough abbots as monachus Burgi et professus suggests that the latter translation may be preferable. Sparke, Historia Anglicanae, 2:132, 145, 153; Raban, Sandra, ed., The White Book of Peterborough (Northampton, UK, 2001), xxviiGoogle Scholar. Godfrey was named as a monk of Peterborough in a charter he witnessed in 1292. Stapleton, Thomas, ed., Chronicon Petroburgense, Publications of the Camden Society 47 (London, 1849), 150Google Scholar.

22 Whittlesey stated that Godfrey had been elected abbot from the office of pittancer and had previously held the office of cellarer. Sparke, Historiae Anglicanae, 2:153, 170–71; for discussion of the offices see Knowles, Monastic Order, 429–30. The seventeenth-century antiquarian Simon Gunton stated that Godfrey had been elected from the office of cellarer; Gunton was followed by the Victoria County History. Gunton, Simon, History of the Church of Peterburgh (London, 1686), 39Google Scholar; VCH Northants., 2:89.

23 Hill, Rosalind M. T., ed., The Rolls and Register of Bishop Oliver Sutton, 1280–1299, 7 vols., Lincoln Record Society (Lincoln, UK, 1948–75), 6:165Google Scholar.

24 Russell, John, “Ordeal on Horseback: The Peterborough Abbatial Elections of 1321 and 1338,” Northamptonshire Past and Present 9, no. 3 (1996–97): 221–26Google Scholar.

25 Sparke, Historiae Anglicanae, 2:153–54.

26 Ibid., 2:153–73. Extravagant spending on important visitors was a common practice—and a common source of complaints—in large monastic houses. Gorsuch, Edwin N., “Mismanagement and Ecclesiastical Visitation of English Monasteries in the Early-Fourteenth Century,” Traditio 28 (1972): 473–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Raban, White Book, xxviii; Sparke, Historiae Anglicanae, 2:171–73; Chancery Miscellanea, pt. V, List and Index Society 49 (London, 1970), 275; Calendar of the Patent Rolls (CPR), Edward I, AD 1301–7, 357, and Edward II, AD 1313–17, 480.

28 Sparke, Historia Anglicanae, 1:125.

29 Gunton, History of the Church of Peterburgh, 40; VCH Northants., 2:89.

30 LAO, Episcopal Register 3, fol. 270v, issued 23 February. According to the bishop's letter, Godfrey was defamed by “clamorous insinuation and rumor” (insinuacione clamosa et fama; this article retains the original spellings in all instances). Some scholars argue that “gossip” rather than “rumor” is appropriately applied to stories intended to defame a particular individual; “rumor,” however, is the more common translation of fama. Scott, Domination, 142–44.

31 “ante tempus electionis de ipso facte in abbatem.” LAO, Episcopal Register 3, fol. 270v.

32 Laurence was identified as the abbot's camerarius. In monastic documents this term normally indicates the officer responsible for the monks’ wardrobe, but it could also refer to a chamber-servant or valet, which was probably the case here.

33 Helmholz, R. H., “Crime, Compurgation, and the Courts of the Medieval Church,” in Canon Law and the Law of England (London, 1987), 119–44Google Scholar.

34 London, Public Record Office (PRO), JUST 3/51/1 m.9.

35 For discussion of English criminal trial proceedings see Bellamy, J. G., The Criminal Trial in Later Medieval England (Toronto, 1998), 1–9Google Scholar; and Pollock, Frederick and Maitland, Frederic William, The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1968), 527–32Google Scholar. For the gaol delivery rolls, see Hanawalt, Barbara, ed., Crime in East Anglia in the Fourteenth Century: Norfolk Gaol Delivery Rolls, 1307–1316 (Norwich, 1976), 5–8Google Scholar.

36 PRO, JUST 3/51/1 m.9, “de diversis bonis et catallis scilicet de bacinis cip[his] pycheriis distis calsariis argenteis florenis et aliis iotalibus aureis et argenteis ad valentiam ducentarum Li[brarum].”

37 In late medieval England, the practice was to try accused clerics in a secular court and then hand them over to an ecclesiastical court for punishment if they were convicted. See Cheney, C. R., “The Punishment of Felonous Clerks,” in The English Church and Its Laws, 12th–14th Centuries, no. 11 (London, 1982)Google Scholar.

38 messor, parcarius, custos, and gardinarius.

39 Daniell, Christopher, Death and Burial in Medieval England, 1066–1500 (London, 1997), 90, 120, 149Google Scholar.

40 LAO, Episcopal Register 3, fol. 274v.

41 Raban, White Book, xxviii–xix; VCH Northants., 2:89.

42 The letter survives in both Dalderby's and Godfrey's registers. LAO, Episcopal Register 3, fol. 16, dated 22 August 1300; Raban, White Book, no. 138, dated 21 August.

43 Raban, White Book, no. 115; Mellows, Book of Fees, 142.

44 Helmholz, “Crime, Compurgation, and the Courts,” 131–33.

45 LAO, Episcopal Register 3, fol. 270v.

46 Dinshaw, Carolyn, Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern (Durham, NC, 1999), 55–99Google Scholar; Goodich, Michael, The Unmentionable Vice: Homosexuality in the Later Middle Ages (Santa Barbara, CA, 1979)Google Scholar.

47 Barber, Malcolm, The Trial of the Templars (Cambridge, 1978), 180–82Google Scholar; and Goodich, Unmentionable Vice, 7–10, 19, 28–31.

48 Barber, Trial of the Templars, 23–24, 108–9, 178–92; Gilmour-Bryson, Anne, “Sodomy and the Knights Templar,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 7, no. 2 (1996): 151–83Google ScholarPubMed.

49 Barber, Trial of the Templars, 193–204. The Templar was “John de Stoke,” a priest. LAO, Episcopal Register 3, fol. 223.

50 See Jordan, Mark, The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (Chicago, 1997)Google Scholar.

51 Dinshaw, Getting Medieval, 69–71.

52 Ibid., 77.

53 In considering the collective allegations of the abbot's sexual misconduct, it may be worth noting that King estimates Godfrey's nephew, Richard, was born around 1265. If this estimate is correct and we posit that Godfrey was at least twenty years older, he was born in 1245 or earlier. It would be a spry septuagenarian who could carry on five sexual affairs simultaneously. King, Peterborough Abbey, 138 n. 4.

54 Dalderby gave the abbot permission to depart the monastery on pilgrimage in a letter dated 26 May 1313. Two royal records, the first dated 10 May and the second 23 May, gave him leave to depart the kingdom and travel overseas for up to a year. LAO, Episcopal Register 3, fol. 274v; CPR, Edward II, 572, 589.

55 For discussion of medieval sainthood, see Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate and Szell, Timea, eds., Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, NY, 1991)Google Scholar; Brown, Peter, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, 1981)Google Scholar; Kieckhefer, Richard, Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-Century Saints and Their Religious Milieu (Chicago, 1987)Google Scholar; Kleinberg, Aviad M., Prophets in Their Own Country: Living Saints and the Making of Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Chicago, 1992)Google Scholar; Vauchez, André, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. Birrell, Jean (Cambridge, 1997)Google Scholar; and Weinstein, Donald and Bell, Rudolph M., Saints and Society: The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000–1700 (Chicago, 1982)Google Scholar.

56 See n. 3 above for summary of this historiography.

57 For development of the canonization process see Vauchez, Sainthood, chaps. 3–6; also DeLooz, Pierre, “Towards a Sociological Study of Canonized Sainthood in the Catholic Church,” in Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore, and History, ed. Wilson, Stephen (Cambridge, 1983), 189–216Google Scholar.

58 Vauchez, Sainthood, 263–79, 283.

59 Ibid., 158–73, 183–212.

60 Christian, William A. Jr., Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton, NJ, 1981)Google Scholar.

61 Ibid., 147–50; Vauchez, Sainthood, chap. 10.

62 Vauchez, Sainthood, 85–103; Christian, Local Religion, 161–62.

63 Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls, 118–21, 139–49. Over the course of the later Middle Ages, the institutional church too extended the honor of sainthood more and more frequently to laymen and laywomen. Vauchez, Sainthood, 263–67.

64 Kleinberg, Prophets in Their Own Country, 40–70.

65 Vauchez, Sainthood, 147–56.

66 Ibid., 147.

67 Ibid., 155–56; see also Bray, Jennifer R., “Concepts of Sainthood in Fourteenth-Century England,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library 66 (1984): 40–77Google Scholar; Valente, Claire, “Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, and the Utility of Sanctity in Thirteenth-Century England,” Journal of Medieval History 21 (1995): 27–49Google Scholar; and Walker, Simon, “Political Saints in Later Medieval England,” in The MacFarlane Legacy: Studies in Late Medieval Politics and Society, ed. Britnell, R. H. and Pollard, A. J. (New York, 1995), 77–106Google Scholar.

68 Vauchez, Sainthood, 154–55.

69 Ibid., 147–54.

70 Walker, “Political Saints,” 86.

71 McCulloh, John M., “Jewish Ritual Murder: William of Norwich, Thomas of Monmouth, and the Early Dissemination of the Myth,” Speculum 72 (July 1997): 698–740Google Scholar; Moore, R. I., The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Oxford, 1987), 36–38Google Scholar; Vauchez, Sainthood, 154–56.

72 Vauchez, Sainthood, 414.

73 Ibid., 143.

74 Ibid., 148–51

75 Ibid., 142, 153.

76 Ibid., 167–73.

77 LAO, Episcopal Register 3, fol. 280v.

78 Ibid., “nos et clericos nostros tanquam inscios et ignaros ad subdolam procuracionem abbatis dicti monasterii accessum populi ad locum predictum contra deum et iusticiam perperam inhibuisse, et quamplurima alia enormia in status nostri et dicti abbatis derogacionem non modicum publice predicarent.”

79 LAO, Episcopal Register 3, fol. 281v.

80 LAO, Episcopal Register 3, fol. 276v.

81 Dohar, William J., The Black Death and Pastoral Leadership (Philadelphia, 1995), 19–20Google Scholar; LAO, Episcopal Register 3, fol. 279, 6 August 1313.

82 LAO, Episcopal Register 3, fol. 289v, 4 November 1313.

83 It should be noted that place-names could become family names, and so a locative is not a positive indicator of an individual's place of origin. Harvey, Barbara, Living and Dying in England, 1100–1540: The Monastic Experience (Oxford, 1993), 75Google Scholar.

84 The register of Dalderby's predecessor, Oliver Sutton, shows that a priest named Hugh of Thurlby held his (unspecified) position from St. Michael's Priory, Stamford, upon his ordination in 1296. Hill, ed., Rolls and Register, 7:69, 79, 86.

85 VCH Northants., 2:98; Raban, White Book, xxiii, xxx.

86 Richard of Wansford, a subdeacon at the time he was presented to the vicarage, was ordained a deacon and instituted to the church on 17 March 1291. He was made a priest a month later, on 12 June. Hill, ed., Rolls and Register, 7:9, 12, 17. For discussion of vicars’ economic positions, see Pounds, History of the English Parish, 53–54, 202–3; and Hartridge, History of Vicarages, 41 and chap. 7.

87 Vauchez, Sainthood, 152.

88 Schmitt, Jean-Claude, The Holy Greyhound: Guinefort, Healer of Children since the Thirteenth Century, trans. Thom, Martin (Cambridge, 1983), 169–70, 177–78Google Scholar.

89 noctanter et latenter. LAO, Episcopal Register 3, fol. 279.

90 LAO, Episcopal Register 3, fol. 276v.

91 Sparke, Historiae Anglicanae, 2:163.

92 The Soke of Peterborough included the southern suburb of the town of Stamford, Stamford Baron, which fell in the deanery of Stamford. The deanery of Ness bordered that of Stamford and the abbot possessed a manor (Thurlby, from which Hugh of Thurlby presumably came) within it. For Stamford, see VCH Northants., 2:522.

93 LAO, Episcopal Register 3, fol. 280v.

94 For a brief summary of Dalderby's career see Page, William, ed., The Victoria County History of Lincoln (London, 1906), 2:34–36Google Scholar.

95 LAO, Episcopal Register 3, fol. 285.

96 “pro remedio peccatorum et vestre egritudinis relevamine aliquali, quod in inmutacione aeris posse creditur vos sentire.” LAO, Episcopal Register 3, fol. 297v.

97 LAO, Episcopal Register 3, fols. 343–343v.

98 LAO, Episcopal Register 3, fol. 289v.

99 Ibid., “cum maior assuerit populi multitudo ibidem.”

100 “Heresy” in the Middle Ages meant not only doctrinal error but also persisting in error after correction, which was John's sin. Lambert, Malcolm, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from Bogomil to Hus (New York, 1976), 4Google Scholar.

101 Mansfield, Mary C., The Humiliation of Sinners: Public Penance in Thirteenth-Century France (Ithaca, NY, 1995), 41–49Google Scholar. See Scott, Domination, 56–58, for similar uses of public apologies in other social and political contexts.

102 See Jordan, William Chester, The Great Famine: Northern Europe in the Early Fourteenth Century (Princeton, NJ, 1996)Google Scholar.

103 Ibid., 51.

104 See Still, Abbot and the Rule, 79–80, and Gorsuch, “Mismanagement,” for discussion of monasteries’ economic problems in the early fourteenth century. According to Whittlesey, Godfrey spent nearly £125 on his building projects in the twelfth year of his abbacy (October 1310–11), £84 of which went to improvements of the manor at Eye. Sparke, Historiae Anglicanae, 2:164.

105 Gorsuch, “Mismanagement.”

106 Sparke, Historiae Anglicanae, 2:164.

107 Gurevich, Aron, Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception, trans. Bak, János M. and Hollingsworth, Paul A. (Cambridge, 1988), 11Google Scholar; Pounds, History of the English Parish, 155–56.

108 For episcopal registers see Clanchy, M. T., From Memory to Written Record (Oxford, 1993), 74–76Google Scholar.

109 Brown, Andrew, Popular Piety in Late Medieval England: The Diocese of Salisbury, 1250–1550 (Oxford, 1995), 36–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; French, “Competing for Space”; Still, Abbot and the Rule, 109–14.

110 Matthaei Parisiensis Chronica Majora, ed. Laud, H. R., Rerum britannicarum medii aevi scriptores 57 (1880), 5:84–85Google Scholar.

111 Still, Abbot and the Rule, 112–14.

112 French, “Competing for Space,” 223–31.

113 Unsurprisingly, these miracles went unrecorded, but miraculous cures and healings were the most common type of miracle in the later Middle Ages. Vauchez, Sainthood, 466–68; Ward, Benedicta, Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record and Event, 1000–1215 (Philadelphia, 1987), 34, 84Google Scholar.

114 In addition to Ward, Miracles, see Vauchez, Sainthood, 444–53, for discussion of miracles and sanctity.

115 LAO, Episcopal Register 3, fol. 285.

116 LAO, Episcopal Register 3, fol. 279; Claire Valente, “Simon de Montfort,” 36–37.

117 Henrici de Bracton de legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae, ed. SirTwiss, Travers (London, 1879), 546–47Google Scholar.