Of the numerous criticisms and expressions of grievance directed at the Church in Germany on the eve of the Reformation, the most devastating was the charge of inadequate pastoral care. Reformers of all complexions bewailed the poor state of the parish clergy and the inadequate manner in which they provided for the spiritual needs of their flocks. At the very least, the parish clergy were ill-educated and ill-prepared for their pastoral tasks; at the very worst, they exploited those to whom they should have ministered, charging for their services, treating layfolk as merely a means of increasing their incomes, and, above all, resorting to the tyranny of the spiritual ban to uphold their position. The popular propaganda of the early Reformation fully exploited such deficiencies, exposing the decay in root and branch of a system of pastoral care depicted as no more than an empty shell, a facade of a genuine Christian cure of souls. The attack on the traditional Church was highly successful, successful enough to provoke an ecclesiastical revolution, and almost a socio-political revolution as well. It was, indeed, so successful that generations of historians of the Reformation have seen the condition of the pre-Reformation Church largely through the eyes of its critics and opponents. This negative image was matched by an idealized view of what succeeded it: where the old Church had failed the Christian laity, indeed, so much that they had virtually fallen into the hands of the Devil, the new Church offered solutions, a new way forward, a new standard of pastoral care and concern that created a new ideal, the Lutheran pastor, who cared for his flock as a kindly father, a shepherd who would willingly give up his life for his sheep.

Among the more far-reaching consequences of the disputes over absolute poverty in the Franciscan Order was the emergence of a doctrine of natural rights. Or rather conflicting doctrines, drawn from conflicting interpretations of the life of Christ and the apostles, which crystallized in the debates between Pope John XXII and members of the Order in the 1320s and 1330s over Christ’s absolute poverty. Both the Pope, in denying that Christ had ever lived in absolute poverty, and his Franciscan opponents, who upheld the Franciscan doctrine that he had, arrived at rival conceptions of the rights involved in either possessing or renouncing temporal things.

Lecture dcs philosophes, lectio philosophorum: la formule, comme telle, ne semble pas se trouver chezjean de Salisbury. En revanche, on rencontre chez lui une allusion à la lecture des lois: lectio legum aut etiam canonum. Cependant, la lecture glosée et commentée des textes philosophiques était une pièce importante dans I’enseignement de son maître Guillaume de Conches.

On account of the spread ‘in diverse countries’ of the heresies of Luther the Scottish parliament enacted in 1525 that ‘na manner of persouns, strangears that hapnis to arrive with their schippis within ony part of this realm bring with thaim ony bukes or workes of the said Lutheris, his disciples or servandes, desputt or reherss his heresies or opunzeounns bot geif it be to the confusion thereof and that be clerkis in the sculis alainerlie, under the pane of escheting of their schippis and gudes and putting of their persons in presounn. And that this act be publist and proclamit out throw this realme at all ports and burrowis of the same’. Twenty six months later this act was extended to include all the king’s lieges who were ‘assistars to sic opunzeouns’. The act of parliament of 1525 expressed the nation’s concern: it does not specifically state that Luther’s writings had already been finding their way into the Scottish east coast ports, but the extension of the act in the following year to include the king’s lieges, makes it clear that heresy was beginning to take hold. By the spring of another year Lutheranism had its first Scottish martyr, the young Patrick Hamilton, titular abbot of Fern, former student at Paris, Louvain, St Andrews, and Marburg. Support for the heretical views could not, despite oppression and persecution, be held in check. Within a decade of the passing of the act, parliament found it necessary not only to have it re-enacted but extended still farther. None was to ‘have, use, kepe or consele ony bukes of the said heretic, or contenand their doctrine and opinions bot that they deliver the samin to the ordinaries within xl days’.

THE work of Richard Baxter, Edmund Calamy, and John Walker in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and of the indefatigable A. G. Matthews and Charles Surman in the twentieth, has illuminated the history of the sufferings of the clergy ejected from their livings in the 1640s and 1650s, and of those who lost their livings at the Restoration and in its aftermath. The history of their families, however, is much less well known. This essay is concerned with the chronicling of the sufferings and with the economic and psychological plight of the families of the clergy ejected in the 1640s and 1650s.

One of the questions that appeared in the theologians’ list of questions to be asked of suspected Lollards was ‘An reges et domini temporales existentes in peccato mortali eo ipso cadunt ab omni iure et titulo ad illa regna vel dominia.’ This question appears between one that enquires whether anyone may preach without authority from the pope or a bishop, and another that seeks to know whether the suspect considers that the laity may freely ad suum arbitrium correct and judge delinquent lords. At the same position in the longer list put together by a jurist appears a somewhat different question: ‘an domini temporales possunt ad arbitrium suum auferre bona temporalia ab ecclesia et a viris ecclesiasticis.’ Wyclif’s followers would have returned a positive answer to both questions, though the enthusiasm of their reply would have been the more audible for the second. Throughout the history of the movement Lollards were notable for the stridency of their objections to clerical prerogatives, and, especially in the view of their opponents, for their sympathy towards the secular rulers. Individual heretics and isolated texts applied Wyclif’s views of dominion to kings and secular lords, but the theory was undoubtedly primarily used against ecclesiastics. Academic debate of Wyclif’s theory of dominion was early, and the issue formed the heart of Gregory XI’s condemnation in 1377. But the question does not seem to have figured largely in the disputations that followed Wyclif’s departure from Oxford in 1381.

Although Jesus wept while mourning the inevitable destruction of the city (Luke 19. 41), and St Paul taught the Christians of Galaria to look for it not on earth, but in heaven (cf. Gal. 4.25-6), the Christian imagination has always been haunted by the city of Jerusalem. As early as the second century Melito of Sardis travelled to Jerusalem to see for himself ‘the place where these things were preached and done’. And as soon as Christianity became a licensed religion under the protection of the Emperor, Christians from all parts of the Empire began to flock to Jerusalem to see for themselves the holy sites ubi steterunt pedes eius, where once his feet stood (Ps. 132. 7) Churches were built to mark all the places mentioned in the Gospels, monasteries were founded to receive the pilgrims, and stories began to circulate about the spectacular conversions which happened to pilgrims while visiting the Holy Places, such as that of St Mary of Egypt who turned from a nymphomaniac into a desert mother on the very doorstep of the church of the Holy Sepulchre. Quite soon earnest Church Fathers like St Jerome and St Gregory of Nyssa, both of them pilgrims to Jerusalem, had to issue dire warnings that true Christianity was a matter of the heart and not of geography, and that a trip to Palestine might perhaps be helpful but certainly not necessary in order to find Christ.

At the close of the eleventh century the region of north west France experienced a revival in popularity of the eremitical movement. Men and women seeking retirement from the world, withdrew to the seclusion of forests and wastelands where, dwelling in crudely constructed huts and living only on small provision, they devoted themselves to a life of voluntary poverty and simple piety. Robert of Arbrissel provides an example of one following the eremitical life. Having retired to the forest of Craon he lived under conditions of extreme austerity, seeking solitude and dedicating himself completely to the contemplation of God. While still practising his austerities in the forest he began his mission of preaching and very soon gathered around him people eager to hear his message. It is not the purpose of this paper to discuss the influences and personal motivations which were at work in determining Robert’s career as a hermit and wandering preacher, aspects which I have examined elsewhere, but to provide an analysis of the impact Robert’s career may have had on others, and on women in particular.

The history of attitudes to marriage is a fashionable subject and has been so for some time. This does not mean that it is an overworked subject, for the field is large enough to provide work for many labourers. A corner of it which has scarcely been touched is the development of marriage doctrine in bible commentaries and sermons, two types of source which medievalists will always associate with Beryl Smalley. This paper deals only with the second class of source, but it is nevertheless about exegesis, since the sermons which will be examined have the pericope or Gospel reading of the marriage feast of Cana as their starting-point.

Among the best-known mediaeval women are literary and pictorial personifications of abstract concepts: Virtues and Vices, Fortune and Philosophy, and the Seven Liberal Arts. Male embodiments of these subjects are exceptional, flouting both iconographie convention and the gender of the Latin nouns. The artes liberales in particular might be expected to remain a female preserve. In literature, from their first appearance as personifications in Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae, they are uniformly female.

The fifteenth century was a very important period in the history of the Polish State and nation. It had a particular significance for the development of national consciousness. The union of the Polish kingdom with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (1385) changed not only the boundaries of this new and unified state called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but also created new and specific conditions for the development of the nation. The different nationalities of the jagiellonian state, Poles, Ruthenians, Lithuanians, Germans, Jews, and Armenians played an important role in the lively exchange of cultural experience on the basis of a sometimes uneasy partnership. Poland guaranteed privileges to the lords, both spiritual and temporal, to the gentry, and to the patricians, estates that had emerged in the course of the fourteenth century. These were united by common sentiment and desire for a strong political foundation. The urban and rural populations of both Polish and non-Polish speakers were bound together by loyalty to the Crown and its territory. Like other groups in late-medieval Europe they saw such a political union as advantageous.

The concept of Jewish serfdom has always figured prominently in interpretations of the medieval Jewish European past. It has seemed at once to hold the key to the understanding of Jewish status at both civil and ecclesiastical law and to mark in an especially dramatic way the degraded position (to some historians, a legal condition of rightlessness) forced on Jews in the period that witnessed a marked deterioration in their position in Christendom. ‘Crucial for an understanding of the entire Jewish position in the medieval world’, Salo Baron has written, summarizing a long-established interpretation, ‘is the institution of “Jewish serfdom”.’ And Gavin Langmuir sees the concept as dominating present historiography about the legal status of medieval Jews. This dominance, however, he has challenged: ‘To speak of Jews as royal serfs or “serfs” only obscures legal realities… Neither Jewish status in canon law nor Jewish status in secular law are accurately described as Jewish serfdom.’

It has long been recognized that the mainspring of Bede’s intellectual work throughout his life was pastoral. Recently it has become increasingly apparent that his dedication to the continuing demands of the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons was stimulated and informed by the ideas of Gregory the Great. What is less clear is the relationship between the great bulk of Bede’s exegetical writings and his conception of the precise needs of those priests and monks whom he was seeking to prepare for pastoral responsibility. He had a certain amount of immediate personal experience of the range of technical problems involved in communicating the essentials of Christian doctrine and liturgy to an illiterate people who were ignorant of Latin.

‘From the era of its first foundation, this has been the venue for the royal consecration, the burial place of kings, and the repository of the royal insignia, and deservedly named from ancient times as the (spiritual) head of England and the diadem of the realm.’ This claim, made on behalf of Westminster Abbey by the fifteenth-century monk John Flete, is examined here with reference to its history between the reign of Edward the Confessor and that of John.

The Cornificians, says John of Salisbury in the Metalogicon, find new laws for every subject of study in the schools; grammar is revised, dialectic altered, rhetoric despised, and ‘abandoning the rules of former masters’, they put forward ‘new ways’ for all the subjects of the quadrivium. In fact, they despise the real quadrivium, and prefer a quasi quadrivium in which the four ‘ways’ are ways of making money or influencing events: by entering the clerical or the medical profession, or seeking a position at Court, or becoming a merchant.

The canonist John of Ayton was described by Maitland as being ‘a little too human to be strictly scientific’. His best-known work, the commentary on the legatine constitutions of Otto (1237) and Ottobuono (1268), was dubbed a ‘grumbling gloss’, which often became ‘a growl against the bad world in which he lives, the greedy prelates, the hypocritical friars, the rapacious officials’. But this, while it may not make him the ideal canonist, is precisely what makes a study of his view of society rewarding.

We know from Eadmer’s Vita Anselmi that Anselm would eat little when he sat down to meals with his monks. Instead of having one of his monks read from an appropriate book at mealtimes, Anselm would instruct the community himself. Indeed, Anselm talked so much that, according to his biographer, it would take a separate book to record all that he said. In fact, Anselm’s sayings were collected, and it is to one of these that I wish to pay particular attention.

Mentalität als Denk-, Verhaltens- und Lebensweise eines Standes steht notwendigerweise in Wechselbeziehung zur kollektiven Lebensform einer Kultur tragenden Schicht. Zeigt erstere deren geistige Strukturen, so kann letztere auch materielk Kulturgüter, ihre Funktion im Leben des Menschen und die Weise des Umgangs mit materielle Kultur durch Menschen umfassen. Lebensform im engeren Sinn als die Einheit von Theorie und Praxis, wie sie im folgenden verstanden wird, fuhrt zur sittlichen Lebensgestaltung im Zusammenhang der humanistischen Bewegung. Von ihr, genauer vom Standesethos des hochmittelalterlichen Weltklerus kann anhand der mittelalterlichen Quellenlage nur die Rede sein.