IV.The Localism of English Catholicism
At some point,of course,attention must turn towards localism in England.Unfortunately,the significance of local and regional differences in religious practice,the identification of the many parts which made up the English church,are matters still needing research.The challenge to develop an appreciation of the regional variations in the late medieval English church,issued some years ago by Norman Tanner,has still not been taken up.[38]Historians generally approach the church as a national or regnal whole.Nation-based top-down analyses,especially when centring on administrative matters,ignore or even deny the significance of regionalism within the church.[39]Meanwhile,regional and local studies often appear to be conceived not as studies of a local church,but as contributions to a national picture,as analyses of a fragment of a larger entity,thereby evading the issue of the real distinctiveness and autonomy of the local religion.[40]
This evasiveness may itself be partly due to the complex format of the religious landscape,which makes actually identifying segments,especially segments which are‘regions’,itself a decidedly problematic process.At present,insofar as religious regions are identified within England,their shape appears to be dictated primarily by the diocesan geography,by broad jurisdictional boundaries rather than a bottom-up mapping of actual spiritual cultures.This diocesan approach clearly has its drawbacks(especially in the huge dioceses of York,Lincoln,and Lichfield)but for the moment provides the only obvious means of structuring a‘regional’history of pre-Reformation English religion.A county-based analysis could provide an alternative,but is immediately challenged by the lack of overlap between secular and ecclesiastical jurisdictional boundaries(except where archdeaconries corresponded to counties),and therefore overlap with spiritual catchment areas.Any formal regionalisation of pre-Reformation English religion would probably have to build in a considerable degree of fuzziness at the boundaries between the proposed regional units.
The uncertainty about how the regionalism of England's pre-Reformation English church should be tackled to some extent rests on a paradox,as the detailed church history so far available is often regional without admitting it.The area about which most is known is East Anglia;its religion tends to be treated as though it is characteristic for the whole of England,even if that is not clearly stated.Other religions,like that of Yorkshire(or of York diocese)would have differed,at least in some respects.Religious practice in Cornwall had its own character based on local evolutions,which in some areas of the county meant that it also contributed to what can be seen as a specifically regional ethnic identity.This was demonstrated in the Cornish revolt of 1549,with its rejection of the linguistically alien English prayer book.[41]
A search for the regionalism and localism of late medieval English religion must apply within the realm the same approach as used with wider catholicism:an awareness of difference within unity,of diversity without adversity and of irregularly overlapping networks of allegiance and catchment areas,which create slightly different expressions of the religion in each of the separate segments which were created.
Liturgy,the formal organisation of the religious ceremonies,gives one instance of this.[42]In England,the province of York maintained its own liturgical identity until the reign of Edward VI,entrenched even in print.In the southern province,the liturgical imperialism of the Use of Salisbury had suffocated most other diocesan rites by 1500:only Hereford's survived into print.The Salisbury Use had not completely swept the board;the regular orders retained their own liturgies.They were occasionally employed outside the Orders,either in private chapels,[43]or in parishes overseen by religious houses.One parochial dispute in the 1450s has been interpreted as reflecting a desire to continue as such a liturgical enclave when threatened with change.[44]That the Salisbury Use was the dominant form of liturgy does not mean that it was being observed in a uniform manner.Its ambitious provisions were not necessarily the common standard;they could not be.Its complex arrangements had been originally devised to meet the liturgical needs of a diocesan cathedral,but its format was not easily followed in an ordinary parish church,which might well lack both the books and the personnel to carry out all of the requirements.[45]
Local religion was not just a matter of texts;practice also mattered.The way in which locality affected practice,to create a local spiritual identity,could be shown even at very basic levels.The segregation of the sexes in church was one such practice;but the geographical evidence for such segregation is incomplete,and the justifications for it certainly were not uniform.[46]Overall,the range of variants makes categories uncertain,yet categories must be created to make things manageable.One recent suggestion,derived from work on churchwardens'accounts,is that urban religion was based firmly on the dead and their bequests,allowing parishes to acquire property which could be rented out to provide an income to meet the church's needs,but rural religion was funded more by the living and their regular donations.[47]This suggests the possibility of further differences between urban and rural religious practices which may merit more investigation,for the potential long-term significance of such differences in the reception of the Reformation particularly in English towns.[48]
How completely the local can be reconstructed clearly depends on the sources,and the nature of the locality itself.For a single parish churchwardens'accounts have obvious utility,and less obvious(but still real)drawbacks.[49]But the parish comprised more than just the laity and their wardens:it was also a benefice,the records for which would be maintained by the clergy.Their side of the parish rarely receives the attention it deserves,despite its undeniable importance.[50]The relationship between the clergy and their parishioners was one of the basic factors in any locality;as pastors and neighbours the clergy could have a considerable impact on the religious and spiritual lives of their parishioners,while their claims to tithes and other dues made them a major force in parochial economies(particularly in rural areas)which might be welcomed or resented.[51]
Locality need not be simply the parish;boundaries were not always barriers.In a city like Norwich,local religious practice would have several different forms,centring variously on parish,city,and cathedral(to give only three possibilities).[52]The devotional focal points within the city changed over time,and in importance.In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries the cathedral attracted offerings to its shrines and images,but the cash returns may be incomplete indicators of actual devotional activity.[53]Indulgences were also available to the cathedral's visitors,the trend of offerings following curves much like those found for offerings to shrines.[54]However,the cathedral was not Norwich's only magnet for devotional attraction.For a time the city housed the cult of Richard Caistor,a local priest who was popularly venerated as a saint.However,he never gained official approval and formal canonisation.[55]Just outside the walls,pilgrims’ offerings at St Leonard's priory often exceeded those noted at the cathedral.[56]Another local church rivalled the cathedral priory in the indulgence business,offering its pardon on different days;[57]but how that fared is utterly unknown.
While local differences existed,and may be detected,their importance to those affected by them is generally unknown.During her travels,the fifteenth-century pilgrim Margery Kempe must have encountered a wide range of liturgical practices:regional liturgies in England,the devotional practices of Venice,Rome,the Holy Land,Compostela,and Germany.The only point she actually mentions is that the practice for raising the cross in Norway at Easter differed from that used in England.[58]Her general silence is inexplicable,unless it is assumed that differences did not matter.The validity of that assumption is of course itself untestable.Perhaps what does matter is that differences were negotiable,but how important they were to those affected by them is elusive.
As a wild generalisation,the localism in English religion can be suggested,but rarely fully and adequately reconstructed.Everyday aspects of religion are even more elusive,almost by definition excluded from the historical record because they were not felt to be worth recording.The everyday can be argued for from details;an almost archaeological approach which looks hard at buildings and texts to break through the barriers.[59]Its reconstruction is often anecdotal.It can be generalised from scattered scraps to build a tentative picture,but is always dependent on the survival of appropriate evidence.With indulgences,for instance,it is impossible to assess the overall availability of those which were offered in return for devotional acts.Many may have been advertised by inscriptions in stained glass windows;but fragments of only one such inscription are now known in England.Another survived the Reformation within a parish church,to be recorded in the seventeenth century,but has since been destroyed.[60]
The problems of reconstructing the parish,already noted,are also the problems of reconstructing the everyday.Current debates over churchwardens' accounts are in part debates about how much of the wardens’extraordinary activity appears in their records;but they are also,more seriously for present purposes,arguments about how much of the normal they omit—that which could be left to run itself,by letting the parish clerk collect his own wages,or by allowing groups to run their own affairs.[61]Similar issues(although possibly less serious)might arise in relation to parish guilds and fraternities.[62]The potentially varied functions and appreciations of fraternity membership make their precise local religious significance difficult to reconstruct,especially when guilds and fraternities grew out of their purely local origins and became more wide-ranging in their appeal and membership(an issue which arises with the short-lived drive by the guild of St John at Walsall in Staffordshire to gain new members in Warwickshire in the early 1500s).[63]
If the completeness of the portrayal of the everyday in churchwardens' accounts is questionable,its portrayal from the clerical pole of the parish is equally incomplete.Here we enter the uncertain world of relationships and understandings,of the parish as a complex mix of devotional,financial and jurisdictional responsibilities and relationships,and the imprecise use of language which too easily transforms local disputes between parishioners(individually or collectively)and their clerics into something which historians and other commentators may be too eager to call‘anticlericalism’when,in reality,they reflect attitudes which were decidedly not hostile to the clergy as a group.[64]To reconstruct the everyday from the clerical perspective may ultimately be impossible;so far it is a task barely attempted.At its heart would be records generated by the parish clergy,corresponding with those of the churchwardens.However,these again fall into the trap of financial sources:they note only the relevant,and give an incomplete picture.Moreover,very few appropriate accounts survive from the parochial clergy:many of the available benefice accounts in fact relate to appropriated parishes—parishes for which the main clerical revenues had been taken over by an institution such as a religious house or hospital,a cathedral,or a university college—and are therefore to some extent misleading.Yet they can provide valuable evidence.There are,for instance,the available benefice accounts for St.Thomas at Salisbury(the parish was appropriated to the dean and chapter of Salisbury cathedral).[65]Over the year these detailed statements list income from weddings,funerals and commemorations after death;they note the high receipts at Easter and the costs of an annual party for the parishioners.They are probably typical of accounts drawn up across the country—very similar records survive from Scarborough and Hornsea(both in Yorkshire).[66]They suggest an active church,a living community.But such accounts do not record the daily normality:births,marriages and deaths may be daily events,but are not everyday events,events so ordinary that they are insignificant.The basic spiritual round of daily masses,visitation of the sick,and doctrinal instruction,which were fundamental to the parish as a spiritual unit,are not mentioned.This yawning gap is perhaps most obvious in a scrappy set of mainly financial jottings made by a parish priest at Basingstoke in the early 1500s.[67]These are certainly everyday in many respects—they record the hiring and firing of servants,note details of sheepflocks pastured and breeding within the parish so that tithes could be collected,record amounts of malt sold to local women to produce ale,and give information about many other aspects of the priest's dealings with the parish.He is very much one of the community,working with his parishioners,buying and selling with them,providing credit.Yet while these notes record social and economic interactions,they are remarkably uninformative about the spiritual activities which were meant to be central in a cleric's existence.They offer very little sign at all that they were in fact compiled by a priest;or that he did anything which fell under even the most general of priestly job descriptions as‘to offer[that is,to celebrate the mass],to bless,to preside,to preach,and to baptise’.[68]