Religion, humanism, arts and learning- HVII

• Papal supremacy


  Head of a substantial state in northern Italy
• Parish churches

  • Over 8000
• Parish

  • Focus of religious experience
  • Provided the focus of popular entertainment
  • Festivals closely linked to the agricultural year
• Guild


  A mediaeval association of craftsmen or merchants, often having considerable power
• Confraternities

  Brotherhoods with a religious or spiritual purpose
• Church's role

  • Encouraged good behaviour, obedience, and stressed the values of community
  • Provided employment opportunities to advance socially
• Erastian

  State should have authority over the Church
• Papacy had no objection to the way in which Henry used the wealth of the Church to reward those churchmen to whom he had given political office
• Church administration

  • Canterbury province
  • York province
  • 17 dioceses
• Some dioceses e.g. Durham enjoyed considerable wealth
• It was common in the late 15th century for senior churchmen to enjoy positions of significant influence and power within the kingdom
• Common for senior clergy to have political authority as well as being from aristocracy e.g. Morton and Fox
• Some offices of state e.g. chancellor were monopolised by clergymen
• Senior Clergymen

  • Highly competent
  • Often had legal training
• Abbots


  • Heads of the wealthiest religious houses
  • Shared membership of the House of Lords with the bishops
  • Had to have management and administrative skills to keep their organisations running effectively whilst demonstrating the necessary spirituality to maintain the reputation of the houses
• HVII's reign was the age of the parish church
• Parish church

  • Provided outward structures of community life
  • Offered various ways an individual could gain grace and minimise time spent in purgatory
• 7 sacraments

  • Baptism
  • Confirmation
  • Marriage
  • Anointing of the sick
  • Penance
  • Holy orders
  • Eucharist
• Transubstantiation

  Priest - bread and wine, Congregation - bread
• Mass


  • Sacrifice performed by the priest on behalf of the community
  • Sacred ritual that the whole community participated in
• Eucharist was the centre of mass
• Corpus Christi was an important 15th century festival
• Lay investments

  • Funded the rebuilding of churches
  • Paid for objects part of service
  • Enhanced the beauty of worship
  • Ensured the remembrance of the benefactor
  • Reduced the benefactors time in purgatory
• Chantries

  Chapels where Masses for the souls of the dead took place, financed from property left in someone's will
• The central role of a chantry priest was intercession (pray for someone else) for the soul of his patron
• Confraternities

  Otherwise known as lay brotherhoods or religious guilds, provided for funeral costs of members, payed chaplains for Masses for their members, made charitable donations
• Guilds

  • Enormously popular, varied greatly in size and wealth, wealthier guilds were sources of patronage and power, some ran schools and almshouses, maintained bridges, highways, and seawalls
• Louth, Lincolnshire Guild payed for the building of the spire at the Parish
• Ale festivals

  Many parishes in the south and south Midlands raised funds through church-ale festivals
• Pilgrimage

  • Gained relief from purgatory, Walsingham, Norfolk shrine built where there had been a supposed visit from the Virgin Mary, St. Thomas Becket's tomb, Canterbury was losing popularity, Late-mediaeval religious writer Thomas à Kempis criticised it as a practice, Eamonn Duffy pilgrimage was exuberant
• Rogation Sunday

  Community would 'beat the bounds' of the Parish
• Individual religious experience


  • Emphasised importance in the writing of mystics e.g The Book of Margery Kempe, Lady Margaret Beaufort's piety was reflected in her widespread donations e.g. to Cambridge University
• Monastic orders

  • Benedictines
  • Cistercians
  • Carthusians
• 1% of adult males in England by 1500 were monks living in monasteries
• 900 religious communities in England
• Benedictines

  • Named after St. Benedictine who first devised the monastic rule, large houses, Durham Benedictine House operated as the cathedral churches of their diocese which fulfilled an important role in the community
• Other monastic orders

  • Their foundation in the 11th Century was prompted by the lack of zeal shown by Benedictines, Monasteries in more remote rural areas e.g. Yorkshire houses of Fountains and Mount Grace, Large proportion of monks in the larger houses were drawn from the wealthier parts of society, Many monasteries recruited predominantly from their own localities
• Friars

  • Dominicans (black friars)
  • Franciscans (grey friars)
  • Augustinians
• Friars recruited from lower down the social scale than the large monasteries
• By the late 15th Century the great days of the friars were over