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Churchmen
in late 14th Century England
To the modern day reader, the number and variety of people who provided some kind of religious function in the late fourteenth century is mind-boggling. First, there was the secular hierarchy of paid archbishops, bishops and priests. Usually, the archbishops and bishops were like the secular aristocracy of the time. They lived in palaces and employed men to work their lands; they participated in politics, and even enjoyed such aristocratic pursuits as hunting. There was a huge social gulf between these prelates and their parish clergy. Such clergy were often from poor backgrounds, were poorly educated and many of them received meagre benefices from which to support their pastoral work.
Aside from these, there were various orders of monks and nuns, who were supposed to stay within their own religious communities - locked away from the outside world. By comparison, the various orders of friars were supposed to get out into the world and preach, and to make their living by begging. This was the theory, but in practice things might be different. There were numerous complaints, in the literature of the time, of monks who lived in luxury and of friars who dallied with women and gave easy confessions to nobles in return for large endowments for their order.
Even for those who could not get a benefice as a parish priest, there were other ways of making a living from their faith. The nobility employed priests and choirs in their own private chapels and joining part of a noble's entourage must have been a much sought-after prize. Others might make a living as a chantry priest, which involved saying prayers for the souls of living or departed patrons. Some people, called pardoners, travelled around the country selling pardons and religious relics to any who might buy them - and there were plenty of buyers. Also at this time, professions such as lawyers and doctors were considered to be clerics. This was important because it allowed them to claim 'benefit of clergy' - the privilege of not having to appear before a secular court of law for an alleged offence.
These various elements of the Church did not always get on with each other. In the Universities there were bitter disputes between the secular clergy and the friars, often over benefices; different orders of friars might be hostile to each other; and, in the parishes, local clergy often resented friars coming into their church and preaching to their congregation. To add to this problem, the Church experienced a schism from 1378 to 1417, when there were two popes - one in Rome and one in Avignon. Like other parts of Christendom, the Church in England had to choose sides.
As an institution,
the
Church also experienced serious challenges from the
lay community in the
late fourteenth century. From the
1370s onwards, Parliaments frequently complained that
the
clergy weren't paying their fair share towards the
war effort with France - and
some demanded disendowment of the
clergy. However, the
biggest threat to the
Church in the
last decades of the
century was from
Lollardy,
a movement instigated by
John Wycliffe, which
began to question the
Church's claim to be the
sole authority on matters of religion. Lollardy posed a serious problem for
the
Church because a number of nobles took Wycliffe's ideas from
the
confines of Oxford University out into the
political world. Locally, in areas such as Leicester, nobles offered protection
to Lollard preachers and,
by the
end of the
century, the
heresy acts were revived so that wayward preachers could be put to death.
The
Church managed to retain its position as the
sole authority on religious matters - at least for
the time being.