William Campbell

The accepted narrative concerning monastic preaching to the English laity suggests that it happened occasionally in the twelfth century and then disappeared until the fourteenth century when monks and canons regular, belatedly following the friars’ example, began to preach again. This paper calls that narrative into question. Records of episcopal administration and surviving sermon books of monastic provenance, including manuscripts from Worcester and Durham cathedrals, provide evidence for pastoral care of the laity and popular preaching by cloistered religious in thirteenth-century England. This would indicate that some monks and canons were contributors and not mere bystanders to the pastoral revolution that shaped later medieval lay religion. In addition to providing evidence, the article points toward previously neglected sources where more is likely to be found.

"The Church was not the only progenitor and disseminator of ideas in mediaeval England, but it was the most pervasive. Relations between the ecclesiastical and lay realms are well documented at high social levels but become progressively obscure as one descends to the influence of the Church at large on society at large (and vice versa). The twelfth century was a time of great energy and renewal in the leadership and scholarship of the Church; comparable religious energy and renewal can be seen in late-medieval lay culture. The momentum was passed on in the thirteenth century, and pastoral care was the means of its transfer.

The historical sources in this field tend to be either prescriptive, such as treatises on how to hear confessions, or descriptive, such as bishops’ registers. Prescription and description have generally been addressed separately. Likewise, the parish clergy and the friars are seldom studied together. These families of primary sources and secondary literature are brought together here to produce a more fully-rounded picture of pastoral care and church life.

The Church was an inherently local institution, shaped by geography, personalities, social structures, and countless ad hoc solutions to local problems. Few studies of medieval English ecclesiastical history have fully accepted the considerable implications of this for pastoral care; close attention to local variation is a governing methodology of this thesis, which concludes with a series of local case studies of pastoral care in several dioceses, demonstrating not only the divergences between them but also the variations within them."

This paper reviews the existing evidence for popular preaching by Franciscan friars in thirteenth-century England, as well as broader evidence that sets it in context. Particular attention is paid to the role of collections of exempla -- short stories used to illustrate the preacher's point. The author argues that the evidence presents a much broader stylistic range of preaching and catechesis than formal sermon texts would suggest.

The thirteenth century was a crucial period of reform in the English church, during which the church's renewal initiatives transformed the laity. The vibrant lay religious culture of late-medieval England cannot be understood without considering the re-invigorated pastoral care that developed between 1200 and 1300. Even before Innocent III called the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, reform-minded bishops and scholars were focusing attention on the local church, emphasising better preaching and more frequent confession. This study examines the processes by which these clerical reforms moulded the lay religiosity of the thirteenth century, integrating the different aspects of church life, so often studied separately, and combining a broad investigation of the subject with a series of comparative case studies. William Campbell also demonstrates how differences abounded from diocese to diocese, town to country and parish to parish, shaping the landscape of pastoral care as a complex mosaic of lived religion.
Forthcoming December 2017
Read more at http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/british-history-1066-1450/landscape-pastoral-care-13th-century-england#Mjx9yt8oRgqdYcUR.99

The series Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae traces the English cathedral clergy from the Norman Conquest of 1066 to the later nineteenth century. Cathedral positions were often used either to reward individuals of outstanding merit or to support important servants of church and/or state. Accordingly, many of the individuals catalogued here were significant in the leadership and administration of church and state, were active members of the universities, were prominent in authorship and scholarly endeavour, and so forth.

The Fasti enables users to trace networks of patronage, competition and collegiality among these most prominent members of the English church. It is also useful in interpreting historical documents. For example: In an archive, one might find an undated letter from the archdeacon of this place to the dean of that cathedral, obliquely referring to comments made by a certain bishop in the House of Lords. By looking up the individuals concerned, the range of dates when the individuals held these offices enables approximate dating of the letter and gives the document, perhaps otherwise uninterpretable, enough historical context that it can contribute to our knowledge.

This volume follows the clergy of Hereford Cathedral from the Reformation to the later nineteenth century, and is based on over 50,000 pages of unpublished manuscript material.

The series Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae traces the personnel of the English cathedral clergy from the Norman Conquest of 1066 to the later nineteenth century. Cathedral positions were often used either to reward individuals of outstanding merit or to support important servants of church and/or state. Accordingly, many of the individuals catalogued here were significant in the leadership and administration of church and state, were active members of the universities, were prominent in authorship and scholarly endeavour, and so forth.

The Fasti enables users to trace networks of patronage, competition and collegiality among these most prominent members of the English church. It is also useful in interpreting historical documents. For example: In an archive, one might find an undated letter from the archdeacon of this place to the dean of that cathedral, obliquely referring to comments made by a certain bishop in the House of Lords. By looking up the individuals concerned, the range of dates when the individuals held these offices enables approximate dating of the letter and gives the document, perhaps otherwise uninterpretable, enough historical context that it can contribute to our knowledge.

This volume follows the clergy of Exeter Cathedral from the Reformation to the later nineteenth century, and is based on over 50,000 pages of unpublished manuscript material.

Beginning with a historiographical examination of the common impression of thirteenth-century English parish clergy as largely ignorant, this paper calls for a reconsideration of the primary sources and argues that records of clerical illiteracy are better used to illustrate the processes by which reformers were actively raising the standards.