Life in a Medieval Village - Frances Gies [65]
By the end of the thirteenth century there were about nine thousand parishes in England, perhaps a quarter of them vicarages. Rich parishes tended to attract men in search of income, leading to vicars in many market towns and large villages, and rectors in small ones.8
The “poor parson” of the Canterbury Tales was the brother of a plowman who had carted “many a load of dung…through the morning dew.” This parson “did not set his benefice to hire/ and leave his sheep encumbered in the mire…/ He was a shepherd and no mercenary.” Despite his peasant background, Chaucer’s parson was “a learned man, a clerk/ who truly knew Christ’s gospel.”9 His colleagues in the country parishes were not all so well versed. Archbishop Pecham charged priests in general with an “ignorance which casts the people into a ditch of error.” Roger Bacon (c. 1214—c. 1294) accused them of reciting “the words of others without knowing in the least what they mean, like parrots and magpies which utter human sounds without understanding what they are saying.” The chronicler Gerald of Wales amused his readers with stories about the ignorance of parish priests: one who could not distinguish between Barnabas and Barabbas; another who, confusing St. Jude with Judas Iscariot, advised his congregation to honor only St. Simon at the feast of St. Simon and St. Jude. Still another could not distinguish between the Latin for the obligations of the two debtors in the parable (Luke 7:41-43), one of whom owed five hundred pence and the other fifty. When his examiner pointed out that if the sums were the same, the story had no meaning, the priest replied that the money must be from different mints, in one case Angevin pennies, in the other sterling.10
Bishops ordaining candidates for the priesthood, or visiting parishes, often found both candidates and ordained clergy illiteratus—unlettered, meaning lacking in Latin and thus ignorant of the Scriptures and the ritual. Laymen were less severe. The dean of Exeter, touring parishes in Devon in 1301, found the parishioners almost universally satisfied with their priests as preachers and teachers.11
Facilities for the education of priests were scarce, and many aspiring novices could only apply to another parish priest for a smattering of Latin, the Mass, and the principal rites. The lucky few who were able to attend cathedral schools, monastic schools, and the universities were more likely to become teachers, Church officials, or secretaries in noble households than parish priests. A priest might, however, occasionally obtain a leave of absence to study theology, canon law, and the Bible.12
The appearance in the thirteenth century of manuals and treatises for the guidance of parish priests marked a new stage of clerical professionalism. One of the most widely circulated was the Oculus Sacerdotis (Eye of the Priest), written by William of Pagula, vicar of Winkfield, Berkshire, in 1314. John Myrc’s vernacular, versified Instructions for Parish Priests, was a free translation of a portion of William of Pagula’s book, intended to inform the reader
How thou shalt thy parish preach
And what thou needest them to teach,
And what thou must thyself be.13
Whether the income of the parish church was collected by a resident or an absentee rector, it came from the same sources. Three kinds of revenue were very ancient in England: plow-alms, soul-scot, and church-scot. The first was a charge on each plowteam, payable at Easter;