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By Root 936 0

a silver or pewter vessel (ciborium) to hold the bread used in Communion; a little box of silver or ivory (pyx) to hold the remainder of the consecrated bread, and another vessel for unconsecrated bread; a pewter chrismatory for the holy oils; a censer and an incense boat (thurible); an osculatorium (an ornament by which the kiss of peace was given); three cruets; and a holy-water vessel. The church must have at least one stone altar, with cloths, canopy, and frontal (front hanging); a stone font that could be locked to prevent the use of baptismal water for witchcraft; and images of the church’s patron saint and of the Virgin Mary. Special candlesticks were provided for Holy Week and Easter, and two great portable crosses served, one for processions and one for visitation of the sick, for which the church also kept a lantern and a hand bell.32 To these requirements a list dictated by Archbishop Winchelsey in 1305 added the Lenten veil, to hang before the high altar, Rogation Day banners for gang week, “the bells with their cords,” and a bier to carry the dead.33 Conspicuously missing were benches, chairs, or pews; the congregation stood, sat on the floor, or brought stools.

The church was supposed to have a set of vestments for festivals and another for regular use. Bishop Quinel recommended a number of books to help the priest: a manual for baptism, marriage, and burial; an ordinal listing the offices to be recited through the church year; a missal with the words and order of the Mass; a collect book containing prayers; a “legend” with lessons from the Scriptures and passages from the lives of the saints; and music books, including a gradual for Mass, a troper for special services, a venitary for the psalms at matins, an antiphoner for the canonical hours, a psalter, and a hymnal. Books and vestments were stored in a church chest.34

The churchyard with its consecrated burial ground was a source of village controversy. In the name of those who lay “awaiting the robe of glory,” priests decried its use for such sacrilegious purposes as “dances and vile and dishonorable games which lead to indecency,” and court trials, “especially those involving bloodshed.” An often-repeated injunction demanded that the churchyard be walled and the walls kept in repair, to ensure that the graves “are not befouled by brute beasts.”35 Robert Manning told the story of a villein of Norfolk who rebuked a knight whose manor “was not far from the church,” for allowing his animals to enter the churchyard, since “as oft befalls,/ Broken were the churchyard walls.” The peasant addressed the knight:

“Lord,” he said, “your beasts go amiss.

Your herd does wrong and your knaves

That let your beasts defile these graves.

Where men’s bones should lie

Beasts should do no villainy.”

The knight’s reply was “somewhat vile”: Why should one respect “such churls’ bones”?

The villein replied:

“The lord that made of earth earls,

Of that same earth made he churls…

Earls, churls, all at one,

Shall none know your from our bones.”

The knight, abashed, repaired the churchyard walls “so that no beast might come thereto to eat or defile.”36

Three services were normally celebrated in the parish church on Sunday: matins, Mass, and evensong. Mass was also said daily, and the priests were supposed to say the canonical hours at three-hour intervals for their own benefit.37 Sunday Mass was the best-attended service. Robert Manning pictured a man lying abed on Sunday morning and hearing the church bells ring, “to holy church men calling,” and preferring to

…lie and sweat

And take the merry morning sleep;

Of matins rich men take no keep.

A devil whispers in his ear, urging him to ignore matins:

“Betimes may you rise

When they do the Mass service.

A Mass is enough for you.”38

Vanity sometimes caused women to be late for Mass, like the lady of Eynsham described by a fourteenth-century preacher, “who took so long over adornment of her hair that she barely arrived at church before the end of Mass.” One day the devil in the form of a giant spider descended on