ABSTRACT
In England, the Holy Name of Jesus was a popular Christian observance: it was based on the belief that the saviour's name was imbued with divine powers and was therefore worthy of adoration. This chapter on the cult of the Holy Name of Jesus seeks to summarise the origins of the cult and its development in England until the last decades before the Reformation. More infamous for their literacy were the Lollards, whose affinity to the devotion is emphasised in Robert Lutton's fine study. Lutton has investigated the appeal of the devotion in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries among the inhabitants of Tenterden, in the Weald of Kent. Devotion to the Holy Name was also expressed through participation in the activities of dedicated guilds, which around the 1450s began to proliferate, all the more so after the feast was officially sanctioned, after the 1480s. Jesus guild certificates have survived from Ware, Islington, Grantham and Princes Risborough.
