ABSTRACT
The personal beliefs of late medieval Europeans are difficult to gauge: the ordinary people of the period often leave little or no trace of their existence behind them. But we can begin by describing the context in which those beliefs were formed. The Church of the fifteenth century looks, at first sight, like a uniform and well-structured hierarchical institution. The highest position was occupied by the Pope, acknowledged as the successor of the Apostle Peter, to whom Jesus had imparted special authority. He presided over the Church as bishop of Rome, the city in which St Peter had been martyred, following an election by ecclesiastical dignitaries known as cardinals, men chosen by previous popes from the ranks of the bishops (the clergymen in charge of a regional unit known as a bishopric or diocese). Further down the pyramid, the whole territory of Catholic Europe was divided into archbishoprics, bishoprics, archdeaconries and well over 100,000 parishes. Bishops and parish priests were ‘secular’ clergymen, because they lived in the world. But alongside the secular hierarchy, the medieval Church had a ‘regular’ branch: a range of orders of monks, nuns and friars who had taken vows of chastity and obedience and observed a specific rule (Latin: regula). Monks and nuns led cloistered lives in communities endowed with pious bequests of landed property. Here they followed an elaborate regime of prayer and worship; friars, on the other hand, depended on voluntary contributions and took a more active part in the spiritual welfare of lay people, especially in towns. Medieval society thus contained within it a large number of professional Churchmen, who collectively formed the estate of the clergy with privileges like immunity from taxation and the right to be judged in separate ecclesiastical courts. Their special status sometimes caused feelings of anticleRicalism.
