How far did the pre-Reformation church meet the needs of the people?

by Annab2609 (student)

University Degree Historical and Philosophical studies

It is a tendency of historians to assume that due to the abrupt changes to the Church brought about by the Reformation, that the pre-Reformation Church must be substantially flawed and had failed in meeting the needs of the people. However, sweeping generalisations about people’s beliefs and religious needs should be made cautiously in any age, not least in such a broad and diverse era as Europe in the early modern period. All over Europe there were variation in the characteristic flavour of Christian life, which was even noted by fifteenth-century travellers: Italians were struck by the fervour of Germans, who did not scruple to criticise Latin levity. The present state of knowledge and the nature of evidence do not provide a clear-cut answer to the uniformity of religiosity and the exact meanings and feeling of people. However, it can be concluded from the sources available that the Reformation was not a foreseeable explosion from a discontented lay society, who had long since outgrown the traditional religious forms of ritual, and a moribund Church, which was an easy target and ripe for change. On the contrary, Europe’s people had learnt how to develop their own form of religious piety and reassurance that suited them best and for the large part of Europe’s population religion did not only meet the needs of the people but formed and shaped the entirety of their lives. The masses needs were concerned on the immediate present and derived primarily from the basic issue of life and death. These were also concerns for the elites, however, their wealth and power could mean that they had less ‘bodily’ wants and also had political needs from the Church, for instance as a source of legitimising their power and working in harmony to reinforce each other. Therefore despite the problem of dealing with the inherent variability of differing needs dependent of location and class, and exceptions to the norm, which I will later discuss, very broadly it seems that the Church was adaptable to the psychological and social needs of the broad populace and it was its breach into the political sphere that threatened the political needs of the elites bringing it into conflict and opening it up to attack.

At first sight, at the turn of the fifteenth century the Church was seemingly in a vulnerable position after the Black Death and Great Schism, which could have eroded faith in the beliefs and institution of the Church respectively. However, the Church continued to be vibrant and active in all areas of life and adapted to meet different people’s needs and provided a comfort, security and reassurance to counter the harsh realities of early modern life. It was an opulent devotional world with interplay of official and unofficial ritual and theology. The discernible way in which the Church responded to peoples needs can be seen through many mediums, but I will focus on the Mass and Host, the social aspects of the Church and popular faith based ‘superstition’.

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Firstly, the Mass is a key exponent of how the Church met the people’s needs: communicating with the divine and the dead. The Mass broke down the barrier between the spiritual and physical; earth and heaven; life and death. It turned earthly pleasures and life giving materials - bread and wine - to a communication with the divine. In particular, it provided a means in which those who were living could extend out their good will to the dead through the endowment of Masses to pray for the dead. In Germany there was a phenomenal surge in the endowment of Masses for the dead from around 1450 with no slackening until the system imploded in the 1520s with Luther’s message. Moreover, for those who could afford it, chantry – an endowment founded for a priest or priests to celebrate masses for the soul of the founder – was a means of buying time out of purgatory, as were the buying of indulgences. This exemplifies how the church took away at least part of the pain of losing someone close to you, which was all to often the case in early modern Europe. Furthermore, the Host itself had quasi-magical powers. It was used to bless the community, to ward off illness and demonic spirits and to ensure reconciliation, good weather, fertility and love. For instance, in some parts of south Germany in the fifteenth century, the host was used to "bless the airs" from the door or porch of the church at the conclusion of mass on every day from the feast of Corpus Christ until the end of harvest. These all provide evidence of the host's broad appeal, versatility and power in meeting the people’s relevant needs.

Secondly, the Church provided a forum and structure, as well as excitement and fun, to every day social life. The Sacraments were rights of passage socially as well as religiously and the liturgical year also added routine and cycle to the lives of all. Moreover, the church was full of colour – in the vestments which changed colour depending on the time of year, candles, church art, reliquaries and flags – and every surface in the Church was covered with decoration. This reflected the joy people had in their faith, and is symbolic of how Christianity could meet their psychological needs. Indeed, in Italy, churches were preferred sites for social display, youthful flirtation and business agreements. This shows how the church was the heart and soul of a community in secular as well as sacred issues. The Church could even help ferment social hierarchies. For example, from the later fifteenth century, Corpus Christi processions in larger towns increasingly serve as a mirror of the social structure. The various guilds with their processional banners and candles participated in order of precedence. At the same time, it was simultaneously the centre of popular theatre and entertainment. For example, during the Whitsuntide festival in the Bavarian diocese of Eichstatt the congregations were covered with water and the member of the congregation most thoroughly soaked became the Pfingstvogel (Whitsun bird) for the coming year. This showed the stability of the Church with its strong faith system and how strongly people could relax within it. It is easy to imagine crowds laughing and singing during the processions and local plays and re-enactments.

Society was also very much what we would, anachronistically, label ‘superstitious’ and the church provided the basis for quasi-magical practices. The official liturgy was adapted and extended to meet popular needs. The magic evoked from sacred objects was apotropaic – concerned with protective magic – both with the exorcism of evil spirits and benediction or divine blessing. The Church and its magic fulfilled the psychological needs of the people: protection from the bad things of the world. The largest candles were for example lit in bad weather to protect the house, while the candles of women (thin, red tapers) were lit in childbirth at the feet to protect mother and baby as the light of the candle was supposed to keep the devil away. Moreover, the palms blessed during the Palm Sunday liturgy were burnt during summer storms and herbs blessed in the Assumption of the Virgin were used as talismans and used for a variety of magic. These items were not part of official liturgy but had been blessed in Church. Bartholomew Wagner in Kirchen Spiegel in 1594: “People of old showed great zeal for all kinds of blessings by the Church, and everyone wanted to share in them… Each Sunday, the Old Christians went in crowds to the blessings of holy water and salt… so that everyone had something blessed on his table the whole week through”. This superstition was not deviant, perverted or aberrant forms of thought but integral to the overall picture of Christianity. These superstitions have frequently been denounced as flawed views of Christianity and, thus, seen that the Chruch must have somehow failed to satisfy their needs. However, this is applying an external standard on the early modern period and confuses more modern ideals of Christianity. In reality, the pre-Reformation Church hallmark was its adaptability to suit the needs of different people and their preferences. The relationships with religious ritual or objects bore a symbol of familiarity and religion was a fortress against danger.

However, it is important to remember the exceptions and understand those who challenged the church and why and whether these challenges reflect that it was not meeting their needs. The Lollards and Hussites are two examples of rebels to the Catholic Church I will examine. Firstly, the English Lollard movement under the leadership of John Wycliffe saw that the true eternal church lay beyond the materiality and wealth of the church and had a fairly significant following. For these people, the Church was clearly not meeting their needs and they sought reform to make it more useful as a means of religion. However, the majority of English people did not subscribe to their views. Indeed, Lollard itself means ‘mumblers who talk nonsense’. Despite this, there was more successful dissent from Rome in central Europe under the Jan Hus, who was also influenced by Wyclife’s writings, but in Prague. His burning at the stake led to rebellion and the establishment of the Hussite Church in Bohemia, independent of Rome. They spoke in Czech rather than Latin and the people received both the wine and bread at Eucharist. However, again the movement had little widespread dramatic effect and after 1450 they were increasingly isolated, although they did have the effect of spreading at least anti-clericalism, if not the more extreme views. Moreover, their complaints though were isolated largely to their behaviour and way of life of the clergy rather than the key beliefs of the Church and there were significant economic and political problems bound up in calls for reform – not just that the Church was not meeting the needs of the people. This perhaps reflects that the Church met the spiritual needs of the people and it was the church’s hierarchy that did not.

So far, the focus has been on the ordinary populace of Europe. However, most conflict with the church was by the elites and so it important to see why the church did not meet their differing needs. Largely, religion transcended class boundaries perhaps more than any other part of early modern life. All classes held elements of these superstitions, while almost every level of society took part in the sacraments, the confessional and the rites for the dead. However, the elite also had economic and political expectations bound up in their view of and needs from the Church to be symbiotic with their personal power. However, the Church was becoming more autonomous and conflicting. Primarily, economically the elites resented the Church’s increasing fiscal demands. Jan Ostorog, Castellan of Pozan, spoke for many of Poland’s elite when in his Monumentum pro Reipublicae ordinatione congestum, written in 1475, he denounced annates and legal appeals to Rome. Moreover, politically, the Church was seen to be overstepping its political role and the continued issue of the pope versus conciliar government furthered the divisions of ecclesiastical versus secular government. Renaissance popes had become obsessed with creating a temporal state in central Italy that drew them deeper into secular politics and diminished their spiritual credibility. Therefore, before the start of the Reformation many German princes, such as Eberhard of Württemberg and George of Saxony, and their clergy (many of whom had been at the Council of Basle) still looked to a general council for reform of the church rather than a pope. This resentment of the papacy was soon extended to the clergy in a bitterness of their conflicting power with to the elites. In particular, the Host served as a demonstration of priestly power that the nobility begrudged. Furthermore, the priesthood were suspected and mistrusted for its extravagance, misuse of resources and striving for political autonomy and influence. The conflict of interests between secular elites and the ecclesiastical governments was a real example of the church failing to meet the needs of the elite by working with them rather than with growing differences.

To conclude, it seems appropriate to return to the initial false assumption that the Reformation points to the failings of the pre-Reformation Church. As we have seen this was not the case and the Church was vibrant, adaptable and for the large part met the spiritual needs of the people, despite the rebellious exceptions and the increasing division between the elites political and economic expectations of the Church. Indeed, this can be further seen in the evidence that many people did not want the Reformation in its entirety, especially loosing their cults and rituals and in many places they clung to them obstinately. In 1553, Johann Marbach in Strasbourg wrote of the ‘shocking scorn and little regard for the ministry of the Church’ among the people of his city as people paid less for sermons than they had done for masses. In Brandenburg Catholic ritual forms survived for two generation after the Reformation and as late as 1598 one could still find the Palm procession, the functiones sacrae in the Easter liturgy and the lowering of the dove on Whitsun. The Reformation was not so much a success at local level as is sometimes imagined. This provides the most persuasive testament to the general, though not uniform, fulfilment of the church of the people’s needs and the largely effective role of the pre-Reformation Church.

Bibliography

C. Allmand (ed), The New Cambridge Medieval History. Vol. VI. c. 1415 - c. 1500 (1998)

C. Zika, ‘Hosts, Processions, and Pilgrimages in Fifteenth Century German’, Past and Present (1988).

D. MacCulloch, Reformation (2003)

D.S. Peterson, ‘Religion and the Church’, in J.M. Najemy (ed.), Italy in the Age of the Renaissance (2004).

E. Cameron, The European Reformation (1991)

J. Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400-1700 (1985)

R.W. Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Germany (1987)

R.W. Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Germany (1987) p.43