The religious history of the fifteenth century was dominated by the Great Schism. While the immediate repercussions of that schism were prolonged by the conciliar crisis until 1448, its long-term effects would be apparent until the end of the century. For Christian intellectuals there was no anxiety more pressing than repair of the damage caused by these misfortunes and the forearming of the Church against the repetition of a similar catastrophe. This preoccupation was the initial inspiration behind reformatio in capite. Even before the restoration of papal power had nullified those measures agreed by the fathers of the Councils of Constance and Basle, the importance of reformatio in membris had been recognised. Every prelate, every superior of a religious community was expected to regularise the organisation he headed, be it a diocese, a congregation or merely a monastery. It was not only the clergy, both regular and secular, whose faults stood in urgent need of correction; the appeal for endeavour was addressed to all Christian people. It was essential, furthermore, to point out to the faithful the path they should follow. The religious education of the laity had never occupied so high a place among the priorities of those clergy who took their duties seriously.
Zeal in the cause of education was the force which motivated Jean Gerson (1363—1429). The learning and moral authority of this Parisian master were greatly admired during his lifetime, and continued to be so long after his death. The theological doctrines he professed were in accordance with his pastoral vocation: man could attain salvation if he used God-given strength to set out in the right direction; the pressing need was to explain this, and to instil an understanding of the rules to be observed on the journey. The proven success of nominalism in the universities facilitated the spread of those ideas in which Pelagian tendencies were apparent. Quite a few adherents of the via moderna were responsive to Gerson’s recommendations; not satisfied simply to devote themselves to theologia speculativa, they took pains to try to communicate their knowledge. Gabriel Biel will suffice as one example: his Expositio canonis Missae affected a vast number of readers — Martin Luther was merely the most famous of them.
Advocates of the devotio moderna were responding to the same desire to educate and mould Christians which inspired Gerson and his emulators. The Brethren of the Common Life were bent upon selecting edifying texts, on devising others, and on seeing that both were read by as many people as possible. They were, too, shrewd pedagogues, more concerned with developing the intelligence of their pupils than with simply filling their heads with information. Their school at Deventer quickly earned a reputation for efficiency which was amply deserved. The search for ways of awakening adolescent minds was at this same time a focus of attention for various Italian humanists, in particular Vittorino da Feltre and Guarino da Verona. Their concerns coincided with those of Gerson, who was wondering how to ‘lead the very young towards Christ’. Without doubt they were all responding to the ever-broadening horizons of western society, with its desire to learn about and better understand the world. Reading was becoming more and more of a necessity, and in some regions the level of literacy reached 10 per cent. The proliferation of Latin schools heralded the flowering of Protestant gymnasia and Jesuit colleges in the sixteenth century. It was a matter of urgency to stabilise the bands of wandering scholars; it was necessary, too, to prepare future students so that they could benefit from a university education.
Universities were attracting more and more young men. Indeed, the network of these establishments had become considerably more tight-knit. A high proportion of the young who attended university subsequently entered a religious order. Furthermore, it was no longer exceptional at the end of the fifteenth century to find that one in three clerics, sometimes more, had spent several semesters in a faculty, although the overwhelming majority had studied liberal arts only. The colleges created to educate future priests, for example the Collegium Georgianum founded in Ingolstadt in 1494, were merely prototypes of the seminaries whose foundation in every diocese would later be required by the Council of Trent. However, the mendicant orders remained practically the only ones to equip their members with knowledge and training that had been properly thought out and methodically administered in the studia generalia or particularia. As far as theology was concerned, the secular clergy were often reduced to self-education; the books which bishops recommended for purchase, for instance the Manipulus curatorum of Guy de Montrocher, or the Pupilla oculi, written in Oxford in 1385 and still sought after in Strasburg in 1514, contained a large proportion of what the parish clergy might have the opportunity to learn.
An Arspraedicandi sometimes featured prominently in the modest libraries available to the least disadvantaged rectors and vicars. Such compositions set out the fundamental rules of preaching, and explained their simplest application. Preparation for preaching was not merely a matter of memorising a set of principles taken from a primer. Collections of exempla provided edifying stories suitable for sprinkling into the sermon like cherries into the cake, in order to illustrate the argument being developed, and to retain the attention of listeners more eager for anecdote than inclined to follow the subtleties of logical reasoning. It was convenient to resort to models: the Summa praedicantium by the English Dominican, John Bromyard, constituted a precious tool, and in Germanic countries Jean de Werden’s sermons, collected together under the alluring title Dormi secure, were presented for easy use for priests whose education was below standard. Printed books reduced the price of texts to very low levels, and brought them within reach of meagre incomes. Collections of sermons rolled off the presses in their thousands, and circulated through the length and breadth of the Christian world. For instance, those written by the Hungarian Franciscan, Pelbartus of Temeswar, were printed in Alsace; the fact that they were continually reissued is testimony of their success. Ever-increasing numbers made use of such works. The study of preachers in the areas of France to the north of the Loire has identified more than 1,600 of them in the fifteenth century, of whom 1,000 belonged to the period 1450 to 1500, as against fewer than 3 50 in the second half of the fourteenth century.
The majority of priests capable of preaching and eager to do so effectively lived in towns, and thus their normal congregations represented only a small proportion of the total Christian population. Country areas, however, were not entirely neglected by preachers. Priests ministering to rural parishes who had done some studying were becoming less of an exception; those capable of putting a sermon together, with books at their disposal to facilitate the task, could be found more and more frequently. Educated or not, rectors and vicars were expected to set out the fundamental truths of the faith at the Sunday Mass. Joan of Arc’s answers to her judges prove that an intelligent, though illiterate, young woman could make good use of this. Municipal authorities were not uninterested in preaching. In many cities in southern Germany, as in Switzerland, they encouraged the establishment of ‘preacherships’, whose holders were required to have a doctorate or, at least, a degree. Their task was to preach regularly on Sundays and feast days. In England, in spite of restrictive measures taken after 1407 through fear of Wyclifite influences — measures severely criticised by Thomas Gascoigne — pulpits were erected in many churches as well as in cemeteries, where crowds could assemble more easily. French towns turned for preference to the mendicant orders: church wardens or town councillors commissioned from them cycles of sermons for Advent and Lent. Financial accounts give us an idea of how frequently they preached compared to the secular clergy. Between 1440 and 1520, 220 different preachers spoke 11,000 times in Amiens, an average of 137 times a year. The far more modest reckoning for Romorantin, though noticeably lower, still reveals on average a pattern of almost forty sermons a year. What is more, these figures only include those whose remuneration justified an entry in the records. Probably the only preachers to be paid were those called upon to perform on special occasions — at festivals, or at times of crisis or exceptional solemnity.
Organisers of these ‘show-piece’ sermons sought the participation of personalities with a well-established reputation for eloquence. Preaching was a ‘socially recognised’ profession requiring its members to respect ‘clearly defined conditions of practice’, including a scale of fees. Star performers came at the top of the scale. In France, the most valued of these ‘stars’ were among the Franciscans and Dominicans, for example Guillaume Josseaume, Olivier Maillard and Jean Cleree. It was the mendicants, in particular the Franciscan Observants, who practised the art of stirring a crowd with the most fire and skill. The example of the Dominican Vincent Ferrer who, from 1399 to 1419, travelled enormous distances exhorting the masses to repent, was followed by others: Bernardino of Siena, John of Capistrano and Giacomo delle Marche are merely among the most famous of these virtuosi of prophetic preaching. To make their listeners receptive to their message and to prolong the effect of their exhortations, they employed all the resources of a stage production. The impact of their impassioned preaching was so powerful that they inspired spectacular decisions in those who heard them. Thus the rogo della vanita consumed in flames objects which, turning Christians away from the straight and narrow path, were leading them into sin. That a solitary friar, Savonarola, fostered, albeit briefly, a climate of austerity in Florence, a centre of wealth and refinement, is testimony that the words of a popular orator, consumed by a passionate desire to convert, did not fall on stony ground. North of the Alps, the surges of religious fervour unleashed by similar preaching campaigns were less frequent than in Italy. None the less, the success enjoyed by the Carmelite, Thomas Connecte, and the Franciscan, Brother Richard, proves that the French were not always unresponsive to such eloquence.
Orators were more readily listened to the more they larded their sermons with references to matters of topical concern, particularly those likely to arouse anxiety or indignation. The principal objective of the preacher was to move his audience; to achieve this, he resorted to a dramatic style, so that sermons took on a theatrical character. References to images alluding to suffering and death were numerous. The systematic use of allegories was designed to make the most important elements in the sermon easier to memorise, since touching the emotions of the congregation was not the sole objective; there was, above all, the intention to instruct. In fact, preaching was ‘a catechism before its time’. It taught the right way to believe so as to live a better life; by emphasising the Incarnation and Passion, manifestations of God’s love for man, it encouraged him to mend his ways so that divine generosity should not lack a response.
A sermon’s efficacity was measured by the number of confessions it provoked, and the famous Observant preachers were always accompanied by priests ready at all times to hear penitents. The confession of sins was not the only part of the proceedings; before giving absolution the confessor questioned the penitent in order to give him a better understanding of the nature and gravity of his failings. It was thus essential for the confessor himself to be sufficiently well educated to do this. The Sommes de confesseur was written to enlighten him but, until printing had lowered the cost, it was more or less a waste of time to recommend its purchase. For the same reason models for the examination of conscience, meant for the faithful, only became widely available after 1470, and then particularly in Germany. Qualified confessors were able to ensure that assiduous penitents did not lack spiritual guides. St Antoninus of Florence wrote the Opera a ben vivere for two of his female devotees, both of the Florentine aristocracy. Having a spiritual director was, in effect though not by right, the preserve of the privileged few. Mostly the faithful were content to fulfil their Easter duties, and the parish priest to whom they confessed on this occasion was but poorly equipped to instruct them.
Those who had an opportunity to develop their religious life by reading were, likewise, an elite. The books recommended were of a rich variety. The most common were collections of prayers, almost always co-ordinated to the sequences of canonical hours. Their tone varied according to temperament: in England, the predominant note was sweetness expressed in rhymed verse, though for all that there was no lack of theological muscle; in the Low Countries, the influence of the Devotio Moderna was perceptible; in Germany, the same tradition was integrated into the tradition of mysticism. The Bible was not presented solely in the guise of sacred history. Translations made its full text available to lay people. Printing took over the copyists’ workshops and flooded the market with religious books in the vernacular. Production, however, outpaced the market; progress in education was slower than in technology, and reading remained a means of spiritual education for but a small minority of Christians.
Iconography, however, could appeal to everyone. Statues and pictures proliferated, assuming many different shapes and sizes: monumental groups such as Breton calvaries, portable altarpieces, illuminations and wood-engravings intended to sustain the piety of the devout in the privacy of their rooms. The image could come to life: processions of tableaux vivants in England, as in Italy; theatrical productions in France and the Germanic countries. Large towns mustered troops of actors and participants who, against complicated back-drops, presented mystery plays which accredited theologians had packed with learning. The image-makers were fostering emotion even more than education. Gazing at these creations, Christians were moved by the sight of the Infant Jesus playing on his mother’s knee; their hearts were touched by the Pieta; and patron saints reassured them by their presence. But, all the while, the danse macabre urged them not to forget the end of all earthly things.
The doctrine brought by the Church to Christian people was a rich one, but its teaching was not without its defects; it was unsystematic and was administered very patchily. Even if a few intellectuals had appreciated the vital necessity of ensuring that children should receive religious instruction, the catechism, as it was to be created by the Catholic and Protestant faiths in the sixteenth century, did not yet exist. None the less, Gerson and Joan of Arc show that, even in rural areas, parents (upon whom the responsibility of instructing their children largely fell) could fulfil the task with excellent results.
At the beginning of the fifteenth century a ruling of the Inquisition listed the actions characteristic of a ‘good and faithful Christian’: he attended church, made offerings, went to confession, extended a welcome to mendicants. The list was not exhaustive, and other compilers might have drawn up this list of priorities in a different way. Theological debates on the relationship between grace and good works need not detain us, as these questions scarcely affected the mass of the faithful who were blind to, and ignorant of, the subtle analyses of scholars.
The Catholic belongs to a complex society which cannot function without priests; they are, above all, dispensers of the sacraments. Normally they administer baptism, a rite sometimes carried out in a somewhat perfunctory fashion. Parents were anxious for their children to be baptised: how else can one explain the popularity of those sanctuaries where the Virgin Mary resuscitated stillborn infants for as long as it took to sprinkle water over them? All the faithful were baptised, but those who went on to be confirmed were often relatively few in number, since opportunities for contact with a bishop (who, alone, could confirm) were quite rare. As for extreme unction, it was a source of fear rather than of comfort and, because they tended to postpone it, the sick often died without its succour. Holy orders were of concern only to clerics. As regards matrimony, the religious and civil authorities vied with each other in stressing its importance. The amount of time consumed in ecclesiastical courts by disputes concerning lawful marriages proves that canonical recommendations were not a dead letter, although many, for lack of adequate means to put things on a proper legal footing, lived in concubinage.
The sacraments we have just dealt with, normally administered but once, mark decisive stages in a Christian’s life. The same is not true of confession and communion, which restore and strengthen with grace. The Church ordains that they should be received at least once a year. We cannot know to what extent the faithful fulfilled their Easter duties. It was easier to shirk them in large cities than in villages, where the priest’s flock was small enough for him to know and supervise everybody. According to church wardens’ records, the vast majority of the faithful confined themselves to this obligatory communion; the relatively low number of hosts consumed being evidence of this. If people came to the communion table but seldom, it was not necessarily a sign of lukewarm piety: awe and reverence kept them at a distance. Ecclesiastical teaching and ceremonial did not scruple to stress that God was actually present in the guise of bread and wine, and these lessons were not without consequence. They instilled in the faithful a respect which expressed itself in the veneration they lavished on the reserved Sacrament. In large churches they constructed tabernacles as tall as houses to preserve it. They fell on their knees when a priest passed by carrying the Last Sacrament to the dying. All possible ceremonial was employed when the Blessed Sacrament was carried solemnly through the streets or round the bounds of a parish. The feast of Corpus Christi was no longer the unique occasion for religious processions which were now requested so frequently by parishioners that some clergy were driven to complain. The monstrance exposed the Bread of Life to be adored by the devout, who were eager at least to look upon it. In order to share in the spiritual benefits produced by the bloodless re-enactment of the Sacrifice of Redemption, it was not absolutely necessary to communicate during Mass; nor was it even essential to be present. Thus foundations of chantries, intended to ensure the regular re-enactment of these rites in perpetuity, were just as numerous after 1400 as they had been before. Even so, the custom of preordaining large numbers of Masses, to be said or sung as soon as possible after a testator’s death, was already widespread. Such Masses were usually requiems; Purgatory was more than ever a gnawing anxiety. The practice of confession, obligatory since 1215, and vigorously recommended by the mendicants, had drawn the attention of penitents to the punishment which forgiveness of sin did not cancel out, but which had to be undergone, if not in this life, then in the next.
Theological doctrine gave to the pope, and to a lesser degree to the bishops, the power to commute such punishment. With the benefit of this mitigation and as reward for a pious deed, believers were assured of a shorter period in Purgatory, which they might even avoid altogether. So urgent did the desire to influence their fate in the after-life become, that the faithful obtained from the hierarchy an increase in the number of these indulgences. The plenary indulgence, in origin tied to the crusades, had subsequently, through the creation of jubilees, been made obtainable every twenty-five years to those making the pilgrimage to Rome. More and more often it was granted to patrons of sanctuaries which, for a few weeks, enjoyed the status of Roman basilicas during Holy Years. These graces were dispensed so prodigally that the term inflation would not be out of place to describe their increase, particularly since offerings represented considerable sums of money, and their allocation and transfer gave rise to large-scale financial operations.
Indulgences only remitted punishment. By failing to obtain absolution of a mortal sin before dying, the deceased risked condemnation to eternal hell-fire. Sudden death, then, was a formidable danger, since it prevented those whom it despatched from confessing their sins in time. The fervent Christian prepared himself for his final conflict down to the last detail; if he had not lived a good life, he should at least do everything in his power to die well. Jean Gerson and Nicholas of Dinkelsbuhl each composed an Ars moriendi of which summaries were offered to readers in many works of piety.
The activities here illustrated are merely the most important and the most performed. They represent but a part of the body of rites created by almost a millennium of preaching and devotion. Prayers, offerings and blessings punctuated rhythmically each passing day, the cycle of the seasons and the stages of life. Localities where intimations of the supernatural had been experienced long ago in pagan times had often been Christianised and transformed into places of pilgrimage. Time and space bore the imprint of a religion which, at the close of the Middle Ages, had become truly omnipresent.
True piety was more than the simple multiplication of religious observances. Many preachers put their congregations on their guard against false certainties which would result from the mere performance of the actions prescribed or recommended by the Church. In order to be of some account these actions needed to be an expression of sentiments and intentions exemplifying the spirit of the Gospel. The rosary, whose popularity was evident throughout the fifteenth century, far from being reduced to a mechanical recitation of ‘Our Fathers’ and ‘Hail Marys’, should be an invitation to the devout to meditate upon the mysteries of the Redemption. A method of praying akin to that formulated by the founders of the devotio moderna percolated through the Christian community from the Confraternities of the Rosary. In the same period, some authors were urging the faithful to turn pilgrimages into a form of itinerant retreat, and to transform their daily lives into a kind of spiritual pilgrimage. Opportunities for reading, which the development of printing opened up to the educated elite, expanded still further the realm of personal prayer, which was thus stimulated by meditation upon devotional texts. In 1476 a bourgeois woman from Swabia voraciously read the entire Bible between the middle of Lent and Easter.
At the end of the Middle Ages, just as Gothic art was adorning the clean lines of architecture with characteristic flamboyant decoration, so piety was creating a plethora of supererogatory devotions around the basic acts of Christian worship. The fundamental truths were not changed in the fifteenth century; neither were they mutilated. But the rites performed and the words spoken by clerics and faithful, because they were a reflection of their feelings, conferred on the religious life of the period its particular flavour. It is worth devoting some attention to these themes which recur like leitmotifs in the various forms of worship, both private and public.
Above all else, emphasis was placed on the act of Redemption, manifestation of God’s love for the human race. Authors and preachers, particularly the mendicants, sought to communicate to the entire population what the outstanding spiritual leaders, in particular St Bernard, had said as a result of their meditations upon the mystery. God Incarnate, the trials and tribulations of His hidden life, the torments of His Passion and Death on Calvary were constantly invoked. They were presented as so many entreaties to respond, initially through compassion for Christ and then through a desire to imitate Him, to the Son of God, made man in order to expiate the sin of Adam. Holy Week, especially Good Friday, remained the focal point of the liturgical year, but commemoration of the sufferings endured by the Saviour was now extended to every week, the last three days of which provided the opportunity to relive in spirit the drama of the Redemption. Pamphlets entitled Orloges de la Passion linked to each hour of the day one of the sorrows suffered by Christ and His Mother; Vespers evoked Mary’s grief as she took upon her knee the lifeless body of her Son. For this reason Germans gave to the ‘Pieta’ the name ‘Vesperbild’. Like time, space was overshadowed more and more by the Cross. Scenes most likely to play on the emotions of the faithful were depicted inside churches and in the enclosures surrounding them, in frescoes on walls, in stained glass, in altarpieces. In cemeteries could be seen Christ on the Mount of Olives. Crosses were erected at crossroads. Stones marking the stations of the via dolorosa signposted roads leading to places of pilgrimage. Finally, thanks to wood-engraving, pictures of the suffering Redeemer could be placed inside even the humblest of dwellings.
Image-makers — painters and sculptors — put the resources of their talents and craft at the service of this multi-faceted religion. During this period, particularly north of the Alps, art was seeking to convey feelings and states of being. The minute attention to detail given by Flemish masters, who founded numerous schools, prompted artists to portray as accurately as possible individuals, costume, interiors and countryside; these were qualities likely to capture the attention and to act on the emotions, which were precisely the objectives of religious pedagogy. Familiarity, it is true, deadened feelings; reviving them entailed endless exaggeration of the horrifying scenes intended to arouse them. Torments became more and more subtle and even bloodier. In the mystical winepress, Christ was crushed implacably by the screw-driven weight. The Man of Sorrows, bowed down with grief, was portrayed on the summit of Golgotha a few minutes before being nailed to the Cross — a plea to the faithful to remember the moral anguish which had overwhelmed their Saviour. ‘The stench of blood’ seemed more pungent when mingled with ‘the scent of roses’. Scenes of childhood were placed alongside scenes of the Passion, the serenity of the one highlighting the cruelty of the other. The Infant Jesus played with the wood of His Cross and pricked Himself on the thorns of His crown.
From Bethlehem to Calvary the Virgin Mary accompanied her Son. She was never portrayed without Him. Whoever venerated her, of necessity worshipped Christ whom she cradled in her arms as a baby, or supported on her knees as a bloodless corpse. The mysteries of the Redemption were those the faithful were urged to meditate upon while reciting their rosary beads, the most popular form of the Marian cult. The ‘Hail Mary’, recited 150 times, which equalled the number of the psalms, recalled the beginning of the story, the Annunciation, which occupied an outstanding position in fifteenth-century devotion. Jeanne de France, the rejected wife of Louis XII, named the order which she founded the ‘Annonciade’. In the debate over the conception of Mary, which brought theologians into conflict, those who believed in the Immaculate Conception, such as the Franciscans and scholars as celebrated as Gerson, were no doubt following the path which the ordinary believers would have taken had they participated in the controversy. Nothing was too good for the mother of God.
‘Mary, Refuge of Sinners’, ‘Notre Dame de Bon Secours’, ‘Maria Hilf’ were prayers constantly used to invoke the most heedful of intercessors and the advocate most readily heard by the Sovereign Judge. There was an almost boundless proliferation of places attracting pilgrims because Mary’s benevolence had manifested itself there in miracles. At the end of the fifteenth century these usually modest sanctuaries were so numerous in certain areas that, wherever one was, it did not take more than a day’s walk to reach one. The filial trust inspired by Mary was extended to her relatives: her mother, Anne, was Jesus’ grandmother: could the petitions she presented ever be rejected? Certainly, few intercessors were more frequently invoked. During the troubles of the schism, Gerson was responsible for bringing Joseph out of the background: Christ’s foster-father would surely not permit the Church, his spouse, to perish. Gradually the Holy Family came to form a kind of portrait around the Virgin and Child. That family’s patrimony was the Holy Land. Only the rich and important were able to make the journey there, but in a certain sense the land came to meet its children: the legend of angels bringing the ‘Santa Casa’ of Nazareth to Loreto is full of significance.
Petitions were addressed to a host of other intercessors. Each had his special quality or attributes: Leonard took care of prisoners, Anthony of those suffering from gangrene, Roch or Sebastian looked after plague victims, while Barbara and Christopher warded off sudden death. In 1445 a shepherd of Franconia had a revelation of the appropriate assistance which fourteen Apotropaics, reputed to have powers of averting a specific malady, could offer, each member of the group excelling in a particular therapy. The cult enjoyed by the 11,000 virgins or the 10,000 martyrs proves that the help of powerful forces was sought. Yet, at the same time, individuals established a privileged relationship with a particular saint, their patron.
Saints usually considered as protectors gave an example to follow, since their lives demonstrated that true love of God comes through love of neighbour. Charity remained the first duty of the Christian, even if states, kingdoms and towns did discover that poverty, a social evil, made poor relief a political necessity. The range of charitable institutions expanded still further and became more varied; licensed establishments took in epileptics, the insane, those afflicted with venereal disease. Orphans, the aged without means, girls without dowries, none was forgotten. The poor man, soon to be shut up in a workhouse, was as yet perceived as Christ who dispensed grace in exchange for alms. Wills made possible the posthumous accomplishment of deeds left undone or badly done during a lifetime. There existed a strong feeling of solidarity between the living and the dead. Confraternities, for the most part mutual aid societies, often took the place of families in having anniversary services said for those, so numerous in towns, without relatives. The preachers of indulgences most readily heard were those whose ‘pardons’ were applicable to the ‘poor souls’. In parishes of modest means the Fraternity of the Holy Ghost looked after the living, while the Purgatory alms-bowl collected offerings to say prayers for the departed. Christian society formed a body whose institutions reached into the after-life.
What was the response of Christian people to such devotions? Did they practise them assiduously? Was there uniformity? Neither the present state of knowledge nor the nature of the evidence permits a clear-cut answer. Sermons evoke with some vehemence the laity’s indifference, even hostility, either concealed or avowed; but then eloquence and exaggeration go hand in hand. Does this mean that no account should be taken of such polemics? That would be a mistake, for caricatures only exaggerate faults, they do not invent them. Other sources — reports of pastoral visits, decisions of ecclesiastical courts, financial accounts of churches, hospices and fraternities — all yield facts and figures recorded by administrators. There are, though, not enough of them to provide the necessary information for a complete picture to be painted; between the finished areas there are large, blank spaces.
Nevertheless, we may risk at least a sketch. Refusal to obey the Church’s laws was first and foremost the action of a heretic. The fifteenth century had begun with a conflagration: Bohemia, already smouldering because of the execution of Jan Hus (1415), burst into flames as soon as Sigismund made to occupy it. For almost fifteen years all the forms which religious controversy could take flourished there. The victory of orthodoxy in 1436 was not a crushing one; the defeated did not embrace their conquerors’ faith with sincerity. In spite of being dispersed, Hussite communities were not eradicated; scattered elements survived in secret, like the Lollards to whom they were closely related through their Wyclifite associations. Waldensian cells were likewise scattered over a large part of Europe; in order to survive, their members feigned submission to orthodoxy, except when they took refuge from persecution, insecure as it often was, in Alpine valleys. After 1450 these heretics in both thought and deed were increasingly isolated, but aspects of their doctrines had spread widely about them, and tended to make popular anti-clericalism more radical. It was not necessarily the principles of the official Church which were questioned; complaints about priests, especially the mendicants, were more concerned with the imperfections of their way of life than with their beliefs. These criticisms were due, at least in part, to the abuse of ecclesiastical censures; excommunications for debt continually renewed and swelled the band of recalcitrant Christians who resigned themselves to not seeking absolution, since they lacked the funds to put things right.
Insofar as we can estimate the frequency and regularity of religious practice, we can establish that the majority of the faithful did carry out the prescriptions of the Church, year in, year out. Their number fluctuated to some extent, irregular practice constantly modifying the picture; those no longer bothering to attend Mass would be replaced by others who had returned to the fold. A troop of fervent Catholics, perhaps one in ten of those baptised, the vanguard of the main force which was content simply to fulfil its Easter duties, left behind the laggards and the insubordinate, and received communion out of devotion on important feast days. There is no need to take into account the founding of chantries, or even requiem Masses, which were ordered in large numbers. Money was needed for these pious works, and it was not through lack of it that the poor were wanting in zeal.
In the end, was the generosity of the rich not simply a means of parading their wealth and maintaining their rank? Religious history cannot be based on statistical history alone. What motives prompted Christians to obey the Church’s precepts and increase supererogatory practices? Examined in this light, the documents at our disposal are very difficult to interpret: how can one make a window into men’s souls, unmask the hypocrite, and accurately recognise the signs of genuine piety? There can be no doubt that there were men and women who took the demands of the Gospel seriously. Individuals whose exceptional virtues have been acknowledged were surrounded by emulators seeking to live up to their models. Francesca Romana, for example, was able to assemble enough women to found a congregation of lay sisters, and the Brethren of the Common Life found buyers for the edifying volumes they had themselves copied and bound in order to sell at a profit. The Alsatian humanist, Jakob Wimpfeling, an embittered man, was for once over optimistic when he went so far as to say that people of very humble background were reading the Bible, the Imitation of Christ and the Lives of the Fathers.
An amazing contrast is discernible between the fervent approach of what was doubtless a narrow elite and the irresponsibility of the masses. Relationships with things religious often bore the hallmark of a familiarity which the ecclesiastical authorities of the fifteenth century deemed reprehensible. They had great difficulty banning from churches masquerades such as the Feast of the Donkey. Oaths, a fashion which, in various forms, swept over the whole of Europe, were in origin ejaculatory prayers turned upside down; they requested damnation, not salvation, and scoffed at everything which was normally venerated — the body or limbs of Christ, for example. Blasphemy by repetition, however, became a habit, and came to notify nothing more than indifference to God’s law.
Yet this indifference was likely to be badly shaken by fear and anxiety. In distress, men sought contact with the spiritual. Without doubt they mostly had an ‘objectivist’ concept of religion, which tended to turn it into a collection of outward and visible actions; by multiplying these works, would they not be building an impregnable fortress against danger? ‘Hail Marys’ were reeled off by the hundred, Masses ordered by the dozen, and, in the absence of a plenary indulgence, a man might try to obtain a pardon worth thousands of days, weeks or years. Many expected that the performance of rites would elicit an immediate response, and their prayers turned into incantations. Some objects were considered to be charged with benevolent power, and in case of need one had only to look upon them to intercept the mysterious beams. A glance at the image of St Christopher was a guarantee against sudden death; pilgrims to Aachen who, swamped by the crowd, were unable to see the exposed relics, fixed a small mirror to their headgear. In such cases, Christianity was little more than a veneer applied to the immemorial beliefs of paganism. Unusual phenomena were readily seen as manifestations, good or bad, of celestial moods. The surprising was taken for the marvellous, and the marvellous promoted to the miraculous. Prelates tried to control the passion for places where, according to rumour, the sacred had made an appearance: the bishop of Saint-Papoul had a pond filled in because peasants were drawing their water with reverence on the pretext that an ox had knelt down at the edge of it. But not all cases were as simple. For decades scholars and the authorities argued about the hosts of Wilsnack, in northern Germany; some recognised the validity of the veneration accorded by crowds of pilgrims, believing that divine intervention had preserved the consecrated Bread from fire, while their opponents denied the authenticity of the facts reported by promoters of this new devotion. Such flagrant disagreement inevitably cast doubts in people’s minds.
Echoing the views of Gerson and of Nicholas of Cusa, many in the universities condemned the profusion of those rites, exorcisms and pilgrimages which people were inclined to fulfil in a superstitious way. In some mountain regions the clergy strove to combat ignorance and cure dissension by religious instruction, which sometimes produced unforeseen results. Practices once tolerated were now forbidden. There was discrepancy between the peasant way of life and the biblical concept expounded by preachers. Old customs died hard; those unable to turn away from them felt guilty. Clerics wondered whether it was not a case of the devil blocking the path of true religion. Some inquisitors elaborated an entire theory from isolated circumstances; healers and their clients were not simply ignorant people, but apostates, whom Satan had turned into disciples. Sorcerers were the new heretics, taking over from Cathars and Waldensians; to fight them was a matter of urgency. The papal bull, Summis desiderantes of 1484, and the inquisitor’s manual, Malleus maleficarum, of 1486, elevated these views to the level of official doctrine. In the Alps where, to eradicate Waldensianism, preaching had often been methodically carried out, fear of satanism first appeared at the end of the fourteenth century, before being found in the Rhine valley, where the authors of Malleus observed it and drew up their theories about it. In France, both the trial of Joan of Arc (1431) and the ‘Vauderie’ (burning of ‘sorcerers’) of Arras (1459—65) mark the development of a scourge which would reveal its utter maleficence in the sixteenth century. This machinery of repression, once set in motion, quickly gathered momentum, and actually caused the spread of those very ideas which it was meant to crush.
The preceding pages constitute a rapid sketch of what would comprise the subject matter of an elaborate painting; in this case, however, only those characteristics common to the whole of western Europe have been considered. A detailed study would require a canvas of bewildering diversity. The characteristic flavour of Christian life in some countries did not escape the notice of fifteenth-century travellers: Italians were struck by the fervour of Germans, who did not scruple to criticise Latin levity. Religion played a part in defining national identities: in this respect the Czechs, whose pride had been wounded by the condemnation of Hus, foreshadowed the devotion of Germans to Luther, who presented himself as the champion of their honour. Social environment provided just as many variations in religious behaviour as did nations. People in urban centres, where cultural levels rose more rapidly than in country areas, responded more easily to the exhortation to give Christianity a truly spiritual dimension; in towns, books, almost always indispensable for meditation, were less rare. There was no uniformity, either, among the peasantry, which was not totally impervious to influences from urban communities. Villagers with regular contact with town dwellers did not inhabit the same intellectual sphere as the people of a high mountain valley cut off from the world. Nor should we forget the differences influenced by gender. Already in the fifteenth century men did not wish to appear bigoted. Women receive communion more often and gave more generously; wills, foundation charters and the registers of confraternities bear witness to this. These remarks, which need qualification and correction, are in no way exhaustive. The history of religious sentiment is a vineyard where men may labour long. There remains one final question to which, once again, no definitive answer is possible. Did religious vitality vary in intensity over the course of the century? Given the present state of knowledge, any attempt to plot on a graph the highs and lows of the religious barometer would inevitably be doomed to failure. It does seem, however, that piety did not suffer permanent weakness; as some features declined, so others took their place. Devotion grew until it became, by the beginning of the sixteenth century, the ‘appetite for the divine’ noted by Lucien Febvre, an appetite which he considered to be one of the causes of the Reformation.