Lamps, lights and layfolk: `popular' devotion before the Black Death

Abstract

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as well as during the later middle ages, lay piety and devotion were expressed through grants for lights. The difference at the earlier time was that benefactions were made to a variety of agencies or religious institutions, so that such endowments by the laity were not confined to the parish church. Perhaps the laity was as concerned to have an association with religious houses as with the parish church and it was particularly through grants for lights that lower social groups – burgesses and even the free peasantry – were able to participate in the spiritual benefits of religious houses because the cost was low, involving often only rents or small amounts of land. The size of conventual churches allowed a large number of altars dedicated to a range of saints which might have been attractive to lay personal devotion.