Lay Religiosity, Piety, and Devotion in Scotland c. 1300 to c. 1450

Abstract

In recent Scottish historical research on issues of ecclesiastical renewal and reform, the chief academic focus has rested on three strands: the radical restructuring of the twelfth century, popular devotion in the immediate pre-Reformation period, and the dramatic events of the sixteenth-century Reformation. This does not mean that other aspects of medieval Church history have been neglected, for there has been much new research into its institutions, personnel, and properties. Access to papal records, published as the Calendars of Papal Letters and the Calendars of Scottish Supplications to Rome, has not only shed light on issues of papal provision to benefices, clerical celibacy, illegitimacy and education, and the continuing role and nature of lay patronage and benefaction of the secular and regular Church but has transformed scholarly understanding of the operation of the secular Church in Scotland, the organization and functioning of its governmental structures, and the exercise of canon law, and has given fresh insight into the influence which the clergy wielded over the lives of the lay population. Research founded on these and earlier papal record sources has borne much fruit in the last twenty years, with major studies of Scoto-papal relations and the government of the Scottish Church by, for example, Paul Ferguson for the pre-1286 period, Andrew Barrell for the mid-fourteenth century, and Donald Watt for the period down to 1472 stimulating a general reassessment of interactions between the Scottish clergy and the papal curia and offering insights into the development and functioning of the legal and judicial structures and mechanisms which characterized the later medieval Church in Scotland. More recently, both Irene Furneaux’s and Jennifer McDonald’s doctoral research into the Scottish material in the records of the Sacred Penitentiary has begun to be published. The full impact of their research is yet to be felt, but the evidence which they present for the level of ecclesiastical influence on routine aspects of the daily lives of both clerical and lay populations in the period after 1470, the volume of communication between Scotland and the Sacred Penitentiary, and fundamental elements of religious practice and belief will undoubtedly trigger a radical reassessment of sacred and profane behaviour and belief among the lay population and the composition, character, and quality of the clergy.