Sacred People, Sacred Spaces: Evidence of Parish Respect and Contempt toward the Pre-Reformation Clergy

Abstract

Conflicts between parish clergy and parishioners in late medieval England have been described as acts of both anticlericalism and proclericalism (that is, an attempt to compel clergy into living up to the parishioners’ increasingly high expectations of them). This paper hopes to expand our knowledge of parish conflict by turning to an oft-neglected source. In his 2002 book Selling the Church, Robert Palmer contended that we must turn to the king’s courts to better understand conflicts with the church, because both the clergy and the laity frequently preferred the king’s justice to the church’s. This paper also turns to the king’s courts, this time to the courts of equity. Examining a sampling of cases involving parish violence this paper hopes to offer a greater appreciation for the variety of sentiment existing in England prior to the Reformation.