Some Statistics of Religious Motivation

Abstract

Motives are the inner springs of action, the invisible causes which are apprehended only in their visible effects. The latter, when collected and classified as numerical data, are known as statistics, through which at least one aspect of the former can be explored and analysed. Thus, while we cannot ask them to reveal such fundamental questions as to what moved men to enter or leave the monastic life, we can legitimately seek an answer in quantitative terms to what is preliminary and, as such, vital to our understanding of the problem of religious motivation: what do statistics disclose with regard to the force of religious motivation and to its rise and decline among the black monks in England in the two centuries between the first catastrophic onslaught of the Black Death and the dissolution (AD 1350–1540)? This question encompasses a vast field and, for the purposes of this present study, our attention must be limited to the three cathedral priories of Ely, Norwich and Worcester.