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Pay Back Time? Tithes and Tithing in Late Medieval England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Extract
In seeking aspects of the pre-Reformation Church which might be expected automatically to invoke connections with God’s bounty, tithes and tithing are obvious candidates. In an essentially agricultural society, where the overwhelming majority of the population worked on the land, God’s bounty in providing crops and food animals, and tithing as the response to the moral and theological imperative to acknowledge that bounty, surely ought to be almost a commonplace. Tithes had biblical origins as a divine precept, and an obligation which Christians were deemed to have inherited from the Jews.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 46: God’s Bounty? The Churches and the Natural World , 2010 , pp. 124 - 133
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2010
References
1 e.g. Lev. 27: 30–33; Deut. 14: 22.
2 However, for an assertion that the obligation to tithe was abrogated by Christ’s birth, see Registram Johannis Trefnant, episcopi Herefordensis, A.D. MCCCLXXXIX-MCCCCIV, ed. W.W. Capes, CYS 20 (1916), 304–06, at 306.
3 In limiting the survey to England, it is also restricted to works produced by English authors. Adding material produced by Continental authors and known to have been available in England (including a range of confessional and instructional material, and canon law texts) would clearly affect the scope. It might also affect the argument, but any impact should be reflected in the English-generated evidence.
4 Swanson, R. N., ‘Standards of Livings: Parochial Revenues in Pre-Reformation England’, in Harper-Bill, C., ed., Religious Belief and Ecclesiastical Careers in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge, 1991), 151–96, at 166–67.Google Scholar
5 Palmer, R. C., Selling the Church. The English Parish in Law, Commerce, and Religion, 1350–1550 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2002), 32.Google Scholar
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8 Jacob’s Well: An English Treatise on the Cleansing of Man’s Conscience: Part 1, ed. Brandeis, A., EETS os 115 (1900); discussion of tithing at 37—47. On the text as a sermon collection, see O’Mara, V. and Paul, S., A Repertorimn of Middle English Prose Sermons, 4 vols, Sermo 1 (Turnhout, 2007), 1: xxxii; tithing discussion summarized ibid. 4: 2285–88.Google Scholar
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11 These benefits also appear in the later Jacob’s Well: ibid. 42.
12 Wenzel, Fasciculus morum, 82–83.
13 I cite the two-volume edition published at Venice, 1586. On dating, see Boyle, L. E., ‘The Date of the Summa praedicantium of John Bromyard’, Speculum 48 (1973), 533–37, repr. in idem, Pastoral Care, Clerical Education, and Canon Law, 1200—1400 (London, 1981)Google Scholar, ch. 10. An earlier date is suggested in Walls, K., John Bromyard on Church and State: The Summa Predkantium and Early Fourteenth-Century England. A Dominican’s Books and Guide for Preachers (Market Weighton, 2007), 189–96, which may merit serious consideration.Google Scholar
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15 Ibid, I, fols 179va, 179ra. For Cain as a bad tither, see also below, 129).
16 Ibid. 1, fols 179rb-179va.
17 Ibid, I, fol. 180vb.
18 Ibid. I, fol. 180va.
19 Dives and Pauper, ed. Barnum, P. H., 2 vols in 3, EETS os 275, 280, 323 (1976-2004), 1/2: 165–66.Google Scholar
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21 Ibid. 166.
22 Ibid. 167.
23 Ibid. 167–68.
24 Jacob’s Well, ed. Brandeis, 37–41; comment on gifts and bequests at 41.
25 Dives and Pauper, ed. Barnum, 1/2:168–69; the legal debate on payment continues to 170.
26 The Towneley Plays, Volume One: Introduction and Text, ed. Stevens, M. and Cawley, A. C., EETS ss 13 (1994), 14–19; The N-Town Play: Cotton MS Vespasian D. 8, vol. 1: Introduction and Text Google Scholar, ed. Spector, S., EETS ss 11 (1991), 37–39; Smith, L. T., York Plays (New York, 1885), 36–37.Google Scholar
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28 Towneley Plays, ed. Stevens and Cawley, 15:
‘… all the good thou has in wone
Of Godys grace is bot a lone.’
29 Tierney, B., Medieval Poor Law: a Sketch of Canonical Tlteory and its Application in England (Berkeley, CA, 1959), 70–71, 73–74, 122.Google Scholar
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37 Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, 1428–31, ed. Tanner, N. P., Camden Society 4th ser. 20 (1977), 103; see also ibid. 61, 141, 183; Lollards of Coventry, 1486–1522 Google Scholar, ed. McSheffrey, S. and Tanner, N., Camden Society 5th ser. 23 (2003), 72.Google Scholar
38 Jacob’s Well, ed. Brandeis, 44. One argument here was possibly that free-will charitable distributions, without clerical oversight, made it easier to avoid full payment.
39 For the concept of the ‘social miracle’, see Bossy, J., Christianity in the West, 1400-1700 (Oxford, 1985), ch. 4, esp. 57.Google Scholar