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The Altars in York Minster in the Early Sixteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

W. J. Sheils
W. J. Sheils*
Affiliation:
University of York
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Extract

Good God! what a pomp of silk vestments was there, of golden candlesticks.’ The dismissive satire of Erasmus’s pilgrim on looking down on Canterbury Cathedral not only brought traditional piety into disrepute among significant sectors of the educated, both clerical and lay, in early sixteenth-century England, but has also helped to colour the views of historians of the later medieval Church until recently. The work on parochial, diocesan, and cathedral archives since the 1960s, undertaken and inspired by the publication of A. G. Dickens’ The English Reformation, has refined that view, which saw traditional piety as something of a clerical confidence trick designed to impoverish a credulous laity, and recovered the reputation of the early sixteenth-century Church. The most recent, and most eloquent, account of the strength of traditional piety among the people is that by Eamon Duffy. His work has concentrated on the parochial context, where he has shown how intercessory prayer, through gilds, obits, and chantries, remained at the centre of a liturgical tradition which commanded great loyalty from the laity up to and, in some cases, beyond the dissolution of those institutional expressions of that devotion in 1547. The place of such devotion within a cathedral context has largely been ignored, despite the recently published histories, and this paper sets out to fill that gap a little by looking at the minor altars of York Minster and the clergy which served them.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 35: Continuity and Change in Christian Worship , 1999 , pp. 104 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1999

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References

1 Quoted in Collinson, P., Ramsay, N., and Sparks, M., eds, A History of Canterbury Cathedral (Oxford, 1995), p. 154 Google Scholar.

2 See Swanson, R. N., Church and Society in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1989), esp. pp. 275–99 Google Scholar, for recent overview.

3 Duffy, E., The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580 (New Haven, CT, and London, 1992)Google Scholar.

4 Lchmberg, S. E., The Reformation of Cathedrals: Cathedrals in English Society 1485-1603 (Princeton, NJ, 1988), pp. 13–25 Google Scholar, discusses the minor canons. For a detailed study see N. Orme, The medieval clergy of Exeter cathedral, i. the vicars and annuellars’, Tratisactions of the Devonshire Association, 113 (1981), pp. 79-102.

5 Lchmberg, Reformation of Cathedrals, pp. 69-76; Lepine, D., A Brotherhood of Canons Serving God: English Secular Cathedrals in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 1995), pp. 6–17 Google Scholar.

6 Cross, Claire, ‘From the Reformation to the Restoration’, in Aylmcr, G. E. and Cant, R., eds, A History of York Minster (Oxford, 1978), p. 194 Google Scholar.

7 J. Raine, ed., The Fabric Rolls of York Minster, SS, 35 (1859), p. 269.

8 Ibid., p. 245.

9 Lchmberg, Reformation of Cathedrals, p. 24.

10 York Minster Library, Dean and Chapter Archives, M2J2)c, fos ior-2tr.

11 Ibid., M2(4)b, fos 1r-4v.

12 Raine, Fabric Rolls, p. 98; G. E. Aylmer, ‘Funeral monuments and other post-medieval sculpture’, in Aylmer and Cant, History of York Minster, p. 432.

13 Lehmberg, Reformation of Cathedrals, pp. 12, 23.

14 C. Cross, ed., York Clergy Wills 1520-1600: 1, Minster Clergy, Borthwick Texts and Calendars: records of the northern province, 10 (York, 1984), esp. pp. 1, 6, 27-9, 46-7, 49-51, 81-4.

15 Ibid., pp. 3, 27-9, 34-5, 47-9, 52-3, 77-80, 82-3.

16 Cross, Minster Clergy, pp. 27-9, 77-80.

17 Orme, ‘Exeter clergy’, pp. 96-7 reveals a similar pattern.

18 C. Cross and N. Vickcrs, Monks, Friars and Nuns in Sixteenth Century Yorkshire, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, 150 (1995) pp. 66, 135, 151, 162, 181, 222, 276-7, 289, 320, 374, 401, 496, 498-9, 504, 515, includes some tentative identifications also. This was even stronger in former monastic cathedrals, I. Atherton, E. Fcrnie, C. Harper-Bill, and H. Smith, eds, Norwich Cathedral: Church, City and Diocese 1096-1996 (London and Rio Grande, OH, 1996), pp. 518-19.

19 Rainc, Fabric Rolls, pp. 274-306, prints all the surviving inventories, arranged by chapel and chantry. There are some omissions in the published text. The original 1521 inventory is in York Minster Library, Dean and Chapter Archives, M2(4)a.

20 Rainc, Fabric Rolls, pp. 280-1, 287, 289; Cross, Minster Clergy, pp. 49-51.

21 Rainc, Fabric Rolb, pp. 281-2, 299.

22 P. Marshall, The Catholic Priesthood and the English Reformation (Oxford, 1994), pp. 50-9, discusses the greater demands of the laity on such priests at this date.

23 W. E. Page, ed., Yorkshire Chantry Certificates, ii, SS, 92 (1895), pp. 429-50.

24 A. G. Dickens, ‘A municipal dissolution of chantries at York, 1536’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 36 (1944-7), pp. 164-73; White, E., The St Christopher and St George Guild of York, Borthwick Papers,72 (York, 1987), pp. 7–9 Google Scholar.

25 Page, Chantry Certificates it, pp. 440-1.

26 Ibid., pp. 432-3, 438-9.

27 Ibid. Details of the incomes are taken from this source passim, and vary somewhat from the view of A. Krcider, English Chantries: the Road to Dissolution (Cambridge, MA, 1979), pp. 19-25.

28 Palliser, D. M., Tudor York (Oxford, 1979), pp. 205–6, 213–15 Google Scholar.

29 Page, Chantry Certificates ii, p. 450.

30 Ibid., pp. 437, 441.

31 Ibid., p. 434; Horn, J. and Smith, D. M., eds, John Le Neve, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1541-1857, York (London, 1975), p. 58 Google Scholar.

32 Cross and Vickcrs, Monks, Friars and Nuns, pp. 151, 401.

33 Page, Chantry Certificates ii, pp. 430-48; Kreidcr, English Chantries, pp. 24-5.

34 Raine, Fabric Rolls, pp. 274-5. All Saints is the first listed by Raine in his alphabetical arrangement, which might explain its influence on subsequent accounts.

35 Lehmberg, Reformation of Cathedrals, p. 107; Harrison, F. C., Life in a Medieval College (London, 1952), pp. 194–202 Google Scholar.

36 Lewis, I. M., Social Anthropology in Perspective, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 131–9, 144–8 Google Scholar; Bossy, J., ‘The mass as a social institution’ P&P, 100 (Aug., 1983), pp. 29–61 Google Scholar esp. pp. 50-4.

37 The British Archaeological Association has published volumes on the Medieval Art and Architecture of the following cathedrals: Wells, Gloucester, Lincoln, Ely, Worcester, Exeter, Salisbury, Hereford, Durham, and Winchester.

38 Kxcidcr, English Chantries, for the general background; Lehmberg, Reformation of Cathedrals, pp. 118-19.

39 Rainc, Fabric Rolls, pp. 100-7; J. H. Harvey, ‘Architectural history from 1291 to 1558’, in Aylmer and Cant, History of York Minster, p. 188.

40 Lehmberg, Reformation of Cathedrals, p. 116.