Any consideration of lay piety in the middle ages must begin with the principal focus of religious experience for the vast majority of the population, namely, the parish church. The interaction of the laity and their local churches in this period is a huge and complex topic, but it is perhaps best exemplified by the proliferation of voluntary devotional associations known variously as parish guilds, brotherhoods or fraternities. Despite the fact that guild records are scattered and often fragmentary, and are usually restricted to those that relate to urban rather than rural communities, much important recent work has been carried out on these institutions. The precise numbers of guilds cannot now be determined with any degree of accuracy, since many were ephemeral associations that have left no trace at all in the records. But it seems reasonable to suppose that most parish churches probably supported at least one guild, although it is clear that some wealthy (primarily urban) parishes could easily support a large number of guilds.
It is known that there were guilds in Anglo-Saxon England that provided members with the same kinds of services as did the later organizations.5 The few surviving preConquest guild statutes and regulations show that the desire to venerate a saint or some holy figure or object was a central feature, as were the provision of post mortem services and the appropriate funeral rites. In addition, entrance fees were usually charged, annual meetings and feasts held, while strict behavioural codes for enrolled members were also set out. There were probably many more early guilds than are now documented, but it seems that they grew significantly in numbers in the later middle ages. The reasons for this expansion in the number of guilds in England are unclear. Obviously, the years 1100-1500 are much better documented than the Anglo-Saxon age, and the greater number of guilds identified for the former period may partly reflect the abundance of references to such associations, but this fact alone does not provide a fully adequate explanation. One possible cause behind this trend which has been noted by a number of historians is that guilds grew as a response to the uncertainties and social and psychological dislocations of the period after the Black Death (1348-9). Guilds helped to ensure that members would receive a proper funeral and burial during times of high mortality when many feared their remains would be consigned to an unmarked grave and that they would go without the prayers needed to speed their souls through Purgatory. Other plausible suggestions are that the growth in numbers of guilds reflects rising levels of per capita wealth among the laity which allowed people to apportion a greater share of their disposable incomes to pious activities. Another suggestion is that the proliferation of guilds represented a practical response to the inflexibility of the parochial system itself. Parish boundaries, more or less fixed by the early 1300s, were not able to respond adequately to changes in population distribution and settlement, and by recruiting from outside the parish some guilds could provide outsiders a means of identification with the community where they came to trade and do business. All of these theories have some merit and are not mutually exclusive. What is increasingly certain is that, despite their proliferation, guilds did not stand in conflict with the churches in which they were established, nor did they represent any significant level of general dissatisfaction with the communal ethos of parish life. While conflicts of interest between guild and parish could arise from time to time, they appear to have contributed in many ways to the religious and social needs of the wider community. Indeed, guilds were hugely important to the overall ceremonial and liturgical life of the medieval parish, through the provision of funds for the maintenance of lights before images or on altars in the church, the employment of auxiliary clergy who were required to help out during the celebration of parish services, as well as the promotion and financing of churchbuilding and church-furnishing programmes. Of course, guilds should not be seen as all-inclusive institutions which catered to the needs of every member of the community: they might reflect, or sometimes even emphasize, divisions in society. There were some guilds which restricted membership on the basis of gender, such as the many guilds of young men or maidens that were common features of late medieval parish life. Other guilds did not admit members of the clergy and, in urban areas with large immigrant populations from overseas (notably London and its suburbs), there were others that were representative of specific national groups and that explicitly prohibited native-born parishioners from enrolling as members; there was, for example, the fraternity of the ‘Holy Blood of Wilsnack’, attached to the church of the London Austin Friars, whose ordinances stipulated that only those ‘boron beyonde the see’ could become members.6 As noted, most guilds charged modest entry fees and also demanded regular subscription payments, thus limiting membership of such groups mainly to the middling and wealthy classes. Recent research has also stressed that in many areas the office of guildwarden was dominated by local elites, that is, men who served or who were to go on to serve as churchwarden, as well as those who sought and attained positions of authority and responsibility in civic or manorial government. Still, these facts emphasize the elision of guild life with that of local society, rather than a separation or conflict of such interests.
At the heart of guild life was a continuing preoccupation with the cult of the saints and their role as intercessory agents. A study of the dedications chosen by guild brothers and sisters for their pious associations helps to chart changes and trends in lay devotion. In the pre-Conquest period, guild dedications were often of homegrown or local saints, whereas gradually over time native Anglo-Saxon, or in the west country Celtic, cults gave way to (although they were never replaced entirely by) the veneration of universal ones such as the cult of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the popular eucharistic devotion of Corpus Christi. The fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries witnessed a revival of enthusiasm for certain older cults, such as those of Sts George, Katherine of Alexandria and Margaret of Antioch, but the same period also witnessed the adoption and growth of some new devotions. Popular guild dedications at this time were those that focused on Christ’s family or lineage, and therefore his humanity, such as St Anne, or those that reflected a concern with the events of his Passion and death, such as the Marian cult of the Pieta. Also increasingly popular from around the mid-fifteenth century was the cult of the Holy Name of Jesus, the central devotion of this cult being the sacred IHS monogram. A survey of guild dedications from different parts of England undertaken by Dr Ken Farnhill has pointed to some interesting regional contrasts: St John the Baptist was a popular choice of dedication in East Anglia but less so elsewhere.7 Guilds dedicated to St Katherine were most numerous in London. Also, both Cornwall and London supported large numbers of guilds dedicated to St George, and while the ‘Jesus’ guilds spread most widely in London and Norfolk, this enthusiasm was not repeated in other documented localities. The reasons for such striking variations in lay devotion across medieval England have yet to be explained fully, but may include the influence of cults fostered by religious houses or cathedrals, the prominence and durability of local holy figures or cults, the influence of trade and communications networks, or (particularly in towns) higher levels of literacy which enabled new cults to be taken up and disseminated.
Overall, it is hard to provide one single definition of medieval parish guilds, and it is equally hard to provide a simple explanation of their significance. They could range in size from the small, informal guilds of maidens or young men, ephemeral and spontaneous organizations that often simply existed in order to meet particular needs such as raising funds for the maintenance of altar lights, to large urban guilds with propertied endowments which provided an array of services and which were often dominated by oligarchs from local government and were in some ways unofficial town councils. However, the very difficulty in trying to establish the nature of parish guilds emphasizes their highly flexible character, a fact which itself provides an explanation for their widespread popularity.
World History
