Polluting the sacred: Violence and religion in English daily life, c. 1400--1553

Late medieval and Reformation Europe was wracked with dynastic dispute and religious fragmentation. Yet, according to Norbert Elias, this was the time of the ‘civilizing process’. In his highly influential study, The Civilizing Process, Elias argued that the burgeoning power of the early modern state and humanist codes of courtesy slowly caused society to stigmatize the use of violence as both illegal and disreputable. Although monarchs and humanists certainly played a part in the alteration of social norms, Elias dismisses a crucial catalyst of change in late medieval and early modern culture, the Church. Long before standing armies and humanist handbooks on table-manners appeared, Christian pastors struggled to curb aggression and violence among their flock. Indeed, some historians have shown an interest in the interaction of the Church and violence, but mostly in terms of chivalry, the crusading ideal or just-war theory. The focus of historians on such broad ideological and intellectual developments leaves unexplored the quotidian struggle of the clergy to suppress violence at the parish level. Through an extensive investigation of late medieval and early Reformation sources, my thesis explores both clerical efforts to check aggression among parishioners and the actual impact of such attempts on lay attitudes and behaviour. Through this study, I show that the medieval Church compelled parishioners to regard the use of violence during sacred rituals or in sacred places as impious and hence, provoked them to question the legitimacy of violent conduct in other settings. Moreover, I display how Protestant reformers altered the manner in which the English Church suppressed aggression yet still clung fast to the idea that violence between parishioners was impious. In summation, this thesis investigates: the efforts of late medieval clerics through ritual, preaching and proscription to check violence; the impact of clerical efforts against aggression on lay actions and attitudes; the role of late medieval parish priests in the prevention and promotion of violence; and the impact of the early English Reformation on the clergy's efforts, lay attitudes and the role of priests.