Pax Christi. Sometimes.

You are, I know, not interested in this in the least. Your are glancing at this, thinking what my son said aloud when he saw the book on the table:

That …..looks like the most boring book ever written.

Fine. Go back to Dune for all I care. You know what *I* think about that.

But since at least some of you probably have interests in or complaints about church life in the 21^st century, I’m just going to sit here and remind you once again, that perspective is everything. History helps. It might just help you be more patient with the present. It might also give you an idea or two.

The entire book is a very good read. If you’re interested at all in the shape of church life across time, take a look. You can skim parts of it online, I’m sure.

Orme sketches some historical development: what was the shape and structure of Christianity by the time the Middle Ages rolled around? How did it come to be?

Then he looks at various aspects, mostly of liturgical life. From the title, you can tell this is the case – this isn’t a study of the relationship between church and state, the Christian moral code or charitable works in the period. It’s about, well…going to church.

I’m just to highlight a few random points that I think might be of more general interest.

• First, the role of the laity, especially in the establishment and maintenance of worship spaces and related institutions – I can’t call them “parishes,” because most were not that, in our modern sense.

We are very accustomed to a top-down mode of establishment and organization, but for much of church history, through much of the world, this was simply not the process, even when it comes to the appointment of clergy. Before modern communication and transportation, it really couldn’t be. If you know American Catholic history, you know this is so as well – this vast land might have been divided into mission territories and even dioceses, but when it came to parish, school and hospital establishment, that often began with the laity, in concert with religious orders, mostly religious women.

• But back to medieval England. As Arnold summarizes:

The functioning of a parish church, or indeed a chapel open to the public, was a co-operative enterprise. As we shall shortly discover, each building should have been prepared for use by a bishop through an act of consecration. Its fabric and contents were meant to be supervised by an archdeacon in regular annual visitations. Patrons owned the church and appointed its incumbent. Tis gave them power over the clergy, which their status and  wealth were likely to prolong after their candidate was instituted by the bishop. Appropriating bodies remained responsible for chancels and might well be expected to give help in any major project of church rebuilding. The rector or vicar held the cure of souls and had rights over the building, properties, revenues, and church services. However these rights came with duties, and if the duties were not done, parishioners could appeal to the bishop – and sometimes did so. Moreover the task of maintaining and running a church by the thirteenth century was too complicated and expensive for an incumbent alone. Hence came the devolution of tasks to the parishioners and the emergence of churchwardens to co-ordinate them. Even before this, guilds or groups of parishioners had formed, and these too helped to contribute to the activities in the building or the parish.

Historians and contemporary church observers have commented on this, especially in the last twenty years – that while the caricature of the “bad old days” of pre-modern Catholicism drew a picture of a totally clerical scene – the laity actually, in many areas, had a lot of power. Also a point of contention through history, yes? And perhaps not always structured in the most ideal way. But perhaps also a bit of a check on clerical malfeasance that our closed clerical circles of the present makes more challenging.

• What about $$$? How was all of this funded? Well, here’s where knowing history might certainly broaden your perspective. The collection plate – or general parish offertory – as a primary means of supporting a parish (we’ll use that term for simplicity’s sake) is a recent innovation. As Orme explains, the support of an institution and its clergy happened through a number of means: the donations of the wealthy, the support of guilds and other groups, offerings of the faithful made in relation to devotions and services – always a potential problem as the line between support and simony is constantly wavering – and, quite standard during this period – the annual donation of a candle to the parish by each household. Much later, when pews became a part of worship spaces, pew-rents and purchases, as well.

It is, in a way, a different sort of mindset rooted in a different role that the Church plays in a community, isn’t it? It’s the difference between a community in which the Church is one of several institutions in the community to which everyone belongs, plays a role in supporting everyone and which, because of that, everyone has a duty to support – and then the role a church institution plays in a more heterogeneous community, to which belonging is the result of choice.

In each case, though, the financial support of the church institution takes the form of dominate framework of exchange in which it resides: in the middle ages, a limited market oriented towards sustaining stability of the community, and then today, a free market oriented towards the satisfaction of individual needs.

Huh.

• Conflict and privilege  The narrative abounds with tales of conflict between clergy and clergy and between clergy and laity – the latter being mostly over support and the performance of duties. In short: the laity being annoyed at the clergy’s negligence. Or sometimes over-attentiveness.

And then privilege: when it comes to who gets to sit where, who receives the pax or the blessed bread after Mass first – there’s always privilege at work. Always.

Which brings us back, quite often, to that previous matter of financial support. No, there are no simple solutions. Just a constant need to recognize human weakness and plan for it.

And so as I always say, when it comes to understanding and working in the present: it’s not useful to pretend that we’re all angels. Managing any institution – even or especially religious ones – requires taking into account human weakness and pride. Maybe even centering it as something to be assumed.

Which is one more reason I tend to be a proponent of the staid old structure rather than the flexible innovative flow – the prideful jerks, the careerists and the strivers will always find a way to push themselves into the front pew and just have things, in general, their way.

At All Saints Staining London in 1496 a woman threw the pax on the ground and broke it when another kissed it first. At Godmanchester, Huntingdonshire, in 1518 a chaplain and two men tried to stop a gentleman’s wife from receiving the pax, presumably on the grounds that it was not her turn. Worst of all, if true, was an assault in Essex at Teydon Garnon in 1522. On the Sunday before All Saints Day, John Browne, a gentleman in the parish but not the most important one, was alleged to have said to the parish clerk, ‘If thou hereafter givest not me the pax first, I shall break it on thy head’. When All Saints came, the clerk, Richard Pond, gave the pax first to Francis Hampden, the patron of the church, then to Margery his wife, and finally to Browne, who kissed it and allegedly then broke it into two pieces on the clerk’s head, causing streams of blood to run to the ground. (245)

Won’t they?