Book Review: Voices of Morebath

Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village
Eamon Duffy
Yale University Press





In 1992 Eamon Duffy published his ground breaking The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580 describing the English Reformation as it happened in the parishes. His thesis was that the people of England were Catholic and that the Reformation was imposed on them against their will and only slowly accepted. Especially noteworthy was his use of the records of the parishes and their members, rather than the doings of the senior leaders Protestant and Catholic on which the usual histories are built. Running through out the book are the comments of Sir Christopher Tryche (pronounced Trickey) of Morebath who was the pastor from 1520 to 1574. A shepard of definite opinion on just about anything, with a deep concern for his flock, his comments bring to life the impact of the Reformation on the parishes. In this follow up book Dr Duffy tells the story of Morebath as it is preserved in Sir Christopher’s records. (In this period priests were addressed as Sir as we would use Father.)

Morebath was a village of 33 families (1531, Sir Christopher’s count by family and farm) and about 125-150 souls located in a remote corner of northeast Devon. The secular political and economic organization was the Manor of Morebath, unfortunately the records of the manor were destroyed in WW II. Except that the crop was wool instead of grain this appears to be a fairly typical medieval village, the manor provided the local government services and was also organized the economic activities. So long as the rents were paid, and there were no disputes requiring outside resolution, a village was fairly autonomous.

Duffy’a account is based on the financial records of the parish maintained by Sir Christopher, as such they provide a good accounting of the physical activities of the parish but do not provide direct evidence of the most important item: the faith life of its members. We see something of this from the comments and asides by Sir Christopher, and indirectly by the amount and type of contributions to the parish and how the parish spends it’s money.

Sir Christopher comes to Morebath as an enthusiastic young priest. We see the parish repair the building, increase devotions, the financial records show a parish spending money on things that facilitate worship and teaching the faith. Two of Sir Christopher’s special projects were establishing the veneration of St Sidwell and obtaining black vestments for funerals. He purchases the statue of St Sidwell from his own money and the parish over several years provides for it's decoration. He contributes about half the cost of the vestments the parish contributing the rest, these must have been decorative, it took 20 years of saveing to purchase them.

In November 1534, Sir Christopher’s world began to unravel. Henry VIII decided that in order to get a divorce he would have to break with the Papacy and had Parliament pass the Law of Supremacy making him head of the Church of England. To keep his appointment Sir Christopher would have had to sign the oath of supremacy. Changes began slowly as Henry’s Protestant advisors slowly brought protestant ideas into force. Widely unpopular, they were they were met with a reaction from passive resistance to open rebellion. But since the King was head of the Church of England these changes had the full force of civil law, denying that the King could be head of the church was high treason. In Morebath there was grudging though timely compliance and trying to make the best of the situation. The records show a change in income and purchasing. Voluntary donations are down; there is one time income from the sale of now forbidden objects. If these are not sold the Crown will confiscate them without compensation. Money is spent to buy Protestant replacements and more and more there are external requirements to raise money to support secular activities such as road maintenance and wars. Decrees 1538 and 1540 eliminate the devotion to saints. However until 1548 Morebath is still a Catholic parish. The Pope is no longer prayed for and is denounced four times a year. The veneration of the saints is gone, but still every Sunday Mass is celebrated. Sir Christopher is required to burn the statue of St Sidwell by outside direction. The black vestments were banned a year after their purchase, but are hidden by a parishioner.

In 1548 King Henry dies, King Edward is a minor and the regents appointed to rule in his place are activist Protestants. A series of decrees are published against all things Catholic, most importantly replacing the Mass books with the Protestant Book of Common Prayer. This is too much for South West England; it rises in what is called the Prayer Book Rebellion. Morebath sends five men to join the rebels and the parish pays to buy them weapons. The revolt is ended when the Crown brings in foreign mercenaries who make short work of the amateur rebels. Of the six thousand rebels 3000 to 4000 died, mostly after the revolt was defeated. Three of the five from Morebath never again appear in the parish records. For the rest of Edward's reign things are dismal. A parish that is doing what it needs to do with no spirit, or least any spirit that they would want to record on paper.

But joy returns. King Edward dies and Queen Mary assumes the throne. Things Catholic begin to be restored, and Mass is celebrated. Items of Catholic worship that were hidden come out hiding. The parish records show voluntary donations to restore the Church as well as an increase in ordinary income.

After a few years of rebuilding, Queen Mary dies and Queen Elizabeth restores Protestantism. She bans things Catholic and reestablishes Protestantism. However she does not restore the activist tendencies makes a very few concessions. Morebath gradually turns into a Protestant parish. In 1574 Sir Christopher dies, the Shepard of Morebath to the end. After his death the parish sells his Mass chalice which he never stopped using and buys a Protestant communion cup.


Useless trivia learned.

To make a noun possessive in 16th Century English the word “ys” followed the noun, which over time became contacted to apostrophe "s". From “Hank ys Eclectic Meanderings ” to “Hank’s Eclectic Meanderings.”


How did the reformation succeed in England?

1) It had the full weight of both Church and State authorities. When Henry VIII made himself head of the Church it was high treason to speak or act against the changes.

2) There was still a good bit of continuity between the Catholic and Protestant faiths so being required to stop some specifically Catholic pratices left room for practices that were acceptable to both Catholic and Protestant. It took longer to get specifically Protestant practices adopted.

3) Like the fictional frog being boiled by gradually increasing the heat, the Reformation happened in small steps so that at the end things were accepted that never would have been accepted at the beginning. Sir Christopher’s tenure lasted 53 years about the average life expectancy at that time. At his death, most of the parish had few or no personal memories of the Catholic period.

4) The old saying “As we pray, so we believe” is relevant here, over time the recitation every week of the Book of Common Prayer would gradually change the parish from Catholic to Protestant. Certain sermons had to be read 4 times a year. Sir Christopher had to have read them for at least 30 years. What ever he felt about them at the beginning somewhere around the 40th or 80th time they must have become part of his belief.

5) The example of priests like Sir Christopher, adapting even under protest, set an example that the laity followed. Mathew 18 makes a good case for accepting the decision of the Church on controversial issues. The parish could hardly be blamed for following Sir Christopher’s lead and he could hardly be blamed for following the direction of his bishop.



This is an excellent book. Well written and informative, it brings to life the people of this parish. The glimpse of a late medieval village we see here is useful for understanding the life in the medieval period in general as well as the reformation period. The only problems with the book are that it is based on accounting records and once in a while it reads like a summary of accounting records. Duffy could have been more generous with modern translations of Middle English. But these are trivial. This book is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED.

I would think that despite every thing Sir Christopher would still wish you to pray for the repose of his soul and those of his beloved parishioners.




See alsoLife in a Medieval Village.

What is Social Justice.

The term “social justice” is one that causes much comment, seldom neutral. There has been a lot of discussion on this over at Joe Cecil’s In Today's news. So I started wondering just what is Social Justice. It often seems from my reading to be like a sign that was posted at job I once had - “it’s nice to be nice.” You can’t argue with the sentiment but does it mean anything. But I would hope that something that gets this much attention has a little more substance.


Michael Novak, wrote an article on Defining Social Justice in the December 2000 issue of First Things. [HT: Christopher Blosser's The Church and The Liberal Tradition]
I have read very little of his work except for a few columns, but whether I agreed or disagreed he always makes a positive contribution to the topic. Hopefully this can give us a good place start to understand what we should mean by “social justice”.

The occasion for Novak’s article is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Frederick Hayak, who is known for his strident opposition to what many call “social justice”. Novak sees this as an irony since “[Hayek] in his own intellectual life, exemplified the virtue whose common misuse he so deplored.”

Novak summarizes Hayek:

“The trouble with “social justice” begins with the very meaning of the term. Hayek points out that whole books and treatises have been written about social justice without ever offering a definition of it. . . . It becomes, most often, a term of art whose operational meaning is, “We need a law against that.” In other words, it becomes an instrument of ideological intimidation, for the purpose of gaining the power of legal coercion. . . . Most authors assert that they use it to designate a virtue (a moral virtue, by their account). But most of the descriptions they attach to it appertain to impersonal states of affairs, “high unemployment” or “inequality of incomes” or “lack of a living wage” are cited as instances ’. Hayek goes to the heart of the matter: social justice is either a virtue or it is not.”

In the mid nineteenth century John Stewart Mills gave what Novak describes as the canonical meaning of Social Justice:

Society should treat all equally well who have deserved equally well of it, that is, who have deserved equally well absolutely. This is the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice; towards which all institutions, and the efforts of all virtuous citizens, should be made in the utmost degree to converge [Emphasis added.]

He comments

Mills imagines that societies can be virtuous in the same way that individuals can be. Perhaps in highly personalized societies of the ancient type, such a usage might make sense—under kings, tyrants, or tribal chiefs, for example, where one person made all the crucial social decisions. Curiously, however, the demand for the term “social justice” did not arise until modern times, in which more complex societies operate by impersonal rules applied with equal force to all under “the rule of law.”

For me a central problem with Mills definition is who is doing “social justice”. “Society” is a thing. Actions are done by persons. To generically say the “society does something” is to say that it is the cumulative effect of everyone’s actions, made for proximate purposes, mostly with no concept of final result. Mills says that institutions and virtuous persons “should be made in the utmost degree to converge.” But who is making them converge? It like that sign “it’s nice to be nice”, it sounds pretty, but in concrete terms who does what to whom?

Novak goes on to show that with the lessening importance of faith and the increased power of the state this meaning became more and more a program for a command economy. He describes Hayak’s objections to this development as:

(N)o one individual (and certainly no politburo or congressional committee or political party) can design rules that would treat each person according to his
merit or even his need. No one has sufficient knowledge of all relevant personal details, and as Kant writes, no general rule has a grip fine enough to grasp
them.

Which is to say that Mill’s definition calls for something that is unworkable at best, and possibly harmful. Thus

(T)he “social” in “social justice” refers to something that emerges not organically and spontaneously from the rule–abiding behavior of free individuals, but rather from an abstract ideal imposed from above

Which would require a level of coercion that would violate human dignity in an attempt to achieve unworkable goals.

So why does Novak assert that he himself [Hayak] was a practitioner of social justice—even if one adds, as one must, “social justice rightly understood.”

Novak’s answer is that “social justice rightly understood” consists of to features that he found exemplified Hayak’s life.

First, the skills it requires are those of inspiring, working with, and organizing others to accomplish together a work of justice. These are the elementary skills of civil society, through which free citizens exercise self–government by doing for themselves (that is, without turning to government) what needs to be done

The second characteristic of “social justice rightly understood” is that it aims at the good of the city, not at the good of one agent only.

I think Novak’s “social justice rightly understood” provides a more operationally useful definition than Mills. In the first point the actor is “free citizens” using the “elementary skills of civil society.” It is clear who is doing the acting. Everyone has his role, and it is a role that is with in the ability of everyone. The second point “the good of the city” provides a focus for individual action. Since this is done “without turning to government” the chance of descending to totalitarianism is trivial.


Comment

I think the biggest thing missing in discussion of “social justice” is a sense of charity to the other side of the discussion. Prayer, discussion , study, and charity to our neighbors should always be perquisite of any discussion of “social Justice.

This is why the distinction between social justice as virtue and a state of affairs is important.

Often in a secular context it seems the argument is that X is required for Social Justice, and any one who opposes X has cooties. There is little or no cogent argument that the proposed action will (or even can) accomplish the desired goal, and asking for a cogent argument is likely to get one accused of being a fascist or some such. From my, mostly secular, reading it seems that “social justice” is usually a “term of art” to support achieving the authors desired “state of affairs”. A polemical club that avoids the necessity to make a cogent argument and respond to reasonable criticism. It seldom means encouraging a virtue. Sometimes I get the impression that supporting a “state of affairs” allows some to ignore being personally virtuous, while claiming the moral high ground.

The Church teaches certain principles for applying the virtue of Social Justice. Someone who has a general Catholic formation will usually agree with these even if they have no formal education in the Church's Social teaching. But in the area of prudential judgment there is often wide disagreement among committed Catholics. This is because there are different understandings of how economic, political, and social processes work and subsequently different and often mutually exclusive understandings of how to practice the virtue of social justice. But many people cannot identify in their own mind where the Church teaching ends and prudent judgment begins. As these issues often carry a good amount of emotion it is easy to accuse another rejecting the social justice teaching when in fact they are rejecting poor economics.

It is not uncommon for Jack to believe that a course of action is objectively evil, while Jill thinks it is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and the other way around. They both believe that to follow the others suggestion would be to commit an objectively evil act with full knowledge and consent. If one is in authority (especially pastoral authorty) he should be careful that he is not using his office to suggest or require his subordinates to commit what the subordinate considers to be an objectively evil act with full knowledge and consent. In discussions we should take care to be sure the other person understands that though we they disagree with them we would not expect them to support what they think is objectively evil end, with knowledge and consent, even so that good can come of it.

The items that constitute prudent judgement can have a wide variety of interpretations. If we see social justice as a virtue, then different people can discuss these with charity, learn form each other and from mistakes, and eventually come to better ways to achieve a just world. If we see social justice as a “state of affairs” then who ever defined the “state of affairs” has begged the question. It supposes we uncritically follow the designated route, to heck with the consequences.

Social Justice is a virtue!



Update: 6 Sepember 2009
See Also

James Chapter Two: Show No Partiality
Social Justice Posts

Non Cogito, Ergo Poof

.



Rene Descartes sat down in a restaurant

The waiter asks him “Would you like some wine, sir?”

He answers, “I think not.”


And - poof - he disappears.

Theology 911 * Final Exam

From Julie the Happy Catholic



1. Summarize Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae in three succinct sentences. You may use your Bible.

2. St. Martin of Tours, Pope Clement VII and Karl Barth were not contemporaries. Had they known each other, how might the history of the Reformation have turned out differently?

3. Define a moral system that satisfies Liberals, Conservatives, Moderates, and the entire population of Ancient Rome, ca. 3 BCE.

4. Memorize the Bible. Recite it in tongues.

5. Imagine you have the stigmata. Would it affect your productivity at work? Would you still be admitted into fine restaurants? Would it be covered by your medical insurance, or should it constitute a pre-existent condition?

6. What would it mean to be eternal, co-eternal, and non-existent all at once?

7. St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine of Hippo decide to rob a bank. The note to the teller is 1,200 pages long, not counting footnotes, complete with a promise of damnation if the teller does not accept immediate Baptism. In the middle of the heist, they engage in an extended debate as to whether or not the money really exists. Are they committing a mortal or a venial sin?

8. Speculate on what the current status of salvation history might have been if Abraham had just stayed in Ur.