Medieval Popular Religion, 1000-1500: A Reader, second edition, brings together a unique collection of 82 sources that casts light on the beliefs and practices of ordinary Christians in the Middle Ages whose religious lives have often been overlooked by historians and theologians. Documents new to this edition include a new translation of the English peasant Thurkill's thirteenth-century vision of hell, a substantial excerpt from the twelfth-century Play of Adam, two pilgrims' travelogues to Jerusalem, and a complete translation of a thirteenth-century handbook for administering confessions.

Comments:

"Anyone who wants to know what Christianity felt like—and looked, sounded, and smelled like—in the Middle Ages need only plunge into the readings gathered in John Shinners' Medieval Popular Religion. This splendid collection offers an unrivalled introduction to the lived religion of medieval Europe. One would think it could hardly have been bettered, and yet it has been.Further enriched by the addition of ten new sources, from recipes for love spells to a handbook for confessors, this new edition is a marvelous teaching tool and true feast for the intellectually curious." - Daniel Bornstein, Professor of History, Texas A&M University

"Now at last, we have a collection that casts a fresh and original eye on medieval Christianity, presenting a wide range of documentation on practice and piety from the eleventh to the sixteenth century. Wisely eschewing conventional boundaries between superstition, heresy, and orthodoxy, the editor includes evidence of witchcraft and protest as well as of earnest efforts to educate the pious. More than a book about religion as belief and debate, this is a book about religion as life." - Caroline Walker Bynum, Professor of Western European Middle Ages at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey 

John Shinners, Professor of Humanistic Studies at Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana, has written a variety of studies on medieval religion and parish life, including Pastors and the Care of Souls in Medieval England (co-edited with William J. Dohar, Notre Dame, 1998).

Table of Contents: [Back to Top]

Chronological Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations
Preface to the Second Edition
Introduction to the First Edition

Chapter One: Instruction in the Faith

1. Basic Christian prayers
2. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215)
3. A handbook for parish priests (1385)
4. A tract on hearing confessions (c. 1224-37)
5. A sermon on the articles of faith (c. 1410)
6. Popular sermons (1230s & c. 1400)
7. Durandus on the symbolism of church art (c. 1286)
8. The faith of Peter Waldes (1173)
9. The faith of St. Francis of Assisi (1203-09)
10. The faith of Joan of Arc (1431)
11. The faith of a Spanish peasant, Juan de Rabe (1518)

Chapter Two: God

12. The Play of Adam (c. 1125-75)
13. St. Francis of Assisi and the Christmas crèche (1223)
14. The Passion narrative from Giovanni de Caulis Meditations on the Life of Christ (late thirteenth century)
15. Caesarius of Heisterbachs miracles of the Eucharist (c. 1220-35)
16. Two hymns for the feast of Corpus Christi (1264)
17. Catherine of Siena on receiving the Eucharist (c. 1378)
18. The host and libels against the Jews (c. 1303)
19. A French peasants theology of God (1320)

Chapter Three: The Virgin Mary

20. Four antiphons of the Virgin (eleventh to twelfth centuries)
21. Elisabeth of Schönaus vision of the Assumption (c. 1157)
22. The Stabat mater (late 1200s?)
23. The Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alfonso X (c. 1250-80)
24. A liturgical drama of the Annunciation (fourteenth century)
25. Johannes Herolts Miracles of the Virgin Mary (c. 1435-40)
26. The Obsecro te (fourteenth century)
27. An apparition of the Virgin Mary in Castile (1399)

Chapter Four: Saints, Relics, and Pilgrimage

28. The traveling relics of Laon cathedral (1112)
29. Accommodating pilgrims at the church of St.-Denis (c. 1144-47)
30. The miracles of St. Thomas Becket (1170s)
31. Bishop Hugh of Lincolns devotion to relics (1186-1200)
32. St. Mary Magdalene and St. Nicholas from the Golden Legend (c. 1260)
33. A Pilgrims Guide to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (c. 1350)
34. Margery Kempe visits Jerusalem (1414)
35. An inventory of relics at Durham cathedral (1383)
36. Thomas Mores dialogue on saints and their shrines (1529)

Chapter Five: Devils, Demons, and Spirits

37. The English peasant Thurkills vision of hell (1206)
38. German encounters with demons (1280s)
39. Demons vex some English villagers (c. 1400)
40. The young priest Walchelins purgatorial vision (c. 1131)
41. Ghost stories (c. 1400)
42. The sorcery trial of Lady Alice Kyteler (1324)
43. Bernardino of Siena on witchcraft and superstition (1427)
44. The Malleus Maleficarum on superstitious practices (c. 1486)
45. A necromancers love spell (fifteenth century)

Chapter Six: Rituals

46. Advice to a young wife on mass and confession (1393)
47. Durandus list of blessings (1295)
48. Various blessings (early 11th-13th century)
49. Jacob of Voragine on the Greater and Lesser Rogations (1260)
50. A litany of the saints (1420-30)
51. Liturgical drama (13th & 14th century)
52. Ceremony for the exclusion of a leper (1490)
53. Christian charms (11th-15th century)

Chapter Seven: Daily Devotions and Practices

54. Rule for the Franciscan Third Order (c. 1221)
55. The fraternity of the Blessed Virgin at Perugia (1312)
56. The fraternity of St. Catherine, Aldersgate, London (1389)
57. Guild sponsors of the York mystery plays (1415)
58. Guillaume de Deguilevilles Pilgrimage of Human Life (1331)
59. Behaving piously: a knights advice for his daughters (1373)
60. Geert Grote preaches the Modern Devotion (c. 1380-83)
61. A spiritual regimen for a fifteenth-century gentleman
62. A fifteenth-century English yeomans commonplace book (1470s)
63. Popular proverbs (c. 1480)
64. Indulgences (1216-1520)

Chapter Eight: Enthusiasm

65. Pious church-builders at Chartres cathedral (1145)
66. The Childrens Crusade (1212)
67. The Shepherds Crusade (1251)
68. The Franciscan Salimbene on the "Great Halleluia" (1233)
69. Pious responses to the Black Death in Tournai (1349)

Chapter Nine: Error

70. Burchard of Wormss Corrector and Doctor (c. 1008-12)
71. The inquisitor Bernard of Gui on sorcery (c. 1323)
72. The spurious Saint Guinefort (mid-1200s)
73. An English bishop oversees popular piety (1296, 1299)
74. Popular heresy in twelfth-century Le Mans (c. 1115)
75. Heresy and orthodoxy in a French village (1320)
76. Heresy and orthodoxy in an English town (1429)

Chapter Ten: Death and Judgment

77. The Dies irae (mid-thirteenth century)
78. The knight Oweins journey through St. Patricks Purgatory (1184)
79. Last wills and testaments (1377-83)
80. A sermon for All Souls Day (c. 1400)
81. The Art of Dying Well (c. 1430-35)
82. Burial of the dead (c. 1425)

Index of Topics
Sources

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