Eve of the Reformation
England on the eve of the Reformation was predominantly agricultural. Ninety per cent of Englishmen worked on the land and such capitalism as existed was crawling around in nappies. However, economics had already begun to polarise society between the highly-educated governing (and trading) élite and the poor, illiterate peasant majority, for whom life was nasty, brutish and short. Average life expectancy was 38 years and 30 per cent of children died before the age of ten - even Catherine of Aragon lost five of her six children in infancy. Pneumonia was prevalent, the bubonic plague was endemic, and doctors were little more than optimistic quacks.
It is against this background that the role of the pre-Reformation Church must be viewed. The Church was the institution that bound communities together. The prevalence of death and the hazards of life tied people to the Church with its imagery, rituals and comforts. To a parishioner in 1530, a service would consist of gazing at the pictures in the stained-glass windows while the priest chanted incomprehensibly in Latin and performed the miracle of transubstantiation, whereby the bread and wine of communion actually became the body and blood of Jesus Christ. This was institutionalised magic and the priest was central to it all - he was God's intermediary on earth. Without him there could be no salvation. He was a trusted figure with some powerful friends and some useful tricks. He could invoke saints and employ relics, sprinkle holy water and exorcise the devil. The church was a vast reservoir of magical power that could be used in almost every aspect of sixteenth-century life.
'The Church was the institution that bound communities together.'
Historians have been long divided on the level of popular support for the Church on the eve of the Reformation. However it is generally accepted that all but the most extreme of critics wished the Church to reform itself from within, tackling the abuses and corruption that undeniably existed. While many preferred the alternative activities of archery and gambling, dancing and drinking - and Church attendance never reached 100 per cent - the Church was the foundation of society. The parish was the smallest unit of local government and the Church calendar, into which pagan ritual had been deliberately incorporated in its earliest days, was a timetable for ordinary life. So what happened after Henry decided Rome was unnecessary? What was the common Reformation experience?
Published: 2001-05-01
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