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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
In seeking aspects of the pre-Reformation Church which might be expected automatically to invoke connections with God’s bounty, tithes and tithing are obvious candidates. In an essentially agricultural society, where the overwhelming majority of the population worked on the land, God’s bounty in providing crops and food animals, and tithing as the response to the moral and theological imperative to acknowledge that bounty, surely ought to be almost a commonplace. Tithes had biblical origins as a divine precept, and an obligation which Christians were deemed to have inherited from the Jews.
1 e.g. Lev. 27: 30–33; Deut. 14: 22.
2 However, for an assertion that the obligation to tithe was abrogated by Christ’s birth, see Registram Johannis Trefnant, episcopi Herefordensis, A.D. MCCCLXXXIX-MCCCCIV, ed. W.W. Capes, CYS 20 (1916), 304–06, at 306.
3 In limiting the survey to England, it is also restricted to works produced by English authors. Adding material produced by Continental authors and known to have been available in England (including a range of confessional and instructional material, and canon law texts) would clearly affect the scope. It might also affect the argument, but any impact should be reflected in the English-generated evidence.
4 Swanson, R. N., ‘Standards of Livings: Parochial Revenues in Pre-Reformation England’, in Harper-Bill, C., ed., Religious Belief and Ecclesiastical Careers in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge, 1991), 151–96, at 166–67.Google Scholar
5 Palmer, R. C., Selling the Church. The English Parish in Law, Commerce, and Religion, 1350–1550 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2002), 32.Google Scholar
6 Tithe disputes are scattered through, e.g., Kentish Visitations of Archbishop William Warham and his Deputies, 1.511–1512, ed. Wood-Legh, K., Kent Records 24 (1984); for legal processes, see Helmholz, R. H., The Oxford History of the Laws of England, 1: The Canon Law and Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction from 597 to the 1640s (Oxford, 2004), 435—65.Google Scholar
7 de Burgo, Johannes, Pupilla oculi (Paris, 1518), 9.3.Google Scholar
8 Jacob’s Well: An English Treatise on the Cleansing of Man’s Conscience: Part 1, ed. Brandeis, A., EETS os 115 (1900); discussion of tithing at 37—47. On the text as a sermon collection, see O’Mara, V. and Paul, S., A Repertorimn of Middle English Prose Sermons, 4 vols, Sermo 1 (Turnhout, 2007), 1: xxxii; tithing discussion summarized ibid. 4: 2285–88.Google Scholar
9 Fasciculus morum: a Fourteenth-Century Preacher’s Handbook, ed. Wenzel, S. (Univesity Park, PA, 1989), 80–81.Google Scholar
10 Ibid. 82–83. Brandeis, Cf., Jacob’s Well, 45, which condemns false tithing as theft from God, which by analogy with the actions of Judas the false tither ‘sleeth a3en crist’.Google Scholar
11 These benefits also appear in the later Jacob’s Well: ibid. 42.
12 Wenzel, Fasciculus morum, 82–83.
13 I cite the two-volume edition published at Venice, 1586. On dating, see Boyle, L. E., ‘The Date of the Summa praedicantium of John Bromyard’, Speculum 48 (1973), 533–37, repr. in idem, Pastoral Care, Clerical Education, and Canon Law, 1200—1400 (London, 1981)Google Scholar, ch. 10. An earlier date is suggested in Walls, K., John Bromyard on Church and State: The Summa Predkantium and Early Fourteenth-Century England. A Dominican’s Books and Guide for Preachers (Market Weighton, 2007), 189–96, which may merit serious consideration.Google Scholar
14 Bromyard, Summa, I, fols 180rb, 178vb.
15 Ibid, I, fols 179va, 179ra. For Cain as a bad tither, see also below, 129).
16 Ibid. 1, fols 179rb-179va.
17 Ibid, I, fol. 180vb.
18 Ibid. I, fol. 180va.
19 Dives and Pauper, ed. Barnum, P. H., 2 vols in 3, EETS os 275, 280, 323 (1976-2004), 1/2: 165–66.Google Scholar
20 Ibid. 1/2:165–66.
21 Ibid. 166.
22 Ibid. 167.
23 Ibid. 167–68.
24 Jacob’s Well, ed. Brandeis, 37–41; comment on gifts and bequests at 41.
25 Dives and Pauper, ed. Barnum, 1/2:168–69; the legal debate on payment continues to 170.
26 The Towneley Plays, Volume One: Introduction and Text, ed. Stevens, M. and Cawley, A. C., EETS ss 13 (1994), 14–19; The N-Town Play: Cotton MS Vespasian D. 8, vol. 1: Introduction and Text Google Scholar, ed. Spector, S., EETS ss 11 (1991), 37–39; Smith, L. T., York Plays (New York, 1885), 36–37.Google Scholar
27 Towneley Plays, ed. Stevens and Cawley, 15, 17. Cf. N-Town Play, ed. Spector, 37: ‘Lord … All is had porwe grace of Pe’.
28 Towneley Plays, ed. Stevens and Cawley, 15:
29 Tierney, B., Medieval Poor Law: a Sketch of Canonical Tlteory and its Application in England (Berkeley, CA, 1959), 70–71, 73–74, 122.Google Scholar
30 Rexroth, F., Deviance and Power in Late Medieval London (Cambridge, 2007), 341 (see also 343).Google Scholar
31 Ibid. 343–44.
32 For this idea, see Tierney, Medieval Poor Law, 40–43. The theory was also used to defend the Church against royal exactions: De speculo regis Edwardi III seu Tractatu quern de mala regni administratione conscripsit Simon Islip, cum utraque ejusdem recensione manuscripta, ed. Moisant, J. (Paris, 1891), 98–99; Political Thought in Early Fourteenth-Century England: Treatises by Walter of Milemete, William of Pagula, and William of Ockham Google Scholar, ed. and trans. Nederman, C.J. (Turnhout, 2002), 85.Google Scholar
33 Tanner, N. P., The Church in Late Medieval Norwich, 1370–1532, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Studies and Texts 66 (Toronto, 1984), 231–32.Google Scholar
34 Wimbledon’s Sermon: Redde rationem villicationis tue: A Middle-English Sermon of the Fourteenth Century, ed. Knight, I. K. (Pittsburgh, PA, 1967), 78.Google Scholar
35 Thomas Netter, Fasciculi zizaniomm magistri Johannis Wyclif cum tritico, ed. Shirley, W W, RS 5 (1858), 496; cf. Registrum Trefnant Google Scholar, ed. Capes, , 279–80, 365. Similar ideas underlay the dispute over personal tithes in London provoked by comments of the Franciscan William Russell, but the argument that such tithes were not due by divine precept removes that case from a context of justification in terms of God’s bounty Google Scholar: see Robertson, C. A., ‘The Tithe-Heresy of Friar William Russell’, Albion 8 (1976), 1–16, esp. 4–5; also Röhrkasten, J., The Mendicant Houses of Medieval London, 1221–1539, Vita Regularis: Ordnungen und Deutungen religiosen Lebens im Mittelalter, Abhandlungen 21 (Münster, 2004), 308–10.Google Scholar
36 Hudson, A., The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford, 1988), 341—45; see esp. 344, an argument that clergy should place themselves among the poor and feeble to validate their right to tithes Google Scholar. See also Aston, M., Faith and Fire: Popular and Unpopular Religion, 1350–1600 (London, 1993), 121–22 Google Scholar; Hudson, A., ed., Selections from English Wycliffite Writings (Cambridge, 1978), 10, 21.Google Scholar
37 Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, 1428–31, ed. Tanner, N. P., Camden Society 4th ser. 20 (1977), 103; see also ibid. 61, 141, 183; Lollards of Coventry, 1486–1522 Google Scholar, ed. McSheffrey, S. and Tanner, N., Camden Society 5th ser. 23 (2003), 72.Google Scholar
38 Jacob’s Well, ed. Brandeis, 44. One argument here was possibly that free-will charitable distributions, without clerical oversight, made it easier to avoid full payment.
39 For the concept of the ‘social miracle’, see Bossy, J., Christianity in the West, 1400-1700 (Oxford, 1985), ch. 4, esp. 57.Google Scholar