One factor that influenced family discipleship during this period was the state of the clergy. Not all clergy during the medieval era served as pastors. In fact, large numbers of clergy had no ministry whatsoever among laypeople. Monasticism had grown in popularity throughout the Middle Ages, and many monks lived their lives within the confines of cloistered communities. The primary responsibility for teaching laypeople the doctrines and practices of the church fell to the “secular clergy”—to the priests who served as pastors in communities. Yet many of these secular clergy were poorly trained and ill-equipped for their ministries. Boniface, an Anglo-Saxon missionary in the eighth century, found secular clergy living in drunkenness, sexual sin, and ignorance regarding the most basic matters of Christian faith.
In the late eighth and early ninth centuries, even the requirements that church reformers laid upon the secular clergy were very basic: Bishops should ensure that priests understood the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, could conduct a proper baptism and mass, and could sing certain psalms. Complaints about the ignorance and hypocritical lifestyles of the clergy continued into the Reformation era (1).
Preaching was often limited to bishops, who were better educated, especially in the early medieval period. Few among the laity had access to the Bible or even the capacity to read.Laypeople encountered Scripture only as it was read during weekly liturgies, and then typically in Latin. Families seeking an encounter with God through Scripture could often do so only at the church during the liturgy—and then only if they understood Latin! During the later centuries of the Middle Ages, the frequency of access to preaching did increase as educational levels improved and as mendicant preaching orders began to make their rounds.
Since families had little or no access to the Bible, the spiritual lives of families might often depend upon the liturgy and ceremonies of the church. Baptism and confirmation were particularly important moments for parents in the spiritual lives of their children. Confirmation developed because of the desire to distance infants and younger children from participation in Holy Communion. Confirmation provided priests with the opportunity to examine the understanding of youths, to communicate the basics of the Christian faith, and to affirm the individual’s standing in the community (2). These more extensive requirements may have kept some from participating. The rite of baptism, then, became even more important, both in the eyes of the church hierarchy and in the eyes of parents. In many cases, the emphasis on the one-time act of baptism seems to have resulted in de-emphasis on processes of Christian training and discipleship.
Next: Godparents and Godchildren in the Middle Ages
Notes
(1) Lynch, The Medieval Church, 77-80, 89-90, 339.
(2) Kathryn Ann Taglia, “The Cultural Construction of Childhood: Baptism, Communion, and Confirmation,” in Women, Marriage, and Family in Medieval Christendom: Essays in Memory of Michael M. Sheehan, C. S. B., ed. Constance M. Rousseau and Joel T. Rosenthal (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1998), 276-283; Linda E. Mitchell, Family Life in the Middle Ages (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007), 173.
[Editor's Note: This article was adapted from the book Trained in the Fear of God, edited by Randy Stinson and Timothy Paul Jones. Used by Permission.]
