An increasingly literate laity made use of a variety of religious books, whose numbers
were further multiplied with the introduction of printing at the end of the 15th century.
Luxury items, such as the Très Riches Heures, a magnificent book of hours
commissioned by the duke of Berry, matched the religious tastes of the wealthy, while
the populace at large relied on cheap handbooks designed for mass consumption.
Vernacular literacy normally began with the memorization of simple prayers and psalms
and continued with the reading of catechisms, saints’ lives, and moral tracts.
In their testaments, laypeople often left considerable sums to endow Masses for the
benefit of their souls and the souls of their ancestors. In much the same way that prayers
to the Virgin were multiplied to the point that rosaries had to be used to keep track of
them, this investment in the afterlife could lead to an obsessive multiplication of Masses:
in the region of Bordeaux, Bernard d’Escoussans, lord of Langoiran, stipulated in 1338
that 25,000 Masses be said for the repose of his soul, while some thirty years later
another nobleman, Jean de Grailly, endowed 50,000. To fulfill the terms of such
bequests, church aisles filled with side chapels, where squadrons of chantry priests, a sort
of clerical proletariat without pastoral responsibilities or secure incomes, celebrated
private Masses without pause.
While the majority of people rested their hopes for salvation on the ministrations of
the clergy, some sought to dispense with priestly intercession. In the wake of the Black
Death of 1348, processions of flagellants spread through parts of northern France,
Flanders, Germany, and Austria. Flagellation had long been accepted as a penitential
practice when performed in monasteries or lay confraternities; but when performed like
this in public, and by people who rejected clerical supervision and themselves assumed
the authority to preach and hear each other’s confessions, conflict with ecclesiastical
authorities was inevitable. Opposition from the pope, resident in Avignon, and the king of
France prevented the flagellant movement from penetrating deeply into French territory.
A more subtle challenge to ecclesiastical authority came from the mystics and
visionaries, many of them women, who assumed greater prominence in the 14th and 15th
centuries. A few were condemned as heretics, but most managed to convince the
suspicious authorities that their inspiration was authentic and their teachings orthodox
and so escaped being burned at the stake like Marguerite Porete (d. 1310), Na Prous
Boneta (d. 1325), and Jeanne d’Arc (d. 1431). What made even the most orthodox
mysticism subversive was its claim of direct and unmediated access to God, without the
need for priestly intercession or institutional guidance. In this, as in the emotional
intensity of their devotion to the person of Jesus, the mystics were simply extreme
examples of a more general interiorization of devotional life. The solitary recitation of the
rosary, the multiplication of side chapels and private Masses, and the proliferation of
confraternities were other signs of the fragmentation of the Christian collectivity at the
end of the Middle Ages.
These later developments, however, were added to earlier ones without replacing
them. What we see is an overlay of devotions, in which the early dedication to such
objects as relics and shrines was supplemented first by reverence for those living holy
men and women who best embodied the evangelical ideal, and then by an effort to
sanctify one’s own self through the performance of charitable and pious acts. Those acts
were often directed toward the most traditional of sacred objects; the cult of relics was as
important at the end of the Middle Ages as it was at the start. And for many of the
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