Gervase Rosser

Going to the fraternity feast: commensality and social relations in late medieval England

In the history of medieval ideas about community, a prominent place must be accorded to the fraternity, or guild. This type of voluntary association, found throughout medieval Europe, frequently applied to itself the name of communitas . The community of the guild was not, however, a simple phenomenon; it invites closer analysis than it has yet received. As religious clubs of mostly lay men and (often) women, the fraternities of medieval Christendom have lately been a favored subject among students of spirituality. Less interest, however, has recently been shown in the social aspects of the guilds. One reason for this neglect may be precisely the communitarian emphasis in the normative records of these societies, which most late twentieth-century historians find unrealistic and, perhaps, faintly embarrassing. But allowing, as it must be allowed, that medieval society was not the Edenic commune evoked in fraternity statutes, the social historian is left with some substantial questions concerning these organizations, whose number alone commands attention: fifteenth-century England probably contained 30,000 guilds. Why were so many people eager to pay subscriptions—which, though usually modest, were not insignificant—to be admitted as “brothers” and “sisters” of one or more fraternities? Who attended guild meetings, and what did they hope to achieve by doing so? What social realities gave rise to the common language of equal brotherhood? This essay is intended to shed some light on these questions by focusing on what for every guild was the event which above all gave it visible definition: the annual celebration of the patronal feast day.

The Art of Solidarity in the Middle Ages: Guilds in England 1250-1550

Guilds and fraternities, voluntary associations of men and women, proliferated in medieval Europe. The Art of Solidarity in the Middle Ages explores the motives and experiences of the many thousands of men and women who joined together in these family-like societies. Rarely confined to a single craft, the diversity of guild membership was of its essence. Setting the English evidence in a European context, this study is not an institutional history, but instead is concerned with the material and non-material aims of the brothers and sisters of the guilds. Gervase Rosser addresses the subject of medieval guilds in the context of contemporary debates surrounding the identity and fulfilment of the individual, and the problematic question of his or her relationship to a larger society. Unlike previous studies, The Art of Solidarity in the Middle Ages does not focus on the guilds as institutions but on the social and moral processes which were catalysed by participation. These bodies founded schools, built bridges, managed almshouses, governed small towns, shaped religious ritual, and commemorated the dead, perceiving that association with a fraternity would be a potential catalyst of personal change. Participants cultivated the formation of new friendships between individuals, predicated on the understanding that human fulfilment depended upon a mutually transformative engagement with others. The peasants, artisans, and professionals who joined the guilds sought to change both their society and themselves. The study sheds light on the conception and construction of society in the Middle Ages, and suggests further that this evidence has implications for how we see ourselves.

Urban culture and the Church 1300–1540

introduction: points of perspective In 1314 the spire of St Pauls Cathedral in London was damaged by a lightning bolt. The repairs accomplished, a man clambered carefully to the scaffolds summit and replaced the great cross, charged with its precious contents of relics which included a fragment of the cross of Christ. From up here, one commanded a panorama of the city. The square mile of the walled area, and the straggling suburbs to east and west and to the south of the River Thames, were all displayed to view. The urban vista was punctuated by the towers of a hundred parish churches and a score of convents, whose smaller scale expressed, from the perspective of the cross of Pauls, their subordinate and ancillary status. Order was additionally revealed in a network of streets still marked by a grid plan imposed four centuries before by an Anglo-Saxon king. From this vantage point the city appeared entire, comprehensible and available for possession. When, in the sixteenth century, the first urban mapmakers were encouraged by municipal councils to publish such another panoptic vision of the city, they made the same climb in order to construct from steeple-tops the impression, before the possibility of human flight, of the birds-eye, all-encompassing view. Bishop, monarch and magistrate each conceived of the city as a visible entity, conveniently subject to his direction and control.

Miraculous Images and the Sanctification of Urban Neighborhood in Post-Medieval Italy

In Liguria, in northern Italy, religious images (usually of the Virgin Mary) dating from the medieval and early modern period continue to be the focus of local cults that create a powerful spiritual sense of neighborhood through common visual references. Their histories are often complex, at certain times involving the defense of local interests against outsiders, sometimes serving as a focal point for the reconciliation of disputes. Some local cults have been coopted by wider groupings, yet they may continue to unite individual neighborhoods. They are able to create a shared identity that ties migrants and travelers to their place of origin. The histories of such local cults reveal the creation of neighborhood identity to be an ongoing and fluctuating process, one that local people deliberately cultivate, and yet one that may simultaneously serve different groups in different ways.

Myth, image and social process in the English medieval town

This essay examines the nature and role of mythical histories in English medieval towns. Myths concerning the origins and special destinies of particular cities were widespread and long-lasting. For contemporaries they acquired meaning through their interaction with changing historical circumstances. Evidence for their circulation in both elite and popular domains is reviewed. Their significance was not unambiguous; they were, rather, contested territory, a means through which townspeople articulated their particular views about the nature and purpose of urban society. Their effect, therefore, could be to assist both in the formation and in the transformation of that society. Issue is taken with the argument that the early modern period saw a weakening of the potential force of such myths.

Towns in medieval England

Introduction Part I: History and praise Part II: Urban growth Part III: Economic life Part IV: Social development Part V: Urban government Part VI: The environment and quality of life Part VII: Tensions and violence Part VIII: Associational life Part IX: Religion and culture Glossary Suggestions for further reading Index -- .

The Virgin Mary and the People of Liguria: Image and Cult

We begin with an image, and a story. Explanation will emerge from what follows. Figure 1 depicts a huge wooden statue of the Virgin Mary, once the figurehead on the prow of a ship, but now on the high altar of the church of Saints Vittore and Carlo in Genoa, and venerated as Nostra Signora della Fortuna. On the night of 16-17 January 1636 a violent storm struck the port of Genoa. Many ships were wrecked. Among them was one called the Madonna della Pieta, which had the Virgin as its figurehead. A group of Genoese sailors bought this image as part of the salvage washed up from the sea. First setting it up under a votive painting of the Virgin in the harbour, they repaired it, had it repainted, and on the eve of Corpus Christi brought it to the church of San Vittore, close by the port. A famous blind song-writer was commissioned to write a song in honour of the image. Sailors and groups of young girls went through the streets of the city singing and collecting gifts. The statue became at once the focus of an extraordinary popular cult, thousands of people arriving day and night with candles, silver crowns, necklaces, and crosses in gratitude for the graces which had immediately begun to be granted. Volleys of mortars were let off in celebration. The affair was managed by the sailors who, in the face of mounting criticism and anxiety from local church leaders, directed devotions and even conducted exorcisms before the image. To stem the gathering tide of visitors and claims of miracles, and to try to establish control, the higher clergy first questioned the identity of the statue (some held it to represent, not the Virgin, but the Queen of England); then the statue was walled up; finally the church was closed altogether. Still, devotees climbed into the church, and large-scale demonstrations of protest were held. The archbishop instituted a process of investigation, in the course of which many eye-witnesses and people who claimed to have experienced miracles were interviewed (giving, in the surviving manuscript, rich detail of their responses to the image). Eventually the prohibition was lifted, and from 1637 until well into the twentieth century devotion to Nostra Signora della Fortuna remained strong, with frequent miracles or graces being recorded. So here we have a cult focused on an image of secular origin, transformed by the promotion of the sailors into a devotional object which roused the enthusiasm of thousands of lay people. It was a cult which, significantly, sprang up at a time of unrest in the city of Genoa, and which thus focused pressing issues of authority. The late 163os witnessed growing tension between factions of ‘old’ and ‘new’ nobility, the latter being marked by their hostility to the traditional Genoese Spanish alliance. Hostilities were played out both within the Senate and in clashes in the streets of the city. The cult of Nostra Signora della Fortuna grew up in this context, but survived and developed in subsequent centuries, attracting devotion from all over Italy.

The English Medieval Town: A Reader in English Urban History, 1200-1540.@@@The Tudor and Stuart Town: A Reader in English Urban History, 1530-1688.@@@The Eighteenth Century Town: A Reader in English Urban History, 1688-1820.

Urban growth and agricultural change - England and the Continent in the early modern period, E.A.Wrigley country, county, and town - patterns of regional evolution in England, A.M.Everitt urban improvement and the English economy in the 17th and 18th centuries, E.L.Jones and M.E.Falkus the English urban renaissance - the development of provincial urban culture 1680-1760, P.Borsay the London mob in the early 18th century, R.B.Shoemaker Bath - ideology and utopia 1700-1760, R.S.Neale science, provincial culture, and public opinion in enlightenment England, R.Porter money, land, and lineage - the big bourgeoisie of Hanoverian London, N.Rogers Birmingham and the West Midlands 1760-1793 - politics and regional identity in the English provinces in the later 18th century, J.Money social class and social geography - the middle classes in London at the end of the 18th century, L.D.Schwartz voluntary societies and British urban elites 1780-1850 - an analysis.

Medieval Westminster, 1200-1540.

List of illustrations List of figures List of tables Abbreviations Introduction The making of the Royal capital, to 1300 The Kings capital, 1300-1540 Landlords, tenants, and houses Fairs and markets Occupations Population and society Urban government The religion of the lay community Guilds Charitable institutions Conclusion Appendices i-viii Select bibliography Index