Newberry Essays in Medieval and Early Modern ... - Newberry Library

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Newberry Essays in Medieval and Early Modern Studies 7Models of Pastoral Care and Church OrganizationMuch recent work among scholars of early medieval Ireland has centered on the organization ofthe church and the administration of pastoral care from the era of monastic missionaries, beginningin the fifth century, to the formulation of a parish system, beginning during the twelfth-centuryreform movement driven largely by the introduction of continental religious houses and Anglo-Norman colonialism. The general trend in scholarship of late has been the repudiation of anorthodox position that the early medieval Irish church was primarily monastic, largely uninvolved inpastoral care, and organized into federations of monastic communities united by shared foundersaintsbut dispersed over wide geographic areas. To the contrary, historian Colmán Etchingham hasinsisted that Irish textual evidence “reveals no systematic distinction between monastic and nonmonasticchurches” and recent discussions have envisaged a functionally diverse church morefundamentally interdigitated with secular society and its territorial structures. 1212 Etchingham, Church Organization, 457; K. Sims, “Frontiers in the Irish Church: Regional and Cultural,” in Colony andFrontier in Medieval Ireland: Essays Presented to J. F. Lydon, ed. T. Barry, R. Frame, and K. Simms (London: ContinuumInternational Publishing Group, 1995), 177-200 [182-5].23
Saints in the SeascapeAs documentary historians point out, contemporary hagiography and prescriptive texts like RíagalPhátraic and Córus Bésgnai indicate that the administration of sacraments—especially baptism and lastrites—to lay people was considered an important service, though they disagree on how often orbroadly it was carried out. 13 Pastoral care is usually conceived as one half of reciprocal if not entirelyequal relationship between church establishments and lay people. In the later medieval and earlymodern parish model, those people living within the territorial extent of a parish paid a tithe to theirparish church in return for spiritual care. This included most crucially access to the sacramentsnecessary for salvation that, according to orthodox ideology, could only effectively be administeredby the ordained clergy. The Synod of Cashel in 1172, one of a series of reforming synods in thetwelfth century, called for all of the faithful to pay tithes to their churches, but it is unclear what kindof system of extraction may have existed before—and even after—that proclamation.Aside from the sacraments, lay pilgrimage to saints’ shrines on important feast days is wellattested and may have been related to extractions of dues from lay people to churches. Thoughmore often associated with the peregrini, holy men who undertook exile as a form of aimlesspilgrimage for the love of God, island monasteries, as suggested by both Inishmurray and Inishark,could also attract lay pilgrims. 14Most likely, this flow of lay pilgrims would have provided monastic communities with an importantsource of revenue in the form of incidental donations if not formalized extractive practices.Early medieval churches often relied on secular authorities for patronage and protection, and indeedEtchingham and Mac Samhrain among others have proposed an alternative model of churchorganization that envisions ecclesiastical communities latching onto existing secular territorialstructures. 15 In this “territorial model,” principal churches were affiliated with subordinate churcheswithin a spatial domain commonly more or less commensurate with that of secular kingdoms. Thedegree to which affiliations within this territorial model were institutionalized, with renders fromsub-churches to principle churches, is uncertain, and Etchingham’s analysis of contemporary textualevidence suggests that autonomy and subservience could exist on a wide spectrum of possibilities. 16In any case, it has been hypothesized that these patterns of territorial organization would haveconstituted the basic framework around which parochial territories were eventually formalized. 17Only a few regional case studies have put these new models to test. Ó Carragáin’s examination ofthe landscape of ecclesiastical communities on the Dingle and Inveragh peninsulas in County Kerry13 R. Sharpe, “Churches and Communities in Early Medieval Ireland: Towards a Pastoral Model,” in Pastoral Care beforethe Parish, ed. J. Blair and R. Sharpe (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1984), 81-109; Etchingham, “Two-TierService.”14 On the peregreni see T. Charles-Edwards, “Social Background,” and M. Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From theDesert Fathers to the Early Middle Ages (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 140.15 C. Etchingham, “The implications of paruchia,” Ériu 44 (1993): 139-62; A. Mac Shamhrain, Church and Polity in Pre-Norman Ireland: The Case of Glendalough (Maynooth: An Sagart, 1996).16 Etchingham, Church Organization, 221.17 P. J. Duffy, “The Shape of the Parish,” in The Parish in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland, 33-61 [41-5].24
Page 1 and 2: Newberry Essaysin Medievaland Early
Page 3 and 4: Newberry Essays in Medievaland Earl
Page 5 and 6: Introduction2
Page 7 and 8: Introduction4
Page 9 and 10: The Transmutation of Corpse to Land
Page 21 and 22: Saints in the Seascapeearly medieva
Page 23 and 24: Saints in the SeascapeFigure 2: A v
Page 25: Saints in the SeascapeFigure 4: Vie
Page 29 and 30: Saints in the Seascapestructuring p
Page 31 and 32: Saints in the Seascapesharply iniqu
Page 33 and 34: Saints in the Seascapeand to wider
Page 35 and 36: Saints in the SeascapeFigure 7. The
Page 37 and 38: Saints in the Seascape34
Page 39 and 40: “These Divine Animals”: Physica
Page 45: Kissing Cousins: Incest and Sex Cha
Page 48 and 49: Newberry Essays in Medieval and Ear
Page 76 and 77:
Newberry Essays in Medieval and Ear
Page 78 and 79:
Page 80 and 81:
Page 82 and 83:
Page 84 and 85:
Page 86 and 87:
Page 88 and 89:
Page 90 and 91:
Page 92 and 93:
Page 94 and 95:
Page 96 and 97:
Page 98 and 99:
Page 100 and 101:
Page 102 and 103:
Page 104 and 105:
Page 106 and 107:
Page 108 and 109:
Page 110 and 111:
Page 112 and 113:
Page 114 and 115:
Page 116 and 117:
Page 118 and 119:
Page 120 and 121:
Page 122 and 123:
Page 124 and 125:
thereby contemplation of the cosmic
Page 126 and 127:
ceremonial settings by Thomas Talli
Page 128 and 129:
movement of the poem even as it per
Page 130 and 131:
tetrachord as an emblem of lament u
Page 132 and 133:
Figure 4: Measures 21-26. Click her
Page 134 and 135:
Page 136 and 137:
Page 138 and 139:
Page 140 and 141:
Page 142 and 143:
Page 144 and 145:
Page 146 and 147:
Page 148 and 149:
Page 150 and 151:
Page 152:
show all

Newberry Essays in Medieval and Early Modern ... - Newberry Library

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?