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Fund-Raising in a Fourteenth-Century Province*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2016
Extract
In addition to dealing with its income from tithes and property, the Church in the Middle Ages, as today, recognized its responsibility for raising money for good causes by urging upon the faithful the need for charity. The collectors of such contributions, or pardoners (as they were known from the inducements which they were able to offer to pious donors) sometimes earned for themselves a bad name for rapacity and fraud, as a study of the Pardoner with his ‘pigges bones’ in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales will show. But the process of collection seems generally to have been carefully organized and supervised, as a study of the system in the province of York under Archbishop Melton indicates. A good bishop clearly regarded the supervision of fund-raising as an integral part of his responsibilities. He worked not only through his archdeacons and clergy, with a final right of citation before himself in person, but also through trustworthy laymen with experience in business.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History Subsidia , Volume 12: Life and Thought in the Northern Church , 1999 , pp. 31 - 36
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1999
Footnotes
*
I am most grateful to Professor David Smith of the Borthwick Institute for his help and encouragement, and also to Professor Peter Ricketts and to Dr Diana Wood.
References
1 The Register of William Melton, Archbishop of York, 1317-1340, 3, ed. Rosalind Hill, CYS, 76 (1988) [hereafter RM 3], no. 196.
2 Ibid., nos 167, 245.
3 RM 3, no. 245.
4 Ibid., nos 50-1.
5 Ibid., no. 71. This letter provides the evidence that Melton had himself spent some time at the University of Oxford.
6 Ibid., no. 134.
7 Ibid., no. 138.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., no. 66.
10 The Register of William Melton, Archbishop of York, 1317-1340, 2, ed. D. Robinson, CYS, 71 (1978), nos 71, 318.
11 Ibid., no. 375.
12 Ibid., no. 432.
13 The Register of William Melton, Archbishop of York, 1317-1340, 1, ed. Rosalind Hill, CYS 70 (1977) [hereafter RM 1], no. 200.
14 RM 3, no. 134.
15 Register of the Freemen of the City of York, I, SS, 96, pp. 15, 27, 29; Catholicon Anglicum, ed. S. J. H. Armitage, EETS (London, 1881), p. 64 and note. I owe this reference to the kindness of Professor Ricketts.
16 RM 3, nos 53, 271.
17 Ibid., no. 174.
18 Ibid., no. 175.
19 A Guide to the Company of Merchant Adventurers of York, ed. D. M. Smith (York, 1990), p. 66.
20 York Memorandum Book, ed. J. W. Percy, SS, 186, pp. 17-19.
21 RM 3, no. 51.
22 RM 1, no. 49.
23 Alan of Settrington had been created a notary-public in 1334: RM 3, no. 123.
24 Ibid., no. 189.
25 Ibid., no. 252. There had been trouble in the city of York in 1334 with a hermit who preached false doctrine and encouraged married women to leave their husbands: ibid., no. 226.
26 RM 1, no. 394.
27 RM 3, no. 276.