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Church’s reaction to the absent of Mass after black death: focused on the 14th and 15th centuries in England

  • 중앙사론
  • 2013, (37), pp.313-336
  • Publisher : Institute for Historical Studies at Chung-Ang University
  • Research Area : Humanities > History

Pilleun Lee-Park 1

1나사렛대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The Purpose of this paper is to investigate the church's reaction to the emergent situation after the Black Death. The raped decrease of laborers caused a consequent rise in wages after the Balck Death. The church's leadership faced unexpected difficulties: 1) The laborers did not attend Mass in order to increase work time; 2) half of the clergy (including the beneficed and the unbeneficed clergy) died in England; as a result, there were often no priests to perform divine services, especially the rite of extreme unction; 3) unqaulified and illiterate clergy were not able to preside the church's rite and tried to negotiate their stipendiary. The church reacted to those unexpected situation by trying to solve this problem. Firstly, the church condemned laborers who did not attend Mass through their sermons and symbols. In the symbols, the meaning of the laborers was identified with the Jesus' suffering on the cross. Secondly, the church allowed for laity and women to preside the rite and had extra rites for ordaining more priests. However, the unqualified stipendiary priests were not able to fulfill their roles and asked for increased wages.

Citation status

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