Late Medieval Religion and Dissent

Late-medieval Christianity combined intense lay devotion with institutional crisis: the Avignon papacy and Great Schism, vigorous popular piety, and movements of dissent such as Lollardy and Hussitism that anticipated the Reformation.

Definition

Late medieval religion encompasses the devotional practices, institutions, and controversies of European Christianity from the thirteenth to the early sixteenth century, including both vigorous orthodox piety and movements of reform and dissent that challenged the Church.

Scope

Covers the religious life of later medieval Europe: the Avignon papacy and the Great Schism (1378–1417) and conciliar attempts to heal it; flourishing lay devotion, confraternities, and the cult of the Eucharist and the saints; mysticism; and dissenting movements including the Waldensians, Wycliffe and the Lollards, and Hus and the Hussites.

Core questions

• How vital and varied was late-medieval lay piety?
• How did the Schism and conciliarism affect Church authority?
• What did dissenters such as Wycliffe and Hus actually teach?
• How continuous was late-medieval religion with the Reformation?

Key theories

Vitality of late-medieval religion

The revisionist view, associated with Eamon Duffy and Miri Rubin, that pre-Reformation Christianity was vibrant and broadly popular rather than decadent, complicating older narratives of inevitable decline into the Reformation.

History

The papacy resided at Avignon (1309–1377) and then split in the Great Schism (1378–1417), resolved by the Council of Constance, which also condemned and burned Jan Hus (1415). Lay devotion flourished in confraternities, Eucharistic piety, and the cult of saints, while Wycliffe's Lollards and Hus's followers pressed for reform, prefiguring later Protestant concerns.

Debates

Decline or vitality before the Reformation

Historians debate whether late-medieval religion was decaying and primed for Protestant reform or flourishing and only disrupted by the Reformation 'from above'.

Key figures

• Eamon Duffy
• Miri Rubin
• Malcolm Lambert
• R. N. Swanson

Seminal works

• duffy1992
• lambert2002
• rubin1991

Frequently asked questions

What was the Great Schism?

A division of the Western Church from 1378 to 1417 during which rival popes claimed legitimacy, eventually resolved by the Council of Constance.

Who were the Lollards and Hussites?

Followers, respectively, of the English theologian John Wycliffe and the Bohemian reformer Jan Hus, who criticized aspects of Church doctrine and practice and are often seen as forerunners of the Reformation.