Gone Medieval - A Guide to Medieval Churches

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

​Do you know the difference between a church and a chapel? A bishop and an archbishop? An abbey and an abbess? In this episode of Gone Medieval, Dr. Eleanor Janega is joined by co-host Matt Lewis to chat all things churches. They will demystify church hierarchy, walk you through the basics of architecture, and answer questions you sent in about all that religious jargon that medievalists are constantly throwing around. This episode was produced by Rob Weinberg.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code MEDIEVAL - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Something that no one tells you about being a medieval historian is that if you focus on Europe, you're inevitably going to spend a bunch of time thinking and talking about churches. And when I say churches, I don't mean just churches. There's also monasteries and abbeys, cathedrals, of course. When you are a layman, you don't necessarily have time. to think about what the difference is between a parish church and a cathedral, or a priest and a bishop,

or a bishop and an archbishop for that matter. And then there's your monks to sort from your abbots, and well, it's all just a bit much, isn't it? I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga, and today on Gone Medieval from History Hit, I am joined by my wonderful co-host, the one and only Matt Lewis, to chat all things churches. We'll demystify church hierarchy, walk you through the basics of architecture, and answer your questions about all the jargon that we're constantly throwing around. So settle in and you'll be dating ecclesiastical architecture with the best of us in No-Town. That's actually a really cool life skill, I promise. Well, I guess, Matt, if we're going to begin at the beginning,

if we're going to tell the story of churches, I think that the thing we have to do is define what churches are. It seems like a good place to start. There's lots of different types, isn't there? Is there a ranking system in churches? Is there a grading system for churches? And I guess the one that most people will be most familiar with on a local level is the parish church. Yeah.

And this is a really specific part of the mission of Catholicism or Christianity, as they simply called it at the time. Just the idea that somebody needs to be looking after their flock. And that's how they refer to it a lot of the time. It's often called pastoral care. So this idea that everyone in every village should have some form of church or priest who's looking, out for their souls who can give them the religious education that they need, who can do the sacraments for them. Even every little village is going to have one. Big cities like Paris or London or Prague, name drop. They all have a whole network of parishes where they'll have dozens upon dozens because

there's so many people to see to. And the idea here is that this is like the heart of the community. It's the locusts where everybody gets together and you will, first of all, get a mass. certainly every Sunday. So that means that you're going to get two readings, one from the Old Testament, and one from the New Testament, and you'll also have a gospel reading. These will all be done in Latin. Good luck. But one thing that we can say about this as well, though, is actually the average person has a pretty all right grasp of Latin because they're been made to sit through it all day long, at least once a week. But then more importantly, you also get a sermon. And this for medieval people was like, hell yeah, I can't wait to hear a sermon. And your sermon would be in the vernacular language of the group. So if

you are English, you're going to get to hear it in English. If you're German, you're going to get to hear it in German. And that usually contextualizes whatever was read at you. So you'll go, oh, yeah, I understand what that means. And then also what happens much like a mass today is that the Eucharist will be given. Now, here's the thing that makes medieval masses a little bit different, though, which is that the Eucharist is not really given to everybody in the video of the period. Mostly, you will have Eucharist maybe four or five times in your life at significant events. For example, when you get married, you often have Eucharist. You often be given Eucharist if you're on your deathbed.

But it's like a big deal. Now, the priest, they're having Eucharist the whole time. But also there is this barrier where the priest gets to have both the bread and the wine at Eucharist and regular people, they just get bread. Priest taking one for the team having a line. I'm doing this so you don't have to. And that was how it was seen, was that the priest was just doing it for the community. What a kind thing.

Wouldn't want to have any wine. So this is the major thing around which mass focuses. And this is a big deal, like the fact that not everybody gets to have comedian because like later in the medieval period, this is what the Hussites kick off about over in the Czech lands. For example, they want to be able to have Eucharist all the time. And they want to have both kinds. That's a big deal to people. But parish churches are also where you have all of your,

major things. That's where you get baptized. It's where you get married. You'll have your funeral service there. So they are really the thing around which everybody's life revolves. So big up parish churches, I'm always really excited to see them in particular because they give you a real sense of place and it helps you to understand what was important for medieval people. And I think what you said at the start is really interesting that they're a physical representation of that idea of the Christian mission is to go to people and preach where the people are, not expect them to travel miles and come to you. You go to them. You build a nice parish church where there's enough people and then you're doing it on their

doorstep. And I think that's really important and it's really beautiful and it's something sweet about the medieval church, right? Okay, but Matt, say you are a fancy person. There is also an option, right? What do you mean say? Say I'm a fancy person. Okay, so yeah, you're a fancy person. Okay, if I was a fancy person like you in the medieval period, I wouldn't necessarily need to go to my parish church all the time, right? Because I've got a built-in option, which is a chapel. Because parish churches can be full of smelly peasants, right? I'd hate to see a commoner while I worship God. Blessed of the meek, but not the smelly.

Yeah. They're very blessed. They just need to be blessed over there. That's all. I guess it's a private parish church. So it's not a parish church, but it does the same thing. But like you said, for a rich family who can afford to pay for it and who, who's, you know, don't want to share. There's a surprising number of those out there as well. And I guess also the thing is

with chapels, sometimes when you find them in places like say castles, to be fair, a castle is a whole community in and of itself. So there's a lot of people other than just the family. Day to day, these are the places that we expect secular people to be worshipping. But what do we say about religious people, right? Because there's the difference between churches and chapels and of course monasteries and monasteries and nunneries. Yeah, and monasteries and nunneries are similar to parish churches in that you'll find them everywhere. They go out because some of the groups will believe that they still have this preaching function. Some of them want to live inside their clothes walls with no interaction with the outside world, but lots of them still believe in a preaching mission.

So they are everywhere. And quite often on a piece of land that someone rich is given to them to build this because then you'll pray for the rich guy's soul. Because if he's not getting enough of that in his chapel, he wants a bit of it in a monastery and a nunnery as well. But I guess the key difference I would say is probably that they're not. not that community hub that are parish churches. Yeah, they are a lot of the time just a place where people live. And of course, they have a church. They all have a chapel that they use.

But this is where people who have taken monastic orders live. And so as a part of that, they need a church because they're going to church constantly. You've got to wake up in the middle of the night and go have some church when you're a monk. So obviously you're going to need to have your own chapel. But one of the reasons why monasteries survived to us pretty well is there these huge complexes. There's the church, but their pantries and their cells where they live, you'll have this really interconnected community. So it's so much more than just a church in and of itself. I quite like the rule of Benedict and the hours of the day. So when you're supposed to pray,

it strikes me as being a lot like that Hobbit idea of breakfast and second breakfast and third breakfast and 11s is and lunch and dinner, but it's praying instead of eating. Yeah. You just do it all the time. What is that if not a form of nourishment? Yeah. And so I guess monasteries and nunneries then, it's like going to uni and living in halls of residence. You're living where you're working and that is your entire community. You are utterly dedicated to praying to God and to furthering the Christian mission. And lots of them will work the farmland of the monastery and things like that. There was a lot going on in a monastery. It becomes like a little, not just a community, but an economy of its own as well. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And these places become fabulously wealthy because rich people simply love. to give them more land even after they're established because they're worried that they're going to go to hell because of all the evil they've done. And so they spend all of this time giving more. And then the more

land they have, the more land they have. And that means that they can be landlords, just lords can be. So they bring in rather a lot of money. And this can be quite interesting to, I suppose we should note here, in terms of enclosure of monks and nuns, because we definitely do see, especially from the high, late medieval period, the preaching orders, like your Dominicans and your Franciscans, who live in cities and go out and preach. But to be clear, nuns almost never are allowed out. You can't trust those girls out in the world. Although, you've all seen hen nights in town on a Saturday night. Exactly. And this idea is that the nuns might go crazy. Now, that's the rule, to be fair, nuns do make it out into the world at times, especially if you were something like

an abyss that sometimes you're called to do particular work. But as a general rule of thumb, it's frowned upon and they're like, you keep those girls behind the walls. Whereas the monks might go out to do business more often. And I think it's quite interesting that we see not often, I guess, but more often than you might expect. We see mixed monasteries and nunneries where the monks and the nuns are not living together in that they're in different buildings, but their community is shared. We tend to have this idea that the male church segregated itself from women, particularly when it comes to monks and women were the ultimate enemy. But you do see those joint communities.

And quite often they're ruled by an abbess rather than an abbot. Yeah, this is super common. So there is usually this idea that they're both a fraternity and a sorority, and they are interconnected. So they share in their wealth, because especially when you have so much land to till, you often have serfs that are doing a lot of it. And that means someone's got to look over the books.

And this is a very traditional women's role in the Middle Ages is the bookkeeping. So it's, yeah, have the sisters do that. They'll watch the books for us and keep things in order. And there are all of these things that are ways. to pass the work back and forth for monasteries and nunneries. So we've got a parish church, we've got a chapel, we've got monasteries and nunneries. How does a church become an abbey? Ah, see, this is a good one to ask because they really occupy our imagination, right?

It's always like the abbeys. So basically you have a community of monks or nuns, just like any other monastery, but it means that they are under the governance of an abbot or an abbess. So they've got like the boss there. And abbots or abbots sometimes can look over several monasteries. But they'll just check in every now and then be like, you kids aren't doing anything you shouldn't be. For example, Hildegard of Bingham, friend of the podcast, she was an abbess, right? And so she started a number of her own nunneries.

Then she would be resident in one, but she'd go check the other ones out occasionally. And so this is the difference. Now, as a result of this, abbeys tend to be a little fancier, bit bigger. You can get a monastery that's like not that much to write home about where it's real cute with it. and they've got a community of 12 people. But abbeys, you're going to be looking at hundreds of people. So an abbey is to a monastery or nunnery, what a cathedral is to a parish church. Which leads us neatly on to the top of the pile.

Sitting up there, the big fanciest of pants on a church has got to be the cathedral. Let's go. I love a cathedral me. It's incredible. Again, the way they do still fascinate us. that people who have no interest in religion will still be awed by a cathedral and will still want to go and visit it and have a look inside it. Oh yeah, it's the ultimate European city break thing. Even if you don't care that much about religion, you're going to go see the cathedral.

And essentially, a cathedral is a parish church that has a bishop living there. So in the same way that we're talking about an abbey is where an abbot or an abbess lives and oversees the community of monasteries around them. The cathedral is the seat of the bishop or perhaps the archbishop, who oversees all the parish churches that are under him, right? That's right. And now you've done a good job setting up this interesting dichotomy, right? Because so think of the bishops kind of as regional managers, right? So you have a bishop and they are the regional manager of all of the churches underneath them.

But then you have an archbishop. And of course, here in England, our archbishop is the archbishop of Canterbury. And then he's the boss of the other bishops. A lot of the time people will think cathedral means very fancy church. And you know what? Oftentimes, that's true. But you can see some cathedrals like Manchester Cathedral. I love you, Manchester Cathedral. Please don't be mad at me. But hey, it's not particularly grand. And that is because what a cathedral is it's a place where there's a bishop. So it's in ecclesiastical court in a lot of ways. It's like where you go to receive instructions on what parishes are supposed to be doing is someone gets in trouble for doing something against ecclesiastical law. You can get called to the cathedral. So cathedrals are both places of worship and also legal centers, a local court as well. They always have to be functional buildings.

We tend to think of them needing to look beautiful and amazing. Lots of them undoubtedly do, but ultimately it's a functional office building. Now, having said that, a lot of people want a very fancy cathedral, right? Because it shows their place in society. It's nice for cities. It's a point of civic pride to have a very fancy cathedral. bishops themselves will sink a lot of money into it, or the local nobility often do. Now, partially that's because often it's like their brother is the bishop.

But just in the same way that you can endow monasteries, you can give money to the cathedral, and it'll make you look really good in the eyes of God in theory. So there's rather a lot of that going on. And I think it's easy for us in a slightly more secular, more cynical age to forget that there was this genuine idea that giving money to the church was good for your soul and would ease your way into heaven. And so the bigger and the more beautiful and ostentatious your cathedral was, the more you were demonstrating that commitment and devotion to God. There is the civic pride stuff and there is lots of competition and all of that kind of thing.

But there is also a genuine reason to have a beautiful cathedral. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And this is an expression of people's piety. And we have to be aware of the fact that they mean it. Sure, there's a kind of amount of cynicism built into the fact that you act like a jerk all your life and then give a bunch of money to the church and you go, hey, this will get me out of hell. Great. But the reason that they're concerned about getting out of hell is because they really believe this stuff and they know that their behavior in life was maybe not the best. So they're like, well, we have to control for this. So it's still an expression of genuine belief even if it is one that is being done a little bit cynically.

Yeah, and there's more than one thing going on there sometimes. So we put a shout out for some questions on social media that people would like to have answered about church. And I thought this was a good place to throw in some of those that relate to some of the things we've been talking about a little bit. So we had a couple of questions from Julian and Ed talking about what church buildings were used for outside of religious services as community spaces. So did they function as this kind of town square? I quite like the idea that it's a town square out of the rain. Did they have this kind of almost secular function alongside their religious ones too? Oh yeah, absolutely.

You don't build a building like this and then not use it. If we think of the big grand buildings that survive to us from the medieval period, which are castles and cathedrals a lot of the time, you can't just go into a castle. That's private land. That's owned by the nobility. Now, you can go into the cathedral because the cathedral's owned by everybody. It belongs to Christendom, and you're a member of that.

So it's a big place that people get together to just discuss whatever local problems are going on if they don't have a town hall. And a lot of times people don't necessarily have a town hall. Town halls often are built later in the medieval period. So by the 14th, 15th century, if you're a real city, you're going to have a town hall as well. But before then, you're going to go into the cathedral where you will do that. They also function as a message board. Something that people to bring up as a big dramatic moment in history is Martin Luther nailing the 99thesis to a church door. That was common. That was how you made proclamations. You just hammered whatever to the cathedral door. And it was a way of making sure that everyone who was

literate could see it. And it was also really common for preachers who were going to preach in the cathedral to put up what they were going to preach about later. So everyone could go, oh, yeah, I really fancy a sermon on piety in the laity and how we need to crack down on priests being married. Yeah, that'll be great. Going to go to that later, right? So they have all of these functions in terms of getting messages out. They also are a place where fun stuff happens often. There's a big crack time in the high medieval period here in England where you have rather a lot of mystery plays that are getting put on inside of cathedrals. And these are religious, which is why they were doing it. They're like, yeah, it's a religious play, question mark.

It just happens to have a lot of fart jokes in it. Hey, who complain me? And eventually the churches, you guys have got to knock it off. You cannot keep putting on plays inside the church. It is clear that you're having too much fun and that this isn't serving a religious function. Get out here and go out in the street, you scamps. And so then they get kicked out. But it's for a very long time, a theater where people do normal things as well.

I think it feeds into that idea that the religious world and the secular world and the government and all of those things were so connected in the medieval world that your church could function as your town hall and your meeting space and your place to disseminate ideas. Because there wasn't this separation. There wasn't the idea that's the church where you go to pray on a Sunday. Over here is where you go to do your secular admin stuff. over here is where you have meetings. This is where you go for cinema or your theater or whatever else. All of that could be in one place because that was all so interconnected in the medieval mind. Yeah, absolutely. Our idea of a separation of church and state, it is specifically modern. For medieval people, that wouldn't even make sense if you said to them.

They'd be like, I don't know what you're talking about. These are really places where you live your daily life and where communities are centered, which is a really cool thing about them. So they aren't just for the church being fancy. They serve the public as well in a number of ways. I'm just going to jump on a couple of other questions. So we've got Teresa asked, were the lower classes allowed into the church? Did they have to stay at the door?

She mentions in the wife of Bath, there's a comment about being married at the church door. Was that a literal thing or was that an expression? That's an expression. It's a good question. But it's just poetic. And here, this is a reference to the fact that the wife of Bath is a goer. So she's making the point that there are two ways of being married in the medieval period. There's the classic way that we all understand as in the church.

But it's also really common for people to just say, hey, we're married now and move into it. And the church doesn't love it, but people do it all the time. So the wife of Bath was making the point that she got married in the correct way every time, which is inside of the church. And so here, when Chaucer says at the church door, he just means that they went inside. It's just a reference to place. But yeah, absolutely. Everyone, including the poor, has access to churches. That's pretty much their entire function.

Although, yeah, you got to be a little bit careful with that because people do be going in and act in a fool at times. So got to keep an eye on a church. That's all I'm saying. Sophia also asked a question about sanctuary. So how were churches used for sanctuary, that idea that if you grab the door handle or the door knocker of the church that you've made it to sanctuary, is that true? In theory, yes, in practice, maybe is the answer here. A lot of people could go ahead and blame sanctuary, whether or not anybody listens to it. That's a maybe. And it really depends on what you've done. So if you've done something, for example, kill someone. Yeah, good luck with that one, home boy. What will usually happen in those instances is you can go inside the church or grab the handle or whatever.

And then it will be explained to the priest why you were asking for sanctuary. And then they're going to come and give you a talking to. And they're going to say, my child, I'm afraid that you are going to hell unless you go out there and face the music. And this is like the standard penance that is given to people who have committed a really grievous sin. Even now. Basically, if you go in and say, oh, I've committed a murder, even though priests aren't supposed to say what's going on, they're going to say, by the way, you will never be forgiven for this unless you go deal with this right now. So there's a kind of negotiation or parley that will then take place. We also have really tragic cases about this as well. For example, during persecutions or pogroms of Jewish people. Because at times, for example, the church will expressly attempt to shield Jewish people from the aggression of crowds.

and they will say, quick, come inside the church. We're giving you all sanctuary. And the locals don't necessarily care and will burn down the church if Jewish people are inside it in these cases. So there are a number of terrible cases where this happens. So it all really depends. If you've done something incredibly benign and you've got a kind of lord that everyone thinks is a jerk and that's who you're running from, yeah, you'll probably get given sanctuary and then they'll go intercede with the Lord and be like, bro, knock it off. But if you've done something really badly, that's not going to do you any good, essentially. And in terms of the rules of sanctuary, in England, at least, you have 40 days in sanctuary.

I think on the continent, they tend to allow you a longer period. But England was quite firm about you've got 40 days that you can stay in the church and kind of work out what you're going to do. And then you will either submit to the law, face the charges, do penance if that's what has been negotiated for you to get out. Or you could end up going into exile. So you effectively become an outlaw, you leave the country. And so what Sanctuary does is buy you a little bit of safety and breathing space to work out. If I'm not going to get the death sentence, I might want to stay at home. If I feel like the punishment's going to be too bad, I might just want to go into exile and get away from this altogether.

But theoretically, in that 40 days or longer on the continent, you should be left alone in there. Essentially, it buys you time to figure out what your deal is. Yeah. And then we do get after the medieval period. So going into the 16th century, you do seem to get this kind of European. and wide almost universal rejection of sanctuary, particularly when it relates to secular crime and stuff like that. The sanctuary seems to very quickly die out across Europe altogether. It's almost like all the kings get together and say, this is no good for any of us. Let's just bin it off.

And we'll work away at the rules of sanctuary. Henry the 7th is quick to change the law to say that you can't claim sanctuary if you've committed treason, for example, because he wants to get his hands on traitors. Which is quite canny. And so this is is part of the sort of medieval to modern turn. And this idea that laws and legalities are much more under the secular arm of government and not underneath the ecclesiastical arm. Whereas earlier in the medieval period, most crimes, especially ones that are the really serious ones, it was like, ooh, you have messed up against God, woo, oh buddy. Slowly the king becomes more frightening than God in these circumstances. So even if, you know, you murdered someone earlier in the medieval period,

The idea here was that you've offended God and their family. And so you have to do restitution with the family and you need to do restitution with the church. You know, the king doesn't enter into it. So it's really a big part of the story of the Middle Ages moving towards that point. Yeah. An increasing feeling, I think, that sanctuary was a way for people to circumvent the law. Yeah. And allow them to get away with a lot of stuff.

I want to talk next about the kind of people who would work in some of these buildings. So we've mentioned a few of the kind of. of people that we might find. One thing I think is quite interesting is the question of, does every parish church have its own priest? Yeah. This is a big point of contention, especially in the later medieval period when people are questioning the church, when there are periodic episodes where people begin to question the church and call for reform. A lot of it has to do with parish priests or the lack thereof. The reason the preaching orders like the Franciscans and Dominicans were invented and said, okay, yeah, go out there and preach, is because people didn't feel

like they were getting the amount of sermons that they were supposed to be getting. They're like, yeah, I've got a parish priest, but never comes around. And this was a really big problem, in particular, kings and things like that, if they were able to give out positions, which they were, or even sometimes bishops to well-connected people, they'd go, oh, yeah, well, I'm going to give you the benefits, it's called, I'll give you the benefits of St. David's out there in the wild wales, up in the hills, and this guy would be like, oh, sweet, okay, well, I'm not going to go out there. I'm going to stay in London and live the high life. And that was super common.

People would just draw the salary that they were supposed to have from that, and then they just wouldn't go there and do it. And we see complaints about this constantly. Sometimes they'll be really complex. In Prague, a big problem that we will see in a lot of complaints that people will have of their parishes is that they will have been assigned a priest who speaks the wrong language. So it'll be like a Czech community and they've been sent a German speaker or it'll be a German speaking community and they've been sent a Czech speaker.

And they're like, this does me no good. I don't know what's happening here. And I can't even get my regular sermons. And sermons are one thing. The big concern here is stuff like sacraments, right? Yeah. If you're not receiving the stuff that you feel you need for your soul from the church, then that causes you a personal spiritual problem.

And also you can throw into that people are paying their taxes to the church. They're paying their tithe. So what are they paying for? They're paying to have a priest there, celebrating services for them and providing a service to the community. And so if that priest isn't there, what are we paying for? And you would be so angry, right? Think about if you are a peasant in some little parish

and you have a baby born, the priest isn't there. It doesn't get baptized. And then it dies? which is super common up until we invent penicillin and things like that, this would be something that would haunt you for the rest of your life. And you would really feel let down by the church. So it's a consistent problem, and it's one that the church never entirely solved in the medieval period, to be fair.

And when you have large organizations such as this, there's always going to be people who take advantage. Now, I would argue that the great majority of individuals within the Catholic Church in the medieval period wanted to do the right thing, and we're there to do good and save souls. But there's always a certain percentage of jerks and we're going to just scam the system. And unfortunately, it was parishes that really felt the brunt of this.

And the world never changes very much, does it? No. We've got a couple of interesting questions from listeners on churches. I think this is actually a really good one. Who cleans churches? Great question. And the answer is it really depends. In monasteries and nunneries, the monks and nuns.

And that is a big part of their whole. mission on earth. They're supposed to be praying for souls, but they also work to show that they are pious. Now, again, is the abbot cleaning the church? No. You know who's cleaning the church? It's going to be the obelates, who are the young people who get set in. So it'll be like the young boys have to scrub the floor, kind of a deal. In secular churches, it's oftentimes members of the community. So they care about their church and they're the ones who are cleaning it. If you have bigger or fancier churches, they might hire people in for this, in which case, this is a really common job. for local women, which is a place where women show up in the church rather a lot, because women

are usually the ones who are hired as cleaners more generally. So you might just have like the local girl comes in and gives it a good once over a couple times a week, something like that. So if someone is getting paid, it's usually just like a local woman, but if it's in a closed area, it's going to be the kids. The kids who's coming that floor. That's what's up. That also, I guess, reflects the role of the church, particularly the parish church, is in the community. And it's also an opportunity to go and work in the church, which it's got to be good for your soul. You're showing your devotion. You're offering this service to God. It might be sweeping the floor, but it might buy you a few days out of purgatory. Yeah, exactly. Actually, you would be surprised

by how many of the really common things in churches come from this. For example, candles, which is, oh my gosh, do they need candles? Ooh, churches have a huge need for candles. And the way that they get them is mostly through donations of people who are feeling guilty. If you've messed up, you might find yourself scrubbing the church porch one day. That's just how it goes. Bennett also asked whether medieval churches had bathroom facilities inside. If you got caught short in the middle of a service, where are you going to go? I know you're going outside.

Sorry, buds. Most places don't have indoor privies. The exception to this is castles and places like that where you can have a long drop. But your average church is absolutely not going to have that. But they probably do have an outside privy. Medieval people are very practical about using the. toilet. I would say that. I think that's fair. And so they'll just be like, yeah, just pop out there. They don't care as much. They're used to going outside anyway. So they're going to have some

the kind of situation outside, but you're going outside for sure. And if you've really upset the priest or done something really bad, you might not be scrubbing the porch, might be emptying the toilet. Yeah, absolutely. To be honest, before Bennett asked that, I can honestly say it wasn't something I thought about very much. You go to castles and you always want to find out the guardrobe, the toilet, all of that sort of stuff. I've never seen one in a church or a cathedral, but it wasn't something that I ever particularly looked for. I don't think it had ever occurred to me before. So I think it's a really interesting question. Yeah. If you are a nerd like being, you spend a lot of time in the countryside looking at parish churches, one of the things that they are often fundraising for is to

build toilet facilities for their congregation now because this is a 12th century building and it does not have a toilet, right? And that's why they're doing it because it just doesn't exist. Yeah. In amongst those questions as well, we got one from Eva about anchoresses and whether they were really a thing. Anchrices are just fascinating, aren't they? Oh yeah. Well, in the first place, yes, Eva, anchors are very much a thing. We love an anchores around here. Julian of Norwich. Helulgna Pingen. Ladies of this nature.

But the thing is with anchores, okay, I guess for those not in the know, first let's define an anchores. An anchores is usually a kind of woman who puts herself in a position usually attached to a regular old church, but sometimes in a monastery or something, where she is going to live in a cell

for the rest of her life. Now, there are levels to this. So Julian of Norwich, she was the real one. And she was like living in a closet and was fully bricked in there and was just like passing things through a slot. Other people, it's, oh yeah, well, I'm enclosed in this salad. It's like the size of a flat. And especially with anchorses, oftentimes they like teach young nuns. So it's more like house arrest. But you live in a flat and also you wanted to. So that's another way of doing it. So it's usually just like tacked on to the side of the church and there are levels to it. The reason Julian of Norwich is a saint other than her prophetic abilities and things like that is the fact that seems very uncomfortable. Wow, very holy.

We love that. But you could be an anchores and it's just a little bit less strict than that. And I do recommend for those interested in it read up online about the life of Julian of Norwich because it's pretty incredible stuff, really. Yeah, we've got a fascinating episode of Gone Medeve. We did a little while ago in Julian of Norwich as well. So there's there you go out for there. Bang. Before we finish as well, I wanted to talk a little bit about architecture in church.

And when you and I spoke about this, when we were thinking about this idea, you stuck your fingers up at me. I did. And I was, what are you doing to stick your fingers up at me? I go around church and stick my fingers up all the time, Matt. Don't you stick your fingers up in church? So I feel like I need to ask you to explain why you stick your fingers up in church. I stick my fingers up in church because it is a great way of dating buildings.

And now, this is a hard and fast rule. It's generalized. But what you do is you find yourself a window and you see how many fingers you can align with that window. Because the number of fingers that you can align really often also aligns with the dates of churches. But this is from the 10th century going forward. So if you can get one finger in the window, it's probably a little bit earlier. It's probably 10th century, 11th century. Two, you're in the 12th, three fingers, you're in the 13th, four, you're in the 14th.

whole hand. That's 15th century, possibly 16th century. So they get wider and wider, and they often kind of align with how your hand looks as well. But this is mostly true if you have dear arches, because it's when we are straying into the more Gothic churches, as we say. But Romanesque churches, which are earlier, but you could still find them in the 11th century. Normans are big fans of Romanesque churches, for example. They have rounded arches, and they are. are less true to this rule. So if you see a very round arch, it's not going to be true. But if you see a pointy little arch, that's finger wagon time. I just like the idea that you get stopped in church all the time and told off for sticking your fingers. And go, no, I'm dating windows. No, look, I just,

I'm just very interested. Ma'am, excuse me, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. No. I just like 12th century architecture. No. And I guess there's lots of common features that we can look out for in churches as well. Columns, arches, windows, doorways that all help us. to date it, but also to look at how splendid they are. The reason your hand gets bigger is because people develop ways to make bigger windows, bigger statements, let more light into huge buildings. And it is all about just making them bigger and bigger and bigger to prove how much you love God. Oh yeah, absolutely.

And they very much see that as the statement. This is the way of proving your piety and proving your connection to God. The higher your church, the closer to God. We all know that. So I guess Cologne wins in that one. One of the things that's also really interesting about, especially cathedrals, is these are things that are built over hundreds of years. So you might get a bit where you've got some 12th century windows and then there might be some 15th century windows at the end. Churches are constantly being made and remade and lived in.

So you might get a 14th century church, but it's got 19th century stained glass. So these are buildings that are in flux and in movement. And a great example of this, if you ever have the chance to go as one of my very favorites is St. Albans Cathedral. because it suffered a collapse of part of the building in the 14th century. And they were like, well, we've done it, guys. Good job, lads. This is one done cathedral. And then a bunch of it just completely collapsed.

So they had to slap up a bunch of new things. So you can really see the difference between the very high Gothic 14th century architecture in the earlier kind of 11th, 12th century architecture. And that's a great way of being able to compare and contrast what very artistic styles are. And we've got some great questions from listeners on this as well. We try and get through a couple of them. Actually, a couple of interesting ones about how Cathedral Tech develops. General I, General Lee, asks, I assume people didn't build 50 cathedrals that all fell over until they learned how to do it.

But it is developing art, isn't it? Can you make this wider? Can you make this bigger? Can you make this more splendid? And they just find ways to do it. So you will notice with older cathedrals, so especially ones that are in the Romanesque style, they're huge and they're beautiful. and they're gorgeous to look at, and they're a bit more chunky. They are not going to have the really huge towering spires that go all the way up,

because it takes longer in the medieval period for them to develop the tech in order to do that. And that is part of the move from Romanesque architecture into Garthic architecture, because if you have pointed spires, it allows you to transfer more weight using the point so they can build higher and higher arches. And then that allows you to have higher and higher steples. Now, it's true most churches don't collapse. Sometimes things do collapse. There are incidents at times, and it's a process of trial.

But for the most part, by the time you've got to the big leagues and you're working on cathedrals, you know what it is you're doing. So these people are the best of the best. They're very sought after the master masons and architects who work on these cathedrals. But also one of the big things that gets invented is the crane. And then the crane also allows you to just get things higher up in it. If you've got to carry a big thing of stone, I don't know if the listeners have ever walked up some of those spiral staircases in cathedrals. But that's a long way up with a big old piece of stone. So when they develop cranes, those things get a little bit easier.

We've had lots of questions as well about seating arrangements and stuff like that in church. Do the posh people sit at the front, poor people sit at the back, all of that kind of stuff? And even just the development of sitting in church is quite an interesting thing, isn't it? In most early services, you would probably have stood no matter who you were. eventually you get seating bought in, particularly because rich people don't want to stand up all the way through all of that. So rich people get to sit down. But then you get this kind of market in selling those seats to local worthies. And it becomes like a bidding war. The most prestigious one is the one right at the front. So everybody's fighting over who gets to sit where. And then I guess as time goes on, the poor people are thinking, why are we standing when they're sitting?

And eventually they get seats as well, but always a little bit further back. So even that process of going from standing to sitting in church is quite interesting. Oh yeah, absolutely, because for quite some time you don't sit in church. If you go into some cathedrals, still to the state, for example, the cathedral in Segovia, pretty much empty. You go there and you stand, buddy. Good luck to you. But the first people to sit down are rich people and it is closer to the front. So it's just another way of ranking society, which medieval people simply love to do.

But yeah, it'll be the poorest of the poor are going to be at the back. Beggers are going to be at the back. and the local notary is going to be up the front. Yeah. Trajan 81 asks about the interiors and exteriors. Were they all painted? Were they garish colors and scenes? We see some surviving wall paintings and things like that in some churches,

but how common were that kind of thing? Medieval people want it garish. They want it loud. They want just paintings all over the bloody place. And we have some records of what particular churches used to be. So for example, like some would be yellow inside or red inside. And then he would have frescoes that depict biblical scenes. Sometimes people just paint a dragon because it's cool, things like this. And you do get instances where cool scenes will survive to us. But unfortunately, the Protestants

didn't like that. And they said, you're getting too distracted in church and you're not having a nice time. And this starts a bit of a spiritual arms race where the Catholics were like, no, we're not having any fun either. No, and then everything gets whitewashed over just like the Protestants are. So it gives us a really skewed view of what churches are now, because when you go into them, they're frequently white, especially if you have medieval churches. Oftentimes the plaster's fallen off completely and you're just back to stone. And that is not what medieval people would have experienced. They want it what we would consider tacky. And that also goes for the outside. They would oftentimes paint their statues. And it just falls out of favor and they stop doing it. It's interesting how we have this image of the medieval world quite often as,

grey stone, slightly boring, very austere, and everybody being very serious when actually everything would have been much more colourful than it is today. Yeah, it's one of those things that people almost wouldn't believe if they saw it. They'd say, well, no, this is an inaccurate depiction, but actually it is. I feel like this is a question almost aimed specifically at you from Tom Parsons. How common are rude figures in churches left by stonemations and carpenters? Very common. They love to work one in, especially in really, really, really big churches and stuff you will have quite a few, especially up top where they can't necessarily

be seen. But yeah, you get a lot of monkeys poking each other's butts. You get a lot of guys with their junk out. You get a lot of mooning, just huge amounts of mooning. Oh my God, they absolutely love to moon things. And this kind of shows you a little bit about how the church is many things. Sure, it's a place of worship, but it's also a place that people just hang out. And do people take it seriously. Yeah, but not so seriously. They're not going to put a guy mooning into the stone maze. Come on, man. Working that in there. There's a wood carving in a roof of a man defecating. He's literally just pooing on anyone that walks beneath him in the aisles. There are topless women in churches. Quite easy to find. There are what looked like pagan kind of fertility

symbols of women with their legs spread. She's on display. So for all the men with their junk on show, there's a woman doing something very similar as well. And I think it's always quite difficult to reconcile that with our idea of medieval religion being quite so serious and austere, they were willing to have a bit of fun with it sometimes. Oh yeah, medieval people are really fun. They're actually quite jolly, is one thing about that. That even goes for priests to the point where often people are like, these priests are a little bit too jolly for their own. A lot of frivolity actually happens within churches. Probably what the Protestants were complaining about.

We could talk about churches for many more episodes. I don't know if we've completed a guide to churches or we've just scratched the surface of churches. churches. But I wanted to end if we can on a question from Kit, which is just around if you have a favorite kind of scandalous story, something from a medieval church, a funny anecdote, something that's come down from history. If you've got a favorite for us, Eleanor. Oh, yes, absolutely. You know how I said that oftentimes the pair of churches would be a bit more empty. And oftentimes people live in one room houses with their whole family. And oftentimes, times if you were ready to have sexual Congress with the individual of your choice, you would choose

to do so in an empty church because it was dry and nobody could see you. And now, this was very bad, very bad and naughty. And if you got cods, you would often be forced to do penance, obviously. But there's a story that's probably apocryphal of one couple who gets caught having sex in a church and they can't come unstuck from each other. And so they are forced on pilgrimage to march all the way to the local shrine to beg forgiveness, stuck together naked while everyone is, ah, you were having sex. There are always people just getting wild with it in the Middle Ages, and I love that. Amazing.

I think my favourite is probably slightly less entertaining, but St. Lawrence's Church in Ludlow, near me, I go to it all the time. They've got some incredible mid-15th century misery cords. So these are the things that priests, when they're celebrating services, they're supposed to be standing up. They have to fold their seat away. So they have these misery cords carved underneath with a flat top on so you can purchase a little bit of a cheat. There's one, if you go to St Lawrence's Church in Ludlow, there is one, which again seems like really odd images to find in a church.

So the supporters on the left and right-hand side of it, on the left is a demon who's reading out from a whole long scroll of somebody's sins. On the right-hand side, you've got this gaping hellmouth with its teeth, and you've got sinners pouring down into this hell-mouth. And in the middle, you've got two more demons. One of them is playing a set of bagpipes, because why wouldn't you be? And the other one has a naked woman slung over his shoulder. And all that she's wearing is a headdress. And she's carrying a measuring jug. And this supposedly represents a Ludlow alewife who got into serious trouble for giving bad measures

and watering down her beer. So clearly the list of sins that the demon is reading out is all of the bad measures that she's given. And she's being marched off to hell for this. And I love the idea that 600 years ago, this guy is carving a misery cord and he's like, flipping woman, rip me off in the pod. I'll teach her. And at 600 years later, you can still see this story of this woman being dragged down to hell because she gave this guy nine-tenths of a pint of beer a few times.

Now, listen, that is both so petty and also he is so real for that. I love it. I absolutely love that. Anytime you feel the medieval world, it's slightly distant from us. Just think about misery cords. Well, Matt, this has been such a treat. Thanks for talking about churches with me. No, it's been a delight.

Thank you very much. I've learned a lot. This isn't my area of expertise. So thank you for talking me through a lot of those questions. I hope listeners have found it interesting. And maybe we'll do some more of these guides. Is there something that you would like us to do a Gone Medieval guide to? Let us know.

Thank you so much once again to Matt for joining me on a Tuesday. And thank you all for listening. This has been Gone Medieval from History Hit, and if you've liked what you've heard, don't forget to rate, review, follow the podcast, and tell your friends about it. If you fancy suggesting an episode, you can drop us an email at Gone Medieval at HistoryHit.com. My co-host Matt Lewis will return to his rightful Gone Medieval Realm on Friday. And as always, I'll see you again next Tuesday. Until next time.