Abstract
This article aims to explain the importance of Easter to medieval Christians and points out some of the ways that they learned about their faith and celebrated the death and resurrection of their saviour.
“The death of the Lord our God should not be a cause of shame for us; rather, it should be our greatest hope, our greatest glory. In taking upon himself the death that he found in us, he has most faithfully promised to give us life in him, such as we cannot have of ourselves.”1
St Augustine of Hippo
A question which puzzles some people today is how a largely illiterate population in Mediaeval England learned about the central tenet of their faith, namely, the death and resurrection of their Lord and saviour. How was the Easter story communicated and celebrated when most people could barely read or write? The answer to that is briefly through preaching, storytelling, visual imagery and through plays and dramas. The ordinary Catholic would experience the story through attending church services and partaking in the fasts and festivals which punctuated the year. Easter was, of course, central to the Christian year. Many towns and villages had their preaching crosses where friars or other preachers could address the townspeople and tell them about the story of their faith. As almost all were of the same faith, it was a shared experience for most of the people.
Any culture has its feasts and festivals, and Mediaeval England was no exception. Modern English society, though, has lost much of the sense of the meaning of feasts and festivals which, in the past, were of central importance. In modern, secular Britain, religious festivals have mostly lost their exceptional, unique, non-repeatable character with perhaps, arguably, the exception of Christmas. Thus, Christian festivals today have tended to become little more than hollowed out mentions on a calendar except for a Christian minority. In the late Middle Ages the harder and more monotonous daily lives were, the more these church holy days and feasts would be an occasion to escape the daily life for at least some hours. Feasts made daily life more tolerable or let peasants forget their daily struggles for a while. Feasts would have been celebrated for very different occasions: on the celebration day of a local or church-wide saint, for a wedding or a funeral or other special occasion. Nevertheless, a feast did not only serve as an escape from the everyday, it also marked a holy time of prayer and reflection. What the faithful Mediaeval Catholic did as well as believed, marked these times out as special. Purchasing new clothes, preparing special meals and welcoming people into your home mattered to them just as it does today.
For mediaeval people, religious festivals had great significance. Firstly, the secular year was designed around the religious calendar of the Catholic church. Secondly, almost everyone took part in Christian worship and custom. Christian faith was the norm in the late Middle Ages and non-attendance at church festivals was very much frowned upon. Thirdly, the peasants enjoyed time off from labour in the days following a festival. The word ‘holiday’ comes from holy day. Consequently, people did not work on the feast itself, but also not during the following week. It is said that some peasants had up to eight weeks off regular work at festival times. The three most important mediaeval festivals were Easter, Christmas and Whitsun. Christmas and Easter were made even more significant through a period of preparation in the weeks leading up to the festival. Lent, meaning the time when the days lengthen, in other words, springtime, is still a period of reflection and preparation for the coming festival. We can learn about Easter in mediaeval times from different sources such as church documents which are the most obvious source of reliable information regarding this most important festival. Pictures, preserved as manuscript illuminations or wall paintings, are also important sources of information concerning feasts and daily life in the Middle Ages. They serve as little windows into a milieu and a culture which is long gone. Easter was and still is, the greatest and most important Christian festival though. There were and still are, lots of rituals and meanings in this festival and there was sharing and celebration with family and friends. One of the best events that people looked forward to in this festival was not having to work; often even the servants did not have to work so that they could be with their family and friends. There are lots of different symbols that mean an assortment of different types of definitions and meanings in Easter that we still use to this day, which have evolved from Mediaeval times.
Then as now, people enjoyed a show or play. During Mediaeval times most plays were religious and were used to teach people about the Bible, the lives of saints, or how to live your life the right way. There were three different types of plays performed during mediaeval times; The mystery play, the miracle play and the morality play. Mystery plays were stories taken from the Bible and each play had four or five different scenes or acts. Each of these was performed at a different place in town and the people moved from one place to the next to watch the play. The play usually ended near the church so that the people could attend a service after watching it. The miracle play was about the life or actions of a saint, usually about the actions that made that person holy. One popular miracle play was about Saint George and the dragon. Morality plays were designed to teach people a lesson in how to live their life according to the rules of the church. Sometimes these plays had elaborate sets, sometimes no sets at all. What really mattered was the story and the message or moral. The peasants and towns folk didn’t have to attend the plays but it was a break from their normal daily lives and must have been something they looked forward to. Plays depicting the passion of Christ, the story of his trial, crucifixion and resurrection were naturally hugely popular during the late Medieval period. The average Medieval peasant was not well versed in Latin so the mass in their local church wasn’t going to greatly inform the story of Jesus. Most ordinary people were functionally illiterate as only a minority had sufficient education to be able to read. The Bible was also in Latin so pictures, images and preaching in church were the obvious way of learning about the faith for many people. Visual representation and oral presentation were the main ways to tell the story to ordinary folk. The peasants would experience all the pain and agony Christ went through in a vivid drama during the church’s year.
An example of this evangelisation which we know about from contemporary sources were the mystery plays. They were a great tradition in the cities of Medieval England as a way of bringing religious messages to the people. 2The main purpose of the mystery plays was to glorify God but it was also a great day out, and the guilds competed against each other to produce the best play. Medieval guilds were often associated with a particular trade and part of their role was to regulate the trade. The plays were performed during great Medieval festivals such as the Feast of Corpus Christi. This holy day fell sixty days after Easter, in May or June. In the one day, at least forty-eight individual plays would be performed by separate guilds. The day began early in the morning with parades through the streets on carts. Actors went on to present the great moments of Christian history such as the death and resurrection at Easter, at twelve special places on the streets. Banners would announce what would happen at each place. The route took them through the city. Scaffolding was erected for those who could afford to pay for it whilst the general population stood and watched. In 1398 the audience in York included King Richard II. Each guild would perform a play, often related in some way to their trade. The shipwrights presented the building of Noah’s Ark, and the marriage of Cana where Christ turned water into wine would be acted out by the vintners. The makers of metal pins and nails would enact the crucifixion and the butchers would perform the death of Christ as it would have been on Good Friday. It is known that the plays were being performed as a group in 1376, although there are earlier references to religious performances which predate this. The first written record of these plays was by Roger Burton in 1415.
At the start of Lent, the people would go to church to be shriven, a word meaning to confess their sins to their priest. This became known as Shrove Tuesday and often involved eating the rich foods such as eggs before the fasting of Lent began. It became a tradition to eat pancakes and the tradition continues in Britain today. On Ash Wednesday the fasting began in earnest. The people went to church to attend mass and receive the ashes which were created from burning green matter such as willow. Ashes were placed on the forehead with the traditional words recited by the priest. Holy Week commenced with Palm Sunday mass where there would be the telling of the story of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. At this mass, the ‘palms’ which were usually of yew, box or willow, were distributed and priests and people with the processional cross accompanied by the church’s most important holy relics, and into the churchyard. After various ceremonies they might move to the main door where the priest may have knocked on the door, symbolically demanding entry for Christ. The procession may have moved to the rood loft and screen which often separated the nave and the chancel in late Medieval churches, where all through Lent a great coloured or painted veil may have been suspended in front of the rood in the rood loft. This veil was now removed and the whole parish might kneel and sing an antiphon such as Ave Rex Noster Fili David, ‘Hail our son of David’. The Gospel story might then be read or sung often from high up on the rood loft at the foot of the Crucifix. The Wednesday of Holy Week was often known as Spy Wednesday as the word spy meant one who secretly listens to and spies on others. It referred to Judas the traitor who betrayed Jesus. Maundy Thursday would be a quiet, solemn service including the ceremonial washing of feet after which the altars were stripped down and then washed with water and wine using a broom of sharp twigs and then covered in twigs and branches to symbolise the stripping and scourging of Jesus. Maundy comes from the Latin word for command and refers to Jesus’ command to ‘Love one another as I have loved you.’3
Good Friday was a day of mourning and fasting, and generally speaking a day when nobody would use iron tools or nails if they could help it in honour of the death of their saviour. There was no mass on Good Friday but a service called Tenebrae, meaning darkness, was held in the afternoon about the time it was believed that Jesus died. The congregation would observe the veiled cross and after it had been unveiled, ‘creep to the cross’ on hands and knees with bare feet to venerate it by kissing the feet of the dead saviour. The Passion story would be read from the Gospel of John, and the service was held almost completely in darkness, with one candle holder, gradually put out to show that darkness was falling on the world. Eventually, only the centremost candle or ‘hearse’ remained lit, representing the light of Christ. As the congregation knelt on the stone floor in the flickering shadows of the only remaining candle, the priest might solemnly intone: from the psalms: Miserere mei Deus secundum misericordiam tuam iuxta multitudinem miserationum tuarum dele iniquitates meas multum lava me ab iniquitate mea et a peccato meo munda me.4 Most of the congregation wouldn’t have known much Latin, but they were all familiar with the story, with it being the most solemn day of the churches year. The story was shown in the church through visual imagery in statues and windows. There was the symbolic burial of Christ in the Easter sepulchre on the north side of the chancel which would often have been made of a moveable timber frame, sometimes with carved or painted panels. In some churches there was a stone platform or niche which the wooden box could be placed in or on. A surviving example of a wooden Easter Sepulchre is to be found at St Michael’s church Cowthorpe near Wetherby, Yorkshire. Throughout the week, the empty Easter sepulchre remained an object of devotion. The priest, barefoot and without his customary vestments except for his surplice, may have wrapped a crucifix and a silver pyx containing the consecrated Host in linen cloths and laid them in the Easter sepulchre. Parishioners may have followed suit, again creeping barefoot to the rood, Candles were lit on stands around the sepulchre, and a continuous watch might be kept all night. There was no mass on Holy Saturday as the congregation would be expected to reflect on the absence of Christ at that time. This time was often known in the middle ages as the ‘Harrowing of Hell ‘and was a solemn time for Christians.
By contrast, Easter Sunday was a joyous occasion when the people would celebrate a new life or beginning and to show this, people would wear their best clothes. Sometimes this was the only time in the whole year a person would buy a new garment. On Easter Sunday morning a procession was formed to the Easter sepulchre and the rood was solemnly raised and carried triumphantly around the church with all the bells ringing and the choir perhaps singing Cristus resurgens, ‘Christ is risen’. People often gave gifts of money to provide the wax for candles for maintaining lumini sepulture, or sepulchre lights. Easter Sunday services would begin at dawn, with the congregation gathering outside the church to sing hymns. Then the priest would lead them into the church, where the Easter Sunday mass would be very joyful, and the Blessed Sacrament would return. As the priest ended the mass with a blessing and the words ite missa est,5 people would be dismissed in grace and forgiveness to go and feast. After all, they had fasted and eaten no meat or eggs for the forty days of Lent, having survived on fish and whatever was available to them in that season.
One of the many traditions that people might want to engage in at Easter was collecting eggs to celebrate Jesus’s resurrection. The egg was believed by many to represent new life as that is what happens with birds and some other creatures. They would collect the eggs during the forty days of Lent when you could not eat any eggs. They would boil the eggs in salt water to preserve them during this time and prevent them from hatching. At Easter, the eggs might be painted or dyed, mostly with red for the blood of Christ. The coloured eggs might be hidden from the children, who joyfully hunted them down; the hunt symbolising the apostles searching for Jesus’s tomb. Along with hunting for eggs, children celebrated the festival with family and friends. Peasants might get a feast especially if the Lord of the manor provided one for them. In 1276, Eleanor and Simon de Montfort bought 3700 eggs for their celebration, and in 1290 Edward I’s accounts show that he paid to have 450 eggs decorated with gold leaf. It was common to disguise food as something else.6
Easter was the most important holy day in Medieval England. Easter celebrated the birth of new life as well as the start of the new year and a key time in the farming year with growth of crops and greenery. Easter was a time of faith and feasting; the Catholic community would be with one another sharing all of the rituals and traditions together. This day was like Christmas is today, there was a lot of eating, drinking, celebrating, fun, gifts, dancing, music, entertainment, and above all rituals and ceremonies celebrating the death and resurrection of Christ.
Bibliography
Duffy, E, The Voices of Morebath, Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 2001
Swanson, R N, Catholic England: Faith, Religion and Observance Before the Reformation, Manchester Medieval Studies, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1993
Websites
http://dailyscripture.servantsoftheword.org/crossaug.htm
http://www.historyofyork.org.uk/themes/medieval/the-mystery-plays
https://www.sbg.ac.at/ges/people/rohr/nsk11.pdf
http://www.medieval-life.net/festivals.htm
https://medievalisterrant.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/medieval-easter-traditions/
https://aethelmearcgazette.com/2015/04/05/medieval-easter-traditions/
https://www.thetelegraph.com/news/article/Why-parts-of-Good-Friday-worship-have-been-16066073.php
1 St Augustine of Hippo
2 http://www.historyofyork.org.uk/themes/medieval/the-mystery-plays
3 John 15:12
4 Psalms 51:1-2
5 Go the mass is ended or literally, go you are sent. Words from the Latin mass.
6 https://aethelmearcgazette.com/2015/04/05/medieval-easter-traditions/