Local religious life in England, c. 1160-1210

This is a thesis about the ideas and relationships which shaped local religious life, particularly the quotidian religious experiences of ordinary lay people, in late twelfth- century England. Local religious life was not primarily a product of developing ecclesiastical structures, nor of systematic pastoral reform, but rather of ministry relationships, in which one person or group received some kind of religious ministry from another. These relationships were coloured by the beliefs and practical interests of clerical and lay participants. The elite clerical idea of prelacy—in which a prelate, endowed with the burden of pastoral care, spiritually governs subjects—was an old idea which reflected the relationship-based structure of religious life, and which writers adapted in response to local realities. The principal manifestation of this interaction between idea and practice was the claiming of certain lay people as the parishioners of religious houses and local churches: priests and parishioners were analogous, in the minds of ecclesiastics, to prelates and subjects. This grated against the reality that lay people actively shaped their own religious experiences. Local practices, as well as factors such as lordship, geography and association, influenced the ways in which laity and clergy in a given locality thought about their ministry relationships. Lay people in late twelfth-century England were not merely parishioners: they received ministries from the religious, anchorites, saints, and other lay people. This thesis is intended as a corrective to the historiographical field of pastoral care: firstly for a particular historical moment, the second half of the twelfth century in England, but also as a model for future inquiry into other periods and regions. It builds a new conceptual foundation which demands, in turn, a reevaluation of local religious life beyond the late twelfth century and beyond England.