The Residentiary Canons of York the Fifteenth Century
No doubt the metropolitan church of St Peter of York, which celebrated its 1350th anniversary two years ago, has always been a difficult institution for the outsider to comprehend; but in the later middle ages its organisation was at its most formidably complex. The reasons for that complexity need...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1979
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| In: |
The journal of ecclesiastical history
Year: 1979, Volume: 30, Issue: 2, Pages: 145-174 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | No doubt the metropolitan church of St Peter of York, which celebrated its 1350th anniversary two years ago, has always been a difficult institution for the outsider to comprehend; but in the later middle ages its organisation was at its most formidably complex. The reasons for that complexity need no particular urging nor indeed explanation. Even more than other major medieval cathedrals York. Minster fulfilled a wide variety of very different and at times conflicting purposes. As the single largest church within the pre-Reformation ecclesia Anglicana it was inevitably committed to an especially elaborate series of acts of worship in choir, in nave and at the many subsidiary altars with which the cathedral literally abounded. As a house of God deliberately rebuilt and refurnished as magnificently as possible during the later middle ages, it provided a focus of spiritual allegiance for the inhabitants of York and Yorkshire as well as courting the attention of pilgrims and visitors from other parts of England. As the largest religious corporation in the region, York Minster was especially familiar to popes and kings as the most important agency through which the surplus wealth of northern churches and their parishes could be diverted to the professional ‘permanent civil service’ which administered the detailed operations of the English church and state. Most important of all, and despite the personal absence of the archbishop himself, the cathedral of York was still performing its original function as the administrative and judicial head-quarters of thenorthernprovinceinanage when ‘if wecome, therefore, to a general conclusion with regard to the organization of English dioceses in the fifteenth century, we find that it has become highly centralized’. |
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| ISSN: | 1469-7637 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The journal of ecclesiastical history
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0022046900034862 |