Careers and Disappointments in the Late-Medieval Church: Some English Evidence
‘He looked up at the pleasant plate-glass in the windows of the house of his friend the dean, and told himself how, in their college days, he and the dean had been quite equal—quite equal, except that by the voices of all qualified judges in the university he, Mr. Crawley, had been acknowledged to b...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
1989
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| In: |
Studies in church history
Year: 1989, Volume: 26, Pages: 111-130 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | ‘He looked up at the pleasant plate-glass in the windows of the house of his friend the dean, and told himself how, in their college days, he and the dean had been quite equal—quite equal, except that by the voices of all qualified judges in the university he, Mr. Crawley, had been acknowledged to be the riper scholar. And now the Mr. Arabin of those days was the Dean of Barchester … while he, Crawley, was the perpetual curate of Hogglestock.’ The Last Chronicle of Barset is the story of a model clergyman, ‘a hard-working conscientious pastor’ and ‘still a scholar’ long after he had left university, who had never gained lucrative preferment. Yet this novel, as all those in the Barchester sequence, abounds with clerics of modest intellect and minimal spirituality whose benefices afforded extremely comfortable livelihoods. In short, the novel reminds us forcibly that a career in the Church was, in the nineteenth century, a gamble; the greatest rewards did not always go to the most deserving, but to those with the right connections through which they obtained the most lucrative positions. |
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| ISSN: | 2059-0644 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Studies in church history
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0424208400010901 |
