Sacerdos Parochialis edited from British Library MS Burney 356 & Exornatorium Curatorum edited from Cambridge Corpus Christi Sp.335.2

Abstract

This thesis is in two parts. Each part contains a critical edition of a late Middle English manual of religious instruction. The first edition is Sacerdos Parochialis and is found in eleven extant manuscripts from the fifteenth century. The second edition is Exornatorium Curatorum, which was first printed by Wynkyn de Worde in c. 1516. It was reprinted ten times. The last known date of publication is 1552. The texts are examples of religious treatises produced from the end of the fourteenth century to the first half of the sixteenth. Both manuals were influenced by the 1281 statutes which were published by Pecham (Archbishop of Canterbury, 1279 - 92) in an attempt to counteract clerical ignorance. Pecham's statutes were republished by Thomas Arundel (Archbishop of Canterbury, 1399 - 1414) in 1409 in response to the Lollard crisis that threatened the Church. Arundel's aim was to limit the scope of religious knowledge available to the laity to that of the Pecham syllabus. Arundel was particularly keen to control access to vernacular translations of the Bible as well as to vernacular books o f religious instruction. These editions will, among other things, provide material by which scholars can assess the effectiveness of his constitutions.