The Parish and the Chapel in Medieval Britain and Norway, by Sarah E. Thomas

Making waves across several fields of historical study which have been previously tackled in isolation, Sarah E. Thomas’s book analyses ‘[f]or the first time, chapels in … three northern European countries … as an important key component of the medieval European Christian landscape’. Considering with clarity and authority capelle established within larger churches as well as those which were free-standing and independent, and public sites of worship deprived of parochial autonomy, Thomas commences her analysis with the simple observation that the ecclesiastical landscape was populated throughout medieval Norway, Scotland and England by this additional group of structures, just as indispensable to the population as were cathedrals, monasteries and parish churches.

A reliance on historically-focused studies, she contends, has meant that chapels have been somewhat neglected in the wider ecclesiastical script because their existence, architecture, usage and universality have run counter to leading narratives which have framed their position in the context of the development of church organisation following Christianisation. She thus sets out to demonstrate why they should be presented as a central, individual focus of analysis and one which deserves investigation in relation to themes pertinent to the study of the parish church. Drawing on past chapel typologies (notably, Nicholas Orme’s ‘dependent [chapels of ease], private, and cult’), Thomas adds a further distinct category: ‘locational’, or those ‘deliberately constructed’ in significant spiritual locations, such as along pilgrim routes, liminal zones, or even sites of assembly.

Thomas deserves praise for her comparative approach which makes pioneering use of papal petitions and supplications, inventories, visitation records, wills and episcopal registers alongside more interdisciplinary archaeological evidence and architectural remains to illustrate the course of change in chapel size, construction, materials and burial evidence across northern Europe.

Three primary themes emerge. The first is centred around universal usage (versus localism), and whether development and design of the medieval Church was homogenous across northern Europe. Did the Church’s drive for greater institutional uniformity and obedience reach local devotional organisation? The question appears to be one of ambiguity—as does the answer. Universal and local/native saints were popular across the landscape and chapel types fluctuated in line with dedication trends. The second theme is the issue of Scandinavian influence on chapel organisation: did pre-Christianised Nordic and Danish settlements leave their mark on chapel networks in Britain? (Dioceses examined include Sodor, Galloway and York, which were settled to varying degrees of intensity by the Norse and Danes, or had Gaelic-Norse links.) Thomas advises that evidence for Anglo-Saxon influence in Christian Scandinavia can be found in parish origins, missionaries, and even had etymological roots in ‘church, archbishop and monk’. Regardless, Thomas deems the Scandinavian influence on at least three English dioceses’ chapel organisation to have been negligible; conversely, pre-existing church organisation and local cults were adopted by Scandinavian settlers.

The third theme considers the impact of natural disasters on the religious landscape; how tumultuous events from the Black Death to famine and climate change signalled a decline in chapel use. Here again, it is easier to pose the question than to supply the response. Did diminishing village populations imply unsustainability in the chapel model? As with many trends in medieval chapel devotion, the answer is a paradox, as an increase in the popular piety of survivors led to new chapel foundations, particularly chantries for commemoration of the dead.

Other inferences are more specific, though all are valuable, and Thomas has painstakingly assembled a vast quantity of information, although there are limitations to the approach. Predominantly, these lie in lack of specificity with regard to the period and case sites/areas chosen. As the title suggests, the research considers the high and late medieval era, but the date range is not clearly demarcated and the sources referenced stretch to the late eighteenth century, making it difficult to contextualise the conclusions with certainty. No specific terminus post nor ante quem is given (nor a comprehensive discussion of chapel origins; Chapter One focuses on the parish system and sacramental roles of the parish church within medieval Christian life)—the most obvious close thus being 1538/9 or even 1600. Rather surprisingly, very little attention is paid to the position of the newly-formed Church of England in the mid sixteenth-century and what bearing that had on parochial and devotional models. On this, as on other aspects of this stimulating study, there is more to be said.

Overall, the dynamism of late medieval religion is well attested. What remains at issue is how far devotion was a matter of the individual being able to pursue requirements through the parochial and chapel network, or rather whether chapels were the manifestation of a sense of community, which Thomas attests as ‘one of the strongest ties of internal communal identity’, worship and commemoration. There is thus a sense of inherent ambiguity in the record which makes a definitive judgement unattainable: fundamentally, the evidence concludes that Christians required buildings that offered access to pastoral services on both a personal and a communal level. This may account for the repeated conclusion of each ‘theme’ of Thomas’s study that a homogenous standard is indiscernible. By the later medieval era, the diversity in chapel functions (and variations) forced many communities to accept that they augmented, and often usurped, the needs that parishioners associated with the parish church, in terms of location, service and architecture. While, of course, local variants and requisites affected the complexity of the religious milieu, the willingness of many authorities to accept variation in the chapel model was ultimately its ticket to endurance.