Canterbury Tales Medieval Church

Canterbury Tales - Medieval Church

Canterbury Tales - Medieval Church





In discussing Chaucer's collection of stories called The


Canterbury Tales, an interesting picture or illustration of the


Medieval Christian Church is presented. However, while people demanded


more voice in the affairs of government, the church became corrupt --


this corruption also led to a more crooked society. Nevertheless,


there is no such thing as just church history; This is because the


church can never be studied in isolation, simply because it has always


related to the social, economic and political context of the day. In


history then, there is a two way process where the church has an


influence on the rest of society and of course, society influences the


church. This is naturally because it is the people from a society who


make up the church....and those same people became the personalities


that created these tales of a pilgrimmage to Canterbury.





The Christianization of Anglo-Saxon England was to take place in a


relatively short period of time, but this was not because of the


success of the Augustinian effort. Indeed, the early years of this


mission had an ambivalence which shows in the number of people who


hedged their bets by practicing both Christian and Pagan rites at the


same time, and in the number of people who promptly apostatized when a


Christian king died. There is certainly no evidence for a large-scale


conversion of the common people to Christianity at this time.


Augustine was not the most diplomatic of men, and managed to


antagonize many people of power and influence in Britain, not least


among them the native British churchmen, who had never been


particularly eager to save the souls of the Anglo-Saxons who had


brought such bitter times to their people. In their isolation, the


British Church had maintained older ways of celebrated the major


festivals of Christianity, and Augustine's effort to compel them to


conform to modern Roman usage only angered them. When Augustine died


(some time between 604 and 609 AD), then, Christianity had only a


precarious hold on Anglo-Saxon England, a hold which was limited


largely to a few in the aristocracy. Christianity was to become firmly


established only as a result of Irish efforts, who from centers in


Scotland and Northumbria made the common people Christian, and


established on a firm basis the English Church. At all levels of


society, belief in a god or gods was not a matter of choice, it was a


matter of fact. Atheism was an alien...

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