The Universal Church and the Laity c. 1050–1500

A fifteenth-century confessor, possibly from the north Midlands, wrote down the following advice for an unknown married man.1 It might have seemed depressing. Like everyone else, he was a sinner: unlike the ‘innocent dog’, he continually provoked the Lord; as a lowly ‘dog’, not a man, he might presume to enter a church. But there was hope. He could ask for mercy: his tears, even if those of his heart alone, might wash the feet of Jesus on the cross. He was to hear mass reverently, and while the clerks were singing, look at the books of the church — especially the Gospel and the Legend of Saints. On weekdays, when returning home, he was to say the Psalter of the Virgin Mary, and at dinner silence was to be broken only by readings in the vernacular to edify his wife and children. Further meditation could continue with confessors until vespers; after supper — a light one, to avoid gobbling — he was to go up to his ‘cell’ to pray. When finally in bed, he was advised to search his heart for the evil and good he had done that day.