Trust and Doubt: The Late Medieval Bishop and Local Knowledge

Abstract

In governing their dioceses late medieval bishops faced significant epistemological challenges: how was it possible to determine the truth in disputes over local customs, patronage, the conduct of divine service and the provision of pastoral care? All such problems demanded an adjudication between competing stories about rights, history and usage, and while canon law provided a framework of principles, it did not provide the answers bishops needed. Increasingly from the thirteenth century the answers came from panels of local ‘trustworthy men’. Bishops had to trust – to have ‘faith’ or belief in – informants who were often peasants. In the church courts and before visitation tribunals lay litigants, witnesses and parish representatives also used the language of faith and belief to characterize their knowledge of events and people: they had faith in their own perceptions. The role of faith in the knowledge that bishops and lay people claimed to have of the material and social world had much in common with the faith that brought Christians closer to having knowledge of God, but there were also important differences in the operation of faith in these three contexts. This essay describes and compares the epistemologies of late medieval bishops, lay people and theologians, paying particular attention to the relationship between trust and doubt in each instance.

Catholic politics and creating trust in eighteenth-century England

“…94 Studies of the role of trust in medieval society have shown how the need for trust relationships could allow those who were ostensibly in positions of weakness due to their social status were able to assert some degree of power in relationships with their social betters. 95 The influence of the dynamics of social status within these relationships of trust also merits attention here. While there is little evidence of relationships of trust or mistrust between Constable and those of lower social status, it is evident that his inclusion within a network of influential gentlemen was greatly to his advantage, and there is some indication of resentment towards him further down the social scale.…”

General Excommunications of Unknown Malefactors: Conscience, Community and Investigations in England, c.1150–1350

“…Ian Forrest's recent study of the role of trustworthy men might provide some answers. 50 Canon law does not help here: Helmholz's study of ecclesiastical juries in England found that they were not discussed in the canon law (though nor were they unlawful under it). These juries usually consisted of about twelve jurors, who could be examined individually.…”