Editing Reformation (section)

====Lay community====
Historian [[John Bossy]] (as summarized by [[Eamon Duffy]]<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Duffy |first1=Eamon |title=Rites of passage |journal=TLS |date=2017 |volume=5941 |url=https://www.the-tls.co.uk/religion/religious-culture/how-historians-have-refashioned-the-reformation}}</ref>) emphasized that "medieval Christianity had been fundamentally concerned with the creation and maintenance of peace in a violent world. 'Christianity' in medieval Europe denoted neither an ideology nor an institution, but a community of believers whose religious ideal—constantly aspired to if seldom attained—was peace and mutual love."{{refn|group=note|Bossy's economic argument was that feudalism was largely a zero-sum economy where the advantage of one people or class could only be obtained by disadvantaging some other people or class, frequently using or resulting in violence, in contrast to later mercantile and capitalist economies.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bossy |first1=John |title=Christianity in the West, 1400-1700 |date=1985 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford [Oxfordshire] ; New York |isbn=0192891626}}</ref> }} <ref>{{cite journal |last1=Galpern |first1=A. N. |title=Review of Christianity in the West, 1400-1700 |journal=The American Historical Review |date=1986 |volume=91 |issue=5 |pages=1184–1185 |doi=10.2307/1864415 |jstor=1864415 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1864415 |issn=0002-8762|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

The Catholic Church taught that entry into [[Beatific vision|heaven]] required dying in a {{linktext|state of grace}}.{{sfn|Hamilton|2003|p=97}} Based on [[The Sheep and the Goats|Christ's parable on]] the [[Last Judgement]], the Church emphasized the performance of [[good works]] by the baptized faithful, such as feeding the hungry and visiting the sick, as an important co-condition of salvation.{{sfn|Hamilton|2003|p=68}} 

Villagers and urban laypeople were frequently members of  [[confraternities]] (such as the [[Archconfraternity of the Gonfalone]]),<ref>{{cite web |title=Medieval Confraternities: Prayers, Feasts, and Fees |url=https://www.medievalists.net/2021/11/medieval-confraternities-prayers-feasts-and-fees/ |website=Medievalists.net |date=21 November 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Rudy |first1=Kathryn M. |title=Chapter 2: Confraternities of Laypeople |date=12 September 2024 |pages=73–124 |doi=10.11647/obp.0379.02 |doi-access=free}}</ref>{{refn|group=note|According to historian Konrad Eisenbichler, "After the State and the Church, the most well-organised membership system of medieval and early modern Europe was the confraternity—an association of lay persons who gathered regularly to pray and carry out a charitable activity. In cities, towns, and villages it would have been difficult for someone not to be a member of a confraternity, a benefactor of a confraternity's charitable work, or, at the very least, not to be aware of a confraternity's presence in the community."<ref>{{cite book|last1=Eisenbichler |first1=Konrad |title=Introduction: A World of Confraternities, in A Companion to Medieval and Early Modern Confraternities |date=30 January 2019 |pages=1–19 |doi=10.1163/9789004392915_002}}</ref> Another historian notes that confraternities were "the most sweeping and ubiquitous movement of the central and later Middle Ages".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bird |first1=Jessalynn |title=Between Orders and Heresy: Rethinking Medieval Religious Movements, ed. Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane and Anne E. Lester |journal=The English Historical Review |date=14 June 2024 |volume=139 |issue=596 |pages=222–225 |doi=10.1093/ehr/ceae008}}</ref>}} mutual-support [[guilds]] associated with a saint, or religious [[fraternities]] (such as the [[Third Order of Saint Francis]]). The faithful made [[Christian pilgrimage|pilgrimages]] to saints' [[shrine]]s,{{sfn|Cameron|2012|p=14}} but the proliferation in the saints' number undermined their reputation.{{refn|group=note|Saints were often supposed to assist those who faithfully [[supplicated]] and [[Veneration|venerated]] them. There were occurrences where disappointed farmers who thought that an agricultural saint had unjustly failed to assist the weather or harvest dragged down his or her statue or spattered it with mud.{{sfn|Pfaff|2013|pp=196–197}}}}{{sfn|Pfaff|2013|pp=213–214}} There was a strong non-theological Biblical awareness,{{refn|group=note|Historian Frans van Liere asserts that "One cannot understand the medieval world without appreciating the scope of medieval people's engagement with biblical stories, characters, and images.[...]It is a common misconception, especially in Protestant circles, that people (or, at least, the "common" people) in the Middle Ages did not read the Bible." Even in the early Middle Ages, "many people, clergy and laity alike, may have been able to read but not write, and even those who could not were not entirely cut off from the written word, because they could have others read it to them.[...]There was both more illiteracy among the clergy, and more literacy among the laity, than is often supposed.[...]Most medieval Christians came to know the Bible not by reading, but by hearing it."<ref name=introbib>{{cite book |last1=van Liere |first1=Frans |title=An Introduction to the Medieval Bible |publisher=Cambridge University Press|date=31 March 2014 |doi=10.1017/CBO9780511843051.008}}</ref>{{rp|xi,177,179,199,208}}
Historian Eyal Poleg "rejects the Reformers' image of a medieval laity denied access to the Bible. Mediation provided all groups in society, lay and clerical both, with an approach to the Bible, though the understanding of what the Bible was differed for different groups."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=O'Brien |first1=Conor |title=Approaching the Bible in medieval England. By Eyal Poleg. (Manchester Medieval Studies.) Pp. xxi+263 incl. 9 figs, 2 music examples and 2 tables+7 colour plates. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013. £65. 978 0 7190 8954 1 |journal=The Journal of Ecclesiastical History |date=October 2014 |volume=65 |issue=4 |pages=898–900 |doi=10.1017/S0022046914001067}}</ref> For historian Andrew Gow, "the circulation of vernacular Bibles in late medieval Germany was abundant and ample and thanks to a well-organised manuscript production and the early success of printed press highly accessible to lay people, in particular those living in an urban environment."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Corbellini |first1=Sabrina |last2=van Duijn |first2=Mart |last3=Folkerts |first3=Suzan |last4=Hoogvliet |first4=Margriet |title=Challenging the Paradigms: Holy Writ and Lay Readers in Late Medieval Europe |journal=Church History and Religious Culture |date=2013 |volume=93 |issue=2 |pages=171–188 |doi=10.1163/18712428-13930202 |jstor=23923202 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23923202 |issn=1871-241X|url-access=subscription }}</ref>{{rp|173}}
 }} especially of the Gospels and Psalms.

New religious movements promoted the deeper involvement of laity in religious practices. The communal fraternities of  the [[Brethren of the Common Life]] did not encourage lay brothers to become priests<ref name=post>{{cite book |last1=Post |first1=R.R. |title=The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism |date=1 January 1968 |doi=10.1163/9789004477155_019}}</ref> and often placed their houses under the protection of urban authorities.{{sfn|MacCulloch|2003|p=22}} They were closely associated with the {{lang|la|[[devotio moderna]]}}, a new method of [[Catholic spirituality]] with a special emphasis on the education of laypeople.{{sfn|McGrath|2004|p=22}} A leader of the movement the Dutch [[Wessel Gansfort]] (d. 1489) attacked abuses of indulgences.{{sfn|MacCulloch|2003|p=119}}

Church buildings were richly decorated with paintings, sculptures, and [[stained glass]] windows. While [[Romanesque art|Romanesque]] and [[Gothic art]] made a clear distinction between the supernatural and the human, Renaissance artists depicted [[God in Christianity|God]] and the saints in a more human way.{{sfn|Hamilton|2003|p=83}}  Historian Caroline Walker Bynum has written of 'a sort of religious materialism' in the period: 'a frenzied conviction that the divine tended to erupt into matter'.<ref name=marshall2015/>