History 2P91: Glossary

• A Fitto: (Italy) :  Land leased out for a fixed payment.
• Abacus:  The square, uppermost part of a capital. (architecture)
• Abbess:  The head of a female religious house, elected for life
• Abbey:  A monastic community of either monks or nuns. Ruled by an (m.) Abbot or (f.) Abbess Usually founded by a particular monastic order and bound by their rules. Abbeys many times owe some form of feudal obligation to a lord/lady or higher organization. Basically they are self contained with all basic function performed by the residents and needs from the local area.
• Abbey:  An enclosed religious community of either men or women governed by one of the interpretations of the Benedictine rule
• Abbot:  The head of a male religious house, elected for life; or the head of a particular religious order comprising several priories.
• Abbot / Abbess:  Superior of a monastery or nunnery; derived from Syriac word abba, "father".
• Abergement:  The right of settlement.
• Abjuration:  A renunciation, under oath, of heresy to the Christian faith, made by a Christian wishing to be reconciled with the church.
• Abonnée:  Regularizing the taille.
• Absenteeism:  Holders not residing in the benefice or performing the duties attached to the benefice though still collecting the income from the benefice. An absentee priest would appoint a substitute (vicar) to perform the duties of the parish and pay him a small stipend.
• Acanthus:  Plant of which the leaves are represented in a classical capital of the Corinthian order.
• Account:  Official report of the receipts and expenses of a manorial estate.
• Acre:  A day's ploughing for one plough team. Now 200 X 22 yards. 120 were reckoned to be the average which would support one family, but the acre varied in real size according to local conditions and soil.
• Action:  A legal suit to secure the enforcement of one's rights in a court of law.
• Ad Censum:  Status of villeins who pay a cash rent in lieu of labor services.
• Ad Opus:  Status of villeins owing larbor services.
• Ad Valorem Duty:  A duty levied upon, and varying with, the value of a commodity.
• Adamite:  Member of a heretical religious current that sought to return mankind to Adam's original state in paradise.
• Adult baptism - see 'Anabaptism':  
• Adulterine Castle:  A castle build with out a person's liege lord's approval.
• Advent:  The penitential season leading up to Christmas
• Advent:  The four Sundays (occasionally five) before Christmas, the first of which (Advent Sunday) is the Sunday next to St Andrew's Day (30 November). This is traditionally taken as the beginning of the church year.
• Advowson:  1) The right to appoint a priest to a parish church. Advowsons could be held by laymen and were treated as real property which could be inherited, sold, exchanged, or even divided between co-heiresses (one appointing on one occasion, another on the next, and so on. 2) The right of presentation to a church or benefice 3) Patronage of a church living; the legal right to present a candidate for installation in a vacant ecclesiastical office.
• Affeer:  To settle the amount of an amercement, to assess.
• Affeeror:  Officer responsible for assessing manorial amercements and fines.
• Afforcement of Court:  Increasement in membership of court.
• Agrier: (S. France) :  A levy of 4th, 9th or 12th sheaf of harvest.
• Aid:  1)          A special obligation of a vassal to provide money for such occasions as his lord's ransom, the marriage of his daughter, the knighting of his son, or for going on Crusade. 2)          Payment to the king on specified occasions - his own ransom, the knighting of his eldest son, the marriage of his eldest daughter once - or to meet a special emergency.
• Aketon:  Shirt-like garment of buckram stuffed with cotton, worn as padding under the hauberk.
• Alb:  A kind of suplice, with close sleeves.
• Albigensians:  Name for the dualist heretics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; derived from the city of Albi in southern France, one of their centres of influence; also called Cathars.
• Alderman:  Derived from O.E. ealdorman and surviving in urban usage to describe the holder of a senior civic office. Two main usages are (I) the chief officer of a guild: occurs in the earlier Middle Ages and later in surviving merchant guilds; (II) the member of a town council, particularly an upper council: increasingly common in the later Middle Ages, probably under London influence.
• Aletaster:  Officer responsible for enforcing the assize of ale.
• Alien Priory:  Monastic house or estate dependent upon or subordinate to a continental, usually a Norman, monastery.
• All Souls and All Hallows:  The feast commemorating the dead, Oct. 31
• Almoner:  Offical appointed to distribute alms.
• Ambo:  Pulpit.
• Ambulatorius (equus):  An ambler or pacing horse, which moves by lifting the two feet on one side together, alternately with the two feet on the other.
• Amercement:  1) A financial penalty inflicted at the MERCY of the king or his justices for various minor offences. The offender is said to be "IN MERCY" and the monies paid to the crown to settle the matter is called "amercement".2) Sum paid to the lord by a person "in mercy" for an offense 3) A pecuniary punishment or penalty inflicted at the "mercy" of the king or his justices for misdemeanours, defaults, breach of regulations, and other minor offences. The offender was said to be "in mercy", he was "amerced", and paid an "amercement". To be distinguished from damages (compensation to an injured party) and from fine.
• Amice:  A square of white linen, folded diagonally, worn by the celebrant priest, on the head or about the neck and shoulders.
• Anabaptism:  Formally speaking, the term applies to those who challenged the scriptural basis for infant baptism. The issue came to the fore in the process of the Zurich reformation and the term 'catabaptists' (or 'antibaptists') was initially coined by Zwingli. His successor at Zurich, Heinrich Bullinger, first used the term 'anabaptist' (meaning 're-baptist'), which the anabaptists themsleves rejected because, for them, there was only one baptism and that was for adults only. The anabaptists came to be the most visible and the most attacked congregations of 'radicals' in the protestant reformation.
• Anathema:  A condemnation of heretics, similar in effect to major excommunication. It inflicts the penalty of complete exclusion from Christian society.
• Anchoret: (M.E. ancre) :  A hermit, or recluse (L. anachoreta, one who has withdrawn from the world).
• Ancient Demesne:  See Demesne, Ancient.
• Anelace:  A heavy, broad-bladed, sharp-pointed, double-edged knife.
• Angelus:  Bell rung at noon commemorating
• Annates:  First year's income paid to the papacy by the incumbent of a benefice to which he had been papally provided.
• Annuity:  An annual cash payment, granted for life or a term of years as stipulated in a contract between a lord and a retainer.
• Annusus:  A colt in its first year, usually unweaned and following its dam.
• Ansange:  Plot of land to be cultivated by compulsory service of the tenant for the benefit of the master.
• Antichrist:  The embodiment of all the anti-Christian forces at work in the world. It had strong associations with the apocalyptic traditions of the return of Christ to earth, which would be preceded by cataclysmic change associated with the Antichrist. The notion of Antichrist ws utilized by the protestant reformers to embody the papacy and its instruments.
• Antiphon:  Small line of text used in worship in response to a larger prayer, or reading
• Apange:  Royal lands granted by a French king to a younger son for his maintenance, with the title of duke or count.
• Apostate:  The term used to describe one who leaves religious orders after making solemn profession. It is considered a serious crime in the eyes of the church, being not only a breach of faith with God but also with the founders and benefactors of their religious house.
• Apostolic Life:  The way of life of the apostles, emphasizing their poverty and preaching; a powerful religious ideal, particularly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
• Apostolic Succession:  The doctrine that the authority of Jesus was passed down in an unbroken line from the apostles to their successors, the bishops.
• Appanage:  A large land grant by a ruler to a member of his family. Usually not hereditary. Holder usually had rights of internal administration and local tax revenue but owed military service to his superior and was allowed no independence in foreign affairs.
• Apparels:  Small rectangular pieces of embroidered stuff, used as ornaments to the alb and amice.
• Apparitor:  An official of the ecclesiastical courts, who summoned people to appear before them.
• Appropriation:  The conversion of the right of presentation to a rectory into possession of that rectory, usually by a religious house or collegiate church.
• Apse:  1) Part of a building semi-circular in plan. 2) Semicircular or polygonal end to a building.
• Apse:  The round end of a church in which an altar is located
• Arbalest:  A crossbow with a steel box stave.
• Arcade:  A range of arches supported on piers or columns. Hence arcade posts if of timber.
• Arcade-Plate:  Longitudinal horizontal beam carried on the arcade posts of an aisled hall to support the rafters of nave and aisle. Square-set, then developed into a purlin.
• Arch, Round:  See Arch, Semicircular.
• Arch, Segmental:  A single arc struck from a centre below the springing line.
• Arch, Segmental-Pointed:  A pointed arch struck from two centres below the springing line.
• Arch, Semicircular:  A single arc, forming half of a circle from the springing line. Common in the 11th and 12th centuries.
• Arch, Shouldered:  Lintel on corbels which are concave on the under side. Sometimes called Caernarvon arch because of its prevalence in that castle, and found in the late 13th and 14th centuries. A late 12th century type (e.g. Boothby Pagnell) has the corbels convex to the opening.
• Archbishop:  A Bishop responsible for the oversight of several bishops
• Archdeacon:  A high Catholic Church official, serving more-or-less as executive secretary to a bishop.
• Archon:  A leader; term used in a variety of ways. Sometimes pertained to the Greek landed nobility.
• Arçons:  The high, enclosing cantle and pommel of a knight's saddle.
• Argent:  White or silver (heraldic).
• Arianism:  View defended by Arius, a fourth-century priest in Alexandria, that Jesus was not the same as God, but was the greatest of all creatures; Arianism was the version of Christianity held by important Germanic kingdoms, including the Visigoths and the Lombards, between the fifth and seventh centuries.
• Armet:  A closed helmet consisting of the rounded cap of the bascinet with two cheek pieces overlapping at the front when closed.
• Armigerous:  Those ranks of society, esquires and above, who were entitled to bear a coat of arms.
• Armor:  Helmets: Armet, Bascient, Cabacete, Cerevelliere, Close-Helmet, Coif, Kettle Hat and Sallet. Shields: Buckler, Heater Shield, Pavise and Targe. Types of Armor: Brigandine and Scale Armour. Parts of Armor: Ailette, Aketon, Aventail, Bavier, Besagues, Bevor, Bracers, Burgonet, Byrnie, Couter, Cuisses, Fauld, Gambeson, Gorget, Greaves, Habergeon, Haketon, Haubergeon, Hauberk, Jack, Jupon, Pauldron, Poleyn, Pourpoint, Rerebrace, Sabaton, Sollerets, Spaudler, Surcoat, Tabard, Tassets and Vambrace.
• Arpent:  A measure of land roughly equal to a modern acre.
• Arrow Loop:  A narrow vertical slit cut into a wall through which arrows could be fired from inside.
• Arts:  The lowest faculty of the university, taught natural philosophy.
• Ash Wednesday:  The beginning of the penitential season of Lent, leading up to Easter
• Assart:  1) Land cleared for use in arable farming. 2) Tract of wasteland cleared or drained to be added to village arable. 3) A piece of forest or waste, converted into arable by grubbing up the trees and brushwood. 4) To assart was to make a clearing (known as "an assart") on virgin land by rooting out trees and rendering the ground suitable for agriculture. To assartain the royal forest without a licence was a grave offence. Land assarted with licence was subject to annual payments to the exchequer.
• Assassins:  The followers of the Old Man of the Mountain, were so-called because they were addicted to the drug "hashish", which kept them in the requisite state of intoxication to perform their atrocious deeds. The modern meaning of the word is derived from their habit of committing violent murders.
• Assize:  1) The meeting of feudal vassals with the king it also refers to decrees issued by the king after such meetings. 2) A) Rule or regulation; B) procedure in legal actions concerning land. See darrein presentment, mort d'ancestor, Novel Disseisin, utrum; C) itinerant court in which such actions were tried. 3) A rule, regulation, or law, enforced on the authority of the Crown, though with the assent of the barons, which modified or changed the customary law. By tranference the term came to be applied to legal procedures under assize law (e.g., the "assize" of novel disseisin), and eventually to the courts which entertained such actions and the justices who administered them.
• Asylum, Right of: (also called Right of Sanctuary) :  The right for a bishop to protect an fugitive from justice or to intercede on his behalf. Once asylum is granted the fugitive cannot be removed, until after a month's time. Fugitives who find Asylum must pledge an oath of adjuration never to return to the realm, after which they are free to find passage to the borders of the realm by the fastest way. If found within the borders after a month's time they may be hunted down as before with no right of asylum to be granted ever again.
• Attainder:  Conviction of treason or felony and resulting in forfeiture of rights and property.
• Attorney:  Person accepted by a manorial court to stand in the place of another.
• Attrition:  The beginnings of repentance for sins as perceived by medieval theologians. Unlike contrition, it arose out of fear of God's retribution (i.e. punishment).
• Augsburg confession Confessio Augustana (1530):  This became the principal Lutheran confession and was widely adopted int he first two generations of the reformation. It originated with an invitation from the elector of Saxony to his protestant theologians to summarize their doctrines with reference to scripture for the forthcoming diet at Augsburg. The resulting document became known as the Torgau Articles, and it formed the seven chapters of the second part of the confession. The first part was an expansion of the 15 articles which Luther had drawn up after the colloquy at Marburg on 5 October 1529. Extracts from the confession are included in this tutorial at 01A.33.
• Augsburg, peace of (1555):  The peace of Augsburg recognized both catholicism and Lutheranism as legitimate religions in the Empire, extending legal recognition to those who accepted the Augsburg confession of 1530 and guaranteeing them the right to exercise their religion. The peace incorporated the decisions in the recess of the diet of Augsburg, meeting from February to September 1555. The peace also provided that, in the secular territories of prin ces and imperial knights, the ruler had the right to determine the religion of his subjects. This was subsequently known as the principle of cuius regio, eius religio. Other protestant confessions were, by implication, officially banned from the empire. Special clauses applied to the ecclesiastical estates of the empire.
• Augustinian Canons:  Religious/monastic rules based on love of God and neighbor, respect for authority, care of the sick, and self-discipline.
• Augustinianism; Augustinian:  The teachings of St Augustine (345-430AD), bishop of Hippo and one of the great 'doctors of the church'. His substantial theological and philosophical writings had an enormous impact on the theologians of the protestant reformation.
• Augustinians:  The Augustinian Friars were one of the principal monastic orders. They had been formed from various Italian congregations of hermits who were placed under the Rule of St Augustine by the papacy in 1256. Their constitution was modelled on that of the Dominicans. There were also various 'reformed' congregations of Augustinians by the time of the reformation. It was to the German Reformed Congregations of Augustinians that Luther belonged.
• Aumbry:  A cupboard in a church in which to lock up sacred vessels, etc. (O.F. armarie; L. armaria, -um, a cupboard, originally for arms).
• Azure:  Blue (heraldic).
• Bacinet:  Relatively light helmet with a rounded or pointed top. It might be fitted with a visor.
• Bailey:  Defended courtyard of a castle.
• Bailiff: (or bailie, bailo) :  1) Manorial official, overseer of the manor, chosen by the lord. 2) Chief representative of a lord on a manor (usually an outsider appointed by the lord).
• Bailli:  Royal officer responsible for the administration of justice and of revenue in a baillage or district.
• Ballinger:  English sailing barge usually with from forty to fifty oars, shallow-draughted and clinker built.
• Ballista:  Engine resembling a crossbow, used in hurling missles or large arrows.
• Ban:  1) A King's power to command and prohibit under pain of punishment or death, mainly used because of a break in the King's Peace. Also a royal proclamation, either of a call to arms, or a decree of outlawry. In clerical terms, an excommunication on condemnation by the church. 2) Power originally wielded by the king, but later assumed by counts and castellans to exploit men and levy dues and services in return for protection. Hence ban inférieur, seigneurie banale, etc. 3) A ruler or governor of a large province, usually a subordinate of the King of Hungary (or historically so). The title was used in the western Balkans in Bosnia, Croatia, Slavonia, and Macva. On occassion a banship became hereditary. Sometimes bans were able to achieve considerable, if not complete, independence.
• Ban:  The temporary exclusion of an individual from a worshipping exclusion; to be distinguished from a permanent exclusion ('excommunication').
• Banneret:  1) A military rank, superior to that of a knight. Bannerets bore square banners, rather than long pennons. 2) Lord entitled to have a banner, and drawing higher wages of war than an ordinary knight.
• Baptism:  Christian initiation sacrament consisting of ritual washing
• Baptism:  The rite of initiation into the Christian community, of which there were (in the late medieval church), many local variants. The ceremony involved a series of prayers and exorcisms performed over the child to be baptized, sometimes using salt to symbolize the candidate's savouring of the faith. Other ceremonies including the 'opening' of the child to spiritual regeneration. The priest would touch the eyes and nose of the child to make him or her open to spiritual regeneration. The water in the font was blessed, and sometimes mixed with holy oild. Godparents were invited to renounce Satan and his works before the priest dipped the child three times in the water. The child was then dressed in a white robe, anointed with chrism, and presented with a candle. Traditionally, the church held that baptism was not only a sign of grace, but actually conferred grace upon the baptized. Protestant reformers were agreed in retaining baptism as one of the sacraments of the church. In other respects, however, there were fundamental differences of liturgical practice and underlying theology. Luther's first baptismal service (1523) and his revised version (1526) eliminated most (but not all) of the exorcisms of the traditional rite and eliminated the blessing of the font. The rite was designed to indicate that it was not the water which had the power of salvation but the word of God acting in and through it. In Geneva, the baptismal rite prepared for use by Calvin was even more unambiguous. Baptism should take place during ordinary Sunday worship as a sacrament in which the sign of Christ's life and death for us is communicated to us all. Exorcism was completely omitted as superstitious. The ceremony did not apparently involve 'dipping' but only 'pouring' the water over the child's head. The question of the Christian name was accorded considerable significance, Calvin being particularly concerned about the relationship between the name of something and the thing signified.
• Barber-Surgeon:  Monastic who shaves faces/heads and performs light surgery.
• Barbican:  1) An outwork or forward extension of a castle gateway. 2) Outerwork of a castle, providing additional defence for the gatehouse. Also used to describe the strategy developed by the English in the late fourteenth century.
• Baron:  Lowest English feudal lord
• Baron: (Old French "man") :  A vassal who holds directly from the crown and serves as a member of the king's great council. It is not, of itself, a title, but rather a description of the Tenants in Chief class of nobility.
• Baronage:  The leading members of the landed elite, above the bannerets. The title of baron carried no specific duties or rights, though most were treated as peers.
• Barony:  1) Name given to administrative divisions of certain counties. 2) Land held as a grant directly from the king.
• Bascinet:  A fourteenth century open-faced helmet of globular or pointed shape, which extended downwards to protect the cheeks and the back of the neck. An aventail was added c. 1320 and a pointed visor after 1350.
• Bassinet:  Conical helmet with "hounskul" (or "pig-face") pointed visor.
• Bastard:  Title borne by acknowledged eldest natural son of a noble.
• Bastardy, Special:  Illegitimacy prior to parent's subsequent marriage.
• Bastide:  See Gagnage.
• Bastille:  1) Redoubt or outwork. (military architecture) 2) Wooden tower on wheels for assault, used in siege warfare.
• Bastion:  1) Round or polygonal tower projecting from walls. 2) A small tower at the end of a curtain wall or in the middle of the outside wall.
• Battle:  1) A main division of the army; usually there were three or four battles in an army. 2) A division of troops commanded by a peer or knight banneret.
• Battlements:  1) Indented parapet for defence. 2) A narrow wall built along the outer edge of the wall walk to protect the soldiers against attack.
• Beadle:  Manorial official, usually assistant to reeve.
• Beguines / Beghards:  Since the twelfth century, a name for pious women who lived in small voluntary groups for religious purposes, but did not take religious vows. They were free to own property, to leave the group and to marry. Beghards were men who lived the same sort of life. They were prominent in Low Countries and the Rhineland; sometimes suspected by church authorities of heresy.
• Belfry:  Large movable wooden tower used in sieges.
• Benedictine Order:  Monastic order founded by St. Benedictine. Monks take vows of personal poverty, chastity and obedience to their abbot and the Benedictine Rule.
• Benefice:  A church office carrying an endowment to provide a remuneration for the individual varrying out the office.
• Benefice: (L. beneficium) :  1) A grant of land given to a member of the aristocracy, a bishop, or a monastery, for limited or hereditary use in exchange for services. In ecclesiastic terms, a benefice is a church office that returns revenue. 2) The grant made by a lord, usually of land. 3) An endowed church office. 4) An ecclesiastical office, such as a parish church or prebend, to which specific duties and revenues are assigned. 5) Ecclesiastical appointment, with cure of souls, usually held by rector or vicar of parish church. 6) Normally referring to the income, endowments and rights (or the living) of a parish church, but generally used of any church with income. Derived from beneficium, the feudal land given in return for service.
• Benefit of Clergy:  1) A privilege enjoyed by members of the clergy, including tonsured clerks, placing them beyond the jurisdiction of secular courts. 2) The legal privilege of those who could prove they were clergy to be tried and sentenced for felonies in the church courts and punished by the church.
• Bible:  The return to the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments formed a central focus of the protestant reformation in its doctrine and ecclesiastical practice. But how passages of the Bible should be interpreted was the subject of intense scrutiny and considerable debate amongst the protestant reformers. What constituted the 'canon' of scripture grew more defined and circumscribed in the course of the reformation. The so-called 'Apocryphal' books of the Bible were gradually excluded from the canon by protestant confessions. At the same time, doubts about the canonical status of some of the New Testament books (especially II Peter, II and III John, Jude and James) were suppressed. The protestant reformers rejected the complex divisions introduced by medieval Biblical comentators into the task of exegesis. in their place, they tended to stress the significance of placing a text in its historical context and elucidating the linguistic complexity of particular phrases. For catholics, the Latin version of the Bible compiled by St Jerome and known as the 'Vulgate' remained the only authentic text.
• Bishop:  A church officer consecrated to the highest of the holy orders; usually the head of a diocese with spiritual authority over the other clergy and laity in that diocese; believed to be a successor to the apostles; word derived from the Greek episcopos, "overseer".
• Bishop:  High ranking ecclesiastic, responsible for a geographical area composing several parishes.
• Black Canon:  A common name for Augustinian Canons, derived from the color of their robes.
• Black Death:  Bubonic plague that ravaged Europe and Asia in the mid-fourteenth century and reappeared periodically in Europe for generations.
• Black Monks:  A common name for members of the Benedictine Order derived from the color of the habits.
• Blanc:  French equivalent of groat but mainly of base metal instead of silver.
• Bloodfeud:  Conflict between kin-groups, arising from an attempt to exact vengeance or compensation for a previous injury.
• Bombard:  Heavy cannon used in siege warfare, firing gunstones or metal cannon balls of up to 1,000 lb.
• Bondman:  Serf; villein.
• Book of Hours:  Devotional text of prayers for the saying of the hours
• Boon-work:  1) Work done on the lord's land by dependent peasants for a fixed number of days per week. 2) Obligation of tenants for special work services, notably the lord's harvest. 3) A day's work, given gratuitously to a lord by his men on a special occasion.
• Borough: (also O.E. burg, burgh, burh; or L. burgus) :  1) A town with the right of self government granted by royal charter. 2) Originally a defended farm or residence but usually used in the meaning current from the ninth to the eleventh centuries, namely an urban settlement, normally fortified.
• Borough-English:  1) A term which designates the custom of ultimogeniture (All lands inherited by the youngest son). 2) The name of a form of land-tenure whereby a man's property descended to his youngest son.
• Bourc:  Gascon title meaning "bastard", but to which no stigma attached. It was adopted as a matter of course by illegitimate sons of prominent families.
• Brimstone:  Sulphur.
• Broach-Stop:  A half pyramid against the chamfer to bring the edge to a right angle, often short with deep hollow chamfer in the 13th century, long with very shallow hollow chamfer in the 15th century.
• Buckler:  A small round shield carried by infantry to parry blows.
• Buffet:  See Colée.
• Bull:  An authoritiative papal letter, sealed with the lead seal, or bulla, of the pope.
• Bull:  From the Latin bulla meaning a 'seal'. It was a written papal authorization with a seal to guarantee its authenticity.
• Bullace:  A small tree or large shrub bearing black fruits 1-1.5in. long with comparatively large stones. Spreads by cuckers - shoots arising from underground from parts of the root system - and therefore often develops into dense stands. Frequently found near to former habitation; not much grown today. Technically a sub species of the plum and its allies; the normal plum of gardens is another sub species.
• Burel Cloth:  Coarse woolen cloth.
• Burgage:  A unit of property in a borough, generally comprising a house but not much appurtenant land, held for a money-rent and according to the more or less standard rules of burgage tenure.
• Burgage Tenure:  A freehold, usually within a town or borough; the holder customarily pays a money rent in lieu of all services, military or other.
• Burgher:  A townsman.
• Burgonet:  A steel cap with chin-piece; a feature of sixteenth-century armour.
• Buttery: (M.E. botelerie) :  1) Room for the service of beverages. 2) Storeroom for wine and other beverages.
• Buttress:  Projection from a wall for additional support.
• Buttress, Angle:  A pair meeting (or nearly) at right angles on the corner of a building.
• Buttress, Diagonal:  One set on the angle of a building, diagonally to each wall.
• Bylaws:  Rules made by open-field villagers governing cultivation and grazing.
• Byrnie:  A mail shirt, the prescursor of the hauberk.
• Byzantine Empire:  The eastern Roman Empire with its capital at Constantinople; it was closely intertwined with the Greek Orthodox church; the empire's long history of advance and retreat ended in 1453 when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks.
• Cabacete:  A tall narrow helmet, with a turned-down brim which was drawn up to a point at front and rear, worn by Spanish infantry in the late fifteenth century.
• Caballus:  In Classical Latin this word denoted an inferior riding horse or even a packhorse, but from the sixth to the tenth or eleventh centuries it denoted a good horse, usually a warhorse. In Southern France and Spain it retained this meaning, but in North-Western Europe, Italy and Germany it was superseded by other words such as equus or destrier. It is rarely found in England at all. From it are derived the normal words for "horse", "knight" and "chivalry" in French, Italian and Spanish (e.g. cheval, chevalier, chevalerie and cavallo, cavaliere, cavalleria). The English words "cavalier" and "chivalry" are derived not direclty from the Latin but from the Italian and French respectively, occuring first in 1560 and c. 1590.
• Cadaster:  A tax register listing population on, ownership of, and extent of land.
• Caesar:  The second title (after emperor) in the Byzantine Empire until the late eleventh century. Then it was eclipsed by new titles, first sebastocrator and then by despot, and thus fell to fourth place.
• Caliph:  Muslim ruler, descendant of the Prophet Muhammed; both secular and spiritual ruler.
• Caliphate:  Principality of a Caliph
• Calvinism, Calvinist:  The doctrines and ecclesiology (approaches to church government) advocated by Jean Calvin and harmonized with those established by Huldrych Zwingli at Zurich. It was characterized in the sixteenth century by the confession known as the Zurich Consensus (or Consensus Tigurinus) of 1549, a common confessional drawn up after lengthy negotiations between Heinrich Bullinger and Jean Calvin. This in turn provided the basis for the Second Helvetic Confession (or Confessio Helvetica Posterior) of March 1566, which laid out in 30 chapters a clear exposition of reformed faith. Published in Latin, German and French, it became one of the best-known and highly-regarded confessions from the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition of protestantism.
• Cambered (beam):  With slight curve, the centre higher than the ends.
• Camera:  Chamber, private bed-sittingroom.
• Candlemass:  The feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, Feb 2, used as one of the four year marking dates for social, religious and economic dues, payments and rents.
• Canon:  A church law or decree incorporated into the body of church law.
• Canon:  A mid-ranking priest attached to a diocese or a cathedral.
• Canon (New Testament):  The list of books accepted by the church as scripture; the accepted list of twenty-seven items in the New Testament was worked out between the second and the fourth centuries.
• Canon Law:  1) The body of rules governing the faith, morals and organization of the church. 2) A body of rules administered by courts of the Church.
• Canon Law:  Church law
• Canon Lawyer:  A student of, or graduate in, canon law and often a practitioner in the church courts.
• Canon, Regular:  A clerk who was not a monk but who lived in a community governed by a rule and belonged to one of the religious orders of canon regulars.
• Canon, Secular: (also Canon) :  1) A clergyman who belonged to a cathedral chapter or collegiate church. Those who observed a written rule, often the Rule of St Augustine, were called regular canons. Those who held personal property and lived in their own houses were called secular canons. 2) A prebendary of a cathedral or collegiate church.
• Canopy:  Suspended covering over high table, roof-like projection over a niche, etc.
• Canton:  Small division of territory in Switzerland, similar to the English parish.
• Cantred:  Name applied by Anglo-Normans (usually when making grants of land) to pre-existing territorial units; later used of administrative divisions of certain counties in Ireland.
• Cantref:  A Welsh political and administrative division, similar to English shires.
• Cap-à-Pied:  From head to foot.
• Caparison:  Fabric or leather horse covering reaching to the fetlocks and ususlly entirely covering the animal except for openings for eyes and muzzle.
• Capitular:  Relating to a chapter.
• Captal:  Gascon title for captain of a castle.
• Cardinal:  Member of the Pope's inner administration, usually a bishop. Responsible for oversight of church's interests, either ecclesiastical or secular
• Cardinal Virtues:  Prudence, Temperance, Fortitude and Justice.
• Carrack:  Large square rigged sailing vessel of Genoese origin, clinker built.
• Cartulary:  The record of a landowner's (usually monastic) possessions in book form.
• Carucage:  Tax on ploughland.
• Casement Moulding:  A wide hollow.
• Casés:  Domestic servants housed in their own cabins.
• Castellan:  1) Governor of a castle. 2) A captain of a castle. For example, a Catalan castellan commanded/held a castle of second rank.
• Castellan:  Vassal responsible for holding a march fortress
• Castle:  Medieval fortification.
• Castle-Guard:  Feudal obligation to serve in the garrison of a castle, either for a period each year or during war.
• Cat:  1) Assault tower.
• Catapult:  Stone-throwing engine, usually employing torsion.
• Catechism:  Devised from the Greek 'to instruct'. It was applied by the protestant reformers to refer to books of instruction in the faith which were extensively utilized to enable ministers and others to teach the elements of the faith to the unlearned or the young. They were extremely numerous in the sixteenth century. An extract from the Genevan catechism is provided in this tutorial by way of example (see 01B.45).
• Cathars:  Dualist heretics active in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, mostly in southern France; the word derives from the Greek word catharos, "pure".
• Cathedra:  The Bishop's throne
• Cathedral:  The Bishop's church in which his Cathedra sits
• Cathedral Church:  The church of the diocese where a bishop has the throne (cathedra) and where he presides. Simplified to Cathedral.
• Catholic Church:  Derived from the Greek word catholicos, "universal"; adpoted in the second century by one group of Christians to distinguish themselves from their rivals, particularly the gnostic Christians; more generally, "Catholic" describes those Christian groups which accept the ancient creeds, including Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics and Anglicans.
• Catslide:  Long slope of roof continued over a lean-to, e.g. aisle or outshut.
• Cavalcade:  See Chevauchée
• Celibacy:  The state of being unmarried; required of western clergy in the major orders (bishop, priest, deacon, subdeacon) since the twelfth century.
• Celibacy:  The unmarried condition of the clergy and regular orders since the central middle ages. It was rejected by protestant reformers.
• Cellar:  Room, often for storage, on ground floor or partly underground. Basement.
• Cellarer:  Official of a monastery responsible for food supplies.
• Cemetery:  Burial place, usually surrounding a church
• Censives:  Rent-paying lands, hence terre censales.
• Censuarius:  Tenant ad censum.
• Centering:  Temporary framework to support arch or vault during construction.
• Cerevelliere:  Simple, globular steel cap originally worn under the coif and helm as an additional protection for the head, but evolving into the bascinet at the beginning of the fourteenth century.
• Cesspit:  The opening in a wall in which the waste from one or more garderobes was collected.
• Chamber:  Part of the king's household which dealt with his expenditure.
• Chamberlain:  1) An officer of the royal household. He is responsible for the Chamber, meaning that he controls access to the person of the King. He is also responsible for administration of the household and the privates estates of the king. The Chamberlain is one of the four main officers of the court, the others being the Chancellor, the Justiciar, and the Treasurer. 2) Household official in charge of the lord's chamber.
• Chambre ardente:  The notorious chamber attached to the Parlement of Paris which, from 1547 to 1559 specialised in the prosecution and conviction of cases of heresy.
• Chambres des Comptes:  Accounting office for French royal finances at Paris or for Norman ducal finances at Caen.
• Champerty:  A procedure by which a person having no legal concern in a suit promises aid or influence to one party in return for a share of the matter in the suit, if successful; usually linked with maintenance.
• Champion:  Officer charged with defending his lord's cause in trial by battle.
• Chancellor:  The officer of the royal household who serves as the monarch's secretary or notary. The chancellor is responsible for the Chancery, the arms of the royal government dealing with domestic and foreign affairs. Usually the person filling this office is a bishop chosen for his knowledge of the law.
• Chancery:  Part of the king's household and responsible for writing his writs and other instruments of government.
• Chanfron:  Armour for a horse's head.
• Chantry:  1) An institution, often endowed by will or supported by subscriptions through a guild, to pay for the regular saying of masses for the souls of the founder(s) and of friends and relations. 2) Endowments of masses, or of chaplains to say masses, for the souls of deceased testors and their nominees.
• Chapel:  Small church either as a separate building or a small chamber containing an altar within a larger church. Chapels were dependent upon a larger ecclesiastical foundation for their existence, such as a parish.
• Chapel of Ease:  A subsidiary chapel of a mother church founded to ease the difficulties of parishioners in worshipping, especially where the parish was very large.
• Chaplain:  Priest or monk in charge of the chapel and of the secretarial department of the castle.
• Chapter:  Ruling body of priests or monks sitting for administrative purposes. In a cathedral, headed by a Dean or Bishop, and composed of Canons, while in a monastic setting, headed by either the Prior or Abbot and comprising senior members of the community.
• Chapter:  The governing body of an ecclesiastical corporation, whether monsatic community or cathedral clergy.
• Chapter House:  The chamber in which the chapter held its deliberations
• Charter:  Official document, usually deed or grant of privilege.
• Charter of Franchise:  Documents granting liberty to a serf by his lord. The term also applies to the freedom granted to the inhabitants of a town or borough. the issue of a Charter of Franchise frees the town from servitude to feudal lords.
• Chartophylax:  Keeper of archives and/or general secretary (or chancellor) of a bishop in the Orthodox Church.
• Châtelet:  Principal criminal court at Paris.
• Chattels:  Movable goods, personal property.
• Chattels Real:  Interests in land less than freehold.
• Checker:  Accounts department.
• Chemise:  Inner walled enclosure of a castle.
• Chevage:  1) Payment, typically in kind, owed annually by villein living outside the manor. 2) An annual payment made to a lord by each of his unfree tenants. 3) Poll tax, or personal charge due from dependants.
• Chevauchée: (also Cavalcade) :  1) Feudal duty to accompany the lord on a minor expedition or as an escort. 2) Mounted raid into hostile territory. 3) Fast-moving campaign, inflicting damage on countryside, partly in the hope of obtaining the allegiance of its inhabitants.
• Chevaux-de-Frise:  Plank or beam covered with iron spikes projecting at all angles, originally designed as a defence against cavalry.
• Choir:  A group of lay clerks or priests (men), sometimes boys attached to the cathedral or collegiate school responsible for singing services. Also the place in the church in which the choir sits, usually in front of the altar.
• Chrism:  A mixture of oil and balm, used for sacramental rituals, and distributed annually among the churches. The receipt of chrism from a particular authority reflected a jurisdictional relationship between the issuer and the recipient church.
• Christendom:  The collective name for those territories inhabited primarily by Christians.
• Christian humanism:  The term 'humanism' (Humanismus in German) was first utilized in 1808 by a German educationalist to describe the emphasis placed on the Greek and Latin classics in education. The word has come to be used to refer to the revival of classical studies in the Italian renaissance and the desire to return 'to the original texts'. Part of the revival involved the more technical aspects of critical textual scholarship known as 'philology', by which more reliable and precise editions of classical texts could be established. Humanism was not, therefore, a precisely delineated philosophical system (as the medieval schoastic philosophers would have understood it) but a methodology which became a general intellectual trend which had specific educational objectives. It had its effects on the writing and teaching of theology and biblical studies on the eve of the reformation. This is best characterised by the writings of the 'Christian humanists', exemplified by the great Desiderius Erasmus [in Latin, Erasmus Roterodamus] ), c.1467-1536.
• Christmas:  Yearly commemoration of the Birth of Christ
• Church:  Place of Christian worship, a building containing an altar
• Church services:  - see 'Baptism', 'Eucharist' and 'Mass'.
• Church visitations:  Canon law required bishops to undertake a regular visitation of their diocese (known as Ad limina Apostolorum visitations). They had occurred in a sporadic fashion in the late medieval church and tended to be devolved to a commissioner of the bishop such as his vicar general. They tended to concentrate on the conditions of buildings and furnishings. Cases of abuse were generally referred to the ecclesiastical courts for further investigation. Some efforts were made to evaluate the educational standards of the clergy, but the moral behaviour and religious education of the laity was rarely the subject of investigation in pre-reformation visitations. In Lutheran churches, the practice of visitations was continued by the 'superintendants' appointed by the prince and reporting to the appropriate ecclesiastical council. These visitations were more detailed and more searching in their examination of the laity.
• Churching:  The ritual cleansing of a woman forty days after childbirth
• Cinque Ports:  Originally "Five Ports" like Sandwich on the southeast coast of England with special privileges.
• Circumspecte Agatis:  First word of a writ of 1286, later regarded as a statute, which defined some boundaries between ecclesiastical and secular jurisdiction.
• Cistercians:  A variety of Benedictine monks, who appeared as a reform movement in 1098 and flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; they advocated a return to the strict, literal observance of Benedict's Rule; name derives from Cîteaux, the first monastery of the order; also called white monks because of the undyed wool in their garments.
• Cistern:  Storage tank for water.
• City:  See Civitas.
• Clapboarding:  A series of vertical boards set up on a sill, each tongued on one edge, grooved on the other, to fit into its neighbor. A term still used in the U.S.A., but the boards are there set horizontally.
• Clerestorey:  Upper storey pierced by windows rising clear above adjoining parts (e.g. aisles) of a building.
• Clergy:  1) Term used to include all members of religious orders. The clergy are generally exempt from jurisdiction of civil courts as well as from military service. 2) A collective term for men having any of the holy orders of the Christian church, as distinguished from the unordained members of the church, who were called the laity.
• Cloister:  Covered way round open space or garth; quadrangle.
• Close:  Enclosed field or area.
• Close-Helmet:  Round-topped helmet attached to neck armour.
• Close-Studding:  Walling of timber posts set little more than their own width apart, with plastered panels between.
• Clunch:  Hard chalk used for building.
• Cluny:  A monastery in Burgundy founded in 909; famous for its magnificent liturgy; during the eleventh century Cluny became the head of the first monastic order, with hundreds of monasteries all over Europe.
• Cob:  1) Wall made of unburnt clay mixed with straw.
• Cog:  1) A type of substantial sailing ship.
• Coif:  Mail hood covering the head.
• Collar-Beam:  Horizontal beam tying together a pair of truss blades, or rafters, usually at or about half way up their length. There may be one to three collars to each pair.
• College:  An ecclesiastical corporation having its own legal identity; not applicable to monastic houses, but it does embrace academic - which were then ecclesiastical - communities.
• College:  Group of priests ruled by a Dean, usually involved both education of boys and the saying of masses for the dead. Would become the foundation for the university system.
• Coloni:  Peasant farmers, free and semi-free, in the later Roman Empire.
• Column Figure:  Sculptured figure placed against, or taking the place of, a shaft on a portal.
• Common Bench:  Court of common law, stationed at Westminster, to hear "common pleas", i.e., actions between private individuals.
• Common Council:  A lower, or outer, town council in the later Middle Ages, or the inner and outer councils meeting together.
• Common Law:  1) The term referring to the legal procedures that are becoming universal. 2) Law, originally unwritten, administered in royal courts, as distinct from local customary law, statute, or equity.
• Common Pleas:  Legal cases concerning private rights, as distinct from criminal pleas.
• Commune Concilium:  Norman equivalent of Anglo Saxon witan. Decision taken at such meetings, either judicial or military, are binding on the vassals.
• Commune: (L. communio, communia, communa) :  A derivative of communitas used particularly in the twelfth century for a sworn association of townspeople, often led by a mayor, which campaigned for corporate liberties. Not thereafter much used in England, though see communitas.
• Communion:  Reception of the Bread and Wine at the Eucharist
• Communion 'in both kinds':  As the perceived holy power of the eucharist had increased, so the risks of its defilement had also grown. The possibilities of spillage of the wine host led to its being withdrawn from the laity in the central middle ages, leaving the clergy to receive 'in both kinds', thus emphasising the separation between clergy and laity. The protestants insisted that the Lord's Supper be reinstituted as a communion 'in both kinds' for both laity and clergy alike.
• Communitas: (L., pl. communitates) :  Used to describe many affective associations including towns in their corporate characters, though not with any very exact meaning before the late Middle Ages when charters, later described as charters of incorporation, used the word communitas (later translated corporation).
• Compagnie di Ventura:  Company of fortune; a band of mercenaries.
• Compagnie d'Ordonnance du Roi:  Company of 500 mounted men, 15 of which were formed by the king of France in 1445 to provide a standing army.
• Compline:  The eighth hour of prayer, said before sleep
• Compurgation:  The process of establishing innocence, or failing to, in an ecclesiastical court, whereby six or usually a dozen men swear to the truth of the accused's assertion of innocence.
• Comuni:  A free city of northern Italy.
• Concentric Castle:  A castle with at least two circuits of walls, one inside the other, the outer wall lower than the inner one so that archers on the latter could fire over the heads of the men on the outer wall. See also: Castle.
• Conciliarism:  The doctrine that the supreme authority in the church is vested in a general or ecumenical council; conciliarism was extremely influential during and after the Great Schism (1378-1414), especially at the Councils of Constance (1414-18), and Basel (1431-49).
• Condottiero:  Captain of a Compagnie di Ventura.
• Confession:  The public or private acknowledgment of sinfulness regarded as necessary to obtain divine forgiveness.
• Confession:  The sacrament of confessing sins and receiving penance.
• Confession:  The public and private acknowledgement of wrong-doing (sin). The word was also used for the public profession (often under oath) to the principles of a particular faith in the reformation period (e.g. 'Confession of Augsburg').
• Confirmation:  Confirmation of baptism, held usual at the age of conscience
• Confirmation:  One of the seven sacraments (accepted by St Thomas Aquinas) and formally affirmed as an article of belief at the council of Florence in 1439. Candidates for confirmation were anointed with unction by the confirming bishop in the sign of the cross to confirm their baptism. Children were not expected to receive the eucharist before they were ten. The protestant reformers were united in regarding confirmation as an important ecclesiastical rite but not a sacrament. It had, they said, no scriptural basis, contained no divine promise, and was not essential to salvation. Although the service continued (albeit in various contexts), the practice of anointing at confirmation was abandoned by the protestant churches.
• Congé d'Élire:  The royal licence permitting a cathedral chapter to elect a bishop; monastic houses which claimed the king as their patron or held their land directly from him, in return for a now national feudal service, were also obliged to seek this licence before they elected their superior.
• Congregation:  Group of believers or group of bureaucrats in Curia responsible for a particular aspect of the church
• Conquistadores:  Christians devoted to reconquering Muslim Iberia for Christianity
• Conroi:  Squadron or detachment of cavalry.
• Consistory:  - see 'Presbyterianism'.
• Constable:  The title of an officer given command of an army or an important garrison. Also the officer who commands in the king's absence.
• Constitutions:  Ordinances.
• Consubstantiation:  Consubstantiation was one of the explanations for the presence of Christ in the eucharist which had been developed by medieval scholastic theologians. It contrasted with the more commonly held view of 'transubstantiation'. Unlike the latter, it upheld that the body of Christ was truly present in the bread and wine of the eucharist, but that there was no supernatural change in the substance of these elements. During the protestant reeformation, Luther rejected the doctrine of transubstantiation, but retained the 'real presence' of Christ 'in, with, and under' the bread and wine of the eucharist. This led his thinking to be linked with the 'consubstantiation' views of medieval theologians by Zwingli, Calvin and others. In reality, Luther himself never used the term 'consubstantiation' to describe his doctrine of the 'real presence' and his followers rejected it as a misrepresentation of their views.
• Consultation:  A writ which quashed prohibitions and allowed the church court to resume hearing the case.
• Contrition:  The repentance for wrong-doing (sins) out of a love for God.
• Contumacy:  Defiance of, or failure (when summoned) to appear in, an ecclesiastical court.
• Conversus:  A) A person who entered a monastery as an adult, in contrast to an oblate who entered as a child; or B) a lay brother in a monastery.
• Conveyance:  Transfer of property.
• Convocation:  Synod of clergy of province of Canterbury or York.
• Coppice:  The system of repeatedly cutting back a woody plant every 6-20 years. The part which remains permanently is the coppice stool. From this coppice stool grow poles, from between about three and eight in number. These economic poles are the product, and are used for fencing, simple furniture, small timber for building, tool handles, etc.
• Coram Rege:  A) Taking place "before the king" in his actual or fictitious presence; B) court of king's bench.
• Corpus Christi:  The feast celebrating the Body of Christ, founded in the thirteenth century
• Corvée:  Labor owed by a serf to his landowner.
• Cottager:  A peasant of lower class, with a cottage, but with little or no land.
• Couchants et Levants:  Burgundian peasants bound to the soil.
• Council of Constance:  One of the great general councils of the church, held at Constance from 1414-18.
• Council of Trent:  The general council of the catholic church, meeting initially at Trent on 13 December 1545. It eventually concluded its deliberations in the 25th session in December 1563.
• Councils:  Ecclesiastical meetings of several sorts, including a) a meeting of bishops with their archbishop or metropolitan, called a provincial council; b) a meeting of a bishop with his diocesan clergy, called a diocesan synod; c) a meeting of all (at least in theory) bishops under the emperor or the pope, called an ecumenical council; almost a synonym for "synod".
• Count:  High ranking feudal lord
• Count:  The continental equivalent of the English earl. Ranks second only to Duke.
• Count Palatine:  In Hungary, the highest court official after the king, who served in place of an absent king.
• County:  The English Shire.
• County Palatine:  See Palatinate
• Court of Common Pleas:  A common law court to hear pleas involving disputes between individuals. Almost all civil litigation is within its term of reference, as is supervision of manorial and local courts.
• Creed:  A brief formal statement of belief; the most famous were the Apostles' Creed, the Athanasian Creed and the Nicene Creed.
• Crenel:  Open space in embattled parapet, for shooting through.
• Crenelation:  A notched battlement made up of alternate crenels (openings) and merlons (square sawteeth).
• Crenellate:  Furnish with battlements.
• Crenellate, Licence to:  Royal permit to furnish with battlements, i.e. to fortify.
• Crest:  Heraldic device worn on helm.
• Crosses:  Church lands within a liberty, exempt from the jurisdiction of the lord of the liberty, and administered by a royal sheriff.
• Crossier:  A bishop's staff, symbolising a shepherd's crook
• Crouée:  Demesne furlong, arable.
• Crown:  French gold coin weighing 3.99 gm (though weight fluctuated), worth 20.5 sols.
• Crown-Post:  Post standing on a tie-beam to support the collar purlin and usually with four-way struts to it and the collar or its braces. Often shaped like a small column, the short examples usually dating from the 14th century, the tall and slim ones from the 13th and 15th centuries.
• Cruficix:  Cross commemorating Christ's death and resurrection
• Crusades:  Military expeditions, traditionally eight in number, undertaken between 1095 and 1271 to win or hold the Holy Land against Muslim rulers; term extended to other military expeditions undertaken to defend or spread Christianity. The word "crusade" was derived from the cross (crux) which crusaders sewed on their clothing.
• Cuir Bouilli:  Leather hardened in boiling wax.
• Cuisses:  Plate armour pieces protecting the thighs.
• Culdees:  Religious ascetics "Culdee means servant of god" Irish/Scottish preservers of old Gaelic Customs.
• Cult:  The word used in the reformation period (from the Latin cultus and reflected in the French culte) for religious worship, sometimes more specifically the worship of saints or holy relics. It is thus distinct from more modern usage of the word to mean a 'sect'.
• Curate:  Priest who exercised the cure of souls in a parish or who held an office to which it was attached in a cathedral; in parishes the curate could thus be the rector or vicar or the senior chaplain acting for them in their absence.
• Curia:  1) Latin for a court - in both senses of that word, royal and legal; applied to the king's court as well as the papal, but usually in this period chiefly with reference to the papal court or household.
• Curia:  The papal court, which encompassed the domestic and administrative offices within the papal 'palace'. It included the college of cardinals and the pope's domestic prelates.
• Curtana:  The sword "curtana" was the pointless sword of mercy (as opposed to the pointed sword of justice) borne before the English king at his coronation.
• Customs:  1) A) Unwritten law; B) levies on imported or exported goods.
• Custumal:  1) Written collection of manorial customs. 2) Document listing obligations and rights of tenants.
• Dais:  Raised platform for high table.
• De Heretico Comburendo:  The English statute of 1401 for the burning of heretics.
• Deacon:  A clergyman holding the holy order just below the priesthood.
• Dean:  Head of a College or School
• Dean:  Head of a collegiate or secular cathedral chapter. Rural deans were diocesan officers usually appointed from the local clergy.
• Decalogue:  The 'Ten Commandments' delivered to Moses from God [Deuteronomy 5].
• Decretal:  1) A papal letter or an excerpt from one which rules on a point of canon law. 2) A judicial decision made by or on behalf of the pope with reference to a particular case, but often collected afterwards to provide or illuminate legal principles.
• Decretal:  A papal decision or decree ('Bull').
• Decretum:  A major collection of canon law texts arranged topically by the monk Gratian in the 1140s; used in church courts and law schools from the twelfth century onward. The formal title of the book was the Concordance of Discordant Canons.
• Demesne:  1) The part of the lord's manorial lands reserved for his own use an not allocated to his serfs or freeholder tenants. Serfs work the demesne for a specified numbers of days per week. The demesne may either be scattered among the serfs land, or a separate area, the latter being more common for meadow and orchard lands. 2) Lands exploited directly by the manorial lord (as distinct from lands rented to tenants). 3) Land devoted to the lord's profit, whether a manor, or a portion of land within a manor, worked by peasants as part of their obligations. 4) Lands and rights retained for direct exploitation by lord or king rather than being granted out to others. 5) That land retained in the landlord's hand and cultivated by himself or leased out, as opposed to tenant land held by hereditary peasant tenants. 6) The Dialogus de Scaccario defines demesne lands as "those which are tilled at the cost or by labour of the owner, and those held from him by villeins". Such lands were said to be "in demesne" (in dominico). The demesne did not include estates which belonged to the lord but which had been let by him as fiefs to vassals in return for services (such lands being said to be in servitio).
• Demesne, Royal:  All land in the realm which had not been put into private hands, and from which the Crown derived rents and other revenues through custodians or "farmers".
• Denarius:  The English silver penny, hence the abbreviation "d" and the coin most common circulation.
• Denier:  A French coin of very small value, roughly equivalent to a penny.
• Despot:  An honorary court title of the Byzantine Empire, introduced in the twelfth century as the second highest title after that of emperor. It was an honorary title in the court hierarchy, and though on occasions it was given to the holder of a territory, the title still reflected the holder's position in the Byzantine court rather than his position as ruler of his holding. Thus the term "despotate" for such a territory is often inappropriate.
• Destrier:  Charger, warhorse.
• Devsirme:  The Ottoman levy of Christian children for future service in the Ottoman state. The term is also used for those so levied.
• Dexter:  Heraldic: on right hand of shield, i.e. on the spectator's left.
• Dictum:  A judicial opinion on a point other than the precise issue in a case before the court; sometimes obiter dictum, an opinion stated by the way.
• Diet [Reichstag]:  The meeting of the representatives of the German estates or Parliament. By the reformation period, the diets consisted of three colleges (curiae), known as the imperial estates (Reichstände). These were the electors (excluding the king of Bohemia who generally only attended for the election of a new emperor), the princes (the group also included prelates, counts and other nobility), and the free imperial cities. When the diet had concluded, its decisions (and the emperor's assent to them) appeared in the form of a recess.
• Diocese:  1) A district subject to the jurisdiction of a Bishop/Archbishop. The name is derived from the administrative districts created by the Roman emperor Diocletian. 2) An ecclesiastical division of territory under the supervision of a bishop; there were more than 500 dioceses in the western church by the fourteenth century.
• Diocese:  The geographical jurisdiction of a bishop
• Dispensation:  A papally granted licence to do what is not permitted by canon law, or at least by the human laws of the church; it cannot alter what is deemed to be divine law, e.g. the Ten Commandments.
• Divine Office:  The religious services sung or red by priests and religious at the canonical hours, i.e. seven fixed times during each day and once during the night.
• Doge:  The title borne by the ruler of Venice.
• Dominicans:  [also known as the 'Order of Preachers' and, in England, as the 'Black Friars' from the black cappa or mantle worn over their white habits. In France they were known as the Jacobins after the name of their first house in Paris which was dedicated to St James (i.e. 'St Jacques')] One of the major monastic orders. The order took shape under the direction of St Dominic in the early 13th Century. It often provided the personnel for the Inquisition and thus inevitably attracted the particular criticism of protestant propagandists.
• Donatism; Donatists:  A schism from the fourth century AD. The Donatists stressed the sanctity of the church and made the validity and efficacy of its preaching and sacraments dependant on the moral purity of the priesthood. It was condemned as heresy by the western Church.
• Double Monastery:  Combined monastery for men and women but sexually separated. Ruled by either an abbot or abbess.
• Dreng:  The name given to a free peasant in Northumbria and sometimes in Yorkshire and Lancashire. The name usually implies that land is held in return for military service.
• Dualism:  The theological view that the universe is divided between two radically different powers, one good and one evil; groups holding dualistic views included Gnostics in the ancient church and Cathars during the Middle Ages.
• Dualist:  Religiously, one who believes in two opposing gods or principles: generally, good vs. evil (or spirit vs. matter). Under this heading one finds Manichees, the medieval Bogomils, and their Western off-shoots (Patarins, Cathars, etc.).
• Duke:  A title from the Roman Dux, which has been held over from Roman time by the ruler of a district called a duchy. In England the title is reserved for members of the royal family.
• Duke:  High ranking feudal lord
• Dun:  Scottish single family hill fort.
• Duress:  Force illegally used to compel someone to do something.
• Earl:  1) The highest title attainable by an English nobleman who is not of royal blood. 2) Count; highest English title in the Middle Ages.
• Earl:  High ranking feudal lord - English equivalent of a count
• Easter:  The religious celebration of Christ's resurrection, held on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after 21 March. It was the oldest and greatest annual Christian religious feast.
• Easter:  Yearly commemoration of the Resurrection of Christ
• Ecumenical:  An adjective meaning "universal", derived from the Greek word oikoumene, "the inhabited world" or "the whole world".
• Elders:  - see 'Presbyterianism'.
• Electors:  The Six most powerful lords in the Holy Roman Empire who elected the next Emperor. Three were Bishops, three were secular rulers.
• Emir:  A prince or ruler of an Islamic territory, or emirate.
• Eschatology; eschatological:  The belief in the coming of the end of the world and time.
• Escheat:  1) The right of a feudal lord to the return of lands held by his vassal, or the holding of a serf, should either die with out lawful heirs or suffer outlawry. 2) Reversion of property to feudal lord or Crown upon default of heir or upon conviction of treason or felony. 3) The reversion to a lord of a fief for default of heirs or the outlawry of the holders.
• Escheator:  The royal official responsible for holding inquests on the deaths of tenants-in-chief to determine who should inherit the property and taking custody of any lands coming into the king's custody because of the minority of heirs or the vacancy of a bishopric or monastery. Escheators also conducted inquests into the alienation of lands held of the king and lands granted to the church without royal permission.
• Estate:  The nature and extent of one's interest in land.
• Estates:  Consultative assembly of representatives of the three estates of nobles, clergy and bourgeois.
• Eucharist:  The sacrament of the holy meal prepared by the priest and commemorates the last supper with Christ and His apostles.
• Eucharist:  The sacrament of the Lord's Supper; the mass; or the consecrated bread and wine; derived from a Greek word meaning "to give thanks".
• Eucharist:  Lit. 'Thanksgiving" in Greek. This is the name given to the central rite of worship in the Christian church. It is also known as 'communion', 'Lord's Supper' and the 'mass'. Debates over the nature of the eucharist were central to the protestant reformation. They were based on a limited range of scriptural references but they went to the heart of how scriptures should be interpreted and revealed fundamental underlying issues about how holy power was to be interpreted.
• Evangelical:  Adjective meaning "pertaining to the gospels"; derived from the Greek word euangelion, "good news", which was an early Christian description of their message and a term for the books - gospels - in which that message was recorded.
• Evangelism, evangelical:  As Luther said, the 'Gospel' [Lat. Evangelium] is a Greek word meaning 'a good message, good tidings, good news, a good report . . . '. For protestant reformers, the central significance of the 'Gospel' or 'Word' gives am appropriateness to the use of the terms 'evangelism' and 'evangelical' by modern historians to describe the infectious enthusiasm initiated by the early protestant reformation in the period before it became doctrinally well-defined and confessionally divided. The term has also been used by historians of the French and Italian reformations in a similar fashion to delineate those whose sympathies were towards the protestant reformation but whose support for the movement was, for various reasons, more a matter of intellectual tendency rather than overt and demonstrative conviction.
• Exchequer:  1) The financial department of the royal government. The chief officers of the Exchequer are the Treasurer, the Chancellor and the Justiciar. Sheriffs, in their role as regional chief accountants, present reports to the exchequer at Easter and Michaelmas. 2) A) Department for receiving and auditing Crown revenues; B) Court of law, dealing particularly with actions involving such revenues.
• Excommunication:  1) Exclusion from the membership of the church or from communion with faithful Christians. Those judged "tolerati" may still mingle with the faithful, but those "vitandi" cannot and are exiled. 2) The formal suspension or expulsion of a person from the communion of the church; in the Middle Ages, excommunication had serious social and legal consequences. 3) Exclusion from communion of Church as method of enforcing jusdgements of church courts. 4) A sentence (in various forms and different degrees), pronounced in a court or by a bishop, which excluded the offenders to whom it applied from the sacraments and church services, or in the case of greater excommunication from law and society, until absolution was granted.
• Excommunication:  Canonical explusion of a Christian from the Church
• Excommunication:  The formal and permanent exclusion of an individual from the community of the church and its rituals. Protestant reformers were united in accepting the need for church discipline. They differed over how they saw that discipline contributing to individual salvation. For Luther, the 'inner discipline' of an individual's life was primarily inculcated by education, preaching and the progressive indoctrination of religious values. Church discipline was more a matter of maintaining public order by legal sanction, necessary for the maintenance of a Christian society but not fundamental to salvation. Lutheran church retained some elements of episcopal government and consistories (at Wittenberg and elsewhere) utilized the power of excommunication to maintain church discipline. For Zwingli, Bucer and Calvin, however, excommunication was a more fundamental part of church discipline since (they argued) it was only within a public community that individual Christians were educated and inculcated with the true values of Christian living. So the stress upon the necessity and visibility of church 'discipline' was much more evident within the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition.
• Exegesis:  The exposition and interpretation of the scriptures.
• Extreme Unction:  The sacrament of anointing an individual near death. Also known as last Rites.
• Faculties:  Groups into which intellectuals were organised by topic within the university. There were four - arts, medicine, law and theology.
• Fair:  A market held at regular intervals, usually once to twice a year. Fairs tend to offer a wider range of goods than normal markets. They are generally licenced by either the king/a local lord or a chartered town.
• Faith:  - see 'Justification by Faith'.
• Family Monastery:  An irregular Saxon monastery set up by noble families for their own purposes and not followig the strict Benedictine rules.
• Farm: (also Ferm; L. firma; Saxon feorme, food-rent) :  1) A fixed sum, usually paid annually, for the right to collect all revenues from land; in effect, rent. Lords may farm land to vassals, receiving a fixed annual rent in place of the normal feudal obligation. Many sheriffs farm out their shires, contracting in advance to pay a fixed annual sum to the crown, thus obtaining the right to collect any additional royal revenues for their own profit. 2) A fixed annual payment, a lease. 3) A fixed annual payment. The "borough farm" or "fee-farm" (firma burgi) was the basic lump sum from a town which had to be paid into the Exchequer each year either by the sheriff of the county or by the town's own officials.
• Fealty, Oath of:  1) The oath by which a vassal swore loyalty to his lord, usually on a relic of saints or on the Bible. 2) The fidelity of a feudal vassal to his lord; a promise under oath to be loyal. 3) An oath of fidelity. Sometimes confounded with homage since both were commonly performed together when a vassal received a fief from a lord. An oath of fealty. however, could be performed to one from whom no land was held. Fealty to the Crown overrode all other obligations even that of homage to a lesser lord.
• Feast-days:  These were the various days designated by the catholic church as holy days. On such days the laity and clergy were forbidden to work and were obliged to attend Mass. Such days included, of course, Sundays. In addition to various fixed dates such as Candlemas (2 February), the feast of the Annunciation (25 March) and Christmas day (25 December), there were variable dates and festivals in the Christian year. These were calculated from the date of Easter, which was assigned each year to the Sunday after the full moon on, or next after 21 March each year.
• Felony:  1) In feudal law, any grave violation of the feudal contract between lord and vassal. Later it was expanded in common law to include any crime against the King's peace and has come to mean any serious crime. Example: Murder is now a Felony, taking the burden off prosecution from the victim's family and giving it to the crown. 2) A serious crime such as murder, arson, rape, highway robbery: the convicted felon forfeits lands and goods and is sentenced to lose "life or member".
• Feoffee:  One to whom land is granted. In the language of medieval law, a grant of land was an "enfeoffment" meaning to endow with a fief or knight's fee.
• Feoffment:  A gift and grant of land by which the recipient acquires a freehold.
• Feudalism:  1) The system of governing whereby semiautonomous landed nobility have certain well defined responsibilities to the king, in return for the use of grants of land (fiefs) exploited with the labor of a semi-free peasantry (serfs). 2) Medieval social and political system by which the lord-vassal relationship was defined.
• Fief: (also Fee or Feud) :  1) A) Heritable lands held under feudal tenure; the lands of a tenant in chief. Sometimes this can apply to an official position. Often called a Holding. B) Normally a land held by a vassal of a lord in return for stipulated services, chiefly military. Sometimes unusual requirements were stipulated for transferring a fief. For example: Henry de la Wade held 42 acres of land in Oxfordby the service of carrying a gyrfalcon whenever King Edward I wished to go hawking. 2) Land or revenue-producing property granted by a lord in return for a vassal's service. 3) Property producing income; a grant by a lord to a vassal to secure the services of the vassal. 4) An estate in land (in England normally heritable): held on condition of homage and the performance of services (both customary and specified, including, essentially, military service) to a superior lord, by whom it is granted, and in whom the ownership remains.
• Filioque:  "And the Son." An addition to the Nicene Creed by which the Holy Spirit descends from the Father and the Son. Arising in Spain in the sixth century, it had by the ninth century become regular usage in the Western (Catholic) Church. After the 1054 break it became the major theological point of difference between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches.
• First Tonsure:  The stage in the progression through clerical orders, giving clerical status without requiring the adandonment of lay life (including marriage).
• Fitz:  An Anglo Norman prefix meaning son.
• Fletcher:  Arrow maker.
• Forfeiture:  The right of a feudal lord to recover a fief when a vassal fails to honor his obligations under the feudal contract.
• Forms of worship. :  
• Franciscan:  A member of the Catholic Order founded by Saint Francis of Assisi.
• Franciscans:  [known in England as the 'Grey Friars' from the colour of their habit] The mendicants order of friars founded by St Francis of Assisi in 1209. The original distinguishing mark of the order was the insistence on complete poverty for individual friars and for the whole order.
• Free Tenant:  Freeman, most commonly holding land by knight-service, whose tenure was protected by the royal courts.
• Freehold:  An estate for life or more; a property interest longer than a lease for a period of years; an inheritable estate.
• Freeman:  Not to be understood in the modern sense but a man who was personally free but could owe rents or obligations to his lord; many freemen in Domesday are "lesser thegns".
• Friars:  Term for members of the mendicant (begging) orders founded in the thirteenth century, especially Franciscans, Dominicans and Carmelites; derived from the Latin word frater, "brother".
• Fuller:  Broad groove running down the centre of each side of some sword blades.
• Fulling Mill:  Mill used to process cloth (fulling) in water and with clay earth after is has been woven to make the weave denser and tighter.
• Gabelle:  Tax on salt - a commodity which could only be bought at royal (in Normandy, ducal) depots.
• Gatehouse:  The complex of towers, bridges, and barriers built to protect each entrance through a castle or town wall.
• General Councils [of the Church]:  The great councils of the early church, as well as aspects of canon law, gave fundamental legitimacy to the proposition that a general council of the church could embody the universal church. Such councils were held periodically in the later medieval period and became associated with ecclesiastical reform. A further, and more radical, strand of thought wanted to make the councils a more regular part of the institutional framework of the church. A still more contentious element of 'conciliar' thinking was the supposition that, in certain circumstances, a church council had supremacy in the church (even over the papacy). It was the dangers implicit in such a development that made the papacy wary of general councils of the church at the time of the protestant reformation.
• Gestum:  A guest's portion: an allowance of meat and drink.
• Gild:  See Guild.
• Glebe:  1) The landed endowment of a parish church. 2) Land assigned to support the parish church.
• Good Friday:  Yearly commemoration of the Crucifixion of Christ
• Good works:  The central proposition of the protestant reformation was that no amount of 'good works' could earn or work a way into heaven. That could only come about through the grace of God, mediated to us through Christ. Only through the grace of Christ could the Christian pilgrim do the good works which would, in the end, enable him to stand before the 'justice' of God. Although their catholic critics assailed the protestant reformers for the primacy of faith over works, Luther, Zwingli and Calvin never identified the freedom of faith as a freedom from good works. On the contrary, they stressed that, though good works never contributed to justification, the effects of a passively received faith from God would naturally and inevitably be actively engaged works of charity in the world. Grace St Augustine's theology of grace was a fundamental starting-point for all protestant thinking on this complex subject. It had ramifications for how the eucharist and other sacraments were conceived, and much else besides. Augustine's insistence on the necessity for God to initiate our salvation was shared by all the reformers, even if they had very different ways of interpreting how this happened. For Luther, the process was utterly dependant on Christ. We receive grace when we believe in Christ. His righteousness becomes ours at that moment. In this mystical union with Crhist, which goes beyond any attempt at rational explanation, the believer receives his forgiveness and renewal of life, and is justified. This is what happened when we are offered the real body and blood of Christ at the eucharist and also when the word of God is received within our hearts. Calvin was also impressed with Luther's formulations and used the image of Christ being 'ingrafted' in us through our faith in the loving kindness of God from whom we, like lost sheep, receive a grace which we do not deserve. How Calvin explained the process of 'ingrafting' was highly complex and still the subject of debate amongst theologians. It depended on how he interpreted a 'sign'. The preaching of the word and the offering of the sacraments 'represent' (i.e. 're-present') God's grace to us in a way which meant that they were neither merely a symbol nor an active agent (crudely conceived) for the conveyal of grace.
• Gospel:  Originally, the "good news" of Jesus; then a word for certain documents telling of Jesus's life and teachings; there were numerous early Christian gospels of which four - those attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - were regarded as canonical by the second century.
• Grange:  Farm-buildings, usually at a distance from manorial centre.
• Gravamina:  Official collective complaints by the clergy about infringements of the church's liberties and rights.
• Great Hall:  The building in the inner ward that housed the main meeting and dining area for the castle's residence.
• Greek Fire:  Incendiary mixture used primarily in siege warfare.
• Green:  An area of common grassland within a village used for grazing.
• Gregorian Reforms:  The ecclesiastical reform of the church associated with Pope Gregory IX (1227-41).
• Guild:  1) A term applied to trade associations. The aims of such association are to protect members from the competition of foreign merchants and maintain commercial standards. The first guilds where merchant guilds, later came craft guilds as industry has gotten more specialized. Guilds maintain a system of education, whereby apprentices serve a master for five to seven years before becoming a journeyman at about age nineteen. Journeymen work in the shop of a master until they can demonstrate to the leaders of his guild that they are ready for master status. Guild members are forbidden to compete with each other, and merchants are required to sell at a "just price". 2) A word used in the Middle Ages for associations of many purposes, but nearly always including mutual charity, general sociability (including drinking), and religious celebrations.
• Halberd:  Axe-headed polearm, usually with a rear and top spike.
• Hanse:  An association of merchants who have secured corporate exemption from tolls and other dues; in twelfth-century England sometimes used interchangeably with "merchant guild". By the later Middle Ages the German Hanse was a formal association of towns, as well as of merchants.
• Hanseatic League:  An association of merchants and towns of northern Germany.
• Haubergeon:  Shortened version of the hauberk, worn by both infantry and mounted men, those for the former usually having short sleeves.
• Hauberk:  1) Mail coat.
• Hedgehog:  A usually oval formation of several ranks of spearmen presenting a hedge of spear points to any attacker.
• Heptarchy, Seven Kingdoms of the:  Names given to the seven pre-Viking Kingdoms of England. Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria, Kent, East Anglia, Essex and Sussex.
• Heresy:  Any religious doctrine inconsistent with, or inimical to, the orthodox beliefs of the church.
• Heretic:  A person who obstinately holds to a view that is contrary to one or more of the fundamental beliefs of the church; it is not mere error, but obstinate holding to the error when instructed by a properly constituted authority.
• Hermit:  A person who leaves society for religious motives; a solitary religious often contrasted to monks who lived in a community of some sort; the word is derived from the Greek word eremos, "desert", which was a favoured place for the withdrawal of eastern Mediterranean hermits.
• Hide:  1) A unit of measurement for assessment of tax, theoretically 120 acres, although it may vary between 60 and 240 acres. It is by custom the land that can be cultivated by one eight ox plow in one year.
• Holy Orders:  Being in 'holy orders' or 'ordained' by the church was perceived within the traditional church as, like baptism, imparting a sacramental grace which could not be completely removed. The council of Trent clarified this position, defining holy orders as a sacrament instituted by Christ and conveying the Holy Ghost. The protestant reformers mostly rejected the idea that holy ordination was a sacrament, although in certain places (notably amongst the English episcopacy) the notion of an episcopacy, ordained by divine right (de jure divino), continued to be maintained.
• Holy Orders: (also Major Orders) :  Subdeacon, deacon and priest, to whom marriage was forbidden.
• Holy Roman Empire ['the Old Reich']:  The complex polity in central Europe ruled by the elective holy roman emperor.
• Homage:  1) The ceremony by which a vassal pledges his fealty to his liege, and acknowledges all other feudal obligations, in return for a grant of land. 2) Acknowledgement by feudal tenant in return for his land that he is his lord's man (homme). 3) A ceremony by which a man acknowledges himself to be the vassal of a lord; an act showing respect and deference, usually a preliminary step in the procedure by which a lord grants a fief to a vassal.
• Hospitallers:  The Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem. A Catholic military order.
• Host: (or ost) :  1) Feudal military service in the lord's army. 2) The consecrated bread of the mass.
• Hours:  The Canonical Hours of prayer during the course of day and night
• Humanism, humanist:  - see 'Christian humanism'.
• Hussites:  The followers of John Hus; considered heretics by the Catholic Church. Though their center was in Bohemia, some of them were to be found in the northern Balkans, particularly in Srem.
• Hussites:  Followers of Jan Hus (c.1369-1415), the Bohemian reformer and heretic. He derived some of his doctrines from John Wyclif and rejected the papacy, putting in its place the authority of the 'Law of God' (the scriptures and the agreed doctrines of the universal church). In practice, the Hussites actively promoted the reading of the Bible in the vernacular and the distribution of the Communion to the laity 'in both kinds'.
• Icon:  A sacred image or picture of Chirst or a saint; venerated with particular fervour in the Greek Orthodox tradition.
• Iconoclasm:  The destruciton of icons; iconoclasm was a policy of some Byzantine emperors between 725 and 842; eventually repudiated by the Christian churches of the medieval east and west.
• Iconoclasm:  The destruction of images, icons and others objects associated with Christ, the holy family or the saints and perceived to have holy power.
• Idolatry:  The worship of images or other objects of perceived holy power.
• Images:  Objects of holy power - not only murals or paintings, but also statues.
• Imam:  Muslim cleric
• Imperial Cameral Court [Reichskammergericht]:  The supreme court of the Empire, created at the diet of Worms in 1495.
• Imputed righteousness:  - see 'Justification'.
• In Partibus Infidelium:  Literally "in the regions of the faithless". Used to designate episcopal sees to which a succession of bishops was maintained by the western church, but for which the actual territories were no longer actually in Latin Christian hands (if the location of the sees was actually known). Titles of this sort were often given to suffragan bishops.
• Incumbent:  The rightful holder of a benefice.
• Indenture:  A contract, drawn up in two parts, one to be kept by each party. The two were written on a single piece of parchment, which was then divided by a jagged or indented cut.
• Indulgence:  A grant of remission of penance for sins, usually emanating from the pope, but also, on a lesser scale of remission, from bishops; always in return for some specifically required act and on the assumption of full contrition by the recipient.
• Indulgences:  A letter of indulgence was a remission of temporal penalties for sin, granted by the hierarchy of the Roman church, for individual who had shown penitence. It was always granted on condition that defined penitential acts were carried out by the indulged (such as visiting the holy places of Jerusalem, or contributing money to the building of St Peter's in Rome). The sale of indulgences, especially 'plenary' indulgences, led to widespread criticism which was focused by the protestant reformation.
• Infidel:  Any one having a strong adversity to Christianity.
• Inland:  Land exempt from tax.
• Inquisition:  The Inquisition (from the Latin inquirere - to look into) was a special ecclesiastical institution established in the thirteenth century to suppress heresy. It was most significant in those places where such heresy had been prevalent. The Spanish kingdoms, along with many other parts of Europe, had a version of the medieval Inquisition. However, the revived and reorganised 'Spanish Inquisition' was a more recent and distinctive tribunal on the eve of the reformation, established specifically to deal with the problems of pseudo-conversions of Jews (Marranos) and Moors (Moriscos) to Christianity.
• Interdict:  The ecclesiastical banning in an area of all sacraments except for baptism and extreme unction. In general it does not ban high feast days. Used to force persons/institution/community or secular lords to a view dictated by the church/pope.
• Investiture:  The act of formally putting someone into an office or a landholding; it was a major occasion of dispute in the eleventh and twelfth centuries when reformers opposed lay rulers who invested clergy with the symbols of their positions.
• Islam:  The religion founded by the Arab prophet Mohammed (570-632); an Arabic word meaning "submission to the will of God".
• Janissary:  Derived from Yeni çeri, literally, the "new corps"; a member of a very effective Turkish infantry corps, armed with fire-arms. Its members were originally drawn from the devsirme (the child) levy.
• Journeyman:  A wage-worker, generally assumed to be one who has served out an apprenticeship.
• Jury:  In the Middle Ages, a body of men, presumed to know the facts of a case, summoned by a public officer to give upon oath a true answer (verdict) to some question.
• Jus Primae Noctis:  The right by which a lord may sleep first night with the bride of a newly married serf, although the custom maybe avoided by the payment of a fine.
• Justiciar:  1) The head of the royal judicial system and the king's viceroy when absent from the country.
• Justification [by faith] [Sola Fide]:  This was the fundamental theological change imparted by the protestant reformation. It lay close to the heart of how Luther (and, with different emphases, other protestants reformers) regarded salvation. The term 'justification' occurred within the New Testament, especially in the Pauline writings, as a metaphor to explain how human beings are 'made rightous' by God. Luther held that man is the recipient of God's mercy through faith alone (Lat: sola fide). Salvation cannot depend on human merit or upon good works or upon the church. Our faith is a gift of grace from God who mysteriously elects to save us and it works in a mysterious way in us. Luther talks about faith as a 'trust' (fiducia in Latin) in God's promises, as revealed to us in Christ. Through this trust, we become sinners who at the same time have a hope of righteousness which God imparts to us (or 'imputes' in us). Calvin stressed that our faith in Christ enables Him to live in us as a real and living force and becomes the route by which we can share in the benefits of His passion. We 'possess' Christ and he becomes 'ingrafted' into our beings and lives, justifying and sanctifying them at one and the same time.
• Keep:  1) The main tower of a castle, usually free-standing.
• Kettle Hat:  Strong yet light open-faced helmet popular with both knights and infantry throughout the 1300-1500 period, having a conical crown and wide brim.
• Khan:  Turkish title for a supreme chief, used by the Tartars.
• King's Bench:  Court of common law attendant on the king's person.
• Knight:  Member of the feudal system, armed man usually carried by horse, and provided for by his manor.
• Knight:  The retainer of a feudal lord who owes military service for his fief, usually the service of one fully equipped, mounted warrior. The ideals to which a knight may aspire are notably prowess, loyalty, generosity and courtesy.
• Knight Hospitaller:  1) Holy order knights pledged to administer to the sick and protect the holy places. 2) The Knights of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem. An order of military monks, founded in 1048. Originally keepers of a hospital for the benefit of poor pilgrims to the Holy Land, the Hospitallers expanded to form a military organization for the defence of Christendom in the East.
• Knight Service:  Unpaid military service, usually of forty days' duration, owed to lord or king in return for tenure of land.
• Knight Templar:  A military and religious order, founded about 1118 for the protection of the Holy Sepulchre and pilgrims to the Holy Land. As may be gathered from Joinville's chronicle, it became very rich and powerful. In the end, whether through envy or some better motive, accusations of heresy and evil practices were laid against its members, and after many confessions of guilt had been extracted by torture or other means, the order to suppressed by command of the Pope in 1312.
• Knight's Fee:  1) In theory, a fief which provides sufficient revenue to equip and support one knight. This is approximately twelve hides or 1500 acres, although the terms applies more to revenue a fief can generate than its size; it requires about thirty marks per year to support a knight. 2) A fief owing the service of one knight: notionally an estate providing sufficient revenue for the maintenance of one knight, but the size varied widely. In practice, the knight's fee became a unit of assessment to services and taxes, large fiefs being reckoned at multiples, and tiny fiefs at fractions, of the "kinght's fee".
• Laity:  The majority of Christians - anyone who had not undergone the sacrament of ordination.
• Laity:  The unordained people of the church, as distinct from the clergy; derived from the Greek word laos, "the people".
• Lance:  A long pole used by knights for knocking opponents of their horse in jousting
• Lateran Council:  General councils held at Rome were known as 'Lateran' councils because they met in the Lateran Basilica.
• Lauds:  The second hour of prayer, said early morning
• Law:  Graduate faculty teaching both secular and spiritual law
• Lay:  Any person not a clerk; that is, not in any orders, minor or holy, and any non-ecclesiastical office or property.
• Leasehold:  A tenure by a lease; an agreement that the tenant may enjoy possession for a specified period of time; sometimes called a term of years. The leaseholder may be designated as lessee, or termor.
• Legate: (L. legatus) :  1) A papal representative. There were two distinct categories: (I) legatus natus (literally "born legate"), a status accorded to the archbishops of Canterbury and York ex officio to reinforce their supremacy within their provinces; (II) legatus a latere ("legate from the side"), directly commissioned by the pope, always a cardinal, and with powers which gave him quasi-papal status within the area of his legation. 2) A representative or ambassador, usually a cardinal, sent by the pope to represent him in a particular territory or for a particular purpose. 3) Normally refers to the legate a latere, who was a papal plenipotentiary sent to reform the local church and overriding archiepiscopal authority. The English archbishops had a courtesy title of legate natus.
• Lent:  The forty days before Easter in commemoration of Christ's forty days in the Judean wilderness
• Lent:  A forty-day period of fast which preceded Easter and began with the communal act of penance on Ash Wednesday.
• Lèse-Majesté divine et humaine:  Treason.
• Liberty:  A) Royal privilege granted to subject; B) area within which such privilege is enjoyed.
• Liege Lord:  The principal lord, or tenant-in-chief, to whom knights rendered their service in exchange for land.
• Lit de Justice:  Plenary session of the parlement presided over by the king of France at which a royal edict was forcibly registered or a peer of France tried.
• Liturgy:  Public worship, based upon liturgical texts
• Liturgy:  The formal prayers and rituals in the church, including such things as the mass, the divine office and the anointing of kings.
• Liturgy:  Lit. 'the work of the people' in Greek. In general, it is taken to refer to the church's services and church worship. In particular, it can refer to the eucharist as the central element of that worship.
• Livery:  1) To be given land as a gift from the king. Also means to be given the right to wear a lord livery (modified form of his coat of arms). 2) The tunic worn by a servant or follower of a lord, being in the colours of the lord's arms and bearing his badge.
• Living:  The ecclesiastical benefice of a rector or vicar.
• Lollard:  Term of abuse, literally meaning "mumbler", commonly applied to those who espoused Wyclif's heretical ideas or ideas similiar to his.
• Lollards:  The name probably means 'mumblers of prayers'. Initially restricted to the followers of John Wyclif (c.1329-84), the English reformer and philosopher, the term became more generally applied in England to all who criticized the church. The original Lollards had distinctive teachings on personal faith, the importance of Divine election and, above all, the significance of the Bible. The scriptures were the sole authority in religion and every man had the right to read and interpret them for himself. The Lollards attacked clerical celibacy, transubstantiation, indulgences and pilgrimages in ways which led the protestant martyrologists to claim the Lollards as their spiritual forebears.
• Lord's Supper:  - see 'Eucharist'
• Lozenge:  Diamond figure.
• Mace:  A weapon used for smashing opponents, composed of a stick with a large head of metal at one end.
• Magdeburg Confession:  In reality, this was a manifesto of the rights of lesser magistrates to resist legitimate authority. It was issued during the siege of the city of Magdeburg after the Schmalkaldic War (1546-7). The city refused to accept the Augsburg Interim imposed by the emperor after his milirary success and it was invested by his troops. This publication became a reference-point for later resistance theory in the sixteenth century.
• Magisterial reform:  The religious changes proposed by the theologically trained masters (magistri) of the protestant reformation such as Luther, Zwingli and Calvin, and the secular authority whose religious changes they orchestrated.
• Mainmorte:  Mortmain. The lord's right to a share of his men's personal estate after death.
• Maintenance:  Unlawful intervening or meddling in an action before a court to assist either party by money, or other means, to carry the case to a successful conclusion, possibly to share in the advantage of winning the case; usually linked with champerty.
• Malservi:  Term used in Provence for men of servile status.
• Man:  In this sense to be a lord's man, to owe obligations to, in the forms of labor or service. A woman can be someone's man.
• Man-At-Arms:  1) A soldier holding his land, generally 60-120 acres, specifically in exchange for military service. Sometimes called a Yeoman.
• Manichee:  A member of a dualistic religion (opposing light against darkness) based on the teaching of a third-century Persian named Mani. Damned as a heresy by the Christian Church. The term was frequently used for later medieval dualists and generally as a term of abuse.
• Manor:  1) A small holding, typically 1200-1800 acres, with its own court and probably its own hall, but not necessarily having a manor house. The manor as a unit of land is generally held by a knight (knight's fee) or managed by a bailiff for some other holder. 2) Estate held by a lord and farmed by tenants who owed him rents and services, and whose relations with him were governed by his manorial court. 3) An estate with land and jurisdiction over tenants. Not necessarily a whole village, which might have several manors, just as one manor might own land in more than one village. 4) Unit of rural lordship, varying greatly in size.
• March:  Borderland.
• March Kingdoms:  Buffer principalities between larger kingdoms - frontiers of Christian Europe.
• Mark:  1) A measure of silver, generally eight ounces, accepted throughout western Europe. In England is worth thirteen shillings and four pence, two thirds of one pound. 2) Money of account, worth thirteen shillings and fourpence, or two-thirds of a pound.
• Market:  A place where goods may be bought or sold, established in a village or town with the authorization of a king or lord. This noble extends his protection to the market for a fee, and allows its merchants various economic and judicial privileges.
• Marriage:  Feudal right to arrange marriage of widow or ward.
• Marriage:  The union of a man and woman - both spiritually and socially.
• Marshal:  Household official in charge of the stables, later a royal officer.
• Martyrology; martyrs:  Martyrs were the faithful who suffered for their faith. Martyrologies were the accounts which retold their lives and suffering.
• Mass:  The common name for the Eucharist
• Mass [Missa]:  The name given to the Latin service (the office or actio) of the eucharist in the traditional church. The central part of the rite (the 'canon') began with the words Te igitur leading through to the consecration and distribution of the host. A 'high mass' was an elaborate, sung, form of the service. A 'low mass' was a simple form of mass, involving only one server, no deacon or choir, and no part of the service was sung. The term 'mass' was rejected by the reformers because of its association with the doctrine of transubstantiation, and because of the theology of 'sacrifice' which underlay it.
• Matins:  The first hour of prayer, said before dawn
• Maundy Thursday:  Yearly commemoration of the Last Supper
• Medicine:  Graduate faculty teaching medical doctors
• Mendicants:  1) Beggars; the term referred to members of religious orders who were forbidden to own personal or community property and were required to live on charity; they sometimes sought their income by begging; mendicant is another term for such friars as the Franciscans, Dominicans and Carmelites. 2) The orders of friars, especially but not only the Franciscans, who lived by begging and not upon landed endowments like the traditional monastic orders.
• Mendicants:  Those monastic orders which were committed to corporate poverty, such as the Franciscans, the Dominicans and the Carmelites.
• Metropolitan:  1) Archbishop having jurisdiction over a province containing several dioceses. 2) A major bishop, standing over a major diocese, ranking below the patriarch and above the archbishops.
• Michaelmas:  Feast of St. Michael on 29 Sept.
• Michaelmas:  The feast of St Michael and All Angels, Sept 29, used as one of the four year marking dates for social, religious and economic dues, payments and rents.
• Military Religious Orders:  See Knight Templar and Knight Hospitaller.
• Millennium; millennial, millenarian:  The belief in the coming of a thousand-year reign of blessedness by Christ and his saints, as envisaged in the Bible (esp. Revelation 20).
• Minaret:  Tower attached to a mosque
• Minor Orders:  The first tonsure and the four grades of clerkship below subdeacon, committing recipients neither to a clerical career nor to celibacy.
• Minstrel:  A poet and singer, also called a jongleur, who lives and travels off of the largess of the aristocracy.
• Misericorde:  "Mercy" dagger, so called from being used to dispatch enemy wounded.
• Monasteries:  - see 'Regular Orders'
• Monastery:  A place where monks or nuns live for a religious life.
• Monastery:  An enclosed religious community of celibate men
• Monk:  Generally, a man who joined a religious house, called a monastery, where he took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience; the commonest form of monk was a man living under the provisions of the Rule of St Benedict.
• Mortmain:  1) Applied to the way in which undying institutions, especially those connected with the church, held real property, and thereby could not be liable for the exactions which would be due to a lord at the death of an individual. 2) Literally "dead hand", applied to property held by ecclesiastical corporations. 3) Literally "dead hand", a term which was applied to land granted in perpetuity to the church; also the title of the English statute of 1279 which barred all such grants.
• Mortuary:  1) A payment due on death of the parish church (or, from incumbents, to the bishop) in acknowledgement of spiritual subjection. Usually either a beast or a robe, but precise demands and liabilities varied.
• Mosque:  Muslim place of worship
• Motet:  Piece of sung music at mass
• Murrain:  A sheep or livestock disease. Lacking a sophisticated system of classifying animal diseases, contemporaries lumped all outbreaks as murrains.
• Muslim:  A follower of the religion of Islam; also spelled Moslem.
• Ne Admittas:  Writ prohibiting a bishop from admitting a candidate to a benefice which was the subject of litigation in the king's court.
• Noble:  Principal gold coin of English currency, worth 6s 8d.
• Nones:  The sixth hour of prayer, said mid afternoon
• Novatians:  A third-century Roman sect.
• Nun:  Woman dedicated to the religious life usually a member of a religious order.
• Nunnery:  An enclosed religious community of celibate women
• Oath-Helper: (or compurgator) :  One who supports the oath of another. A man who, in court, was required to prove his assertions by "waging his law" swore a solemn oath to the truth of his declarations, and had to be supported by oath-helpers who testified on oath to his truthfulness. Custom, or the court, specified the number of oath-helpers required.
• Oblate:  A child who was offered to a monastery by his/her parents; the practice was already recognized in the sixth-century Rule of St Benedict, and was legislated out of existence in the late twelfth century by the popes; often contrasted to a conversus, one who entered monastic life as an adult.
• Official:  Deputy of archdeacon or bishop, presiding over their courts.
• Official Principal:  The bishop's deputy who presides over the bishop's consistory court.
• Or:  Gold (heraldic).
• Ordeal: (O.E. ordel, judgement) :  1) A method of trail in which the accused is given a physical test (usually painful and/or dangerous) which can only be met successfully if he is innocent. 2) A form of proof in a court of law, by which a divine sign of guilt or innocence was invoked. The person who was required to undertake the ordeal (usually the accused but sometimes the accuser) performed some feat such as carrying hot iron or plunging a hand into boiling water, and innocence was demonstrated if the wounds healed cleanly. The ordeal of cold water was customarily reserved for the unfree, but was the required ordeal for all those prosecuted under the Assize of Clarendon (1166).
• Orders: (Minor/Major) :  1) The grades or steps of the Christian ministry; the so-called minor orders were acolyte, lector, exorcist, and doorkeeper; the so-called major orders, which bound their holders to celibacy, were bishop, priest, deacon and subdeacon. 2) Referring either to the grades of clerkship (holy or minor orders) or to the different associations of religious.
• Ordinary:  A bishop or other prelate who exercises the jurisdiction of a bishop over a diocese or an enclave in a diocese.
• Ordination:  The ceremony by which clergy are promoted through the various grades, or orders, of clerkship. Also refers to the legal instrument by which a vicarage is endowed and permanently established.
• Ordination:  The sacrament of making priests, for men only.
• Original Sin:  - see 'Sin'.
• Orthodox:  Correct belief. A term used for mainstream Church in East and West until the Church split. Subsequently the term came to refer to the Eastern Churches in communion with Constantinople, while the term Catholic, also originally used to refer to the Church both in the East and West, came to refer solely to the Church of Rome.
• Orthodox Church:  The dominant form of Christianity in the Byzantine Empire and in the Slavic lands converted from that empire. Its leaders were the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem and Antioch; after 1054 the Orthodox churches broke with the fifth patriarch, the bishop of Rome and refused to recognize his authority. Orthodoxos is a Greek word meaning "right belief". See also: Orthodox.
• Oyer and Terminer:  Commissions issued to a panel of justices to "hear and determine" specific complaints raised by individuals.
• Palatinate:  In England, a county in which the tenant in chief exercises powers normally reserved for the king, including the exclusive right to appoint justiciar, hold courts of chancery and exchequer, and to coin money. The kings writ is not valid in a County Palatinate.
• Papacy:  The institutions of the papacy fulfilled a dual role which reflected the double nature of the papal monarchy as both the titular and administrative head of the church of Latin Christendom and also the prince of the Papal States, the largest and most coherent political entity in sixteenth-century Italy. The term was used by protestant reformers to refer not merely to the pope (the 'Apostolic See'), who claimed direct descent from St Peter and supremacy (the 'supreme Pontiff') within Western Christianity. It was taken to refer to the papal institutions as well as, by implication, the church more generally.
• Papal Bull:  Pronouncement from the Pope regarding a political or spiritual matter
• Papal Curia:  Inner group of Papl bureaucrats and administrators
• Parish:  A community of believers resident within a particular church with their own priest.
• Parish:  Generally a subdivision of a diocese; administered by a resident priest who might have other clergy as his assistants; it was the basic unit of ordinary church life in western Europe.
• Parlement:  Highest regional law courts in France.
• Parlement:  Supreme court of appeal in the kingdom of France, situated at the Palais de Justice in Paris.
• Parlements:  The sovereign royal lawcourts in France. The Parlement of Paris was the oldest, and most renowned; but there were also provincial lawcourts in Toulouse, Rouen, Rennes and elsewhere.
• Parliament:  The gathering of commons and lords in representation of the realm in England for purposes of approving taxation.
• Parson:  The rector of a church.
• Patriarch:  A major bishop who was the independent head of a major diocese. In the Early Church (from the mid-fifth century) there were five recognized patriarchates: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. After they became autocephalous the Bulgarian and Serbian Churches sought and at times unilaterally assumed this title for the heads of their Churches. At time through pressure they even received recognition for their patriarchial titles from the Constantinopolitan patriarch.
• Patriciate:  The collective, often closed, group of elite merchant families who controlled the affairs of many Dalmatian towns.
• Patron:  The founder of a church, or the founder's descendant or successor, in whom was vested the right to present to a parish living, or - in the case of a religious house - various rights including that of consenting to the election of the head of the house.
• Paulicians:  Member of a religious sect, seen as heretical by the Orthodox Church, arising in Armenia and eastern Anatolia. Long considered to be dualist, the Paulicians have recently been shown to have been Adoptionists. After being defeated by the Byzantines, many Paulicians were transferred to Thrace and the Rhodopes to defend the border with Bulgaria, where (centered in Philippopolis) many continued to retain their beliefs and practices.
• Pavage:  A toll charged to pay for the paving of a town's streets, or some of them.
• Peace of God:  A movement that arose in southern France in the tenth and eleventh centuries to place limits on fighting; it placed certain classes of people - non-combatants, women, clergy and the poor - under the protection of the church and threatened those who used violence against them with excommunication.
• Peculiar:  In the law of the Church: a jurisdiction proper to itself, exempt from and not subject to the jurisdiction of the bishop of the diocese.
• Pelagianism; Pelagius:  A British monk in c.400AD who gave his name to a theology which held that mankind took the first stops towards salvation by its own efforts and without the assistance of divine grace. The theology, and its associated followers, were declared heretical in the early fifth century AD.
• Penance:  One of the seven sacraments of the Roman church. The word derives from the Latin poena for punishment. As conceived by medieval theologians, penance contained various stages from attrition and contrition, through confession to absolution. In general, the word is often taken to refer to the various disciplines adopted by the church for the control of wrong-doing (sin).
• Penitentiary:  The official of the papal court responsible for overseeing the processing of the majority of dispensations.
• Petition:  A) Request, orally or in writing; B) written complaint presented to court of law, in particular to parliament.
• Pike:  Long spear with small iron head.
• Pilgrimage:  A journey to a holy place for the purpose of worship or thanksgiving or doing penance; there were many local, regional and universal sites that drew pilgrims in the Middle Ages; among the greatest pilgrim destinations were the places connected with Jesus's life in the Holy Land, the city of Rome and the shire of St James at Compostela.
• Pilgrimages:  Journeys to holy places, such as a shrine of a saint, as an act of thanksgiving or penance.
• Pleas of the Crown:  The more serious crimes, breaches of the king's peace, and specially designated offences such as concealment of treasure trove, jurisdiction over which could be exercised by no one except officers of the Crown.
• Pledge:  Legal guaranty; a person who guaranteed that another would meet a legal obligation.
• Pledging:  Legal instituion by which one villager served as guaranty for another's court appearanec, veracity, good conduct, payment of a debt, etc.
• Plenarty:  The question of whether or not a benefice was filled.
• Plenitude of Power:  The plenitudo potestatis or the papal claim to sovereignty over the clergy and church property.
• Ploughland:  Amount of potential arable land on an estate (that is, the number of ploughs there was scope for) expressed as a tax assessment which varied according to regional conditions and class of soil.
• Pluralism:  1) The holding by one person of more than one church office or benefice at the same time; it was a favourite way for secular and church officials to support their bureaucrats; in the later Middle Ages it was a widespread abuse. 2) The practice of holding more than one benefice at a time, often leading to absenteeism. 3) The holding of two or more benefices simultaneously, either within the limits approved by the law of the church or without them (when it required a dispensation or was punishable).
• Pontifical:  Anything to do with the Pope
• Pontifix:  The Pope
• Pope:  Derived from papa, "father"; originally a term for any bishop; in the west it came to be restricted to the bishop of Rome, who was the successor of St Peter, was regarded as the chief bishop of the church; in the west, the pope became the dominant figure in the governance of the church; in the Orthodox churches that position of dominance was rejected.
• Pope:  Head of the church, resident in Rome
• Postern:  1) Secondary gate or door.
• Praemunientes:  Clause in parliamentary writ of summons to bishops, "requiring" them to summon to parliament representatives of the lower clergy.
• Praemunire:  Name of the writ and of two English statutes (of 1353 and 1393) which threatened severe penalties for those who sued in church courts on matters which were deemed to be subject to the king's authority.
• Prebend:  1) Cathedral benefice set aside for support of member of chapter. 2) A benefice in a cathedral chapter designed to support one of the members of the chapter with income supplied by a manor belonging to the cathedral. 3) The endowment and income of a cathedral or collegiate canonry; could be estates or parish churches and their estates or even a fixed cash sum. Hence often a synonym for canonry, and a canon was often referred to as a prebendary.
• Prebendary:  Holder of a prebend, therefore usually a secular canon.
• Predestination:  Predestination (from the Latin praedestinare, to 'fore-ordain') is the belief that certain individuals (the 'elect') are foreshadowed for eternal salvation. on the basis of the Pauline scriptures, St Augustine had developed it as a mystery which the human mind had to accept but which could not be further investigated. It was evident as a feature in the works of Luther but later developments somewhat caricatured it as a dopctrine of unique significance to Calvin. Calvin argued not merely that some (the 'elect') were fore-ordained to salvation, but also that the remainder of fallen humanity (the 'reprobate') were foreordained to damnation. This is sometimes referred to as 'double predestination'.
• Prelate:  Archbishop, bishop or head of a religious house.
• Presbyterianism; presbytery:  The name derives from the Scottish terminology for the system of church government associated with the Calvinist reformation in Europe. Calvin's church discipline was developed to provide an ascending and interlocking pattern of ecclesiastical courts, comprising both clergy and lay elders. At the level of the parish or congregation, the minister and elders met together as the 'consistory' (in Scottish terminology, a 'session'). The consistory provided the base unit for church discipline. Above it came a regular meeting of representatives from individual churches, called a 'classis' (or, in France, a 'colloque'; in Scotland, a 'presbytery') to deal with common problems. Then, above that, lay more occasional national synods (or, in Scotland, 'general assemblies'). The basis for the presbyterian pattern of government was laid down by Calvin in Geneva in his Ecclesiastical Ordinances of 1541, which may be consulted in the tutorial (06.27).
• Presentee:  Candidate nominated by the patron for appointment to a benefice.
• Priest: (or Presbyter) :  A man who held the second highest of the holy orders, after that of bishop and above that of deacon; term derived from the Greek word presbuteros, "elder".
• Prime:  The third hour of prayer, said mid morning
• Primogeniture:  1) The right of the eldest son to inherit the estate or office of his father. 2) System of inheritance by which the first-born son succeeds to all his father's landed property.
• Prior:  Either the head of a priory, or in an Abbey the Abbot's deputy.
• Prior:  In Benedictine monasteries, the second in command after the abbot; also a term for the head of a religious house that did not have the legal status of a monastery.
• Prioress:  Either the head of a priory, or in an Abbey the Abbess' deputy.
• Priory:  Any religious house administered by a prior or prioress. If the prior was subject to a resident abbot, the house is called an abbey or monastery. The title prioress is held in certain religious houses for women.
• Priory:  Satellite religious community following non-Benedictine rule - usually Augustinian rule. Responsible to the Abbot of the Order
• Private Church:  A church owned by a landlord or a monastery; most rural churches were founded by the owner of the land on which they stood and remained under the control of his family; sometimes called a proprietary church.
• Province:  Usually referring to a group of bishoprics subordinate to a metropolitan or archbishop; some religious orders, particularly the friars, were also organized into provinces.
• Provisions, Papal:  1) The arrangement whereby the papacy claimed authority to nominate and appoint to any benefice within the Catholic Church, mandating the local ecclesiastical authorities to grant possession of the post. The appropriate mandates were in two different forms: (I) in forma pauperum, whereby the recipient was given the right to demand nomination to any benefice in the gift of a named patron (in England almost invariably an ecclesiastical institution); (II) in forma speciali, whereby the recipient was nominated to a specified post (used especially for cathedral prebends and bishoprics). 2) Nomination or appointment to a church office; in the fourteenth century the papacy gained the right of provision over thousands of church offices all over Europe.
• Provost:  1) Feudal or royal magistrate. 2) Royal officer responsible for overseeing administration of justice.
• Purgatory:  The foundation of the medieval doctrine of purgatory lay in the belief, located in the writings of St Augustine, that the fate of the individual soul is decided immediately after death and the certainty of purifying pains of the afterlife. Purgatory was gradually elaborated by medieval theologians as a place of waiting for the sinful who could not be admitted to heaven until penance had been done for their sins. According to St Thomas Aquinas, the guilt (culpa) of venial sin was expiated immediately after death and only the punishment remained to be served. That punishment, greater than the greatest pain on earth, might be helped, however, by the faithful on earth, especially by the offering of masses for the souls of the departed. The official teaching of the church on purgatory was finally defined at the councils of Lyons (1274) and Florence (1439). Purgatory gradually assumed a central place in the penitential fabric of the church. The attack on the belief by Martin Luther was therefore of critical significance.
• Purpresture:  1) Illegal enclosure or encroachment.
• Purveyance:  1) The king's right to requisition food and goods in return for payment. Purveyances were made to supply the royal household and households of the royal family members in ordinary times as well as to supply royal armies in wartime.
• Quadrivium:  Arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music; the scientific subjects in the seven liberal arts; the three literary subjects were called the Trivium.
• Questaux:  Term used in Aquitaine for men of servile status.
• Ram:  Battering-ram.
• Real Presence:  To medieval theologians, the elements of bread and wine were commonly interpreted as being miraculously changed into the very body and blood of Christ (the 'Real Presence') at the moment when the priest uttered the words of consecration. They explained the process as 'transubstantiation' (transubstantio). By this, they meant that the 'substance' (the reality within) the bread and the wine was 'transformed' into the substance of the body and blood of Christ, leaving only the 'accidents' (or superficial properties - what you could see, touch or taste) unchanged. In common with some later medieval philosophers and theologians, Luther rejected this explanation, but retained the notion of a 'Real Presence'. He regarded is as having undisputed Biblical attestation. It was analagous to the fact that Christ incarnate (both God and Man) had been on earth. Christ's body and blood were not to be equated with the bread and the wine, but they lay 'in, with and under' it in ways that God had not intended us fully to understand. When we eat and drink the sacrament we become one body ('incorporated') with all the saints.
• Rebeck:  A musical instrument, having three strings, and played with a bow; an early form of the fiddle.
• Recess [Abschied]:  The conclusions of an imperial diet, issued by the imperial chancellory and including the decisions of the diet and the assent of the emperor.
• Recognizance:  An obligation recorded before a court, or an officer authorized to keep such records, with a condition to do some act required by law which is specified within the record.
• Rector:  1) The holder of a rectory. 2) Incumbent whose tithes have not been alienated.
• Rectory:  The full income, endowments and office attached to the benefice of a parish church. Contrast vicarage.
• Reeve: (O.E. gerefa; L. praepositus, prepositus) :  1) A royal official, or a manor official appointed by the lord or elected by the peasants. 2) Manorial overseer, usually a villager elected by tenants of the manor. 3) Officer responsible for the general management of a manor (usually selected from among the manor's tenants). 4) The lord's official on the manor who supervised labour dues and renders owed by peasants. 5) Principal manorial official under the bailiff, always a villein.
• Regular:  See Regular Clergy.
• Regular Clergy:  Monks, canons, friars and other clergy who lived in communities under a rule; word derived from the Latin word regula, "rule"; often contrasted with the secular clergy, the bishops and priests who worked in the world.
• Regular Orders:  The monastic orders were known as the 'regular' orders of the church because they were composed of men or women living in a community under a religious rule (regula) as a monk or nun, and who had taken vows or 'made profession' to live according to the rule of their particular order.
• Reich:  - see 'Holy Roman Empire'.
• Relic:  An object venerated by believers because it was associated with a saint; a relic could be something owned by the saint, such as a piece of clothing or a book, but most often was a part of the saint's body.
• Relief: (relevium, from relevare, to take up) :  1) The fee paid by the heir of a deceased person on securing possession of a fief. Tradition determines the amount demanded. 2) A fine paid by the heir of a vassal to the lord for the privilege of succeeding to an estate. 3) Payment due to a manorial lord upon inheritance.
• Religious:  When used as a noun, it is a general term to encompass any person bound to monastic life by vows; it could be used to describe a monk, a canon, a friar or a nun.
• Reliquary:  A chest, box, or shrine, often elaborately decorated, in which a saint's relics were kept. Reliquaries were often the focal point of pilgrimages.
• Remission:  See 'Sin'.
• Retinue:  Small troop of fighting men of all types raised on the estate of a knight.
• Retrochoir:  Space behind the altar.
• Righteousness of God (in Latin, iustitia Dei):  This was the embodiment of the arbitrary (to mankind) decisions of the divine will.
• Rites:  Forms of worship.
• Romanesque:  The architecture of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in Europe, sometimes called Norman in England.
• Rosary:  Sequence of prayers aided by the use of a beaded string.
• Royal Free Chapel:  Among peculiar jurisdictions, deaneries not subject to episcopal jurisdictional authority in which the authority of the crown was (or had been until passed to others) paramount.
• Rule of Law:  A principle of the law; a ground of decision, recognized by the courts; a guiding principle in the determination of new cases.
• Sabbath:  Saturday - the day of rest
• Sacraments:  According to St Thomas Aquinas (d.1274), a sacrament was 'the sign of a sacred thing in so far as it sanctifies men'. In Christian theology, the scope of what constitutes a sacrament varied widely. By the late middle ages, however, Aquinas' seven sacraments had been formally affirmed as an article of belief at the council of Florence (1439). These were baptism, confirmation, matrimony, extreme unction, penance, the eucharist and holy orders. These were radically reduced by the protestant reformers, amongst whom only baptism and the eucharist were accepted without reservation as sacraments.
• Saint:  Holy christian individual, immediately upon death enters heaven
• Sally-Port:  See Postern.
• Saltpetre:  Potassium nitrate, a component of gunpowder.
• Salut:  Lancastrian French equivalent of the gold crown.
• Sanctuary, Right of:  Churches or areas in their jurisdiciton which were recognized as offering fugitives from the king's justice a refuge for forty days after which they had to leave its safety and abjure the realm as outlaws.
• Satisfaction (Lat: satisfacio):  Satisfaction of God's righteousness was the explanation commonly offered by medieval theologians for the process of penitence leading to salvation. God had been mortally offended by the 'disgrace' afforded to his honour by the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. Their kin (human kind) inherited that disgrace, and God's wrath. Human beings did not have sufficient merit to offer God by way of satisfaction, or compurgation, for the injury afforded. They had, instead, to rely on a gift from God of someone (i.e. Christ) who, with kinship to God (as his son) and also as a human being, could act as a mediator and compurgator. It was the critique of this explanation of salvation which led protestant reformers to offer the alternative of 'justification' in place of 'satisfaction'.
• Sauvement:  Levy for protection of village communities.
• Sauvetés:  Settlements founded by Templars near Toulouse as sanctuaries from ill-treatment and exactions.
• Scale Armour:  Small rectangular plates of horn, sometimes metal, attached to a leather or linen coat. Lighter and more flexible than mail.
• Schism:  A formal split in the church over a disagreement about a matter of practice; distinct from heresy because the split is not over belief; the schism of 1054 marked the formal break between Roman Catholicism and the Greek Orthodox church; the Great Schism (1378-1414) was the split in the western church between those loyal to the pope at Rome and those loyal to the pope at Avignon; derived from the Greek word schisma, "split or tear".
• Scimitar:  Oriental sword
• Screens:  1) Wooden partition at the kitchen end of a hall, protecting a passage leading to buttery, pantry, and kitchen.
• Scriptures:  - see 'Sola Scriptura'.
• Scutage:  1) The sum that the holder of a knight's fee may pay his lord in lieu of military service. Sometimes used as a form of tax. 2) Shield-tax, a tax paid in lieu of military service. 3) Feudal payment in place of knight service in the field. 4) Literally "shield-money"; a payment in lieu of military service, paid in respect of the knights which a tenant-in-chief owed to the Crown. The personal obligation to serve of the tenant-in-chief himself could not be discharged by scutage, but only by fine.
• Secular Canon:  See Canon, Secular.
• Secular Clergy:  1) The clergy who were not separated from the world by a written rule or by life in a monastic community; it included the bishops and priests who worked with the laity; often contrasted to the regular clergy who lived under a rule; word derived from saeculum, "world". 2) Any cleric who was not a regular, but lived under no rule and outside communities, in the world or in saeculo. The term applied to nearly all the parish clergy, most collegiate clergy and the canons of the secular cathedrals.
• Secularization:  In the sixteenth century, this term applied to lands formerly belonging to the church, which were transferred into lay ownership. These lands included substantial terrritories in Germany which had formerly belonged to the catholic church and which were secularized in the course of the reformation.
• Sede Vacante:  Vacant see (or bishopric).
• See:  The seat of a bishop, i.e. his bishopric.
• Seignorial Jurisdiction:  The right of a lord of a manor to hold a court for the tenants of the manor.
• Seneschal: (or Steward) :  1) Manager of an estate or a household. 2) Steward or chief officer of lord.
• Serf:  1) A semi-free peasant who works his lord's demesne and pays him certain dues in return for the use of land, the possession (not ownership) of which is heritable. These dues, usually called corvée, are almost in the form of labor on the lord's land. Generally this averages to three days a week. Generally subdivided into classes called: cottagers, small holders, or villeins although the later originally meant a free peasant who was burdened with additional rents and services. 2) Slave; property of the lord. 3) Peasant burdened with week-work, merchet, tallage, and other obligations; bondman, villein.
• Sergeant:  1) A servant who accompanies his lord to battle, or a horseman of lower status used as light cavalry. Also means a type of tenure in service of a nonknightly character is owed a lord. Such persons might carry the lords banner, serve in the wine cellar, make bows/arrows or any other dozen occupations. Sergeants pay the feudal dues of wardship, marriage, and relief but are exempt from scutage (nonknightly).
• Sergeant-at-Arms:  Member of a royal bodyguard.
• Serjeant-at-Law:  A senior barrister.
• Sext:  The fifth hour of prayer, said at midday
• Sheriff:  1) The official who is the chief administrative and judicial officer of a shire. Many of its jobs where taken over by the itinerant justice, coroner, and justice of the peace. Collected taxes and forwarded them on to the exchequer, after taking his share. Also many times responsible for making sure that the Kings table is well stocked while king is in his county (I.e.. Royal Game Preserve). 2) Royal official in charge of a shire or county.
• Shire:  English county. The shire court conduct the administrative, judicial and financial business of of people living in the county.
• Shire Levy:  All able-bodied men between the ages of 16 and 60, called out in times of national crisis by the king.
• Shrievalty:  Office of sheriff.
• Siege:  The military tactic that involves the surrounding and isolation of a castle, town or army by another army until the trapped forces are starved into surrender.
• Simony:  1) The buying or selling of spiritual things, particularly church offices and benefice. 2) The buying or selling of sacred things, such as sacraments and ecclesiastical positions; owrd derived from Simon the Magician (Acts 8:18-24), who tried to buy spiritual power from St Peter.
• Sin:  Scholastic theologians and confessors' manuals had identified seven 'deadly' sins (pride, avarice, extravagance, wrath, gluttony, envy and sloth). There was much scholarly and ecclesiastical debate as to the relative seriousness of the deadly sins. The protestant reformers radically transformed this notion of sin. This resulted from their different conception of salvation, and also of the human psyche. Scholastic theologians had regarded human beings as having a superior, rational faculty in control of the sensual, and potentially sinful, lesser, corporal elements of the body, including the emotions and the senses. It was these lesser elements which contained the roots of human sins, which were duly dissected into the sins connected with particular senses and emotions. God saved human beings from these sins by operating upon the rational faculties; but the nature of that operation remained a matter of great conjecture for medieval theologians. Protestant reformers had a more balanced and holistic conception of the human psyche. Mind and body lay in a profound interrelationship one wth another. Both were integrally touched by the original sin which was part of our human nature. That sin was indivisible, all-embracing and all-pervasive. Only faith in Christ, by which we were given the grace to be better than our fundamentally sinful nature, could transform us. But that faith reached us at least as much by the word of God appealing to our emotions as to our rational faculties. So, for Luther, we are at one and the time time 'justified and sinful' (simul iustus et peccator). By faith, the 'sin that rules us' (peccatum regnans') can be transformed into the 'sin that is ruled' (peccatum regnatum'). In this way, our sin is 'remitted'. For Calvin, the language is even more graphic. Sin was unbounded lust ('concupiscence'), a 'pollution' to which we were as human beings 'enslaved'. Only the grace of Christ could set limits to the bounds of our lust and prevent us from mixing up ('polluting') the holy with our sin.
• Sinister:  Heraldic; on left side of shield, i.e. on spectator's right.
• Small Holder:  A middle class peasant, farming more land than a cottager but less than a villein. A typical small holder would have 10-20 acres.
• Smithy:  A blacksmith's workshop where iron objects are forged as opposed to a smelting workshop where iron is extracted from the ore.
• Socage Tenure:  The humblest of medieval freehold tenures; the tenant is commonly a free man, an agricultural worker, who owes to his lord money rent or clearly specified agricultural services such as ploughing or harvesting.
• Sola scriptura ('Scripture alone'):  Protestant theologians were not the first theologians to regard scripture as the prime validator of doctrine. They were, however, the first to place scripture in direct opposition to the traditions and practices of the church. They did so because, so they argued, the medieval church had granted itself the authority to determine what scripture said and how it should be interpreted. By contrast, the reformers regarded all traditions within the church as only carrying weight if they conformed to scripture. The protestant reformers further argued that scripture had within it the guiding lights and inspiration for its own interpretation. Sola scriptura was also a principle of Biblical exegesis. Scripture was the holy word of God and inspired by the Holy Spirit. However, there was an assumed distinction between the substance of the scriptures (in Latin, res) and the words (verba) they contained. The latter might be lost in translation without affecting the former, whose 'truth' and 'certainty' would still be capable of being conveyed to our consciences and minds despite the limits of our capacities for understanding them.
• Sorbonne:  The Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris. It was an important school of theology in western Europe and a staunch opponent of the protestant reformation. It censured Luther's works in 1521 and played an important part in the censorship of printed books in France.
• Spiritualities: (L. spiritualia) :  1) Ecclesiastical revenues, derived from tithes. 2) Income or rights arising directly from the exercies of spiritual, sacramental or pastoral authority and duties.
• Squire:  1) Knight-aspirant. 2) Apprentice knight, aged between 13 and 21, classes as a man-at-arms in action.
• Star Chamber:  Building erected next to the exchequer in Westminster where the royal council met, probably called that because stars were painted on the ceiling.
• Statute:  A formal enactment of the highest dignity; it may be declaratory or interpretive of the law; it may also represent a deliberate change in the law.
• Steward:  The man responsible for running the day to day affairs of the castle in absence of the lord.
• Stole:  Part of the priest's vestments
• Subinfeudation:  A Western feudal practice by which a vassal of a superior lord could also have vassals of his own. In contrast, in the Orthodox lands all fiefs were held from the crown and all service was owed the ruler.
• Sub-Tenant:  Free tenant holding land of intermediate lord rather than directly of king.
• Suffragan Bishop:  Usually refers to the deputy who fulfilled the diocesan bishop's spiritual functions, such as ordination, consecration, confirmation, etc. Also used to designate the diocesan bishops of a province who were subject to the archbishop.
• Sultan:  Title of the Ottoman sovereign.
• Sumptuary Legislation:  Laws regulating expenditure on food and dress.
• Sunday:  Day of Christian prayer, the first day of the week celebrating Christ's resurrection
• Superstition:  The battle launched by the protestant reformers against 'superstition' indicated much of what was central to their preoccupations. Following St Augustine (and medieval theologians) they defined superstition as not merely the credulous notions of the unlearned but the dangerous worship of false gods. The latter exteded to idolatry, divination, sorcery and magic.
• Surcoat:  Long flowing garment worn over armour.
• Survey:  Official list of the holdings of a manor.
• Suzerain:  A feudal overlord. The king as suzerain was the highest feudal lord in the kingdom.
• Synod:  1) An ecclesiastical meeting; see definitions under "council"; word derived from Greek synodos, "a coming together".
• Tabard:  Short, loose garment, open at the side and having short, wide sleeves, worn from c. 1425 by some knights.
• Tallage:  1) A tax levied on boroughs and on the tenants living on royal estates. 2) Tax levied at the will of the lord on unfree tenants, or tax levied on towns at the king's discretion. 3) Annual tax levied by lord on villeins. 4) Arbitrary levy, especially on property of unfree tenants and ancient demesne of Crown. 5) An occasional direct tax of a relatively arbitrary kind, taken from those who (like villeins) were personally unfree or (like towns) had a customary obligation to pay; thus distinguished from aids, which were regarded as more freely granted. In towns, used in two main senses: A) royal tallages, i.e. lump sums levied by the king before they were superseded by parliamentary taxes; B) town or borough tallages levied by town authorities for their own use.
• Talmud:  Collection of ancient Rabbinic writings constituting the basic religious authority for traditional Judaism.
• Temporalities: (L. temporalia) :  1) The non-spiritual holdings of the church such as lands, markets and liberties. 2) Secular possessions of ecclesiastics. 3) Income or rights arising from the possession of estates or the exercises of jurisdiction over, or in virtue of, them.
• Tenth:  The common rate of clerical taxation, usually granted in multiples or fractions (e.g. half or moiety) of tenths.
• Terce:  The fourth hour of prayer, said late morning
• Tetrapolitan Confession (Confessio Tetrapolitana):  A confession produced for the diet of Augsburg in 1530 by Wolfgang Capito, Martin Bucer and Caspar Hedio for the four cities of Strasbourg, Constance, Memmingen and Lindau. Although the statement was not accepted by the diet, and although they went on to accept the Augsburg Confession in the following year, the articles of the Tetrapolitan Confession continued to be of significance in the development of the protestant reformed tradition for its formulations of doctrine on the Lord's Supper and on images.
• Teutonic Knights:  German Fighting Order with main bases in Prussia, Hungary and Germany. Recruits almost exclusively from German Speaking peoples of Europe.
• Theology:  Graduate faculty teaching theology, usually the smallest, but the most highly regarded faculty.
• Tithe:  1) One tenth of a person's income given to support the church. 2) The payment of a tenth of one's income to support the church and the clergy; based on texts in the Old Testament books of Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, and made mandatory in the eighth century by the Carolingian kings Pepin and Charlemagne. 3) Tenth part of agricultural produce, owed for support of local clergy. 4) A tax of one-tenth levied by the church on harvests and animals for the support of the parish priest.
• Tithe:  Payments from the laity for the maintenance of the clergy. Theoretically a tenth portion of production, tithes were, in fact, of varying proportions and composed of differing elements, depending on the products being tithed and the methods of payment agreed. Many tithes were 'commuted' to fixed money payments by the sixteenth century.
• Toll:  A payment either on goods, vehicles, or persons passing a particular point, e.g. a bridge, ford, gate, or quay, or on the buying and selling of goods at a market or fair.
• Tonsure:  1) The rite of shaving the crown of the head of the person joining a monastic order or the secular clergy. It symbolizes admission to the clerical state. 2) A clipping of hair or shaving the top of the head; tonsure was the ceremony that dedicated a person to God's service; it was the first step of entry into the clergy.
• Tourney:  Mock combat for knights.
• Transubstantiation:  - see 'Real Presence'.
• Trebuchet:  1) War engine developed in the Middle Ages employing counterpoise. 2) Stone-throwing siege engine operated by means of a counterweight.
• Trinity:  The doctrine of the Trinity (i.e. that the one God exists in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but one substance) is central to Christian theology. It had been defined by the early church councils in the face of the antitrinitarian 'heresies' of Arius (256-356) and others. Antitrinitarianism would resurface during the protestant reformation.
• Trivium:  Grammer, rhetoric and logic, the literary components of the seven liberal arts; the other four subjects were called the quadrivium.
• Truce of God:  A movement that began in the eleventh century which sought to forbid fighting on Sundays and the chief religious seasons and feasts.
• Tympanum:  Triangular space in the pediment of a classical building, semicircular solid space between the arch and lintel of a Gothic doorway or between the covering arch and lights of a window.
• Ulema:  The doctors of Muslim religious law, tradition, and theology.
• Uniate:  An Orthodox believer who has accepted Church Union with Rome and submitted to the pope; in most cases the popes allowed the Uniates to retain their own services.
• University:  Group of colleges dedicated to higher learning.
• Uses:  Effectively a form of trust whereby land or income from land was held by a number of trustees for the use of another person.
• Usury:  The interest charged on a loan. Forbidden by church law (based upon biblical). Commonly used by Knight Hospitallers and Knight Templars in later medieval times.
• Vasi:  The first small, cast brass cannon, c. 1325.
• Vassal:  1) A freeman who holds land (fief) from a lord to whom he pays homage and swears fealty. He owes various services and obligations, primarily military. But he is also required to advise his lord and pay him the traditional feudal aids required on the knighting of the lords eldest son, the marriage of the lords eldest daughter and the ransoming of the lord should he be held captive.
• Vernacular:  The native languages written and spoken by ordinary people (from the Latin for 'native' or 'common'), as distinct from the Latin used by the clergy.
• Vespers:  The seventh hour of prayer, said at sunset
• Vestments:  Garments worn by a priest
• Via antiqua; via moderna:  There were various schools of thought (or Viae) in medieval universities. They were named after great exponents of the classical philosophical and theological problems of the day, or after the name given to a particular approach to the problem. One such debate was about the degree to which, and how, we 'knew' and 'understood' the world around us. In philosophy it is known as the problem of 'universals'. Most common nouns are 'universals' (e.g. bat; brick). Aristotle (and Plato to an even greater degree) had argued that, on the basis of our sense-impressions, we abstract the underlying common forms which exist in the objects to form what is understood as a 'brick' or a 'bat'. That is known as 'realism' because the form is not merely an abstraction in our minds but derived from the 'reality' of the form as represented to us. This analysis was broadly accepted by the greatest of the medieval philosophers, St Thomas Aquinas. After Aquinas, however, medieval philosophers questioned this understanding. They have become collectively known as 'nominalists' although the term covers several different approaches to the problem of 'universals'. The most representative, and best-known, of them was William of Ockham (c.1285-c.1349). For Ockham, the categories into which we place our sense-impressions are created within our minds only. 'Universals' thus only exist as a mental concept (or 'name' - hence 'nominalism') which we have either abstracted from reality or intuitively ascribed to it. So, if God chose to destroy all the bats in the world, we would still 'know' what a 'bat' was. In university curricula relating to the faculty of arts, where philosophy was studied, this was sometimes known as the 'modern way of thought' (via moderna) to distinguish it from 'the ancient way' (via antiqua) of Aquinas and Duns Scotus. These debates in term had an impact on the other great set of debates in medieval universities over how man was 'saved' by God.
• Vicar:  1) In its basic meaning, a person who substitutes for another; in many medieval parishes the resident priest was not the legal holder of the parish; the legal holder was a non-resident person or was a monastery and the resident priest was the vicar for the legal holder, who carried out the latter's duties in return for a portion of the parochial income. 2) Substitute for a rector and holder of the vicarage.
• Vicarage:  The portion of an appropriated rectory which was set aside to support the vicar.
• Vicar-General:  The chief administrative deputy for the bishop, usually when the latter was absent from his diocese.
• Vill:  1) Township, local district; small unit of lordship or fiscal assessment. 2) The smallest unit of government covering the village, or township, and the surrounding countryside. It was roughly equivalent to the parish, the smallest unit in ecclesiastical administration.
• Villein:  1) The wealthiest class of peasant. they usually cultivate 20-40 acres of land, often in isolated strips. 2) A non-free man, owing heavy labor service to a lord, subject to his manorial court, bound to the land, and subject to certain feudal dues. 3) The highest class of dependent peasantry, often holding between 30 and 100 acres; above them were "freemen" and "sokemen". 4) Peasant bound to lord or estate; in England regarded as unfree from about 1200. 5) English term for serf. 6) In England, the holder of a villein tenement for which he usually owes agricultural services to his lord. The villein's rights in his tenement are customary and not enforeceable against his lord by medieval common law. Personally free against all men but his lord, the villein nevertheless does not fully enjoy the rights of a free man. He is a tenant at the will of the lord; he cannont serve on a jury dealing with the rights of a free man; he cannot take ecclesiastical orders with emancipation; he cannot make a will; if he leaves his duties on the lord's manor, the lord can use all necessary force to bring him back to perform them.
• Vows:  Formal, voluntary promises to God. Any adult could make a vow, and it was a common practice in medieval religion. However, vows are usually associated with those who entered religious houses. By the high Middle Ages, the vows of monks, nuns, regular canons and friars usually involved promises of poverty, chastity and obedience.
• Vulgate:  The Latin translation of the Bible, believed in the sixteenth century to have been undertaken by St Jerome (d. 420).
• Wager of Law:  To wage one's law was to defend an accusation in court by swearing a formal oath of innocence supported by oaths of compurgators, i.e., oath-helpers.
• Waldenses:  Followers of the twelfth-century Peter Waldo of Lyon. They preached poverty and the renunciation of the world, appointed their own ministers (known as 'barbes' in French because of their beards, and because united with the Hussites. On the eve of the reformation, and despite persecution, the Waldenses survived in the rural upland communities of Alpine France and Italy.
• Waldensian:  A follower of Peter Waldo, a twelfth-century advocate of the apostolic life, who eventually broke with the church over his claim to the right to preach without authorization.
• Wardship:  1) The right of a feudal lord to the income of a fief during the minority of its heir. The lord is required to maintain the fief and to take care of the material needs of the ward. When the ward come of age, the lord is required to release the fief to him in the same condition in which it was received. 2) Right of guardianship exercised by lord over a minor. 3) Right of feudal lord to act as guardian during minority of heir.
• Watch and Ward:  The duty, especially in boroughs, to arrange day (ward) and night (watch) for the apprehension of those who break the peace.
• Wattle and Daub:  1) A combination of laths and clay used to infill panels in a timber-framed building.
• Wergeld:  A monetary value, scaled according to rank, which was put on a person's life in the early Middle Ages.
• Writ:  1) Sealed document, transmitting an order from the king or his courts. 2) A royal order to a definite person; a mandate commanding something to be done, usually by the sheriff of the county wherein an injury is committed or is supposed to be, requiring him to command the wrongdoer or party accused, either to do justice to the complainant or else to appear in court and answer the accusation against him.
• X
• Yale:  A heraldic composite animal, like a spotted deer with swivelling horns.
• Year Book:  Reports of legal arguments in courts, usually common bench or eyre, and, with the invention of printing, published annually.
• Zwinglianism, Zwinglian:  The doctrines advanced by the protestant reformer at Zurich, Huldrych Zwingli.