Margaret Paston’s Piety by Joel T. Rosenthal (review)

The religion of the gentry of late medieval England has attracted much interest among historians for some years now. This has been an enormously productive development, perhaps most obviously in helping to rewrite the Protestant version of late medieval religion and of the origins of the Reformation. And yet, as all practitioners in the field would acknowledge, the real difficulty is getting beyond the outward manifestations of belief to an understanding of spirituality. This is because our sources for gentry religion are themselves nearly all outward: wills, grants to the church, religious foundations, dealings with religious guilds, along with evidence of building and beautification of churches that survives haphazardly in family papers, antiquarian publications, and the buildings themselves. In all this evidence, although there may be glimpses of personal belief—for example, in mentions of particular saints in wills and dedications, or in the ownership of religious books—the worldly manifestations of religion predominate. This is hardly surprising since most of our sources for the gentry in this period pertain to their property, and those that shed light on their dealings with the church are no exception. The almost entirely impersonal evidence that these men and women have left behind them means that it is very difficult to get to know them from within in any respect.

There is however one group of gentry where we have the possibility of discovering at least some of their thoughts: the families who have bequeathed letter collections, nearly all from the fifteenth century, to posterity. Of these, far and away the largest collection was produced by the Pastons of East Anglia and, among the Pastons, the largest number of surviving letters were written by Margaret Paston. As Rosenthal observes, the far more “flamboyant” and openly expressed piety of the famous female religious exhibits of the period, Margery Kempe and Dame Julian of Norwich, is likely to be far from typical of the period. Might a close examination of Margaret and her letters help us to a more intimate view of the religion of a typical female inhabitant of late medieval England? Rosenthal’s book comprises four essays. The first two offer very close reading and analysis of the evidence for Margaret (chiefly, of course, her letters), accompanied by exploration of some of the other Paston letters and papers for comparative purposes. These two chapters explore words, in the form of dating clauses and pious expressions, and actions, such as dealings with churches and churchmen, pilgrimages, and ownership of religious books and church furnishings. The third chapter is a dissection of the Paston wills, culminating in Margaret’s, including also the elaborate funerary rites for John I, which we know about even though his will is missing. Finally, Margaret and the Pastons are placed physically, religiously speaking: in the East Anglian countryside and in what remains of the churches where they worshipped and bestowed their favor and their bodies.

Historians should be grateful to Rosenthal for the very large amount of work he has put into analyzing his sources. His dissection of every aspect of Margaret’s habits for dating letters is a tour de force and is accompanied, for comparative purposes, by a sustained analysis of dating styles for the letters as a whole, both those sent and those received. His exploration of religious phrases used in the letters, by both Margaret and other members of the family and the family circle, if not as complete, is also extended and meticulous. Other evidence for the religion of the Pastons, as indicated above, is examined with immense thoroughness and scholarly care. The Paston letters and papers are a treasure-house, but it takes a lot of work to extract the full measure of the booty: as far as religion and dealings with the church are concerned, readers will find coverage here of perhaps everything of significance on Margaret and a large amount on her family and wider circle.

And yet, for all this effort, we do not seem to get...