“To Sey or Thinke Otherwise”: Ordinary Theology and Facing Death in Late Medieval Norfolk

摘要

This article explores how Jeff Astley’s work on ordinary theology can enrich historical study of late medieval lay religion. Ordinary theology provides scholars with a new set of vocabulary and methodological approaches for accessing the religious discourses of “everyday” Christians and allows medievalists in particular to reach beyond contested labels for lay belief. The article begins with a discussion of the promises and limitations of Astley’s theories for historians of religion and concludes with a test case of how they might guide future research, through a quantitative and qualitative analysis of 152 wills from fifteenth-century Norfolk. The results highlight the diversity of beliefs about the afterlife and associated doctrines among medieval laypeople even as they demonstrated commitment to orthodox Christianity and their local parishes.