hermit, occupying his own cell or small house within the cloister, but meeting for a common meal on certain specified occasions. His major occupation, apart from prayer and meditation, came to be very similar to that of the Brethren of the Common Life: the production and composition of books. The works of Richard Rolle, Nicholas Love, or Denis the Carthusian were popular and widely disseminated in their time and lay predilection for saintly hermits was institutionalized by the Charterhouses. Anchorites and recluses proliferated, often on the lands of the secular nobility, and their absolute renunciation of the world commended itself to the wealthier sections of later medieval society. There was perhaps an element of vicarious asceticism or self-denial by proxy in all this and the penitential literature of the period (some of it composed by laymen) would support such an idea. In his Livre de Seyntz Medicines ( 1351) Henry, duke of Lancaster, wrote of his sins and of the many temptations put by the world in the way of the rich and powerful. Atonement for sin could take many forms--from the performance of personal penance to the endowment of a religious house, hospital, almshouse, or school--and the more practical tone of much later medieval lay piety suggests that the performance of good works was becoming increasingly important. Entry into paradise and remission from the pains of purgatory could be achieved in many ways and it is an indication of the varied and multiform character of lay piety that so many charitable acts were undertaken.

Popes might come and go, councils meet and disband, but the horizons of most inhabitants of northern Europe were bounded by their parish, collegiate, or cathedral church, in which all participated. Baptism was universal and obligatory, binding men and women together as the body of the faithful, not yet riven (outside Bohemia) by the doctrinal schism of the Reformation. But there were disturbing signs at the end of the Middle Ages that the traditional forms and institutions of the Roman Church were, unless reformed or adapted, insufficient to contain and satisfy the demands and aspirations of a more literate and educated laity.

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