p1437 -
Peasant Women, Religion, & Divination in Fourteenth-Century Catalunya
Peasant Women, Religion, & Divination in Fourteenth-Century Catalunya
In the fall of 1341, an episcopal visitor arrived in the village of Garrigàs to inquire into the lives of the clergy and laity to find that both fell short of church expectations, Specifically, women were living openly with parish priests and questioning church doctrine. The testimonies of the laity in fourteenth-century Catalan episcopal visitations and diocesan court records reveal a significant disconnect between peasant beliefs and Church doctrine and policies. Despite the decrees of Lateran IV in 1215, rural women in Catalonia entered into concubinous unions, practiced divination, engaged in usury, failed to confess their sins or attend church regularly, and questioned some principal values of the Catholic Church.
This paper focuses on peasant women and their religious practices, experiences, and beliefs that did not conform to the ideals of the fourteenth-century Church. It seeks to show how women and their communities fashioned their own religious beliefs and practices, often in contradiction to Church policies, that best suited their lived experience in rural villages. Episcopal authorities were overall quite tolerant and did not go out of their way to punish parishioners. For example, women who practiced usury or were identified as diviners were never punished with fines or excommunication, but simply exhorted to cease their evil ways. Given the difficulties of policing parishioners in the mountainous regions of the Pyrenees, Catalan episcopal officials faced a number of challenges in exerting their influence and authority among the peasantry.