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Medieval Society

Priests

A priest held a special place within the Church. Only a priest could administer the sacraments, was subject to special Church law and was generally exempt from secular law, and gained his special status through a special ceremony. All this served to set priests apart from society and make them a separate order.

Within the priesthood was a tremendous range of social standing. A village priest might be only a local village boy who was sent off to a monastery to learn his duties, as poor as his parishoners. On the other hand, a bishop was also a priest, and he might be the son of a nobleman, wealthy and powerful. A priest might be illiterate, though literacy was higher in the clergy than in the general population.

As was the case with the other two orders, then, there was nothing intrinsic to the order of priesthood that says anything about their economic or political position. But the priestly order was the most prestigious of the three orders, for they were closest to God. For this reason, the priest within any given community normally had a higher standing than the other members of that community.

This is one reason why anti-clerical sentiment was so bitter. When priests fell from grace, they were criticized vehemently, having farther to fall. Priests were supposed to behave better than the normal run of humanity and were not permitted to have the foibles of the laity. They did have them, of course, and so incurred the wrath of the less privileged.