Vernacular Religious Literature

Abstract

The bishops’ constitutions and treatises previously covered frequently enjoin clergy to teach their parishioners the Creed and Articles of Faith in their parishioners’ “mother tongue” or “native language.”1 Since three languages—Latin, English, and the dialect of Old French known as Anglo-Norman—existed alongside each other in thirteenth-century England, the first question to ask is: What was this mother tongue? What languages did the people use in their everyday activities? As late as 1963, Mary Dominica Legge, the reigning scholar of AngloNorman literature, could claim that by the late twelfth century, in England, “most people, down to the very poorest, were bilingual” in French and English.2 More recent work, especially that by William Rothwell, Ian Short, and Michael Richter, has shown that in thirteenth-century England, the native tongue of most English people was English, as it had been since the days before the Conquest.3 People in thirteenth-century England understood Anglo-Norman to be something of a vernacular, but a vernacular that was used by those in the higher social ranks: the great magnates, the knightly class, and the members of the incipient gentry and upwardly mobile amongst the free.4 It served as a language of power and a “language of culture,” a social marker for those in the upper classes and those seeking entry into those classes.5 Up to at least the