Legal Ephemera in the Ecclesiastical Courts of Late-Medieval England

Abstract

The article identifies the ephemeral documents that were crucial to the operation of criminal business in the ecclesiastical courts of late-medieval England. It proposes a loose definition of ephemera, focusing on their material qualities as small, transient, and disposable documents. It then looks at different types of legal ephemera generated in the course of ecclesiastical legal processes, and the ways in which they framed – and inflected – the different relationships of power between clergy, parishioners, and the institutions of church discipline. As the material interface between church authority and the laity, ephemera were strangely fragile, a quality that was clearly noticed and sometimes exploited by disgruntled parishioners who ripped up citations. But they were nevertheless vital in conveying information and power. It was their collective weight – the capacity of church courts clerks to produce so many of these documents – that made them sharp instruments of regulation.