흑사병이 잉글랜드의 성직자와 교회에 미친 영향 = The Effects of the Black Death on the Clergy and the Church of England

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In this paper I try to track the long term change of the clergymen and religious institutes after the Black Death. In case of England, about half of clergymen died due to the Black Death which occurred between 1348 and 1349. Especially, many lower clergymen and monks within their residential parish taking in charge of curing of souls were sacrificed. Contrarily, most bishops avoided contacting the people. Because of exhausted human resource, it was difficult to fill the vacancies of clergymen. For the reason of hurried recruitment, verification of clergymen’s qualification degenerated to formality. And among the newly recruited clergymen, those who are young, who have insufficient experience and knowledge, and who are greedy came to be included in not a small number. Through the Black Death, not only the need for rapid and whole-scale human and structural change, but also, the need for reformation of the church stood out. Because not a small number of clergymen ran away or explicitly pursued greed, the Black Death was an opportunity to reveal the clergymen’s human weakness. Because having multiple benefices was admitted, some high ranking clergymen monopolized it, and poor clergymen were produced in a great number. Through the Black Death, religious institutes corresponded to change in many ways, but it unexpectedly caused many side effects. Monasteries located in rural areas fatally fell, and parish churches became integrated or leased like products. People at that time thought that most of the wickedness, including moral disorder, of the clergymen was caused by the Black Death, and that it was the reason for all unhappiness and decadence. However, the clergymen’s possession of multiple benefices, non-settlement, selling sacred profession, and etc. were frequent even in previous days. Simply, the despairing situation caused by the Black Death became an opportunity to make people perceive all kinds of inconsistencies at that time more clearly.