The 'Law of God': Reform and Religious Practice in Late Medieval Bohemia

Abstract

Around 1380 Pavel of Janovic, Archdeacon of Prague, personally visited more than 300 parishes in the Archdiocese of Prague. His visitation record survives. The visitation protocol is, among other things, an extensive dossier of clerical abuses, immorality, and an absence of concern for spiritual matters. Archdeacon Pavel reports that married pastors took more delight in song and drunkenness than they did in divine service. Other priests lived openly with concubines. Priest Václav, in the deanery of Poděbrady, frequently drank himself senseless and behaved improperly in the town of Hostomice. In the town of Všeradice the priests were numbered among the town drunks. Priest Jan was a heavy drinker and Priest Jakob seldom made it through a day sober. Priests acquired property and engaged in business to the detriment of their religious vows. Carmelite monks evidently were duping gullible women into questionable pseudo-medical treatments, the nature of which can only be left to the imagination! More shocking was the case of a presbyter who operated a lucrative brothel in his home. Many of his regular customers and frequent patrons were fellow clerics!