They weren’t all that pious in the good old days

You need to be wary of being too flattering about English churches. As John Betjeman said: ‘Be careful before you call Weymouth the Naples of Dorset. How many Italians call Naples the Weymouth of Campania?’ Even so, the rise of the English medieval church was extraordinary. As early as 1200 there were 9,500 churches in England — all built since 597, when St Augustine started his mission to the English at Canterbury. And lots of them are still there. Our Anglo-Saxon, Norman and Gothic churches must be the highlight of our architectural history, just ahead of our country houses.

But how did the English use their churches? Step forward Nicholas Orme, emeritus professor of history at Exeter University and a specialist on the medieval church, in this useful, eye-opening book.

The church may have largely disappeared from most of our lives. But until the Toleration Act of 1689 every adult was expected to attend for baptism, marriage and burial; to worship on Sundays and festivals; and to help maintain the buildings and their furnishings. So the church formed a significant part of medieval life and grew increasingly important over the centuries, as you can tell from the evolution of the word ‘parish’. Originally from the Greek paroichos, meaning ‘neighbour’, it was first used to mean a diocese attached to a minster church or monastery. As churches proliferated, so their territories, or parishes, became smaller, and ‘parochial’ came to mean ‘local’ and ‘petty’.

This transformation of England into a land of many small parishes took place between the 10th and 12th centuries, often to a crazy extent: in Eastleach, Gloucestershire, two churches stare at each other across a stream. Churches grew richer as they absorbed the patronage and wealth of the local community, and Orme deftly shows how church language became part of everyday English, particularly as men increasingly joined the priesthood.