Dear Folks, While we are entertaining some of the more intriguing possibilities posed by Bruce Carpenter's recent postings, let's be careful not to take terms with both modern and medieval usages and assume they are the same things. Here's what I remember from college, seminary, and reformation history about the late medieval period: 1. English clergy were poorly trained, or sometimes not trained at all. They were poorly paid on the local level, so much so that they frequently had more than one parish or "living" to make ends meet. They frequently did not live in their parishes. A "succesful" cleric might well be sub-contracting his work, as it were, to other clergy. Someone might be vicar of St. Mary's here and St. David's there, and never personally show up to do the services. This did not generally endear them to their parishioners. The laity, however, had very little to do with who was appointed as their parish clergy: the Bishops (in close consultation with the large landowners who generally funded the clerics) appointed priests. 2. There were "minor orders" in addition to the priesthood. One could be "ordained" to be a lector, bellringer, deacon, sub-deacon, doorkeeper & exorcist and never go on to the priesthood. Having these minor orders did put a man under the protection of the church courts, however. 3. The only clergy more disliked than the Bishops and the parish clergy were the monastics, who had title to almost one-third of the arable land in England. The merchant class was happy to cooperate in the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII when it meant they had more grazing land and fewer church taxes. 4. The great disparity between the poorly trained, poorly paid local clergy, and the Bishops (who were government functionaries and very well off indeed) created a very fertile atmosphere for the reformation, English style. Th reformation in England was punctuated by anti-clericalism, land-grabbing, the flowering of the liturgy in English, and a bewildering series of Acts of Parliament. In Germany, the reformation started with the debate of scholarly theses; in France with the eating of sausages on Ash Wednesday, and in England with legislation! 5. I can say with great assurance that in modern usage, a vicar is a priest in charge of a parish that is not financially self-sufficient. In these churches, the Bishop is considered to be the Rector and appoints a Vicar to serve for him (or her). A Rector is a priest in charge of a financially self- sufficient parish and has certain canonical rights associated with that. For example, a Vicar serves at the Bishop's pleasure and can be employed one day and gone the next. A Rector cannot be dismissed without certain procedures and constraints, even by the Bishop. So....it's better to be rector. This point applies to the Episcopal Church in the U.S. at this time: the Anglican Church in England has different fine print, and the fine print matters a great deal. Pat Hobson ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com