Pastoral Texts

Pastoral texts provided clergy with instruction in pastoral care, including how to conduct penance, what Christian doctrines and practices to teach, and exhortations to virtue. Pastoral texts are studied as sources for medieval culture and religion, which influenced even secular writings. Latin was the dominant language, although pastoral texts survive in English, French, Irish, and Welsh. Pastoral writings had a long tradition, but burgeoned from the thirteenth century as the expectations for both parish priests and their lay congregations increased. By the fourteenth-century, vernacular religious writing became significant, especially in England. Responding to the threat of heresy, Archbishop Thomas Arundel of Canterbury issued restrictions on vernacular biblical translations and theological discussion and tried to limit lay religious discourse to elementary pastoral instruction. The advent of printing helped to make pastoral texts more accessible, but the pastoral gave way to the polemics of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century.