Lesson video

Hello, this is Mr. Cooper tuning in for your fourth of six lessons on the inquiry about the mediaeval world, looking at it through the life of a woman called Margery Kemp, who I hope you all are getting to know quite well by now and yeah, big fan of Marjorie.

So what I'd like you to do, first of all, same thing.

Every, every time, first of all, hide your phone, put it away, put it behind you.

You put above you below you, whatever, just don't want to You shouldn't be able to see it.

That's the key thing.

Piece of paper, Dates of whatever days you're doing this lesson on, title, which will be on the screen in a moment.

And then underline both.

I know it sounds boring.

The teachers go on about this all the time, but tidy notes, tidy mind.

This is the key thing that we're doing this for.

So, do that, restart the video and then we will get on with the lesson.

So if you could please make sure you've got the dates of whatever day is today, the day that you're doing this lesson, and the title "Mediaeval Religion," and then underline both.

That would be great.

So as always, you can pause the video at any point.

And when you've gotten that done, please restart the video.

So we've started to learn a bit about the world in which in which Margery lived, based partly on her book, but also of course, the lateral thought that we looked at a few lessons ago.

And we're now going to look at Margery's faith, her religious beliefs.

And before we get there, I want to tell you a little bit about what was going on at this time in the 14th century, the 14th and 15th centuries, when Margery was alive, because to understand who Margery was, it's actually quite helpful to look at similar women who were living at that time.

On the screen, you will now see a very beautiful image that was painted a little bit after Marjorie was alive, but it shows a woman called Bridget.

St.

Bridget of Sweden.

So she was a Swedish women.

She was married to a very powerful man.

And when this powerful man died, she decided to become a very religious, spiritual person.

And this image shows Mary and God the father, in the cloud, surrounded by angels and the saints and the apostles, all these religious characters looking down at Bridget and Bridget looking up.

And if you look in front of Bridget, you can see that she's at church.

So she's outside at a religious service.

So Bridget believed that she had visions of all these sorts of things, and she went on to create a very powerful religious movement.

And she actually spent the end of her life living in Rome, in Italy.

So she travelled all the way from Sweden in the North of Europe, down to Rome.

We have another very famous woman and this woman is called Catherine.

She was born in Sienna, in an Italian town called Sienna.

And she also believed that, well, she said that she had these very powerful visions of religious visions.

And on this, on the screen, now you'll see a picture of her dressed in white, surrounded by demons.

Now she's also wearing white and actually Marjorie herself asked for permission to wear white.

This was a symbol of her holiness.

And what I love about this picture, Catherine, yes she's surrounded by demons, but Catherine's pretty relaxed.

She doesn't seem too stressed out by it at all.

And Catherine of Sienna.

She became a very chief, she remains a very famous saint in the Catholic church and she, yes, also led a religious life.

So at the time Margery was alive, It wasn't common, It wasn't like everybody was walking around having visions of Jesus, but there were quite a few Holy women like Bridget, like Catherine, that Marjorie would have been aware of; She would have known about them.

Indeed Margery actually went to visit another very famous woman called Julian of Norwich, who lived in Norwich by herself.

She just bought, attached to a church there, and Marjorie in her book talks about how she had conversations with Julian of Norwich.

And she also mentions Bridget.

So when, when Margery is, we'll talk about, she goes to Rome and a pilgrimage.

This is a word that we'll be talking about today.

She talks about the dedication of lots people to Bridget, who had died by the time she visited.

But Bridget was quite famous by this point.

So I want us to just talk about what churches would have looked like when Marjorie was alive.

So, I was very lucky actually, because when I was making these lessons for you, I was living in a Norwich.

from this church, St.

Faith's church, in a small village called Little Witchingham.

And this church you can see on the map hopefully, Marjorie was living in King's Lynn, but she travelled a lot.

She travelled all over, all over England, all over Europe.

And we know in a book, she talks about going to visit Norwich.

So when she went, she would have probably walked very close to this church.

Can't confirm because she doesn't mention this particular church, but this church now, is in the middle of nowhere.

You wouldn't know to go there unless you knew someone in the area, or if you had a particular interest in mediaeval churches, which surprisingly I seem to.

So I went to this church and this is what was inside this church.

So we typically think of churches as quiet, sort of grey.

The there's not much, it's a bit dark and dingy sometimes, let's be honest.

When Marjorie was alive, church was very different.

Now this is something that you look at probably in a different inquiry, but the churches before Henry the eighth came along and his auntie's son Edward became King.

Churches were very bright and colourful.

And this little church in the middle of Norfolk, possibly where Margery, maybe once walked, is a really good example of this.

So I walked in and I saw these beautiful paintings and these original paintings painted about seven or 800 years ago.

We see on the left hand side the orange area is pointing at vines.

This is a very important symbol in the Bible.

The Bible is of course the very important text in Christianity.

And then on the right hand side on the wall, you can see an image there.

And this is an image of a scene from the Bible, which is when doubting Thomas, one of one of Jesus's disciples.

He doesn't believe that Jesus has come back from the dead.

And so in the Bible, it says that Jesus appeared to Thomas and said, "Stick your finger in my side, where I was stabbed." Bit gross.

But this is to prove to Thomas that Jesus had indeed come back from the dead.

Now whether or not you believe that doesn't really matter.

But what does matter is that I was so lucky to see this original painting in this tiny little church in the middle of nowhere.

So when you walked into church when Margery was around, this is the kind of colour that you might well have seen.

Oh, this is actually a cathedral in Moscow.

So in Russia, long, long way away, and it's possible the churches weren't as colourful as this.

This is one of the biggest cathedrals in Russia and in Europe.

But just to give you an idea that churches can be this bright and colourful.

So you might actually spot some similarities here, the pictures and the colours.

So this is, this is something that you can actually both, maybe not at the moment, but this is the kind of experience you'd have had walking into a church in mediaeval England.

I also want to talk to you a little bit about what kind of things would Margery have been doing when she was around.

The church was different, very different.

It played a different role for people, but when you went to church, she would have had a different experience as well.

So again, this is something that you probably need to look at in more detail in a separate inquiry, but when Margery was alive, England was part of the Catholic church.

Now the Catholic church, Catholic meaning universal, as for the Catholic church, everybody was Catholic.

There were no different types of Christians at this point.

We'll look at what was starting to happen.

But the key thing, the most important thing about Catholic worship was this idea of mass.

And mass was the recreation of the last supper.

So on the left hand side, we see Jesus in the pink circle, celebrating the loss of him before he was crucified with his disciples.

And Catholics believe that when you go to church, you recreate that moment.

And here, we have a modern day image of a, a Catholic celebration of mass.

And what the the idea is that the priest in a Catholic mass is taking on the role that Jesus played and what he's doing is holding up the bread.

And you can see the bread in front of Jesus on the left hand side So this is the kind of thing that Margery, when she writes about going to church, this is the kind of thing that she would have been seeing.

And she cried all the time because she felt very, very moved by what she saw.

Another, just to give you a different way of looking at the same thing.

So we just looked at this picture on the left.

On the right, this is an image that was painted in a book, not actually quite similar.

It was a different, different style of book, but it was painted a little bit after Margery was alive, And we see the same thing happening here.

So in the orange circles, we see the priest holding up the bread that Catholics believe is turned into the body of Christ.

And then behind him, we have all the priests kneeling, looking up.

And actually, if you look, you can spot in the picture on the right.

You can see some heads peering over the top because when Margery was alive, normal people weren't allowed to see all this stuff going on.

They were there in the audience, they were there for the show.

And this whole process was very theatrical, There was a lot of drama to it.

That Margery was really, really, really, really into.

She found it very moving, indeed.

And then the last thing I wanted to tell you about, so religion in mediaeval, England, religion held the community together.

So again, lots of people are not religious anymore.

Religion doesn't play the same kind of role it used to, when Margery was alive, the brightest, most beautiful things about a person's life were typically in church.

The church was this colourful, think of the church that I just showed you, this colourful part of what would often be a quite dark dingy life, and like many peasants, the churches were thought of filled with candles the villages were tasked with looking after.

There would have been beautiful images of saints, like Bridget of Sweden, Catherine of Sienna, or were these candles flickering in front of them.

And in the middle of, and throughout the year, there were very important festivals, celebrating moments in Jesus' life or the days of saints.

And on the screen, we have one of the most important festivals that Marjorie would have been part of.

And it's called the Corpus Christi festival.

And what happens we have on the left hand side, on the right hand side, the same procession, obviously the picture is taken in 2017, but the same thing was happening many, many hundreds of years ago.

So the picture on the left hand side was actually made quite a while after Margery had died, maybe 60 years.

However, this was very much the kind of scene you would have seen in villages, towns all over England and Europe, in fact.

Corpus Christi possessions, you see the priest in the middle, under a canopy, under a tent type thing, and a procession with music and cheering and all these kind of things.

And this festival, in fact, there would have been things called mystery plays when the villages would put on plays about the life of Jesus and the stories from the Bible.

So religion was a very colourful, vibrant, emotional experience for people this time.

And this was Margery's experience of religion was very much about this sort of thing.

So I would like you to do now is simply pause here and do what we've done a few times before, which is filling the gaps, using the words in the box below.

So maybe copy out the paragraph and then slot in the words when you've done them.

And then you should pause the video for this actually.

And then when you've done that simply restart, and we will continue with the lesson.

So this is the completed paragraph: In mediaeval, England religion played a much bigger role than it does now.

Churches were usually full of bright candles of scenes from the Bible and of saints.

Candles were always burning.

There were festivals all year round to celebrate Holy days, when there was music and feasting.

One of the most important was Corpus Christi in summer when the blessed sacrament was carried around under a tent by the priest.

So make sure you've got the correct answers there, pause again if you need to change anything, and then restart when you're ready.

So on the screen, we now have a map.

We have a map of Europe and we have a yellow line connecting King's Lynn to Jerusalem.

Now, one of the other big things that happened in mediaeval Europe was something called pilgrimage.

A Pilgrim was someone that travels to a Holy place to visit somewhere, for example, where St.

Bridget might've lived, or Catherine of Sienna might've lived.

And there might be a bit of her, the base of the saint's body, or a bit of the cross that Jesus was on.

Now, we can't confirm whether these actually were these, the things that they said they were, and this is actually something that becomes a big problem during when Henry the eighth becomes King, but people went on pilgrimages.

They travelled huge distances to visit these Holy places because they believe doing so would bring them closer to God.

Margery, bear in mind, she's a woman and she travelled alone.

She travelled right the way across the world from King's Lynn to Jerusalem.

And this took about two years.

This was a first pilgrimage when she actually got back from Jerusalem, she said that she had a vision where she married Jesus, and this all might sound a bit spooky, that was strange to us, but she really did have this very powerful belief that this had happened to her.

So what was she losing in Jerusalem? Sorry, on the way to Jerusalem.

She, first of all, stopped in Venice.

And this is one of the buildings that she almost certain had seen because it was built And it was, it was that in Venice when she was alive.

When she got to Jerusalem, they moving forward.

This is the site of the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre strange word, but don't worry too much.

Christians believe that this church was built where Jesus was crucified.

And so this is a very special church.

Margery goes down and she writes about how she travelled.

She did like a tour, she had a tour guide; a monk was a tour guide with a group of other pilgrims. She cried the whole time.

She found the whole thing very, very emotional, indeed.

And then on her way back, she stopped in Rome.

And I was very lucky actually to go to Rome just before the lockdown started.

And one of the churches that she, she may well have visited was this particular church Santa Maria in Trastevere and this church was built when she was there.

So she probably saw exactly this.

This is isn't as peaceful.

This was the, if you just look, this is above the roof, I'm going to move the mouse.

So you can see just here.

So zooming in, this is what she would have seen.

So we have the Virgin Mary with Jesus in her arms. And I mean, I think it's just really beautiful.

Whether or not you're religious, you can appreciate how beautiful that is.

And then this is inside this church.

And again, these images were there.

The pillars were actually added later, but if she had gone into this church, she would have seen those images.

Another pilgrimage she went on: So she got back in 1415, and then two years later, she decides to go on another pilgrimage.

And she goes to somewhere in Spain and it's called the Santiago de Compostela.

And this building that you can see here would have been there when she was there.

So people still do this pilgrimage.

They still travel to see these holy places.

So this is another pilgrimage she went on.

And then on her way back, I was really lucky actually, So I discovered, I was reading most of the book of Marjorie Kemp, and she was talking about her pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.

And she says on her way back, she stopped at Hailes Abbey, It was a very special monastery in England.

And I couldn't believe it, but it turned out that my mum, where I was staying during lockdown there, lived just around the corner.

So this is a picture that I took of the ruins of Hailes Abbey.

on her way back from Spain.

It's a ruin because it was knocked down by Henry the eighth.

But the site is still there, that's a very, very beautiful, beautiful place.

And then the last one, third pilgrimage, this time to a place called Prussia doesn't exist anymore as a country.

But she travelled.

This is actually a really funny story.

Her son lived in Danzig, which is the town.

If you look at the very end of the red line, so her son married a Prussian woman and they lived in Danzig.

Her son dies and Margery decided that she was going to take her daughter-in-law back to Danzig.

Everyone said, "don't you dare get on that boat, Margery, you stay, you're too old.

You shouldn't be travelling by yourself." So Margery then decides to sneak into her anyway.

And she travels to Danzig.

And then she spends, or travelling back by herself, visiting this place.

Another very, very important church for Catholics.

And there was a secret Relic there.

And then another one, again, these buildings would have been there when she visited.

So she really did a lot of travelling by herself and the stories that she told her really quite special.

So what I'd like you to do now, please write down the statements below, which are true.

So five statements, read through each one, and write down those which are correct, and then restart when you're done.

So we have five sentences.

The first one is true.

Margery did visit holy places all over England and Europe in order to get closer to Jesus.

Two, also true.

Marjorie cried all the time because she felt overwhelmed by her love for God.

True.

That is a statement is correct.

Three, a Pilgrim was someone who travelled to a Holy place to visit the home of a Saint or relic, also true.

So this was something that was very common in Europe at the time.

And one of the ways that Europe was connected.

Four, Margery went on five pilgrimages in her lifetime, this is false.

She went on three, three big ones.

He also travelled around England quite a few times, but the three big pilgrimages I've just shown you, they were abroad.

And then lastly, five, when she got back to Italy from the Holy land, Margery married Jesus and divorced her husband.

False, she actually stayed married to her husband and also married Jesus, slightly odd situation for her husband, who actually was constantly worrying about her and getting very embarrassed when she was crying.

But the last one is false.

She, married Jesus and stayed married to her husband.

So what we're going to do now, as we've done many times before, is you're going to pause the video in a moment, and you're going to go to the next part of the lesson.

You're going to read through the slides.

And then you're going to answer these five questions at the end of the slides.

And when you've done that in full sentences, just to repeat, full sentences.

When you've done that, come back to the video and then we'll go through the answers together.

So pause now read the slides and answer the comprehension questions.

So, first question, what religion did people follow in mediaeval England? the acceptable answer is Christianity.

The good answer, the religion that most people followed in mediaeval England was Christianity.

We could say Catholic Christianity, but for our purposes, we just, I think, keep it simple at this point, Christianity.

there was a Jewish community, but they had had, they'd been kicked out of England previously.

So most people at this point, were Christians, the vast majority.

So what happened to the Corpus Christi procession? Acceptable answer: People followed the priest around the village.

Good answer: at a Corpus Christi procession, everyone followed the local priest who carried a cross around the village.

There was feasting and music, and the village has put on plays based on stories in the Bible.

So clearly there's a big difference between the acceptable and the good answer.

And just to remind you, you can pause this video at any point, if you want to make sure that you've got the correct answer or I've talked to you quickly.

Three, what were mediaeval churches like? Acceptable answer: colourful I think we've seen quite a few examples of churches when we can give a rather more detailed, honest answer.

So the good answer: Mediaeval churches were usually full of candles and pictures of saints and Holy people, the walls are also painted with scenes from the Bible, rather than bare stone like today.

Now, in fairness, not all churches are bare stone today.

You have stained grass in some and it depends whether it's a Protestant church or a Catholic church, but we won't worry about that too much right now.

Four: Why did people go on pilgrimage? Acceptable answer: to be forgiven or to be cured Good answer.

People went on pilgrimage to Holy places because they believed doing so would mean they would be forgiven for their sins or be cured of sickness.

So many reasons to go on a pilgrimage.

And these are just two of them.

Five: Does it matter to a historian Margery's conversations with Jesus were real? Acceptable answer: No, it doesn't matter A good answer:It doesn't matter if Margery's conversations with Jesus were real or not.

What matters is that her story and her experiences tell us a lot about mediaeval religion, if we were scientists, or if we were psychologists, then we might be interested in this question because they would obviously have an opinion about whether Marjorie was actually just having hallucinations.

But for our purposes, what we are looking at is to understand her experiences of religion.

And so it doesn't really matter whether it's real or not.

She did.

And that's what we need to know.

So last part of this lesson, writing a writing activity, historians, we read and we write.

You've done some reading and now we're going to do some writing, using all this knowledge that we picked up in today's lesson.

So we're going to answer this question together.

Why did religion matter so much to mediaeval people? And then we will come to the end of the lesson.

So pause here.

I want you to have a go at doing this.

Why did religion matter so much to mediaeval people? Well, I want you to list the reasons you can think of why religion mattered.

If even if it's just one, don't worry.

Just do what you can.

I can think of quite a few myself, but then that's makes sense because I'm teaching you.

So just pause here, have a go and then see what you can come up with.

So I've put on the screen six ways that religion mattered to mediaeval people, six of them.

So put them down if you haven't got them already.

And these are what I could think of.

If you've got something else.

That's great.

Don't worry if not, make sure, pause now, and just make sure you've got these six, points in your books, or your notes.

So last part of our lesson.

I don't want you to spend more than five or 10 minutes maximum on this.

The question is why did religion matter so much to mediaeval people? The first sentence of your answer needs to clearly answer that question.

So reusing the words of the question, religion mattered to mediaeval people, because what? We've got all of these, these different points that we can talk about, I've put some other sentence starters there.

So this is shown by, that is why, this explains that.

And then we've got all of these different bits of information that we can use to answer this question in a nice paragraph.

Again, no more than five or six sentences would be absolutely fine.

And don't worry if you find this difficult, if you didn't find it difficult, I mean, that's why we're studying history to get better and better at these things.

Practise, practise, practise.

As I've said many times before, I have to do the same kind of exercise with my A-level students.

So if we get this cracked now, then you'll be in good stead for when you all do history A-level.

I mustn't say, that's very naughty, but I would love for you to take history further down at key stage three.

So, have a go at this pause now.

Have a go at writing this paragraph And then when you're done, that will bring us to the end of the lesson.

And as ever, what you can do is if you'd like to share your work with Oak National and me, I'd love to see the work you're producing.

So if you'd like to please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter tagging @oaknational and #LearnwithOak So that brings us to the end of lesson four of six lessons in this particular inquiry, hope you find it interesting, really enjoy teaching students about Margery and the world that she lived in and what kind of things she was up to.

And as always a short quiz, five questions, multiple choice, just to make sure we've got some stuff stuck in our brains after this lesson, and then have a great day wherever you are.