John Mirk was an English Augustinian canon and
the author of three devotional texts, two in English
and one in Latin. His anthology of sermons in English, the Festial (ca. 1382–90), was one of the earliest printed books in England, and became one of
the most widely read texts of the late 15th century.
Mirk was probably born and raised in Yorkshire. It is unknown whether or not he attended
one of the universities, but he was well educated
in Latin and in theology. He became a canon of the
Lilleshall Abbey, near Shrewsbury close to the
Welsh border, and apparently regularly preached at
the nearby church of Saint Alkmund’s in Shrewsbury. Ultimately he was appointed prior of his
monastery.
Mirk’s Festial, his most popular text, was an anthology of a full year’s worth of sermons, filled
with entertaining and vivid exempla for each homily. The Festial comes out of Mirk’s early years of
preaching and a direct knowledge of the state of
parish ministry in the years following the BLACK
DEATH. Augustinian monasteries like Lilleshall
often had to supply their own pastors to parish
churches that they controlled. But the plague,
which had hit the clergy at a proportionally higher
rate than the laity, had wiped out a generation of
parish priests. New priests pressed into service
after the Black Death were often untrained, and
had no formal education. Thus Mirk’s intent in the
Festial was to provide these new underprepared
clergy with help and support—in English, since
the new priests knew no Latin.
The same impulse was doubtlessly behind
Mirk’s other major work in English, the Instructions for Parish Priests, probably also written during those unsettled years between 1382 and 1390.
Possibly intended as a companion volume to the
Festial, the Instructions provide details to priests on
how they might deal with a variety of practical situations (what to do about mice chewing communion wafers, for instance), as well as advice on
proper conduct for priests and parishioners. Its
arrangement follows the seven sacraments, beginning with a discussion of baptism and ending with
extreme unction. This is followed by translations
and explanations of the Our Father, the Hail Mary,
the creed, and articles of faith. The text is loosely
based on an earlier Latin text by William of Pagula
called Oculus sacerdotis (ca. 1320–28).
Pagula is also the source for much of Mirk’s
Latin work, the Manuale sacerdotis (ca. 1414). This,
too, is a handbook for priests, but Mirk’s purpose
is different. Intended for a more learned audience
of priests and probably written after Mirk’s promotion to prior, the Manuale gives modern readers
a firsthand look at the life of a priest in rural England. Like the Instructions, much of the Manuale
is concerned with the proper moral conduct of
priests, but in this case Mirk is probably reacting to
the challenge to the church posed by the LOLLARD
faction in England. As Fredel points out (1994),
Mirk’s way of fighting Lollardy was not to directly
attack the Lollard heretics, but rather to point out
the common abuses among the clergy in England
that fed the heresy in the first place—and to do it
in Latin, so that his chastisement was kept within
the circle of priests themselves, rather than spread
among the laity and the heretics.
Details of Mirk’s death are unknown, but undoubtedly he died not many years after 1414 at the
abbey of Lilleshall, where he had spend most of
his life. Late in the 15th century, his Festial, originally intended for a clerical audience, became popular among middle-class and noble readers, whose
preferences ran toward devotional texts in English,
especially ones illustrated with vivid and interesting tales like Mirk’s exempla. Caxton printed the
text in 1483, and it was reprinted several times well
into the next century.
Bibliography
Fletcher, Alan J. “John Mirk and the Lollards,”
Medium Aevum 56 (1987): 217–224.
———. “Unnoticed Sermons from John Mirk’s Festial,” Speculum 55 (1980): 514–522.
Powell, Susan. “John Mirk’s Festial and the Pastoral
Programme,” Leeds Studies in English, n.s., 25
(1991): 85–102.