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Morph Bark
2014-03-03, 06:42 AM
I'm trying to figure out what percentage of the populace of a country should be a servant of the faith in my game. It's a no magic game, so that doesn't factor in, so I figured it'd be about the same as in the Middle Ages. Hence the title question.

Mastikator
2014-03-03, 07:45 AM
Varies greatly.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_monks_were_there_in_Britain_during_the_mi ddle_ages?
So you won't have to deal with wiki.answers extremely annyoing interface (just give me the damn answer!), in Britain in 1066 there were circa 1000 monks and nuns in 60 monk houses in England.

Spiryt
2014-03-03, 07:52 AM
Do you mean "monks" as in member of convent, living after his Order's Rule, etc. or priests, parsons etc. in general?

Also, I think there was a thread for those kind of general 'sociology' questions.

Stoneback
2014-03-03, 07:24 PM
Davey, Mike, Peter and Mickey. So, four.

Raimun
2014-03-03, 09:14 PM
Davey, Mike, Peter and Mickey. So, four.

No, five. The fifth one was also named Mike. Of course, both were known as brother Mike. That's why the confusion.

Mando Knight
2014-03-03, 11:08 PM
I'm trying to figure out what percentage of the populace of a country should be a servant of the faith in my game. It's a no magic game, so that doesn't factor in, so I figured it'd be about the same as in the Middle Ages. Hence the title question.

Parish pastors/priests weren't necessarily monks... but they're easier to estimate: one, sometimes two per church, one church per village (more for cities)... around maybe 0.5% of the population?

The Domesday Book suggests that there were around 2 million people in Britain in 1086, though it omits several cities (London, for instance), and monasteries were not taxed at the time and were thus omitted as well. Given the 1000 monks estimate in 1066, and the influx of new Norman monasteries during that period, I'd say a 0.5-1% estimate for the total is fairly generous.

Aedilred
2014-03-04, 12:40 AM
It will vary by location and date, of course. By the time of the Dissolution, there were 625 monasteries in England, out of a population of about 3 million (and all of those had been founded much earlier). You only need an average of two monks per community for the figure to exceed the thousand suggested for the date of the Conquest. Cluny Abbey in Burgundy alone had 200 monks at its peak, albeit that was exceptionally large.

Ian Mortimer estimates a monastic population of about 22,000 people in England in 1350 - which was actually after the peak of monasticism - and over 30,000 in religious occupations in total, which would give a proportion of about 0.7-1%, although I've seen estimates ranging as high as 2% for all religious occupations.

Delta
2014-03-04, 04:43 AM
Varies greatly.

We should really just install a script in the forum that automatically posts this whenever someone opens a thread with a question ending on "in the Middle Ages?"

To the OP: "The Middle Ages" is a period of roughly a thousand years and is generally used to refer to the area of the whole of Europe in that period. I could give you any answer from "almost none of them" to "almost all of them" and be pretty sure that at some time, at some place during that period, it would be correct.

As you can see from the answers given in this thread, you can only answer this question if you define it more clearly, since most english (or what was considered english at the time ;) ) written sources from that time come from England (well, duh!), that's the answer you're most likely to get.

Aedilred
2014-03-04, 11:25 AM
England had (and has) some weird demographics, too, so it's not all that great for modelling larger Medieval/Early Modern fantasy states. It wouldn't be a disaster, but nor is it really ideal.

Knaight
2014-03-04, 03:40 PM
I'm trying to figure out what percentage of the populace of a country should be a servant of the faith in my game. It's a no magic game, so that doesn't factor in, so I figured it'd be about the same as in the Middle Ages. Hence the title question.

An analogous country and period would be really helpful here. Ireland 870-900 is a totally different case than 1450-1480s Norway, for example - Ireland was a center of monasticism during that period, which was also one where monasticism was at a high and church-state power struggles tended to favor the church (there weren't exactly a lot of centralized governments at all, and the word state is an overstatement). The mid-late 1400's tended towards more centralized state power, a decline in monasticism (though the 1300's had plenty of it), etc. Norway also wasn't exactly a bastion of monasticism even by mid-late 1400's standards.

fusilier
2014-03-04, 11:36 PM
I think this book: Florence, the Golden Age, 1138-1737 had an interesting breakdown, showing out of 500 people or something, how many would be in the clergy (15th or 16th century). It was actually pretty cool breakdown, as it covered other jobs too (bakers, judges, university students, etc.). However, I don't own the book, and Florence was considered to have a larger than average number of people in the clergy.

It may have separated monks from other clergy.

fusilier
2014-03-04, 11:45 PM
There's also the Medieval Demographics Page (I think based primarily on high-medieval France):
http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm

They claim that 1 out of 40 people would be in the clergy, and 1 out of 25-30 clergy would be priests.

However, you should keep in mind what everybody else has been saying about varying by time in place.

Anxe
2014-03-05, 09:10 PM
Here's a good source for modern numbers.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/irelands-sons-turn-their-backs-on-the-priesthood-2063257.html

Yora
2014-03-06, 11:57 AM
There's also the Medieval Demographics Page (I think based primarily on high-medieval France):
http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm

They claim that 1 out of 40 people would be in the clergy, and 1 out of 25-30 clergy would be priests.

However, you should keep in mind what everybody else has been saying about varying by time in place.
I would eyeball it as "somewhere in the low single digit percentages". That simply seems quite plausible to me.

veti
2014-03-06, 09:00 PM
They claim that 1 out of 40 people would be in the clergy, and 1 out of 25-30 clergy would be priests.

1 out of 25-30 clergy being priests - seems implausibly low to me. Effectively, every village has its own church, and every church has its own priest. That must surely add up to a significantly higher proportion than that.

However, the definition of "priest" in the middle ages isn't as clear cut as all that. Some village "priests" were only marginally more educated than the peasants they served - they'd learn the rituals by rote and mumble their way through them, secure in the knowledge that nobody knew enough to correct them. If you take 'priest' to include only the educated class we normally associate with the word, then maybe that figure is plausible.

Mando Knight
2014-03-06, 10:16 PM
Or if "bishop" were meant instead of "priest."

Aedilred
2014-03-07, 04:35 AM
Or if "bishop" were meant instead of "priest."
That figure would probably be too hig. I think overall you'd probably be looking at one priest for every 300-400 people or so total (so assuming that one in forty people is a cleric, somewhere around 10% of those would be a priest), given the average size of a village and assuming one priest per village. The 1/40, 1/25 figures give us about one priest per thousand people, which does seem low, although it wouldn't be out of order for a reasonably urbanised society where you'll need fewer priests per head. Again, then, it will vary by region and date: regions with more (and larger) towns and cities will probably have fewer priests per head (maybe more like a German figure, rather than a French one), and likewise during periods where towns were larger the proportion of priests might fall. Even in those circumstances I'd still say that 1/1000 is a pretty conservative figure, though.

Whereas bishops, you'd have one per city, so even a large nation might only have thirty or so out of a population of several million.

Raimun
2014-03-07, 10:10 AM
I would guess it was on average about 1% of the population, give or take some fractions.