page_title: John Mirk
section_title: Manuale Sacerdotis
hierarchical_section_title: John Mirk / Works / Manuale Sacerdotis
context_page_description: John Mirk was an Augustinian Canon Regular, active in the late 14th and early 15th centuries in Shropshire. He is noted as the author of widely copied, and later printed, books intended to aid parish priests and other clergy in their work. The most famous of these, his Book of Festivals or Festial was probably the most frequently printed English book before the Reformation.
context_section_description: The Manuale Sacerdotis or Priest's Handbook seems to date from about 1400 – rather later than Mirk's other works, and when he was prior of Lilleshall. Like the Instructions, it seems to draw on William of Pagula's work, but it has an entirely different agenda from Mirk's earlier work. Instead of providing simple instruction in doctrine and practice, it aims to provide an understanding of the meaning and role of the priesthood. This accounts for Mirk's decision to write in Latin prose, as the audience is assumed to be better-educated. It is addressed to a friend of Mirk, named as "John, vicar of A." It has been conjectured that he was John Sotton, who was vicar of St Alkmund's from 1414, and he is called "John de S" in some manuscripts. This is not simply a preliminary dedication: John is continually addressed throughout the book.
  Mirk begins by contrasting the good priest with the modern priest, who is distracted by the vanities of secular life. He proceeds to a detailed account of the priest's activities, including the canonical hours and celebration of the Eucharist. Here, as he considers the focus of the priestly office, he explicitly responds to Lollardy, explaining in detail the doctrine of Transubstantiation. He re-uses the story of St Oda that he employed in his homily for Corpus Christi.
  Mirk's underlying purpose seems to be to make clear the correlation between the external activity to the inner life, which for Mirk, involves the following of a rule: “life without a rule is nothing less than dying.” While Mirk follows a written rule, he commends to the priest the principles inherent in Christ's own life.
  The Manuale has been overshadowed by the Festial and the Instructions, not least because it is in Latin and probably never had the wide readership of the vernacular works. Thirteen extant manuscripts are known. It has not yet been printed, although a critical edition by Susan Powell and James Girsch, based on Bodleian Library MS Bodley 632, is planned.
caption: Manuscript of The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis, a German Augustinian, and dating from about 1418. Imitation of Christ and an intense focus of the Eucharist were common threads in Augustinian theology and spirituality of the period.