1566 - A PEASANTS PAYING TITHES: PAYMENT OF YEARLY DUES
Name/Title
1566 - A PEASANTS PAYING TITHES: PAYMENT OF YEARLY DUESDescription
1566 - A PEASANTS PAYING TITHES: PAYMENT OF YEARLY DUES Artist: Pieter Bruegel, the Elder This is a large licensed, limited reproduction print of the original painting. The view painted is the inside of a typical Church Of England - mandated tithe counting house. The scene depicts poor peasants, farmers, and community members reluctantly bringing funds or in-kind items such as the center-pictured man with a goose to be used to settle his tithe "debt" to the Church Of England. Note the disarray of records and excess tithing of poor people. A woman is bent over to retrieve fresh eggs in a basket to settle her debt because she has no money. Soldiers from the government of England were used in revolving visits to each town province to collect what the appointed Vicar or Friar would have been collecting on a schedule from the common people. This formed a portion of the Robin Hood story with the Friar Tuck and Sherrif of Nottingham characters. One of the reasons the Puritans and Pilgrims left England to eventually sail to America was for the freedom to worship without the mandated tithe-tax forcibly retrieved by and for The Church Of England. The original painting is one in a set of 4, now housed in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium. Manifest Record: 1753347Collection
Art & Framed IllustratedCategory
Tithe Rent, Pew Rent, Mandated Tithe, Usury, Tithe Wars
History