The discussions on de(con)secration have tended to presume that an
abandoned church would need to be formally unhallowed, but I am skeptical.
Italy has a great many tithe lists from the last several centuries of the
middle ages, lists that, region by region, enumerate churches and their
incomes. These lists reveal a fair number of bankrupt churches, variously
designated. Some were viable on earlier tithes lists, then ceased to be in
later ones. Yet they remain on list.
There were lots of possible ecclesiastical uses for abandoned churches.
The Mediterranean world has a whole array of shrine chapels that might be
visited formally, once a year, as goals of or way stations to local
pilgrimages. There are churches taken over by hermits. There are
abandoned churches that might in the future be taken over by hermits
inasmuch as a frequent topos of hermit saints' vitae is that the
saint-to-be finds an abandoned church or chapel and sets up shop. I think
people presumed that churches were churches and if, regrettably, they
became inactive, they were still potentially sacred places in which to pray
(as Francis did at the ruined San Damiano and as a plethora of romance
heroes did in forest chapels). People probably hoped that sacred spots
fallen on hard times would eventually be restored to greater
respectability, but, in the meantime, there they were.
--John Howe, Texas Tech
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