medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Since I am currently working on a dissertation based on mortuary rolls, I
thought I might comment on one part of this discussion:


Quoting Christopher Crockett <[log in to unmask]>:

> "Ms Brenda M. Cook" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> >There is the additional point of the OBITUARY SCROLLS of senior
> ecclesiastics
>
> and, not just the Seniores, but many Lesser Lights as well, including (as
> best
> we can tell) quite ordinary monks.

Yep, some houses seem to have circulated rolls just for major figures but
others sent out rolls for "ordinary monks."  Rolls were only sent out, however,
for members of the community; for example, if a roll honors a patron, it
invariably turns out that the patron joined the community prior to his death.
>
> >- those things that went the rounds from monastery to monastery
>
> the result of, what were they called?, "confraternities" (?) between the
> various abbeys --agreements to share (or commonly pool) the commemoration
> of
> their departed members.

Yes, they were called confraternities, but the link between rolls and
confraternities is not as neat as previously supposed.  For example, I have
compared the confraternity agreements of Solignac with the houses contributing
to the mortuary roll of Hugh of Solignac in 1240.  Solignac appears to have
been in confraternity with 37 communities in 1240, but only 9 of those
communities contributed to the roll (5 Benedictine houses, 1 Cistercian house,
3 groups of canons), even though the roll contains tituli (entries) from 350
communities.  Most notably, Fleury and St. Martial of Limoges had long-standing
confraternity with Solignac (dating from 942); St. Martial and SOlignac
commemorated one another's dead each year on the same day in February.  Yet
there are no tituli from these houses on Hugh's roll, although they
contributed to other rolls.  Conques established a confraternity arrangement
with Solignac sometime between 1176-1178; but although Conques frequently
contributed to mortuary rolls, it did not appear on Hugh's roll either.

My theory is that some closely related houses might have been contacted with
prayer requests immediately after Hugh's death, because of their connections to
Solignac.  The roll was not issued for some months after his death, and perhaps
the houses were not contacted again because they had already commemorated Hugh
in their own way.  It was the prayers that mattered, after all, not the
notation on the roll acknowledging a request for prayer.



> >to have laudatory comments added on.
>
> sometimes with additions; but frequently --most often, if i recall-- just
> the
> list of names was enough.

And sometimes not-so-laudatory comments, as the outrageous "All abbesses
deserve to die" verse on a mortuary roll that caught the eye of Southern and
was quoted in his Making of the Middle Ages.  It was this reference that piqued
my curiosity and led to my dissertation topic.  Many rolls, as you say, have
only lists of names for whom prayer is requested but there are plenty of rolls,
esp. from the 12th century, that contain verse contributions from many of the
houses visited.  About half the houses contributing to the roll of Abbess
Mathilda of Holy Trinity, Caen-- the roll with the "all abbesses deserve to
die" verse-- just added a simple RIP and list of dead and about half
contributed verses which might or might not have much to do with the dead
abbess, depending on a number of factors including the relationship between the
contributing house and Holy Trinity.


> much to the chagrin of modern Scholarship.
>
> the main thing was, apparently (and as i understand it) to get the guy's
> Name
> in the Book, so that the commemoratory and spiritually salubrious Ju-Ju can
> be
> set in motion.
>
> >Probably not enough evidence has survived, but has anyone tried to collate
> the entries on an obituary scroll with the entries in the necrologies of
> the
> contributing abbeys ?

 I had hoped to do that as part of my dissertation work, but it doesn't look
like I'll have the time.  Someday, though.....

>
> i believe the Urpublication of the Rolls is :
>
> L. DELISLE, Rouleaux des Morts du IX au XV siecle, Paris 1866
>
> there should be some more up-to-date stuff on them in the Huyghebaert i
> mentioned above, since they are certainly "documents nécrologiques."

Delisle is wonderful, with tons of examples collected in one yummy package.  he
also did an edition of an extant roll for Vital of Savigny, and included
photographs of the entire roll.  There you'll find what is believed to be the
actual handwriting of Heloise, who most probably wrote the verse for the
Argenteuil and may well have added it to the roll herself.

If anyone needs more recent bibliography, backchannel me.  Huyghebaert does
have some references.  Very little has been written in English on rolls,
unfortunately.  Steer clear, btw, of Jean-Claude Kahn's "Les moines messagers,"
which purports to use mortuary rolls to discern changing attitudes toward death
over several centuries.  It's a mess.

>
> our problem here is that such intensive work would probably only appear in
> a
> monographic publication dealing with the necrological sourses for, say, a
> given house and wouldn't necessarily show up in some more generalized
> discussion of the subject.
>
> >To see if the commemoration dates would fit with the possible date the
> scroll
> arrived and was added to.
>
> worth doing, for sure.
>
> let me know if i can help you do it with the Chartres material.
>
> i'll hold your coat.

If anyone IS working on such a project, I'd love to hear about it.


Teresa Leslie
Emory University

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