medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Jim Bugslag wrote:
>
> I know much less about processions than Christopher claims, but a
> distinction
> certainly needs to be made between liturgical processions and
> extra-liturgical or para-liturgical processions. Christopher is
> certainly right that the city and environs of Chartres formed a
> "processional landscape", but the liturgical sources for
> Chartres don't extend back any earlier than the mid-12th century, and
> the
> development of the liturgical processions there, that took in
> churches both within the city walls and in the immediate vicinity (as
> well as a farther-ranging annual procession, on foot, to Orleans and
> back, 40 km away!), is unknown before that
> time. The stational processions of Rome are sometimes invoked as a
> sort of "model" for such processions elsewhere, but how this early
> tradition of processions might have connected up with later ones all
> over Europe lies outside of my
> superficial knowledge of the subject. Also unknown to me is when
> extra-liturgical processions began to develop. At Chartres, the most
> high-profile of these was the Grand Procession, in which the
> principal relics of the cathedral and most of the town clergy,
> together with a large lay contingent, processed out to the abbey of
> Josaphat (a 12th-century foundation, as Christopher says) for a mass
> and then back again, usually in order to invoke the Virgin's aid in
> obtaining needed rain for crops. The problem with these
> extra-liturgical processions is that they were recorded on an ad
> hoc basis, and little evidence that I know of survives for them
> before the 16th, and even more so, the 17th centuries. Plagues
> provoked innumerable votive
> processions in the later Middle Ages and Early Modern period. The
> earliest one I
> know of is "la Grand Procession" at Tournai, which began in 1089 in
> relation to the
> Mal des Ardents, but the great age of this, as far as the patheticly
> poor sources for it go, was the 17th century (in Catholic Europe,
> obviously). Many small shrines and religious houses on the
> continent, conveniently located within an easy walk of
> towns, became the goals of such "local pilgrimage" processions.
> Dealing with
> England is doubly difficult, not only because so little survives of
> such local shrines in the wake of the Reformation, but because of the
> "arrested development" of them
> from that time. Nevertheless, I'd be very surprised if they hadn't
> existed earlier. The question of when they arose, in this difficult
> case, may just be impossible now
> to answer. Outside of a few Holy Wells, there is little physical
> evidence for such local shrines in England. One of the best sources
> for such local shrines in England that I know of are wills, which
> mention such local shrines often in the 15th century. I don't know
> what survives in the way of Winchester wills, but they would be worth
> consulting in this respect. Even without sources, it might be
> legitimate to conclude that, where there are local shrines, there are
> processions (although I would welcome discussion of such a
> proposition).
Thanks for this. Part of the problem is that evidence from wildly different
dates is being combined for Winchester. But if we stick to liturgical
processions, a very early date is claimed. The Regularis Concordia of 970
was drawn up at Winchester, so it "must have" reflected the practice there.
This describes the Palm Sunday procession proceeding to the church where the
palms are blessed, and returning. It says nothing about the location of
that church. The Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc (late C11 - before
1089) gives more elaborate instructions for the Palm Sunday procession,
although it doesn't describe the destination where the 'statio' is made.
The returning procession, however, halts outside the city gates before
returning to the cathedral. The assumption is that Lanfranc's instructions
were not just for Canterbury. The 1114 Winchester document (I haven't seen
the text) apparently describes the combined procession making a 'statio' at
the church of St James, then the returning procession halting outside the
West Gate of Winchester, where the Abbot and monks of the New Minster
returned to Hyde (presumably without entering the city) and the Prior and
monks of the Old Minster returned to the cathedral.
The other piece of evidence claimed is from the Winton Domesday (early C12)
itself, I 105:
"Domus Alwini Poplestan et Alwinus heuere reddebant consuetudines TRE et
reddebant hominibus Destregilda xxxv d. Modo tenet Sawalo prb'to et non
fecit consuetudines; et inde recepit xii s. Illa terram sciatis fuisse TRE
hominum extra portam de West."
'The tenements of Alwin Pebble and Alwin the hewer paid the customs TRE and
paid the men of the Easter Guild 35 d. Now Sawal the priest holds them and
does not perform the customs. And he receives from them 12 s. Know that
TRE that land belonged to the men outside West Gate.'
This assumes that "Destregilda" is an elision of "de Eastran gilda" - and
that there was such a guild outside the West Gate, associated with the
procession.
John Briggs
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