medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
----- Original Message -----
From: "Laura Jacobus" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious
culture" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 13 April 2009 18:03
Subject: Re: [M-R] burials in church (and in chapels of ease)
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
> Very many thanks for all the replies so far, and do please keep them
> coming! There's plenty to follow up already, but in answer to questions
> which have been raised-
>
> In this case the Scrovegni held onto the ius patronatus (advowson?)
> through several generations and hedged it about with various conditions to
> stop it being sold, but it did eventually get sold anyway. I seem to
> recall that the sale had to be ratified by the bishop, as this was one of
> the original conditions. I've not come across anything stating that the
> ius patronatus included the right to burial, and my guess is that it was
> unconnected to this right by legal means- but from Jim's reply it may have
> been connected by custom ie burial rights may have been one of the
> unofficial perks of founding your own church. I wish I knew the answer
> with respect to chantries, but my sense is that Italian private chapels
> within churches were pretty much the same thing.
>
> Getting back the the Scrovegnis, there is a theory that the church was
> intended as the founder's 'mausoleum' but I find this hard to prove one
> way or another as he was eventually buried in an apsidal chapel that was
> added to the original church. It's this that made me wonder whether he
> needed permission, and whether that had been witheld at the time he built
> the church but was later granted, necessitating the addition. The
> original permit to build is only known through hearsay, but it suggests
> that he was given permission to build it as a convenient place of worship
> for members of his household, nothing more. This seems equivalent to an
> English estate church or 'chapel of ease', and while I know their patrons
> eventually got buried in them too, I wonder whether they needed
> permission.
>
> All best
>
> Laura
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Thomas Izbicki" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: 13 April 2009 16:55
> Subject: [SPAM]Re: [M-R] burials in church
>
>
>> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>>
>> Laura,
>> Jim's message just reminded me of two things:
>> - The ius patronatus of a chapel. Did it include a right to burial?
>> Could the right to a chapel be sold?
>> - Is there an Italian equivalent to the chantry? The literature on
>> English chantry chapels is interesting, but I am unsure how applicable it
>> is to Italy.
>> Tom Izbicki
>>
>> jbugslag wrote:
>>> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
>>> culture
>>>
>>> Laura,
>>> I've been waiting for someone more learned on the matter than me to
>>> weigh in on this, but my feeling is that, by 1300, burial in churches
>>> was well on the way to becoming quite normal. Before the 11th century,
>>> burial usually took place in the churchyard, with the exception of "the
>>> very special dead", the saints in other words, and with the equally
>>> important exception of founders of churches and their families, which in
>>> the time before the investiture controversy were very widespread.
>>> Beginning in the 11th century, burials within churches began to
>>> multiply. From founders, heads of religious institutions began to
>>> demand this right, and from there, the floodgates opened. Before the
>>> 13th century, church burial was still a highly prestigious privilege,
>>> but even after it became quite common, most people would have still been
>>> buried outside in the churchyard. And initially, the cost of this
>>> privilege was prohibitively high. At Peterborough in England, for
>>> example, Abbot Ernulf (1107-1114) made an agreement between his convent
>>> and those knights who held abbey lands, that a knight should pay yearly
>>> two parts of his tithes and at his death a third of his whole estate for
>>> burial in the church. As well, all his "knightly endowments", including
>>> his horse and his arms were to be brought with his body to the funeral
>>> ceremonies and offered up to St Peter, at which time the convent
>>> received the corpse in procession and performed the Office of the Dead.
>>> As burial in the church became more common, the cost was undoubtedly
>>> made more reasonable. By the later Middle Ages, it was undoubtedly
>>> relatively inexpensive, yet other factors were then involved in church
>>> burial. Under normal circumstances, an individual was expected to be
>>> buried at his parish church (whether inside or in the cemetery
>>> surrounding it), but the appearance of the Mendicant orders changed that
>>> situation dramatically. More and more, mendicant churches began to
>>> compete with parish churches for the burial of citizens, to the point
>>> where they were widely criticized for it. And the concept of an
>>> Eigenkirche certainly did not go away. Both monastic and collegiate
>>> churches were founded in the later Middle Ages specifically as burial
>>> churches, either for individuals or dynasties. Concurrently, private
>>> chapels within larger churches began to proliferate. An indicative
>>> "early" example is the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris; as built in the
>>> late 12th and early 13th century, it was ringed with projecting
>>> buttresses supporting the flyers above. During the late 13th and early
>>> 14th centuries, the aisle walls were progressively broken through, and
>>> private chapels built between the buttresses, to the point where the
>>> entire cathedral was ringed with private chapels. In Italy, such
>>> private chapels came to be designed from the beginning, as at S. Croce,
>>> the Franciscan church in Florence. Although I am not certain of the
>>> legal basis for it, families could "buy" such chapels, although it was
>>> not always the case that they accommodated burials. A good source for
>>> this phenomenon, from an architectural point of view, is H.M. Colvin's
>>> Architecture and the Afterlife, but I can't remember whether he
>>> addresses the institutional aspects of the phenomenon that you were
>>> enquiring after. Another source that might be useful is Philippe
>>> Aries's encyclopedic The Hour of Our Death, which certainly treats this
>>> phenomenon from many perspectives in considerable detail. Erwin
>>> Panofsky's book, Tomb Sculpture, may also be useful. In relation to
>>> your specific topic, it strikes me that the Scrovegni family was
>>> essentially emulating noble practice in founding a family chapel that
>>> would accommodate burial. You might consider "parallel" cases such as
>>> the Church of Notre-Dame at Ecouis, founded in the early 14th century by
>>> Enguerrand de Marigny as a dynastic burial church (cf the book on this
>>> by Dorothy Gillerman) or the monastery of Tewkesbury in England,
>>> refurbished as a dynastic mausoleum in the early 14th century by the
>>> Despenser family. I hope your query provokes a response that addresses
>>> legislation, because I am interested in it, too. Cheers,
>>> Jim Bugslag
>>>
>>> On 12 Apr 2009 at 14:10, Laura Jacobus wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
>>>> culture
>>>>
>>>> Happy Easter and Passover to all.
>>>>
>>>> Can anyone tell me what regulations or customs existed regarding
>>>> burials in churches (thirteen and fourteenth century Italy being my
>>>> main concerns)? I'm working on a private church (the Scrovegni Chapel
>>>> in Padua), and my sense is that c.1300 it was still quite rare for
>>>> lay-people to be buried in churches, though the practice was gaining
>>>> in popularity and Italian churches began to sprout private family
>>>> chapels for the purpose around this time. I'd be particularly
>>>> interested to know whether private churches or family chapels within
>>>> churches might have needed a special license for burials, or whether
>>>> it was simply assumed that patrons had the right to be buried in them.
>>>>
>>>> All best
>>>>
>>>> Laura
>>>>
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>>>
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>>
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