medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
John,
I'm not sure if this is exactly what you had in mind, but the private
mass obligations in monasteries and cathedral priories in England was a
real problem. For example, at Durham, two years after the Chapel of the
Nine Altars was begun, in 1244, the monks were pledged to 7332 masses a
year. If (and I've heard differing opinions about this) only one mass
per day could be said at each altar, at least 21 altars would have been
needed to fulfil this enormous obligation. There was occasional
legislation with respect to such masses. In 1249 the Benedictine
Chapter for Canterbury Province decreed that "lest the souls of defunct
benefactors be deprived through omission and negligence of the Masses
owed unto them," any priest-monk who passed more than three consecutive
days without saying mass should be punished; such a provision was also
made for York Province. In 1278 provision was made for the hiring of
secular priests to avoid negligence of masses; in c.1280 the 80 monks of
Bury St Edmunds employed 11 such chaplains to help with masses. And at
the more encompassing Council of Vienne in 1311 it was decreed that no
monk of 24 years of age and who was not otherwise disqualified (how, I
wonder?) might refuse to take holy orders when commanded by his abbot;
furthermore, dispensations on the age limit here decreed were made in
vast numbers after the losses of manpower incurred in the Black Death.
Despite all this legislation, however, the late Middle Ages were marked
by a decline in the diligence with which monastic houses carried out
their mass obligations. By the 15th century, masses were commonly
either "lumped together", with one mass supposedly representing a number
of individual masses, or else completely ignored. In Bishop Alnwick's
visitation of Peterborough in 1437, for example, it was found that
"oftimes very few masses are celebrated", and in 1447 it was found that
the monks had been in the habit of receiving pocket money for saying
masses. Presumably, this is one of the reasons for the development of
the full-blown chantry foundation, with an accompanying endowment to
hire a priest specifically in conjunction with it. I found most of this
information in G.G. Coulton, Five Centuries of Religion, vol. III
(Cambridge, 1936), Chapter V, "The Value of Masses".
Cheers,
Jim
John Briggs wrote:
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
> Can anyone point me to sources which would indicate who would serve
> chantries (and particularly chantry chapels) in monastic churches (and
> in particular monastic cathedrals)? I am thinking of England in the
> first instance.
>
> I would have thought that chantry chapels would have been rarer in
> monastic chuches, and would have been served by the monks themselves
> rather than by secular chaplains, with the exception of monastic
> cathedrals.
>
> To my surprise, I found a houses of Augustinian Canons (Anglesey
> Priory, Cambridgeshire) where early chantry agreements (VCH
> Cambridgeshire) specified secular chaplains, who were to be given food
> and lodging in the monastic house!
>
> (This may throw some light on the other vexed question as to whether
> regular canons served their parish churches themselves or put in vicars.)
>
> John Briggs
>
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