medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Laura said:
>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.
... Arguing from silence is a dangerous thing, and making a sweeping statement thereof rasher still, but I have never come across the issue of canonical permission being required for burial in an English church. But burial was certainly controlled by custom and by any religious community involved. The general pattern - already outlined by several contributors - of founders' rights to burial seems to me to pertain just as much to 'estate churches' as to the nearest rich church or larger religious communities, but the status level required to permit entry increases as one moves up the scale. Christopher Wilson's brilliant article 'The medieval monuments' in Collinson and Sparks, eds, A History of Canterbury cathedral (Oxford UP, 1995) goes into great detail, with considerable documentary support, with regard to who got buried where (and how that burial was monumentally expressed) at c1200-c1500 Canterbury.
And...
a
> community of three or four Augustinian canons. Would that count as a
> college of canons?
Not strictly speaking, in that as Augustinians they lived to a Rule and therefore counted as a small monastic community. But as they were all by definition priested they would have been most suitable to the saying of permanent chantry masses. You might want to establish whether they were attached to a larger community, or whether the foundation sets them up with an endowment and accomodation of their own -- in which case the difference between them and a small college of chantry priests is rather academic.
And ...
> I think
> they were probably chantry endowments anyway, since he'd certainly added
> the apse and built himself a tomb in it by the time of the last endowment.
> The gap between foundation and endowment puzzles me - and that's why I'm
> still not sure whether he built the church with the intention of being
> buried there. To muddy the waters further, the family seems to have
> already had funerary chapels elsewhere in major Paduan churches.
None of this sounds unusual. I've made a detailed study of 14th-century patronage at St Augustine's, Bristol, one of hte more architecturally remarkable 'dynastic burial houses'. It was clear that during the period of the rebuilding of the east end, which had built-in recesses for tombs designed into it, three successive lords Berkeley sponsored aspects of the architecture, focusing on their own presumed intended chantry chapels, and endowed chantry masses and obits in varying proportions. All of this comes in the period 1307-c1350, but the endowing of chantries came very late in the day: there could be a big gap between architectural work, burial, and final setting up of memorial masses, muddying the waters as to the original intention. And at the same time they built, or added priests to, or founded memorial masses at a wide range of religious buildings on their demesne - a Cistercian abbey, a couple of parish churches near their residences, several wayside chapels and hospitals. The lord who was most generous to St Augustine's in terms of chantry endowments was the only one of these not to be actually buried there, though his first wife was. Nothing is ever simple!
Telling you that you've just missed a three-day conference on English chantry chapels - which would have addressed many of your interests in endowment, etc - won't help, I'm sure, but the proceedings will be published eventually!
Jon
> >
> > 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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