medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Dear Paul,
I’d say this is very common practice among the confraternities (12th and 13th) that have mixed membership (clergy and laity), and religious orders like Franciscans or Carmelites were in their beginning extremely similar to confraternities. It is therefore not surprising that they emulated to some extent the confraternal legislation common at the time. I would not even call it “substitution”, rather everyone in the community does the best prayer that they are capable of: Priests Mass, other clergy psalms, laity paternosters.
So as a source I’d recommend reading the confraternity statutes that G. Meersseman edited in his “Ordo Fraternitatis”. I myself have published an article on the twelfth-century confraternities in Italy in JMH and the following is an excerpt from that article:
"In the Pescia confraternity, if a member died, then all others were obliged to attend the funeral services and donate 1 denarius. If the dead member were a priest or cleric, each priest in the confraternity would celebrate a Mass for him daily, up to 30 days after his death. The clerics, on the other hand, would chant 25 psalms during the same period. The lay members would say 20 paternosters for each departed cleric or priest daily for up to seven days.”
In the appendix to this article, there is the edition of the 12th statutes of the Pescia confraternity : "Statuimus etiam ut quando aliquis sacerdos vel clericus decesserit, unusquisque presbiter pro eo singulis diebus usque ad trigesimum missam celebret. Clericus vero usque ad prefatum diem pro sacerdote et pro clerico xxv psalmos decantet. . . . Laicus siquidem pro presbitero et clerico xx Pater Noster singulis diebus usque ad vii diem dicat.”
Best wishes,
Nesli
Neslihan Senocak
Associate Professor of History
Columbia University
Hagiography Society, President
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Not an exact parallel but it's in the regulations for the daily worship of the almshouse at Ewelme - which assumed that at least some of the almsmen would be able to manage a range of Latin prayers. They were expected to say the Matins of Our Lady and even to read at the Master’s direction. Those who could not recite Matins were to say the basic elements of lay instruction, the Paternoster, Ave and Creed, in set cycles of repetition (this is in John A. A. Goodall, God’s House at Ewelme: life, devotion and architecture in a fifteenth-century almshouse (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 146, 148, 234)
might be parallels in regulations for other big charitable foundations
Maddy
On 15/11/2018 05:26, Paul Chandler wrote:
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
I'm corresponding with a colleague who is writing on the Carmelite Rule ("formula vitae" between 1206 and 1214, "regula bullata" revised lightly and approved by Innocent IV in 1247).
He is unimpressed with the provision in par. 11 which provides for hermits who are literate to recite the canonical hours "with the clerics", and for those who are not to substitute Pater nosters (50 for Vigils, 15 for Vespers, 7 for each of the other hours -- he calls it "a legislative mess" from which no good could come. However, it seems to me a natural resolution of the situation of a community which contained both literate and illiterate members. I remember something very similar for the contemporaneous hermits of Giovanni Bono in central Italy. Giovanni himself, being illiterate, never attended the Office in church, but performed his own prayers and prostrations before an icon in his cell, opening a window so he could hear the chant from the church (it's somewhere in the lengthy
acta of his canonisation process, but I can't find the reference now). Interestingly, the Carmelite Rule does not actually specify whether the Office should be said in church or in the cell.
I seem to recall that Peter Damien expected his hermits to learn the entire Psalter by heart, even if they were otherwise illiterate, but I can't find that reference either.
Does anyone know of bibliography on the use of Pater nosters as a substitute for the canonical hours in the 12th-13th centuries? Or distinctions made between literate and non-literate religious?
Very grateful for any pointers. -- Paul
--
Paul Chandler, O.Carm.
Holy Spirit Seminary | PO Box 18 (487 Earnshaw Road) | Banyo Qld 4014 | Australia
office: (07) 3267 4804 | mobile: 044 882 4996
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