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MEDIEVAL-RELIGION  July 2002

MEDIEVAL-RELIGION July 2002

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Subject:

Necrologies, Obituaries &c - was Visitation &c

From:

Christopher Crockett <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Mon, 8 Jul 2002 08:38:32 -0700

Content-Type:

text/plain

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Parts/Attachments

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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

"Ms Brenda M. Cook" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

[quoting me]
>>never having seen mention of this phenomenon in the literature (i'd welcome
a reference from someone), i like to call these "cluster obituaries" --several
families not always on the same day, but all within a few days of each other,
usually in the necrology of the same house, but sometimes in those of several
houses in the region.


>I too would like to know of any study of this phenomenon. Nothing in the
literature I have read. 

i had a bit of a conversation with someone considerably more knowledgeable
than i (not difficult to be) at my stall at k'zoo a few years ago and bounced
the idea off him (Joseph Dyer??) and, while he too had not actually read
anything of the sort, it seemed to him to be a reasonable deduction. 

one recent work that i've only glanced at which, at a minimum (and it's a
pretty small work) might have some recent bibliographic hopefulls is in the
sometimes useful series published by Brepols, "Typologie des Sources du Moyen
Âge Occidental" :

N. Huyghebaert, _Les documents nécrologiques,_  1972. 76 p., + 14 p. updating
by J.L. Lemaître.

(http://www.brepols.net/catalogue/index.jsp?mpk=20295&art=90530 )

>And it causes laughable discepancies in some of the less discriminating
family trees on the 'Net. 

my limited experience with viewing medieval genealogies on the web is that,
except perhaps for those dealing with very highest level of the "nobility,"
they are all inherently unreliable.

even off the web, in old-fashioned "printed" books, the information in the
secondary literature (including, say, footnotes to published charters) must be
used with great caution and "controlled" against the actual sources.

i'm sure that the published chartrain material is not at all exceptional in
this regard, and i've found it to be *full* of contradictions and revisions.

eg., footnotes in sucessive publications of cartularies --even by the same
editor-- might give a great variety of information about a given family, but
be subject to sucessive revisions as more and more of the charters were
published or simply unearthed in the course of the 19th c.

but, unlike a webpage, the earlier publication is *out there* in the world and
cannot be changed nor in any way linked to the subsequent publication
correcting or expanding it.

and even the better "monographic" treatments of individual families (de Dion
on the LePuisets or Depoin on the Gallardons & the Leves) must be used with
considerable caution, not only checked against the published charters but
also, wherever possible, against the originals themselves (considerable
opportunities for transcription errors, there in those tedious and
"unimportant" witness lists).

this can end up looking a *lot* like Work, if one is not careful.

the only way i can see to arrive at a dependable genealogy is to just plow
through the charters (and the occasional other sources, including necrolgies)
and tease out the relationships, one name at a time, citing one's sources in
specificity so that one can go back, repeatedly, and weed out the inevitable,
innumerable, errors one has made.

(http://www.ariadne.org/centrechartraine/lords/GALFAM1.htm )

not many genealogical sites i've seen on the web have the patience for such
tedious work.

>Is the phrase "cluster obituaries" copyrighted ? [:)] 

alas, yes, it is (though i believe i used it in a previous discussion on this
list a year or so ago).

however, if you will write your name on the back of a hundred dollar bill and
send it to me, i'll speak to the Copyright Holder and see what i can do.

he's a pretty tough Old Bird, but responds remarkably well to the sight of
Cash.

>>(a good occassion for a family reunion, also.)

>A nice idea this, and one that had not occurred to me.

thanks.

i sometimes found that if i could immerse myself deep enough in the charter
material i could, to a certain extent, enter --or at least "view from the
inside"-- the world in which they were created, and think in terms of some of
what may have been going on, on the "micro" level, in the lives of the people
envolved.

seeing these "lesser nobility" families out in their "seats" and their
relationship to the Great City of Chartres (12th c. population of, what?,
15,000??) was part of this process.

a Trip into Town would surely have been something of a Special Occasion, for
most members of the family (the Knights, of course, would have gotten around
quite a bit more than the womenfolk and younger members).

and, of course, the Occasion of an Anniversary Mass (much less a *series* of
Anniversary Masses) for one's departed kinsmen and women would have been a
very Solemn and Special Occassion indeed, i should think. 

>>the same fellow would commonly be entered into different necrologies on
different days, the difference sometimes a function of the distance the given
house was from the actual place of death.

>Exactly my feeling, especially if X died (for example) in the Holy Land, or
if the eccl. inst. was distant from the family seat.

yes, but great distances needn't *necessarily* be involved; and, when they are
*not* we are given a further clue into what the devil was Going On.

as i recall there are one day discrepancies in the death dates of quite a few
Chartres fellows (bishops and suchlike), between and among the various
surviving necrolgies of, say, the cathedral and the outlying monasteries (none
of which is more than an hour's walk from the other).

suggesting to me that :

1) as you noted previously, contrary to our own supreme and myopic interest in
exact chronolgies, the *actual* date of death of the guy was, to the
Middlevils, of secondary importance (compared to the Absolute Necessity of
seeing to it that his name was intered into the house's Book of Life and that
there was formally established the Regular Celebration of his Anniversary);

b) given this, the entry was made during the next working period after the
news was received at the given house --thus, word of the death of the bishop
might actually reach the house in the evening, say, but would not be intered
until the next day, as part of the normal scribal routine.

(just guessing, of course.)

>There is the additional point of the OBITUARY SCROLLS of senior
ecclesiastics 

and, not just the Seniores, but many Lesser Lights as well, including (as best
we can tell) quite ordinary monks.

>- those things that went the rounds from monastery to monastery 

the result of, what were they called?, "confraternities" (?) between the
various abbeys --agreements to share (or commonly pool) the commemoration of
their departed members.

>to have laudatory comments added on. 

sometimes with additions; but frequently --most often, if i recall-- just the
list of names was enough.

much to the chagrin of modern Scholarship.

the main thing was, apparently (and as i understand it) to get the guy's Name
in the Book, so that the commemoratory and spiritually salubrious Ju-Ju can be
set in motion.

>Probably not enough evidence has survived, but has anyone tried to collate
the entries on an obituary scroll with the entries in the necrologies of the
contributing abbeys ? 

i believe the Urpublication of the Rolls is :

L. DELISLE, Rouleaux des Morts du IX au XV siecle, Paris 1866 

there should be some more up-to-date stuff on them in the Huyghebaert i
mentioned above, since they are certainly "documents nécrologiques."

our problem here is that such intensive work would probably only appear in a
monographic publication dealing with the necrological sourses for, say, a
given house and wouldn't necessarily show up in some more generalized
discussion of the subject.

>To see if the commemoration dates would fit with the possible date the scroll
arrived and was added to.

worth doing, for sure.

let me know if i can help you do it with the Chartres material.

i'll hold your coat.

>>the possibility exists, however, that having an anniversary mass for 
the same guy (or girl) on different days would allow members of the family to
attend more than one ceremony in more than one house on the same trip in from
the Sticks.

>Another nice one this,

just follows naturally from the observations above (viday soupra) and the
"simple" act of trying to put oneself in the place of these folks.

reading historical fiction (Undset & Oldenbourg) helps, i find.

>But in any case, Necrology data should carry a health warning for
unsuspecting genealogists!

and even suspecting ones.

like i say, i can see no other way to do it than to just slog through the
original sources...

the _pons asinorum_ has been washed out in the Flood.

best from here,

christopher


Christopher's Book Room
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