medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

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

>Got a feeling I have sent this information to Med Rel  about a year ago.

yes, i think that we did.

>I was hoping someone knew of a serious study of this phenomenon using a
broader sample than my two or three, but nothing has come up.

me too, and i say we should keep periodically worrying this list until someone
either informs us of one or breaks down and actually does such a study.

>The same person may well be commemorated on different days in different
necrologies.

very frequent.

>Also, you frequently get spouses commemorated on the same day together with
other persons with similar names who look suspiciously like children /
grandchildren & other kin. It is unlikely they ALL died of the plague or in a
massacre. 

i've christened these "cluster" obits.

>The necrology or whatever 

i take it that the book itself is the "necrology" --the actual individual
notice within the book i call the "obituary" or "obituary notice" or just
"obit."  Just my own nomenclature.

>was essentially a book in use in the context of an ecclesiastical
organisation which - among other things - was pledged

or, payed, either at the time of death or by an earlier gift, the charter
recording which may mention that inscription in the institution's "Book of
Life" will be granted as part of the recognition of the gift.

>to pray for the soul of certain persons on a regular basis.  

far as i know, there is no question about this being their primary function
--both as a commemorative inscription in the institution's "Book of Life" and
as an "appointment calendar" for keeping track of what services were to be
held on certain days.  (and who might be dropping in, expecting hospitality.)

>Thus if X dies on the premises or nearby, the requiem mass in either the day
of the death or the day following. This event will be repeated annually. But
if X dies some distance away, then surely the requiem will the sung on the day
the news reaches the institution. 

yes.

sometimes, even in the necrologies of institutions "in" the same town, there
will be a difference of a day --say, the fellow dies up in the City at night,
but word doesn't reach the Benedictine or Austin house down the hill (and
outside the city walls) until the next morning (Chartres is my paradigm here,
as always).

>Even if the news bulletin gives the date of the death, the institution is
hardly going to wait ten or eleven months before performing its dutiful rite.
And I suggest it is THIS date (the date of the requiem) that is recorded in
the necrology. 

the first mass, yes.

>If another member of X's family dies, then s/he will be added to the same day
so that the family (biological or familial) can all be commemorated together.

by the surviving family members, as i see it.

families of the "lesser nobility" had (just as did their Betters) close ties
to particular monastic/collegiate houses, as benefactors, suppliers of
personel, "friends" and "advocati" of the institution, etc.

and there would surely be an advantage for all parties in having the
anniversaries of family members "clustered" on or around specific dates, so
that the family could come into town (or to the _bourg_ of the rural
institution) from their country estates, either as a group or singly, from
wherever they happened to be, celebrate the commemoration of the death of the
member(s), transact family (and institutional) business, etc. 

the whole thing might take place over several days, probably/surely including
attendance at whatever other regularly scheduled "feasts" might be happening,
either in that particular house or elsewhere in the town.

the best of these "clusters" which i can recall seeing were those involving
several members of the "Chenard" family, whose seat was a few miles out in the
Beauce south of Chartres.  A member of their family, Udo, was abbot of the
Benedictine house of St. Peter's from 1130-50, and i'm of the opinion that it
was Udo who was responsible for seeing to it that his uncle, mother and other
kinsfolk were both in the abbey's necrology and placed rather closely
together, chronlogically.

>My very tentative conclusions are these: where you get a group, the date is
the date of the death or the first requiem of the first named person. 

perhaps.

>The rest are then tacked on - sometime even unto the fourth generation.

i've not seen such an extended period of time in my own documents, but see no
reason why it couldn't extend such.

>Where you get a discrepancy between two institutions, the explanation 
may lie in the distance between the location of either and the place where the
death occurred.

what i've also not seen --in my very unsystematic gleanings-- is "cluster
obits" for the same members of the same family in the necrologies of different
institutions.  this would be interesting to see, if one could come across
enough surviving documents in a single, rather narrowly defined region.

all this being said, however, while this phenomenon definitely appears to be
happening, it is by no means common --or at least as common as we might expect
it to be, considering how "convenient" it is, at least in our wretched
reconstruction of things en ces temps la.

also, all the instances of it that i noticed were rather early (late 
11th-12th cc.) --but that might just be because i was only interested in folks
from that time period and tuned out the rest.

best from here,

christopher

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