medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Many thanks for this. The Anglesey Priory agreements are comparatively
early: 1251 and 1331, so the basic problem was obviously identified
fairly early.
John Briggs
On 20/04/2010 22:32, Dr Jim Bugslag wrote:
>
> 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".
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