medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>members of the same family are frequently commemorated on the same day in necrologies - they can't
>ALL have died together !
Note also the numbers of saints of the same name commemorated on the same or subsequent days.
Graham
****************************************
Dr Graham Jones
Lecturer in English Topography
University of Leicester
Centre for English Local History
Marc Fitch Historical Institute
5 Salisbury Road
Leicester LE1 7QR
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)116 252 2764
Fax: +44 (0)116 252 5769
e-Mail: [log in to unmask]
Web pages: http://www.le.ac.uk/elh/grj1
-----Original Message-----
From: Ms Brenda M. Cook [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 04 July 2002 21:47
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [M-R] Visitation &c
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Theoretically, once the
> (purely fictional) date of Christmas was set, all
> other dates (as was the case with the Annunciation)
> should have followed from that date.
I absolutely agree with the rest, but I quibble with the phrase "purely
fictional" for Dec 25th as the commemoration of the birth of Christ. Surely
we should see this as his official birthday, the convenient and symbolically
appropriate day for his birth to be celebrated ? After all, the Queen has
her Official Birthday on June 8th (this year - it can vary a bit from year
to year), a suitable day for outdoor ceremonial and approximately six months
from the New Year, that other occasion on which Honours are announced. The
(then) Princess Elizabeth of York was actually born on 21 April 1926.
I suspect that to the mediaeval mind it was more important to celebrate an
event regularly every year than to be bureaucratically accurate as to date -
something which was not always known. I am specifically thinking of the
discrepancies in the death dates recorded for the same person in different
necrologies and chronicles - and the fact that I suspect that the day in a necrology when the death
is commemorated is the anniversary of the day the NEWS of the death of the
first recorded, or most socially significant member of the family, reached
the ecclesiastical institution, and was the anniversary of the first requiem
mass rather than of the actual death. (The rest of the family got added
later.) After all, even if you KNEW the date X had died, you were not going
to wait ten or more months to pray for his soul on the "right" day.
Brenda MC
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