Journal of Medieval History, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 69–86, 1999

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Ceolfrid: history, hagiography and memory in seventh- and eighth-

century Wearmouth–Jarrow

Simon Coates

Department of History

, King’s College, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, England

Abstract

This article investigates the manner in which Wearmouth–Jarrow was able to define itself as a

religious community through the manner in which it remembered the activities of its former abbot,
Ceolfrid. Ceolfrid’s memory was cultivated in two written texts: the anonymous Vita Ceolfridi and
Bede’s Historia Abbatum. The article explores the nodal points around which both texts
constructed Ceolfrid’s memory paying particular attention to the gifts he made to the community
and his involvement in liturgy. It also contextualises the two Lives by analysing texts from
Frankish Gaul which they used as models or which shared similar concerns. The article concludes
by considering the differences between the two texts and argues that Bede consciously sought
deliberately to forget certain aspects of Ceolfrid’s career as a response to the threat he perceived
Bishop Wilfrid had presented to the late seventh- and early eighth-century Northumbrian Church.

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Keywords

: Memory; History; Hagiography; Ceolfrid

In recent years historians have become increasingly aware of the importance of the

process of commemoration, particularly the liturgical commemoration of the dead, in

early medieval society. However, one body of source material which allows this process
to be investigated has been relatively neglected by English-language speaking historians:
the Libri Memoriales or Libri Vitae of the great monasteries. The purpose of these books
was to record the names of men and women associated with the monastery concerned,
and who hence formed a focus for its prayers, either as members of it, patrons, or even
servants. The earliest of three surviving examples from Anglo-Saxon England is known
as the Liber Vitae of Durham and, although difficult to date because it consists of entries

SIMON COATES is a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at King’s College, London. He has

published in History, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Speculum, Studies in Church History 33: The
Church Retrospective, Downside Review, and Historical Research.

*Corresponding author. E-mail: simon john.coates@kcl.ac.uk

]

Many references to the now large amount of literature on the subject of commemoration can be found in

Memoria

. Der geschichtliche Zeugniswert des liturgischen Gedenkens im Mittelalter, ed. K. Schmid and J.

Wollasch (Munster, 1984). The commemoration of the dead is covered in F. Paxton, Christianizing death

The creation of a ritual process in early medieval Europe (Ithaca, N.Y., 1990); M. McLaughlin, Consorting
with saints

: The ideology of prayer for the dead in early medieval France (Ithaca, N.Y., 1993); and P. J.

Geary, Living with the dead in the middle ages (Ithaca, N.Y., 1994).

Simon Coates

made and recopied over time, arguably dates from the ninth century, possibly from

around 840.

Beginning with a list of kings and duces and written in alternating lines of gold and

silver, this book was appropriate for a royal monastery. Although it has traditionally
been associated with Durham and the community of Saint Cuthbert, it has recently been
argued that the text’s ultimate origin can be ascribed to Wearmouth–Jarrow and the

absence of a bishops’ list from its contents may further point in this direction. Heading

a list of abbots and priests is Ceolfrid, abbot of Wearmouth–Jarrow. Examination of the
kings’ list reveals names which attest to wide bonds of prayer and patronage extending
from Scotland to Francia. The Picto–Scottish quotient is relatively high and is attested
by such names as Oengus I, son of Fergus, 729–61; Constantine, son of Fergus

790–820; and Eoghenan, son of Oengus II, who died in 839. In addition to such great
names as that of Charlemagne, one also finds lesser Frankish kings who are commemo-
rated. One such king is Helpric or Chilperic. This figure was Chilperic II, a Merovingian
ruler and former cleric from Neustria vilified by the Carolingians for his weakness who

was defeated by Charles Martel in a civil war and ended his days under house arrest. If
one were to ask why a weak, failed Frankish ruler was remembered by a Northumbrian
monastic community, the answer lies in the figure of Ceolfrid. Having left his brethren
bound for Rome carrying with him a huge pandect, a complete Latin Bible, the Codex
Amiatinus, as a gift for the pope, Ceolfrid was welcomed in Francia by Chilperic. His
journey, like the king’s rule, was a failure. He died at Langres in 716 and the Codex

Amiatinus reached Rome without him.

The Libri Memoriales, as commemorative litanies, were texts designed to cultivate

The paucity of English-language scholarship on Libri Vitae has, in part, been rectified by the recent edition of

one of the three surviving Anglo-Saxon texts by Simon Keynes, The Liber Vitae of New Minster and Hyde
Abbey Winchester

. British Library Stowe 944. Together with leaves from British Library Cotton Vespasian

. VIII and British Library Cotton Titus D. XXVII. Earliest English Manuscripts in Facsimile, 26

(Copenhagen, 1996). The introduction provides useful background to the Anglo-Saxon texts as a whole

(49–65). The fullest study, however, remains J. Gerchow, Die Gedenkuberlieferung der Angelsachsen
(Berlin, 1988). For the Durham Liber Vitae, see Liber Vitae Ecclesiae Dunelmensis, ed. A. Hamilton-
Thompson, Publications of the Surtees Society, 136 (London, 1923); Liber Vitae Ecclesiae Dunelmensis, ed.
J. Stevenson, Publications of the Surtees Society, 13 (London, 1841). A full study is needed. Until one
appears, it is necessary to consult E. Briggs, ‘Religion, society and politics and the Liber Vitae of Durham’
(Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Leeds, 1987) for further secondary comment.

Gerchow, Die Gedenkuberlieferung der Angelsachsen, 119–31.

Gerchow, Die Gedenkuberliferung der Angelsachsen, 306.

Gerchow, Die Gedenkuberliferung der Angelsachsen, 304, nos. 43, 80, 100; S. Airlie, ‘The view from

Maastricht’, in: Scotland in dark age Europe, ed. B. Crawford (St Andrews, 1994), 33–46, at 42.

Gerchow, Die Gedenkuberlieferung der Angelsachsen, 304, no. 79 (Charlemagne); no. 67 (Helpric or

Chilperic); Liber Historiae Francorum, ed. B. Krusch (Monumenta Germaniae Historica [henceforth MGH],
Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum [henceforth SRM] II, Hanover, 1888), cc. 52–3; Trans. P. Fouracre and R.
Gerberding, Late Merovingian France

: history and hagiography 640 –720 (Manchester, 1996), 95–6;

Fredegar, Chronicarum quae dicuntur Fredegarii scholastici libri IV, ed. B. Krusch, (MGH, SRM II,
Hanover, 1888), cc. 9–10; Trans. J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Fourth Book of the Chronicle of Fredegar
(London, 1960), 88–9. For the importance of 716 in the rise of Charles Martel, see R. Gerberding, ‘716: A
crucial year for Charles Martel’, in: Karl Martell in seiner Zeit, ed. J. Jarnut, U. Nonn and M. Richter
(Sigmaringen, 1994), 205–216.

Historia Abbatum auctore anonymo (anon, Vita Ceolfridi ), ed. C. Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae opera

historica, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1896), vol. 1. c. 32 [henceforth VC followed by chapter number / s]; Bede,
Historia Abbatum, ed. Plummer in the same volume, c. 21. [henceforth HA followed by chapter number / s].

Ceolfrid: history, hagiography and memory in seventh- and eighth-century Wearmouth–Jarrow

memory. Memory was triggered off by the invocation of a name in prayer. This paper is
concerned with the manner in which memory moulds and shapes the collective religious
identity of monastic communities. Monasticism was dependent upon memory. Monks
operated in a world of collective experience, identifying themselves with exemplary
figures from the past. Furthermore, the organization of monastic communities: the daily
round of manual work, prayer and study, was focused around, and given authority by,
the frozen memory of past communities in written Rules. Above all, however, this
paper’s focus is the manner in which the collective social memory of Wearmouth–
Jarrow reconstructed the life of its former abbot through hagiography. Commemoration
was central to the cult of saints. The term memoria was used to describe not only the

relics of the saints themselves but also the tomb or shrine where they were kept. Saints’
lives are part of a genre of immense longevity, relatively impervious to change, and yet
also the product of particular circumstances and environments. The rewriting of a saint’s
vita, during a period of rapid cultural transformation, reveals the manner in which
memory is not static. It changes as circumstances change and, furthermore, ‘different

groups of people remember things in different ways’.

By investigating two texts: the

anonymous Vita Ceolfridi and the later Historia Abbatum written by Bede, a pupil of
Ceolfrid’s monastic scriptorium, it may be possible to recover the memory of seventh-
and early eighth-century Wearmouth–Jarrow for our own age and to cast light upon how
the figure of Abbot Ceolfrid in particular reveals the intellectual and social environment

of an early Northumbrian monastic community.

The Vita Ceolfridi was composed at a time of transformation and change. Following a

prolonged period of relative stability and security, the monks’ collective memory of their
former abbot, Ceolfrid, was aroused by the sudden, and unexpected, announcement of
his departure for Rome and the need to select a long-standing member of the
community, Hwaetbert as his successor. Ceolfrid confirmed the election along with
Bishop Acca of Hexham and Hwaetbert further consolidated his position by composing

a letter to the pope informing him of the succession.

This relationship between a

distinct period of transformation and the cultivation of memory was made more explicit
when Hwaetbert, in one of his first acts, carried out under the authorisation of Acca,
translated the relics of Eosterwine and Sigfrid, two early members of the community

There is now a large amount of literature on the subject of memory in medieval culture. For a sample, see J.

Coleman, Ancient and medieval memories

. Studies in the reconstruction of the past (Cambridge, 1992); J.

Fentress and C. Wickham, Social memory (Oxford, 1992); Mary Carruthers, The book of memory

. A study of

memory in medieval culture (Cambridge, 1990); P. Geary, Phantoms of remembrance

. Memory and oblivion

at the end of the first millennium (Princeton, 1994); A. Remensynder, Remembering kings past

. Monastic

foundation legends in medieval southern France (Ithaca, N.Y., 1995); P. Connerton, How societies remember
(Cambridge, 1989). For a consideration of memory in one early medieval context, that of Notker’s Life of
Charlemagne, see M. Innes, ‘Memory, orality and literacy in an early medieval society’, Past and Present,
158 (1998), 3–36, and for a wide consideration of the relationship between oral and written culture and the
preservation of the past, see M. T. Clanchy, From memory to written record

. England 1066 –1307 (2nd

edn., Oxford, 1993).

‘Memoria’, in: Mediae latinitatis lexicon minus, ed. J.F. Niermeyer (Leiden, 1984), 669.

C. Wickham, ‘Lawyers’ time. History and memory in tenth-and eleventh-century Italy’, in: Studies in

medieval history presented to R

.H.C. Davis, ed. H. Mayr-Harting and R. I. Moore (London, 1985), 54.

The fullest single account of Ceolfrid and Wearmouth–Jarrow is I.N. Wood, The most holy abbot Ceolfrid

(Jarrow Lecture, 1995) to which this present study is deeply indebted.

VC, 21–30; HA, 16–20

Simon Coates

who had briefly served as abbots, to join those of its founder, Benedict Biscop, in St

Peter’s Wearmouth.

The creation and management of these early monastic cults was

given further resonance by the return of some of Ceolfrid’s companions bearing news of

his death.

Thus, 716 proved to be a year of immense significance in the community’s

history and finds prominent place in the manner in which the Vita Ceolfridi remembered
the recently deceased abbot. Although the text sought to narrate the entirety of Ceolfrid’s
life, it devoted half of its forty chapters to Ceolfrid’s preparations for his departure, his
valedictory address and the actual events of the departure itself which culminated in his
death. Furthermore, such was the importance attached to the events of 716 in the
author’s mind that he gave no indication that he was present at the events he described

until his narration of the reception of the returning brothers in the final chapter.

The

need to commemorate the calamitous events of 716 finds expression in the author’s
concern to discuss the pressing concerns of his brethren for some form of memorial and
in his designation of his vita as a sermo, a commemorative address or homily, which
was to be addressed to the brethren and to form the key focus of Ceolfrid’s memorial

service.

Bede’s Historia Abbatum was also deeply marked by the events which surrounded

Ceolfrid’s departure, death and incipient cult. Although the work was intended to
encompass the entire institutional history of Bede’s monasterium rather than to serve as
a means by which the actions of his erstwhile abbot were remembered, it devoted nine of
its twenty-three chapters to Ceolfrid’s abbacy. Eight of these, however, were devoted to
his departure and death and the rest of Ceolfrid’s career was subsumed into a single
chapter. When he heard of Ceolfrid’s decision, Bede had interrupted his composition of
his commentary on Samuel and opened its fourth book by chronicling the delay in his
work engendered by ‘the sudden change of circumstances brought about by the

departure of my most reverend Abbot’.

Thus, as with all saints’ cults, death provided a

focal point around which memory could be constructed. It also convinced the
community of the need for a written account of Ceolfrid’s life so that the memory of
their abbot could not be forgotten. The two texts which embodied this memory
possessed certain features in common, emphasizing how Ceolfrid was a figure who
united the community, controlled its social formation, and steered its development.
However, the two texts were also markedly different and, in the case of Bede, who

composed the Historia Abbatum after the earlier anonymous work,

what he chose to

forget was as important as what he chose to remember. For Bede, Ceolfrid had a past
history which needed to be presented in fragments; certain pieces of the past needed to
be buried in order to preserve a particular portrayal of Wearmouth–Jarrow for posterity

VC, 18; HA, 20.

VC, 36–37, 40; HA, 22.

VC, 40.

VC, 1.

Bede, In primam partem Samulhelis libri IV, praef., ed. D. Hurst, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 119

[henceforth CCSL] (Turnhout, 1962), 212.

The work has not been precisely dated. However, it is generally thought to have been written sometime

between 725–31. When composing the Chronica Maiora in 725, Bede used the Vita Ceolfridi rather than the
Historia Abbatum which was presumably still unwritten. See W. Levison, ‘Bede as historian’, in: Bede

. His

life

, times and writings, ed. A. Hamilton Thompson (Oxford, 1935), 129–32.

Ceolfrid: history, hagiography and memory in seventh- and eighth-century Wearmouth–Jarrow

and minimise the potentiality of ecclesiastical dispute. Before dealing with the issue of
why Bede came to rewrite the life of Ceolfrid in one section of the Historia Abbatum,
however, it is necessary to examine the nodal points around which both texts sought to
construct their memory of Abbot Ceolfrid, emphasizing matters of convergence before
those of divergence.

As Patrick Geary has noted, tangible, material objects which had been given as gifts

to churches were key points around which memory could be organized and

constructed.

In both the anonymous Vita Ceolfridi and Bede’s Historia Abbatum,

Ceolfrid was presented as a notable monastic benefactor, concerned to build up the
wealth and prestige of Wearmouth–Jarrow through substantial gifts of books, vestments
and ecclesiastical vessels.

Ceolfrid accompanied Benedict Biscop to Rome, returning with books and paintings.

The anonymous views him as an equal partner with Benedict Biscop in the foundation of
the library at Wearmouth–Jarrow whereas Bede emphasizes the manner in which
Ceolfrid’s work as a bibliophile was an extension of the foundations of book-collecting
laid by Benedict who, before his death, had specifically stated that the library should be

preserved as a single collection.

Reflecting his own devotion to scholarship, Bede

chose to emphasize Ceolfrid’s interest in books. Unlike the anonymous who comments
merely on how Ceolfrid increased the size of the monastic library, Bede specifically
mentions how he doubled its collection. He also provides a small insight into the
contents of the books at Wearmouth–Jarrow noting that Ceolfrid managed to increase
the size of the community’s landed endowment by exchanging a work of the

Cosmographers brought back from Rome by Benedict Biscop for eight hides of land.
Ceolfrid’s contribution to the community’s collection of books, however, is most notable
through his commissioning of three pandects: one each intended for Wearmouth and
Jarrow and one to be taken to Rome. Whereas the anonymous simply records the
enterprise, Bede links the three pandects, which were copies of Jerome’s Vulgate, to the

old translation, the Vetus Latina, which Ceolfrid himself had brought back from Rome.
The relationship between the two translations is evident in the Codex Amiatinus which
utilises the new text of Jerome but places the books of the Bible in the order of the old

translation listed by Cassiodorus.

Thus Bede, the most notable scholar nurtured under

Ceolfrid’s abbacy, was anxious to remember Ceolfrid’s own contribution to scholarship
alongside that of Benedict Biscop and to provide an insight not only into Ceolfrid’s
concern to continue to foster the increase of the library’s size but also into the structure
and content of the works he commissioned. The manuscripts of Wearmouth–Jarrow
known to have been produced under Ceolfrid’s abbacy testify to its cultural output.

Geary, Phantoms of remembrance, 18.

VC, 9–10; HA, 7.

VC, 20; HA, 4, 6, 11, 15.

VC, 20; HA, 15.

R. L. S. Bruce-Mitford, The art of the Codex Amiatinus (Jarrow Lecture, 1967), 8–9; The Stonyhurst Gospel

of Saint John, ed. T. J. Brown (Roxburgh Club, Oxford, 1969), 10; K. Corsano, ‘The first quire of the
Codex Amiatinus and the Institutiones of Cassiodorus’, Scriptorium, 41 (1987), 3–34; P. Meyvaert, ‘Bede,
Cassiodorus and the Codex Amiatinus’, Speculum, 71 (1996), 827–83; Wood, The most holy abbot Ceolfrid,
13–14.

Simon Coates

These works, produced in a characteristic Uncial script, include a fragment of one of the
other pandects, a fragment of Gregory the Great’s Moralia, gospel fragments and the

Stonyhurst Gospel of Saint John.

Furthermore, these manuscripts were not merely

ostentatious, they were designed for the practical benefit of the community as the
anonymous author makes clear by commenting on how the pandects intended for
Wearmouth and Jarrow were to be placed ‘so that it should be easy for all who wished to

read any chapter of either testament, to find what they wanted’.

Alongside the Vita

Ceolfridi and Bede’s Historia Abbatum, such manuscripts illustrate the manner in which
Wearmouth–Jarrow recognised the importance of the written word in defining and
consolidating the identity of a monastic community.

Ceolfrid was also notable as a builder. The most striking testimony of this occurs not

in the hagiography but in the preservation of the foundation stones of St Paul’s, Jarrow,

identifying Ceolfrid as the church’s founder. The anonymous, rather than Bede, is more
inclined to emphasize Ceolfrid’s role as the founder stating that Ceolfrid took with him

twenty-two brothers from Wearmouth to serve as the church’s initial inmates.

Bede,

however, lists the number as seventeen thereby slightly reducing the numbers of brethren

under Ceolfrid’s leadership.

He does state elsewhere, however, how the church at

Jarrow was not Ceolfrid’s only ecclesiastical building remarking how he was responsible

for the building of several chapels.

Ceolfrid’s continued involvement in building work

is further evident from Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica where it recounts how he was
asked by Nechtan, king of the Picts, to whom he had earlier written a lengthy letter
concerning the Roman tonsure and method for calculating Easter, to provide masons for

the building of a church in the Roman manner.

One of the most striking elements in the life of the church which is dependent on

memory is the liturgy which, as Catherine Cubitt has emphasized, ‘acted as a potent

force in the creation of a common identity’.

Isidore of Seville had stressed the central

role of memory for the music of the church by writing of how ‘unless man hold sounds

in the memory they perish, because they cannot be written down’.

Both Bede and the

M. B. Parkes, The scriptorium of Wearmouth – Jarrow (Jarrow Lecture, 1982), 3–4; Brown, The Stonyhurst

Gospel of Saint John, 6–13. A fragment of one of Ceolfrid’s pandects eventually came into the possession
of the church of Worcester where it was rumoured to have been given as a gift by Offa, P.H. Sawyer,
Anglo-Saxon Charters

. An annotated list and bibliography (Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks

no.8, 1968), no. 118 (forged or interpolated); P. Sims-Williams, Religion and literature in western England

600 –800 (Cambridge, 1990), 182.

VC, 20.

Corpus of Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture, vol. 1, part 1, County Durham and Northumberland, ed. R. Cramp

(London, 1984), 113–4; J. Higgitt, ‘The dedication inscription at Jarrow and its context’, Antiquaries
Journal, 59 (1979), 343–74.

VC, 11.

HA, 7.

HA, 15.

Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors, Bede

’s

Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford, 1969), 5. 21 [henceforth Bede, HE followed by book
and chapter number / s].

C. Cubitt, ‘Unity and diversity in the early Anglo-Saxon liturgy’, in: Studies in church history

32. Unity and

diversity in the church, ed. R. N. Swanson (Oxford, 1996), 45–57, at 46.

Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. W. M. Lindsay, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1911), vol. 1, III.xv.2.

Ceolfrid: history, hagiography and memory in seventh- and eighth-century Wearmouth–Jarrow

anonymous pay special attention to Ceolfrid’s devotion to the liturgy and its preserva-
tion. Nowhere is this more striking than in the anonymous’ account of Ceolfrid’s
response to a plague which left the community devastated. Only Ceolfrid and one small
boy, possibly Bede, were left behind and although it was decided to conduct all the
psalm singing without antiphons, except at vespers and matins, this practice was only
inaugurated for a week since Ceolfrid could not bear the impoverishment of the

liturgical life.

The importance of the antiphons lay in the manner in which they made

the psalms into prayers and, elsewhere in the anonymous’ text, one finds an emphasis on

Ceolfrid’s concern for prayer.

Prayer formed the backbone of Ceolfrid’s foundation of

Jarrow where he began to observe the same canonical method of chanting and reading
which existed at Wearmouth despite the fact that there were many who were unable to

chant psalms, read in church, or recite the antiphons.

Although it was Benedict Biscop

who had been responsible for the introduction of Roman chant into Wearmouth by
travelling to Rome, accompanied by Ceolfrid, and returning with John the Arch-chanter,
the text of the anonymous makes clear Ceolfrid’s own continual devotion to correct

liturgical practice.

This is evident in the lengthy and detailed account it provides of

Ceolfrid’s leave-taking where a desire for unhindered application to prayer formed a key

element in his decision to leave for Rome.

The stress he placed on the importance of

the maintenance of the liturgy for the communal life of the church is emphasized in the
account of the brothers’ weeping on hearing of his intended departure and his concern to
stay with them during a day and night. Returning to St Peter’s, Wearmouth, Ceolfrid
attended Mass at St Peter’s and St Mary’s, received communion and, lighting a censer,
proceeded to the oratory of St Laurence in the monastic dormitory accompanied by the
monks singing the antiphons from Isaiah 26 and the 66th and 83rd psalms, all of which
were relevant to a journey. Having addressed the brethren, Ceolfrid entered a ship
accompanied by deacons holding a cross and candles. His final act was to venerate the
cross before riding away. Bede’s account is more condensed but preserves essentially the

same details.

The two texts do differ, however, in their account of Ceolfrid’s devotion

to the liturgy in his last sickness, the anonymous stating that he recited the whole of the
psalter three times a day until four days before his death, Bede correcting this to twice

daily.

The symbolic importance of these events lay in the manner which they stressed the

centrality of Rome in the community’s life. St Peter, St Mary and St Laurence were the
three great patrons of Rome and, furthermore, important liturgical changes had been
inaugurated there by Pope Sergius I between 687 and 701. Sergius had given new

VC, 14. This passage has been widely discussed. See D. Whitelock, ‘Bede and his teachers and friends’, in:

Famulus Christi

. Essays in commemoration of the thirteenth centenary of the birth of the Venerable Bede,

ed. G. Bonner (London, 1976), 20–2; P. Wormald, ‘Bede and Benedict Biscop’, in the same volume, 143–4;
Wood, The most holy abbot Ceolfrid, 16.

B. Ward, Bede and the psalter (Jarrow Lecture, 1991), 3–4.

VC, 11.

VC, 10; HA, 6; Bede, HE, 4. 18.

VC, 21–8; E. O’Carragain, The city of Rome and the world of Bede (Jarrow Lecture, 1994), 12–14.

HA, 16–17.

VC, 33; HA, 22.

Simon Coates

impetus to the cult of the Cross and inaugurated four new feasts celebrating the

incarnation and the glory of Mary.

Ian Wood has argued, on the basis of traces of these

cults to be found in eighth-century Northumbria, that Ceolfrid may have been the agent
for their introduction particularly as he sent an embassy to Sergius to secure a papal

privilege for Jarrow.

Rome followed a stational liturgical system where, on 160 days

each year, the Pope celebrated Mass not at the Lateran but at other basilicas and shrines.
The stational system was followed by Ceolfrid when he travelled to the various churches
associated with Wearmouth–Jarrow. Such action would ensure that the monks re-
membered those who celebrated in a similar fashion in Rome and form a means of

establishing the community’s liturgical identity.

It is important, however, not to see

Wearmouth–Jarrow solely through a Rome-centred prism. Whilst Bede and the
anonymous had formed a focus for the community’s identity with Rome, the series of
homilies composed by Bede reveal knowledge of Southern Italian customs through their
inclusion of local Neapolitan feasts. Liturgy, whilst remembered as a focus for unity,

remained diverse.

A further focus for remembrance was the community’s faithful devotion to the

regularity of monastic appointments.

Indeed, it is arguable that one of the central

purposes of both works was the preservation of monastic unity and the concern with the
upholding of discipline and custom. Although Bede’s Historia Abbatum illustrates that
the regula mixta rather than pure Benedictinism formed the backbone of the communi-

ty’s life, the memory of Benedict of Nursia’s actions loomed large.

It was filtered

through the Rule itself, perhaps acquired by Benedict Biscop from Wilfrid who had
travelled to Rome to obtain knowledge of it, and the influence of Gregory the Great

upon Bede and the anonymous.

Whilst it was difficult to find evidence for the early

observance of the Benedictine Rule in Rome, it began to be increasingly used in
Frankish Gaul in the communities which had begun life under the patronage of

Columbanus.

Agilbert, the erstwhile bishop of Wessex and Wilfrid’s host in Gaul

Liber Pontificalis, ed. L. Duchesne, Le Liber Pontificalis

, texte, introduction et commentaire 2nd. edn., 2 vols

(Paris, 1955), vol. 1, 374; Trans, R. Davis, The book of pontiffs (Liverpool, 1989), 85; Wood, The most holy

abbot Ceolfrid, 17; O’Carragain, The city of Rome and the world of Bede, 13–14.

Wood, The most holy abbot Ceolfrid, 17; O Carragain, The city of Rome and the world of Bede, 35–6; O

Carragain, ‘Liturgical innovations associated with Pope Sergius and the iconography of the Ruthwell and
Bewcastle crosses’, in: Bede and Anglo-Saxon England, ed. R.T. Farrell (British Archaeological Reports,
46, Oxford, 1978), 131–47; M. Clayton, The cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge,
1990), 29.

O Carragain, The city of Rome and the world of Bede, 11–12, 27.

Cubitt, ‘Unity and diversity in the early Anglo-Saxon liturgy’, 50–1.

J. McClure, ‘Bede and the Life of Ceolfrid’, Peritia, 3 (1984), 71–84, at 78–9.

Wormald, ‘Bede and Benedict Biscop’, 141–6; H. Mayr-Harting, The Venerable Bede

, the Rule of St

Benedict and social class (Jarrow Lecture, 1976).

Wormald, ‘Bede and Benedict Biscop’, 145; Stephanus, Vita Wilfridi, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave, The Life of

Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus (Cambridge, 1927), c. 14 [henceforth, VW followed by chapter
number / s].

James Campbell, ‘The first century of Christianity in England’, repr. in his Essays in Anglo-Saxon History

(London, 1986), 49–67; also his ‘Observations on the conversion of England’, in the same volume, 69–84;
Wormald, ‘Bede and Benedict Biscop’, 145–6.

Ceolfrid: history, hagiography and memory in seventh- and eighth-century Wearmouth–Jarrow

during his trip to Rome, possessed Columbanian connections.

It is likely that Biscop

spent some time with Agilbert when returning from Rome with Theodore and Hadrian in

668–9.

Furthermore, Wessex is known as an early outpost of Benedictinism in

England.

The impact of Gregory the Great on the cultural world of the Northumbrian

Church was immense. It seems hardly a coincidence that the book Biscop chose to have
read to him on his deathbed was Job, the subject of Gregory’s most extensive work of

biblical exegesis. Ceolfrid’s first assumption of the office of abbot was described by the
anonymous in words echoing Gregory’s Pastoral Rule emphasizing how the assumption
of office must not be the individual’s own choice. The account of Ceolfrid’s conduct of
his abbacy in the Vita Ceolfridi shows him in a Gregorian mould severe in rebuking

sinners but also able to exercise the reconciliation of the penitent with gentleness.

Gregory’s Dialogues, the work places great emphasis upon the monastic contribution to
teaching and preaching. Bede’s treatment of the abbots and their activities, although
indebted to the Vita Ceolfridi, incorporated them into a wider scheme of reform based
upon Gregorian principles advocated in his commentaries where action and contempla-

tion were combined and used in the service of the community.

Both texts consistently specify that Wearmouth–Jarrow was to be one monasterium in

two places. The creation of a single abbot for the two is a central preoccupation.

This

process occurred in stages. Benedict Biscop’s creation of co-abbots had to be justified.
The Vita Ceolfridi did so by specifically mentioning that Benedict could have managed
without Ceolfrid’s aid and justifies the appointment of Eosterwine on the grounds of
Benedict’s frequent absences at court where he was summoned by the king to give

counsel.

For Bede, the problem was a more specifically religious one, Benedict,

anxious to travel abroad for the good of the community, faced too burdensome a task.
Benedict of Nursia’s appointment of twelve abbots in his stead was therefore cited to

justify Eosterwine’s appointment.

Around 688 or 689, Eosterwine was replaced by

Sigfrid and it was only when it was realised that neither Benedict nor Sigfrid could
survive much longer that Ceolfrid assumed the sole abbacy. Unity loomed large.
According to Bede, Benedict Biscop feared for the unity of the community after his

death, the anonymous attributed a similar fear to Ceolfrid.

Central to the issue of preserving monastic unity lay the problem of hereditary

Bede, HE 3. 7, 24, 26, 28; 4. 1; 5. 19; VW, 9–10; 12; Cubitt, ‘Unity and diversity in the early Anglo-Saxon

liturgy’, 52–3. For important comment on Wilfrid and Gaul, see J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, ‘Rome and the early
English Church. Some questions of transmission’, in his Early medieval history (Oxford, 1975), 115–35, at
128–9.

HA, 3; Bede, HE, 4. 1.

Wormald, ‘Bede and Benedict Biscop’, 146.

HA, 12.

McClure, ‘Bede and the Life of Ceolfrid’, 77, 80.

A.T. Thacker, ‘Bede’s ideal of reform’, in: Ideal and reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon society, ed. P.

Wormald, D. Bullough and R. Collins (Oxford, 1983), 130–153.

McClure, ‘Bede and the Life of Ceolfrid’, 78–9.

VC, 12.

HA, 7.

HA, 13; VC, 25.

Simon Coates

succession. This had formed the backbone of the privileges obtained for the community

by Benedict Biscop and Ceolfrid.

Ceolfrid had been appointed abbot by Biscop

because he felt united to him more by spiritual than carnal relationship. The problem of
kinship had, however, loomed over the community since he had chosen Ceolfrid with
the deliberate intention of excluding his brother from acquiring the abbacy and, most

importantly, Wearmouth–Jarrow’s endowment.

Bede, unlike the anonymous, speaks

specifically of several legitimate land grants made to the community which relates his
text directly to the anxiety he felt about monastic land falling into lay hands expressed in
his letter to Egbert of York in 734. In this letter, in addition to criticising certain bishops
for setting bad examples, being unlearned and ignoring the laity in remote places, he
lamented the rise of secular, lay abbots who founded pseudo-monasteries so as to avoid
the obligations placed upon secular land and be exempt from military service. This not
only led to a decline in monastic standards but also diminished the numbers of fighting

men who were available.

During the reign of King Osred, Ceolfrid traded the land he

had acquired through his gift of the book of the Cosmographers to Aldfrid for twenty
hides at a place known as Sambuce and the gift of Witmer, who had consecrated himself
into the community’s service, led to its acquisition of ten hides, originally granted to

Witmer by Aldfrid, in the township of Dalton.

These grants reveal not only Bede’s

concern with the preservation of the community’s landed endowment in an age of
increasing anxiety over the lay appropriation of monastic land but also the manner in
which memory placed itself in the physical contours of the landscape, becoming
incarnate in places and names. Although Wearmouth–Jarrow was a monasterium which
reflected the manner in which Northumbria belonged to a wider, Christian world, it was
also a highly localised institution. Presentation of its foundation and development was

thus, in part, an exercise in geographical memory.

Memory did not exist in a vacuum. Hagiographical texts, whilst constructed out of the

memory of individuals and communities which produced them, needed also to rely on
known models; the genre demanded it and here one finds both unity and diversity in the
approach adopted by the two texts. To find such literary models of memory we need to

clear ‘the fog in the channel’,

as Janet Nelson has reminded us, and look to Gaul. The

anonymous’ text clearly drew upon a body of monastic literature produced in southern

Gaul at Lerins where Benedict Biscop was noted to have stayed and where he was

consecrated.

It drew upon the Life of Honoratus, the founder of Lerins, composed by

Bishop Hilary of Arles since Ceolfrid’s emphasis on the need for unity between two
communities under his rule is close to Honoratus’ attitude to hostile parties in the church

HA, 6, 11, 15; VC, 16; Wormald, ‘Bede and Benedict Biscop’, 146–9; W. Levison, England and the continent

in the eighth century (Oxford, 1946), 23–7, 187–90.

VC, 16; HA, 11.

Bede, Epistola ad Ecgbertum, ed. C. Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae Opera Historica 2 vols. (Oxford, 1896),

vol. 1, 405–423.

HA, 15.

Geary, Phantoms of remembrance, 124.

J. L. Nelson, ‘...sicut olim gens Francorum...nunc gens Anglorum’: Fulk’s letter to Alfred revisited’, in:

Alfred the Wise

. Studies in honour of Janet Bately on the occasion of her sixty-fifth birthday, ed. J. Roberts,

J.L. Nelson and M. Godden (Cambridge, 1997), 135–44, at 144.

HA, 2.

Ceolfrid: history, hagiography and memory in seventh- and eighth-century Wearmouth–Jarrow

of Arles.

Furthermore, only Ceolfrid’s passing, like that of Honoratus, was marked by

wonders.

Instead of the miraculous, the Vita Honorati was concerned with describing

the personal virtues and striking death scene of the saint, a concern which also found

expression in Possidius’ Life of Saint Augustine.

Honoratus and Ceolfrid both

possessed a concern for the poor and a devotion to the psalter.

The impact of John Cassian on the monastic culture of southern Gaul is well known.

Cassian influenced the anonymous’ treatment of the themes of resignation and
peregrinatio. Ceolfrid’s decision to depart for another calling on account of his old age
recalls Cassian’s comments concerning Abbot Charemon in the Conferences:

What doctrine can I teach you? I in whom the feebleness of old age has relaxed my
former strictness, as it has also destroyed my confidence in speaking? For how could
I presume to teach what I do not do, or instruct another in what I know I now practise
but feebly and coldly? Wherefore I do not allow any of the younger men to live with
me now that I am of such an advanced age, lest the other’s strictness should be
relaxed owing to my example. For the authority of a teacher will never be strong

unless he fixes it in the heart of his hearer by the actual performance of his duty.

In Cassian’s writings, moreover, discourse and memory are the media through which
ascetic experience and expertise is transmitted.

A further text akin to that of the anonymous was the Vita Caesarii, the Life of

Caesarius, bishop of Arles, composed in two books by five clerics of Caesarius’

acquaintance, most notably Cyprianus, bishop of Toulon from c.517 to c. 545.

The

early sections of the first book described Caesarius’ life before he became bishop
emphasizing, like the Vita Ceolfridi, Caesarius’ patrons and teachers. Both Caesarius and

Ceolfrid shared a devotion to books and maintenance of the daily office.

Both texts

were marked by striking, extended, death scenes and both saints had left their

communities for other callings; Caesarius departing from Lerins because the severe

asceticism of his discipline led him to develop fever.

Although Bede was clearly influenced by the literature of the Lerins circle and it

guided his monastic reform programme, in order to write the history of an abbey’s
internal structure and its relationship with the outside world, he needed to look

VC, 25; Hilarius, Vita Honorati, ed. S. Cavallin, Vitae sanctorum Honorati et Hilarii (Lund, 1952), 28.

VC, 40; Hilarius, Vita Honorati, 34.

Possidius, Vita Augustini, ed. H.T. Weiskotten, Sancti Augustini vita scripta a Possidio Episcopo (Princeton,

1919); Wormald, ‘Bede and Benedict Biscop’, 151.

VC, 33–4; Hilarius, Vita Honorati, 20, 38.

O. Chadwick, John Cassian (2nd edn., Cambridge, 1968); P. Rousseau, Ascetics

, authority and the church in

the age of Jerome and Cassian (Oxford, 1978).

Cassian, Conlationes, 11. 4, ed. M. Petschenig, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 13 (Vienna,

1886), 316–7; Trans, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 11 (2nd edn., Massachusetts, 1995),
416.

Vitae Caesarii Episcopi Arelatensis Libri Duo, ed. B. Krusch (MGH SRM III, Hanover, 1896); Caesarius of

Arles

. Life, testament, letters, ed. and trans. W. Klingshirn (Liverpool, 1994); W. Klingshirn, Caesarius of

Arles

. The making of a Christian community in late antique Gaul (Cambridge, 1994).

VC, 14, 20; Vitae Caesarii, 1. 15–16, 19.

VC, 21–36; Vitae Caesarii, 1. 7, 13–14; 2. 45–50.

Simon Coates

elsewhere. A model from early sixth-century Frankish Gaul may help to set his work in

context: the Vita Patrum Iurensium or Lives of the Jura Fathers.

This text, an early

collective monastic history, describes the routine and Rule of a network of monastic
communities in the Jura mountains of Burgundy founded by three abbots: Romanus,
Lupicinus, Romanus’ brother, and Eugendus, who left family estates for the ascetic life.
It is striking that Bede’s Historia Abbatum is similarly structured around three lives,
dealing effectively with Benedict Biscop, Eosterwine and Ceolfrid. It also shared,
alongside the Vita Patrum Iurensium, a concern to unite the lives of holy men around a

written Rule. Furthermore, despite his asceticism Romanus, the founder of the abbey of

Condat, never strayed too far from the local aristocracy.

Wearmouth-Jarrow was

similarly bound to kings and aristocrats by chains of amicitia and gift-giving. Romanus
remained a man with political contacts, as the life of his brother Lupicinus reveals since
Lupicinus had frequent cause to defend himself against the hostile courtiers of King

Chilperic I of Burgundy. Some of the monastic communities of Burgundy were thought
to contain large numbers of monks. The Vita Clari, a Life written in the Carolingian

period, gave a figure of 500 monks for Vienne.

Wearmouth–Jarrow was similarly large

and said to have contained 600 brethren when Ceolfrid departed.

Although the Vita

Patrum Iurensium focuses primarily on the inner lives of the communities founded by
the saints, miracles of healing, visions and the survival of demonic torments are recorded
particularly in the account of Eugendus’ life. Bede’s innovation, therefore, was to
remove miracles from his work completely. He ignored the posthumous miracle
associated with Ceolfrid described by the anonymous arguably because it was thought
inappropriate for his intended audience: the monks themselves. He may have thought
that some people needed to hear miracle stories more than others and reserved his

presentation of the miraculous to those texts he wrote with a wider audience in mind. A
further text from Frankish Gaul also helps us to set Bede’s collective history in context.
To do so, we need to step forward one hundred years from Bede’s time to the
Carolingian world of the early ninth century and the composition of the Gesta Abbatum
Fontanellensium which Levison described as the earliest monastic history from Western

Europe.

It recounts the affairs of the abbey of Saint-Wandrille founded around 649 on

the lower Seine by Wandregisil and endowed by prominent Merovingian benefactors:

Vita Patrum Iurensium, ed. F. Martine, Vie Des Peres du Jura, (Sources Chretiennes, 142, Paris, 1968); I.N.

Wood, ‘A prelude to Columbanus. The monastic achievement in the Burgundian territories’, in: Columbanus
and Merovingian Monasticism, ed. H.B. Clarke and M. Brennan (British Archaeological Reports,
International Series, 113, Oxford, 1981), 3–32; J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church (Oxford, 1983),
8–9.

Vita Patrum Iurensium, 1. 1, 19; 3. 23, 26.

Vita Patrum Iurensium, 1. 1.

Vita Patrum Iurensium, 2. 10.

Vita Clari, 2 (Acta Sanctorum, Jan., 1, 55–6); Wood, ‘A prelude to Columbanus’, 10.

VC, 33; HA, 17. It is possible that some of these fratres could have been those resident on the monastic

estates, A.T. Thacker, ‘Monks, preaching and pastoral care in early Anglo-Saxon England’, in: Pastoral
Care Before the Parish, ed. J. Blair and R. Sharpe (Leicester, 1992), 141.

H. Mayr-Harting, ‘Bede’s patristic thinking as an historian’, in: Historiographie im Fruhen Mittelalter, ed.

A. Scharer and G. Scheibelreiter (Munich and Vienna, 1994), 367–74, at 368.

W. Levison, ‘Zu den Gesta abbatum Fontanellensium’, in: Levison, Aus rheinische und frankischer Fruhzeit

(Dusseldorf, 1948), 532; I.N. Wood, ‘Saint-Wandrille and its hagiography’, in: Church and chronicle in the
middle ages

. Essays presented to John Taylor, ed. I.N. Wood and G.A. Loud (London, 1991), 1–14.

Ceolfrid: history, hagiography and memory in seventh- and eighth-century Wearmouth–Jarrow

Clovis II, Childeric II, Theuderic III and Balthildis, Clovis II’s queen and once an

enslaved Anglo-Saxon.

The abbey thereafter fell into Carolingian hands. A body of

hagiographical material associated with it was generated in response to the translation of
Wandregisil, Abbot Ansbert and the hermit Conded from the church of St Paul to that of
St Peter in 704, an incident which parallels Hwaetbert’s translation of Sigibert and

Eosterwine to St Peter’s Wearmouth in 716.

The material associated with Saint-

Wandrille was notable for sharing concerns similar to those aired by Bede in the
Historia Abbatum. The miraculous plays little part. Instead we find recorded a zeal for
learning which is marked by gifts of books, the lives and activities of the saints as abbots
showing their concern for the monastic life and correct abbatial behaviour, and a stress

upon the importance of the Rule.

A further concern which is prevalent is that surrounding monastic immunity. Charles

Martel granted Abbot Lando an immunity in c.732 and the monks had Ragenfrid

deposed for infringing it. Austrulf secured a further privilege from Pippin III in 751–2.
Saint-Wandrille, a monastery associated with powerful Carolingians and known to
possess computistical works by Bede was thus, like Wearmouth–Jarrow as described in
the Historia Abbatum, remembered by hagiography concerned with the security of its

monastic endowment.

Saint-Wandrille, although owing its continued existence to the

Carolingians was not always a pro-Carolingian house. The aggressive policies of Charles
Martel and Pippin III lost it vast quantities of land and gave it a series of bad abbatial

appointments.

Abbot Teutsind had no compunction about secularization and may have

distributed up to a third of his lands to his followers as precariae. Abbot Witlaic was a

simoniac who bought his office from Pippin III.

Although all these texts from Frankish

Gaul possess general parallels to Bede and the anonymous, it is not possible to provide
specific contexts in which such texts might have been known at Wearmouth–Jarrow.
Instead such texts reveal that the milieus of Francia and eighth-century Northumbria
bore strikingly similar characteristics.

Memory, as we have said, was not static. Bede did not entirely remember Ceolfrid in

the same manner as the anonymous. On the one hand this may be seen as a matter of
genre. Bede, after all, was writing the history of his house not a saint’s Vita. On the other

Wood, ‘Saint-Wandrille and its hagiography’, 1; Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church, 71.

Gesta sanctorum patrum Fontanellensis coenobii, ed. F. Lohier and J. Laporte (Rouen and Paris, 1931), 2. 4;

VC, 18; HA, 20.

Wood, ‘Saint-Wandrille and its hagiography’, 7–8.

Gesta sanctorum patrum Fontanellensis coenobii, v. 2; viii. 1; x. 4.

Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church, 350–2.

Wood, ‘Saint-Wandrille and its hagiography’, 9–12; Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms

450 –751 (London,

1994), 279; Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church, 136–8. It is important to place the seizure of
Saint-Wandrille’s lands into perspective. There is no early evidence to suggest that abnormally large
numbers of estates were seized, see I.N. Wood, ‘Teutsind, Witlaic and the history of Merovingian precaria’,
in: Property and power in the early middle ages, ed. W. Davies and P. Fouracre (Cambridge, 1995), 31–52.
The extent to which Charles Martel had a systematic ‘policy’ of alienating church land has also been
questioned. See T. Reuter, ‘‘‘Kirchenreform’’ und ‘‘Kirchenpolitik’’ im Zeitalter Karl Martells. Begriffe und
Wirklichkeit’, in: Karl Martell in seiner Zeit, 35–59 and the studies in the same volume by H. Wolfram,

‘Karl Martell und das frankische Lehenswesen Aufnahmne eines Nichtsbestandes’, 61–78; A. Dierkens,
‘Carolus monasteriorum multorum eversor et ecclesiasticarum pecuniarum in usus proprios commutator?
Notes sur la politique monastique du maire du palais Charles Martel’, 277–94.

Gesta sanctorum patrum Fontanellensis coenobii, 4. 3; 11. 1.

Simon Coates

hand, however, it may be possible to discern a further motive for Bede’s omissions and
changes. To do so we need to examine the anonymous’ account of Ceolfrid’s early
career, a subject ignored by Bede, and, in particular, to consider his relationship with
Bishop Wilfrid. Ceolfrid’s father, a member of the royal comitatus of King Oswiu was

grand enough to expect to wine and dine with the king.

His brother, Cynefrid, was

abbot of the Deiran monasterium of Gilling, a distinctive and pre-eminent royal house
founded by King Oswiu to atone for his murder of Oswine of Deira in 651 / 2 where the

monks were to daily pray for the murderer and the murdered.

Cynefrid retired to

become an ascetic in Ireland and his successor, Tunbert, another of Ceolfrid’s relatives

eventually rose to become bishop of Hexham but was deposed from the see in 685.
Tunbert and Ceolfrid, who had entered Gilling when he took up the religious life, left it
for Ripon where Ceolfrid was consecrated priest by Wilfrid. After leaving it to visit
monasteria in southern England in Kent and East Anglia so as to increase his knowledge
of the monastic life, Ceolfrid returned and, according to the anonymous, Benedict

Biscop then sought Wilfrid’s approval for his transfer to Wearmouth.

Ceolfrid agreed

but was soon to retire from his position as prior due to the hostility of certain aristocratic
monks to his vigorous practices. He returned to Ripon but finally agreed to return again

to Wearmouth at Benedict Biscop’s prompting.

All of these events are omitted from Bede’s rewritten account. As he created an image

of the past life of his former abbot, Bede chose to bury the memories of Ceolfrid’s early
career. As a result of this act of deliberate forgetting, the anonymous is the only text
which records Ceolfrid’s contacts with Wilfrid and Wilfrid’s own involvement in
sending Ceolfrid to Wearmouth. According to Bede, Wearmouth had no association with
the powerful and contentious bishop. Wilfrid’s turbulent career and ability to rouse the
hostility of kings, queens and fellow members of the clergy is well-known as are his
entreaties to Rome in 678 / 9 and 703 / 4 to petition for the restoration of properties which

had been removed from him.

Falling foul of King Egfrith’s queen, Iurminburg, he was

expelled from his see which was then dismembered by Archbishop Theodore.
Returning from Rome he was imprisoned and when finally restored to the royal court
was swiftly removed and spent time in Mercia and Wessex, consistently forced to move
since he aroused the hostility of the sister of Egfrith in the former and Iurminburg’s

sister, the queen, in the latter.

Only on Egfrith’s death could he return to Northumbria

in 686 / 7 at the invitation of King Aldfrith. Peace was made and his monasterium at

Hexham and then that at Ripon along with his entire see were restored to him.
Wilfrid’s relations with Aldfrith, however, soon became strained for three reasons:
Aldfrith attempted to despoil Wilfrid of his possessions, wished to convert Ripon into a

VC, 34.

VC, 2; Bede, HE, 3. 24.

VC, 3; Bede, HE, 4. 12, 28.

VC, 3–6.

VC, 8.

See, for example, the discussion in C. Cubitt, ‘Wilfrid’s ‘‘usurping bishops’’. Episcopal elections in

Anglo-Saxon England c.600–c.800’, Northern History, 25 (1989), 18–38, at 18–24.

VW, 24.

VW, 33–40.

VW, 43–4.

Ceolfrid: history, hagiography and memory in seventh- and eighth-century Wearmouth–Jarrow

bishopric, and adhered to the decrees of the middle period of Archbishop Theodore’s

pontificate which had dismembered Wilfrid’s diocese.

Wilfrid was expelled again and

made a second appeal to Rome which once more earned him papal favour. As a result,
he obtained a settlement in 706 and at the Synod of Nidd received Ripon back and was

100

restored to the see of Hexham.

Mindful of the contention which his career had created,

Wilfrid sought to divide his vast wealth into four leaving one quarter of it to the
communities of Ripon and Hexham so that they could buy the friendship of bishops and

101

kings.

The memory of Wilfrid preserved by the account of his hagiographer, Stephanus,

102

written between 710 / 11 and 720

may, as Walter Goffart has suggested, have polarised

the Northumbrian ecclesiastical establishment. As a result, an outburst of hagiographical

103

writing occurred. Wilfrid’s ‘ghost’ remained to haunt the living.

A powerful magnate

with a large retinue who was consistently involved in power politics made an
uncomfortable form of saint and appeared to sharply differentiate Wilfrid from a saint

104

such as Cuthbert who had consistently sought withdrawal from the world.

As a result,

memories of Cuthbert, preserved in an anonymous Life, had to be rewritten by Bede to
restore him to a high position in the pantheon of Northumbrian saints. Similarly, the
Historia Abbatum and the Historia Ecclesiastica have been considered a response to the
cult of Wilfrid. Wilfrid’s reputation rested most prominently upon his Rome-centred
outlook. It is possible that his devotion to St Benedict may have created tension between
his own foundations and Wearmouth–Jarrow over which community was more
thoroughly Benedictine in outlook. Wilfrid’s heavy involvement with the aristocracy is
also of significance. Whilst Wearmouth–Jarrow could not, and indeed did not, wish to
disassociate itself from the aristocracy since they had provided its endowment and
ensured the survival of its reputation it was conscious that the aristocracy could threaten
as well as protect. As we have seen, 716 was a year of tension and anxiety within the
community since Ceolfrid’s departure brought a degree of uncertainty. The Vita
Ceolfridi presents the abbot’s resignation as a solely religious move. However, its
occurrence in 716 means that it coincides with the advent, by violent means, of King

VW, 45.

100

VW, 60.

101

VW, 63.

102

VW, x–xi. Any consideration of the date is dependent upon establishing who the author of the Vita Wilfridi
was. The identification of the author with the singing master Aedde said to have been brought to
Northumbria by Wilfrid in Bede, HE 4.2 and VW, 14, is now considered no longer valid, D.P. Kirby, ‘Bede,
Eddius Stephanus and the ‘Life of Wilfrid’’, English Historical Review, 98 (1983), 101–14. As a result, the
author is commonly known as Stephanus, J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, Bede

’s Ecclesiastical History of the English

People

. A historical commentary (Oxford, 1988), 139.

103

W. Goffart, The narrators of barbarian history

, AD 550 –800. Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, Paul the

Deacon (Princeton, 1988), 235–328; W. Goffart, ‘The Historia Ecclesiastica. Bede’s agenda and ours’,
Haskins Society Journal, 2 (1990), 29–45. This view is also expressed less explicitly in A.T. Thacker,
‘Lindisfarne and the origins of the cult of St Cuthbert’, in: St Cuthbert

, His Cult and His Community to

.D.1200, ed. G. Bonner, D. Rollason and C. Stancliffe (Woodbridge, 1989), 103–22, at 119–122; D.P.

Kirby, ‘The genesis of a cult. Cuthbert of Farne and ecclesiastical politics in Northumbria in the late seventh
and early eighth centuries’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 46 (1995), 383–397.

104

It should, however, be noted that Wilfrid and Cuthbert were both almost certainly aristocrats and that

Cuthbert’s apparent poverty is balanced by the burial of an object of wealth, his pectoral cross, alongside his
body. See The relics of Saint Cuthbert, ed. C.F. Battiscombe (Oxford, 1956), 308–25.

Simon Coates

Coenred whose ascent to the throne broke a monopoly of royal power which had been

105

established since the days of King Oswald (634–42).

If the rule of Coenred were

unfavourable this could split the community, hence the insistence of the Vita Ceolfridi
on the need to preserve monastic unity. Ceolfrid’s departure had political resonance.
Also in 716, in his commentary on Samuel, Bede condemned the inert clergy whose

106

inadequacies allowed compromise with heathen practice.

Moreover, the years of

uncertainty seem not to have diminished at the time of Bede’s composition of the
Historia Abbatum. His commemorative homily on Benedict Biscop hints at this,
emphasizing the salvation of the just and the punishment of the wicked whilst the
prologue to De Templo, a commentary on the construction of the temple of Solomon
composed between 729–31, speaks of the consolation of the scriptures in times of

107

affliction.

He increasingly deplored the lack of virtue and intellect of those within the

108

church whose avarice and indolence left the laity bereft of spiritual teaching.
Moreover, the close of the Historia Ecclesiastica tells of how the beginnings of King
Ceolwulf’s reign, which began in 729, had been filled with so many varied and serious
commotions that it was impossible to know what to say about them or to guess at their

109

outcome.

Ceolwulf was captured in 731 and tonsured by unnamed opponents who

kept him prisoner in a monastic centre before he was restored to the kingship. In the

110

same year, Acca, bishop of Hexham, Bede’s diocesan, was expelled from his see.

The

possibilities of dynastic faction fighting, which came to find particular expression in the
later history of the eighth-century Northumbrian kingdom, coupled with the problem of
the increasing secularization of land and ignorant priests and bishops who neglected
their dioceses led Bede to be particularly resilient about stressing the unity of the
monasterium and to ignore any possible political controversy. As Paul Fouracre has
noted in a Merovingian context, the further away from its subject in time a hagiographi-
cal work was written, the more opportunity there was to create a distinctively saintly

111

image.

Wearmouth–Jarrow needed to be disassociated from such a contentious figure

as the likes of Wilfrid since the behaviour of such individuals had created tension and
schism in the Northumbrian Church. Bede certainly did not wish to diminish the
importance of Ceolfrid’s career nor did he, in any way, present it as controversial.
Although Ceolfrid’s decision to depart without consulting his diocesan was contrary to

112

canon law,

neither Bede nor the anonymous saw any need to criticise it. Nor was it

considered contrary to the monastic principle of stabilitas. In his homily on Benedict
Biscop, Bede had written of the profit that came out of Biscop’s journeys but hinted that
peregrinatio was not to be for all: ‘As often as he crossed the sea, he never returned, as

105

Bede, HE, 5. 22; D. P. Kirby, The earliest English kings (London, 1991), 147.

106

Bede, In primam partem Samulhelis libri IV, ed. D. Hurst, 122–3, 222.

107

Bede, Opera Homiletica, 1. 13, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL, 122 (Turnhout, 1955); Bede, De Templo, prologus, ed.

D. Hurst, CCSL, 119A (Turnhout, 1969).

108

Bede, In Ezram et Neemiam prophetas allegorica exposition, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL, 119A (Turnhout, 1969),

303, 324, 360.

109

Bede, HE, 5. 23.

110

Bede, HE, 572–3; Kirby, The earliest English kings, 148–9.

111

P. Fouracre, ‘Merovingian history and Merovingian hagiography’, Past and Present, 127 (1990), 3–38.

112

Wormald, ‘Bede and Benedict Biscop’, 147.

Ceolfrid: history, hagiography and memory in seventh- and eighth-century Wearmouth–Jarrow

113

is the custom with some people, empty-handed and without profit’

. Instead of

criticism, therefore, Biscop’s journeys were performed so that his community could
enjoy the peace of contemplation. Bede’s other omissions are tied into the need for
Wearmouth–Jarrow to look inwards in order to protect itself from the potentiality of the
landed aristocracy from without exploiting its monastic endowment and robbing it of
land. Cultivating the memory of Ceolfrid was one means by which a threatened

114

community could ensure itself of its continued identity.

At the time of Ceolfrid’s

departure the anonymous recounted a story about Ceolfrid’s generosity linking this to an
anecdote about his father. His father had on one occasion prepared a magnificent
banquet for the king but the monarch was unable to come due to the unexpected

115

exigency of war. Ceolfrid’s father therefore gave the food to the poor.

Bede was ever

mindful of moral example, particularly when an act of altruism was committed by a
layman, and it therefore seems credible to suggest that he omitted this story to
disassociate Ceolfrid from secular ties and make him a solely monastic figure.
Furthermore, by omitting to mention Ceolfrid’s welcome by Chilperic and the fact that
Benedict Biscop was able to receive builders from an Abbot Torhthelm in Gaul who had
once been united with him in friendship, Bede presented Ceolfrid in a more inward

116

looking manner to serve his purposes.

The sense of anxiety about the need to avoid

internal discord is evident in Bede’s refusal to recount the hostility which was expressed
towards Ceolfrid’s regime by some of his fellow monks when he first arrived at

117

Wearmouth as prior.

Memory is not passive. Instead it is a ‘process of active restructuring in which

118

elements may be retained, reordered, or suppressed’.

Shared images of the historical

past are the kinds of memories which have particular importance for the constitution of
social groups in the present. Despite the differences between the accounts of Bede and
the anonymous outlined above, Wearmouth–Jarrow certainly shared a strong sense of its
own corporate identity and the part played by Abbot Ceolfrid in creating and
maintaining that identity. A monastery which created and reworked an account of its
own history clearly was a community which regarded the memory of its abbots as a
commodity which could be exploited for certain, specific, goals. The cult of saints is not
merely the expression of a monolithic, uniform Latin Christianity but a phenomenon
whose nature and function reflected changing political and social realities. Whereas the
anonymous personalised memory, Bede institutionalised it. The anonymous sought to
justify Ceolfrid’s abbatial position. The Vita Ceolfridi may be read as an attempt to
narrate and to justify the sole abbacy of Ceolfrid as Benedict Biscop’s spiritual
successor. Bede, however, by writing a history of his own abbey located memory not in
persons but in a community. His goals were unity and peace. His concerns were books,
liturgy, monastic observance, and the preservation of ecclesiastical land. It is possible

113

Bede, Opera Homiletica, I 13, ed. D. Hurst, 93, ll. 172–3.

114

See A.P. Cohen, The symbolic construction of community (New York, 1985), esp. 44–50, 77–82.

115

VC, 34.

116

For Abbot Torhthelm, see VC, 7.

117

VC, 8.

118

Fentress and Wickham, Social memory, 40.

Simon Coates

119

that the anonymous and Bede could even have been the same person.

Both texts

follow the Eusebian practice of including written documents within them. The Vita
Ceolfridi contains Hwaetbert’s letter to the pope and Gregory II’s reply. Both share a
similar style and both follow a precise, chronological format. The rewriting of the Vita
Ceolfridi may, therefore, have been a means by which the same author could address
some of the issues which he faced in the mid-720s. However, given the significance of
Wearmouth–Jarrow as a monastic centre, it should not be thought of as having only one
intellectual among its brethren who was capable of producing hagiographical and
historical writing. Hwaetbert was practised in writing, singing, reading, and teaching,

120

and a book of Latin riddles by Eusebius is attributed to him.

Witmer was ‘learned in

121

every kind of knowledge, both secular and of the Scriptures’.

The Historia Abbatum

itself should be viewed as an attempt to portray Wearmouth–Jarrow as an intellectual
powerhouse to be emulated.

Although the memory of Ceolfrid could serve certain immediate functions for the

monks of Wearmouth–Jarrow, it is fundamental to realise that the community’s chief
function, and the key element in establishing its identity, lay in the cultivation of
worship and devotion. Thus, ultimately, through the figure of Ceolfrid, memory provided
the monks with a means by which they could remember a world where the gens
Anglorum could begin to display the characteristics of the heavenly elite marked by the
classlessness of the universal Church, a world ‘where though there are Jews and
barbarian peoples and Scythians, freemen and slaves, nobles and non-nobles, all are

122

brothers in Christ and glory to have the same father in Heaven.’

119

McClure, ‘Bede and the Life of Ceolfrid’.

120

HA, 18; Whitelock, ‘Bede and his teachers and friends’, 25–6.

121

HA, 15.

122

Bede, De Templo, 195. Diximus autem supra quod pauimenti aequalitas humilem concordiam designaret

sanctae fraternitatis ubi cum sint Iudaei et gentis barbari et Scythae liberi et serui nobiles et ignobiles cuncti
se in Christo esse fratres uniuersi eundem se habere patrem qui est in caelis gloriantur...

Journal of Medieval History, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 87–95, 1999

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Mechthild of Magdeburg’s mystical eschatology

Thomas Benjamin deMayo

223 Lakewood Drive, Carrollton, GA 30117, USA

Abstract

Despite the assumptions of previous scholars, the eschatological material in Mechthild of

Magdeburg’s Fliessendes Licht der Gottheit does not derive from the thought of Joachim of Fiore.
Rather, her treatment of Antichrist and the preaching matryrs Enoch and Elijah is grounded on
Mechthild’s own understanding of holiness and suffering.



1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All

rights reserved.

Keywords

: Mechthild of Magdeburg; Fliessendes Licht der Gottheit; Eschatology; Antichrist;

Beguines; Joachim of Fiore

In the last few decades, there has been considerable scholarly interest in Mechthild of

Magdeburg and her Fliessendes Licht der Gottheit. This should come as no surprise, for
Mechthild is not only an important female mystic of the High Middle Ages but also a
noteworthy writer of German vernacular prose and verse. Caroline Walker Bynum
(1982), Amy Hollywood (1995) and Ulrike Wiethaus (1996), have treated Mechthild’s
mystical thought and psychology, while new editions, translations and articles by Hans
Neumann (1987), Margot Schmidt (1995), Frank Tobin (1995), and Galvani and Clark
(1995), have concentrated on establishing a firmer foundation for Mechthild studies and

on determining the place of Mechthild in the history of the German language. Yet

THOMAS B. DEMAYO received his M.A. in history from Northwestern University, 1998. He has contributed

chapters to the Vampire: the Dark Ages role-playing game books Liege Lord and Lackey

(1997) and The

Three Pillars (1997).

I would like to thank Robert E. Lerner for his advice and aid with this project. For basic works in Mechthild

studies, see Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother

: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages

(Berkeley, 1982). Amy Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife

: Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete,

and Meister Eckhart, Studies in Spirituality and Theology series, 1, series edited by Lawrence Cunningham,
Bernard McGinn, and David Tracy (Notre Dame, 1995). Jeanne Ancelet-Hustache, Mechthilde de

Magdebourg

(1207 –1282): etude de psycholgie religieuse (Paris, 1926), 279–80. Mechthild von Mag-

deburg, Das fliessendes Licht der Gottheit

: Nach der Einsiedler Handschrift in kritischem Vergleich mit der

gesamten Uberlieferung, 2 vols, edited by Hans Neumann and Gisela Vollmann-Profe. Munchener Texte und

Untersuchungen zur Deutschen Literature des Mittelalters series, edited by the Kommission fur Deutsche

Literatur des Mittelalters der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Munchen, 1990, 1993), and The
Flowing Light of the Godhead, the Garland Library of Medieval Literature, translated by Christiane Mesch

Thomas Benjamin deMayo

Mechthild’s Das fliessendes Licht der Gottheit also contains significant eschatological
passages which have been overlooked by recent scholarship. While it is true that some
scholars have proposed that Mechthild of Magdeburg was influenced by Joachim of
Fiore, careful examination shows that there is no validity to this claim. On the other
hand, the two passages in which Mechthild does treat the eschatological future are worth
examining in their own right, for they explicate Mechthild’s thoughts on suffering,
martyrdom, and the nature of her communion with God.

Mechthild’s eschatological thought is expressed primarily in visions found in Book 4,

chapter 27 and book 6, chapter 15 of Das fliessendes Licht der Gottheit. These visions
contain two significant themes. First, Mechthild describes a future order in red and white
habits. I posit that this represents her idea of the perfect mendicant life and express her
disappointment with the current mendicant orders, but reserve this subject for future
consideration. Second, Mechthild describes the suffering of Enoch and Elijah at the
hands of Antichrist. As I hope to demonstrate, Enoch and Elijah exemplify for
Mechthild the religious traits that she cultivated in herself – suffering, martyrdom,
holiness, and communion with God. Mechthild’s visions of the future proceed out of the
same interests that suffuse the rest of Das fliessendes Licht. She is not interested in the
end of the world for its own sake, but in the opportunities for holiness that it possesses.

Contrary to what many scholars have said, Mechthild’s work fails to exhibit any

distinct signs of Joachite influence. A Joachite work will, generally speaking, exhibit one
or both of the following characteristics: either (1) a pattern of threes in its treatment of
history, or (2) the expectation of a time of peace and spiritual enlightenment between the
death of Antichrist and the Last Judgement. Jeanne Ancelet-Hustache attempts to argue
that Das fliessendes Licht meets the first test, that it uses a Joachite pattern of threes in

Galvani, edited by Susan Clark (New York, 1991). Hans Neumann, ‘Beitrage zur Textgeschichte des
‘Fliessendesn Lichts der Gottheit’ und zur Lebensgeschichte Mechthilds von Magdeburg’, in: Altdeutsche

und Altniederlandische Mystik, edited by Kurt Ruh, Wege der Forschung, Band xxii (Darmstadt, 1964),
175–239, and ‘Mechthild von Magdeburg’, in: Die deutsche Litteratur des Mittelalters

: Verfasserlexikon, 2

ed., vol. 6, edited by Kurt Ruh (Berlin, 1987), 260–70. Mechthild of Magdgeburg, Das fliessende Licht der

Gottheit

: Zweite, neubearbeitete Ubersetzung mit Einf uhrung und Kommentar von Margot Schmidt, edited

and translated by Margot Schmidt, Mystik in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Texte und Untersuchungen:
Abteilung I: Christliche Mystik Series, edited by Margot Schmidt and Helmut Riedlinger (Stuttgard-Bad
Cannstat, 1995). Frank Tobin, Mechthild von Magdeburg

: A Medieval Mystic in Modern Eyes (Columbia,

1995). Ulrike Wiethaus, Ecstatic Transformation

: Transpersonal Psychology and the Work of Mechthild of

Magdeburg (Syracuse, 1996).

Hauck and Grundmann cite Das fliessendes Licht

, Book 4, chapter 27 and book 6, chapter 15 as evidence for

Mechthild’s Joachism, without discussing either in depth. Albert Hauck, Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands
(Leipzig, 1912–22) (reprinted Berlin, 1954) and Herbert A Grundmann, Studien uber Joachim von Floris,

Beitrage zur Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters und der Renaissance, band 32, edited Walter Goetz (Leipzig,
1927), 176–177, n. 6.ln his Verfasserlexikon article, Neumann includes Joachim in a long list of influences
on Mechthild, including Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, Psuedo-Dionysus and others. Hans Neumann,
‘Mechthild von Magdeburg’, 264. Preger provides no documentation at all. He merely says that Mechthild’s
Joachism exists and explains its presence by positing Heinrich von Halle as its transmitter. Wilhelm Preger,
Geschichte der deutschen Mystik im Mittelalter

: Nach den Quellen untersucht und dargestellt, 3 vols.

(Leipzig, 1874), vol. 3, 94. Schmolinsky is more doubtful about the presence of Joachism, referring to the
Grundmann and Neumann and to the sections book 4, chapter 27, book 6, chapter 15 and book 6, chapter
21. She notes that ‘it requires a more accurate examination, whether it can be understood without the
Joachite-Joachimite

( joachimisch–joachitische) prophecy of the Orders’. Sabine Schmolinsky, Der

Apokalypsenkommentar des Alexander Minorita

: zur fruhen Rezeption Joachims von Fiore in Deutschland,

Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Studien und Texte; Band 3 (Hanover, 1991), 6–7, n. 20.

Mechthild of Magdeburg’s mystical eschatology

its treatment of history. Other authors seem to assume that because Mechthild predicts
the coming of a new Mendicant order, it meets the second test. I argue that it does

neither.

Ancelet-Hustache takes book 5, chapter 34 to be evidence of Joachite theology in

Mechthild. The relevant passage reads:

The Lord told me about three kinds of blood. The first kind of blood is that of Abel
and the slain children, John the Baptist, and all those who innocently shed their blood
before the martyrdom of Our Lord. That was Christ’s blood, for they had suffered a
blessed death for love of Him. The second kind of blood is that of the Heavenly
Father, which Christ poured from his innocent heart. The third kind of blood, which
one should shed before the Last Day in Christian faith, is the blood of the Holy Spirit,
for without the Holy Spirit no good deed can be accomplished. The martyr’s blood
through Christ gives company and courage; the Father’s blood in Christ gives

redemption and faith. The last kind of blood gives protection and honor.

Ancelet-Hustache claims that these ‘three kinds of blood’ portray Joachim’s three

ages (or status). Yet not every Trinitarian theological conception is Joachite, and
Mechthild’s use of threes in this case do not show evidence of historical progression of
the ages projected into the future.

Das fliessende Licht also fails to meet the second test for Joachite influence: mention

of a spiritual age to come between the death of Antichrist and the Last Judgement.
Within the crucial sections of book 4, chapter 27, and book 6, chapter 15, Mechthild
presents Antichrist and the Last Judgement in a completely traditional manner. The
Antichrist tradition found its orthodox embodiment, first in the writings of the tenth-

century Ottonian Abbot, Adso of Montier-en-Der, and then in the Compendium
theologicae veritatis falsely attributed to Albertus Magnus but actually written by the

German Dominican Hugo Ripelin, who flourished around 1260. Its diffusion into
German culture may be measured by Ripelin’s work and also by the Passau Anonymous

(c. 1260 / 66), another German work contemporary with Mechthild’s Das fliessendes
Licht. Ripelin and the Anonymous agree almost completely on the Antichrist legend.
Antichrist will be born in the east. He will travel to Jerusalem, where he will circumcise
himself and win the Jews to his cause. He will attempt to win over the Christian people

A Joachite work might also attempt to predict the future on the basis of biblical concordances, that is, an

attempt to extrapolate from patterns in the Old and New Testaments. But no one has ever argued that
Mechthild does this and thus there is no need to pursue this test further.

Neumann, Licht, 1:195–6. This is (here and elsewhere) Galvani’s translation. Galvani, 164.

Ancelet-Hustache, 279–80.

A short biography and a translation of Adso’s work appears in Bernard McGinn, editor and translator,

Apocalyptic Spirituality

: Treatises and Letters of Lactantius, Adso of Montier-en-Der, Joachim of Fiore,

The Franciscan Spirituals

, Savonarola, Classics of Western Spirituality: A Library of the Great Spiritual

Masters series, editor-in-chief, Richard J. Payne (New York, 1979), 81–96.

Georg Steer, ‘Hugo Ripelin von Strassburg’, in: Die deutsche Litteratur des Mittelalters

: Verfasserlexikon. 2

ed, vol. 4, edited by Kurt Ruh (Berlin, 1983), 252–66.

Alexander Patschovsky, Der Passauer Anonymus

: Ein Sammelwerk uber Ketzer, Juden, Antichrist aus der

Mitte des

13. Jahrhundert, in: Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae historica (Deutsches Institut fur

Erforschung des Mittelalters) series, band 22 (Stuttgart, 1968), 1.

Thomas Benjamin deMayo

through a series of demonically engineered miracles such as flying and a staged
‘resurrection’. He will persecute the Christians, and be opposed by Enoch and Elijah
(who will return from the Earthly Paradise) for three years. He will then have them
publicly killed and their bodies exhibited. Upon their deaths, however, an Angel will be
seen leading them into heaven. Thereafter, Antichrist will climb the Mount of Olives
with the intention of parodying Christ’s ascension. This will prove too much for God,
Who will promptly strike Antichrist dead, through the agency of either Christ or the
Archangel Michael. A short period of peace will follow, and then the Last Judgement
will occur. There will be a bodily resurrection and general sorting-out of the good from

the evil. Then the world will end. Book 4, chapter 27 and book 6, chapter 15 match
those sections of Ripelin or the Passau Anonymous which cover the same material,
which is to say, the story about Enoch and Elijah. The Joachite story, however, runs
quite differently than the orthodox version. His Antichrist comes not from the east, but
from the west, and is prefigured by many different signs and lesser Antichrists, who are
identified with the seven heads of the dragon in Revelation 17:9–10. Most important of
all, Joachim’s Antichrist does not immediately precede the end of the world. After
Antichrist’s death, there will be a time of peace and happiness, before the dragon’s tail

(or Gog) arrives.

There is no hint of the Joachite sequence in Mechthild’s story. She

says explicitly that the events she describes take place at the end of time.

Why then do so many scholars assume that Mechthild was a Joachite? They were

probably misled by Mechthild’s prophecy of a future order, incorrectly assuming that
Mechthild was consciously imitating Joachim’s prophecy of two new orders. Joachim
predicted that two new orders would arise at the time of Antichrist. One would be an

order of preachers, the other of hermits.

In the years that followed his death, it was

widely assumed that Joachim had predicted the coming of the mendicant orders,
especially among the mendicant orders themselves, who circulated Joachite and pseudo-

Joachite works for that very reason. One could therefore plausibly argue that Mechthild
had heard of Joachim’s prediction and drew upon it for her vision of a preaching order.

For the version I have given above, see Hugo Ripelin, ‘Compendium theologicae veritatis’, in: Albertus

Magnus, Opera Omnia, vol. 34, edited by Steph. Caes. Aug. Borgnet (Parisiis, 1895) 241–7. See also Vom
Antichrist

: Eine Mittelhochdeutsche Bearbeitung des Passauer Anonymus, ed. Paul Gerhard Volker, Kleine

deutsche Prosadenkmaler des Mittelalters: Erstund Neuausgaben der Forschungsstelle fur deutsche Prosa des

Mittelalters am Seminar fur deutsche Philologie der Universitat Wurzburg unter Leitung, ed. Kurt Ruh

(Munchen, 1970), a fourteenth-century Middle High German translation of the Antichrist section of the
Passau Anonymous. Ripelin and the Anonymous expand upon Adso, but do not contradict him. It should
also be noted that although the traditional story draws upon Revelation, it does not assume that the events in
Revelation will take place literally as written. Many of Revelation’s passages are interpreted symbolically or
allegorically. Especially, one should note that the millennial reign of peace and justice had dropped from the
orthodox tradition at least as early as Augustine, who prefers to read that passage as a symbol for the
existence of the Church. For this issue, see Robert E. Lerner, ‘Refreshment of the Saints: The Time after
Antichrist as a Station for Earthly Progress in Medieval Thought’, Traditio

: Studies in Ancient and Medieval

History

, Thought, and Religion, 32 (1976), 85–144.

Joachim’s captions and commentary on the fourteenth table of his Book of Figures are reprinted in McGinn,

136–141. For more on Antichrist in Joachite thought, see Robert E. Lerner, ‘Antichrists and Antichrist in
Joachim of Fiore’, Speculum

: A Journal of Medieval Studies, 60 (1985), 553–70.

Mechthild, 4.27.

McGinn, 108.

Mechthild of Magdeburg’s mystical eschatology

However, one cannot trace a descent of image or concepts from Joachim to Mechthild.
Mechthild speaks of one order, not two. Furthermore, if she meant her new order to be
Joachim’s preaching order, it would mean that the Dominicans could not also be that
order. In so doing, Mechthild would therefore be depriving the Dominicans of their
status as a divinely predicted order. Most conclusive of all, there still remains no trace of
the three status, of the correspondence between testaments, or of the coming age of the
spirit.

If Joachism does not explain the content of Mechthild’s eschatological visions, what

does? Mechthild, however, was a visionary who spoke directly to God. She (like
Joachim) predicted the future, but she did so through an entirely different process.
Mechthild’s treatment of Enoch and Elijah is central to understanding how Mechthild
uses eschatological material. When she speaks of them, Mechthild’s selective use of
Antichrist lore becomes more obvious. The language she uses to describe their expulsion
from Eden in book 4, chapter 27 parallels her descriptions of her own ecstatic states, and
Enoch’s persecution by Antichrist resembles Mechthild’s own sense of persecution.
They are the key to the way she approaches both prophecy and mysticism.

Mechthild’s use of the orthodox Antichrist tradition is extremely selective. Out of this

sequence, which is filled with dramatic and striking scenes, any of which could easily
become the focus of devotional contemplation, Mechthild chooses to write only about
Enoch, Elijah, and the other martyrs. Antichrist and his deeds do not interest her, except
insofar as they intersect with the martyrs. His false miracles are mentioned only as an
explanation for the current state of affairs in book 4, chapter 27 and book 6, chapter 15.
Other minds, and other temperaments might be expected to call attention to Antichrist’s
coming punishment. Mechthild does not. Once the martyrs have finished dying, and are
reconciled with God, the story ends.

Why is this? What accounts for Mechthild’s abiding interest in Enoch and Elijah? I

posit that Mechthild looked upon Enoch and Elijah’s spiritual condition as paralleling
her own. They were, in a sense, mystics, possessors of special gnosis before, during, and
after their ascension into the earthly paradise. Moreover, they were martyrs, and for
Mechthild their innocent suffering served as a parallel to and model for her own, and
their eschatological status enhances their value as role models.

It is medieval tradition, not scripture, which identifies Enoch and Elijah with the two

preachers in Revelation 11.3–7. The reason for this identification is, I think, clear. God
had caused both to be removed from the earth before their deaths. Scripture does not say
that God takes Enoch and Elijah to the earthly paradise. The patriarch Enoch ‘walked
with God and was seen no more: for God took him’ (Gen 5.24). Elijah’s fate in 4 Kings
11 was more spectacular, ascending into heaven in a fiery chariot. Where did God take
first Enoch and then Elijah? For Christians, it could not have been to heaven. First, they
were Jews, and before the Incarnation they would have been unable to enter heaven at
all, and secondly, they did not die. The earthly paradise, therefore, was a natural place

for God to ‘store’ them until He needed them again.

It is not heaven, and so does not

raise any uncomfortable questions about the salvation of Jews, but it is sufficiently

Mechthild, 7.57, contains a dialogue between Mechthild and Elijah. ‘Why did God bring you here?’ ‘To be

the helpers of Christianity and God before the Last Day.’ Galvani, 261.

Thomas Benjamin deMayo

pleasant to satisfy the sense of the Old Testament passages that Enoch and Elijah
received a great privilege. Why did God take them? It was so that He could send them
on one last mission at the end of time. The traditional exegesis thus neatly solves two
mysteries at once.

Let us look first at Enoch and Elijah as ‘mystics’. I propose that in Mechthild’s mind,

Enoch and Elijah were exemplars of a mystical process similar to, but not identical with
her own. I do not wish to argue that Mechthild thought of Enoch and Elijah as
visionaries, like herself, who achieved special knowledge of God through contemplation,
reflection and revelation. They may have done so once, but upon their transference to the
earthly paradise, their knowledge of God became more physical and direct. In the earthly
paradise they ‘eat the same food Adam would have eaten, had he remained there’, and

experience ‘clarity [clarheit]’ and ‘bliss [wunne]’.

Their very lives in Eden parallelled

the mystic state Mechthild tried laboriously to achieve on earth, and their departure from
Eden, however voluntary, echoes Mechthild’s disappointment upon ‘coming down’ from
an ecstatic state.

We can find clear parallels to each step of Enoch and Elijah’s stay in paradise in

Mechthild’s own experiences. Mechthild says of Enoch and Elijah (in book 4, chapter
27) that:

The angel led Enoch and Elijah out of Paradise. The clarity and bliss which they felt
now in their bodies had to remain behind. When they saw earth, they were frightened
as those who see the ocean and wonder how they are going to cross it. And they
received the earthly appearance and had to become mortal humans. They ate honey
and figs and drank water mingled with wine, and their spirits were nourished by

God.

This passage can be broken into three steps. (1) Enoch and Elijah exist in a state of

clarity and bodily bliss: ‘They live in body and soul in the same bliss [ 5 wunne] and eat

the same food that Adam would have eaten, had he remained there’ . (2) Enoch and
Elijah return to earth, where they are filled with fear. (3) God continues to lead them,
albeit in a less intensely pleasurable state of spiritual activity, but where their activity
will benefit others. (4) God again receives them upon martyrdom. Mechthild’s ecstatic
visions follow a similar pattern: (1) God grants Mechthild’s soul a state of union with
Himself. Some of the most beautiful (and some of the most shocking) language in Das
fliessendes Licht is devoted to describing this union. For example, her bridal imagery is

Neumann, Licht, 1:148. Galvani, 127–8. The word Klarheit can indicate a religious state as it does here. See

the Grimms’ Deutsches Worterbuch (Leipzig, 1873) vol. 5, 1001–3. The Latin claritas has the same
connotations. See, for example, the use of the word in 2 Corinthians 3:18 in the Vulgate and Peter of John
Olivi’s De Doctrina in Peter of John Olivi on the Bible

: Principia quinque in sacram scripturam: postilla in

isaiam et in I ad Connthios

: Appendix: Quaestio de oboedientia et sermones duo de S. Francisco, ed. David

Flood, O.F.M and Gedeon Gal, O.F.M., Franciscan Institute Publications Text Series No. 18 (St.
Bonaventure, N.Y., 1997), 94.

Neumann, Licht, 1:148. Galvani, 128. Their food is also mentioned in 7.57, and discussed in James C.

Franklin, Mystical Transformations

: The Imagery of Liquids in the Work of Mechthild von Magdeburg

(Rutherford, 1978), 60.

Neumann, Licht, 1:147. Galvani, 127.

Mechthild of Magdeburg’s mystical eschatology

both lovely and carnal. (2) Mechthild’s soul returns to her body, which it regards with
loathing. (3) Mechthild persists in spiritual drought until her next vision. Even this
suffering is good, however. (4) Mechthild returns to bliss. The sequence of events is
beautifully embodied in 1.5:

. . . The body says to the soul:

‘‘Where have you been? I am tired.’’
To that the soul replies: ‘‘Quiet fool.
I have been with my loved one;
May you never recover.
I am His joy; He is my suffering.’’
This is her suffering from which she will never recover.
This suffering you must endure.

Never will you be free of it.

The difference between Mechthild’s experience and Enoch and Elijah’s is that

Mechthild’s is purely visionary, whereas Enoch and Elijah experience their bliss in the
body. Enoch and Elijah experience a closer (or at least a more spectacular) relationship
to God than Mechthild. Their appeal to her should therefore be obvious; their lives are
mirrors of her own experience.

Book 4, chapter 27 is not the only point at which Enoch and Elias resemble mystics.

To those familiar with the contents of the Old Testament, Elijah is famous primarily for
the closeness of his relationship with God. Elijah’s tribulations in the desert parallel
somewhat such Christian contemplative saints as Anthony or Jerome. Similarly, Enoch’s
closeness to God, to walk with God and be no more, suggests a kind of mysticism.

Further supporting this analogy, both Enoch and Mechthild have received a secret

revelation from God. Book 6, chapter 15 clearly states that Enoch and Elijah retain (even
on earth) a special knowledge gained in their days in Paradise. Antichrist wants Enoch’s
knowledge and so is torturing him. If he gets it, Antichrist will proclaim it as his own, to
impress people with ‘his’ wisdom:

Enoch still lives
For the Anti-Christ is lusting
For the wisdom [wisheit]
Which Enoch has learned from God
That he might proclaim it publicly
Together with his own false teachings.
And if only he could draw Enoch to himself,

All the world with great honor would be his.

Mechthild’s book resembles a version of Enoch’s wisdom, much as she herself

resembles a version of Enoch himself. Das fliessendes Licht, like Enoch’s secrets,
constitutes a kind of secret gnosis. The prologue of Das fliessendes Licht was probably

Neumann, Licht, 1:11. Galvani, 10.

Neumann, Licht, 1:224. Galvani, 184.

Thomas Benjamin deMayo

not written by Mechthild herself, but it indicates how others saw her book, and perhaps

how she saw it as well.

It begins:

Now in this book I am addressing all spiritual people, both the good and the evil for
if the pillars should fall, the whole work would not stand; it will refer only to me and
will merely be a glorious revelation of my secret. All who want to study this book

should read it nine times.

Of what will happen if unspiritual people read the book, it does not speak. Presumably

they will misunderstand it or use it badly or put the owner of the book into jeopardy.
(The Einsiedeln manuscript, for example carries a warning not to let it stray beyond the

walls of cloisters which owned it.)

Danger and promise are inherent in Enoch’s gnosis

and Mechthild’s book – both could potentially be put to evil purposes, but both, when
used by the holy, have great worth.

The suffering of Enoch and Elijah comprises the second important theme in these

visions. Suffering, both externally and self-imposed, is important to Mechthild’s system
of thought generally, and the sufferings of the eschatological martyrs does much to
explain their presence in the Das fliessendes Licht.

Mechthild spoke and almost certainly thought of herself as persecuted, as her own

words show. In Book 7, chapter 26, she fears her book may be burned, as some people
have recommended. She cries out:

Lord Jesus Christ,
I poor creature, flee to You
And implore You for Your assistance
For my Enemies pursue me.
Lord God, I lament to You,

For they Want to separate me from You.

Whether or not Mechthild’s feeling of persecution was based upon events she actually

experienced, it was also a rhetorical construct and an outgrowth of her theology. For
Mechthild, suffering itself is holy, and suffering is something she voluntarily undertakes
as a human being, a mystic, and a beguine. When she speaks of her life as a beguine, she

speaks of it as a form of suffering, voluntarily undertaken. For Mechthild, suffering is a

purging experience, and one which is to be sought, not avoided.

On the authorship of the prologue, see Tobin, Mechthild, 134–136.

Neumann, Licht, 1:4. Galvani, 5. Not the same prologue as the Latin one which proceeds it. I have no

explanation for the presence of evil spiritual people. Perhaps bose in this case indicated lapsed or sinning
spiritual people, rather than malicious ones.

Schmidt, ix–x.

Neumann, Licht, 1:275–6. Galvani, 229.

See 1.25, 2.8, 2.15, 2.25, 3.3, 3.10, 3.16, 4.12, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 6.14, 6.31, 7.4, 7.65.

Hollywood also discusses the place of suffering in Mechthild’s thought, especially as it relates to whether

Mechthild locates sin in the body or the ‘will’, Amy Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife

: Mechthild of

Magdeburg

, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart, Studies in Spirituality and Theology series, 1, series

edited by Lawrence Cunningham, Bernard McGinn, and David Tracy (Notre Dame, 1995), 73–86.

Mechthild of Magdeburg’s mystical eschatology

We must ask, therefore, not why Mechthild would write about martyrs, but why she

would write about the martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah and nothing of other martyrs

except John the Baptist.

The simple answer is that Enoch and Elijah’s position at the

end of time made them special sorts of exemplars. (‘Our Lord answered thus: ‘‘Enoch

shall be the last person to lead a spiritual life.’’’)

They exist in eschatological, mythical

time. From that position they take on the colour, not simply as martyrs, but the final and
perfect martyrs. They are, by virtue of their temporal position, archetypal.

All told, then, Mechthild used eschatological materials for personal ends. She was not

a Joachite and had no interest in presenting an account of Antichrist’s life or last things
for didactic purposes. She was a mystic who was concerned with the relationship of the
individual soul to God and who wished to explore different modes of love, ecstasy, and
suffering.

In book 2, chapter 4, Mechthild witnesses John the Baptist giving mass, a vision which she defends in book

6, chapter 36. See also Tobin, Mechthild, 4–5, Neumann, ‘Beitrage zur Textgeschicht’, 188, and Bynum,
237. She also writes of passion of Jesus Christ – a universal object of Christian piety.

Neumann, Licht, 222. Mechthild, book 6, chapter 15.

Journal of Medieval History, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 97–114, 1999

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P I I : S 0 3 0 4 - 4 1 8 1 ( 9 8 ) 0 0 0 2 1 - 9

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Lamps, lights and layfolk: ‘popular’ devotion before the Black Death

David Postles

Department of English Local History

, Marc Fitch House, University of Leicester, 5 Salisbury Road,

Leicester LE

1 7QR, England

Abstract

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as well as during the later middle ages, lay piety and

devotion were expressed through grants for lights. The difference at the earlier time was that
benefactions were made to a variety of agencies or religious institutions, so that such endowments
by the laity were not confined to the parish church. Perhaps the laity was as concerned to have an
association with religious houses as with the parish church and it was particularly through grants
for lights that lower social groups – burgesses and even the free peasantry – were able to
participate in the spiritual benefits of religious houses because the cost was low, involving often
only rents or small amounts of land. The size of conventual churches allowed a large number of
altars dedicated to a range of saints which might have been attractive to lay personal devotion.



Keywords

: Religious houses; Parish; Lights; Lay devotion

‘Before the altars and images lights were set, and the maintenance of these lights,

especially during times of service, became the single most popular expression of piety in

wills of the late medieval laity.’

Long, however, might it have been so. In 1109 3 1114, Nigel d’Aubigny gave to

Selby abbey a carucate of land in Amcotts for the provision of light in the abbey

DAVE POSTLES has been Marc Fitch Research Fellow in the Department of English Local History since 1988

performing contract research on English anthroponymy. His full details can be found at this URL:
http: / / www.le.ac.uk / elh / pot / intro.html. He wishes to thank Barbara Harvey for many kindnesses in the
past and for reading an early draft of this paper, and also an anonymous referee for many helpful
suggestions and for catching many infelicities.

E. Duffy, The stripping of the altars

. Traditional religion in England 1400 –1580 (New Haven and London,

1992), 134. For the association of gilds and the provision of lights, 146–7; on this note that, whilst the
maintenance of lights and lamps during the later middle ages was achieved by small groups of people and
individuals as well as parochial and rectorial responsibilities, at an earlier time small groups were not so in
evidence: see below. See also G. Rosser, ‘Communities of parish and guild in the late middle ages’, in:
Parish

, church and people. Local studies in lay religion 1350 –1750, ed. S.J. Wright (London, 1988), 29–55;

B.A. Hanawalt, ‘Keepers of the lights: late medieval English parish gilds’, Journal of Medieval and
Renaissance Studies, 14 (1984), 21–37; V. Bainbridge, Gilds in the medieval countryside

. Social and

religious change in Cambridgeshire c

.1350 –1558 (Woodbridge, 1996), 68–9 and 87.

David Postles

church. Many of the strategies for personal salvation which are associated with popular
piety in the English late middle ages have a longer history, and it is by no means clear
that there was a greater efflorescence of these recourses in the late middle ages. What is
probably true is that the higher disposable income of many people in the later medieval
period combined with the relative emancipation of the peasantry might have brought

such strategies within the compass of more people. Lighting had an immense practical
and symbolic importance for the medieval church and its congregations even before the

late middle ages.

Scope thus exists for an extended consideration of the laity’s contribution to lighting

before the middle of the fourteenth century. Benefactions for lights reveal much about
lay piety in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the extent to which personal
religious observance had become focussed on the parish church or whether religious
houses continued to be as, if not more, attractive at a time when parochial organisation
and parochial obligations on the laity were still evolving. Lights are significant because
quite modest endowments could be made for their maintenance, which allowed the
participation of wide social groups in this form of association with the liturgy, including
burgesses and even the free peasantry. Whilst the first part of the paper explores the
symbolic importance of lights, the second part considers the involvement of the laity in
their provision, both by ecclesiastical compulsion and as part of voluntary religious
observance. It is clear that lights were a continuous focus of lay piety in the middle ages,
but that some differences existed between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the
later middle ages in the nature and direction of the benefactions as, in the later middle
ages, the parish stood increasingly at the centre of lay devotion.

Before the construction of clerestories and large windows in the nave and the use of

grisaille glass to allow reading of texts by at least some parishioners, churches were
darker, which made the contrast between light(ing) and dark even more significant, both
practically and symbolically, especially in, for example, ceremonies such as the

tenebrae. In the dark, and before the introduction of seating, so that congregations were

Charters of the honour of Mowbray

1107 –1191, ed. D. Greenway (British Academy Records of Social and

Economic History, n.s., 1, London, 1972), 14 (no. 9). Of similar status was the gift of Abberton by Ranulph
Peverel to St Paul, London, before 1142, for the lights of the cathedral church, Peverel having elected to be
buried there: Early charters of the cathedral church of St Paul

, London, ed. M. Gibbs (Camden 3rd ser., 58,

1939), 173–4.

C. Dyer, Standards of living in the middle ages

. Social change in England c.1200 –1520 (Cambridge, new

edition, 1994).

See generally, D.R. Dendy, The use of lights in Christian worship (Alcuin Club Collections 41, SPCK,

London, 1959).

For the later use of grisaille glass for reading, H. Leith Spencer, English preaching in the late middle ages

(Oxford, 1993), 38–9. About the contrast of light and dark, I hesitate to assume too much of a structuralist
interpretation of binary opposition, but see the prayers for light dispelling darkness at Candlemas: M.C.
Mansfield, The humiliation of sinners

. Public penance in thirteenth-century France (Ithaca, New York,

1995), 136 and 136 n.19, but note that Mansfield concludes that Candlemas was ‘resolutely unpenitential’.
For the Paschal candle as a metaphor for the Light and the contrast of light and dark in contemporary
Franciscan theology, R. Brentano, Two churches

. England and Italy in the thirteenth century (Berkeley and

Los Angeles, pb. edn, 1988), 184–5. For the ceremonial ‘creation of light’ at Siena cathedral when the
clergy processed into the church to cense the altars and light the candles after sunset, B. Kempers, ‘Icons,
altarpieces, and civic ritual in Siena Cathedral, 1100–1530’, in: City and spectacle in medieval Europe, eds.
B.A. Hanawalt and K. Reyerson (Minneapolis, 1994), 95; see there also for the contrast of light and dark in
processions with candles: 112. The tenebrae were described by Guillaume Durand (for thirteenth-century
‘France’) as the repeated lighting and extinction of candles: Dendy, Use of lights, 145. Micrologus, slightly
earlier, made it clear that the light at mass symbolised the Light: Dendy, Use of lights, 25.

Lamps, lights and layfolk: ‘popular’ devotion before the Black Death

assembled standing, the raising and positioning of lights at the elevation of the host in

masses, presented the contrast again. By 1226, the cathedral church at Wells was
consuming at least 450 lbs of wax every year for its lighting, whilst, when the lighting
was increased at Salisbury cathedral church in the early thirteenth century, the treasurer

was allowed another 200 lbs of wax.

This close association of lights and the mass confirmed their symbolic and ritual

importance. In c.1200, for example, William filius Herberti of Derby donated to Darley
Abbey half an acre of land in his borough to help to maintain a light coram corpore

dominico [before the host]. The statutes of English dioceses in the early thirteenth
century elaborate on this point. A lamp must burn continuously day and night before the

host.

Diocesan statutes required two candles or at least one candle and a lantern for the

solemnization of the mass. The statutes for the diocese of Winchester (1247?) specified
that the candles should be not only large but made ad modum torticeorum; when the
priest began the communication, with the incipit of the Te igitur, two assistants should

move the two candles to the right and left of the altar.

Similarly, when the eucharist

was taken to the sick, it was to be preceded by a light, sometimes as in the statutes for
the diocese of Salisbury defined as a candelabrum or lantern and churches in that diocese

were required in 1238 3 1244 to have two candelabra and two processional candles.

The host was blessed with candles.

For raising of candles during priests’ communication, R.N. Swanson, Religion and devotion in Europe

.1215 –1515 (Cambridge, 1995), 100 and 141. As early as the ‘Canons of Edgar’ (1005 3 1008) it was

required that a light should constantly burn when mass was sung: Councils and synods and other documents
relating to the English Church, I AD

871 –1204, Part I 871 –1066 [hereafter Councils and synods I, I], eds.

D. Whitelock, M. Brett and C.N.L. Brooke (Oxford, 1981), 328; Dendy, Use of lights, 89 (including the
grant by Hugh de Westwode to Bushmead Priory of 6d. rent for the two torches which were lit at the
consecration and elevation of the host). For the use of light at the elevation of the host, Calendar of the
manuscripts of the Dean and Chapter of Wells, 2 vols (Historical Manuscripts Commission [hereafter HMC]
Report no 12, 1907 and 1914), 2, 587 (no. 179).

MSS of D and C Wells, 1, 36–7 and 2, 570; K. Edwards, The English secular cathedrals in the middle ages

(Manchester, 2nd edn 1967), 225 and 225 n. 4.

For the ritual development of the mass as a rite of incorporation and as ‘posthumous rituals of expiation’ and

purgation, requiring some sense of purgatory, from the eighth century and thus antedating Le Goff’s notion
of purgatory, F.S. Paxton, Christianizing death

. The creation of a ritual process in early medieval Europe

(Ithaca and London, 1990), 66–8. However, Paxton also perceived the mass as an integral part of the culture
of gift-exchange of early medieval society, a gift expecting or anticipating a return – that God should or
would reciprocate – following Mauss (although not Mauss’s account of the more extreme and competitive
potlatch – I return to this below in terms of the gift defining social honour and social status as well as being
salvific): M. Mauss, The gift

. The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies, trans. W.D. Halls

(London, 1990), 33–43.

Darley cartulary, ed. R.R. Darlington 2 vols (Kendal, 1945), I, 126 (no. B37).

Statutes of Worcester 1240, c. 16: Councils and synods with other documents relating to the English church,

volume II AD

1205 –1313, eds. F.M. Powicke and C.R. Cheney [hereafter Councils and synods II ] (Oxford,

1964), 296.

Councils and synods II, 144 (an unidentified diocese 1222 3 1225) and 522 (Ely statutes 1239 3 1256, c.36).

Dendy, Use of lights, 26–36.

Councils and synods II, p. 404 (c.4). Torches might consist of wax weighing up to 24 lbs: B.F. Harvey,

Living and dying in England

1100 –1540. The monastic experience (Oxford, 1995, pb edn), 26. For lights at

mass, Dendy, Use of lights, 72–91.

Councils and Synods II, 296 (Worcester 1240, c.2 – one candelabrum and a lantern only – and c.15 for the

eucharist taken to the sick), 379 (Salisbury 1238 3 1244 c.29) and 512–13 (Salisbury 1228 3 1256 c.8 –
eucharist to the sick). See also Swanson, Religion and devotion, 141. Dendy, Use of lights, 68, suggests this
was so by 1195.

Councils and Synods II, 512–13 (Salisbury 1228 3 1256, c.8).

100

David Postles

In keeping with the ritual significance of the liturgical lights, their use had to be

demarcated from normal life – marking off both the substance and its use.

The ritual

demarcation was most pronounced afterwards, as by the statutes of Salisbury of
1217 3 1219 which required that after Holy Trinity small candles should be made from
Easter wax which could be employed in the burials of the poor – reserving the use of the

wax to its ritual occasions.

Similar promulgation for the diocese of Worcester (1229

and 1240) allowed use of Easter wax after Holy Trinity for the lesser altars as well as for

burials of the poor.

Even more emphatically, however, the statute of 1229 prohibited

any other use (common use) of the candles blessed for Purification unless the wax was

first melted down.

Quotidian material was thus marked off symbolically from normal consumption both

in time and use. Liturgical time and use were separated from the rest of life, although the
material was in common daily use, for candles remained a common assistance to the
pursuit of normal life. The author of the Seneschaucy (compiled before or not much after
1276), for example, ordered that the cowherd should not take fire or candle into the
cowshed except under controlled manner. For the ploughmen, he proscribed the use of
naked flame for warmth nor should the ploughmen use candles unless in a lantern. The
carter, furthermore, required to sleep every night with his horses, should take no flame or

candle into the stables except in a lantern.

Consequently, the manorial accounts of

Cuxham, a manor of Merton College in Oxfordshire, recorded the purchase of tallow for
candles; in 1290–1, 12 lbs of tallow were bought for candles for harvest and winter, an
amount adjusted upwards to 22 lbs in 1293–4, although still at 1d. per lb. In 1288–9, the
account recorded that the tallow was bought for candles for the use of the famuli in
winter, but in some years the costs of visits to the manor were also included. The
purchase of 14 lbs of tallow in 1297–8 was defined as for all expenses of the familia,

which must mean the body of the famuli in this case.

Some of the peasants on manors

of the Bishopric of Winchester contributed wax as their annual recognition (chevage) in

1301–2; more than thirty found 1 / 2 lb. each and four a full lb.

The itinerant household of Abbot Walter of Wenlock, head of Westminster Abbey,

purchased 27 lbs of Paris candles at Pirford for 2s10 1 / 2d in 1289–90; several quantities

For boundary-marking rules – in this case in the puja of the Jains – C. Humphrey and J. Laidlaw, The

archetypal actions of ritual

. A theory of ritual illustrated by the Jain rite of worship (Oxford, 1994), 105

and 116. For a more general discussion about the differentiation of ritual from social life, but using the same
materials, C. Bell, Ritual theory

, ritual practice (Oxford, 1992), 90–1. For another view, relating to the

imposition of ordering, M. Douglas, Purity and danger

. An analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo

(London, repr. 1995), 4.

Councils and Synods II, 56 (c.10).

Councils and synods II, 178 and 318.

Councils and synods II, 174 (c.21). For the marking off of communion, J.H. Lynch, The medieval church

. A

brief history (London and New York, 1992), 282 (similar to Jain marking off of the puja).

Walter of Henley and other treatises on estate management and accounting, ed. D. Oschinsky (Oxford,

1971), 282–5 (cc. 52, 54 and 56) [for the date, 72].

Manorial records of Cuxham

, Oxfordshire, circa 1200 –1359, ed. P.D.A. Harvey (HMC JP23, 1976), 173,

185, 201, 235, 253, 270 and 286.

The pipe roll of the Bishopric of Winchester

1301 –2, ed. M. Page (Hampshire Record Society, 14, 1996),

16, 21–2, 24–5, 29, 32, 34, 38, 297. There may be a further significance, however, in that the payment in
wax recognised a dependency and submission to lordship, although many others paid in cash.

Lamps, lights and layfolk: ‘popular’ devotion before the Black Death

101

of wax were also bought from Thomas Romain, pepperer and later Mayor of London.
Tallow was purchased for candles for the guesthouse of Beaulieu Abbey in 1269–70; the
same commodity was forestalled outside the market at Norwich leading to presentment

at the leet in 1289.

Beaulieu, however, was assiduous in producing its own wax from

swarms in all its manors and workshops in Hampshire. By a centralised organisation, the
wax was delivered from the points of production to the lesser chamber, whence it was
redistributed. The lesser chamber thus received 215 1 / 2 lbs of wax, of which 140 lbs
were directed to the sacristan, all to be consumed in the churches and chapels in his care.
The abbot’s chamber received 18 lbs (fourteen from the lesser chamber and four from
the sacristan) and the abbot’s notary 3 1 / 2 lbs, the keeper of the works 6 lbs, the

refectory a small amount, the cellarer 3 lbs, and the guesthouse 10 lbs.

Additionally,

the larder produced 2 stones of tallow, which was sold, and the tanner substantial
quantities of tallow; large amounts of oil were also purchased for the churches, the

monks’ dormitory, the dormitory of the conversi, and both of their infirmaries.

At least

some of the wax, most of the tallow, and some of the oil were thus used for lighting of
non-liturgical purpose. It is estimated that sixteen candles for this purpose might be

derived from 1 lb of material. Even in an ecclesiastical context, then, candles retained a
practical purpose which was not liturgical, and the three officials of the treasury of
Lincoln cathedral received in the late middle ages an allowance each week of thirteen or
fourteen candles through winter and seven in summer to search the cathedral twice each

night for the security of valuables.

A further way in which liturgical candles were

marked off from daily use, however, was by material, size and complexity. At the lowest
social level, candles for daily use consisted of fat dipped in rush, at the higher level
tallow, with some wax and a maximum weight considerably less than 1 lb. Liturgical
candles were uniformly of wax, heavy and decorated (such as torches), although candles
used by penitents at their penance were slight, as might have been the candles used by

parishioners at Candlemas processions.

Candles were thus familiar from daily life but also separated off for ritual use. In

Documents illustrating the rule of Walter of Wenlok

, Abbot of Westminster, 1283 –1307, ed. B.F. Harvey

(Camden 4th ser., 2, 1965), 167, 169, 173 and 184; since the materials were acquired by the steward of the
household, it is assumed that they were not for liturgical use, which is confirmed by the commodity being
Paris candles, that is, made from tallow, a less expensive option: H. Swanson, Medieval artisans

. An urban

class in late medieval England (Oxford, 1989), 16–17 and 98–100. For Romain, P. Nightingale, A medieval
mercantile community

. The Grocer’s Company and the politics and trade of London 1000 –1485 (New

Haven and London, 1995), 94–5 and 123–7.

Account-book of Beaulieu Abbey, ed. S.F. Hockey (Camden 4th ser. 16, 1975), 277; The records of the city

of Norwich, eds. W. Hudson and J.C. Tingey, 2 vols (London and Norwich, 1906 and 1910), 2, 367.

Account-book of Beaulieu Abbey, 54, 86, 108, 119, 124, 135, 145, 151, 157, 162, 169, 184, 188, 194, 212,

214, 227–8, 237, 239, 241, 242, 243, 253, 256, 269, 277, 281 and 298.

Account-book of Beaulieu Abbey, 188, 212 and 243.

Harvey, Living and dying, 202.

Edwards, English secular cathedrals, 230.

For the use of candles at submission in penance: Mansfield, Humiliation of sinners, 187 and 187 n.90,

alluding to a symbolic ritual of submission through the candles as reported by Guillaume Durand for parts of
France (‘complicated choreography with candles’ – Mansfield); R. Wunderli, London church courts and
society on the eve of the Reformation (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 50–1. One of the duties of the parish priest
in the early twelfth century was to bless the candles at Purification: M. Brett, The English church under
Henry I (Oxford, 1975), 222. The Paschal candle at Salisbury cathedral weighed 7 lbs: Edwards, English
secular cathedrals, 225.

102

David Postles

certain circumstances, wax assumed a heightened significance and symbolism.

The

penance of Walter filius Simonis for insulting the Priory of Daventry was, in 1239, to

keep a light constantly burning before the high altar of Daventry.

The appropriation of

some parish churches by religious houses in the twelfth century was only allowed on the
condition that the revenues be employed in maintaining the lights and ornaments of the

monastic church.

In the early twelfth century, William Gifford, bishop of Winchester,

allowed his cathedral priory the Pentecostal oblations to be used for their lights and
other necessities, perhaps mindful of the cerae deneratae provided by parishioners to

mother churches at such processions in Normandy.

Rents of lay fee between clerics

involved these symbolically-invested materials as rent, different from secular services in
some sense (although enforceable at common law). Thus when Mr William de Bening
[worth] received a toft and croft from the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln in 1241 3 1243,
the rent consisted of a wax candle weighing 1 lb to burn on the high altar of the
cathedral church and when Daventry priory was forced to distrain for a rent, the distraint

consisted of the forfeiture of 2d. to provide a candle for the daily Lady Mass.

When,

before Papal judges delegate, agreement was reached between the priory of St Gregory,
Canterbury, and Roger, rector of Lenham, about the tithes of Lenham in 1240, the priory
was obliged to make an annual payment of a candle weighing 2 lbs to the parish church

on the feast of the Nativity of the BVM pro bono perpetue pacis.

Similarly, an

agreement with the consent of Reading Abbey between the rector of the parish church of
Rowington and Pinley Priory about the lesser tithes due to Rowington was concluded by

the nuns providing a small pension of wax for their lesser tithes, in 1195 3 1213.

compensation for their accommodation in the house on the east side of the cathedral

It is not certain whether, in the following examples, wax (cera) refers to wax for candles, but their

occurrence is worth consideration: arbitration by the precentor and chancellor of York between the Dean and
Chapter of Lincoln and the Prior and Convent of Sixwould was concluded by the last paying to Lincoln, pro
bono pacis, 2 lbs of wax every year (1248); from 1295 the Abbess of St Clare contributed to the census of
exclusive religious houses exempt from Ordinary and Metropolitan and directly subject to the Papacy, the
only house to provide wax; Lunt suggested that the commodity was a ‘‘a sign of liberty’’, but as well as
signifying exemption it might also have communicated subservience to the Pope (it was in any case
commuted). Registrum antiquissimum of the cathedral church of Lincoln ed. C.W. Foster and K. Major, 12
vols (Lincoln Record Society, 27–9, 32, 34, 41–2, 46, 51, 62, 67–8, 1931–73), 7, 166–7 (no. 2142); W.E.
Lunt, Financial relations of the Papacy with England to

1327 (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), 118.

The cartulary of Daventry Priory, ed. M.J. Franklin (Northamptonshire Record Society, 35, 1988), 13 (no.

24).

English episcopal acta [hereafter Eea] II Canterbury

1162 –1190, eds. C.R. Cheney and B.E.A. Jones

(British Academy, London, 1986), 243–4 (no. 284) (Leeds Priory and the parish church of Bearsted,
1185 3 1190); Eea IV Lincoln

1186 –1206, ed. D.M. Smith (British Academy, London, 1986), 107 (no. 161:

appropriation by the church of Haddenham by Rochester Cathedral Priory: 1194 3 1200). An element of
subjection might be involved also, as in the case of the stone of wax due from the church of St Andrew,
Huntingdon, as a pension to Ramsey Abbey for lights (1189): Eea IV, 104–5 (no. 157). An alternative
symbolic payment in religious situations was incense, as to be provided to the church of Winwick (1 lb)
before Christmas by Daventry Priory as a token; Daventry had been permitted to appropriate the churches of
West Haddon and Cold Ashby saving the rights of the church of Winwick held by the Prior of Coventry
(1150): Daventry cart., 228–9 (no. 697).

Brett, English church under Henry I, 162.

Registrum antiquissimum of the cathedral church of Lincoln, 5, 57 (no. 1536); Daventry cart., 105–6.

Cartulary of the priory of St

. Gregory, Canterbury, ed. A.M. Woodcock (Camden Society, 3rd ser., 88,

1956), 159 (no. 220).

The Reading Abbey cartularies, ed. B.R. Kemp, 2 vols (Camden 4th ser., 31 and 33, 1986–7), 463 (no. 625).

Lamps, lights and layfolk: ‘popular’ devotion before the Black Death

103

close at Lincoln, poor clerks contributed a lighted candle in a silver candlestick to burn

before the high altar on specific days.

Candles were symbolically employed in excommunication, as well as restitution of

penitents, but perhaps more illuminating is the incensed reaction of Bishop Oliver Sutton
to the desecration of the church and altars at Thame. For this profanity, Sutton, in 1294,
excommunicated the occupiers of the church by taking up a candle (sumens candelam)
and then, with the words ‘fiat, fiat, amen’ on completion of the excommunication,

dashed the candle to the ground (et proiecit candelam ad terram).

Ritual and everyday

use commingled and became confused, however, in ‘popular’ religion, when candles
were constructed to take to shrines to aid the sick. The wick was measured against the
body of the sick person and then folded and coated in wax, the candle, thus representing

the sick body, being then placed before the shrine.

The symbolic, ritual and liturgical importance of lights thus existed from an early time

and was profound by the twelfth century. The discussion now concentrates on the
involvement of the laity in the provision and maintenance of lights in the variety of
religious institutions, including the parish, which attracted lay devotion before the late
middle ages. It begins by considerating the compulsory obligations imposed on the laity
from an early time, but progresses by way of an example, the provision for lighting in
the parish church of Tytherley, to explore voluntary benefactions by the laity for
lighting. Described then are the comparative levels of benefactions for lights in religious
houses and parish churches in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, attempting to locate
the focus of lay devotion. These two forms of institution were, in a sense, competitors
for lay grants for lights, but more complexity obtained. Religious houses were
appropriators of parish churches. Since many advowsons were in the hands of the
religious, it is not always clear whether, in grants for lights in some parish churches, the
parish church was the primary focus and the religious simply acted in a supervisory
capacity, or whether donors had mixed motives. It is, however, possible to discern that
in many cases the benefaction was exclusively intended for parish church and illustrative
examples are collected together. Finally, some of the wider implications of benefactions
for specific purposes such as lights are considered again.

Originally, it was the obligation of all the laity to provide for lights in churches,

whether monastic or parochial. The early pastoral role of large Benedictine religious
houses is reflected in the scot for lights levied on their tenantry. The Regularis
Concordia of c.970 ‘assumes a regular presence of lay parishioners at mass in a
monastery’, with the consequence that some houses, such as Crowland, continued

Edwards, English secular cathedrals, 313.

Select cases from the ecclesiastical courts of the Province of Canterbury c

.1200 –1301, eds. N. Adams and

C. Donohue (Selden Society, 95, 1981), 585; for excommunication with the ringing of bells and lighted
candles (accensisque candelis) at mass on Sundays or feast days, 685 (1299).

R.W. Finucane, Miracles and pilgrims

. Popular belief in medieval England (London, repr. 1995), 95–6. For

light as a mark of honour, Dendy, Use of lights, 74. See the agreement about the wax candles deposited at
the shrine of St Thomas Cantilupe in Hereford cathedral in 1293: Charters and records of Hereford
Cathedral, ed. W.W. Capes (Hereford, 1908), 167.

104

David Postles

through the later middle ages to entertain worship by the laity.

Minsters too continued

as ‘primary centres of lay attraction’. As a result, the large Benedictine houses imposed
the obligation to provide some of the lighting of their churches on their tenantry. Thus
Ramsey Abbey exacted lightscot in the early twelfth century at the rate of 1d from
married and 1 / 2d from unmarried cottars on its manors of Abbot’s Ripton and
Broughton, whilst on another manor, Wistow, each house contributed 1 / 2d at Easter for
lighting the church; the Abbey required 1d from every plough of the curia on its manor
of Brancaster for Easter wax. In c.1125, Peterborough Abbey received 1d from every
plough on its manor of Glinton for Easter wax. On the manors of the Bishop of Ely
waursilver or waresilver was levied, a comparable scot. The tenants of the secular
cathedral chapter of St Paul’s, London, contributed 2s, each year for candlewekesilver,

the name of the levy raised from manors by the Bishop of Durham.

Slightly different, however, was the provision of wax for parochial churches, to which

all parishioners contributed through the payment of lightscot. In the Old English law,
leohgesceot was mentioned in 1002 3 1008; slightly later, the ‘Canons of Edgar’
(1005 3 1008) commented on the levy of light dues three times each year, as did the
Code of Æthelred although this enunciation allowed the laity to contribute more

regularly than three times a year voluntarily.

Cnut’s laws maintained the three feasts,

Easter, All Saints and Candlemas, establishing the rate of payment at 1 / 2d on every

hide.

The statutes of the diocese of Salisbury (1228 3 1256) confirmed that parishion-

ers should contribute Easter wax and sufficient lighting throughout the whole year for

matins and vespers and mass.

A list of 1230 3 1240 for waxscot (De ciragio) for the

villages of Haddenham, Linden, Hill, Hinton and Aldreth in the Isle of Ely denominated

213 persons (or households) who should contribute.

By the early thirteenth century, nevertheless, individual grants and gifts to maintain

lighting in churches were widely anticipated, so that diocesan statutes repeatedly made
provision that rents assigned by the devotion of lay persons to lights should not be

diverted by rectors or vicars to other purposes.

Encouragement was extended by

G. Rosser, ‘The cure of souls in English towns before 1000’, in: Pastoral care before the parish, eds. J. Blair

and R. Sharpe (Leicester, 1992), 270–1; C.N.L. Brooke, ‘The missionary at home: the church in the towns,
1000–1250’, in: Studies in church history 6 (Oxford, 1970), 59–83. Other examples of continuous lay
congregations are Westminster, Hereford and Beverley: Rosser, ‘The cure of souls’, 271–2. On the pastoral
role of monks in the twelfth century, M. Chibnall, ‘Monks and pastoral work: a problem in Anglo-Norman
history’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 18 (1967), 165–72, and Brett, English church under Henry I,
221–2.

Rosser, ‘The cure of souls’, 275.

N. Neilson, Customary rents (Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History, 2, 1910), 42, 112 and 192: note

that all were cathedral chapters and / or older Benedictine religious houses.

Councils and synods I, I, 303, 332, 351 and 393.

Councils and synods I, I, 477. A deponent in a cause in 1286 remembered the day of the event recalled

because his father was ill at Brackley and was brought to the deponent’s house at Steane, lying ill there until
Purification, so that the deponent sent his mother the candle for the feast: Select Canterbury cases, 541.

Councils and synods II, 512–13 (c.8).

D.M. Owen, ‘Two manorial parish books from the diocese of Ely: New College MS. 98 and Wisbech

Museum MS. 1’, in: East Anglian and other studies presented to Barbara Dodwell, eds. M. Barber, P.
McNulty and P. Noble (Reading Medieval Studies, 11, 1985), 125–6.

Councils and synods II, 271, 310, 348, 407 (Lincoln 1239?, c.21, Worcester 1240, c.59, Norwich 1240x1243,

c.22, Winchester 1247?, c.27).

Lamps, lights and layfolk: ‘popular’ devotion before the Black Death

105

statutes for Winchester and Wells dioceses in respectively 1247? and 1258?, with the

grant of an indulgence of ten days to those contributing to lighting.

In the mid-thirteenth century Matthew de Columbariis attorned to the parish church of

Tytherley, all the service and rent of Philip de Querco, that is twelve candles yearly
burning every day at all masses each candle weighing 1 lb. Two candles were to be
delivered on Christmas eve and to burn until 1st March, two from the 1st March to 1st
May, two from 1st May until 1st July, two from 1st July to 1st September, two from 1st
September until the eve of All Saints, and two from then until Christmas eve.
Additionally, he prescribed that half the residue of the candles should burn before the
cross and the other half of the residue before the Lady altar for the antiphony after

mass. Unusually, this donor was of relatively high social status and his definition of the
use of the candles was exceptional, as also was their quantity. On the other hand,
illustrated well is the association of this sort of grant with the assignment of rents and
with the mass and the Lady altar.

The assignment or attornment of rents also allowed the participation of the free

peasantry in such gift-exchange, but more particularly townspeople. Religious houses,
however, offered a symbol of social and religious association different from the parish
church, again especially in towns, but also amongst the rural free peasantry. The further
benefit which accrued from the granting of rents to maintain lamps was flexibility of
association and private devotion. Grantors selected altars dedicated to a wider range of
saints than merely the dedication of the religious house or the parochial church. Popular
piety was thus expressed through benefactions to lights for a wide range of altars rather

than restricted to the patronal saint of the church’s dedication.

Whilst donors or grantors of high social status had a range of strategies for salvation –

place of burial, (con)fraternity, chantry, pittances in expectation of response – the
exchange of rents for lights in expectation of salvation was much more accessible to

lesser benefactors.

Perhaps only the fabric fund of religious houses and pittances

allowed a similar opportunity.

There remain, nevertheless, complexities for any

analysis, not least hidden purchases even for such purposeful benefactions. It is possible

Councils and synods II, 404 and 592–3.

The cartulary of St Denis, ed. E.O. Blake 2 vols (Southampton Record Society, 24–5, 1981), 244 (no. 436).

This gift constituted one amongst many from this family which held the advowson of the church: 258–9 (no.
463, 1171 3 1184).

G. Rosser, ‘Parochial conformity and popular religion in late medieval England’, Transactions of the Royal

Historical Society, 6th ser. 1 (1991), 173–90, for the inflexibility of parochial organisation and attempts to
circumvent it.

For the earlier stages in the development of chantries, K.L. Wood-Legh, Perpetual chantries in Britain

(Cambridge, 1965).

In this case less gift-exchange than a declared remission of sins; see for example the thirty-three masses in

the cathedral each week for brothers and sisters of the fraternity of the fabric: Eea IV, 166 (no. 258). Many
grants to Thurgarton priory were assigned to the fabric fund: The Thurgarton cartulary, ed. T. Foulds
(Stamford, 1994), for example 84–9 (nos 134–46 [broken series]). Some houses and chapters were
particularly adept at receiving rents for pittances whether on the anniversary of the grantor’s death or not:
The cartulary of Holy Trinity

, Aldgate, ed. G.A.J. Hodgett (London Record Society 7, 1971), 90, 109, 137,

158, 205 and 210 (nos 449, 546, 701a, 812, 1013 and 1028) and Magnum Registrum Album, ed. H. E.
Savage (Collections for a History of Staffordshire, 1926 for 1924), 264–8 (nos 554–65). Elias Porter gave a
toft to Blyth Priory in the late twelfth century to allow a pittance on the anniversary of his death nulla
festiuitate obstante: The cartulary of Blyth Priory, ed. R.T. Timson (HMC JP17, 1973), 34–5 (no. 26).

106

David Postles

that the circumstance of some, at least, of the acquisitions was purchase by the religious
house. For example, when Southwick Priory received a house in Southwick from
William de [sic] Lardenir in c.1250, the Priory paid a consideration of 18s. although a
light would be maintained at the high altar of the Priory church (which acted also as the
parochial church). What appears to have happened here is that in recompense for its

acquisition the Priory undertook to provide the light.

So also when Arnold son of

Roger Niger transferred to Shrewsbury Abbey a messuage in that borough to increase
the light before the high altar by providing a candle at high mass, the Abbey gave in

consideration two marks and 10s.4d. in urgentissima necessitate mea.

A second complication occurred when the church of the religious house contained

also the parochial church, if the professed religious used the chancel and the parishioners
the nave, or if the two congregations had different naves, since it is difficult to
differentiate whether the benefaction was primarily intended for the conventual or
parochial parts of the church. For example, both Daventry and Southwick Priories had
been founded within parish churches. Cathedral priories and churches present a similar
confusion of interests, although the cartulary of Worcester cathedral priory apparently
contains few charters with benefits for the lights and Brown refers to only a few such

grants to the lights at Salisbury.

Although, as we shall see, predilection for the high and Lady altars was paramount,

those making grants for lights could exercise a wider personal choice from a range of

altars dedicated to a variety of saints.

In 1323, John Launcelevey requested that wax

candles annually valued at 4s.5 1 / 2d. burn on the altar of St Nicholas on the feast of that
saint in the chapel of St James in Southwick Priory, the reason for his choice being

obscure. Roger son of William de Houton’ gave two tofts (1218 3 1231) to Thurgarton
Priory, a house dedicated to St Peter, for the maintenance of three lamps in the priory,
one for the Lady Mass, one before the altar of St Nicholas for masses, and one in the

Lady chapel of the infirmary for masses.

The same priory received from Henry Ruffus

three selions partly to maintain lamps, one to provide a lamp before the high altar of the
house, one for its fabric fund, and the final one to provide two lamps before the altar of

St Margaret the Virgin in Owthorpe church. Muriel de Langetoft selected the altar of St
Nicholas in the parish church of St Peter, Shiplake, granting lands and villeins for two

The cartularies of Southwick Priory, ed. K.A. Hanna 2 vols (Hampshire Record Society 9–10, 1989), 104

(III, 297); this point was emphasised to me by Barbara Harvey.

The cartulary of Shrewsbury Abbey, ed. U. Rees 2 vols (Aberystywth, 1975), 156 (no. 179: 1232 3 1252).

The cartulary of Worcester Cathedral Priory

(Register 1), ed. R. R. Darlington (Pipe Roll Society n.s. 38

1962–3), 80–1 and 181 (nos 143 and 340) are the lay beneficiaries (1189 3 1196 and 1219); A. Brown,
Popular piety in late medieval England

. The diocese of Salisbury 1250 –1550 (Oxford, 1995), 52 (provision

of a candle of 1 lb to burn before the Lady altar on the eve of the feast of the Assumption of the BVM). For
the general configuration of lights at Salisbury, Dendy, Use of lights, p. 28. See also, M.J. Franklin, ‘The
cathedral as parish church: the case of southern England’, in: Church and city

1000 –1250. Essays in honour

of Christopher Brooke, eds. D. Abulafia, M.J. Franklin and M. Rubin (Cambridge, 1992), 173–98.

Dendy, Use of lights, 108–19, for lights and the ‘cult of saints’, and 17–71 for lights around the altar, with

the suggestion (19 and 69) that the accretion of lights on the altar was only permitted by the remodelling of
parochial churches from the twelfth century, allowing the replacement of smaller, square altars by larger,
rectangular ones.

Southwick carts., 2, 378 (II, 923).

Thurgarton cart., 188–9 (no. 320).

Thurgarton cart., 386–7 (no. 630: 1202 3 1235, alluding to the blessed Margaret).

Lamps, lights and layfolk: ‘popular’ devotion before the Black Death

107

candles at that altar at the altar’s patronal feast day and a lamp before the same altar

burning festiuis diebus ad uesperas et ad missam.

More unusual was the choice of

William Juvenis who in c.1275 assigned a rent of 4s. from property in Derby to Dale

Abbey to maintain a lamp day and night before the altar of St Werburgh in the house.
Rents of 12d. were assigned by Henry Inge to St Frideswide’s Priory, Oxford, in
1230 3 1240 for a lamp in the chapel of St Lucy the Virgin que sita est in curia

dictorum Prioris et Conuentus.

St Catherine the Virgin was the beneficiary of a rent of

9d. granted in the early thirteenth century to Blyth Priory to sustain a candle before her

altar in the house on her feast day.

On receipt of a messuage and plot of land from

Adam Bat in c.1230, Beaulieu Abbey agreed to contribute 2s. annually to maintain lights
before the altars of St Thomas and St Catherine in the parish church of St Laurence,

Hungerford.

At the instance and consent of his wife, Eustacia Basset, Richard de

Camville conveyed to Robert clericus a virgate in Bicester with the condition of
providing a lamp before the altar of St Nicholas in Bicester Priory, which was dedicated
to SS Mary and Edburga every day and night when divine office was celebrated and

during canonical hours (1206 3 1216).

Ralph de Cornehell elected to sustain lights

before the altars of SS Erkenwald and James in St Paul’s cathedral some time before

1211.

Despite this variety, however, provision was mainly directed to the high altar and

more particularly the Lady altar and their masses. More typical was Thomas la [sic]
Wayte who assigned a messuage in Southwick to the priory there for a light before the

altar on the north side of the priory church when Lady Mass was solemnly sung.
William de Hoo, a townsman of Portsmouth, requested a light on the altar of the BVM

in the priory.

Indeed, six of the ten grants for lights to Southwick Priory, mostly from

townspeople of Southwick, were associated with the Lady Mass, so that a keeper of the

(lights of) the altar was necessary. Similarly the keeper of the Lady altar at Shrewsbury
Abbey received twenty-five of the twenty-nine grants of rents, mainly in the borough, to

The cartulary of Missenden Abbey, Part III, ed. J.G. Jenkins (HMC JP1, 1962), 101–2 (no. 691).

The cartulary of Dale Abbey, ed. A. Saltman (HMC JP11, 1967), 304–5 (no. 445)

The cartulary of St Frideswide

’s Priory, ed. S.F. Wigram, 2 vols (Oxford Historical Society, 28 and 31,

1895–6), I, 291–2 (no. 387).

Blyth cart., 64–5 (no. 76).

The cartulary of Beaulieu Abbey, ed. S.F. Hockey (Southampton Record Society 17, 1974), 29–30 (no. 28).

Basset charters c

.1120 to 1250, ed. W.T. Reedy (Pipe Roll Society n.s.50, 1995 for 1989–91), 130–1 (no.

195).

Early Charters

... St Paul, 187 (no. 237). For more eclectic choice, Ernald son of Simon the chaloner gave a

land and house in 1222 3 1248 to Holy Trinity, Aldgate, to provide half a mark for pittances for the regular
canons on the morrow of St Edmund King and Martyr and another half mark for the same on the
anniversary of his own death, but until that time on the feast day of St Leodegarius, as well as half a mark
for candles for the regular canons at supper and drinking as often as necessary: Cart. of Holy Trinity

Aldgate, 74 (no. 380).

Southwick carts., 411 (III, 997: 1235 3 1266).

Southwick carts., 262 (III, 682: c.1230).

Southwick carts., 104–5, 262, 378, 411–17 (III, 297–8, 682, 923, 997–8, 1003, 1006 and 1010–11).

Excluded for this purpose are the lights established by William de Humeto, king’s constable, not only
because of his status, but also because the location of his lights was determined by the burial place of his
wife, Lucy, before the cross: 24 and 43 (I, 39 and 76: 1170 3 1190); the gift of a tenement in Berkeley,
Glos., by Robert de Berkeley 1190 3 1215 had the simple purpose ad emendacionem luminaris (62, III,
200).

108

David Postles

maintain lights in the first half of the thirteenth century. At Westminster Abbey as early
as 1200 3 1214, provision was made for all those who had contributed towards lights at

the Lady altar to be entered in the martyrology.

Indeed, townspeople in Westminster

and London were involved in twenty-one charters in 1198 3 1216 granting rents for
lights for the Lady altar in the Abbey, totalling £2 10s. 0d., at a mean rent of 2s.4d. The

lowest amount was a rent of 4d. and the highest 7s.8d., the median lying at 2s.

By this

time, the light had been assigned to the precentor.

In Oxford, William Vincent

contributed a rent of 6d. c.1230 for the Lady light in Osney Abbey, whilst the light at the
Lady altar in Norwich cathedral benefited from a gift of 4d. rent from Alice filia

Egidie.

Attested once again in this phenomenon is the strength of Marian devotion by

the early thirteenth century.

In the tenor of most of the grants for Lady lights in the borough of Shrewsbury, the

size of the rents varied widely, but fell in the lower levels. Thus Adam son of Andrew le
Turner gave a rent of a mere 1 / 2d. there towards the lights for the Lady altar in

1260 3 1280, whilst Reiner filius Godwini assigned only 1d. rent.

Eighteen of the rents

did not exceed 1s. The size-distribution is complicated, however, by the actions of Hugh
filius Ricardi, who contributed a sequence of rents of 3d., 3 1 / 2d., 4 1 / 2d., 1s., 5s.10d.,
8d., and 1s.2d. with no ostensible consideration or counter-gift, but finally 1s. for a

consideration of 10s. in magna necessitate mea.

Nevertheless, the donations to

Shrewsbury by townspeople illustrate both how accessible this form of salvific
benefaction was to townspeople and their predilection for the BVM.

The same predilection was exhibited in benefactions for lights to Daventry Priory, the

church of which contained also the parochial church, a former minster. In 1148 3 1166,
Simon filius Roberti confirmed the advowsons of five parish churches granted by his
father to the priory, to which Simon added a virgate of the glebe of Foxton to provide a

light for the Lady altar and to fund a weekly Lady Mass on Saturday or any other day.
His gift was complemented about the same time by Philip de Daventre whose
benefaction had the purpose of providing two candles on the Lady altar at all Lady

Shrewsbury cart

., pp. 98–9, 156, 167–8, 178–80, 183–216, 287, 386–7, 388–9, 392–8 and 401. Other

grants were made simply to the altar rather than for its lights. The twenty-five grants involved no
consideration and do not appear to be concealed sales although it is evident that the keeper was also
purchasing rents in the borough for the altar: 392–402 (nos 426–8, 436 and 436c, 438 and 442).

Westminster Abbey charters

1066 –c.1214, eds. E. Mason et al. (London Record Society, 25, 1988), 177 (no.

329).

Westminster Abbey charters, 191–2, 202, 205–8, 229–32, 247–64, 266, 269, 271, 277–82, 288–9 (nos 356,

362, 364, 387, 390, 407, 411–12, 415, 417–18, 420, 423, 425–7, 429, 432, 435, 441, 443–5 and 451). See
also G. Rosser, Medieval Westminster

1200 –1540 (Oxford, 1989), 46–50 and 256–7.

I owe this point to Barbara Harvey.

The cartulary of Oseney Abbey, ed. H. E. Salter, 6 vols (Oxford Historical Society 89–91, 97–8 and 101,

1929–36), 2, 169–70 (no. 719); The charters of Norwich Cathedral Priory Part Two, ed. B. Dodwell (Pipe
Roll Society n.s. 46, 1985 for 1978–80), 178 (no. 329).

N. Morgan, ‘Texts and images of Marian devotion’, in: England in the thirteenth century, ed. W.M. Ormrod

(Harlaxton Medieval Studies I, Stamford 1991), 69–103.

Shrewsbury cart., 193 and 200 (nos. 225 and 234b).

Shrewsbury cart., 208–14 (nos 240–3 and 245–7). St Paul’s bought a rent of 5s. for the lights before its

Lady altar for four marks in 1241 3 1242: Early Charters

... St Paul, 114–15 (no. 148).

Daventry cart., 291–2 (no. 885).

Lamps, lights and layfolk: ‘popular’ devotion before the Black Death

109

Masses. Six of the nine subsequent benefactions for lights before 1320 were directed to

Lady altar or Mass. At least two townspeople in Lichfield favoured with rents the lights

before the Lady altar in the cathedral church, but another respected the high altar.

The most complete description of the funding of parish lights involving a range of

saints, however, derives from the visitations of churches in the gift of St Paul’s cathedral

priory c.1249 3 52.

All the lighting in the church of Barling was provided by the

leasing out of sixty-one ewes to eight of the tenants, contributing wax for the altar of St
Giles, before the cross, before the images of St Nicholas and the Lady, and the rowel
light. Many, if not all, of these leased sheep were accumulated through legacies or
benefactions; for example, Reginald Wile rented fourteen ewes, of which twelve had
accrued under the will of Walter Pavery. Additionally, Brice had to find wax for candles
before the altar of St Giles. It was fortuitous indeed that these provisions had been made,
for the great tithes of the demesne and parish had been appropriated to support the

lighting of St Paul’s.

At Heybridge, seventeen ewes and two cows were leased out to

provide lights for the altar of St Andrew (the dedication of the church), the Lady altar,
three other altars and before the cross. Pain de Boscho had taken on lease a cow and
three ewes bequeathed by the will of John de Araz for maintaining a lamp in perpetuity

before the cross to burn on four feast nights each year.

To provision the lights at

Tillingham, including the Lady light and in front of the cross, fifty-four tenants had

received on lease 103 ewes, a lamb, three cows and a horse.

Less well endowed,

however was Alderbury, where three lamps before the high altar were enumerated in the
inventory, one of which was maintained by the parishioners. The parish had, however,
no stock for leasing and relied for Easter wax and the rowel light for levies on houses

and households, whilst the support of other light depended on offerings.

A similar

situation obtained at Pelham Forness, with its four candelabra listed, where no rents had
been assigned for lights; Easter wax was collected at the rate of 1 / 2d on holdings of 18
acres and proportionately for smaller tenements. The rest of the wax and lamps before

the crosses and altars depended on offerings.

So too at Pelham Arsa, where two

candelabra were listed, ad luminare ejusdem ecclesie nichil est certum since there were
no assigned rents, for a gift of 2 acres by Geoffrey Sarvors to provide two candles for
the high altar had been absorbed into the demesne of the Treasurer of St Paul’s and at
the time nothing had been allocated to the parish church. Whilst Easter wax was gathered
on the basis of a farthing from each messuage by custom, the remainder of the lighting

derived from offerings.

Entirely consistent was the pattern of provision at Navestock

Daventry cart., 25 (no. 64: mid-twelfth century).

Daventry cart., 11, 13, 48, 93, 99, 105–6, 129, 148, 188–9, 196–7, 225, 228–9, 277, 285–6 and 288–9 (nos

19, 24, 139, 309, 325, 461, 580, 689, 853 and 881)

Magnum registrum album, 219 and 265 (nos 459 and 556–7; rents of 2d., 1s. and 10s.).

W.S. Simpson, ‘Visitations of churches belonging to St Paul’s Cathedral 1249–1252’, Camden miscellany, 9

(Camden Society, n.s. 53, 1895), 1–33.

‘Visitations of churches belonging to St Paul’s Cathedral’, 10.

‘Visitations of churches belonging to St Paul’s Cathedral’, 11–12.

‘Visitations of churches belonging to St Paul’s Cathedral’, 15–16.

‘Visitations of churches belonging to St Paul’s Cathedral’, 17–18.

‘Visitations of churches belonging to St Paul’s Cathedral’, 19–20.

‘Visitations of churches belonging to St Paul’s Cathedral’, 21.

110

David Postles

where the rowel resulted from a levy of 1 / 2d. on each messuage, as did Easter wax, two

candles before the Lady altar being supported only by rents of 2s.

By contrast, lights in the churches of Thorpe, Walton and Kirkby were amply

supported by the stock of animals leased to the tenantry (see Table 1). Perhaps most
significantly, most of these collections for different lights for the church of Kirkby had
been assigned by the middle of the thirteenth century to specific keepers (custodes),

selected from amongst the parishioners.

During the twelfth and early thirteenth century, religious houses competed with parish

churches for the allegiances of parishioners in terms of benefactions, including those for

lights.

Parochial organisation was still developing into the early thirteenth century, so

that, in some places, and perhaps in towns, local religious affiliations were expressed
through religious houses as much as parish churches. The extent of benefactions of this

Table 1

Provision for lights at Thorpe, Walton and Kirkby, c.1249 3 1252

Manor

Animals

No. of

Rents

Purpose (lighting)

leased

lessees

Thorpe (a)

28 ewes

2d. each

rowel

20 pecora

2d. each

before the cross

6 pecora

2d. each

St Margaret’s chapel

5 pecora

2d. each

Lady chapel

20 pecora

2d. each

BMV next to high altar

Walton (b)

26 ewes

total: 4s.8d.

rowel

5 1 / 2 ewes [sic]

total: 10d.

before cross

63 1 / 2 ewes [sic]

total: 11s.4 1 / 2 d.

Lady light

20 ewes

total: 3s.3d.

St Michael’s light

37 ewes

total: 5s.5d.

high altar

Kirkby

7 sheep

Easter wax

41 sheep

Lady light

6 sheep

before cross

9 sheep

St Peter’s light

18 sheep

rowel

22 sheep

St Michael’s light

7 sheep

2 lights in the chancel

11 sheep

before cross

Notes to Table 1: (a) there was a small number of additional legacies of cows and ewes; (b) the total rents

comprised 25s.6 1 / 2d. but non est aliquis redditus ad cereum paschalem.

‘Visitations of churches belonging to St Paul’s Cathedral’, 23. See also the collection of 1 / 2d. from each

house at Chesewith, 7.

‘Visitations of churches belonging to St Paul’s Cathedral’, 32–3.

The exception was perhaps the Cistercians, who were austere in their use of lights, but also remote and thus

less accessible for patronage of this kind: Dendy, Use of lights, 12, 25 and 37–8 (for their sparing use of,
especially, candles). Few such grants are contained in Rufford Charters, ed. C.J. Holdsworth, 2 vols
(Thoroton Society Record Series, 29–30, 1972–4) or Beaulieu cart. Apparently there was a single grant
(half a mark) for a light before the host at Kirkstall Abbey, but it was significantly received from Henry de
Lacy and perhaps thus difficult to refuse: G.D. Barnes, Kirkstall Abbey

1147 –1539. A historical survey

(Thoresby Society 58, 1984), 21. The Garendon Cartulary (London, British Library, Lansdowne MS 415)
also contains little of such content, although Thomas Dispensator arranged for a pittance on the anniversary
of his son’s death (f. 8v and 32r), but pittances were not unusual in Cistercian houses.

‘Visitations of churches belonging to St. Paul’s Cathedral’, 24–6, 28–30, and 32–3.

‘Visitations of churches belonging to St. Paul’s Cathedral’, 30.

Lamps, lights and layfolk: ‘popular’ devotion before the Black Death

111

kind for lights in parish churches is more difficult to establish by comparison with those
to religious houses and, paradoxically, some of the best evidence derives from the
charters and cartularies of religious houses, in many cases where the advowson was held
by the house. Where the religious house had an interest in the parish church – through
advowson, portion or pension – some confusion is inevitable. Was the benefaction only
to the parish church or by association to the religious house as well? That complexity
was exacerbated when, for example, in 1227 John son of John Cordewaner conveyed to
Ralph molendinarius a messuage with a rent reserved to the altar of St John in the parish

church of Hertford when the canons of Waltham celebrate mass for the parishioners.

In many cases, however, although recorded in the cartularies of religious houses

which held the advowson, the benefaction was clearly to the parish church or to a
chapelry. The charter of benefaction was registered in the cartulary simply because the

religious house had a supervisory role, but the benefaction was from lay grantor to
parish church. In c.1180, Emma de Langetoft attorned a rent of 16d. for the provision of

a lamp in the chapel of St Mary at Shiplake.

In the middle of the thirteenth century,

Nicholas Iuuenis transferred a rent of 6d. in Derby towards the lights before the high

altar in the parish church of St Peter in the borough.

Recorded in the cartulary of

Darley Abbey are numerous grants of rents for the provision of lights at the altar in the
parish church of St Mary, Scarcliffe, including 1 / 2d. p.a. from Roger son of William de

Somerford c.1250 at the low end and 4s.4d. from Hubert fitzRalf at the top end.

1190 3 1200, Hugh de Pluggenait conveyed a rent of 2s. to provide a lamp in St

Andrew, Headington.

Shortly afterwards (c.1200–1219), land which yielded a rent of

2s. was conveyed to the priory of St Gregory, Canterbury, for the perpetual maintenance

of the lights in the parish church of St James, Elmstead.

In the early thirteenth century,

some eighteen grants of rents for lights and lamps (and oil) were directed to the chapel

of St Mary at Bures, but recorded in the cartulary of Stoke by Clare Priory.

A very

significant gift, of a virgate in Rushton, was made to Cirencester Abbey for the
maintenance of a lamp before the Lady altar in her chapel in the parish church of

100

Rothwell in the early thirteenth century, to burn omnibus noctis seculi.

Parish

churches in Oxford received rents from townspeople, such as the 12d. for lights in St
Mary’s, 5s. for the Lady light in St Peter le Bailey, and 2d. for lights in the chapel of St

101

Thomas.

In Derbyshire, the chapelry of Glapwell, and in particular the Lady altar, benefited

from several gifts of assigned rents in transactions in land between the local free
peasantry. Thus, when in c.1250, John filius Hugonis sold land there to Robert de
Sumerford’, provision was made for a rent of 1d. to sustain a light before the Lady altar
in the chapel. The acquisition of 1 1 / 2 acres by the same Roger involved a rent of 1 / 2d.

The early charters of Waltham Abbey

1062 –1230, ed. R. Ransford (Woodbridge, 1989), 218–19 (no. 327).

Missenden cart., 3, 84 (no. 870).

Darley cart., 1, 202 (no. E1).

Darley cart., 2, 379–80 and 395–7 (nos H58 and H85–89: late 12th cent to c.1250).

Cart. of St Frideswide, 2, 26 (no. 715).

Cart. of the priory of St Gregory, 25–6 (nos. 29 and 31).

Stoke by Clare cartulary, eds. C. Harper-Bill and R. Mortimer, 3 vols (Suffolk Record Society Suffolk

Charters, 4–6, 1982), 1, 264–86 (nos 393–428 intermittently).

100

The cartulary of Cirencester Abbey Gloucestershire, ed. C.D. Ross, 2 vols (Oxford, 1964), 568–9 (no. 680).

101

Oseney cart., 1, 201 and 2, 104–5 and 366–7 (nos 635 and 942).

112

David Postles

for the same light, just as William Haranc’s acquisitions of land produced rents of 1 / 2d.
and 1 / 4d. for the same light. A further 1 / 4d. of rent resulted from another transaction,
but when Roger de Bollisouer passed inter vivos to his son two tofts, a croft, lands and
meadow, he required 8d. in rent to accrue annually towards a lamp burning in the
chapel. The obligation to furnish oil for a lamp before the Lady altar in the chapel
ensued from the conveyance of an acre. Reflected here, then, is not only the strength of
Marian devotion, as noted above, but also the participation of the local free peasantry in

102

the maintenance of lights in the chapel in the thirteenth century.

Many charters in the cartulary of Thurgarton Priory record benefactions for lights to

103

the parish churches of Tithby, Loudham, Kirkby Green and especially Scopwick.

the early thirteenth century, Adam Burel, John filius Willelmi filii Tice de Roueston and
Reginald de Cubington all directed rents of 1 / 2d. to maintain lamps or lights at the altar

104

of St Andrew in the parish church of Scopwick.

As a consequence of these benefactions, both to religious houses and parish churches,

rents became reserved from tenements and burgage property; the rent thus became a
service attached to and owed from the holding. In some cases, the new tenants might
have regarded the assigned rent as simply that and as having no greater significance or
its meaning might have been lost. For example, it is recorded in the cartulary of
Daventry Priory for 1427 that John Brygge had withheld for twelve years 12d. rent due
from a virgate to support a candle in the Lady Chapel of the Priory (which contained

105

also the parochial church).

Probably shortly after a benefaction, William filius Egidii

acknowledged that he owed a reserved rent of 9s. for lights for the Lady altar at Lincoln
Cathedral where mass was celebrated daily at prime, although this recognisance in

106

1250 3 1255 might simply have been a precautionary action by the Dean and Chapter.
In similar vein, Henry carnifex of Winchester issued a notification in the late thirteenth
century that he should remit 1 lb of incense yearly for the Lady altar of St Denis,

107

Southampton, for land in Winchester.

In the twelfth and thirteenth century, the terms of gifts to the religious were not

always specific. In particular, gifts of land were most frequently effected for the welfare
of souls, although assignment of revenues for specific purposes in gifts to religious

108

houses composed a proportion of gifts to the religious.

The expectation of the return

in gift-exchange for salvific purposes was often unspecified, if generally understood:
prayers for the benefactor and her or his kinship. Sometimes that anticipation was
expanded, although in the vaguest of manners: ut orationibus eorum apud dominum
adiuuemur (c.1190), preter participationem missarum et orationum que fiunt in eadem

102

R.R. Darlington, ‘The Glapwell charters’, Transactions of the Derbyshire Archaeological and Natural

History Society, 76 (1957–8 for 1956), 71–9, 111–12 and 119–20 (nos 83–7, 89, 123 and 130).

103

Thurgarton cart., 158, 317 and 495–6 (nos 258, 525 and 846: 121831231 and mid-thirteenth cent.: Tithby,

Loudham and Kirkby Green – for Scopwick, see below).

104

Thurgarton cart., 507, 525, 527, 530 and 534–5 (nos 874, 923, 930, 936 and 946–9) comprise all such

grants to Scopwick, including those by clerical benefactors who favoured the Lady altar.

105

Daventry cart., 325 (no. 985).

106

Registrum antiquissimum of the Cathedral Church of Lincoln, 9, 59–60 (no. 2453).

107

Cart. of St Denis, II, 275 (no. 496).

108

R.H. Snape, English monastic finance (Oxford, 1926); R.A.L. Smith, ‘The Regimen Scaccarii in English

monasteries’, in: Collected papers of R

.A.L. Smith (London, 1947), 54–73.

Lamps, lights and layfolk: ‘popular’ devotion before the Black Death

113

ecclesia (late twelfth-early thirteenth century) and preter missas et orationes et cetera

109

beneficia spiritualia que fiunt in prefata ecclesia (mid-twelfth century).

Specific

provision for the purpose of gifts was often directed towards remembrance and before
c.1300 some of the smaller forms of remembrance – pittances and lights – allowed the
greater participation in spiritual benefits of a larger number of lay benefactors, extending

110

to the free peasantry and townspeople.

The provisions of the Fourth Lateran Council

of 1215, such as annual communication and confession, were a stimulus to internal piety
which was expressed through voluntary lay benefactions for lights. One of the
consequences of these individual benefactions for lights might have been from the early
thirteenth century the development of lay offices in the parish and over the later middle

111

ages more ‘lay control’ over the contributions of the laity to the parish.

Individual lay

provision for lighting was already associated with the mass and Marian devotion, but
there is no need to attribute an integrative or communitarian impulse or response.
Individual benefactions for lights were received from only part of the ‘community’, a
small selective part, so that social status was further defined by such benefactions.
Indeed, social differentiation was visible in the materials used, the size and weight of

112

candles and the extent of decoration.

Since the circumstances between late medieval piety and the twelfth and thirteenth

centuries were somewhat different, so some changes also occurred. By the later middle
ages, local social and religious allegiances had generally been transferred from religious
houses to parish churches. Whilst a case might be made for a communitarian motive in
the late middle ages by augmenting divine service in the parish, the direction in the
earlier period of grants for lights in religious houses, to the enclosed religious, cannot be
associated with that influence. Except where a religious house functioned also as parish

113

church, parishioners were unlikely to be able to participate in the benefits of the lights.
If the origins of grants for lights in the later middle ages were located in the earlier
grants, then the primary motivations must have been internal devotion, personal
salvation, and definition of social status, rather than any wider sentiment.

A transformation occurred in the nature of the grantors and their instruments for

allocating grants for lights. In the twelfth and thirteenth century, at least some part of the
grants consisted in charters, with the implication that, even if the contribution to the

109

The Thame cartulary, ed. H.E. Salter, 2 vols (Oxfordshire Record Society, 25–6, 1947–8), I, 59 (no. 71);

Blythburgh Priory cartulary, ed. C. Harper-Bill (Suffolk Record Society Suffolk Charters 3 1981), 2, 141

and 189 (nos 247 and 359). For a resume of free alms, B. Thompson, ‘Free alms tenure in the twelfth
century’, in: Anglo-Norman studies XVI

. Proceedings of the Battle Conference, ed. M. Chibnall (Wood-

bridge, 1994), 221–43.

110

Grants for lights to some religious houses in Suffolk, however, seem to have been more exclusive, conferred

by people of higher social status, sometimes knightly: Sibton Abbey cartularies and charters, ed. P. Brown,
4 vols (Suffolk Record Society Suffolk Charters, 6, 8–10, 1985–8), 2, 284–5 and 316–17 (nos 390 and 436)
(Hugh II Bigod and Cecily de Herford, 121731230); Blythburgh Priory cart., 114 (no 196) (Roger de
Mainwaring, 1244).

111

E. Mason, ‘The role of the English parishioner 1100–1500’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 27 (1976),

17–29; B.A. Kumin, The Shaping of a community

. The rise and reformation of the English parish

.1400 –1560 (Aldershot, 1996), 17–42; Brown, Popular piety, 77–91.

112

For some examples of differentiation, Kempers, ‘Icons, altarpieces, and civic ritual’, 97 and 112.

113

See C. Burgess, ‘‘‘For the increase of divine service’’: chantries in the parish in late medieval Bristol’,

Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 36 (1985), 48–65.

114

David Postles

lights continued after the death of the grantor, the association was between the living and
the religious institution. Since grants by charters were not usually ambulatory – that is,
the grant had to be immediately effective rather than deferred until some future date,
such as death – support for the lights occurred in the grantor’s lifetime as well as
afterwards. By the later middle ages, the patronage of lights was largely effected through
testaments, so that the grant was only made after the grantor’s death, by bequest.
Fundamentally, the later medieval relationship was between the dead and the religious
institution. Despite these differences, however, what is clear is the essential continuity of

114

many aspects of late medieval popular piety, not least in lay provision for lights.

Lights, consequently, continuously had symbolic importance in the liturgy. Through

benefactions to their support, the laity hoped to be more closely associated with the
liturgical rites and, before the late middle ages, lay piety was expressed through such
grants. This sort of benefaction was inclusive since the cost could be small, so that
participation extended to burgesses and even the free peasantry. The earlier circum-
stances differed, however, since the parish church had not yet become the primary focus
of lay piety, as religious houses offered an alternative.

114

For the purposes of this paper, I have consulted a number of other cartularies not previously cited in the

text: The cartulary of Burscough Priory, ed. A.N. Webb (Chetham Society 3rd ser. 18, 1970); Luffield
Priory charters, ed. G.R. Elvey, 2 vols (Northamptonshire Record Society, 25–6, 1974–5); The cartulary of
Tutbury Priory, ed. A. Saltman (HMC JP2, 1962); St Benet of Holme

1020 –1210, ed. J.R. West, 2 vols

(Norfolk Record Society 2, 1932).

Journal of Medieval History, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 115–140, 1999

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Forever after: the dead in the Avignonese confraternity of Notre Dame

la Majour (1329–1381)

Joelle Rollo-Koster

University of Rhode Island

, Department of History, Washburn Hall, Kingston, RI 02881, USA

Abstract

Historians of confraternities have often defined them as extended surrogate families, regrouping

the living and the dead under their parentage. Death never unbound confraternal ties. It is the
purpose of this paper to investigate whether or not, during the late Middle Ages, the dead ‘lived
on’ in the large Avignonese confraternity of Notre Dame la Majour. This investigation begins with
a study of the association’s early fourteenth-century statutes and continues by quantifying the lists
of names from the matriculation books, in order to identify the association’s dead. Contrary to
prevailing notions, the confraternity eliminated its dead from the group’s records. Thus, why did
this confraternity bypass remembrance in its commemoration of the dead? The identity of the
brothers partially answer this question. The association gathered numerous Italians, Florentine for
the most part, who had followed the papal court to Avignon. Notre Dame la Majour granted civic
recognition and honour to the foreigners present in the city through its ceremonies, funerary
processions and public appearances. But foremost, the confraternity permitted foreigners to
recognize, identify and relate to each other.



Keywords

: Dead; Memorialization; Confraternity; Italians; Merchants; Avignon

Since Philippe Aries’ publication of his ground breaking The Hour of our Death,

historians of confraternities have largely followed his lead and treated confraternities as

a ‘guarantee of eternity’. Later studies on southern French confraternities echo Aries’
words: ‘Of all the works of mercy, the service for the dead became the main purpose of
the confraternities . . . the confraternities . . . provided assurance regarding the afterlife.
The dead were assured of the prayers of their confreres . . . after burial, the confraternity
continued the services and prayers that the church council or monasteries were suspected

JOELLE ROLLO-KOSTER is Assistant Professor of medieval history at the University of Rhode Island. She

received her Ph.D in 1992 at the State University of New York at Binghamton. Most recently she has
published various papers in Confraternitas (the journal of the Society for Confraternity Studies), The
Journal of Women’s History (1996), the Proceedings of the Western Society for French History (1997), and
in Urban and Rural Communities in the South of France, K.L. Reyerson and J. Drendel, eds., (Leiden: Brill,
1998).

P. Aries, The hour of our death (New York, 1981). Originally published as L

’homme devant la mort (Paris,

1977).

115

116

Joelle Rollo-Koster

of neglecting or forgetting ’. We see Aries’ influence in Coulet’s ‘the union between
living and dead built and preserved by the confraternity is evident in the great change in

religious sensibility found in the later Middle Ages’, and again in Jacques Chiffoleau’s
‘the statutes show that the confraternity functioned as a family. And because the
confraternity was a substitute family, it played a very important role in the preparation
for death, funerary rituals and suffrages for the dead . . . . Rejection for nonobservance of
the statutes was the only form of confraternal exclusion, since death itself could not have
untied the links that bound confreres . . . in the minds of medieval men, the imaginary
family assembled the dead and the living of each lineage, and confraternities considered

that they (the dead) would always be part of the association’. Thus, be it based on a
study of confraternal statutes or individual wills, historians of confraternities have often
defined them as extended surrogate families, regrouping the living and the dead under
their parentage. According to these scholars, death never unbound confraternal ties.
Synthesizing most of the research on French medieval confraternities, Catherine Vincent

´ ´

in her recent Les confreries medievales dans le royaume de France locates the training
and management (l

’encadrement) of death as the essential confraternal charitable

activity.

It is the purpose of this paper to investigate whether or not, during the late Middle

Ages, the dead ‘lived on’ in the large Avignonese confraternity of Notre Dame la
Majour – granted that commemoration relies on the behaviour of the living. This
investigation will begin with a study of the association’s early fourteenth-century
statutes and continue by quantifying the lists of names from the matriculation books in
order to identify the association’s corporate dead. After demonstrating that, contrary to
prevailing notions, the confraternity eliminated its dead affiliates from the group’s
records, the question will be raised as to why the association bypassed their remembr-
ance in its commemoration of the dead. In a larger historical context, we shall ask if the
remembrance and commemoration of the dead were central to the spiritual merit system
of this association.

The confraternity of Notre Dame la Majour is well known through its statutes and

confraternal registers. In 1934, Pierre Pansier, physician and well-known Avignonese
antiquarian, published the Latin statutes of the association, taken from a copy that he

dated around 1330. This fourteenth-century copy has since disappeared from the

archives, but an eighteenth-century copy, quite similar to the earlier one, remains.

Besides these Latin copies, the Municipal Library of Avignon possesses a manuscript

(MS. 2452, no pagination) which is a French translation of the Latin statutes, made in

Aries, The hour of our death, 185.

N. Coulet, ‘Le mouvement confraternel en Provence et dans le Comtat Venaissin au moyen age’, in: Le

mouvement confraternel au moyen age

. France, Italie, Suisse (Rome, 1987), 108, my translation.

J. Chiffoleau, ‘Les confreries, la mort et la religion en Comtat Venaissin a la fin du moyen age’, Melange de

’ecole Franc¸aise de Rome, Moyen age-temps moderne (MEFRM). 91 (1979), 811, 814, my translation.

Chiffoleau discusses at length the roles of southern French medieval confraternities in ‘Entre le religieux et

le politique: les confreries du Saint-Esprit en Provence et en Comtat Venaissin a la fin du moyen age,’ in: Le

mouvement confraternel au moyen age

. France, Italie, Suisse (Rome, 1987), 9–40 and La comptabilite de

’au-dela. Les hommes, la mort et la religion dans la region d’Avignon a la fin du moyen age (vers

1320 –vers 1480) (Rome, 1980), 266–287.

´ ´

C. Vincent, Les confreries medievales dans le royaume de France (Paris, 1994), 77–78.

P. Pansier, ‘Les confreries d’Avignon au XIVe siecle’, Annales d

’Avignon et du Comtat Venaissin, 20 (1934),

36.

Avignon, Archives Departementales du Vaucluse, archives hospitalieres d’Avignon, Majour E2.

Forever after: the dead in the Avignonese confraternity of Notre Dame la Majour (1329–1381)

117

1505 and printed in 1678. This 1505 translation follows closely the Latin transcription

published by Pierre Pansier excepting a few omissions and additions. I will use
Pansier’s published 1330s Latin version of the statutes in my study and refer to the
French translation only when it differs.

Notre Dame la Majour was a devotional association not specifically oriented toward

one profession or one nation. It was only during the late fourteenth century that those of

the judicial profession were banned from entering its ranks. After analysis of the
affiliates listed in the two fourteenth-century lists of matriculation, some conclusions can
be drawn regarding the social composition of the association. Its ranks were filled with
Tuscan merchants, craftmen and curial administrators, for the most part courtiers
(curialists and other followers of the Roman court), along with a minority of eminent

Avignonese citizens.

The significant differences are: 1) removal in the 1505 French translation of the Latin introductory paragraph

– the dedication of the association – and its replacement by an introductory paragraph listing the
association’s administrators; 2) the replacement of Latin Chapter 33, dealing with the eventual departure of
the curia from the city, with a new chapter, of the same numeration, defining who could not hold office in
the association.

The 1505 translation also adds four chapters to the fourteenth-century Latin draft. These chapters deal with: 1)

the prohibition against jurists ( procureur

, notaire, n’y autre de robbe longue) entering the association

(chapter 34); 2) the agreement passed between the confraternity and the Augustinian convent (chapter 35);
3) the nomination of messengers (chapter 36); 4) the nomination of cameraries to masterhood (chapter 37).

The dating of the agreement between the Augustinian convent and the confraternity, August 14, 1385, given in

the closing section of chapter 35 of the French translation, shows that the bulk of the statutes was written
during the fourteenth century, between the 1330s (date attributed by Pansier to the statutes) and 1385 (date
of chapter 35). Unfortunately, no date eases the chronological placement of the last two chapters, 36 and 37.

This prohibition appears on chapter 34 of the French translation. Chapter 35 is dated 1385. If the chapters

were recorded in chronological order this prohibition took place before 1385 and after the departure of the
curia from the city in 1367 or 1376. Latin chapter 33 (omitted in the French translation) implies that if the
curia were to leave Avignon the confraternity would follow. However, the curia left and the confraternity
remained. After the departure of the curia the confraternity recognized the illogical nature of this chapter and
replaced it with another one, dealing this time with office holding. This new chapter 33 was recorded
sometimes after 1367 or 1376, since two popes brought the curia back to Rome: first Urban V left Avignon
for Rome in 1367 (to return in 1370) then his successor, Gregory XI, left Avignon in 1376.

The 1374 list (here designated as ND1) records a total of 1663 individuals. Of this total 424 names are

carried over from the 1364 list (here designated as ND2). Of the total entries specific to ND1, that is 1239,
24% list an occupation and 23% a place of origin. On the other hand, ND2 totals 1237 individuals, 41.5% of
which list an occupation and 53% a place of origin. Based on a total of 302 listed occupations, ND1
occupational percentages are as follows: merchants 29%; craftmen 21%; scribes, notaries, papal and
cardinal’s staff and administration 16%; accommodation and lodging 14%; financial 6%; defence 6%;
messengers, couriers 5%; barbers and surgeons 2% and domestics 1%.

Based on a total of 514 listed occupations, ND2 occupational percentages are as follows: merchants 32%;

craftmen 23%; scribes, notaries, papal and cardinal’s staff and administration 17%; accommodation and
lodging 8%; financial 6%; defence 6%; messengers, couriers 5%; barbers and surgeons 2%; and domestics
1%.

The majority of adherents who declared an origin (80%) came from Italy and especially Tuscany. Within the

Italian group two out of three individuals, in both lists, are Tuscan (65%) and amongst the Tuscans,
individuals from Florence are the majority (55% in ND2 and 71% in ND1), followed by individuals from
Lucca (16% in ND2 and 15% in ND1), Siena (7% in ND2 and 4% in ND1), Prato (5% in ND2 and 1% in
ND1), Pistoia (2.5% in ND2 and 2% in ND1) and Pisa (2.5% in ND2 and 1% in ND1). Non-Italians come
first of all from Avignon and its surrounding (69% in ND2 and 60% in ND1), then from France (18% in
ND2 and 17% in ND1), Lorraine and the territories of the Empire (7% in ND2 and 14% in ND1) and Savoy
(3% in ND2 and 1.5% in ND1). Although B. Guillemain, La cour pontificale d

’Avignon. Etude d’une

´ ´

societe (Paris, 1966), 596–605, does not take into account that 424 individuals were carried from the older
list to the more recent one, he leaves no doubts in his analysis as to the nature of the association, describing
it a confraternity of Italians.

118

Joelle Rollo-Koster

To judge by the Latin statutes, it seems that both temporary residents (the courtiers)

and permanent citizens were welcome. Any inhabitant who wished to join the
association was accepted as long as he led a respectable life, paid the yearly dues (three

gros tournois and six deniers for the ‘love of God’) and any eventual fines.

The

confraternity excluded women from its ranks. None appear in the matriculation lists and
the statutes refer only briefly to them, in a proviso forbidding married members to keep a

concubine.

The Latin statutes specify the Roman court as the common thread for

participation in the association.

The later French translation replaced all mention of the

Roman court by en Avignon and eliminated all references to the curia, which by then
had departed Avignon.

The association was a wealthy one. As early as 1329, the members of Notre Dame la

Majour could afford a silver image of the Virgin and other devotional ornaments of the

same metal. Some years later, about 1360, the association built two hospitals as refuges
for poor pilgrims. One, l

’hopital des Lombards, was located in front of the Augustinian

church, which served as the association’s religious offices. The other, l

’hopital Notre

Dame, was dedicated to Saint-Michel.

Notre Dame la Majour was the only association

in Avignon wealthy enough to run two hospitals simultaneously. One of the reasons for
the affluence of the association was the large number of adherents. The association was
popular from its inception. Written about 1330, the Latin statutes provided for a

management suitable only for a large association.

In contrast to the six to eight

directors elected annually by other contemporary confraternities, Notre Dame la Majour
elected some thirty-five: four masters, four cameraries, two procurators and twenty-five

advisors; a notary and several messengers took care of the administrative tasks.

The Latin statutes reflect a certain openness in their dedication. Devotion is offered to

The six deniers could be replaced by offering a meal to a poor person, Pansier, ‘Les confreries d’Avignon’,

38.

Notre Dame la Majour ran contrary to the mixed genders present in many Provencal confraternities. See for

example Coulet, ‘Le mouvement confraternel’, 105–106; for a quick survey of women’s roles in medieval
confraternities, see G. Casagrande, ‘Women in confraternities between the middle ages and the modern ages:
Research in Umbria’, Confraternitas, 5 (1994), 3–13.

The confraternity was founded at the Roman Court and benefits varied according to one’s presence or

absence from that court; Pansier, ‘Les confreries d’Avignon’, 36, I. Infra scripta sunt statuta confraternitatis
Majoris Beate Marie Virginis, in romana curia facta . . . ; 39, XVI. De confratribus morientibus in curia and
XVII. De confratribus morientibus extra romanam curiam . . . quod citius hoc magistri sciverint . . . si . . .
dictus defunctus destitisset per quinquennium a solvendo confraternitati, eisdem predictis omnibus sit
privatus ac si confrater non fuisset; 43, XXXIII. Si adveniret quod curia mutaretur . . . mercatores
conducant et conducere teneantur ad quamcumque civitatem et ubi curia romana resideret, et quod confratres
dicte confraternitatis qui secuntur curiam possint et debeant habere subscriptas imagines et bona
confraternitatis predicte libere et expedite semper manutenere et facere dictam confraternitatem sicut in
nostris statutis continetur. My italics.

Pansier, ‘Les confreries d’Avignon’, 34.

Guillemain, La cour pontificale, 597. It is interesting to note that neither of the statutes (in Latin or French)

mention either hospital.

Pansier, ‘Les confreries d’Avignon’, 36.

The confraternity of Saint George elected two masters, two cameraries, and four advisors. The confraternity

of the Souls in Purgatory elected two masters, two cameraries, and two advisors. The confraternity of the
Holy Spirit elected two advisors and four bailiffs. In each case the appointment was annual; Pansier, ‘Les

confreries d’Avignon’, 19, 28, 45. In Notre Dame one had to accept these positions; refusal led to the
imposition of a fine. It is clear that the association shrank over time. By the time of the 1505 French
translation only four masters, two cameraries, one procurator, five advisors, and one notary were left.

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119

the Celestial Court and the Virgin, to be sure, but the association’s preamble also
honours the pope, the college of cardinals, the camerary, and the marshal of the Roman
court (head of justice for the courtiers). After all, the livelihood of the courtiers
depended specifically on their good relations with the Roman court. Conversely, the
1505 French translation avoids all reference to the Roman court in Avignon, perhaps to
prevent any linkage of the confraternity to the memory of the ‘schismatic’ Avignonese
papacy.

The statutes of Notre Dame la Majour elaborate in great detail the role of each

administrator, giving primacy to the annually elected masters. Members had to follow a
strict regimen of ‘decency’, steering away from blasphemy, murder, and concubines.
They had to join together in two masses each month, and recite the Our Father and Hail

Mary daily. Once a year, on the eve of the Assumption, members brought tapers for the

ceremony and gave alms.

Obligations were typically enforced by a litany of fines.

Surprisingly missing from the statutes is the confraternal banquet, generally ever-present

in European confraternities.

The association fulfilled the various religious, social and moral needs of its members.

Christian liturgy was prescribed by the recitation of various prayers and participation in
confessions and masses. Gestures of good will such as the distribution of alms were also
required. Charity held a central place within the organization and in its relation to the
outside world. Affiliates who became indigent were not eliminated from its ranks. They
received alms on specific days and other charity at the discretion of the masters. When

needed, a coffin was to be provided for them at no cost.

The poor of Avignon could

also count on a distribution of alms by the confraternity on the Virgin’s feast day.

One other purpose of the confraternity was to attempt to harmonize social relations

among the various members as well as between members and those in the outside world.
Thus, the annually-elected masters had full power to prevent or handle any threats to
peace and concord among affiliates. Beyond its usual jurisdiction, the confraternity
extended its support to the defence of any confrater involved in legal matters, the
masters going so far as to visit detained members during their incarceration. The

Avignon described by Jacques Chiffoleau in his Les justices du pape was a violent one.
It is possible that the confraternity of Notre Dame la Majour actually helped to pacify

Pansier, ‘Les confreries d’Avignon’, 37

It seems that these tapers were collected to be sold at a later date, J. Hayez, ‘Nostra Donna la Maggiore della

Corte di Roma’ (Rapport de D.E.A., Paris, 1984), 17.

For example, officers had to elect their successors on the first of July of each year, and if they failed to do so,

each officer had to pay 20 gros tournois. If an elected official refused his position, he too had to pay that
sum. Every member had to participate in the Mass for the Virgin on the first Sunday of July and in the Mass
for the Dead on the following Monday. A fine was charged of half a gros tournois if the person did not
show up at all or a quarter gros tournois if the person came after the elevation of the host; Pansier, ‘Les

confreries d’Avignon’, 36, 37. The statutes were read twice a year to remind the brothers of their
obligations, in August, during the feast of the Virgin, and in March during the first mass of that month;

Pansier, ‘Les confreries d’Avignon’, 38.

´ ´

On the importance of the ‘confraternal meal’ in France, see Vincent, Les confreries medievales, 17–23.

Pansier, ‘Les confreries d’Avignon’, 39–40.

Pansier, ‘Les confreries d’Avignon’, 38.

J. Chiffoleau, Les justices du pape

. Delinquance et criminalite dans la region d’Avignon au XIVe siecle

(Paris, 1984).

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Joelle Rollo-Koster

the city. By having peace-keeping as one of its basic tenets and promulgating a ban on
blasphemy and homicide among the members, the statutes indicate at least the will to

effect harmonious social relations.

Mainly, however, the advantages offered by the confraternity were fully realized at

one’s death.

The courtiers, away from their traditional familial ties, could count on

their confraternal brothers for a decent funeral procession highlighted by tapers and a
new shroud. Most important, daily masses and prayers would be recited by clerics and

confratres for the sake of one’s soul.

Members of a brother’s immediate family were

also honoured at death by the confraternity, with a few limitations: the deceased had to
have lived with the affiliate, the deceased’s body would be covered with an old shroud
and, lastly, children less than seven years of age would not be so honoured.

The association nevertheless set limits to its benefits. Members who died away from

Statutum est quod si quis confrater blasphemaret Deum, piatam Virginem Mariam, vel aliquem sanctum de

paradisio, aut in despectum vel malis gratibus eorum aliquid sic irreverenter diceret vel faceret, teneatur
stare a principio misse dicte confraternitatis usque ad finem, decalciatus et nudo capite, et indutus uniquo
solo panno super camisia et cum corrigia ad collum ante altare; Statutum est quod si quis confrater
commiserit homicidium, quod Deus advertat, in aliquem confratrem, ipso facto sit extra confraternitatem,

nisi pro defencione et tutela sui corporis hoc fecisset; Pansier, ‘Les confreries d’Avignon‘, 37, 41.

The statutes’ chapters dealing with the rituals and commemoration of death are the following:

Chapter IV: On the first Sunday of each month the association celebrated a high mass in honour of the Virgin,

followed the next day by a mass honouring the dead. All brothers had to participate and recite 13 ‘Our
Fathers’ and 13 ‘Hail Marys’.

Chapter XV: The confraternity owned six torches. Four were lit at mass during the elevation of the host and

during the funeral of a brother. The body of the deceased was in this instance wrapped in the new
confraternal shroud. The two other torches were lit at mass during the taking of the host and during the
funeral of a brother’s relative. The deceased body was in that case wrapped in the old confraternal shroud.

Chapter XVI: When a brother died in Avignon, masters and brothers carried four lit torches in procession from

the deceased’s house to his church. The association then ordered the celebration of a high mass for the dead.
In addition, each brother ordered the celebration of a mass for the dead (the timing of that mass is not
specified) and recited 13 ‘Our Fathers’ and 13 ‘Hail Marys’. After the funeral all brothers were to leave the
church and return to the deceased’s house.

Chapter XVII: When a brother died away from the city the association followed similar litugical rituals, on the

condition that the administrators were aware of such a death.

Chapter XX: The confraternity image of the Virgin with Angels was put on the altar when a brother was buried

in the Augustine convent.

Chapter XXI: The association paid for the celebration of two daily masses, one in honour of the Virgin and one

for the soul of deceased brothers. Each brother also recited three daily ‘Our Father’s’ and ‘Hail Mary’s’,

Pansier, ‘Les confreries d’Avignon’, 37, 39–40.

Statutum est quod magistri teneantur omni die facere celebrari duas missas, ubi et per quos eis videbitur

unam videlicet ad reverentiam Virginis Marie, et aliam pro animabus confratrum defunctorum. Et quod

quilibet confrater teneatur dicere singulis diebus ter pater noster et ter ave maria, Pansier, ‘Les confreries

d’Avignon’, 40. On the organization of the funerary arrangements see Pansier, ‘Les confreries d’Avignon’,
39. Chapter 35 of the 1505 French translation details the 1385 agreement passed between the Augustinian

convent and the confraternity. It states: Item, est de noter qu’il a este convenu entre les maistres et confreres

de ladite confrerie et le prieur du convent des freres hermites de saint Augustin de la presente cite

d’Avignon; et sont obliges ledit prieur, freres, et convent esdits maistres en la maniere qui s’ensuit. Et
premierement est de noter que lesdits prieur et convent seront tenus dire une messe solemnellement en notte
de Nostre Dame chacun premier dimanche de chaque mois, et chacun lundy ensuivant une messe des morts

en notte. Et apres ladite messe des morts faire une procession par le cloistre, et retourner a l’eglise par la

grande porte de devant, et faire quatre absoutes, deux dans le cloistre, une a la sortie et l’autre en la chapelle.
Item, seront tenus de dire in chacun jour en la chapelle desdits freres, une messe pour lesdits confreres. Item,

outre les choses dessus ecrites, sont tenus lesdits freres un chacun jour pour lesdits confreres dire deux

messes, une pour les vivants, et l’autre pour les morts, comme de la convention plus a plein est ecrit au livre
des mortuaires dudit convent, au feuillet septante-un, lequel commence XX. and sine corpor. and au marge
sine mortuis. Ecrit en Avignon l’an 1385 le XIIII jour d’aoust.

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121

the Roman court received their benefits as long as the confraternal administration was
aware of their death. However, the living would ritually remember the dead only when
their dues had been paid within the three years (for the ones living in curia) or five years
(for the ones living extra romanam curiam) prior to their death. If a member’s payments
lapsed for more than five years, the confraternity eschewed all responsibility for the
departed soul. And, to symbolize the exclusion from the confraternal family, the
association would scrape off his name from the book of matriculants (abradatur libro

nominum confratrum).

Among the statutes of the confraternity is a specific paragraph entitled ‘On the Three

Books of the Confraternity’ that sheds some light on the purpose of such books of
matriculants; in addition to two ledgers maintained by a notary and a treasurer, the
company kept a parchment book inscribed with the names of all brothers, living and

dead.

To what extent did lay confraternities write down the names of their dead? The

question is difficult to answer. Memorialization has been studied in European confrater-
nities without clearly establishing the means of remembrance. For example, the

fraternity between the living and the dead is primarily illustrated by using statutes.

some instances, as in the present case, a ‘book of the dead’ may increase our knowledge
of the mechanics of remembrance. Usually, a lay confraternity remembered its dead on
paper when the association was bound to and overseen by an ecclesiastical institution, be

XIV. De debitoribus confraternitatis. Statutum est quod si qui, pauperibus tamen exceptis, dare tenerentur

aloquid confraternitati, et postquam mandatum eis fuerit tribus vicibus per magistros non solverint, quod de
dicta confraternitate expellantur, nec illam reintrare possint nisi satisfecerint de omni eo et toto quod dare
tenentur; XXXII. . . . Et si aliquis staret in ista duricia per tres annos non solvendo ut dictum est expellatur

de confraternitate et nomen ipsius abradatur de libro nominum confratrum, Pansier, ‘Les confreries
d’Avignon’, 39, 43. See also note 13. The removal of debtors from confraternal registers is not an

Avignonese exception. A confraternity in Caceres eliminated members who did not pay their fines; the
confraternity of Saint Denis withdrew from its ranks the names of all delinquents until their penance; in
Paris, the confraternity of stevedores at the church of Saint Eustache expelled debtors; closer in spirit to

Notre Dame la Majour, the confraternity of the merchants d

’outre mer of Vitre expelled debtors after three

´ ´

consecutive years of non-payments; Vincent, Les confreries medievales, 139, 143, 151. The elimination of a
delinquent member’s name from a company’s book also appears in Renaissance Bologna, see N. Terpstra,
Lay confraternities and civic religion in Renaissance Bologna (Cambridge, 1995), 111, n.42, and in two

seventeenth-century confraternities in Marseilles: R. Allier, La compagnie du Tres-Saint-Sacrement de

’autel a Marseille (Paris, 1909), 20; and, A. Barnes, The social dimension of piety. Associative life and

devotional change in the penitent confraternities of Marseilles

(1499 –1792) (New York, 1994), 131

(penitents Carmelins).

Quod In Confraternitate Sint Tres Libri: ‘Statutum est quod in dicta confraternitate sint tres libri: quorum

unum teneat notarius, secundum librum teneat camerarius; in quibus duobus libris scribantur introitus et
expense confraternitatis: Tertius vero liber sit de pergameno in quo scripta omnia nomina confratrum

vivorum et mortuorum’. My italics. Pansier, ‘Les confreries d’Avignon’, 38. The 1505 French translation
retained this paragraph.

For example, J. Banker, Death in the community

. Memorialization and confraternities in an Italian commune

in the late middle ages (Athens, 1988); V. Bainbridge, Gilds in the medieval countryside

. Social and

religious changes in Cambridgeshire

(1350 –1558) (Woodbridge, 1996); Barnes, The Social Dimension of

Piety; C. Black, Italian confraternities in the sixteenth century (Cambridge, 1989); M. Flynn, Sacred
charity

. Confraternities and social welfare in Spain (1400 –1700) (Ithaca, NY, 1989); J. Henderson, Piety

and charity in late medieval Florence (Oxford, 1994); G. Meersseman, Ordo fraternitatis (Rome, 1977), 3
vols.; and, L. Sebregondi, Tre confraternite fiorentine (Florence, 1991). Vincent’s ‘list of cited confrater-

´ ´

nities’, Les confreries medievales, 192–203, catalogues some 120 confraternities. The overwhelming
majority use confraternal statutes as primary sources.

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Joelle Rollo-Koster

it a parish church, monastery or convent.

The confraternity of the Rosary in Colmar

offers a fitting example. Founded by the city’s Preachers in 1484, it assembled a large
portion of the city’s and the neighbouring population. Only an anniversary bequest
permitted the recording of a layperson’s name in the obituary of the Colmar Dominicans.

The association did not run a distinctive book of the dead.

The authoritative work of J.L. Lema ı tre and N. Huyghebaert permits the establish-

ment of a nomenclature of these lists of dead’s names. Huyghebaert distinguishes
between a necrology, a liturgical book, and an obituary, a non-liturgical book. For

Lema ı tre, these distinctions are too formal. Most importantly, the words ‘obituary’ and
‘necrology’ are not medieval. The Middle Ages used words like regula (they are after all
of monastic origins), martyrologium, or liber to describe a calendar-based book in which

the names of the dead have been inscribed. For Lema ı tre the mode of inscription, not
liturgical usage, distinguishes each type of book. A necrology records members of the
community who had been admitted to the fraternity of prayers (usually after an
important gift) on the day of their death. An obituary records the date of celebration of
an anniversary paid by a bequest. Both books require three elements: a calendar, the

names of the dead, and anniversary foundations.

Huyghebaert assigns to the various libri and necrologies a purely liturgical dimension.

During the Carolingian period, a liber vitae registered the names of the living and the
dead who were recommended during mass. The names were read (by priests or deacons)
during the offertory or during the first memento (the first of two prayers, one for the
living and one for the dead, in the canon of the mass). In that case, ‘reading’ could

simply take the form of setting the book on the altar.

By the end of the tenth century

necrologies replaced the various libri (note that Lema ı tre refutes this idea). Even though
Huyghebaert allocates different functions to necrologies (liturgical, as they were read
during mass) and obituaries (a reminder to the officiant to celebrate an anniversary), he
insists on their fundamental role in the commemoration of the dead (while granting that

the terminology can be tricky).

´ ´

Few lay confraternities maintained corporate ‘books of the dead’. For example, J. L. Lemaı tre, Repertoire

des documents necrologiques franc¸ais (Paris, 1980), 2 vols., indicates only a few confraternal obituaries or
necrologies. All had ties with an ecclesiastical establishment in order to benefit from an inscription in a

´ ´

chapter, monastic or conventual roll, Lema ıtre, Repertoire,

[ 612, 1348, 1395–1399, 1833, 1836, 2016,

2212, 2213, 2790, 3034–3035, 3064, 3189, 3200.

´ ´

J.C. Schmitt, ‘Apostolat mendiant et societe: une confrerie dominicaine a la veille de la reforme’, Annales,

26 (1971), 83, 93, 97, 103.

J.L. Lemaı tre, Les documents necrologiques (Turnhout, 1985), 11, 35 (this volume updated by Lema ıtre was

´ ´

originally published by Huyghebaert), and Lema ıtre, Repertoire, Vol. 1, 5–25.

Lema ıtre, Les documents necrologiques, 13–14. The order of the canon of the mass is found in A. Hughes,

Medieval manuscripts for the mass and office

. A guide to their organization and terminology (Toronto,

1982), 90.

´ ´

Lema ıtre, Les documents necrologiques, 33–34. J. Avril, ‘La paroisse medievale et la priere pour les morts’,

´ ´

in: L

’eglise et la memoire des morts dans la France medievale, ed. J.L. Lemaıtre (Paris, 1986), 60,

discusses the pre-mortem admission of laypeople into monastic orders ( professio ad succurrendum).
Entering the monastic fraternity of prayers permitted these newly admitted members to be inscribed in a
necrology. Avril speculates that the necrology was read daily, during the chapter office. In a fascinating
discussion at the end of the volume, Dom Jacques Dubois questions the procedure of inscribing names in
necrologies while knowing full well that they would not be recited on the days of their anniversaries. Various
scholars agree with Dubois on the quick removal from circulation of the monastic rolls of the dead.

Lemaıtre points out that while those funding anniversaries did so for spiritual benefit (to shorten their stay
in Purgatory), the religious institutions involved in officiating these bequests were more interested in the
measures of wine they would bring to their house than in the effectiveness of their prayers for a layman they

did not know! L

’eglise et la memoire des morts, 119, 124–125.

Forever after: the dead in the Avignonese confraternity of Notre Dame la Majour (1329–1381)

123

Megan McLaughlin’s study of prayers for the dead in early medieval France discusses

at length the ritual use of the various medieval liturgical name-lists and their significance

in the commemoration of the dead.

Regardless of the semantic and historical

differences between, for example, a liber memorialis and a necrology, their main
purpose remained unchanged, that is, they linked the dead with the living. Naming a
dead person brought him or her to the presence of the namer, in most cases the one

offering prayers (suffrages).

If such lists existed in the monastic societies of the early Middle Ages, their

significance did not escape the laity of the later Middle Ages. Fourteenth-century
Avignonese testators, lay persons for the most part, wished to benefit from the added
consolation offered by inscription in a monastic or cathedral’s matricula. Most often,
those testators demanded the inscription of their name on a church, monastery or

convent’s matricula for anniversary masses, in exchange for a donation.

Such name-lists also existed at the corporate level, as demonstrated by the presence of

a ‘book of the living and the dead’ in the confraternity of Notre Dame la Majour. But it
seems that the confraternal books differed from monastic lists in their liturgical usage.
Huyghebaert insists that, most of the time, what is called a confraternal necrology was
not read during the liturgical office. It was read out at the beginning of the confraternal

banquet, before the miserere or de profundis.

The detailed liturgical use of the list is

even more difficult to interpret when only one text (the coutume de l

’abbaye de Farfa,

the third penning of Cluny customs) describes the actual reading of the name-lists, and

historians are still debating if and when necrologies were read.

In any case, studies of

confraternal statutes point out that the names of the dead were read during liturgical

M. McLaughlin, Consorting with saints

. Prayers for the dead in early medieval France (Ithaca, NY, 1994),

90–101. McLaughlin relies on the work of German historians focusing on memoria, for example, Karl
Schmid, Joachim Wollasch, and Otto Gerhard Oexle.

If, as McLaughlin demonstrates, calling aloud the name of a deceased person inscribed on a list made that

person ‘present’ at the ritual, does it mean that the disappearance of a name from a list pushed the memory
of that person away? Jean-Claude Schmitt’s discussion of memoria in Les revenants

. Les vivants et les morts

´ ´

dans la societe medievale (Paris, 1994), offers an interesting twist to McLaughlin’s argument. He sees in the
liber memorialis and its aim – to shorten the span of time spent in purgatory – a social practice of collective
memory as well as a social technique of oblivion. That is, the inscription of a name on such a list allowed
one to put the dead in their proper place in order for the living to remember them, if by chance they did,
without fear or passion, Schmitt, Les revenants, 17–19.

For example, when Agnes de Beaufort in her testament bequests a house and garden to the church of Saint

Didier and requests in exchange that a perpetual anniversary mass be celebrated in that church, she adds ‘‘et
volo etiam et ordino quod dictum capitulum et canonici ejusdem ecclesie teneatur et promettant facere dicti
anniversaria annis singulis et perpetuis temporibus ac scribere in eorum matricula’’, Avignon, Archives

Departementales de Vaucluse, 10G14 (18 Jan. 1386). A transcription of her testament appears in L.

Duhamel, ‘L’habitation, la famille et la sepulture de Pierre Obreri, architecte du palais des papes

d’Avignon’, Memoires de l

’academie de Vaucluse, 3 (1884), 1–14; Other examples appear in various

testaments: Angelus Melioris left several bequests to the church of saint Agricol in exchange for anniversary
masses with the condition that ‘‘domini canonici faciant et teneatur facere poni nomen meum in mortologio

eiusdem ecclesie’’, Avignon, Archives Departementales de Vaucluse, 8G10 (20 Aug, 1374); Delphina
Menduellia went a step further than other testators. She left donations to the convent Saint Catherine in
Avignon, the Franciscan, Augustinian and Carmelite monasteries of Avignon, the monastery of Fonte in

Nımes and the chapter of Notre Dame des Doms, to all with the stipulation ‘‘teneant ponere nomen meum

in eorum matricula’’; Avignon, Archives Departementales de Vaucluse, 8G9 (7 Dec. 1399).

Lema ıtre, Les documents necrologiques, 24.

´ ´

Lema ıtre, Repertoire, 16. Regarding the debate concerning the reading of necrologies see L

’eglise et la

´ ´

memoire des morts dans la France medievale ed. J. L. Lema ıtre (Paris, 1986), 125–126.

124

Joelle Rollo-Koster

functions, for example the service for the dead at Lent, the weekly office of the dead,

masses (plain, commemorative and requiem), and feasts.

Confraternal books of the dead show other peculiarities. They do not fit neatly into the

categories proposed by Huyghebaert and Lema ı tre. In an unpublished paper presented in
1994, entitled ‘Variety of Account Books from the Florentine Confraternities’, Ludovica
Sebregondi describes the lack of distinction between account books and other confrater-

nal books.

This confusion of intentions and procedures may also be applied to the

books of the dead. Examples abound: for instance the published necrology of the
jongleurs and bourgeois of Arras, titled ‘necrology’ by its editor, does not in fact
resemble a necrology. Names are listed along with a record of payment, according to
date. The editor goes as far as to question its aims. The 11,000-name list could be a
membership roll, a record of bequests, or a necrology. Internal evidence demonstrates

that the names represent the confraternal dead, inscribed on the year of their death.
External evidence, like the marking of certain names with a cross or the use of red ink to

embellish a capital letter, corroborates his conclusion.

Conversely, Huyghebaert treats

the document as, above all, a financial register.

Sometimes a confraternal necrology contains the names of the living and the dead, for

example the fifteenth-century confraternity of Saint Nicolas at Bapaume.

Most often,

obituaries and necrologies are closer to matriculation lists than to ‘books of the dead’.
The White Brotherhood of Montfort-sur-Mer, for example, kept an obituary lacking

dates and commemorative services. It only lists the names of the dead.

The

confraternity of Floreffe maintained a list of members onto which crosses were added.
Of 156 names, 54 are marked by a cross. For Genicot, the symbol marks the confraternal
dead. The membership list further adds anniversary bequests founded by certain dead

members. Taking into consideration the fact that this association insisted on prayers for
the dead and paid for weekly requiem masses facilitates the re-definition of its matricula
as a necrology / obituary.

In Italian confraternities of the sixteenth century the names of all dead brothers would be read out during the

service for the dead at Lent; Black, Italian confraternities, 105. In Bologna during the Renaissance ‘with the
libro delle morti, members of all social conditions were sure that at least annually the living members would
remember all their deceased spiritual kin by name in a special requiem mass and feast’; Terpstra, Lay
confraternities, 112. In 1384 Wisbech (England), the gild of St John the Baptist ordered that the priest of the
fraternity should record the names of the living and the dead ‘so that he might pray for both at mass and his
prayers’; Bainbridge, Gilds in the medieval countryside, 84. In Renaissance Florence the names of the
deceased were recalled frequently in any commemorative mass or at the office of the dead; Henderson, Piety
and charity, 165–166.

L. Sebregondi, ‘Variety of account books from the Florentine confraternities’, unpublished paper, Interna-

tional congres of medieval studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1994.

R. Berger, Le necrologe de la confrerie des jongleurs et des bourgeois d

’Arras (1194 –1361) (Arras, 1963),

30, 34–37, 47.

Berger, Le necrologe, 28.

Lema ıtre, Les documents necrologiques, 24. For Huyghebaert the external aspect of confraternal ‘nec-

rologies’ is linked to their liturgical use, or rather their lack thereof. Since they are non-liturgical they do not
need a precise calendar – thus their usual inscription of names (in the order of death) without dates.

´ ´

Lema ıtre, Repertoire,

[ 1833.

´ ´

J.L. Lemaı tre, Repertoire des documents necrologiques franc¸ais

, supplement (Paris, 1987), 33, identifies it

as a kind of matriculation list.

L. Genicot, ‘Une paroisse namuroise a la fin du moye-age: Floreffe’, Revue d

’histoire ecclesiatique, 80

(1985), 703, 705, 707, 726–730.

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125

Various associations combined their membership lists with a pseudo book of the dead.

The Compagnie du Tres-Saint-Sacrement in Marseilles added ‘dead’ to its member list.
In Renaissance Bologna, Terpstra notes that ‘while confraternities statutes required the
company to maintain a libro delle morti separate from the running matriculation list . . .
most company secretaries simply annotated the existing matriculation lists using either

the symbol ‘ 1 ’ or a phrase such as ‘mortus est’.’

In a society where record-keeping

was tedious, a simple list of members could take on the attributes of a sacred document.
In medieval England, Bainbridge notes ‘entry into the fellowship of gild or other society
might entitle new brethren to have their names registered on a bede roll. These
documents, sometimes inadequately described as membership lists, were not drawn up
primarily for administrative convenience, but so that those named would receive the

prayers of their parent institutions’.

Those examples leave no doubt that non-liturgical

documents could still convey liturgical use.

Once written on a piece of parchment, the names of the confraternal deceased would

carry on to become the responsibility of the living. Thus, the word all (omnia), found in
Notre Dame de la Majour’s statutes, confirms that the matriculations were intended to be
a lay version of the monastic book of the dead. The living and the dead, once inscribed

on the books, benefited from prayers pre and post mortem.

The belief in Purgatory had

an effect on the ritual use of name-lists in this Avignonese confraternity. In general,

confraternal devotion shows a growing concern for the souls in Purgatory.

In his La

comptabilite de l

’au-dela, Jacques Chiffoleau establishes the appearance in the Comtat

Venaissin of the new practice of suffrages for the souls in purgatory between 1330 and

1360,

a period contemporary with the foundation of Notre Dame la Majour. The belief

in Purgatory created a dialogue between the dead souls expiating their faults and the
living now praying to hasten the dead souls’ expiation time. It seems reasonable to

suggest that Notre Dame originated as a consequence of this newly established belief.

Like many other associations, Notre Dame la Majour did not keep a separate ‘book of

the dead’ or necrology. It kept a combined matriculation list / book of the living and the
dead. The Avignonese archives still hold the notary’s and treasurer’s paper ledgers
(entrata and uscita) required by the statutes. The matriculation lists stand out clearly
from these administrative registers. The matriculation lists are copied in gothic, on

Allier, La compagnie, 29.

Terpstra, Lay confraternities, 112.

Bainbridge, Gilds in the medieval countryside, 83.

The Notre Dame la Majour ‘book of living and dead’ is similar to the libri memoriales described by Megan

McLaughlin in her study on prayers for the dead in early medieval France. She notes ‘most of the names
listed in the libri memoriales were, of course, those of the dead . . . . However, a name was normally entered
in a liber memorialis while its owner still lived, and that person would be prayed for before as well as after
death’, McLaughlin, Consorting with saints, 94.

See for example, Black, Italian confraternities, 105, and, Henderson, Piety and charity, 155, 163–164.

Chiffoleau, La comptabilite, 408.

Even if the word ‘Purgatory’ fails to appear in the statutes, belief in it appears in the celebration of a mass for

the dead on Mondays. According to Jacques de Vitry, souls in Purgatory did not need as many suffrages on
Sunday, the day of the Lord when pains of purgation subsided, as on Mondays. Thus, traditionally, churches
organized their masses for the dead on Mondays, J. Le Goff, La naissance du purgatoire (Paris, 1981), 400;

´ ´

Vincent, Les confreries medievales, 104; and J. Longere, ‘Un sermon inedit de Jacques de Vitry’, in:

´ ´

’eglise et la memoire des morts dans la France medievale, ed. J. L. Lemaıtre (Paris, 1986), 36.

126

Joelle Rollo-Koster

parchment, and are illuminated and alphabetized. In contrast, the registers are copied on
paper, in cursive and in chronological order.

Those ledgers list members who paid their dues or participated in various ceremonies

for a given year. For example, the ledgers record 325 dues-paying members for the year
1374–1375, 303 for the year 1375–1376, 266 for the year 1376–1377, and 232 for the

year 1377–1378.

These numbers do not compare with the 1200 and 1600 or so names

recorded in the matricula. The matriculation lists are so lengthy because they combine,
as in most liber memoriales, living and dead members. By doing so they conform to the
statutal regulation requiring a confraternal book of living and dead.

The inscription of honorific members, who do not appear regularly in the administra-

tive registers, cardinals or bishops for example, added symbolic value to the matricula.

As mentioned earlier (see note 27), the association was bound to the Augustinian

convent.

They met in the chapel of the Assumption of their church and in some cases

the Augustinians allowed some of Notre Dame’s members to be buried in their ground.
The 1505 agreement between the convent and the confraternity cites a ‘Book of the
Dead’ (livre mortuaire), leading to the assumption that the Augustinians may have
maintained their own necrology or obituary. In this case, Notre Dame’s dead may have
been inscribed among the names of the Augustinian deceased. The archives have no

record of such a book.

The association’s statutes do not make it clear if the company honoured the dead by

Hayez, ‘Nostra Donna’, 9. The ledger is illegible for the period investigated, from the 1360s to the 1390s.

Hayez counted the approximate entries with infra red light.

For example, Cardinal Rinaldo Orsini heads the list of names starting with the letter ‘A’ (folio 62, under his

‘nickname’ Arnaldo Orsini), regarding this person see, J. Font-Reaulx, ‘Les cardinaux d’Avignon, leurs

´ ´

armoiries et leurs sceaux’, Annuaire de la societe des amis du palais des papes et des monuments d

’Avignon

(1973), 35 (cf. Rinaldo Orsini, 1350–1374); Giovanni Vivenci heads the letter ‘G’ with the added marginal
annotation that he became bishop of Pistoia under pope Urban V (folio 80), see F. Ughelli, Italia sacra, 5
vols. (Venice, 1717–1722), vol. 2, 474, vol. 3, 305; Raimon della Bolla (Raymond Gausserandi, of the Bull
Office) and Roberto da Casa Dei (Robert abbot of Chaise Dieu) head the letter ‘R’ (folio 105); for Raimon

della bolla, see K.H. Schafer, Die Ausgaben der apostolischen Kammer unter Benedikt XII

., Klemenz VI.

Und Innocenz VI (Paderborn, 1914), 228, 283, 314, 316, 356, 382, 404, 413, 427, 433, 436, 457, 481, 504,

529, 540, 563, 568, 640, 676, 688, 694, 744, and for Roberto da Casa Dei see, Clement VI, Lettres secretes

et curiales se rapportant a la france, ed. E. Deprez (Paris, 1960–1961),

[ 5064; Cardinal Francesco di

Sancto Piero di Roma (Francischus de Theobaldeschis) heads the letter ‘F’. His name was obviously added

after his promotion in 1368, by a hand different from the rest of the list (folio 16), see J. Font-Reaulx, ‘Les

´ ´

cardinaux d’Avignon, leurs armoiries et leurs sceaux’, Annuaire de la societe des amis du palais des papes
et des monuments d

’Avignon (1973), 21 (cf. Francischus de Theobaldeschis, 1368–1378); Similarly, the

name of Nicholaus Brancatiis (dominus Nicolao, cardinale) was added to head the letter ‘N’ after his 1378

promotion, see J. Font-Reaulx, ‘Les cardinaux d’Avignon, leurs armoiries et leurs sceaux’, Annuaire de la

´ ´

societe des amis du palais des papes et des monuments d

’Avignon (1974), 30 (cf. Nicolaus Brancatiis,

1378–1412). These dignitaries usually paid a lump sum as an advance on future payments and disappeared
from the yearly account books; Hayez, ‘Nostra Donna’, 8. Discussing ‘national’ confraternities found in
large Italian cities, Black notes ‘matriculation lists can be misleading since they might register those passing
through very briefly as pilgrims or merchants, and might include (notably in Rome) names of people who
never visited, but who wanted to be registered to benefit from indulgences and privileges awarded to the
confraternity, its church or chapel’, Black, Italian confraternities, 43–44.

See for example, Guillemain, La cour pontificale, 597; Pansier, ‘Les confreries d’Avignon’, 34.

Pansier, ‘Les confreries d’Avignon’, 40 (chapter 20); Avignon, Archives Departementales du Vaucluse,

archives hospitalieres d’Avignon, Majour C1, mentions the chapel.

Avignon, Archives Departementales du Vaucluse, Grands Augustins d’Avignon, H 1–20. In any case if such

´ ´

a book existed it would also have been recorded in Lema ıtre’s Repertoire.

Forever after: the dead in the Avignonese confraternity of Notre Dame la Majour (1329–1381)

127

name, by, for example, ritually calling aloud the names of the dead during certain

celebrations.

The liturgical use of the book is hard to prove solely from external

evidence. Nevertheless, the beautiful parchment shows clear signs of manipulation, and
the need to copy a new list of names when the old one was damaged also indicates that it

was actively used.

One can envision that, as other confraternities did, or as with a

monastic liber memorialis or a necrology, the confraternal ‘book of names’ was placed
on the altar during mass ‘to serve as concrete symbol of the liturgical community on

earth and . . . In heaven . . . ’.

Thus, the list of members could be described as the

‘memory’ of the brotherhood, linking past with present affiliates in an endless
association. But, were the names of all members living and dead in fact preserved? Were
the names of all deceased members repeated in successive matriculation lists?

The two surviving lists are located in volume E4, among the confraternity’s papers in

the departmental archives of the Vaucluse.

The two lists of matriculation, which I have

dated 1364 and 1374–1381,

are found at the beginning of volume E4. They are

followed by the collected papers of the confraternity which run, with lacunae, from 1365
to 1411 (folios 115 to 502). For convenience, I will call the first list found in the volume
ND1; it covers folio 1 to 60. I will call the list which follows ND2; it covers folio 62 to
113. In fact, the first list in the volume is the most recent one (1374) and the second one,
the older (1364). Thus the lists are bound into volume E4 in reverse chronological order.
The following volume, E5, contains papers from the fifteenth century. In his study on
Nostra Donna, Jerome Hayez describes these fourteenth- and fifteenth-century records
as: the notary’s and treasurer’s ledger recording deposits and withdrawals; brief notes;
particular accounts for specific individuals; wax accounts; dignitaries’ elections; and an

inventory of the confraternity’s belongings.

The language of both matriculation lists is Italian with a few lapses into Latin. These

Latin entries are sometimes made as later additions – after the original penning of the
document in question – and are easily distinguishable from the matriculations’ formal

Regarding the commemoration of the dead by name, see J. Banker, Death in the community

. Memorialization

and confraternities in an Italian commune in the late middle ages (Athens, GA, 1988), 50; J. Henderson,
‘Religious confraternities and death in early Renaissance Florence’, in: Florence and Italy

. Renaissance

studies in honour of Nicolai Rubinstein, ed. P. Denley and C. Elam (London, 1988), 382.

When a list of names was found to be outdated or worn out, another was compiled. Thus, on November 15,

1390 the ledger contains the following entry ‘‘per un libro in pergameno per li nomi de’ confrati . . . ’’ (fol.
362); or the treasurer recorded on October 19, 1391 ‘‘Pago per fare un libro grande de pergameno nuovo de
nomi e pagamenti de confrati peroche’l vechio non valeva’’ (fol. 505v.), and on August 15, 1392 ‘‘e a frate
Martino per parte di pagamento del libro grande nuovo de’ confrati che scrisse’’ (fol. 408v); Hayez, ‘Nostra

Donna’, 4 and ‘La stanza di Vignone. Identite et migration entre la Toscane et Avignon au XIVe et XVe

siecle’ (Universite de Paris IV–Sorbonne: these de doctorat, 17 decembre 1993), 16 n.1. The 1390–1391 list
is nowhere to be found.

According to McLaughlin ‘the living and the dead were present among the group gathered around the altar’,

McLaughlin, Consorting with saints, 92, 100.

Avignon, Archives Departementales du Vaucluse, archives hospitalieres d’Avignon, Majour, E4.

J. Rollo-Koster, ‘The people of curial Avignon. A critical edition of the liber divisionis and the lists of

matriculation of the confraternity of Notre Dame la Majour’ (Ph.D. Dissertation, S.U.N.Y. at Binghamton,
1992), 147–159. In order to identify the dates of the document I examine both external and internal
evidence. After demonstrating that the Roman numeral present at the end of each entry is the year up to
which each individual has paid his dues, I use these numerals to determine the document’s date. In addition,
internal evidence regarding well-known individuals also sheds light on the dating.

Hayez, ‘Nostra Donna’, 4.

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Joelle Rollo-Koster

textual gothic because they are written in cursive. In any case, all the marginal notations
added to the matriculations are in Italian minuscule cursive, a sign that Italian, and more
specifically Tuscan, was the language used by the administration of the association. The
Latin statutes and the Italian matriculation lists indicate that while Latin might be
employed on formal occasions, Italian replaced it in day-to-day business.

Unfortunately, both the matriculation lists and the ledger in volume E4 have suffered

extensive flood damage and are extremely difficult to read. The illegibility of parts of the

documents means that many entries are gone or only partially readable.

A complete

entry contains the following: the first and last names of the participant, and often his
occupation and place of origin, though these latter were not systematically recorded by
the association. A Roman numeral ends each entry, located in the right margin of the

documents. This numeral indicates the year up to which dues had been paid.

(Table 1)

One may hypothesize that the scribe who wrote a new list in fact recopied the names

in the previous one and added to the names of past members the ones who had joined
since the last completed list. The statutes required such a systematic reproduction of all

Table 1
Notre Dame: Legibility

ND1

ND2

Legible

Illegible

Total

Legible

Illegible

Total

138

176

111

120

115

163

113

234

255

489

253

309

I / J

101

100

201

130

116

U / V

913

750

1663

1035

202

1237

Total: ND1 5 1663; ND2 5 1237.
Total legible: ND1 5 55%; ND2 5 84%.
Total illegible: ND1 5 45%; ND2 5 16%.

See Table 1, where the legibility of the document is rendered alphabetically, letter by letter. Each entry

occupies a line; therefore, the total given for each letter of the alphabet represents the total membership for
that letter, that is the total number of members whose first name starts with that letter.

See Rollo-Koster, ‘The People of Curial Avignon’, 135–147, where I discuss in detail the meaning of these

Roman numerals (the year up to which a member had paid).

Forever after: the dead in the Avignonese confraternity of Notre Dame la Majour (1329–1381)

129

the names (liber sit de pergameno in quo scripta omnia nomina confratrum vivorum et
mortuorum). A survey of both lists indicates, however, that the repetition was not
unconditional. While the names found at the beginning of ND1 (the 1374–1381 list) are
indeed a repetition of names found in ND2 (the 1364 list), that repetition is only
partially systematic: of some 1237 members found in ND2 only 424 are repeated in ND1
(only 34%). In summary, ND1 starts with a partial series of names repeated from ND2,

followed by a series of names unrelated to that previous list.

The conclusion is

inescapable. When ND1 was compiled, the association utilized some criteria to decide
who would be kept from the previous list and who would be eliminated.

The statutes themselves offer some explanations for the removal of certain names

from the registers. The causes could be moral or simply financial. Homicide committed

against brothers and repeated blasphemy resulted in expulsion from the association.
Financial irresponsibility regarding the payment of dues was also penalized with

expulsion from the association and the exclusion of one’s name from the list.

How did the administration recognize which names to keep and which to eliminate?

The various crosses and addenda found in the margins of the document provide partial
answers to this question. I discuss them in details in Appendix A.

Following the statutal evidence, one might imagine the following scenario. After

August 15 of each year (members paid their yearly dues on that date), the administration
gathered a list of members, old and new, who had just paid their dues. Such lists exist in
the ledgers that follow both matriculations, but they are unfortunately hardly legible for
the period being investigated, from the 1360s to the 1390s. Once the list of recently paid
dues was established in the ledger, a scribe compared the names of those who had just
paid with the names present in the most recent matriculation list. As long as a member
paid his dues regularly, his name was left untouched in the matriculation list.
Alternately, an addenda such as ‘he is believed dead’ or ‘he did not come and did not
pay’, or a cross, was added in front of a matriculant’s name to indicate his lack of
payment. Palaeographic evidence shows that they were, in fact, added after the
matriculations were completed. The hands, a minuscule cursive, are different from those
that compiled the matriculation lists.

It could be suggested that these crosses added to the matriculation lists were intended

strictly to mark the dead in ‘good standing’. Nicolas Terpstra noticed this practice in his
study of early modern Bolognese confraternities (see p. 125). However, the use of this
cross was not as clearly defined by Notre Dame la Majour as it was in the Bolognese
confraternities. The crosses did imply the ‘corporative death’ of a member, but they did
not entail, in many cases, the physical death of an associate nor his good standing within
the association.

All crosses designated individuals who were in violation of the statutes, that is, those

This fact alone establishes a direct connection between both lists (the existence of an eventual intermediate

list would still not explain the disappearance of names from one list to another). Since the first list starts with
a repetition of the second one, it seems plausible to assume that the first list was compiled when the second
one had already been completed. This in turn implies that the second list chronologically precedes the first
one, Rollo-Koster, ‘The People of Curial Avignon’, 153.

Pansier, ‘Les confreries d’Avignon’, 37, 41.

Pansier, ‘Les confreries d’Avignon’, 39, 43.

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Joelle Rollo-Koster

who had lost their benefits because they had not been paying their dues for the three to
five years since the date of compilation of ND2 (there is no reason to assume that a large
percentage of the membership in ND2 was dropped from ND1 because they had

commited blasphemy and homicide).

If members had not been paying their dues, on

the other hand, the association wanted to find out why. The different crosses, and the
addenda, indicate the various justifications for nonpayment.

According to this recording procedure, a reader perusing the list was able to ascertain,

with the help of the various symbols used, if a member still belonged to the association
or not. Surprisingly, the association did not differentiate in its recording procedure
between the physical death of a member in good standing and the corporative death of a
member (due to his non-observance of the statutes). This in turn should have posed
serious problems for the accomplishment of its main tasks, which were to honour its
dead members with a funerary procession and to commemorate them with daily masses.
How could the confraternity honour its confraternal dead when it combined them in one
symbol, the same cross, with the corporatively dead (who could in fact still be alive) and
deleted both from succeeding ‘books of the living and the dead’?

The scribe compiling a new ‘book of the living and the dead’ did not include many

‘dead’ members in that list, since only 17% of all individuals marked by a cross in ND2
made it into ND1. But in addition, he also eliminated from ND1 members who were not
marked with a cross or an addendum in ND2. Seven hundred and sixty individuals have

clearly legible entries in ND2 and ND1.

Fully 49% of those do not appear in ND1. Of

the latter, as expected, 59% are marked with one of the various crosses meant to
legitimize their elimination from the later list, but 41% are not outwardly recognizable.
These latter entries were eliminated without apparent justification except in five specific
cases: two entries are crossed out (elimination), two mention a departure (andossene) and
one an expulsion (casso perche . . . illegible answer).

What are we to make of these apparently casual eliminations? It would seem that the

confraternal administration used the matriculation lists as one way to keep up with its
membership. The scribe who compiled ND1 knew how to recognize the corporatively
dead members in ND2. Their entry was preceded by a cross or an addendum in the ‘old’
list. But, evidently, he also had to know how to recognize the corporatively dead who
were not marked by any symbol in the preceding list. Perhaps he used another document
to this end, such as the ledger which, according to the statutes, was kept by the

confraternal notary, or the ledger that was held by the organization’s camerary.

This

would mean that the crosses and addenda summarized information obtained from the

Chiffoleau, Les justices du pape, 203, counted very few condemnations against blasphemers, around one per

cent of the total fines imposed by the temporal court. The only sure case of homicide among Notre Dame la
Majour’s matriculants regards the barber Stephano di Puccio [folio 107v]. Stephano was accused of several
crimes and of murdering another barber, Nicolas of Milan. He escaped justice but was nevertheless
condemned in absentia in 1366; P. Pansier ‘Les medecins des papes d’Avignon (1308–1403)’, Janus
(1909), 433. His name, found in ND2, is not repeated in ND1 but no cross or addendum is inscribed before
his entry.

To ensure that such elimination did indeed happen I chose to take as a sample only those parts of ND1 and

ND2 that are clearly legible. This sample comprises all the entries of each letter except G, L, M, S and Z.
The latter are omitted because their entries are badly disfigured in ND1. This sample assures that certain of
ND2’s entries are in fact missing from ND1 and not present, but illegible.

See p. 7. As noted earlier, the statutes recognize the presence of three books, Pansier, ‘Les confreries

d’Avignon’, 38.

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131

other confraternal registers. The elimination of unmarked entries from one document to
the next may be understood if we take into account that the transcription of such
information may not have been systematic.

The data offered by Notre Dame la Majour does not permit the calculation of an

annual rate of affiliates’ expulsion. The two matriculation lists only allow one to assess
that over a 10-year period some 66% of all affiliates named on the 1364 matriculation
list were not carried over to the 1374 list. According to the statutory regulations, the
disappearance of a name between one list and the other entailed the corporative death of
a member, thus his dismissal from the association.

Notre Dame la Majour’s dismissal rate does not seem unusually high when compared

with similar data pertaining to other confraternities. Nicholas Terpstra’s research on
Bologna in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries shows expulsion rates ranging from 16%
to 53% over a time span ranging from 30 to more than 100 years. For comparison,
Terpstra cites the research of John Anderson on a Trecento company in Florence which

annually expelled 16% of its members.

James Banker’s research on the confraternities

of the Italian town of San Sepolchro indicates that during a 40-year period less than half
of

those

who

entered

the

confraternity

San

Bartolomeo

died

without

commemoration. Ronald Weissman’s study on Florentine confraternities yields a yearly

loss of membership of close to 6%.

John Henderson’s research on Florentine Flagellants between 1334 and 1369,

primarily on the company Gesu Pellegrino, reveals that in 56% of the cases no reason
was offered. Mortal sins resulted with expulsion in 4.8% of the cases, and various
offences against the company counted as another 39% of the cases. Most importantly,
non-payment of subscription dues, listed as one of the offences against the company,
never led to expulsion from the association but, in 5% of the cases between 1365 and

1369, did lead to punishments.

In general, these Italian confraternities expelled members who had violated their

statutes through non-attendance and insubordination, who had committed moral lapses,

who were negligent, and some others for no clear reason.

None seems to have

eliminated from their ranks members who had died in good standing vis a vis the
association.

As we have seen, however, the situation is quite different in our Avignonese

confraternity. Notre Dame la Majour’s recording procedure shows that a large gap
existed between what was called for in the statutes and the actual practice. Intended by
the statutes to be a book of the living and the dead, the matriculation lists evolved as a

book of living and paying members only.

James Banker finds a similar trend amongst

Florentine confraternities during the fourteenth century, starting with San Frediano,
which recorded the dues of those paying in the 1330s. Further, Florentine confraternities

Terpstra, ‘Death and dying’, 185, 194.

Banker, Death in the community, 64.

R. Weissman, Ritual brotherhood in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1982), 126.

Henderson, Piety and charity, 136.

Terpstra, ‘Death and dying’, 185, 198 n. 16; Banker, Death in the community, 64; Weissman, Ritual

brotherhood, 126, 128.

The attention given to the souls of the ‘living’ may be the sign of a changing mentality, precursor of

Vauzelles’ words ‘it is to the living, to the living and not to the dead that are owed the alms which resurrect’.
These words were aimed at offering relief to the poor of Lyon during the early sixteenth century; N. Zemon
Davis, Society and culture in early modern France (Stanford, CA, 1975), 53.

132

Joelle Rollo-Koster

developed the habit of recording those who did not pay. For Banker this practice testifies
to the growing reliance on dues as the source of finances for the confraternities: ‘after a
period of probation, the derelict member would be expelled from the confraternity,

thereby losing all his confraternal benefits’.

If we accept that this practice spread to

Avignon, understandably so because of the large number of Italians residing in the city,
it still does not explain the association’s practice of eliminating the dead ‘in good
standing’ from the confraternal memory. It is ironic that most of the members of Notre
Dame la Majour who died in good standing may, in fact, have not been remembered by
the association, at least not by name and not on parchment. How could they be properly
honoured if their names were not inscribed in the successive matriculation lists?

The association’s un-corporative behaviour appear even more clearly if, once again,

the affiliates themselves are taken into consideration. As seen earlier, the association
gathered numerous Italians, Florentine for the most part, who had followed the papal
court to Avignon. These individuals, like the majority of the Avignonese population
during this period, resided in the city as long as the papacy remained. These residents,
labelled curiam romanam sequentes in apostolic documents, were transients in a city

where transiency was the norm.

Jerome Hayez’s study of the Tuscans of Avignon emphasizes the mobility of that

group of Italians. Hayez defends the argument that both individuals and communities
benefited from temporary expatriation. Enlarging one’s fortune in a foreign country
favoured, once home again, an individual’s social reinsertion at a higher social status
than the one previously held and, of course, enhanced the finances of the commune of
origin. Thus many Tuscans came to Avignon and after a few years spent in the city,

went back home, possibly with further onore.

If many, the merchant-bankers for example, travelled back and forth between Avignon

and their ‘homeland’, many also joined Notre Dame la Majour upon their arrival in the

city.

Can we safely assume that, for a newly arrived merchant, joining an Avignonese

confraternity did not threaten corporate relations established somewhere else? Joining
Notre Dame hastened integration within the city and recognition amongst the other
Italian residents.

Banker, Death in the community, 71.

The last third of the fourteenth century was, to say the least, a period of travels and tribulations for the

Roman curia. In 1366, Urban V communicated to the French court, in dismay, his desire to return to Rome.
He left Avignon on April 30, 1367 and arrived in Rome on October 16. Three years later Urban returned to
Avignon. He entered the city on September 22 1370, only to die three months later, on December 19, 1370.
His successor Gregory XI was crowned pope on January 5, 1371 and immediately expressed the same
intention as his predecessor. He embarked for Rome on September 13, 1376, to arrive on January 17, 1377.
His death, on March 27, 1378, and the subsequent election of two popes, catapulted Christianity into the
Great Schism. Elected by the ‘French’ party, Clement VII entered Avignon on June 20, 1379; G. Mollat, Les
papes d

’Avignon (Paris, 1930), 111–128 and M. Hayez, ‘Avignon sans les papes, 1367–1370, 1376–1379’,
`

in: Genese et debut du grand schisme d

’occident (Paris, 1980), 143. For a discussion of the term curiam

romanam sequentes, see M. Bullard, ‘Mercatores florentini romanam curiam sequentes in the early sixteenth
century’, The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 6 (1976), 51–71, and Rollo-Koster, ‘The
People of Curial Avignon’, 18–23.

Hayez, ‘La stanza’, 1–6, 18. I can only refer to the works of R.C. Trexler and R. Weissman on the concepts

of honour and shame in medieval Florence.

For example, Tommaso Lamberteschi of Florence represented the Alberti Antiqui in Avignon from January

1363 until May 1365. He paid for 1363 and 1365; Filippo Astay of Lucca arrived in Avignon on May 21,
1364. He paid his membership that same year; Ghisello di Bindo resided in Avignon in 1374 only. He paid
his dues that same year; Rollo-Koster, ‘The People of Curial Avignon’, 151–152, 157–158.

Forever after: the dead in the Avignonese confraternity of Notre Dame la Majour (1329–1381)

133

Membership in an ‘international’ brotherhood was recommended to medieval busines-

smen. In his Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence, Weissman cites the four-
teenth-century Florentine Paolo da Certaldo counselling his sons that, when travelling in
a foreign territory, one should always secure the friendship of the powerful of the region.

This provided protection and a means of integration.

Weissman defines Florentine

confraternities as vehicles for expanding personal networks and gaining access to
patronage chains throughout the city because of the Florentine apprehension of

‘strangers’.

As in Florence, the Tuscan merchant houses established in Avignon tied temselves to

a network of allies, the amici. These could be special clients, benefiting from trading
privileges, who also became, when needed, protectors. In the words of Nicolaio di
Bonnacorso, one of Francesco di Marco Datini’s agents, buono fa in chorte di Roma
avere uno ispeziale singnore, or to listen to the advice of another of Datini’s agents, one

should ‘stick’ to a protector.

After all, after the 1376 papal interdict on Florence,

one-third of the Florentines present in Avignon escaped banishment with individual

exemptions obtained through influential friends at the curia.

Notre Dame la Majour,

with its cardinals, papal bureaucrats, merchants and tradesmen, Italian for the most part,
might have been the channel through which client relations were generated, and also the
haven sought by Italians travelling to the city.

The association granted civic recognition and honour to the foreigners present in the

city through its ceremonies, funerary processions and public appearances, for example

the procession it held on Assumption day.

But most of all the confraternity permitted

foreigners, stranieri, to recognize, identify and relate to each other. Furthermore, I would
like to suggest that the statutal ‘book of living and dead’ was a mean of transmission of

that knowledge of fellow strangers.

Tuscan merchants insisted on the importance of a

Weissman, Ritual brotherhood, 63.

Weissman, Ritual brotherhood, 40, 80.

Hayez, ‘La stanza’, 47–48, 86.

J. Hayez, ‘En quete de l’identite de migrants toscans d’Avignon des XIVe–Xve siecles’, Cahiers du centre

de recherches historiques, 13, 47.

P. Pansier, ‘Annales avignonnaises de 1370–1382 d’apres le livre des mandats de gabelles’, Annales

’Avignon et du Comtat Venaissin, 3 (1914–1915), 70–71, is the sole mention of that procession during the

medieval period. A much later source describes in detail the role of the confraternity during the celebration
of the Assumption. On June 21, 1761 the bishop of Avignon, Franc¸ois Marie des Comtes de Mangi, visited
the central location of the association, the chapel of the Assumption at the Augustinian church. After mass
he asked various questions regarding the confraternity’s origin and traditions. I quote: ‘The rectors
responded by explaining that every year, on the vigil of Our Lady in August the confraternity exposes its
banner at the place du change (the old town square where money changers, usually Tuscan, officiated). Why
at that location? Because it was the location of the annual confraternal election. On the same day, at around
six o’clock at night, the brothers go in procession throughout the town, while carrying a statue of the Virgin.
The city’s consuls participate in the procession, which ends up touring the great courtyard of the pope’s
palace. This route has been followed since the popes resided in the city. At that time the pope himself would

offer his benediction to the procession’s participants.’ Avignon, Archives hospitalieres d’Avignon, la
Majour, C1. What better recognition than a special blessing by the pope! If nothing else, the long term
memory of the association recalled its special relation with the pope and the city’s administrators.

In his introduction to La circulation des nouvelles au moyen age, Ph. Contamine suggests that the circulation

of various ‘death rolls’ (rouleaux des morts) played a part in the spread of a variety of information. It is
possible that the addenda to the lists of matriculation played such a role. They permitted administrators, and
anybody who had access to the lists, to identify the whereabouts of the ‘addended’ affiliates; Ph. Contamine,

‘introduction’, in: La circulation des nouvelles au moyen age, 24ieme congres de la S.H.M.E.S. (Paris,
1994), 19.

134

Joelle Rollo-Koster

name, part of the buona fama, in their commercial and social dealings. They chose
agents, and left their inheritance, to individuals who could maintain the reputation of the
original owner’s name. The inscription of a name legally bound the participants to a

commercial company.

Names were still essential in their religious activities since,

according to the statutes of Notre Dame la Majour, transgression of the association’s
rules carried the penalty of seeing one’s name erased from the company’s book.
Conversely, corporative participation granted the inscription of one’s name in the
confraternal register.

It seems that for this association the means of memorialization also granted the

recognition of the living, paying members of the association, that is the amici. These
were the ones bound together by adhering to the association. Once an individual died or
left the city, the necessity to preserve ties with the Avignonese confraternity slowly
disappeared. Thus, their names vanished from the confraternal lists. Inherent to a
confraternity of transients, the confraternal, corporate and familial bonds usually present
elsewhere, were replaced by the temporary ties formed, out of necessity, in Avignon.
Even if some must have remembered the association after they left the city and recalled
their past brotherhood in their testaments, the majority who left a bestowal to Notre
Dame were Italians who died in the city, individuals who depended on its presence to
re-create the bonds they had left behind. Andrea di Ruspo offers a fitting example. In his
will of 1366, after qualifying himself as ‘follower of the Roman Court’, he requested

burial at the Avignonese church of Saint Peter.

If the sequence of the testament tells

anything about the ‘affection’ and frame of mind of the individual who wrote it, Andrea

thought first to preserve relations with his home town, Florence,

and only then about

his corporate relations in Avignon. His third bequest went to the marshal of the Roman
Court (head of justice for non-native residents). Then he offered various bequests to the
church of Saint Peter in Avignon in order to fulfil the necessary funeral ceremony on the
day of his death (money was left for tapers and masses). Afterward, he turned to several
Avignonese confraternities; the confraternity of Notre Dame beate Marie Maior cuius
sum confrater, to which he donated three gold florins; the confraternity of Saint John the
Baptist in Avignon, to which he donated three gold florins; and the confraternity beate
Lucie in Avignon, to which he donated two gold florins.

The point of interest in this discussion is that Andrea did not count solely on the

suffrages of Notre Dame la Majour (he is listed in the matriculation on folios 1 and 62).
As with Eliseo Mamelini in early sixteenth-century Bologna, he counted on the
complementarity of joining several associations to multiply his spiritual benefits,

corporate acts of charity, and political or social connections.

Andrea requested masses

from the clergy of the church of Saint Peter, and one has to assume that he expected
suffrages from members of other confraternities in Avignon as well as from members of

Hayez, ‘La stanza’, 237–240, discusses at length the roles of names in Italian commercial societies.

Avignon, Archives Departementales du Vaucluse, archives hospitalieres d’Avignon, Sainte Marthe, H30, 19

Feb. 1366.

His first bequest is to the Confraternity of Saint Michael in Florence (Orsanmichele), and his second to the

alm-house of Saint Reparate, also in Florence.

Regarding Mamelini and his multiplication of membership see Terpstra, Lay confraternities, 69, 78.

Forever after: the dead in the Avignonese confraternity of Notre Dame la Majour (1329–1381)

135

the Florentine societies to which he donated. In this he followed the pattern of increased

demand for individual masses delineated by Chiffoleau in La comptabilite de l

’au-dela.

In addition, as a member in good standing of Notre Dame la Majour he offered proof

of his buona fama. Joining the association was a form of personal insurance for himself
and the other members. When, for example, Matteo Benini arrived in Avignon in 1360,
he joined the association (he is recorded on folio 95v.). He left soon after for Arles

where he became a trading partner of the Avignonese Florentine.

He nevertheless

remained a member of the organization, at least up to 1364, even though he did not

reside in the city any more.

His participation in Notre Dame la Majour served as a

reference for his good social and commercial practices.

In an echo of things to come, time and money became of the essence for this

association. A regular payment of dues bound the brothers and secured corporate
survival, even if one was away from the community. But what the association failed to
recognize (at least in its statutes) is that payments did not bind brothers forever. Even
though members left bequests to their association, usually a donation of 2 to 3 gold

florins, those bequests did not guarantee their corporate survival after death.

This confraternity’s procedure shows in extreme fashion what happened to mobility

when mobility was not yet the norm. The association was set in a large international city
made up of an extremely fluid population. The association’s purpose, as inferred from
the statutes, was to by-pass the transient character of its adherents and to offer a

traditional confraternal structure.

The association adapted to the condition of its

adherents by replacing the temporary loss of kinship ties and personal affiliations,
predominantly absent in a confraternity of transients, with the brotherhood. Still, the
mobility of its adherents caught up with the association. Members left and were
seemingly forgotten. The dead did not ‘live on’ in Notre Dame’s ‘corporate memory’
because the brothers of Notre Dame did not need their ‘names’. The ties that bind were
not, for this group of Italians, in Avignon. They primarily remained at ‘home’. The dead
were remembered generically by professionals, paid to say masses, but not as ‘named’
individuals. The particular social or commercial usefulness of each had vanished with
each life.

The role confraternities played in social cohesion has long been established, and

nowhere else with more eminence than in late medieval England. When M. Rubin
describes English Corpus Christi fraternities, she states ‘let us try to understand
fraternities as providers of essential personal, familial, religious, economic and political
services, as providing security in some essential areas of life; and let us see these

Hayez, ‘La stanza’, 235.

He is recorded as having paid up to 1364 in ND2.

See, for example, the fourteenth-century testaments of Andrea di Ruspo, Avignon, Archives Departementales

du Vaucluse, hopitaux d’Avignon, Sainte Marthe, H30; Bartholomeo Cardini, Avignon, Archives com-
munales de la ville d’Avignon, notaires, Martin, 46, ff. 3–6V, and Delphina Menduelle, wife of Petrus

Poncii alias Raubati, Avignon, Archives Departementales de Vaucluse, 8G9. They donated, respectively,
three, one and four gold florins to Notre Dame la Majour. They all left additional bequests to other
confraternities.

The statutes of Notre Dame la Majour are very similar to the ones of other contemporary confraternities; see

Pansier, ‘Les confreries d’Avignon’, 6–48.

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Joelle Rollo-Koster

activities as articulated most frequently in symbols from the language of religion’.
Could we argue that in Avignon, as in many other places, some confraternities acted as
what a modern reader would call ‘social clubs’ or ‘gentleman’s clubs’, dressed in
medieval garb?

Notre Dame la Majour’s corporate abandonment of the dead coincides chronologically

in Avignon with a growing reliance on flamboyant funerals and the multiplication of the
number of masses requested by testators. In his study based on thousands of testaments,
Chifolleau rationalizes this trend by investigating the role that immigration, and urban
and social dislocations, played on death rituals. He concludes that the geographical and
temporal separation of the dead from their kin and homeland favoured individualization

100

and reliance by the testators on themselves.

‘This self-absorbed concentration on one’s

own obsequies’ and the specific character of Avignon could also explain Notre Dame’s
procedure and the abandonment of a corporate memorialization of the dead. Each
brother of Notre Dame la Majour could count, if he died in Avignon, on a funeral
ceremony highlighted with the various corporate insigni of the association (funeral
procession, tapers, shroud, and so on). But memorialization was left to the traditional
agents of such, that is, to the various churches and monastic orders. Notre Dame added
to the multiplication of intercessory masses with its daily ‘generic’ mass for the dead,
but one counted first on the various anniversary masses ordered personally for one’s
sake at other institutions. If the statutes, written in the early fourteenth century, showed a
consciousness, emanating from a lay organization, towards controlling memorialization
through its daily intercessory masses, the testamentary practice described by Chiffoleau
tends to show that the clergy of Avignon (because of its overwhelming presence), and
not the confraternity, quickly took over and controlled the practice.

M. Rubin, Corpus Christi

. The eucharist in late medieval culture (Cambridge, 1991), 233. Rubin emphasizes

the social and political roles played by fraternities in Corpus Christi, 235, 239, 241; M. Rubin, Charity and
community in medieval Cambridge (Cambridge, 1987), 250–259, and M. Rubin, ‘Religious culture in town
and country: Reflexions on a great divide’, in: Church and City

(1000 –1500). Essays in Honour of

Christopher Brooke, ed. D. Abulafia (Cambridge, 1992), 6. Examples abound of English gilds / fraternities’
link to local politics and political aspirations, social cohesion, personal gain and commemoration. I am citing
only a few scholars in a list that is far from exhaustive: G. Rosser, Medieval Westminster

: 1100 –1540

(Oxford, 1989), 281–314; G. Rosser, ‘Going to the fraternity feast: Commensality and social relations in

late medieval England’, Journal of British Studies, 33 (1994), 430–447; G. Rosser, ‘Solidarites et

changement social: Les fraternites urbaines anglaises a la fin du moyen-age’, Annales, 5 (1993), 1127–
1143; Ch. Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a city

. Coventry and the urban crisis of the late middle ages

(Cambridge, 1979), 118–127; B.R. McRee, ‘Religious gilds and civic order: The case of Norwich in the late
middle ages’, Speculum, 67 (1992), 69–97, and ‘Charity and gild solidarity in late medieval England’,
Journal of British Studies, 32 (1993), 195–226.

100

Chiffoleau, La comptabilite de l

’au-dela, 429–435. For a comparison of Chifolleau, La comptabilite de

’au-dela, with Florentine attitutes toward death, see S. Strocchia, Death and ritual in Renaissance Florence

(Baltimore, 1992), 63–66; see S.K. Cohn. Jr., Death and property in Siena

. Strategies for the afterlife

(Baltimore, 1988), 3–4, 37, for a summary of Chiffoleau’s works.

Forever after: the dead in the Avignonese confraternity of Notre Dame la Majour (1329–1381)

137

Historians of confraternities have often emphasized the role that confraternities of the

laity played in memorialization, without taking into account that the means of
memorialization, the various necrologies or books of the dead, might not, as in this case,

101

preserve the memory of the dead.

Aries, Coulet and Chiffoleau, to name but a few

scholars, describe confraternities from their statutes, that is from the rules they set for
the living. Conversely none of those who have studied successive books of the dead
conclude that they represented a joint community of living and dead. Notre Dame la
Majour may well have been unexceptional. If we follow Schmitt and consider the

102

various name-lists as a means of social oblivion,

it is probable that many confraternal

books of the dead functioned to erase the memory of their members. In addition,
confraternities of ‘transients’ are rare. Further research on confraternities of merchants
residing in foreign territories might unearth the same procedure as Notre Dame la
Majour’s.

In his work on sixteenth-century Italian confraternities, Black identifies several

national confraternities. They were composed essentially of foreign merchants, migrants,
and artisans. These associations provided religious functions, ‘cohesion in a potentially
hostile, xenophobic environment... lines of communication and introduction for new-

103

comers’ and support for the poor.

To answer the question initially raised in this paper: was the remembrance and

commemoration of the dead central to the merit system of the association? This study
has demonstrated that, in this case, the answer is not a straight forward yes. Notre Dame
la Majour promoted an active piety, which, as acts of mercy and charity were dispensed,
built the spiritual merits of the brotherhood and its members. Most importantly, the
association used its structures to raise funds for charitable ends. The poor people
attracted by the papal presence could take some comfort in the alms distributed by Notre
Dame la Majour, but especially in the two hospitals the confraternity put at their disposal

104

in Avignon.

But these Italian men also joined the association to enlarge their social

connections within the city.

The confraternity survived the departure of the popes and succeeding centuries. In

1761 the bishop of Avignon visited its walls and its hospital for pilgrims. By that time
the only thing that the association remembered of its past was that it had been, during
the sojourn of the popes, a confraternity of cardinals, which had built the hospital. After
the departure of the pope and his cardinals, the confraternity had been left in the hands
of a few Florentine merchants established in the city.

101

See note 35. This Avignonese confraternity was not an exception.

102

See note 37.

103

Rome, for example, counted four Italian-national confraternities (for Sienese, Lombards, and Florentines)

and five non-Italian (for French, Flemish, German, Catalan etc . . . ); Black, Italian confraternities, 44.

104

For the charitable services of the association, see J. Hayez, ‘Nostra Donna’, 18–21. Pansier, MS. 5700,

offers examples of alms given to various people and of the expenses encountered by the association in
running its hospitals. The confraternal expenses sometimes exceeded its income and the association asked its
masters to lend money to cover them.

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Joelle Rollo-Koster

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Richard C. Trexler and Kathryn L. Reyerson, who helped and

encouraged me during the various stages of this paper.

Appendix A. Crosses and addenda

(@ 5 five dots in a cruciform pattern, 1 5 simple cross,

[ 5 four dots within the arms

of a cross)

Addenda

[

No symbol

Total

crediamo sia morto

andossene per non tornare

andossene a . . .

sia a . . .
non ci viene e non paga

casso . . .

crediamo sia povere

Total

121

Different cruciform symbols appear in the matriculation lists: a simple cross ( 1 ), five

dots organized in a cruciform pattern (@) and four dots within the arms of a cross (

[).

Though crosses and addenda are found in both documents, ND2 greatly outnumber

ND1: about 400 crosses are found in ND2 and only half that number are identified in
ND1; indeed, half the latter are carried over from ND2. In ND2, I counted a total of 455
various crosses: 377 1 , 35

[ and 43@. The addenda’s proportions in both lists also

favour ND2: 121 addenda fill the margins of ND2 but only one can be identified in ND1.

What can be ascertained first is that the crosses never overlap. No single entry is

preceded by two different types of crosses. Secondly, in 85% of the cases, the presence
of any type of cross in the older document, ND2, results in the elimination of that entry
from the later one, ND1. In ND2, there is a total of 455 various crosses, 389 of those
entries are eliminated in ND1. Quantification of the separate crosses yields similar
results: in ND2 there are 35 cases of (

[). None of these 35 entries is repeated in ND1.

Further, none of the 43 entries with (@) is repeated in ND1. Yet of a total of 377 simple
crosses ( 1 ), 66 entries are repeated in ND1. Of those repeated, 32 entries are found in
ND1 without a cross and 34 have a cross in both ND2 and ND1.

The analysis of both addenda and crosses proved to be extremely laborious and

partially inconclusive. The percentage of addenda found in correlation with a cross,
53%, is almost equal to the 47% of addenda with no crosses at all. As the table shows,
there appears to be no correlation between a specific addendum and a specific cross.

The Italian addenda: ‘he is believed dead’ (crediamo sia morto), ‘he is not attending

and is not paying’ (non ci viene e non paga), ‘he left and is not coming back’ (andossene
per non tornare), ‘He is in . . . ’ (sia a

. . . ), indicate (1) a lack of payment, and (2) the

Forever after: the dead in the Avignonese confraternity of Notre Dame la Majour (1329–1381)

139

departure of an individual. Both appear meant to justify the omission of a specific
individual from ND1. Seventy-seven percent of the individuals so annotated in ND2 do
not reappear in ND1. The statistic can be refined as follows: 100%, that is all the
members who were ‘believed dead’ or ‘left without the intention of coming back’
(crediamo sia morto and andossene per non tornare) in ND2, are missing from ND1. In
ND2 these individuals are also recognized by a cross (@ or 1 ) before their entry. On
the other hand, the ones who ‘do not come and do not pay’ (non ci viene e non paga)
were not automatically removed from ND1. In 66% of their total, no cross marks their
entry, and they are still being considered active in 36% of their total, their names being
carried over to ND1. In ND2, total of non ci viene e non paga: 36; 13 are found in ND1
and 23 are not. Finally, the ones who had left for a specific destination (andossene a . . . ,
sia a . . . ) are carried over in 59% of cases. Eighty-nine percent of the time, no cross
accompanied these two addenda.

All in all, it seems that whenever a chance remained for an individual to come back,

as in ‘he left for . . . ’ or ‘he is not attending and is not paying’, the annotation sufficed
and no cross was entered before the entry. These names would be carried over in the
next list for 36% to 59% of the cases. But in the clear cases where an individual was
believed lost to the confraternity, because he had died or left forever, his name was
marked by a symbol and removed from the next list. Terpstra notes a similar pattern in
Bologna, ‘post mortem spiritual benefits were available only if a member maintained his
or her membership until death. Those who quit, drifted away or, failed to pay their dues
were not written into the libro delle morti, and would not be mentionned in the requiem
mass’, Terpstra, Lay confraternities, 112.

By a large majority the simple cross stands by itself, without any addendum. There

are 377 cases in ND2 and 201 in ND1. In 83% of the cases, an individual marked by a
cross in ND2 is not carried over to ND1. As for the 17% that are carried forward to
ND1, 52% continues to be marked by a cross in the new list, and 48% have no cross at
all. This may indicate that at the time of ND1 compilation, the scribes were uncertain
about the status of these individuals marked by a cross in ND2, and so kept them
corporatively alive. One may assume that at that point 48% paid back all their past dues,
or had their dues paid by relatives if they were dead, and were fully re-established in the
association, with no cross inscribed in ND1. As for the 52% left, who failed to
re-activate their membership, the cross preceding their entry in ND1 designated them as
corporatively dead and perhaps eliminated them from any matriculation list subsequent
to ND1.

Four dots within the arms of a cross, remains a puzzle. Unused in ND1, it is found 35

times in the earlier ND2. In each case the individual is not found in ND1 and no
annotation explains his whereabouts. This symbol obviously meant something specific
which did not require any further information.

Five dots in a cruciform pattern, was also used only in the older list, ND2; individuals

marked with this symbol are not found in the later list, ND1. In all but three of the 43
cases an addendum of some type accompanied this symbol. The addenda reveal clearly
the meaning of this cross. The scribe of the association was justifying why a certain
individual had not paid his dues: he was dead (in 19 cases); he had left and was not

140

Joelle Rollo-Koster

coming back (in 17 cases), etc . . . . No payment of dues would ever be expected from
these individuals. The symbol inscribed in the margin of the entry served as future
reference: following the statutes, the individual was corporatively dead and should not
be carried forward into later lists.

Journal of Medieval History, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 141–154, 1999

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Historiographical essay

Insurrection as religious war, 1400–1536

Norman Housley

Department of History

, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK

Can any of the armed revolts which took place in the late Middle Ages and early

Reformation be described as religious wars? The question is far from easy to answer.
Few historical events throw up as many problems of causality as revolts, while the very

definition of religious war is contentious. Given that both areas of investigation are
beset by taxing methodological difficulties, linking them might well be regarded as
perverse. None the less, the recent historiography of the subject is well worth reviewing,
because one of the most striking characteristics of this period was its experience of both
insurrection and religious upheaval on an unprecedented scale. Like people at the time,
one inevitably questions the connections between the two, particularly in terms of the
generation, conduct and depiction of the violence which was unleashed. From this point
of view, and given the popularity in recent years of comparative studies, the scarcity of

literature addressing the issue head-on is somewhat surprising. Much, however, has
been written about the part which religion played in causing individual revolts. In this
article I shall focus on the methodological problems revealed by these studies, but I hope
also to indicate some of the ways in which future analysis can be other than generalised
or inconclusive.

It seems a good idea to start with a revolt in which the role of religion was relatively

clear-cut. This was the Hungarian peasant uprising of 1514, usually called the Dozsa

revolt after its leader Gyorgy Dozsa, a member of the lesser aristocracy from the Szekely
region of Transylvania. The reason why we stand on firm ground in this case is the fact

that the Dozsa revolt sprang from the preaching of a crusade against the Turks.
Participants in the rebellion, who were for the most part peasants (although they received
a sympathetic hearing in some towns), were crucesignati. They took the cross chiefly
from the hands of the Franciscan Observants, who carried out the preaching of the

NORMAN HOUSLEY is Professor of History at the University of Leicester. He is the author or editor of four

books and numerous articles on the crusades, especially in the period after 1200. Currently he is working on
a study of religious warfare in Europe between 1400 and 1536.

See, for example, K. Repgen, ‘What is a ‘‘religious war’’?’, in: Politics and society in Reformation Europe

Essays for Sir Geoffrey Elton on his sixty-fifth birthday, ed. E.I. Kouri and T. Scott (London, 1987),
311–28.

The only collection of essays which has come to my attention is Religion and rural revolt

: Papers presented

to the Fourth Interdisciplinary Workshop on Peasant Studies

, University of British Columbia, 1982, ed. J.M

Bak and G. Benecke (Manchester, 1984). It is disappointing that the subject receives virtually no attention in
Resistance

, representation, and community, ed. P. Blickle (Oxford, 1997).

141

142

Norman Housley

crusade at the command of a cardinal-legate, the archbishop of Esztergom, during the
spring of 1514. The peasants received no noble leadership or assistance for the crusade,
indeed they encountered resistance, largely because of the anticipated loss of their labour
services. As a result they postponed their campaign against the Turks and instead turned
their arms against their own nobles, winning several encounters before being defeated by

the vojvode of Transylvania in the late summer.

Most commentators on these remarkable events have accepted that the rebels were

highly influenced in their thinking and actions by crusading ideas. These were
communicated not just in the sermons to which they responded by taking the cross, but
throughout the campaign by those Observants who accompanied the several peasant
armies. As we would expect, the crusade was cancelled as soon as attacks on nobles and
their property were reported to the king and archbishop: indeed, the latter granted
indulgences to anybody who would take up arms against those peasants who refused to
disperse to their homes. The insurgents were denounced as traitors and pseudo-
crucesignati, their atrocities regarded as the more abominable because of the crosses
which they wore and displayed on their banners. If this message made any impact on the
rebels it has left no mark in the sources. The peasant crusaders believed that they were
an Elect group, favoured above others by the Christ whose cross they wore and whose
cause they served. From this they derived much of their cohesion, confidence and sense
of purpose. And they claimed, in defiance of their own king, that they were acting in
defence of his kingdom whose interests were being betrayed by the nobles’ indolence. In

the only document left by Dozsa, the so-called Cegled proclamation, the nobles were
denounced as infideles: they were effectively on the Turkish side.

Nothing like this had happened before either in the long history of the crusades or in

the somewhat shorter history of medieval peasant rebellions. David Nirenberg has
recently reinterpreted the 1320 pastoureaux movement in France, which also took the
form of a crusade, as ‘a rebellion against royal fiscality, camouflaged with the very
language of sacred monarchy and Crusade that had helped to legitimize the fiscality

under attack’. But the case is much less clear-cut than the Dozsa rebellion. There is no
evidence, for example, of crusading ideas being mediated to participants by a group like
the Observants. More convincing precedents are the peasant unions of 1469 and 1478 in
Styria, where a similar pattern can be traced: failure on the part of the landed nobility to
provide defence against Turkish incursions, and consequential measures of self-defence
by the peasants which included the rejection of noble privileges forfeited through this

inactivity. There was therefore a specific regional context in the form of the pressing

See most recently my ‘Crusading as social revolt: The Hungarian peasant uprising of 1514’, Journal of

ecclesiastical history, 49 (1998), 1–28. Much of my analysis forms a critique of Jeno Szucs’s excellent ‘Die
Ideologie des Bauernkrieges’, in his Nation und Geschichte

: Studien (Gyoma, 1981), 329–78. A revival of

interest in Dozsa occurred in 1972, when the (largely hypothetical) quincentennial of his birth was marked

with a big symposium at Budapest. See Aus der Geschichte der ostmitteleuropaischen Bauernbewegungen
im

16.–17. Jahrhundert, ed. G. Heckenast (Budapest, 1977).

D. Nirenberg, Communities of violence

: Persecution of minorities in the middle ages (Princeton, NJ, 1996),

ch. 2, with quote on 50.

There are good studies of the role played by dereliction of duty in bringing about the 1514 revolt by Janos

Bak, ‘Delinquent lords and forsaken serfs: thoughts on war and society during the crisis of feudalism’, in:

Society in change

: Studies in honour of Bela K. Kiraly, ed. S.B. Vardy (Boulder, Col., 1983), 291–304, and

Paul Freedman, ‘The Hungarian peasant revolt of 1514’, in: Grafenauerjev Zbornik, ed. V. Rajsp (Ljubljana,
1996), 433–46.

Insurrection as religious war, 1400–1536

143

Ottoman menace and resistance to any centralised form of defence mounted by a
particularist aristocracy. And this is where the causality becomes complex. For the same
basic self-interest which led the Hungarian aristocracy to prioritise its own concerns
when the defence of the realm was being promoted had caused it to respond to
unfavourable economic conditions by maximising its seigneurial profits at the expense of
the peasants. This created serious social unrest, especially in the market towns (oppida)
where the seigneurial clamp-down was having the worst effect on standards of living.

It is doubtful whether any modern historian of the Dozsa uprising would view it as

Nirenberg does the 1320 pastoureaux, arguing that peasants took the cross as
‘camouflage’ for what they always intended to be a revolt against their nobles. Even
Peter Gunst, whose analysis of the insurrection was couched largely in terms of

economic causes, accepted that ‘die Kreuzzugsideologie dominierte’. However, as
Gunst and others have noted, there were strong causal links between this dominant
ideology of crusade and underlying economic grievances. They included the lively
response to crusade preaching of the herdsmen (Heiducken), many of whom faced
unemployment in the spring of 1514 due to the poor commercial outlook; the fact that
the residents of the oppida generally provided many recruits (although there could be
other reasons for this, such as a concentration of preaching efforts there); and the
congruence between the impoverishment of many peasants and the ideological elevation
of poverty which lay at the heart of Observant christology (although there seems to be an
inconsistency between the theological elevation of poverty and attempting to end it by

rebellion). According to this reasoning the Dozsa revolt was in essence an uprising
against the nobility. True, it began life as a crusade against the Turks, but from the start,
thanks to the volatile atmosphere in which preaching took place and the sympathy
shown by the Observants towards the peasants’ economic plight, a transformation into
revolt was likely. Other commentators, including the present writer, have viewed the
insurrection as a crusade, which came to incorporate a programme of social upheaval but
never shed its crusading persona. The enemy alone changed, from the external infideles
who desired (as the peasants were told) to extinguish the Hungarian kingdom, to the
domestic infideles whose nefarious activity (or inactivity) was leading to the same
outcome by a more roundabout route.

One problem, as is invariably the case with popular insurrections, is the paucity of

sources which directly communicate the views of the peasants. This makes exceedingly
difficult any resolution of the question of whether they conceptualised the Turkish threat,
and their crusading response to it, in national as well as religious terms: did they view

their nobles as guilty of infidelitas towards patria as well as towards faith? In addition,
the 1514 crusade consisted of several large bands (turmae) whose leaders and
participants may well have had quite different ideas about what they were aiming at,

another recurring problem with large-scale revolts. Jeno Szucs made the ingenious

suggestion that the uprising’s programme of social change was contributed by Dozsa on

‘Der ungarische Bauernaufstand von 1514’, in: Revolte und Revolution in Europa, ed. P. Blickle (Munich,

1975), 62–83, with quote on 80.

Although there are more than in the case of earlier revolts, such as the 1381 revolt in England.

This is vigorously denied by F. Szakaly, in ‘Das Bauerntum und die Kampfe gegen die Turken bzw. gegen

Habsburg in Ungarn im 16.–17. Jahrhundert’, in: Aus der Geschichte der ostmitteleuropaischen Bauer-
nbewegungen, ed. Heckenast, 251–66.

144

Norman Housley

the basis of his own Szekely background of self-regulating communities of free farmers

and fighters, which he persuaded his fellow-leaders to adopt. In a similar way, it is
possible that some turmae were more influenced by crusading ideas than others: for
example, that they were less willing to turn from attacking the Turks to killing their
nobles, and were more ready to compromise with local nobles for the sake of keeping
the campaign’s original goal in view. This could explain why in some areas there was a
marked degree of noble participation in the revolt, but in the last resort we simply do not
know.

Notwithstanding the bizarre nature of some of their pronouncements on indulgences,

the rebels of 1514 were Catholics. Their revolt was followed a decade later by a peasant
uprising many of whose leaders self-consciously identified their aims with the evangeli-

cal cause, thereby rejecting the entire structure of belief which Dozsa’s crusaders held
dear. This contrast is just one of the reasons why some historians have been eager to

compare the Dozsa revolt with the German peasant war of 1524–26. In this they have

followed the lead of some contemporaries.

The comparison is, however, a difficult one

to sustain. In the first place, the difference of scale is noteworthy. The figure of 50,000 is
often given for the crusaders of 1514, while the Bauernkrieg may well have involved six
times that many, of whom up to a third perished: it was the most general revolt in
European history before the French Revolution. The fact that the revolt affected the
German lands, with certain exceptions, all the way from Prussia to Austria, inevitably
entailed a diversity of regional causality. It also suggests that any set of religious goals
or principles agreed on by the leaders could have arisen from their perceived need for
unity rather than reflecting the actual aspirations of their followers.

The debate has focussed on the interpretation set out in 1933 by Gunther Franz in his

Der deutsche Bauernkrieg, which has attained classic status and has been reprinted in

numerous revised editions.

For Franz the role played by the evangelical cause was

crucial because it ended the oscillation between ‘old law’ (‘alte Recht’) and ‘God’s law’

(‘Gottliche Recht’) which had characterised the justification of earlier peasant rebellion
in Germany: the ‘poor Conrad’ revolts in particular had aimed to defend customary
rights against new exactions by lords, while the Bundschuh rebellions had looked to
scripture to validate resistance against oppressive lordship. Both ‘alte Recht’ and

‘Gottliche Recht’ were present in the lists of grievances drawn up by the peasant bands
in 1524–26, but the latter dominated because of the electricity generated by evangelical
teaching on scriptural authority.

Franz’s interpretation was revitalised and given fresh emphases by Peter Blickle.

Much of the value of his contribution lies in his rich analysis of the economic and
political background to the rebellion. Blickle claimed to identify a general crisis in the
relations between ‘the common man’ (‘der gemeine Mann’) and the authorities in
Germany, not just the landlords but also clerical and lay rulers. He was attracted by the

Szucs, ‘Die Ideologie’, 362–7.

The German peasants

’ war: A history in documents, trans. and ed. T. Scott and B. Scribner (Atlantic

Highlands, NJ, 1991), 274.

I have used the fourth edition, published in 1956 (Darmstadt: Gentner). Book One is particularly relevant.

The revolution of

1525. The German peasants’ war from a new perspective, trans. and ed. T.A. Brady and

H.C.E. Midelfort (Baltimore, MD, 1981).

Insurrection as religious war, 1400–1536

145

idea of a widespread undermining of the credibility of lordship caused by a combination
of fiscal oppression and the refusal to provide basic protection and justice. The process
of alienation was particularly apparent in the famous Twelve Articles of the peasants of
Swabia, compiled by Sebastian Lotzer in February–March 1525 as a summary of over
300 peasant grievances. Article eleven, which demanded the abolition of death dues,
expressed well the feeling of disenchantment: ‘The very ones who should be guarding

and protecting our goods have skinned and trimmed us of them instead.’

This mirrored

what had taken place in Hungary and Styria, in so far as the nobles were guilty of failing
to play their part in the divinely-ordained social order and would be punished for it
(‘God will suffer this no longer but will wipe it out’). But strikingly absent in the
Peasants’ War was any detailed reference to the defence of Germany against the Turkish
threat: things might have been different had Hungary not still been in place as
Christendom’s bulwark.

Resistance to noble oppression on the part of ‘the common man’ was possible because

of the ordered life of peasants in communes (Gemeinden). As Bob Scribner observed, it
is largely thanks to Blickle’s approach to ‘communalism’ that ‘the study of
community . . . [is currently] squarely in the centre of historical discussion of late

medieval and early modern Germany’.

From the Gemeinden were formed the bands

(Haufen) and unions (Bunde) which constituted the organizational structure of the
peasants’ war. Outraged by the failure of lordship, and possessing means to respond to it
which were more sophisticated than anything available to their Hungarian counterparts,
the peasants still needed a justificatory ideology. This was what Protestant teaching
offered them. To use Blickle’s terminology, ‘feudalism’ was confronted by ‘biblicism’.
The latter constituted much more than just a cloak of ideas. The Gospel sustained this
‘revolution of the common man’: it had a ‘liberating and even revolutionary’ effect,
amongst other things bringing together revolts in town and country. ‘Without the

principle of God’s law . . . the revolution would have been impossible’.

Consequently

the refusal of any mainstream evangelical leader to support the revolt proved disastrous.
‘The godly law lost its authority because it did not solve the crisis, and it lost its
explosive power because the military and political leaders . . . did not know how to

exploit it to produce a new political order’.

In this interpretation, Luther’s infamous

diatribe against the peasants becomes a crucial factor in explaining their defeat.

In some ways Blickle’s explanation agrees with that of contemporary Catholics: ‘this

business . . . has its ultimate source in Lutheran preaching’, as the Bavarian chancellor

expressed it in February 1525.

It is understandable that Catholic commentators would

be keen to use the revolt to discredit the Protestant cause, but not all were unsympathetic
to peasant grievances, and their partisanship does not altogether invalidate their assertion
that once the authority of the church was challenged, disorder was bound to multiply

Blickle, The revolution of

1525, 195–201, with quote on 200. For another translation see The German

peasants

’ war, no 125, pp. 252–7.

R.W. Scribner, ‘Communities and the nature of power’, in: Germany

: A new social and economic history,

vol. 1, 1450–1630, ed. R.W. Scribner (London, 1996), 291–325, with quote on 294.

Blickle, The revolution of

1525, 93.

Blickle, The revolution of

1525, 99–100.

The German peasants

’ war, no 50, p. 152.

146

Norman Housley

more generally. For the historian of religious war, Blickle’s thesis has much to commend
it. The key sources for the peasants’ war are certainly permeated by the doctrines of
scriptural authority, Godly law and divine justice. As the Klettgauers put it in a letter to

Zurich in March 1525, ‘there is no truer judge in heaven or on earth than the Word of
God, and all our affairs and concerns, life and being consist only in the Word of God . . .

The same living Word will be our judge’.

It is hard to believe that such phrases were

mere camouflage. But the peasants were not going any further than justifying their
uprising. The ‘Christian Union’ of Upper Swabia, which was proclaimed in March 1525
and is generally regarded as the most sophisticated association formed by the rebels,
assured its principal opponents from the start that it both respected them and intended

them no harm.

This could have been bluff, but for all Luther’s histrionics the peasants

were restrained in their actions, certainly when compared with Dozsa’s crusaders, who
impaled their opponents on stakes and threatened even people who stayed neutral with

death and the destruction of their property.

There were, of course, exceptions. At Weinsberg in April 1525 members of the

Wurttemberg band carried out a massacre of nobles, but it was on a small scale and was

not especially vicious in nature.

When the bloodthirsty Thomas Muntzer threw in his

lot with the Thuringia band, his call to chiliastic holy war fell on rather barren soil. It

has been cogently argued that his alliance with the rebels was essentially pragmatic.
Although Germany was one of the most receptive areas in Europe to apocalyptic
programmes, their impact on the revolt was muted. Lords were not condemned as
Antichrists or ‘infidels’, but criticised as misguided fellow-Christians who must be
persuaded or coerced to behave in accordance with God’s justice. This is not to say that
the rebels did not demand radical changes, but for the most part they envisaged the
continuation of a hierarchical society. The general reluctance of the peasants to
dehumanise their opponents by labelling them as God’s enemies was matched by the
absence of any sustained attempt to portray themselves as a Chosen People, the
executors of a divine mandate. The peasants saw themselves as waging a conflict which
might be described as ‘godly’ or ‘righteous’, a war to create a society in fuller
accordance with Gospel norms, but not a holy war in the spirit of the crusade.

Even this restrained interpretation of the religious content of the German peasants’

war has been challenged. In a brilliant review of the literature generated by the 450
anniversary of the peasants’ war in 1975, Tom Scott questioned the assumption that the

use of phrases like ‘God’s law’ was consistent across the Germanic lands.

While

accepting that the Reformation gave massive extra resonance to ‘Gottliche Recht’, he
suggested that the phrase’s meaning may be more elusive than it seems, and that it might

The German peasants

’ war, no. 124, p. 252.

The German peasants

’ war, nos 30–1, pp. 129–30.

Housley, ‘Crusading as social revolt’, 18.

The German peasants

’ war, no 54, p. 158.

T. Scott, Thomas Muntzer

: Theology and revolution in the German Reformation (Basingstoke, 1989), ch. 5,

esp. 174–5.

‘The peasants’ war: a historiographical review’, The historical journal, 22 (1979), 693–720, 953–74. This

article is a fully-documented introduction to the state of play in 1979. Also of value is R.W. Scribner, ‘The
German peasants’ war’, in: Reformation Europe

: a guide to research. ed. S. Ozment (St Louis, MO, 1982),

107–33.

Insurrection as religious war, 1400–1536

147

in any case have acted as ‘a device not an ideological programme’.

So strong is Scott’s

reaction against a programmatic reading of the revolt that he comes close to portraying
‘God’s law’ as a slogan. One of the features of Blickle’s interpretation which most
troubled Scott was his claim that ‘God’s law’ had the effect of binding together
socio-economic groups with conflicting interests, such as towns and their hinterlands. As
Blickle put it, ‘What united the common project of peasants and townsmen was the
gospel, or more precisely, the transformation of Reformation theology into a political

theology.’

By contrast, Scott found it ‘rather far-fetched to argue that burghers and

peasants fought side-by-side in 1525 in the name of a libertas christiana based upon

their shared commitment to the ideal of the Christian community’.

And in a lengthy

analysis of Waldshut’s relations with the rebels he argued that ‘the origins of alliances
between town and country . . . depended less upon an overriding extraneous ideology

than upon the circumstances in which these alliances were formed’.

A common tendency of such local studies is that by bringing particularities to the

foreground they make any generalisation seem shallow and ill-conceived. There is no
doubt that some scholars see this as a step forward: Scott argued that ‘only detailed
investigation of local circumstances can hope to counteract the facile assumptions which
are sometimes made about the revolutionary potential of revolts in which religious

radicalism and social protect coincide’.

Blickle himself quoted the stricture of T.R.

Gurr to the effect that ‘intellectually pleasing filters through which to view and

categorize the phenomena of a disorderly world are not knowledge’.

Recently,

however, James Stayer, a distinguished historian of the Anabaptists and author of a
penetrating study of attitudes towards violence during the Reformation, has come to the
defence of an overarching ideological interpretation of the Peasants’ War. Stayer
admitted from the outset that the uprising was ‘a phenomenon whose tangled root
system was political, economic, social and religious’, but proceeded to argue that it
derived both unity and dynamic from its attempt to apply the new Gospel teaching to
social relations: it ‘brought the Reformation to the countryside’. An important feature of
Stayer’s approach is his division of the uprising into phases: first a mass movement of
withdrawal of co-operation which he termed a ‘general strike’, secondly a reluctant and
belated recourse to combat, and thirdly, in the aftermath of savage repression, the
channelling of peasant hopes into an Anabaptist programme of shared goods which

reached its bizarre apotheosis in the millennial Kingdom of Munster in 1534–5.

‘The interpretation of all aspects of the German Peasants’ War is as open as it has

ever been: recent scholarship has merely served to revive issues considered settled and

to suggest fresh approaches.’

This comment by Tom Scott and Bob Scribner, made in

1991, serves as a warning against any attempt to sum up the uprising’s religious

Scott, ‘The peasants’ war’, 711.

Blickle, The revolution of

1525, 115.

Scott, ‘The peasants’ war’, 961.

‘Reformation and peasants’ war in Waldshut and environs’, Archiv f ur Reformationsgeschichte, 69 (1978),

82–102, 70 (1979), 140–69, with quote on 168.

Scott, ‘Reformation and peasants’ war’, 69 (1978), 84.

‘Peasant revolts in the German empire in the late Middle Ages’, Social history, 4 (1979), 223–39, at 228.

The German peasants

’ war and Anabaptist community of goods (Montreal and Kingston, 1991).

The German peasants

’ war, 64.

148

Norman Housley

features. It could be the case that we can only come to clear conclusions about the ideas

of vociferous individuals like Muntzer,

the remarkable Tirolean leader Michael

Gaismair,

or the anonymous author of the inflammatory ‘An die Versammlung

gemeiner Bauernschaft.’

Scott and Scribner themselves, however, went somewhat

further. They drew useful distinctions between the complexions of the regional Haufen,

pointing out for example that the religious element was unusually dominant in Alsace.
It would seem that we can go thus far without falling into the trap of deductive
reasoning from grievance lists and statements of principles which form inherently
tendentious evidence.

At this point it is helpful to move forward another decade to the Pilgrimage of Grace

(1536), because similar difficulties present themselves. For A.G. Dickens, in 1967, ‘The
Pilgrimage and the Western Rising [of 1549] were, at their grass-roots, peasant-risings
which some of the gentle and clerical leaders were trying with varying degrees of

success to guide into political and religious courses.’

Writing at a time when the

influence of Muntzer on the German rebels was commonly exaggerated, Dickens
contrasted the chiliastic violence supposedly witnessed in Germany with the ‘mild,
unmilitant Piers Plowman tradition’ of religious revolt which was evidenced in

Richmondshire and Cumberland.

Some years later G.R. Elton played down the

Pilgrimage’s religious features even more insistently than Dickens had done. He argued
that at root the uprising was the work of the defeated Aragonese–Marian court faction,
which mobilised the grievances of the north by persuading their gentry supporters to call
out their tenantry. In turn, the massive response to the call to arms was stimulated by
fear of material loss, stirred up by rumour-mongers: ‘Money, not the faith, caused the
people to stir.’ Elton’s Pilgrimage was a thoroughly secular affair. He acknowledged that
‘without the religious shape given to the uprising it would probably have lacked
cohesion, drive and endurance’, but this remark is hard to square with his judgement that
‘the religious purposes of the Pilgrimage had shallow roots, except among the few who

dominated its ideology, eloquence and propaganda.’

Reaction has come largely from

Christopher Haigh and C.S.L. Davies, forming part of the thoroughgoing reassessment
of the English Reformation which has occurred over the past twenty years or so. In two

There is a massive bibliography on Muntzer: in addition to Scott’s biography, see his ‘From polemic to

sobriety: Thomas Muntzer in recent research’, Journal of ecclesiastical history, 39 (1988), 557–72.

W. Klaassen, Michael Gaismair

: revolutionary and reformer (Leiden, 1978).

The German peasants

’ war, no 130, pp. 269–76. Full text in An die Versammlung gemeiner Bauernschaft.

Eine revolutionare Flugschrift aus dem Deutschen Bauernkrieg

(1525 ), ed. S. Hoyer and B. Rudiger

(Leipzig, 1975).

The German peasants

’ war, 19–53.

A.G. Dickens, ‘Secular and religious motivation in the Pilgrimage of Grace’, Studies in church history, 4

(1967), 39–64, at 64.

Dickens, ‘Secular and religious motivation’, 63.

G.R. Elton, ‘Politics and the Pilgrimage of Grace’, in: After the Reformation

: Essays in honour of J.H.

Hexter, ed. B. Malament (Manchester, 1980), 25–56; reprinted in Studies in Tudor and Stuart politics and
government, vol. 3, Papers and reviews

1973 –1981 (Cambridge, 1983), 183–215 (edition used here), with

quotes at 203 and 205.

Insurrection as religious war, 1400–1536

149

remarkable essays on the Pilgrimage, Davies emphasized the religious content of its

leaders’ grievances and demands, and the religious ethos of its activities.

As with the German Peasants’ War, one way to break through the interpretative

impasse is to emphasize the difference in outlook from host to host. This requires
painstaking analysis of the kind recently carried out by Michael Bush. He demonstrated
in particular the different levels of social leadership and involvement, and the

importance of local particularities such as the cult of St Cuthbert in the north-east.

But

one feature identified by Bush as general immediately puts one in mind of the Hungarian
and German uprisings. This was the belief that a divinely-ordained social system, the
‘society of orders’, was being undermined by reckless and irresponsible actions on the
part of government. As Bush put it, ‘The policies and actions of the government were
found intolerable because of the contempt they expressed for the basic components of

this social theory: the royal family, the nobility, the clergy and the commonalty.’

major difference between 1536 and the earlier uprisings was its broader social base:
even in Cumberland and Westmorland, where defence of tenurial rights was most

prominent, there was substantial gentry leadership.

Yet it would be inaccurate to

deduce from this that the uprising was ‘political’ rather than ‘social’ in nature: at its
roots lay a complex mix of tenurial, legal, fiscal, religious and political grievances. As
Davies put it, ‘Historians . . . pull apart the various factors involved in a complex
movement in the course of their analysis and set them in rank order; in the process they
are inclined to forget that it is precisely the interaction and fusion of several grievances

which make revolt possible.’

His comment applies equally well to all the uprisings we

have looked at, and one might add that much of the interest of studying them lies
precisely in the myriad ways in which interaction and fusion occurred.

In such circumstances Aske’s ingenious proposal that the uprising should take the

form of a pilgrimage, or ‘pilgrimage of grace for the commonwealth’ as it was most
commonly termed, was more than simply a device. With its oath and its marching song,
it bestowed cohesion on an inherently fissile movement by referring directly to a familiar

and imperilled value system.

But it was much less highly-charged, and dangerous to

the government, than the crusade. Christopher Tyerman has drawn attention to the
indignation expressed by Thomas Cromwell, one of the leading ‘southern Turks’
objected to by the rebels, about the distribution among Aske’s Host of the Five Wounds
badges discovered, coincidentally so it was claimed, at Pontefract castle. These had a
direct connection with crusading because the castle’s keeper, Lord Darcy, had used them
on an expedition against the Moors in 1511. The questions which Cromwell had posed

C.S.L. Davies, ‘The Pilgrimage of Grace reconsidered’, Past and Present, 41 (1968), 54–75; Davies,

‘Popular religion and the Pilgrimage of Grace’, in: Order and disorder in early modern England, ed. A.
Fletcher and J. Stevenson (Cambridge, 1985), 58–91. See also C.A. Haigh, English Reformations

: Religion,

politics

, and society under the Tudors (Oxford, 1993), 145–9.

M. Bush, The Pilgrimage of Grace

. A study of the rebel armies of October 1536 (Manchester, 1996).

Bush, 103.

Bush, 321–7, 361–4.

‘Popular religion’, 59.

As emphasized by Davies, ‘Popular religion’, 75–8.

150

Norman Housley

to Darcy at the latter’s interrogation make clear Cromwell’s fear that the distribution of
these badges might have helped to lift the rebellion to an entirely different plane of
expectation and action. ‘Was it not to the intent you would have made the soldiers to
believe that they should fight in the defence of the faith of Christ, and to the intent that
they should not fear to die in that cause? Was it not declared to them which wore those
badges that they were Christ’s soldiers, and that when they looked upon their badges of
Five Wounds of Christ, they should think that their cause was for the defence of Christ’s

faith and his church?’

Possibly Cromwell had heard or read about the Hungarian

insurrection of 1514. He must have been aware of at least some of the attempts made
since 1532 to persuade Charles V to invade England in support of his aunt. Darcy had
been caught up in this planning, and Cromwell, like most commentators since, was
deeply suspicious of his claim that he simply found a large cache of Five Wounds

badges lying around in Pontefract castle.

These plans for an imperial invasion would

assume the form of a crusade project in 1538–9 when the pope threw his weight behind
them. As Tyerman showed, the government’s fears that a ‘crusade-revolt’ could be
engineered in England, perhaps in conjunction with such an invasion, were well-

founded.

In practice, however, the restrained behaviour of the English pilgrims of 1536 puts

one more in mind of the German rebels than the Hungarian crucesignati. Michael Bush

even concluded that ‘their principal purpose was demonstration, not war.’

Partly, no

doubt, this was due to the personal influence of Robert Aske, who was very unwilling to
proceed to open rebellion. Perhaps, as C.S.L. Davies has suggested, it was simply a
question of timing: ‘Prolonged religious fighting could (and probably would) have

produced a vigorous, crusading catholicism.’

But it is hard to disagree with another

remark of C.S.L. Davies that ‘Medieval catholicism had not, after all, developed an ethic

of popular resistance’;

it is not inconceivable that the crusade could have provided an

alternative to this, as it did in Hungary, but England’s crusading traditions were much

attenuated by this point.

Only in the case of the Host of the Four Captains, which was

raised in the West March, was there something of a reflection of the situation in
Christendom’s eastern bulwark-state. In the West March the disruption of the social
order which the suppression of Catholic customs brought with it was seen as weakening
the defence of the border, rendering the region susceptible to incursions by the Scots;

‘the maintenance of the faith’ and ‘the maintenance of this country’ went hand in hand.

M. Bateson, ‘Aske’s examination’, English historical review 5 (1890), 550–73, on 554–5 (questions 74 and

87). See also Latimer’s sermon on the Epistle to the Ephesians 6:10–20, preached when the northern
insurrection was at its height: Sermons by Hugh Latimer sometime bishop of Worcester, ed. Canon Beeching
(London, 1906), 22–9, on 26.

Bateson, ‘Aske’s examination’, 555; Elton, ‘Politics’, 196–7; Davies, ‘Popular religion’, 78, 90.

C. Tyerman, England and the crusades

1095 –1588 (Chicago, 1988), 343–4, 359–66.

Bush, The Pilgrimage of Grace, 416.

Davies, ‘The Pilgrimage of Grace reconsidered’, 74, and see too 76: ‘given the right circumstances, a not

very heroic piety might have been transformed into a much more dangerous enthusiasm’.

‘Popular religion’, 88.

Though see Tyerman, England and the crusades, 346–54.

Bush, The Pilgrimage of Grace, 335.

Insurrection as religious war, 1400–1536

151

Thus far we have been edging forwards in the early sixteenth century. To locate the

programme of thoroughgoing social change which was most firmly anchored to a
religious belief-system we have to move back a full century to the heyday of Hussite
Tabor. ‘Mainstream’ Hussitism was bound to have some social implications because of
its powerful assault on the landed Church. It is well-established that the most important
single result of the revolt was the massive territorial losses of the Church, some 80% of
whose property was either assigned away by Sigismund to fund his invasions or fell into

the hands of the Czech higher nobility. But secular authority in general, and lordship in
particular, did not come under attack from the Hussite centre. Recent research has
effectively discredited the post-war trend to depict Hussitism as a general assault on
‘feudal’ structures. On the contrary, moderate Hussites were as attracted by Wyclif’s

social conservatism as they were by his theological radicalism.

As Frantisek Smahel

put it during a series of incisive lectures at the College de France in which he

summarised recent research, ‘Cette epoque revolutionnaire n’est pas parvenue a mettre

au point un programme revolutionnaire.’

At first Tabor was different, for in 1419–20 a

radical experiment in communism was attempted there. The impetus was partly a desire
to return to the practice of the early Church as described in Acts 2 and 4, and partly
millenarian zeal. If we can believe such hostile sources as John Pribram, Taborites
expressed virulent anti-noble sentiments at times, but it was almost certainly incidental;
after all, many of their own captains came from the lesser nobility. The Taborite articles
show that their demand for social change was driven primarily by religious conviction:
the belief that property-holding was inherently sinful, that hierarchy was contrary to
God’s law, and that entry into the new community of the Elect was conditional on the
renunciation of the sin-laden trappings of the old life. Lawrence of Brezova, the leading
conservative chronicler, painted a lurid and somewhat tendentious picture of Taborites
putting pressure on peasants to leave their farms and bring their families and possessions

to Tabor, sometimes by abducting their priests.

At Tabor, Pisek and Vodnany, a system

of common chests was practised.

Tabor therefore offers us a society of chiliastic

revolutionaries waging a holy war in defence of a twofold programme of religious

change and social justice. It bears a much stronger resemblance to the Dozsa model than
either of the other two uprisings we have looked at, chiliastic expectation in this instance
providing the urgency and conviction which a christological (and perhaps patriotic)
response to the Ottoman threat was to furnish a century later. The episode made a lasting
impression. When Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini visited Tabor in 1451 there were few
vestiges left of its early communism, but the future pope referred to it in a letter, noting
that ‘they attempted to live after the example of the primitive church, possessing all

F. Smahel, La Revolution hussite

: une anomalie historique (Paris, 1985), 105–110.

Smahel, La Revolution hussite, 71, 127.

Smahel, La Revolution hussite, 83.

Lawrence of Brezova, ‘De gestis et variis accidentibus regni Boemiae’, in: Geschichtschreiber der

husitischen Bewegung in Bohmen, ed. K. Hofler, vol. 1 (Vienna, 1856), 321–527, at 410–11.

Good recent studies are J. Klassen, ‘The disadvantaged and the Hussite revolution’, International review of

social history, 35 (1990), 249–72, and T.A. Fudge, ‘‘Neither mine nor thine’’: communist experiments in
Hussite Bohemia’, Canadian journal of history, 33 (1998), 26–47.

152

Norman Housley

goods in common, with one making provision for the other, and referring to all members

as brothers.’

Tabor’s communism was abandoned largely because of the need to defend the Hussite

cause against the crusaders and their allies among the Czech Catholics. Food, equipment,
supplies and money were required for the Taborite army. On 14 October 1420 the
Taborites started collecting seigneurial dues from the surrounding villages, and their

community’s egalitarian nature was slowly eroded.

But the Taborite social programme

was not just a casualty of the need to wage an organised war in defence of religious
principle. Thomas Fudge has pointed out that from the beginning Tabor’s communism
was as much aspirational as actual, disparities of size appearing in the houses which

were constructed at Tabor.

Smahel referred more broadly to the seductive appeal of

urbanisation, which won over even those imbued with the biblical association of cities

with sinfulness (Genesis 4:17).

Moreover, there was a tension between the chiliastic

expectations of the early Taborites and any attempt to create an economic system based
on the common production of goods. The millennialism faded away in 1420, and
without it the ideals of apostolic poverty and equality proved too weak to resist the
influx of war booty generated by Taborite military prowess. Taborite preachers were to
complain frequently in years to come that both the practice of God’s law and its defence

against attack were being undermined by the desire for personal enrichment.

There were other uprisings in this period whose ideology was heavily influenced by

religion, perhaps most importantly the Comunidades of 1520–21 in Castile and the

Germanıas of 1519–23 in Valencia.

But the four which we have looked at suffice to

draw some conclusions about the way recent scholarship has approached the impact
which religious convictions exerted on insurrection during the fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries. There have certainly been major advances, including a one-volume

edition of all the known sources for the Dozsa uprising, an excellent English translation

of a rich sample of the documents for the German Peasants’ War, and important studies
written or translated into English on the Pilgrimage of Grace and the Hussite

revolution.

As one would expect, the journal literature has been immense. Yet one has

the impression that to progress further the subject needs an injection of new ideas. We
lack any equivalent to the studies on the French Wars of Religion in which Natalie
Zemon Davis and Denis Crouzet have recreated, in remarkable and at times overwhelm-

Fudge, ‘Neither mine nor thine’, 34. In general, H. Kaminsky, ‘Pius Aeneas among the Taborites’, Church

history, 28 (1959), 281–309, esp. 288–91.

Kaminsky, ‘Pius Aeneas’, 37; Smahel, La Revolution hussite, 79–80.

Fudge, ‘Neither mine nor thine’, 39.

Smahel, La Revolution hussite, 80.

H. Kaminsky, ‘Nicholas of Pelhrimov’s Tabor: An adventure into the eschaton’, in: Eschatologie und

Hussitismus

: Internationales Kolloquium Prag 1.–4. September 1993, ed. A. Patschovsky and F. Smahel

(Prague, 1996), 139–67, at 156–7.

J. Perez, La revolucion de las Comunidades de Castilla

, 1520 –1521 (Madrid, 1977); R. Garcıa Carcel, Las

germanıas de Valencia (Barcelona, 1981).

Monumenta rusticorum in Hungaria rebellium anno MDXIV, ed. A. Fekety Nagy and others (Budapest,

1979).

The German peasants

’ war, ed. Scott and Scribner.

Bush, The Pilgrimage of Grace; T.A. Fudge, The magnificent ride

: The first Reformation in Hussite Bohemia

(Aldershot, 1998); Smahel, La Revolution hussite.

Insurrection as religious war, 1400–1536

153

ing detail, the psychology of groups engaging in religious violence.

One way in which

this technique could be fruitfully applied in the case of our revolts would be through
analysis of the symbols which participants wore on their persons and displayed on their
banners: the cross in Hungary, Germany and England, the chalice in Bohemia, the badge
of the Five Wounds in England. Such symbols, and the rites surrounding their adoption
and use, played a major role in expressing and crystallising group aims, hopes and
identities. It is clear that they mattered because, as we have seen in the case of England,
their use was a cause of deep concern to the authorities. By investigating them we could
escape from the methodological cul-de-sac of trying to pinpoint motivation and
causality, both of which in the case of revolts are so fraught with problems.

An indication of what can be done in this way has already been provided by C.S.L.

Davies in the case of the Pilgrimage of Grace and Thomas Fudge in that of Hussitism.
Davies suggested that time spent on inconclusive analyses of programmes would be
better invested in ‘Examining how people behaved during the rebellion, the incidents
which provoked them, the crises to which they responded, [and] the form which actions
took’. In this light, he pointed to the significance of the banner of the Five Wounds, the

Pilgrim marching song, and the Pilgrim oath.

Thomas Fudge was much more

ambitious. Applying to the Hussites techniques which his mentor, Bob Scribner, had
developed in studying the popular Reformation in Germany, Fudge described how the
main constituents of the Hussite myth, namely the cult of Jan Hus, lay access to the
chalice, and the law of God, were disseminated through channels such as paintings,
songs, slogans, poems, public processions and demonstrations. By so doing he takes us
beyond the formulations of major thinkers and commentators like John of Pribram,
Nicholas of Pehlrimov, Peter Chelcicky and Lawrence of Brezova, into the minds of the

anonymous ‘warriors of God’ who time and again drove back the invading crusaders.

Given the need for more detailed analysis of this kind, it would be premature to

answer the question posed at the start. But if it is answered it will surely be through the
adoption of a comparative approach similar to that followed here. We are not denying the
individual circumstances and complexity of an uprising or revolution if we attempt to
establish parallels with others whose programmes included religious goals and were
based on appeals to religious authority. The fact that both the goals and the authority
could be as different in nature as those which we have looked at, may even strengthen
the value of the comparison. Comparative analysis acts as a valuable brake on
reductionism by conferring an awareness of contributory factors and distinctions which
might otherwise be overlooked or dismissed. It thus enables us to perceive that warfare
in the name of religion can take a variety of forms and be conducted at different levels

of intensity. It is fairly clear, for example, that the participants in the Dozsa revolt shared
with the Taborites a belief that their combat was sacred in nature, mandated by God and
waged in Christ’s name, to a degree which was absent either in Germany in 1524–25 or

N.Z. Davis, ‘The rites of violence: Religious riot in sixteenth century France’, Past and Present, 59 (1973),

51–91; D. Crouzet, Les Guerriers de Dieu

: la violence au temps des troubles de religion (vers 1525 –vers

1610 ), 2 vols (Seyssel, 1990).

Davies, ‘Popular religion’, 74–8.

The magnificent ride, chs 3–4. More specifically on manifestos, see K. Hruza, ‘Die hussitischen Manifeste

vom April 1420’, Deutsches Archiv, 53 (1997), 119–77.

154

Norman Housley

in England in 1536. A difference of conviction, perhaps, yet even in the case of the latter
uprisings such terms as ‘legitimation’ or ‘justification’ seem too restrictive, for there are
signs that religious belief was present, as a force shaping behaviour rather than just
validating it. This did not apply to some revolts, such as the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381.
The comparative approach thus forces us to clarify our terms, always a useful exercise
and rarely more so than when studying a subject which calls for adroit steering between
the Scylla of scepticism and the Charybdis of imprecision.

Books reviewed

Religion and rural revolt

: Papers presented to the Fourth Interdisciplinary Workshop

on Peasant Studies

, University of British Columbia, 1982, ed. Janos M. Bak and Gerhard

Benecke (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984. ISBN 0-7190-0990-1).

The German peasants

’ war: A history in documents, ed. Tom Scott and Bob Scribner

(Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1991, ISBN 0-391-03681-5).

Peter Blickle, The revolution of

1525. The German peasants’ war from a new

perspective, trans. and ed. Thomas A. Brady and H.C.Erik Midelfort (Baltimore MD and
London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981, ISBN 0-8018-2472-9).

Tom Scott, Thomas Muntzer

. Theology and revolution in the German Reformation

(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989, ISBN 0-333-46498-2).

James M. Stayer, The German peasants

’ war and Anabaptist community of goods

(Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991, ISBN 0-7735-0842-2).

Michael Bush, The Pilgrimage of Grace

. A study of the rebel armies of 1536

(Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-7190-4696-3).

Christopher J. Tyerman, England and the crusades

1095 –1588 (Chicago and London:

University of Chicago Press, 1988, ISBN 0-226-82012-2).

Frantisek Smahel, La Revolution hussite

: une anomalie historique (Paris: Presses

universitaires de France, 1985, ISBN 2-13-038703-9).

Monumenta rusticorum in Hungaria rebellium anno MDXIV, ed. Antal Fekety Nagy

and others (Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1979, ISBN 963-05-1098-7).

Thomas A. Fudge, The magnificent ride

: The first Reformation in Hussite Bohemia

(Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 1998, ISBN 1-85928-372-1).

Denis Crouzet, Les guerriers de Dieu

: la violence au temps des troubles de religion

(vers 1525 –vers 1610), 2 vols (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1990, ISBN 2-87673-094-4).

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