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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2016
Aside from learned conjecture about the nature of the afterlife, the men and women of the late Middle Ages were as fearful as we are of what lies on the other side of death. They too were afraid of dying, afraid of what was beyond, of their own aloneness in facing death. They too had their euphemisms for the process of dying. Some went the way of all flesh: ‘Viam universe carnis ingredi’, while others migrated from this light, or from this age, to the Lord, ‘ab hac luce migraverit’, ‘ab hoc saeculo emigraverit’, ‘ad Dominum migraverit’. To comfort themselves they held up a mirror to their own society, which reflected the network of relationships which bound them in life to their lords, their tenants and servants, their families and benefactors, their fellow religious, their fellow gild brethren, townsmen, and parishioners. This image they projected into the void beyond the grave.
1 Scholarly interest in the subject of death grew out of” the work of art and literary historians on such striking representations as ‘the Dance of Death’ and the ‘Ars Moriendi’, for example, A. Tenenti, ‘La vie et la mortà travers l’art du xve siècle, Cahiers des annales, 8 (Paris, 1952);ll senso della Morte e l’Amore della vila nel Rinascimento (Turin, 1957). The debate widened to the discussion of western attitudes towards death and dying, and many publications on this subject followed: P. Ariès, Western Attitudes towards Death (Baltimore, 1974) and L’Homme devant la Mort (Paris, 1977), translated as The Hour of our Death (New York, 1981).
2 Public Record Office C47/38/7:C47/38/14, 15, 24, 36;C47/38/3, 20, 23, 33:C47/38/8; Camhridge Gild Records, ed. M. Bateson, Publns Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 39 (Cambridge, 1903), 24, St Mary’s Gild prayer for the dead; J. Chiffoleau, Le Comptabilitè de l’ait Delà: Les Hommes, La Mort et la Religion dans la Region d’Avignon à la fin du Moyen Age vers 1320–1480, Col lections de l’École Français de Rome 47 (Rome, 1980), p. 114.
3 Reynolds, S., Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe 000–1300 (Oxford, 1984)Google Scholar, confirms the importance of collective activity in the Middle Agcs; Bossy, J., ‘The Mass as a social institution 1200–1700’, Past and Present, 100 (1983), pp. 29–61Google Scholar, esp. 37–46, the obligation of the living to pray for the dead to whom they were bound.
4 Camporesi, P., The Fear of Hell: Images of Damnation and Salvation in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar, esp. ch. 1 on the organic horrors of hell; Goff, J. Le, The Birth of Purgatory (Chicago, 1984)Google Scholar; McDaunell, C. & Lang, B., Heaven: A History (Yale, 1988)Google Scholar.
5 Le Goff places the emergence of the third place where venial sins were sloughed off in the twelfth century; Bredero, A. H., ‘Le Moyen Age et le Purgatoire’, RHE, 78 (1983), pp. 429–52Google Scholar, a review and useful counter-balance to Le Goff, emphasizes the period between antiquity and the twelfth century when prayer for monks and laymen evolved in monasteries; the emergence of towns and money economy in which the concept developed from the eleventh century, and its popularization through preaching and indulgences from the thirteenth century on; Burgess, C., ‘“A fond thing vainly invented”: an essay on purgatory and pious motive in late medieval England’, Parish, Church and People: Local Studies in Lay Religion 1.350-1750, ed. Wright, S.J. (London, 1988), pp. 56–84Google Scholar, esp. 56–70; Duffy, E., The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England a 400–1580 (Yale, 1992)Google Scholar, section D, pp. 299–376.
6 Bossy, J., ‘The Mass’, pp. 29–61, esp. p. 42Google Scholar; and Christianity in the West 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1985). esp. pp. 26–34.
7 Boggis, R.J. E., Praying for the Dead: An Historical Review of the Practice (London, 1913)Google Scholar, traces the history of this practice fromjudaism to the Reformation: Death and the Regeneration of Life, cas M. Bloch and J. Parry (Cambridge, 1982), Intro, pp. 10–11. Such beliefs are still widespread in twentieth-century Western society.
8 The Tibetan Book of the Dead, ed. Evans-Wentz, W. Y. (Oxford, 1957, 3rd edn 1960), Intro. pp. v, xiii—xiv, xxGoogle Scholar; the Tibetan judgement pp. xxx—xxxiii. 165–9; pain experienced in the spiritual body after death p. lxxix.
9 PRO C47/38/24; Bossy, J., ‘The Mass’, pp. 36–46Google Scholar, the spiritual power of the mass could be directed to confer benefit on friends, and indeed to harm enemies.
10 Rosenthal, J., The Purchase of Paradise: Gift Giving ana the Aristocracy 1307–1485 (London, 1972), p. 16CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Table 1; Goff, Le, Birth of Purgatory, pp. 11–12, 233Google Scholar, the strength of family and corporate ties; p. 293, the likeness of the bond between living and dead to ‘feudo-vassalic’ contracts.
11 Bredcro, A. H., ‘Le Moyen Age’, p. 448Google Scholar.
12 PRO Prob. 11/4/7, fos 54r, 1456.
13 Hicks, M., ‘Chantries, Obits & Almshouses: the Hungerford Foundations 1325–1478’, The Church in Pre-Reformation Society, eds Barron, C. M. & Harper-Bill, C. (Woodbridge, 1985), pp. 123–42Google Scholar, esp. 124–36.
14 PRO Prob. 11/14/32, fos 25jrand v, 1504.
15 King’s College Ledger Book, 1451 — 1558, fol. 78r, 1474.
16 PRO Prob. 11/6/15, fos 114r and v, 1472; Pfaff, R. W., ‘The English Devotion of St. Gregory’s Trental’, Speculum, 49 (1974), pp. 75–90Google Scholar.
17 PRO Prob. 11/2b/48, fol. 379, 1420.
18 PRO Prob. 11/17/20, fol. 160r, 1512.
19 PRO Prob. 11/2a/1, fos 7r and v, 1401.
20 Sheehan, M. M., The Will in Medieval England (Toronto, 1963)Google Scholar; Burgess, C., ‘By quick and by dead: wills and pious provision in late Medieval Bristol’, EHR, 102 (1987), pp. 837–58Google Scholar. Wills give only limited evidence for pious provision.
21 Duby, G., William Marshall: The Flower of Chivalry (London, 1986), pp. 3–27Google Scholar. The poem depicts an ideal death-bed scene, with che hero divesting himself of his worldly possessions one by one to his family and household.
22 Hicks, M., ‘Chantries, Obits & Almshouses’, p. 126Google Scholar: some bequests were never paid due to the financial embarrassment of the testator; Burgess, C., ‘By quick and by dead’, pp. 844, 855Google Scholar. Objections by relatives to the alienation of property for commemorative rites led to their endowment in the testator’s life-time rather than relying on their last will being carried out.
23 There are 22 examples in Ely Consistory Court Wills 1544–58 and one in Ely Archdeaconry Court in 1546. Nine of these come from Willingham, a village where Protestant ideas took root early in the sixteenth century; see Spufford, M., Contrasting Communities: English Villages in the 16th and 17th Centuries (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 320–44Google Scholar.
24 Ariès, P., Western Attitudes, ch. iiGoogle Scholar. Ariès, and those who follow him, perhaps overlook the extent to which commemoration was a collective activity.
25 Chiffoleau, J., Le Compatibilitéde l’au Delà, ch. 3Google Scholar. One of his theses is that fraternities grew up as people moved away from their families to the towns of the eleventh and twelfth centuries; Westlake, H. F., The Parish Gilds of Medieval England (London, 1919), p. 9Google Scholar and passim, asserts that the chief function of the fraternities was to pray for their dead.
26 Gross, C., The Gild Merchant: A Contribution to British Municipal History (Oxford, 1890)Google Scholar; Coornaert, E., ‘Les Ghildes Médiévales (ve-xive siècles) Définition-Évolution’, Revue Historique, 199 (1948), pp. 22–55, 208–43Google Scholar.
27 Weissman, R. F. E., Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1982)Google Scholar; Trexlcr, R., Public Life in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1980)Google Scholar.
28 Orme, N., ‘The Kalendar brethren of the City of Exeter’, Report & Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature & Art, 109 (1977), pp. 153–69Google Scholar; Kettle, A., ‘City & close: Lichfield in the century before the Reformation’, The Church in Pre-Reformalion Society, pp. 143–57, 161Google Scholar.
29 Cambridge Gild Records, ed. Bateson, M. (Cambridge, 1903), pp. 1—13Google Scholar minutes, pp. 14–25 bede rolls; Banker, J. R., Death in the Community: Memorialisation and Confraternities in an Italian Commune in the Late Middle Ages (University of Georgia Press, 1989), pp. 59–68Google Scholar. There are far fewer women than men on the bede rolls of the Confraternity of San Sepolcre 1269–1309. Banker thinks that they are widowed heads of households which suggests a different system of memorialization, p. 64.
30 PRO C47/38/39.
31 British Library, Add. MS 5846, pp. 5–13, St Clement’s Gild Statutes 1431; Cambridge University Lib. MMI 36: Baker MSS vol. 25, Item 10, pp. 361–6, St Peter and St Paul Gild Statutes 1488; pp. 367–71, All Saints Gild Statutes 1473.
32 Duffy, E., Stripping of the Altars, pp. 334–7Google Scholar, bede rolls.
33 Raban, S., Mortmain Legislation and the English Church 1279–1500 (Cambridge, 1982), p. 170CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kreider, A., The English Chantries: The Road to Dissolution (Harvard, 1979), p. 84Google Scholar.. The Crown was hostile to the alienation of lands for intercession, even before the abolition of intercessory institutions in the mid-sixteenth century.
34 Cook, G. H., Medieval Chantries and Chantry Chapeb (London, 1963), Jntro. pp. 1–6Google Scholar.
35 Bloch, M. and Parry, J., Death and the Regeneration of Life, Intro., p. 1Google Scholar; Fraser, J. G., The Colden Bough (London, 1890)Google Scholar; Eliade, M., The Myth of the Eternal Return (Princeton, 1965)Google Scholar; Bossy, J., ‘The Mass’, pp. 29–61Google Scholar; Rubin, M., Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991)Google Scholar.
36 Cook, G. H., English Collegiate Churches of the Middle Ages (London, 1989)Google Scholar.
37 Bateson, M., Cambridge Gild Records, Intro.; VCH Cambridgeshire, ed. Roach, J. P. C. (London, 1959). 3. pp. 371–6Google Scholar; Josselin, J., Historióla Collegii Corporis Christi et Beatae Mariae Cantabrigiae, ed. Willis, J. (Cambridge, 1880)Google Scholar.
38 King’s College Cambridge, King’s College Ledger Book 1451–1558, 39 wills in this period, on the whole made by fellows of the college with some college servants and their widows.
39 King’s College Cambridge ledger, fos 219V—20v.
40 King’s College Cambridge ledger, fos 247v-8r.
41 Pfaff, R. W., ‘St. Gregory’s Trental’, pp. 75–90Google Scholar. A custom based on St Gregory’s release of his mother’s soul from purgatory, through his intercession, having just seen a vision of her in torment pleading for help, and afterwards a beatific vision of her release and subsequent joy.
42 Duffy, E., Stripping of the Altars, pp. 375–6Google Scholar.
43 King’s College Cainbridge ledger, fos 278v-9r.
44 A tremai (from Latin Triginta) was 30 masses; Placebo (from the first Latin word of the service) was evensong; and Dirige (from the first Latin word of the service) martins; Burgess, C., ‘By quick and by dead’, pp. 840–1Google Scholar; Finucane, R. C., ‘Sacred corpse: profane car rion: Social ideas & death rituals in the later Middle Ages’, Mirrors of Mortality: Studies in the Social History of Death, ed. Whaley, J. (London, 1981), pp. 40—60Google Scholar, gives a brief summary of funeral rites.
45 New Catholic Encyclopaedia (New York etc., 1967), 12, p. 384. Requiem mass was usually cele brated the day after burial, and on certain other days, the third, seventh, thirtieth days after death and the anniversary; Burgess, C., ‘By quick and by dead’, pp. 840–1Google Scholar; R.J. E. Boggis, chs viii and ix.
46 Chiffoleau, J., Le Compatibilité de L’au Delà, part IIGoogle Scholar, le Mathématique du Salut.
47 English Cilds, ed. J. Toulmin Smith, EETS 40 (London, 1870), Intro, by L. Toulmin Smith, p. xxxvi.
48 Westlake, H. F., Parish Cilds, p. 40Google Scholar, contradicts the ‘Burial club’ idea; p. 44 labels them ‘Co operative chantries’.
49 Sixty returns for Cambridgeshire are extant.
50 Durkheim, E., The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, transi. Swain, J. W. (2nd edn. London, 1976), p. 399Google Scholar, ‘when someone dies the family group to which he belongs feels itself lessened and, to react against this loss, it assembles’.
51 PRO C47/38/9.
52 PRO C47/38/36.
53 Van Gennep, A., The Rites of Passage, transl. Vizedom, M. B. and Caffee, G. L. (London, 1977), esp. ch. viii, p. 165Google Scholar: ‘convocation by drum crier or messenger gives the meal even more of the character of a collective ritual’.
54 PRO C47/38/6. The small sums left to gilds in wills of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are probably to pay for the hire of such things.
55 The medieval view was that they also had greater opportunities for sin and therefore less chance of redemption, as exemplified in the story of Lazarus and the rich man.
56 PRO C47/38/10.
57 VCH Cambridgeshire, 2, ed. L. F. Salzman (London, 1948), pp. 92, 320, 327; 4, ed. R. B. Pugh (London, 1953), pp. 254–6. This gild leaves a number of sources so it is possible to gain a broader picture of its activities.
58 Wisbech Corporation Records, vol. i. This document in the Wisbech & Fenland Museum started life as the Trinity Gild Register and became volume I of the corporation records at the in corporation in 1547.
59 PRO C47/38/43.
60 PRO Prob. 11/20/8, fos 55V, 56r and v, 1520, will of Robert Smythe; Prob. 11/20/24, fos 190v-2r, 1521, will of Thomas Wyth, gentleman.
61 PRO C66/478, 32 Henry VI, membrane 23, patent roll licence to found a chantry.
62 PRO Prob. 11/5/14, fos 112r and v, 113r, 1466, will of John Masse.
63 Bloch, and Parry, , Death and the Regeneration of Life, Intro, p. 4Google Scholar; Gennep, Van, Rites of Passage, p. 148Google Scholar, mourning is greater for those of higher social standing.
64 PRO C47/38/17a, b.
65 PRO C47/38/5.
66 PRO C47/38/32.
67 English Gilds, ed. J. Toulmin Smith, pp. 19–20, gild of St Katherine, St Simon and St Jude’s Church, Norwich, pp. 51–3; gild of St Leonard, St James Church, Damgate, Lynn.
68 PRO C47/38/4:C47/38/9.
69 PRO C47/38/4:C47/38/7.
70 PRO C47/38/9.
71 BL, Add. MSS 5846, pp. 5–13; Cambridge University Library, MM 136: Baker MSS, vol. 25, pp. 361–6, 367-71.
72 PRO C47/38/24; Ely Consistory Court Original Wills 1528 (ECC/1/3/4).
73 Palmer, W. M., Village Gilds of Cambridgeshire (Ely, 1904), p. 348Google Scholar, quotes this will. This goes against the emphasis of the 1389 ordinances on loyalty and keeping gild secrets: Chiffoleau, J., La Compatabilité, part IIGoogle Scholar.
74 Michaud-Quantin, P., Universilas: Expression du Mouvement Communautaire dans le Moyen Age Latin (Paris, 1970)Google Scholar.
75 Archdeaconry Court of Ely 2/1/12, 1545, will of John Chapman.
76 Obit—commemorative services on the anniversary of a death.
77 I.e. college of the University.
78 Cambridgeshire County Record Office P22/5/1, Church Wardens’ Accounts, Cambridge, Holy Trinity parish 1504–58, fol. 6r, and passim.
79 Rye, W., ‘The Order of funerals, ringings ¿Ve. at Norwich’, The East Anglian, or Notes and Queries, ns 2 (1887-8), pp. 389–92Google Scholar. The number of strokes would inform the hearers of the exact status of the deceased.
80 Scarisbrick, J., The Reformation and the English People (Oxford, 1984), pp. 5—6Google Scholar: two-thirds of testators in the 1530s requested some prayers for their soul.
81 This phrase is more common in the sixteenth than the fifteenth century.
82 Cook, G. H., Medieval Chantries ana Chantry Chapels; K. L. Wood-Leigh, Perpetual Chantries in Britain (Cambridge, 1965)Google Scholar; Rosenthal, J., Purchase of Paradise, ch. 3Google Scholar; Hicks, M., ‘The piety of Margaret, Lady Hungerford’, JEH, 38 (1987), pp. 19–38Google Scholar, an excellent study of a foundress’ pious motivation.
83 VCH Cambridgeshire, 2–6, 8; Ventris, E., ‘Notes upon chantries and free chapels’, Proc. of Cam bridgeshire Antiquarian Society, 1 (1859), pp. 201–40Google Scholar.
84 The ‘Cantarie de la Grene’ at Ely is not mentioned in either of the above, and is known only through wills: e.g. Ely Diocesan Archives, HK 275 I/A, fos. 10v, 40r, 40V.
85 VCH Cambridgeshire, 5, ed. Elrington, C. R. (London, 1973), p. 172Google Scholar.
86 VCH Cambridgeshire, 6, ed. Wright, A. P. M. (London, 1978), p. 272Google Scholar.
87 Thompson, J. A. F., ‘Piety & Charity in late Medieval London’, JEH, 16 (1965), pp. 178–95Google Scholar; Dobson, R. B., ‘The Foundation of Perpetual Chantries by the Citizens of medieval York’, SCH, 4 (1967), pp. 22–38Google Scholar. Both argue against the line put forward by W. K. Jordan and G. C. Coulton.
88 Kreider, A., The English Clianlries, p. 89Google Scholar.
89 Dobson, R. B., ‘Foundation of Perpetual Chantries’, pp. 22—38Google Scholar.
90 Burgess, C., ‘By quick and by dead’, pp. 837–8Google Scholar, esp. 840, 842, reminds us of the inadequacy of wills as a source. Nevertheless they express intention if not actuality.
91 Ely Diocesan Archives HK2791/A, fos 56v-57r, 1458, wills of Margaret Ffarnham. A priest to sing for a year cost eight marks.
92 Burgess, C., ‘A service for the dead: the form and function of the anniversary in late medieval Bristol’, Trans, of Bristol & Gloucester Arch. Soc. 105 (1987), pp. 183–211Google Scholar.
93 Aries, P., Western Attitudes, ch. ivGoogle Scholar, draws on recent sociological studies to underline the impoverishment of twentieth-century Western society in this respect.
94 Kubler-Ross, E., On Death and Dying (New York, 1969)Google Scholar; and Death: The Final Stage of Growth (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1975).
95 Bloch, M. and Parry, J., Death and the Regeneration of Life, Intro, pp. 3–4Google Scholar, the two phases of mortuary rituals enable society to recover and to locate death, an arbitrary event, within time; Gennep, A. van, Rites of Passage, p. 147Google Scholar. Mourning is a transitional rite for the survivors.
96 Bloch, and Parry, , Death and the Regeneration of Life, p. 28Google Scholar: commensality is associated with sexuality and therefore birth with death; Van Gcnnep, Rito of Passage, pp. 164–5: com mensality unites the survivors with the dead.
97 CCRO Pi 1/5/1–2, Bassingbourne churchwardens’ accounts 1490–1540, passim.
98 Kreider, A., The English Chantries, pp. 84–5Google Scholar, the end of chantry foundation; chs iv. and v. on the demise of purgatory.
99 From work on the sample of 2,000 wills, it is my opinion that they are not suitable for measuring the growth of confessional faith, either Protestantism or post-Reformation Catholicism, as too many use neutral wording at this difficult period. They do show, however, the broad outline of response to government initiatives on religious matters.
100 Bossy, J., ‘The Mass’, pp. 29–61Google Scholar.
101 Duffy, E., Stripping of the Altars, p. 8Google Scholar.
102 Kitching, C., ‘The quest for concealed lands in the reign of Elizabeth 1’, TRHS, 5th series, 24 (1974), pp. 63–78Google Scholar.
103 The use of these phrases in the preambles of wills takes on a particular ambiguity in the 1540s and 1550s.
104 King, P., ‘The Iconography of the Corpse’. Paper delivered at the Institute of Historical Research, London, 29 May 1991Google Scholar.
105 McDannell, C. and Lang, B., Heaven: A History, pp. 353–8Google Scholar, describe the cyclical prominence of various beliefs about the afterlife at different rimes. Aries and Le Goff tend to view changes on a linear model.
106 Wunderli, R. and Broce, E, ‘The final moment before death in Early Modern England’, Sixteenth-Centuryjournal, 20 (1989), pp. 259–75Google Scholar, at p. 275 quotes Walker, D. P., The Decline of Hell: 17th Century discussions of Eternal Torment (Chicago, 1964)Google Scholar: by the late seventeenth century belief in hell had declined, by the eighteenth century it was under open attack; P. Camporesi, Fear of Hell, part I, gives details of the outrageous descriptions of hell the Jesuits made in the eighteenth century to try to gain the attention of their sophisticated audience.