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The High Cost of Dying: an Analysis of pro anima Bequests in Medieval Dublin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Margaret Murphy
Margaret Murphy*
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Dublin
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Extract

This examination of the bequests made by medieval Dubliners for the health of their souls is based almost exclusively on evidence drawn from wills of the period. The medieval ecclesiastical sources of Dublin are by no means abundant, and wills in particular have survived badly. Only one register of wills remains, covering the period 1457 to 1483 and containing seventy-four testaments. To this may be added a further twenty-four wills, found in a variety of ecclesiastical and municipal sources, ranging in date from 1270 to 1500, giving a total of ninety-eight wills in all.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 24: The Church and Wealth , 1987 , pp. 111 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1987

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References

1 Register of Wills and Inventories of the Diocese of Dublin in the Time of Archbishops Treguryand Walton, 1457–1483, ed. H. F. Berry (Dublin, 1898) [cited hereafter as Reg. D.D.].

2 Ten wills can be found in The Calendar of Christ Church Deeds, in the 20th, 23rd, and 24th Reports of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records of Ireland, nos 106, 237, 239, 251, 290, 291, 296, 537. 633, 886 [cited hereafter as Cal. Ch. Ch. Deeds]; three in die Calendar of the Liber Albus of Christ Church Dublin, ed. H.J. Lawlor, PRIA 27 (1908), nos 49, 58, 77 [cited hereafter as Cal. Lib. Alb.]; four in Trinity College Dublin MS 1207, nos 85, 128, 180, 258 [cited hereafter as TCD 1207]; two each in The Calendar of Ancient Records of Dublin, i, ed.J. T. Gilbert (Dublin, 1889), pp. 127–31 [cited hereafter as C.A.R.D.] and Register of the Hospital of St John the Baptist, ed. E. St John Brooks (Dublin, 1936), nos 65, 66 [cited hereafter as Reg.Hosp.St.John]; one in the Chartularies of St Mary’s Abbey, Dublin, ed. J. T. Gilbert, RS (1884), pp. 16–22 [cited hereafter as Chart. St Mary’s]; and one each in The Ancient Deeds of the Parish of St John, ed. J. L. Robinson, PRIA 33 (1916–17), section C, pp. 175–224, no 112 and The Deeds of the Parish of St Catherine, ed. H. F. Twiss, ibid., 25 (1918–20), section C, pp. 265–81, no 14.

3 P. Heath, ‘Urban Piety in the Later Middle Ages: the Evidence of Hull Wills’, in B. Dobson, ed., The Church, Politics and Patronage in the Fifteenth Century (Gloucester, 1984), pp. 209–34; J. Chiffoleau, La Comptabilité de l’au-delà (Rome, 1980); S. Epstein, Wills and Wealth in Medieval Genoa (Harvard, 1984).

4 See particularly Vale, M. G. A., Piety, Charity and Literacy among the Yorkshire Gentry, 1370–1480, Borthwick Papers, 50 (York, 1976)Google Scholar; Saul, N., ‘The Religious Sympathies of the Gentry in Gloucestershire 1200–1500’, Bristol and Gloucestershire Arch. Soc. Trans., 98 (1980), pp. 99–112 Google Scholar; McHardy, A. K., ‘Some Late-medieval Eton Wills’, JEH 28 (1977), pp. 387–95 Google Scholar.

5 Cal. Lib. Alb., no 58. The testator, William Stafford, was going to the Holy Land. Thomasin, wife of William Berry, also failed to specify a burial place: Reg. D.D., p. 61.

6 P. Aries, The Hour of Our Death, esp. cap. 2.

7 Register of the Abbey of St. Thomas Dublin, ed. J. T. Gilbert, RS (1889), pp. 348–51; Chart. St Mary’s, 2, p. 476.

8 Giraldus Cambrensis, Speculum Ecclesiae, Opera, 4, RS (1873), pp. 178–9.

9 In 1475 Jacoba Payn desired burial in St Patrick’s’beside the burial place of my late husband’, Reg. D.D., p. 157.

10 Rosenthal, J. T., The Purchase of Paradise (London, 1972), p. 84.Google Scholar

11 For example, Reg. D.D., pp. 1, 56.

12 See nn. 3, 4, above.

13 Reg. D.D., p. 4.

14 Ibid., pp. 14–15.

15 Ibid., p. 146.

16 Manning, B. L., The People’s Faith in the Time of Wyclif (Cambridge, 1919), p. 73 Google Scholar.

17 Reg. D.D., p. 30.

18 C.A.R.D., 1, p. 127.

19 Ibid., p. 130.

20 Crede Mihi; the Most Ancient Register Book of the Archbishops of Dublin before the Reformation, ed. J. T. Gilbert (Dublin, 1897), pp. 103–4.

21 Ibid., pp. 103–4.

22 John Foyll in 1380 left £40 for the purchase of wax, Cal. Ch. Ch. Deeds, no 251.

23 Owen, D.M., Church and Society in Medieval Lincolnshire (Lincoln, 1971), p. 164 Google Scholar.

24 See Reg. D.D., pp. 67, 86, and 111, for some typical examples.

25 Heath, ‘Urban Piety’, p. 217.

26 See, for example, Reg. D.D., p. 64.

27 Ibid., p. 98.

28 Ibid., p. 56.

29 Cal. Lib. Alb., no 58; Reg. D.D., pp. 67, 112, 150.

30 Rosenthal also noted this in England: Purchase of Paradise, p. 99.

31 Anc. Deeds of the Parish of St John, no 112; Reg. D.D., p. 65.

32 Cal. Ch. Ch. Deeds, no 512; Reg. D.D., p. 98.

33 Ibid., p. 52.

34 Cal. Ch.Ch. Deeds, no 512.

35 Reg. D.D., p. 39.

36 Ibid., pp. 80–1.

37 Cal.Ch.Ch. Deeds, no 201.

38 Ibid., no 512.

39 Ibid., no 296.

40 Reg.D.D., pp. 1, 17, 112.

41 TCD 1207, no 85.

42 Chart. St Mary’s, pp. 16–21.

43 Reg.D.D., p. 146.

44 Anc. Deeds of the Parish of St John, no 112.

45 Reg. D.D., p. 9. Cal. Ch. Ch. Deeds, no 237.

46 TCD 1207, no 85.

47 Reg. D.D., pp. 17, 33, 98. Cal. Lib. Alb., no 49.

48 Reg. D.D., p. 16.

49 Cal. Ch.Ch.Deeds, no 237.

50 Reg. D.D., p. 111.

51 Ibid., p. 114.

52 Two wills left sums of money to a recluse ‘of St. Paul’: Cal Ch. Ch. Deeds, no 106, and TCD 1207, no 85. This latter will also left money to recluses of St Dimlach and St Glanoc.

53 Chart. St Mary’s, p. 17.

54 Reg. D.D., p. 70.

55 Ibid., p. 56.

56 MRHI, p. 212.

57 One will left 35. to ‘each brother wearing the cross of St John’, Reg. Hosp. St John, p. 42.

58 For example, Chart. St Mary’s, p. 17. John Taillour left iooi. to the works of the hospital.

59 Reg. D.D., pp. 98, 112; Reg. Hosp. St John, no 65.

60 Cal. Ch. Ch. Deeds, no 106; Cal. Lib. Alb., no 58.

61 Chart. St Mary’s, p. 21.

62 Reg. D.D., p. 48.

63 Ibid., p. 146.