Saving the Souls of Medieval London

Perpetual Chantries at St Paul's Cathedral, c.1200-1548

Marie-Hélène Rousseau

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781409405818
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317059370
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

St Paul's Cathedral stood at the centre of religious life in medieval London. It was the mother church of the diocese, a principal landowner in the capital and surrounding countryside, and a theatre for the enactment of events of national importance. The cathedral was also a powerhouse of commemoration and intercession, where prayers and requiem masses were offered on a massive scale for the salvation of the living and the dead. This spiritual role of St Paul's Cathedral was carried out essentially by the numerous chantry priests working and living in its precinct. Chantries were pious foundations, through which donors, clerks or lay, male or female, endowed priests to celebrate intercessory masses for the benefit of their souls. At St Paul's Cathedral, they were first established in the late twelfth century and, until they were dissolved in 1548, they contributed greatly to the daily life of the cathedral. They enhanced the liturgical services offered by the cathedral, increased the number of the clerical members associated with it, and intensified relations between the cathedral and the city of London. Using the large body of material from the cathedral archives, this book investigates the chantries and their impacts on the life, services and clerical community of the cathedral, from their foundation in the early thirteenth century to the dissolution. It demonstrates the flexibility and adaptability of these pious foundations and the various contributions they made to medieval society; and sheds light on the men who played a role which, until the abolition of the chantries in 1548, was seen to be crucial to the spiritual well-being of medieval London.

Chapter 1
Founding Chantries

As intercessory foundations, chantries had their roots in a system of beliefs and customs strongly established by the late twelfth century. Well before they took their place in the spectrum of commemorative options, endowments provided intercession to lessen the sufferings of souls in purgatory, in the forms of monastic prayers, anniversary masses, corporate masses, guild masses and even daily masses.1 Chantries evolved from these customary practices sometime in the late twelfth century. The spontaneous and simultaneous nature of this evolution, however, renders it hard to pinpoint their first manifestations with any accuracy. Wood-Legh, the pioneer of chantry studies, suggested the college of four chaplains established at Marwell in Hampshire by Henry of Blois (d.1171), bishop of Winchester, as her candidate for the first chantry ever established on English soil.2 Endowments provided for contemporary foundations at the cathedrals of Paris, Amiens, Rouen and Lichfield in the 1180s and 1190s.3 At St Paul’s Cathedral, the close of the twelfth century was also the period when the earliest chantry foundations were established: the first was founded presumably in the 1180s with the money that Richard Foliot, former archdeacon of Colchester (d.1181), bequeathed to the Dean and Chapter for the maintenance of a chaplain who would pray for him and for all the faithful departed; while three others date from the 1190s.4 During his episcopacy (1189 × 1198), Richard Fitz Neal established a chantry of two chaplains to commemorate all the kings of England and the bishops of London.5 He also set up an altar dedicated to the Merovingian Queen Radegund, whose offerings provided for a chaplain who prayed for his soul.6 In 1199, less than a year after becoming bishop of London, Fitz Neal’s successor, William of Ste-Mère-Eglise, set up a chantry of one chaplain. From then until the Reformation at least eighty-four perpetual chantries were established at the cathedral, although not all coexisted: some were amalgamated, and a minority disappeared.7 This chapter explores the identity of the individuals who founded these commemorative services, the types of arrangements they made with the cathedral authorities and the nature of the endowments that provided financial support to maintain them.

Founders

The Angevin royal family played a leading role in the emergence of chantries. They endowed daily masses in perpetuity on both sides of the channel, including the commemoration of Young King Henry (d.1183) at the Cathedral of Rouen.8 At the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, their French rival, King Philip, instigated the earliest chantry endowments.9 At St Paul’s it was men attached to the cathedral who stood behind the earliest foundations, although one of the chantries provided prayers especially for the souls of all English kings and bishops of London.10 As mother churches of dioceses, cathedrals were flagships in liturgical developments.11 The cathedral’s high-ranking clergy would have been acquainted with the development of the various options in commemorative practices and many of them would have had the financial means to participate in their development. At St Paul’s Cathedral, one archdeacon and two bishops were responsible for the first four foundations, while between 1200 and 1250 the cathedral clergy established all but one of the foundations.12 Although their monopoly of chantries at St Paul’s did not last more than a few decades, the predominance of higher-ranking clerics as chantry founders remained unchallenged throughout the centuries. Until the dissolution of the mid-sixteenth century, more chantries were founded by or for men associated with the cathedral than for any other group in society (see Table 1.1).

Table 1.1 Chantry founders at St Paul’s Cathedral

The predominance among chantry founders of bishops, deans, major canons and even a few members of the minor clergy is clearly a result of their special relationship with the cathedral. Not only was the cathedral their place of work, and the place of their daily worship; it was also the physical symbol of the large clerical community of which they were part. Not surprisingly, such men invested their fortunes in St Paul’s. More than just interceding for the salvation of their souls, their chantries contributed to the embellishment of the physical setting of their cathedral and to the enrichment of its liturgy.13

This close relationship between chantry and working environment is even clearer in the case of chantries founded by members of the cathedral’s lesser clergy. These clerics were those who ensured the daily celebration of the opus Dei at the cathedral and performed the private services at the side altars. For instance, in 1275 a chantry was established for John de Braynford, who had served John le Romeyn’s chantry in 1261.14 In one case, there was a clear correlation between the chantries that these men served in life and the focus of their post-mortem pious bequests. Walter de Blockele (d.1307) had been chaplain of Roger de La Legh’s chantry, for which he developed a very strong attachment. Not only did he personally contribute to its welfare by increasing its endowment and by providing lodging for its chaplain; he also requested that his own chantry chaplain should serve at the same altar where he had himself celebrated the daily mass for many years as chaplain of de La Legh’s chantry.15 Apart from these two foundations, only three other chantries were founded by minor clergy of St Paul’s: Godfrey de Acra in the 1260s, Godfrey of St Dunstan in the 1290s, and Nicholas Husband in the late 1340s, all minor canons at the cathedral.16 This small representation of minor clergy among chantry founders is presumably a result of the heavy financial investment involved in chantry foundation. Only those who had an inheritance or other substantial income could provide an endowment, because the customary annual wages earned by the minor clergy were insufficient to fund a perpetual chantry. In the late thirteenth century, St Paul’s chantry chaplains were earning on average six marks per annum.17 Relying on such a salary alone, it would have been impossible for individual priests to accumulate sufficient capital to endow a perpetual chantry. For this reason, the majority of the lesser clergy had to content themselves with more provisional and cheaper foundations.18 The precarious chantry of chaplain Simon de Herlyng, rescued by Robert le Seneschal, minor canon, in 1298, less than three years after its foundation, was probably of such a temporary kind, and so is omitted from this survey.19 On the Continent, especially in Germany, clerics often solved the problem of the financial cost of a permanent chantry by designating themselves as the first incumbents of their newly created chantry.20 By reducing the original costs, this practice made the foundations more affordable for chantry priests. Although no definite examples of this practice have been found in England, it appears that St Paul’s authorities may have facilitated chantry founding by priests by restoring to the founders during their lifetime the properties with which they had endowed their chantries. Between 1262 and 1268 the Dean and Chapter granted to minor canon Godfrey de Acra, for the term of his life, the houses and the rent that he had given to them and to the chaplain celebrating masses for him and his benefactors in the chapel of St James.21 In York, between 1330 and 1390, the chantries were not exclusively patronised by the most powerful members of the city oligarchy.22 At St Paul’s Cathedral a comparable ‘popularisation’ of chantries occurred half a century earlier, but with only five perpetual chantries founded by members of the minor clergy, it was limited. The founding of chantries r...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Copyright Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Founding Chantries
• 2 Managing Chantries
• 3 Housing Chantries
• 4 Monitoring Chantries
• 5 Serving Chantries
• 6 Dissolving Chantries
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index