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Monumental Brass Society 2012 TRANSACTIONS Monumental Brass Society Volume XVIII, Part 4, 2012. ISSN 0143-1250 Obligations and Strategy: Managing Memory in the Later Medieval Parish 289 Clive Burgess Each According to their Degree: the Lost Brasses of the Thorpes of Northamptonshire 311 Robert Kinsey Embellishment and Restoration: the Barttelots and their Brasses at Stopham, Sussex 334 Jerome Bertram The Brass to the Revd. Montague Henry Noel, d. 1929, St. Barnabas, Oxford 363 David Meara Conservation of brasses, 2011 370 William Lack Reviews 374 Portfolio of Small Plates 381 Contributors are solely responsible for all views and opinions contained in the Transactions, which do not necessarily represent those of the Society. © Monumental Brass Society and the authors, 2012 Registered Charity No. 214336 www.mbs-brasses.co.uk Obligations and Strategy: Managing Memory in the Later Medieval Parish Clive Burgess Primarily concerned with commemorative practice within I England’s late medieval parishes, this essay first explores When starting to consider the nature of later the means by which the commemorative impulse became medieval commemoration a number of embedded in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and, questions immediately arise. Why did men and second, looks at factors, both general and local, which women strive so assiduously to be remembered? particularly assisted with managing memory within How generally did they contrive to maintain parishes. The essay then turns to consider how their presence? And what, therefore, was the individuals endeavoured to weave themselves into the broader array of commemorative devices parish liturgy, especially through repeated ceremonial such among which memorial brasses took their as anniversaries and by commissioning chantry Masses. place? In answering these, the following Having outlined the context of commemoration, the article discussion proceeds to identify a number of reviews in more detail how tombs and brasses functioned co-ordinates – eventually building up a matrix as one element among the complex of mnemonic of guiding principles – reflective of the manner apparatus commonly assembled within parish churches in which motives and strategies, as well as by the eve of the Reformation. agents and agencies, intermeshed to embed commemorative imperatives among the Rather than dwelling on the more immediate priorities of the faithful. For while characteristics of later medieval brasses – such commemoration functioned as a distinctive as patronage, provenance and appearance – aspect of later medieval religious belief and the following seeks to situate these memorials motivation, it also served a number of other in the broader devotional regime that operated roles: we need to make a number of broader in the century and more before the connections, and explore their implications, if Reformation. As a result, this essay will dwell we are properly to understand the uses of first on the circumstances prompting their memory and why it was managed so attentively development and commission, and thereafter in the century or more preceding the consider the context in which they functioned Reformation. as one mnemonic device among the many that benefited the souls of the departed – and In addressing the first, and most fundamental, which, cumulatively, enhanced the praise of the questions just listed, it pays to cast back offered to God in the churches of the later our sights to the late eleventh or twelfth medieval English realm. If the picture on offer centuries, to that period when, within Western is composed of broad brush-strokes this is Europe, peace had – to some extent – broken because it covers a wide canvas: it explores, on out. As a result, released from the obligation to the one hand, the linkage between the defend itself against external predators, doctrinal and administrative systems of the Christendom itself began to embark on Church, while, on the other hand, attempting ambitious collaborative campaigns in the to place the personal and communal Holy Land. But at home, relieved from the commemorative arrangements that formed so constant pursuit of military and spiritual self- distinctive a part of contemporary belief and defence, Christian society had the chance to practice. take stock and, where necessary, recast basic Obligations and Strategy: Managing Memory in the Later Medieval Parish 290 strategies in the light of new circumstances. Wise counsel had realised that, were the church Within the higher ranks of the Church some ever to liberate itself from domination by the now chafed against what they saw as the mighty, it had to cultivate alternative means undue control exercised by lay elites, of support and to develop other sources of particularly kings and magnates.1 While the revenue.4 It needed funding from the broader, latter had greatly enriched the Church with less threatening, body of the faithful: this called endowments and, over the generations, had for pastoral and penitential remodelling. The founded, extended and defended many of its Church could not expect common people to institutions, such nurture came at a cost. engage with and contribute towards it unless Princes and noblemen expected to exercise a salvation were generally attainable – in other role in appointing those, like bishops and words, ordinary Christians could only be abbots, who governed the Church. Lay expected to participate had they a realistic hope patrons, moreover, required such appointees to of sharing in the benefits that the Church contribute to government, bolstering existed to minister. As a result, rather than administration in, and assisting with the defence continuing with the severe penitential standards of, the localities and the realm: some now began pertaining heretofore that restricted salvation to to feel that such roles seriously compromised the few – be they monks or, like kings and their spiritual office and vocation. In its attempt aristocrats, those who procured substitutive to free itself from lay domination and, by ending penance from monks – the Church fashioned a lay investiture, to assert ‘right order in the regime better able to stimulate and world’, the Church struggled in vain.2 Princes accommodate the multitude.5 On the one hand, and their peers were not about to abandon long largely (and, perhaps, ironically) as a result of -held rights and, even within the Church, many lay initiative in manors and in villages, the regarded the novel claims of some colleagues as parish network had crystallised by the twelfth or unnecessarily extreme – why bite the hand that thirteenth century and this ensured that priests had been so generous for so long?3 But, if the might now more easily be on hand both to degree of ‘reform’ in the political arena teach in and to minister to local ultimately proved limited, other attempts at neighbourhoods.6 Such pastors were supported amendment fared better. by tithe, paid by all the faithful; in developing 1 R.W. Southern, Western Society and the Church 4 For this, and what follows, it is worth finding (Harmondsworth, 1970), chapters 2 (ii and iii), 4 (ii and R.W. Southern’s review (entitled ‘Between Heaven and iii) and 5 still provides a stimulating perspective on Hell’) of J. Le Goff, La Naissance du Purgatoire (Paris, these developments. 1981) published in The Times Literary Supplement, 2 A phrase taken from the memorable opening sentence no. 4133 (18 June 1982), pp. 651-2. of G. Tellenbach, Church, State and Christian Society, transl. 5 See my ‘“A Fond Thing Vainly Invented”: An essay on R. Bennett, 5th edn. (Oxford, 1970). Purgatory and Pious Motive in later medieval England’, 3 That some, even among the ranks of churchmen, had in Parish, Church and People: Local Studies in Lay Religion. no sympathy with the reformers is evident from a 1350-1750, ed. S. Wright (London, 1988), pp. 56-84, survey of Becket’s contemporaries on the English bench which is heavily indebted to Southern’s review article of bishops – some, like Gilbert Foliot, were quite happy mentioned in the previous footnote. On the earlier, to continue as the king’s men. In the next generation, it relatively draconian systems of penance, see is worth pondering the career of Archbishop Hubert T.N. Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation Walter, who, while undeniably doing the bidding of (Princeton, 1977), chap. 1. kings without demur, may in many respects have 6 As described, for instance, in R. Morris, Churches in the achieved more for the benefit of the Church in England Landscape (London, 1989), chaps 4-6. than Becket (see C.R. Cheney, From Becket to Langton: English Church Government, 1170-1213 (Manchester, 1956), chapter 2 and passim). 291 Clive Burgess Fig. 1. Souls being released from Purgatory by means of prayer and good works, Carthusian Miscellany, northern England (Mount Grace?), c. 1460 (BL, Add. MS 37049, f. 24v) (photo.: British Library) Obligations and Strategy: Managing Memory in the Later Medieval Parish 292 this revenue, the Church clearly began to tap prayer, the individual (or sometimes a group) into new and productive reserves.7 On the other had to give in order to receive. Quite simply, hand, theological developments mollified the the wealthy, the ‘penitentially challenged’, sacrament of Penance resulting, in part, in a commissioned good works and also gave, be it sharper definition of the purpose of Purgatory. to the poor, or the clergy, or the Church more Here, in the ‘third place’ or anteroom to Heaven, generally – the last of these