The Customs of Old England | Page 5

and day of arrival be inscribed on the roll in each monastery, together with the name of the superior, the purpose being to preclude any failure on the part of the messenger worn out with the fatigue, or daunted by the hardships and perils, of the journey. The circuit having been completed, the parchment returned to the monastery from which it had issued, whereupon a scrutiny was made to ascertain, by means of the dates, whether the errand had been duly performed. "After many months' absence," says Dr. Rock, "the messenger would reach his own cloister, carrying back with him the illuminated death-bill, now filled to its fullest length with dates and elegies, for his abbot to see that the behest of the chapter had been duly done, and the library of the house enriched with another document."
One of the Durham rolls is thirteen yards in length and nine inches in breadth. Consisting of nineteen sheets of parchment, it was executed on the death of John Burnby, a Prior of Durham, in 1464. His successor, Richard Bell, who was afterwards Bishop of Durham, and the convent, caused this roll, commemorating the virtues of the late Prior and William of Ebchester, another predecessor, to be circulated through the religious houses of the entire kingdom; and inscribed on it are the titles, orders, and dedications of no fewer than six hundred and twenty-three. Each had undertaken to pray for the souls of the two priors in return for the prayers of the monks at Durham. The roll opens with a superb illumination, three feet long, depicting the death and burial of one of the priors; and at the foot occurs the formula: Anima Magistri Willielmi Ebchestre et anima Johannis Burnby et anim? omnium defunctorum per Dei misericordiam in pace requiescant.
The monastery first visited makes the following entry: Titulus Monasterii Beat? Mari? de Gyseburn in Clyveland, ordinis S. Augustini Ebor. Dioc. Anima Magistri Willielmi Ebchestre et anima Johannis Burnby et anim? omnium defunctorum per misericordiam Dei in pace requiescant. Vestris nostra damus, pro nostris vestra rogamus. The other houses employ identical terms, with the exception of the monastery of St. Paul, Newenham, Lincolnshire, which substitutes for the concluding verse a hexameter of similar import. It is of some interest to remark that, apart from armorial or fanciful initials, the standing of a house may be gauged by the handwriting, the titles of the larger monasteries being given in bold letters, while those of the smaller form an almost illegible scrawl. The greater houses would have been in a position to support a competent scribe--not so the lesser; and this is believed to have been the reason of the difference.
Almost, if not quite, as important as the roll just noticed is that of Archbishop Islip of Westminster recently reproduced in Vetusta Monumenta.
After the tenth century it appears to have been the custom in some monasteries, on the death of a member, to record the fact; and at certain periods--probably once a year--the names of all the dead brethren were inscribed on an elaborate mortuary roll in the scriptorium, before being dispatched to the religious houses throughout the land.
The books of the confraternities are divisible into two classes--necrologies and libri vitae. The former are in the shape of a calendar, in which the names are arranged according to the days on which the deaths took place; the latter include the names of the living as well as the dead, and were laid on the altar to aid the memory of the priest during mass. Twice a day--at the chapter after prime and at mass--the monks assembled to listen to the recitation of the names, singly or collectively, from the sacramentary, diptych, or book of life. The most famous English liber vitae--that of Durham--embraces entries dating from the time of Edwin, King of Northumbria (616-633), and was compiled, apparently, between the devastation of Lindisfarne in 793 and the withdrawal of the monks from the island in 875. In the first handwriting there are 3,100 names, a goodly proportion of them belonging to the seventh century. As has been already implied, various degrees are represented in the rolls of the living and the dead--notably, of course, benefactors, but recorded in them are bishops and abbots, princes and nobles, monks and laymen, and often enough this is their only footprint on the sands of time. The name of a pilgrim in the confraternity book of any abbey signifies that he was there on the day mentioned.

ECCLESIASTICAL
CHAPTER II
VOWESSES
Not wholly aloof from the subject treated in the previous chapter is the custom that prevailed in the Middle Ages for widows to assume vows of chastity. The present topic might possibly have been reserved for the pages devoted to domestic customs, but the recognition accorded by the Church to a state