4 - The Chantry Movement: An Intimate Art of the Medieval New Jerusalem
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2023
Summary
Private Worship and the Eschatology of Chantry Rites
I Richard’s body have interred new,
… … . .
and I have built
Two chauntries where the sad and solemn priests
Sing still for Richard’s soul.
THE verses quoted are from one of the king’s speeches in Shakespeare’s Henry V. They are part of a prayer in which Henry asks God to “think not upon the fault” of his father, Henry of Lancaster, who had obtained the crown by murdering Richard II (IV.i.293–302). Shakespeare is probably drawing on Holinshed who says that Henry V (r. 1413–22), after his coronation, had the body of Richard (r. 1377–99) moved “with all funerall dignitie convenient for his estate,” from King’s Langley to Westminster Abbey, where he was buried with his first queen, Anne of Bohemia, in a “solemn toome erected and set up at the charges of this king.” Holinshed records the historical event, but Shakespeare gives us a glimpse, as well, of the religious belief and a whole set of liturgical practices associated with Henry’s actions. Here is a more complete citation from Henry’s speech:
I Richard’s body have interred new,
And on it have bestowed more contrite tears,
Than from it issued forced drops of blood.
Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay,
Who twice a day their wither’d hands hold up
Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built
Two chauntries, where the sad and solemn priests
Sing still for Richard’s soul. (295–302)
Shakespeare’s portrayal here of Henry V’s response to the death of Richard II provides a rare as well as sympathetic description of the piety associated with the late medieval chantry movement in England. The tears of contrition shed, perhaps, at the dead king’s tomb, the poor mourners who have been hired by Henry to pray twice a day for the atonement of his father’s guilt, and the building of the chantry chapels to have Masses said daily for Richard’s soul are some of the religious and cultural features of the chantry movement that require brief consideration before proceeding to a fuller consideration of the movement’s architectural expression.
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- Medieval Allegory and the Building of the New Jerusalem , pp. 98 - 134Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2003