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II.—Some Letters of Confraternity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2011

Clark-Maxwell
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The origin of letters of ‘confraternity’, or of ‘participation in benefits’ for the two classes seem to be, as I hope to show later on, practically equivalent, is to be sought in the natural desire among those who were fighting against the corruptions of the world, to feel themselves fortified with the prayers of others engaged in the like conflict, and the no less natural wish to help their brethren in that struggle. Such associations would, equally naturally, be formed first and principally between monastic houses, since these formed, as it were, the entrenched camps into which religion retreated during the dark ages of Europe. But inasmuch as those thus associated were reckoned as in the fullest sense brothers, it was not long before the practical usefulness of these acts of confraternity became apparent in providing a means of arbitration in case of disputes between head and members in an abbey, as well as a sort of appeal against unjust treatment by a superior, or a remedy for fundamental incompatibility of temperament. Dom Ursmer Berlière, O.S.B., in an interesting article in the Mémoires of the Royal Belgian Academy, has investigated the jurisdictional side of these monastic confraternities, and therein relates the surprising experience of an abbot of St. Trond, who on approaching in the course of a journey the abbey of Brogne or St. Gérard, finds himself received with all ceremony, conducted at High Mass to the abbot's stall, and is informed that the officers of the monastery had to surrender to him their keys of office, and that he had the right to remit the punishment imposed upon a brother of the house. He asks the reason; and the only explanation his hosts can give, is that this is always done to an abbot of St. Trond on his first visit to Brogne. The author explains these proceedings by supposing the former existence of a formal act of confraternity between the houses, entirely forgotten on one side, and only partially remembered on the other.

Type
Research Article
Information
Archaeologia , Volume 75 , 1926 , pp. 19 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1926

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References

page 19 note 1 Acad. Royale de Belgique, Memoires, 2 ser. xi, iii, 1920.Google Scholar I have also had the opportunity of seeing an article by the same learned author on ‘Les confraternités monastiques au Moyen-Âge’ from the Revue Liturgique et Monastique, xi (1926), pp. 134–42.Google Scholar

page 20 note 1 Wm. Humez, abbot of Westminster, 1214–22.

page 20 note 2 So in printed copy; qu. ‘commanendum’.

page 23 note 1 Round, , Commune of London, p. 102 f.Google Scholar

page 23 note 2 B.M. MS. Lansd. 207 a, f. 120.

page 28 note 1 Boniface, abbot from 1244 to 1257.

page 29 note 1 Nomasticon Cisterciense (Solesmes, 1892), p. 186.Google Scholar

page 31 note 1 Herrgot, , Vetus Disciplina Monastica (1726), p. 200.Google Scholar

page 31 note 2 Lanfranci Opera, ed. J. A. Giles, vol. i, p. 176. For the formula of admission at St. Augustine's, Canterbury, see the Customary of that house (Henry Bradshaw Soc, vol. xxiii, p. 292 f.); for Westminster, see the same society's vol. xxviii, p. 232 f.

page 32 note 1 Printed in Snappe's Formulary and other Records, ed. Salter, H. E., Oxford Hist. Soc, vol. lxxx (1924), p. 358.Google Scholar

page 33 note 1 See also some further examples and references in the Appendix to this paper.

page 34 note 1 The abbot's name has been wrongly transcribed as ‘Gulielmus dictus Abbas Cestrie'; but the whole context shows that it should read ‘Cistercii’.

page 35 note 1 See the Appendix for other examples.

page 41 note 1 Since this paper was read, various emendations of the passage have been suggested to me, of which the most probable appears to be the following: ‘Addens eciam de speciali gracia [indulgentiam] a nostris sanctis patribus omnibus fratribus et sororibus nostris [concessam] tarn vivis quam mortuis videlicet quatuor centum et viginti quatuor dierum [quas] illis contritis et confessis misericorditer a Domino relaxamus’.

page 43 note 1 See Gasquet, Henry VIII and the English Monasteries, ch. v; also Brewer's Monumenta Franciscana.

page 43 note 2 See Thomson, The Land and the Book, p. 37. The Legenda Aurea places the fight near a city called Silena.in the province of Libya; the Greek versions edited by Aufhauer (Byzantinisches Archiv, Heft 5) call it Lasia. Thanks to Mr. E. Lobel, of the Bodleian Library.

page 47 note 1 Dom Berlière, in the article in the Revue Liturgique et Monastique, referred to at the beginning of this paper, distinguishes between the confraternitas or spiritual fellowship of a monastery and the confraternities (confréries) or gilds established in honour of the patron saint, regarding these latter as a special development of the original conception. An instance of a ‘confrerie’ will be found on p. 34 (Scala Celi in St. Anastasius, Rome). We may look upon the gilds in connexion with parish churches as a further development of the same idea.

page 48 note 1 A Rouncìval Pardon cost fourpence (Westlake, Gilds, &c, p. 97).

page 52 note 1 Son of the poet.

page 52 note 2 See also the instances quoted in Mr. Edmund Bishop's Liturgica Historica, pp. 358, 359. Also Harl. MS. 638, ff. 245, 356, for examples from Bury St. Edmunds. In the Literae Cantuarienses, i, 9–1 a are models of such letters to an associated house (Waltham Holy Cross) and to individuals.

page 57 note 1 See Bateson, Records of Borough of Leicester, ii, 386.