abbey to another, bearing their mournful missive, and when England had been traversed, crossing the narrow seas to resume their melancholy task on the Continent. At whatever place he halted, the messenger might count on a sympathetic reception; and in every monastery the roll, having been detached from his neck, was read to the assembled brethren, who proceeded to render the solemn chant and requiem for the dead in compliance with their engagements. On the following day the messenger took his leave, lavishly supplied with provisions for the next stage.

Monasteries often embraced the opportunity afforded by these visits to insert the name of some brother lately deceased, in order to avoid waiting for the dispatch of their own annual encyclical, and so to notify, sooner than would otherwise have been possible, the death of members for whom they desired the prayers of the association.

Mortuary rolls, many examples of which have been found in national collections—some of them as much as fifty or sixty feet in length—contain strict injunctions specifying that the house 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 animæ omnium defunctorum per Dei misericordiam in pace requiescant.

The monastery first visited makes the following entry: Titulus Monasterii Beatæ Mariæ de Gyseburn in Clyveland, ordinis S. Augustini Ebor. Dioc. Anima Magistri Willielmi Ebchestre et anima Johannis Burnby et animæ 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 which was neither conventual nor lay, but partook of both conditions in equal measure, decides its position in the economy of the work. We must deal with it here.

Before discussing the custom in its historical and social relations, it will be well to advert to the soil of thought out of which it sprang, and from which it drew strength and sustenance. Already we have spoken of the heritage of human sentiment. Now there is ample evidence that the indifference to the marriage of widows which marks our time did not obtain always and everywhere. On the contrary, among widely separated races such arrangements evoked deep repugnance, as subversive of the perfect union of man and wife, and clearly also of the civil inferiority of females. The notion that a woman is the property of her husband, joined to a belief in the immortality of the soul, appears to lie at the root of the dislike to second marriages—which, according to this view, imply a degree of freedom approximating to immorality. The culmination of duty and fidelity in life and death is seen in the immolation of Hindu widows. The Manu prescribes no such fiery ordeal, but it states the principles leading to this display of futile heroism: "Let her consecrate her body by living entirely on flowers, roots, and fruits. Let her not, when her lord is deceased, ever pronounce the name of another man. A widow who slights her deceased lord by marrying again brings disgrace on herself here below, and shall be excluded from the seat of her lord."

A similar feeling permeated the early Church. "The argument used against the unions," says Professor Donaldson, "was that God made husband and wife one flesh, and one flesh they remained even after the death of one of them. If they were one flesh, how could a second woman be added to them?"