A duty to the dead
If the dead in purgatory could be helped, then ignoring them was a kind of neglect. That simple chain of reasoning explains a great deal of medieval religious behavior. Prayers, masses, charity and even building projects were often undertaken with one eye on what they might do for a particular soul, whether a parent, a spouse, a patron or oneself.
The belief was that souls in purgatory could not help themselves. They could not earn merit any longer, but the living could offer what were called suffrages: acts done on their behalf that might shorten or ease their time of purification. The exact mechanism was never fully explained, and theologians spoke carefully about it. The most common view was that God, in his mercy, might apply the good works of the living to the dead, without anyone being able to calculate the effect.
The main ways of helping
Medieval Christians relied on a handful of standard practices.
- Prayer. The simplest form of help. Families prayed for their dead, and prayers for the dead were part of ordinary worship. People often asked in their wills that others pray for them. Gravestones and church monuments sometimes carried a request that passersby say a prayer for the soul of the person commemorated.
- The mass. The mass was considered the most powerful offering. Priests could be paid to say masses for a named person. A popular custom was a set of thirty masses on consecutive days, often called a trental, and many wills asked for a series of masses soon after death.
- Almsgiving. Giving to the poor was understood as a work of mercy that benefited the giver and could be offered for the dead. Funerals often included doles of money, food or clothing to the poor, who were asked in return to pray.
- Fasting and pilgrimage. Some people undertook fasts or arranged pilgrimages on behalf of the dead.
- Indulgences. The church could grant partial or full remission of the temporal penalty for sin. Later in the Middle Ages, indulgences were increasingly said to be applicable to souls in purgatory, a development that became controversial.
Remembering at set times
Prayers for the dead were not left to chance. They were built into the calendar. The most important remembrance in the western church was a day set aside for all the faithful departed, the day after All Saints. This observance spread from the monastic world, with monks at Cluny among its early promoters around the year 1000, to ordinary parishes.
Families also marked a “month’s mind” a month after death and an anniversary a year after, often with a mass, bell-ringing and a gift to the poor. Wealthier families might endow an annual service that was to continue for decades. Church bells themselves played a role, since a passing bell announced a death and invited prayer, and bells were rung again in memory of the dead.
Chantries and guilds
People with money could pay for something more permanent. A chantry was a fund, often with its own altar or chapel, that paid a priest to say masses for the founder’s soul, and sometimes for family members, for a set number of years or in perpetuity. Chantry chapels are still visible in many cathedrals and parish churches in England and elsewhere.
Those of modest means could not usually afford a private chapel, so they joined together. Religious fraternities and craft guilds regularly paid for candles, funerals and prayers for deceased members. A member could expect that when he died, fellow members would attend the funeral and keep on praying afterward. This gave the idea of purgatory a social side, because membership in a guild was in part a promise of remembrance.
Monasteries also took part. Many houses kept lists of benefactors and offered prayers for them in exchange for gifts of land or money. Lay people sometimes asked to be buried within the monastery or in a church to remain close to the prayers offered there. In this way the worlds of monastic life and lay piety were bound together.
Effects on daily religion
The cumulative effect was large. Priests in many places spent much of their time saying masses for the dead. Wills from the later Middle Ages often devote their first provisions to the soul and the funeral before turning to property. The structure of parish churches, their altars and their decoration were shaped by donors hoping for remembered prayers. And after the Black Death, when so many died suddenly and without full rites, the demand for such prayers is often said to have increased, though historians debate how far.
Criticism and limits
The system was not free from complaint. Critics argued that it favored the wealthy, who could buy more masses than the poor, and that it tempted the clergy to treat prayer as a transaction. Some medieval preachers warned against thinking that payment could settle everything, and stressed that the quality of the giver’s own life and charity mattered. Fourteenth-century and later reformers such as those influenced by Wycliffe teachings went further and questioned the whole practice, and the sixteenth-century Reformation brought the abolition of chantries in several countries, including England.
The underlying belief, though, was widespread and sincere. For many families, praying for the dead was a way to continue a relationship that death had not entirely ended.