Mass forever

[Kropotkin]

I'm re-reading Barbara Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror" on the tram. For those that does'nt know about it, it's a book that deals with a period of the 14th century centered around a french knight known as Enguerrand de Coucy and his time.

The thing I've thought about is the masses (as a religious cermony) the nobility and others often buy from various monestaries and other religious institutions. If you where a rich man or woman with some doubts about your souls future you could buy masses to your name for a certain time or even forever.

Now, my first thought was that the idea of masses in your name forever is a ridiculous idea. Today "forever" is no time longer time than 5-10 years, and even if the time frame was longer back then, forever certainly didn't last forever. But then I came to think about the fact that this was a contract with the chatolic church, one of the most ridiculous institutions in the world - no offense intended.

So does anyone know, or having some idea, if there's still monetaries and churches that are performing masses for perople that lived in medieval times?

[molly bloom]

Henry VIII wasn't keen on the idea:

An Act of 1545 empowered confiscation by the king of all charities, whether chantries, hospitals, guilds or colleges.

Chantries, like Dartford’s Stampit Chantry, were a particular target of another act passed in 1547.

The main purpose of a chantry was to fund priests to say masses for the dead, thereby implying the existence of purgatory, an intermediate stage where the dead waited before going to heaven or hell. The Protestants could not find proof in the Bible of the existence of ‘purgatory’; this gave them an excellent excuse to dissolve the chantries and seize all the land that had once funded the employment of chantry priests. The Crown received over £600,000 from the dissolution of chantries as land passed into lay hands. Dartford’s Stampit Chantry in Holy Trinity church was dissolved in 1547. The lamps were taken away, the figure of the Virgin Mary removed, and the altar pulled down.

http://www.dartfordarchive.org.uk/early_modern/religion.shtml

I thoroughly enjoyed 'A Distant Mirror'- perhaps because the times depicted seemed so very modern in some respects.

[lord of the mark]

Re: Mass forever

Originally posted by Kropotkin
Today "forever" is no time longer time than 5-10 years, and even if the time frame was longer back then, forever certainly didn't last forever.

I hope youre not in the cemetary business, where eternal care contracts are common. There are also university endowments, etc that come with binding conditions with no end date.

Whether any of those will last, say, 2000 years is dubious. But 5-10 years? Im not seeing the smiley. Perhaps its my broken sense of humor.

[Zkribbler]

As a practical matter, what happens if the Church breaks its promise to say masses forever?

Is the noble suddenly yanked out of Heaven and cast into the outer darkness to wail and gnash his teeth?

[Kropotkin]

lotm: Not really humour, just a mild hyperbole to make a point for the sake of argument.

I guess it's not very likely, but some nobles funded the foundation of new churches and monestaries for that perticular purpose. Some of them has to be in function still. If you're spending half the day praying, wouldn't a small mass for you monestary's founder be in order, even if it's 600 years in the past?