Purgatory, Mary Anne Madden Sadlier [books to get back into reading .txt] 📗

1403, the saintly Wykeham made his will. He directed that his body should be laid in a chantry which he had himself founded, and at the altar of which he was wont to offer up the Holy Sacrifice. He desired that on the day of his burial, "to every poor person coming to Winchester, and asking alms, for the love of God, and for the health of his soul, there should be given fourpence." Alms were likewise to be distributed in every place through which his body was to pass, and large provision was made for Masses and prayers for the repose of his soul. He had, besides, made an agreement with the monks of St. Swithin's, by which they were to offer three Masses daily for his parents and benefactors in the chantry chapel; the first of these was a Mass of Our Lady, to be said very early. The boys attached to the College were, moreover, to sing every night in perpetuity, either the
Salve Regina or Ave Regina , with a De Profundis for his soul's repose. So, as the hour of his death drew near, he who had concerned himself through life with the souls of the departed, essayed to make provision for his own. Since that hour when he proceeded to the high altar of Winchester Cathedral, escorted by the Lord Prior of Winchester and the Abbot Hyde, to celebrate his first Pontifical Mass, the same constant memory of the dead had been with him, as when kneeling he prayed aloud for the soul of his predecessor, William de Edyndon, and bade the choir chant the De Profundis , while he himself recited the Fidelium omnium conditor .

But leaving Oxford and its pious founder, we turn our gaze upon that ancient foundation of Eton, which was to serve as a preparatory school for the new establishment of King's College of Cambridge, which Henry had in contemplation. Henry, in his famous Eton charter, makes mention of his desire that this college shall be, as it were, a memorial of him, and be composed of clerks, "who," he says, "shall pray for our welfare whilst we live, and for our soul when we shall have departed this life." The Pope, Eugenius IV., afterwards granted a plenary indulgence to all who should visit the College Chapel of Our Lady of Eton, after Confession and Communion. Henry having visited the Colleges of Winchester, first met there with William Wayneflete, with whom he was to be united in so warm and beautiful a friendship. The "Master of Winton," as Wayneflete then was, is described as "simple, devout, and full of learning." But a short time after he was removed to Eton, and presently raised to the Provostship. Among many beautiful and pious customs, the memory of the dead was carefully preserved among the Eton scholars, and their verses on All Souls' Day were on the blessedness of those who die in the Lord. But Wayneflete is, of course, chiefly identified with Magdalen College, Oxford, said to be "the finest collegiate building in England," and of which he was the founder. It was, in truth, his dream, and one which he was destined to see realized. Here is neither the place nor time to dwell upon its beauties. The first stone was laid by the venerable Tybarte, its first president. He was buried in the middle of the inner chapel, and upon a cope, preserved among the ancient church vestments, is one upon which is worked the inscription, " Orate pro anima Magistri Tybarte ." [1]

[Footnote 1: Pray for the soul of Master Tybarte.]

Among the rules and regulations of this new foundation was one which obliged the president, fellows, and scholars to recite, while dressing, certain prayers in honor of the Blessed Trinity, and a suffrage for the founder. Daily prayers were offered up for the repose of the souls of the founder's father and mother, "those of benefactors of the college, and for all the souls of the faithful departed." These suffrages were to be made by every one, at whatever hour of the day was most convenient.

There were many foundations of Masses attached to this College of Magdalen. Of these daily Masses, offered at the six altars of the chapel, the early "Morrow Mass" was always said in the Arundel Chapel, for the soul of Lord Arundel, the chief benefactor of the institute. Another Mass was to be said every day for "souls of good memory," including, besides the two kings, Henry III. and Edward III., his dear and never forgotten friends, Henry VI., Lord Cromwell, and Sir John Fastolfe, as well as King Edward IV. Other Masses and prayers were said for other intentions. The founder was to be especially remembered every quarter. Every day, after High Mass, one of the demys was to say aloud in the chapel, " Anima fundatoris nostri Willielmi, et animae omnium fidelium defunctorum, per miscricordiam Dei in pace requiescat. " [1] The same prayer was to be repeated in the hall after dinner and supper.

[Footnote 1: "May the soul of our founder, William, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace."]

But the life of the Founder of Magdalen, the great Bishop, was drawing to a close. We shall see by his will how firm his faith in that most Catholic of all doctrines - Purgatory. After various bequests, he left a certain portion of his property for Masses and alms-deeds for his own soul and the souls of his parents and friends. On the day of his burial, and on the thirtieth day from the time of his decease, and on other appointed days, his executors are charged to have 5,000 Masses said in honor of the Five Wounds of Christ, and the Five Joys of Mary - his favorite devotions - for the same intention. His remains were buried at Winchester, in a tomb which he had prepared as a place of burial during his lifetime. His was, indeed, the third chantry chapel in Winchester, the others being those of his predecessor. This custom was common to all the great prelates of the time. They prepared a place of sepulture during their life, and there where they officiated at all solemn offices, and so frequently celebrated requiems for the departed, they knew that their remains were one day to be laid, and prayers and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass to be offered for themselves. It was thus a constant reminder of death.

A ceremony connected with Magdalen Tower seems likewise to have had its origin in this pious custom of remembrance of the dead. "On the 1st of May," says Anthony Wood, "the choral ministers of this house do, according to ancient custom, salute Flora from the top of the tower, at four in the morning, with vocal music of several parts." Of course, as a chronicler remarks, it was not to salute Flora that any Catholic choristers thus made vocal the sweet air of May. "The sweet music of Magdalen Tower," remarks the author of the Knights of St. John, "had a directly religious origin. On the 1st of May the society was wont annually to celebrate the obit or Requiem Mass of King Henry VII., who proved a generous benefactor to the College, and who is still commemorated as such upon that day. The requiem was not, indeed, celebrated on the top of the tower , as Mr. Chalmers, in his history of the university, affirms, in total ignorance that a
requiem is a Mass, and that a Mass must be said upon an altar; but it is probable that the choral service chanted on the 1st of May consisted originally of the De Profundis , or some other psalm, for the repose of Henry's soul, and as a special mark of gratitude." Some semblance of the old custom is still kept up, as ten pounds is still annually paid by the rectory of Slimbridge, in Gloucestershire, for the purpose of keeping up this ceremony.

Such are a few brief glimpses of this belief in Purgatory, which was so dear to the hearts of Englishmen, in those centuries before the blight of heresy had fallen upon the Island of the Saints. These hints upon the subject are given very much at random, and will simply serve to show how prayer for the dead was a part of all Christian lives in those ages of faith. It was incorporated in the rules of every collegiate institute, and more especially those two most notable ones of Oxford and Cambridge. It entered into every man's calculations, and was provided for in every Will and Testament. Had it been in our power to go backwards, into a still more remote antiquity, it would have been our pleasant task to find this belief in suffrage for the dead taking so vigorous root in every heart. Do we not find the Venerable Bede, "the Father of English Learning," who was born in 673 and died in 734, asking that his name may be enrolled amongst the monks of the monastery founded by St. Aidan, in order that his soul after death might have a share in the Masses and prayers of that numerous community, as he tells us himself in his Preface to the Life of St. Cuthbert. "This pious anxiety," says Montalembert, "to assure himself of the help of prayer for his soul after death is apparent at every step in his letters. It imprints the last seal of humble and true Christianity on the character of the great philosopher, whose life was so full of interest, and whose last days have been revealed to us in minute detail by an eye-witness." [1]

[Footnote 1: "Monks of the West," Vol v, p 89.]

The passionate entreaties of Anselm, another of the shining lights of early Anglo-Saxon days, that the soul of his young disciple Osbern be remembered in prayers and Masses, proves what value he attached to suffrages for the departed:

"I beg of you," he writes to his friend Gondulph, "of you and of all my friends, to pray for Osbern. His soul is my soul. All that you do for him during my life, I shall accept as if you had done it for me after my death. ... I conjure you for the third time, remember me, and forget not the soul of my well-beloved Osbern. And if I ask too much of you, then forget me and remember him.... The soul of my Osbern, ah! I beseech thee, give it no other place than in my bosom."

And do we not read of those "prayers for souls," incessant and obligatory, which were identified with all the monastic habits - thanks to that devotion for the dead which received in a monastery its final and perpetual sanction. "They were not content," says Montalembert, "even with common and permanent prayer for the dead of each isolated monastery. By degrees, vast spiritual associations were formed among communities of the same order and the same country, with the aim of relieving by their reciprocal prayers the defunct members of each house. Rolls of parchment, transmitted by special messengers from cloister to cloister, received the names of those who had 'emigrated,' according to the consecrated expression, 'from this terrestrial light to Christ,' and served the purpose of a check and register to prevent defalcation in that voluntary impost of prayer which our fervent cenobites solicited in advance for themselves or for their friends." And, of course, this was many years, even centuries, before the Feast of All Souls was instituted by the Abbot Odilo and the monks of Cluny in 998. English history, like every other history, furnishes us, indeed, with innumerable traits of this pious devotion