Levenoth and the Grateful Dead

Abstract

Matthew Paris' Historia Anglorum' is the fullest authority for the edifying anecdote told of Bartholomew, bishop of Exeter.2 De hoc Bartholomaeo venerabili viro fama refert notissima, et, cum scripti quod idem episcopus confecit testimonio, crebra ejusdem relatio, quod cum, lucro animarum devotus intendens, parrochiam suam visitaret, in villa quadam campestri cum suis clericis forte pernoctavit. Lodging in an upstairs room overlooking the churchyard, he woke about midnight to find the night-light extinguished, and sent out his chamberlain to fetch fire. While waiting the bishop clearly heard quandam vocem puerilem saying repeatedly, Riseth op, alle Cristes icorne, Levenoth ure fader of pis wrold fundeth; and other childish voices weeping and saying, Vae nobis! vae nobis! Quis amodo pro nobis orabit et elemosinas dabit? vel pro nostra salute missas celebrabit ? Migrat ab hoc seculo noster consolator Levenothus. The first voice cried in a more solemn tone Requiescat in pace, and the others responded Amen. The chamberlain, presently returning with fire from the end of the village, reported that he had found a lighted house and a man just dead; a man given to charity, who had maintained a priest to say masses and offices for the dead, and whose name was Levenoth. The bishop provided for the perpetual continuance of these rites, himself said mass for Levenoth, and had him buried.8 The anecdote is clearly a mere appropriating and localizing of a familiar type of medieval story, which itself seems a late development from the widespread Grateful Dead theme, a Christianized and clericalized development, of which there are many examples. In particular, there are various cases where souls make the responses in offices for the dead, sometimes to help a departed benefactor. In a Latin sermon, for instance, a boy often stops to pray for the dead on his way to school, and is whipped for being late. He dies, and at his 1 I, 312-14 (Rolls Series, 1866). 2 From 1162 to 1184 (Stubbs, Registrum Sacrum Anglic., p. 48). 3 There is a garbled reference to the vision in the account of Bartholomew in Tanner's Bibliotheca Brit.-Hib., p. 78. The versicle and response are from the Missa Defunctorum, replacing the Ite missa est at the end of most masses. [MoDERN PHILOLOGY, November, 1924] 211