Mortuaries And The Law Of Custom

Abstract

Abstract Medieval churches and the men who ministered within them held rights in a great deal of property, real and personal, from which they received sizable returns.The canon law did not prohibit this. Nor had the Roman law. Biblical injunctions against the corrosive effects of aspiring to wealth were distinguished away, or at any rate allowed to percolate quietly at the edges of Christian theology,2 and in most circles it was recognized that the members of clergy had to be guaranteed a sufficient income if they were to survive. Indeed, they needed more than a claim to subsistence if they were to flourish. The hospitality they were expected to provide for their neighbors and the alms they were encouraged to bestow upon the poor required that they them- selves possess an adequate income.3 Men in holy orders were forbidden to undertake secular occupations, and they could not altogether depend upon the fluctuating and uncertain alms of their parishioners if they were to meet their pastoral obligations. Few doubted this in principle, although there was some grousing about the material consequences of these conditions in fact.