Agricultural History Review, Volume 68 Part 2 (2020), p. 320

This book aims for a comprehensive survey of late medieval liturgical commemoration, particularly the commissioning of prayers for the dead through the establishment of anniversaries and chantries. In line with the doctrine of purgatory, founders of such services sought to gain spiritual benefits – above all a speedier transfer of their own souls and those of named beneficiaries to Heaven – in return for lifetime or testamentary bequests of money, lands or donations in kind. The innovative thrust of the approach is an unusually broad combination of secular and ecclesiastical perspectives by an author with a background in Religious Studies and a diverse portfolio of research interests. The empirical data derives from 56 parishes spread across the three dioceses of Liège, Munster and Utrecht in the northern Low Countries. All in all, many thousands of services can be traced in this sample, from a single one in the village of Hijum to no fewer than 3,020 at Oirschot (pp. 224–8). One of the great strengths of the study is the painstaking combing of relevant categories of evidence from over twenty archives as well as in-situ research, not just specialized memoria registers but also fraternity records, wills, deeds, population surveys and surviving clues from material culture (such as tomb slabs and armorial crests), to name just a few genres. Arranged in three main parts dedicated to aspects of economy, society and culture, the qualitative argument is supported by no fewer than 18 figures, three graphs and 23 tables in an extensive appendix, plus an index of place names.

In terms of major findings, the book traces the broad chronological outlines of the phenomenon: originally confined to large-scale endowments at religious houses in the High Middle Ages, liturgical commemoration received a major boost through the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, which tied the cure of souls to the emerging network of parishes. The high point came in the ‘long’ fifteenth century, when parochial institutions like poor tables established themselves as major memoria providers alongside a range of internal and external competitiors. At Warmond, near Leiden, which serves as a case study throughout the book, there is documentation for 1,201 different services, 998 of which were entrusted to the local priory, 114 to the parish fabric, 64 to a guild, 20 to a women’s convent and five to an external fraternity. Worsening socio-economic conditions, related to demographic growth, and Reformation-inspired attacks on Catholic doctrine then ushered in a gradual – but not universal – decline of foundations from the 1520s until the region formally adopted Protestantism later in the century. Demand derived from a wide spectrum of social groups. At Warmond, the seigneurial Wouden family dominated the scene (with no less than a quarter of parish-based services catering for its members), but humbler groups were not excluded. Apart from getting themselves on the bede roll, affordable options included ‘budget’ anniversaries with a smaller number of candles, fewer celebrant priests and no alms for the poor. Memoria foundations, furthermore, reveal a matrix of reciprocal (trans-)local loyalties involving the living and the dead, nuclear families and wider kin, villages of origin and subsequent places of residence as well as ancestral and more recent spiritual preferences, the latter allowing observant orders to grow their market share at the expense of other monastic communities.

Conceptually, the approach is informed by Erik Thoen’s model of social agrosystems and Bas van Bavel’s work on market economies (pp. 5, 174). Kuiken introduces us to distinct village types in the region, differentiated by soil types, landholding patterns and production regimes, relates the growth of the parish to the decline of demesne farming in the later Middle Ages (at Britswerd, parochial funds came to own 22 per cent of a surface area of 72 ha; p. 231) and emphasizes the commodification of commemoration, manifest, for example, in consumer choice of providers and tailor-made levels of investment. One hectare of land sufficed to set up an anniversary, while chantries with daily masses required ten. The undisputed market leader, a fraternity dedicated to Our Lady at ’s-Hertogenbosch, became the ‘single largest memoria provider in the medieval Low Countries’ (p. 135) with tens of thousands of members. Its growth reflected a combination of affordable fees, tangible signs of belonging (such as the annual supply of a candle to each member) and a comprehensive network of agents promoting its interests, mirroring practices known from the sale of indulgences. Whether the fraternity always fully discharged its resulting obligations, however, remains doubtful.

Formally, the text can get a little dense. A great wealth of information on families, villages and foundations is conveyed in relatively short sections (pp. 112–18), sometimes in relation to several layers of conceptualization. Given constraints of space, there is not really the scope to develop each of these fully. This can be acerbated by a few editing issues such as repeated passages (p. 47) or misplaced captions (p. 142). Another challenge is the meaningful definition of ‘rurality’ in such a heavily urbanized region. The solution here is to link town status to the possession of a charter, which seems a rather formal criterion, as the author concedes (p. 177). Looking beyond the Netherlands, one wonders whether the financial benefits from such a dramatic ‘increase of divine service’ over several centuries, i.e. the surpluses accruing to the various lay funds after payment of all associated costs, created the same sorts of tangible benefits for parish communities as Clive Burgess has identified for metropolitan environments like London and Bristol.

Overall, Rural salvation markets offers uniquely detailed insights into the commissioning, delivery, and long-term evolution of liturgical commemoration within a particularly dynamic socio-cultural setting. Future comparative studies on city contexts as well as other rural regions would be very welcome.