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Historisk tidskrift 131:3 • 2011

Innehåll (Contents) 2011:3

Omsorg om själen – vård av kroppen

Gabriela Bjarne Larsson

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Summary

Pastoral and bodily care in religious houses and churches

This article compares endowments given to religious houses and churches in the periods 1282 to 1314 and 1401 to 1410. In the first period the pattern was for a testator to donate a large sum to one main recipient for his burial place and several smaller sums in money to diverse recipients for chantry prayers. Many of the latter recipients were monasteries and convents, especially of the mendicant orders. These recipients ceased in the second period when instead a sole recipient stood for all pastoral care. During both periods women and men gave more property and more frequently to monasteries belonging to the Cistercian order than to the mendicant orders.

The yield from designated farmsteads financed the gifts during the first period, especially when the gift finally was given in coins. In the first period the receiver only acquired perpetual right to the yield when a chantry (prebenda) in a cathedral or in a monastery was established. In contrast, in the later period the receiver almost always got such a right. In the former period this only happened when a donator who had received bodily care had died. In the 15th century the right of possession was transferred foremost to monasteries, not only when the donator sought bodily care but also when seeking such pastoral care as chantry prayers, masses, month-minds, yearminds and intercessionary prayers. When yield paid for the care it seems that it was easier for the donators to turn to the mendicant orders than it was in the 15th century. None from any of the Franciscan orders then received possession of landed property, as expected. But some female Dominicans and the John Baptist brethrens from the town of Eskilstuna received landed property during this later period too.

Keywords

bequests, endowments, mendicant order, pastoral care, money, landed property