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Abstract
The mortuary roll ritual was a unique medieval commemorative practice initiated on behalf of select individuals who had been, in life, members of the religious community. A monastic house would circulate a parchment roll headed by the announcement of a death to other religious communities, requesting prayers for the soul of the dead. To signify their agreement to join this prayer network, communities would add to the roll a titulus, an entry usually written in verse and sometimes quite elaborate. Because rolls were circulated among a wide variety of religious communities, they are invaluable resources not only for understanding the relationship between the living and the dead but also among the living members of this prayer community. While covering a broad geographical and chronological range, this study focuses on rolls from twelfth-century Normandy, particularly one commemorating Abbess Mathilda of Holy Trinity, Caen.
Chapter One describes the mortuary roll ritual process and examines the meanings of the ritual for those involved in it. Chapter Two focuses on the ritual, seen as a rite of passage and a gift-exchange ritual. Chapter Three is a study of the various participants in the ritual. Chapter Four demonstrates how encyclicals, the obituaries written at issuing houses, conformed to the ritual's dual purposes of fostering a sense of unity among religious while celebrating the passage of one particular religious to the afterlife. Roll verses transcend boundaries between religious orders, geographical areas, and the sexes, as shown in Chapter Five, which treats the complex interrelationships between groups of religious as seen through roll texts. Through an analysis of tituli written by women, Chapter 6 considers in detail the participation of female religious in the ritual, a subject considered throughout the dissertation. Chapter Seven examines the responses to death articulated in mortuary roll verses, arguing that the register of responses found among the tituli is far greater than in any other form of commemoration, and that the range of appropriate responses to death is wider than previously assumed. The conclusion recapitulates major themes in the dissertation, which also includes two appendices.