A STATEMENT OF FAITH

It is often asked why the Guild’s Chantry Chapel at Walsingham is so called. The term chantry is a medieval one and comes from the old French ‘chanterie’, implying chanting or singing. A chantry came to mean several things. Strictly speaking it was an endowment for the maintenance of priests to sing masses for the soul of the founder or his family. A chantry was often associated with a particular altar in a parish church, or with a chapel specially constructed within the church - plenty of these survive in English cathedrals and parish churches.  Whilst a chantry was most frequently founded to pray for the soul of an individual or a family, others were co-operative or were formed as guilds. The chaplain of the guild regularly “minded” or recalled the names of departed members, a practice referred to as “bidding the bedes”. Once a year every name on the parish bede-roll would be read aloud at the parish requiem.

Chantry chapels were also associated with almshouses and schools. For instance, many wealthy pious benefactors founded grammar schools whose pupils were taught by chantry priests who would pray for the founder’s soul. Although the Chantries Acts of 1545 and 1547, which abolished the chantries, effectively closed these grammar schools, some were subsequently re-founded and today many an English school can trace its origin back to a chantry foundation, as can some almshouses and hospitals.

At the Reformation, as Protestant ideas began to take hold, so the Chantry priests were prevented from saying the traditional masses for the dead and the term chantry became virtually obsolete until the 19th century, when the Guild of All Souls had at least something to do with its revival.

What is the point of reciting all this old history? Perhaps it is just that we can always learn something from the past. In reading accounts of those old Wills which endowed chantries, it is impossible not to be struck by the way so many of the testators set down in their Wills a solemn declaration of faith, which was not just a pious formality or a convention of the time. It would be unusual to do this nowadays, but why not? This might be something we can learn from the past. Based on those old Will preambles here is a modern version:

Members of the Guild might well compose something on these lines for inclusion in their Wills, as an affirmation of their faith.