Abstract:
Memoria, the liturgic commemoration of the dead, figures in this study as a unifying perspective on the economic, social, and cultural aspects of village life in the late medieval northern Low Countries.
Against the background of Erik Thoen’s model of social agrosystems, a set of 56 rural parishes of which localmemoria registers have been preserved is analysed.
This study shows, among other aspects, how rural salvation markets developed; how kinship, social stratifications, and translocal networks were reflected in these registers; and how liturgy and loyalties shaped medieval villages as imagined communities in which care for the salvation of deceased villagers played a major role.
Rural salvation markets: medieval memoria in Dutch village parishes appeared on October 11th, 2019, in Historia Agriculturae a series founded in 1953 by the Netherlands Agricultural Historical Institute (NAHI), and is available here.