Perpetual Chantry Chapels and the Sources of Secularism

I have heard a good deal about secularism through my life, and I have subjected to the usual list of suspects. However, secularism was not a philosophical movement; it was the reaction away from the Theory of the Church-State of the Roman Empire from paganism through Christianity and through the Dark Ages and into the mediaeval period.

In politics, the Monolithic Theory of empire extended through Charlemagne and into the Holy Roman Empire, while the reality was a centrifuge of power, a breaking down into smaller states and nations settling out from the ancient matrix of the One Empire.
The Church was able to resist this breakdown longer, mainly because the Church itself had little by the way of armed forces, and relied upon the nations of Europe to wage its crusades and wars. Thus, it did not perform in the arena of warfare and devoted its energies to the spiritual and to the paths of power that stopped short of warfare involving the Church personally. Once the Reformation came and joined with dissenting Princes, then began the intense period of religious warfare.

Throughout, I think this process of the breaking down of Empire pushed the spiritual to the side and emphasized the political. Indeed, it was in the political realm that the greatest rewards were to be found, not in the spiritual. When war and threats of wars are alien to a people, then we see a focus on spirituality, and in this area there is much to be gained. In such a manner, Rabbinic Judaism was born in the area and the times of the Roman Empire and the successor states of Europe and Islam when Judaism was forbidden to possess arms and wage their own wars. At this point, someone may point out that Islam was born in the heat of battle. However, the wars fought between Medina and Mecca were very small in scale, and warfare did not take over the life of the nation as it was to subsequently do when Islam was to spread to Spain and on beyond India. This occurred after Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet was killed in a political dispute, and war became the focus of the state.

This process left a great gap in the spiritual lives of the people involved in the pursuits of power and wealth; the gap was a spiritual one. In Europe, the powerful and rich and illustrious sought to aid their journey to heaven by leaving property to establish and endow chapels to be built in churches around their tombs. They had much to fear, for spiritual virtue had little benefit and life was uncertain and death was quick:

If meat and drink thou ne'er gav'st nane,
every night and alle,
The fire will burn thee to the bare bane,
and Christ receive thy saule.

 In these chapels were chanted masses for the repose of the souls of the departed benefactors, and candles were to be kept burning: Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, Eternal life grant to them, O, Lord.
It was very much along the lines that the ancient Pharoahs provided for their after-life.

In England in 1547, the year Henry VIII passed to his reward, the perpetual chantries were dissolved and the endowments which funded the masses, candles, and prayers were forfeited to the Crown. Thus once again power politics undermined the spiritual beliefs of the age, and we can only guess at the concept of life-continuity which burned in the hearts of the earlier ages.

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