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member (due to his non-observance of the statutes). This in turn should have posed
serious problems for the accomplishment of its main tasks, which were to honour its
dead members with a funerary procession and to commemorate them with daily masses.
How could the confraternity honour its confraternal dead when it combined them in one
symbol, the same cross, with the corporatively dead (who could in fact still be alive) and
deleted both from succeeding books of the living and the dead ?
The scribe compiling a new book of the living and the dead did not include many
dead members in that list, since only 17% of all individuals marked by a cross in ND2
made it into ND1. But in addition, he also eliminated from ND1 members who were not
marked with a cross or an addendum in ND2. Seven hundred and sixty individuals have
clearly legible entries in ND2 and ND1.73 Fully 49% of those do not appear in ND1. Of
the latter, as expected, 59% are marked with one of the various crosses meant to
legitimize their elimination from the later list, but 41% are not outwardly recognizable.
These latter entries were eliminated without apparent justification except in five specific
cases: two entries are crossed out (elimination), two mention a departure (andossene) and
one an expulsion (casso perche . . . illegible answer).
What are we to make of these apparently casual eliminations? It would seem that the
confraternal administration used the matriculation lists as one way to keep up with its
membership. The scribe who compiled ND1 knew how to recognize the corporatively
dead members in ND2. Their entry was preceded by a cross or an addendum in the old
list. But, evidently, he also had to know how to recognize the corporatively dead who
were not marked by any symbol in the preceding list. Perhaps he used another document
to this end, such as the ledger which, according to the statutes, was kept by the
confraternal notary, or the ledger that was held by the organization s camerary.74 This
would mean that the crosses and addenda summarized information obtained from the
72
Chiffoleau, Les justices du pape, 203, counted very few condemnations against blasphemers, around one per
cent of the total fines imposed by the temporal court. The only sure case of homicide among Notre Dame la
Majour s matriculants regards the barber Stephano di Puccio [folio 107v]. Stephano was accused of several
crimes and of murdering another barber, Nicolas of Milan. He escaped justice but was nevertheless
condemned in absentia in 1366; P. Pansier Les medecins des papes d Avignon (1308 1403) , Janus
(1909), 433. His name, found in ND2, is not repeated in ND1 but no cross or addendum is inscribed before
his entry.
73
To ensure that such elimination did indeed happen I chose to take as a sample only those parts of ND1 and
ND2 that are clearly legible. This sample comprises all the entries of each letter except G, L, M, S and Z.
The latter are omitted because their entries are badly disfigured in ND1. This sample assures that certain of
ND2 s entries are in fact missing from ND1 and not present, but illegible.
74
See p. 7. As noted earlier, the statutes recognize the presence of three books, Pansier, Les confréries
d Avignon , 38.
Forever after: the dead in the Avignonese confraternity of Notre Dame la Majour (1329 1381) 131
other confraternal registers. The elimination of unmarked entries from one document to
the next may be understood if we take into account that the transcription of such
information may not have been systematic.
The data offered by Notre Dame la Majour does not permit the calculation of an
annual rate of affiliates expulsion. The two matriculation lists only allow one to assess
that over a 10-year period some 66% of all affiliates named on the 1364 matriculation
list were not carried over to the 1374 list. According to the statutory regulations, the
disappearance of a name between one list and the other entailed the corporative death of
a member, thus his dismissal from the association.
Notre Dame la Majour s dismissal rate does not seem unusually high when compared
with similar data pertaining to other confraternities. Nicholas Terpstra s research on
Bologna in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries shows expulsion rates ranging from 16%
to 53% over a time span ranging from 30 to more than 100 years. For comparison,
Terpstra cites the research of John Anderson on a Trecento company in Florence which
annually expelled 16% of its members.75 James Banker s research on the confraternities
of the Italian town of San Sepolchro indicates that during a 40-year period less than half
of those who entered the confraternity of San Bartolomeo died without
commemoration.76 Ronald Weissman s study on Florentine confraternities yields a yearly
loss of membership of close to 6%.77
John Henderson s research on Florentine Flagellants between 1334 and 1369,
primarily on the company Gesù Pellegrino, reveals that in 56% of the cases no reason
was offered. Mortal sins resulted with expulsion in 4.8% of the cases, and various
offences against the company counted as another 39% of the cases. Most importantly,
non-payment of subscription dues, listed as one of the offences against the company,
never led to expulsion from the association but, in 5% of the cases between 1365 and
1369, did lead to punishments.78
In general, these Italian confraternities expelled members who had violated their
statutes through non-attendance and insubordination, who had committed moral lapses,
who were negligent, and some others for no clear reason.79 None seems to have
eliminated from their ranks members who had died in good standing vis à vis the
association.
As we have seen, however, the situation is quite different in our Avignonese
confraternity. Notre Dame la Majour s recording procedure shows that a large gap
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