Page:The Normans in European History.djvu/188

174 Historia Ecclesiastica of Ordericus Vitalis, but he was an historian, not a Boswell, and his experience of half a century of monastic life lies embedded deep in the five solid volumes of this wide-ranging work. One phase of the religious life of mediæval monasteries is admirably illustrated in Normandy, namely the mortuary rolls of the members and heads of religious houses. It early became the custom, not only to say prayers regularly for the departed members and benefactors of such a community, but to seek the suffrages of associated communities or of all the faithful. To that end an encyclical was prepared setting forth the virtues of the deceased and was carried by a special messenger from convent to convent, each establishment indicating the prayers which had there been said and adding the names of the brothers for whom prayers were solicited in return. The two most considerable documents of this sort which have come down to us are of Norman origin, the roll of Matilda, the first abbess of Holy Trinity at Caen, and that of Vitalis, founder of the Congregation of Savigny, which belongs to the year 1122 and is the oldest manuscript of this type extant in its original form, with all the quaint local varieties in execution. Each of these was carried throughout the greater part of England and of northern and central France, reaching in the first case two hundred and fifty-three different monasteries and churches, in the second two hundred and eight, and as the replies were often made at some length in prose or