All Souls Day Generosity

Ensuring salvation in this manner was a significant investment. One needed to be sure that if they lavished riches on the poor they could expect an advantageous return. But the issue with these mortuary provisions, is that one could never be assured that the investment would pay off, and that the recipients of their generosity would honour their part of the exchange. They needed the poor’s help to profit in the afterlife, and this could be managed in several ways. The first option was to ensure the reliability of the recipient through selective generosity, discriminating between those ‘worthy’ poor and vagabonds who could not be trusted. The second option, was to revert to the antique tradition of giving to ‘clients’, or to those with whom you had a personal connection.
An extract from A Sermon for All Souls Day, demonstrates how prayer was encouraged, for ‘saints have often heard devils wails when souls were delivered form their hands through good prayers.’ The laity were warned that if they failed to execute the deceased’s bequests, or show generosity in prayer, their own soul would suffer as a consequence. A Knight prior to battle beseeched his cousin that, should he fall, his horse was to be sold for