London and the Lesnes Missal: Commemoration, Erasure, and the Economy of Salvation

The present study charts changes in patronage and commemoration at Lesnes Abbey, c. 1200–1400. It focuses principally on the listed names of patrons, donors, and benefactors that accompany the liturgical memento of the dead in the abbey’s illuminated missal (London, Victoria and Albert Museum MSL/1916/404). Situating these marginal entries within the wider archival, archaeological, and manuscript evidence for the abbey, it contends that they reflect a shift in the abbey’s patronage: whereas these commemorations were originally for members of the de Lucy family, descendants of the abbey’s founding patrons, the fourteenth-century entries reflect the house’s increasing reliance on the credit, capital, and patronage of London’s mercantile, clerical, and administrative milieux. The frequency of these entries increased as the abbey’s financial difficulties deepened, and the grants and remittances they represented served partly to mitigate its revenue shortfalls. Ultraviolet light reveals erased names which likely represented temporary or expressly limited-term memorials.