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Lot Essay
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE:
Edward H. Pinto, Treen and Other Wooden Bygones, Bell and Hyman, London 1969. Pages 43-47.
Pinto states '... In the middle ages the small, plain ones, or murrae usuales, were the individual drinking bowls used by monks and others; the large and elaborately silver-mounted vessels, for passing from drinker to drinker at the table, were the murrae magnae, the valuable ceremonial vessels referred to in inventories and the most important drinking vessels used between about 1250 and 1600''. Much lore is quoted about mazers, but perhaps the most unusual is recorded by Pinto regarding the West Country custom of sin eating. ''It was usual to hire a 'sin eater' at the funeral of a wealthy person. The poor sin eater took on himself the sins of the deceased in return for a mazer bowl of maple, filled with ale, and a loaf of bread which he consumed over the corpse on its bier, as the procession to the grave commenced he thus absolved the deceased from walking after death''.
Edward H. Pinto, Treen and Other Wooden Bygones, Bell and Hyman, London 1969. Pages 43-47.
Pinto states '... In the middle ages the small, plain ones, or murrae usuales, were the individual drinking bowls used by monks and others; the large and elaborately silver-mounted vessels, for passing from drinker to drinker at the table, were the murrae magnae, the valuable ceremonial vessels referred to in inventories and the most important drinking vessels used between about 1250 and 1600''. Much lore is quoted about mazers, but perhaps the most unusual is recorded by Pinto regarding the West Country custom of sin eating. ''It was usual to hire a 'sin eater' at the funeral of a wealthy person. The poor sin eater took on himself the sins of the deceased in return for a mazer bowl of maple, filled with ale, and a loaf of bread which he consumed over the corpse on its bier, as the procession to the grave commenced he thus absolved the deceased from walking after death''.