A month's mind (sometimes formerly termed a trental[1]) is a requiem mass celebrated about one month after a person's death, in memory of the deceased.[2]
In medieval and later England, it was a service and feast held one month after the death of anyone, in their memory. Bede (died 735) writes of the day as commemorationis dies. Such "minding days" were of great antiquity, and represent survivals of the Norse minne, or ceremonial drinking to the dead.[3]
"Minnying Days," says Blount, "from the Saxon Gemynde, days which our ancestors called their monthes mind, their Year's mind and the like, being the days whereon their souls (after their deaths) were had in special remembrance, and some office or obsequies said for them, as Obits, Dirges." The phrase is still used in Lancashire.[4]
The month's mind is still an almost universal practice in Ireland (for Roman Catholics) for the family of the deceased and close friends to attend mass and take a meal together.[5][6]
Wills sometimes gave elaborate instructions for the conduct of commemorative services. Thus, one Thomas Windsor (who died in 1479) orders that "on my moneth's minde there be a hundred children within the age of sixteen years, to say for my soul", and candles were to be burned before the rood (cross) in the parish church and twenty priests were to be paid by his executors to sing Placebo, Dirige, and other songs. In the correspondence of Thomas, Lord Cromwell, a commemoration in 1536 is mentioned at which a hundred priests took part in the requiem mass. Commemorative sermons were usually preached, the earliest printed example being one delivered by John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, on Margaret, countess of Richmond and Derby, in 1509.
^"Health" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 13 (11th ed.). 1911. p. 121. see para: Drinking of Healths.—The custom of drinking "health" to the living is most probably derived from the ancient religious rite of drinking to the gods and the dead. The Greeks and Romans at meals poured out libations to their gods, and at ceremonial banquets drank to them and to the dead. The Norsemen drank the "minni" of Thor, Odin and Freya, and of their kings at their funeral feasts. With the advent of Christianity the pagan custom survived among the Scandinavian and Teutonic peoples. Such festal formulae as "God's minne!" "A bowl to God in Heaven!" occur, and Christ, the Virgin and the Saints were invoked, instead of heathen gods and heroes. The Norse "minne" was at once love, memory and thought of the absent one, and it survived in medieval and later England in the "minnying" or "mynde" days, on which the memory of the dead was celebrated by services and feasting.
