In June 1437 the devout visitors who contributed towards the building, support and repair of the chapel of St James at Bellasize in the parish of Bradoc in the archdeaconry of Cornwall were granted an indulgence of forty days. The only historical reference to this particular chapel suggests that it was a cult chapel with a small number of local devotees, and the indulgence was a means of encouraging these individuals to make financial or even physical contributions towards the chapel's maintenance. At the other end of the scale, the chapel of Holy Trinity in St Day attracted pilgrims from across Cornwall and, as the sixteenth-century geographer John Norden attested, further afield in England. Late medieval Cornish wills further demonstrate the popularity of this cult, revealing twenty-four donations to the chapel and its store.

These two examples show the potential breadth and range of cult chapels, chapels that lacked a pastoral or other similar, official role, and were instead devoted to the worship of a specific saint. This might be a popular local saint or a universal saint adopted by a community, and the chapels could be focal points for local, regional or even supra-regional pilgrimage. These structures remind us that one aspect of the diversity of chapels was that they ranged from local to international in terms of their status and significance.

This chapter considers who the prime movers behind cult chapels were and how they enabled these cults. It also examines whether there were typical locations for such chapels. Like locational chapels, cult chapels tended to be outside parochial structures and the purview of the official Church. Significantly, in contrast to the sites considered in Chapters 2 and 3, these chapels were not necessarily licensed and were, in some cases, the targets of attempts by the Church authorities to suppress them.

Defining a cult chapel

Like locational chapels, cult chapels lacked, by definition, parochial pastoral responsibilities; they had neither baptismal nor burial rights and rarely had permission to celebrate Mass. Instead, their sole purpose was the veneration of one saint. This could be a local saint or a universal saint – particularly popular cults in the later Middle Ages included those of the Virgin Mary, St Anne and St Nicholas – and the chapels could be the focus of local pilgrimage or more widespread devotions.