For the Benefit of Souls

This chapter focuses on private family chapels. Well known as an effort to claim status through public memorialization, the establishment and operation of such chapels was also legible in terms of pious economy, stewardship, and the virtues of good governance. Enhancing the prestige and memory of their lineages, they also created a mechanism by which earthly coinage could be exchanged for the spiritual currency of prayer, which was both desirable and easily transferable. Its production generated social status, and its strategic circulation enabled prominent Romans to bind themselves to one another and to render their political community more resilient to the instabilities of daily life. Chapel patrons projected an image of themselves as leading members of a rightly ordered society based on a just economy that was at once terrestrial and spiritual. As with the management of lineage patrimony in testaments, the establishment and maintenance of a chapel combined economic virtue with a clear performance of the virtues of good government.