Misericord

Misericord is a term used to denote various offices and articles.

(1) Subsellia-Spanish subsilia-the folding seat of a stall. SEE MISERERES.

(2) A compassionate mitigation of full penance.

(3) According to Lyndwood, a custom in certain monasteries of relieving a number of monks, in alternate weeks, from attendance in choir, and claustral duties.

(4) A hall for eating flesh-meat in a monastery. Some convents, as Canterbury and Westminster, had country hospitals for convalescents.

(5) The word also implied stated indulgences and allowances, according to circumstances, of food, drink, wine or beer, or clothing or bedding, beyond the rule. And, finally, some writers, misled by the glossarist of Matthew Paris, have called a misericord a guzzle of wine, an imperfect definition taken from the refreshment of that liquor granted during the above period. See Walcott, Sacred Archeology, s.v.; Fosbrooke, British Monachism, chapter 48.