Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-31T09:47:41.722Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The English Monastic Cathedrals in the Fifteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Barrie Dobson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It might well appear an excessively abrupt change of pace to turn from Professor Bossy's topic to my own—to move from the most personal of all manifestations of individual Christian worship to the most formidably complex institutional corporations late medieval England has to offer for our contemplation. However, there is little about medieval monasticism, that ambivalent exercise in seeking one's own route to the divine but not in one's own company, which is quite what it seems. For perhaps no audiences in fifteenth-century England would have listened to Professor Bossy's lecture with greater fascination than the monastic communities of Canterbury, Durham, Ely, Norwich, Rochester, Winchester, and Worcester cathedrals. Not only did those Benedictine monks have an obligation to pray as assiduously as any religious in the country but they were also and ipso facto required to do so in the most public and exposed of all possible arenas, the formal prayer houses par excellence as well as the ecclesiae matrices of seven of late medieval England's nineteen dioceses. Precisely how those monks would have explained what they were doing when engaged in acts of communal and private prayer is no easy matter for a modern historian to surmise; but it seems certain that many of them must have been highly concerned about the purpose and quality of their devotions, not least because they could hardly have ignored the priority placed on the oratorium and oratio within the Rule of St Benedict, to chapters of which they listened more or less attentively every day of their professed lives.

Type
Christian Life in the Later Middle Ages
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 1 , December 1991 , pp. 151 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The apparent ambiguities here are discussed in R B 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict in Latin and English with Notes ed. Fry, T. M. (Minnesota, 1980), 412–14Google Scholar.

2 Collett, B., ‘The Civil Servant and Monastic Reform: Richard Fox's Translation of the Benedictine Rule for Women, 1517’, Monastic Studies: The Continuity of Tradition, ed. Loades, J. (Bangor, 1990), 211–28Google Scholar. As early as 1277 the statutes of the General Chapter of the English Black Monks in the province of Canterbury had required all novices to learn the Rule by heart: Documents illustrating the activities of the General and Provincial Chapters of the English Black Monks, 1215–1540, ed. Pantin, W. A. (Camden Third Series, xlv, xlvii, liv, 1931–1937), i, 73–4Google Scholar; cf. ibid., i, 95, 111–12, 250; ii, 40, 70, 84. By the early fifteenth century English translations of the Rule were also readily accessible in monastic cathedral libraries: see, e.g., Catalogi Veteres Librorum Ecclesiae Cathedralis Dunelm., ed. Botfield, B. (Surtees Society, vii, 1838), 107Google Scholar.

3 Dobson, R. B., Durham Priory, 1400–1450 (Cambridge, 1973), 51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Although Pearce's, E. H.The Monks of Westminster (Notes and Documents relating to Westminster Abbey, no. 5, Cambridge, 1916)Google Scholar still remains the only systematic attempt to publish a complete biographical register of a major medieval English monastery, that omission is at last in course of being rectified by Dr Joan Greatrex, Mr Alan Piper and other scholars. Cf. Dobson, R. B., ‘Recent Prosopographical Research in Late Medieval English History: University Graduates, Durham Monks, and York Canons’, Medieval Lives and the Historian: Studies in Medieval Prosopography (Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1986), 187–92Google Scholar.

5 Smith, R. A. L., Collected Essays (1947), 23–73Google Scholar. The first surviving obedientiary account at the cathedral of Norwich is the Camera Prioris roll of 1265; and at Durham the earliest account is that of the bursar in 1278: Saunders, H. W., An Introduction to the Obedientiary and Manor Rolls of Norwich Cathedral Priory (1930), 18–21Google Scholar; Dean and Chapter of Durham Muniments, Bursar 1278–9; Cf. (for a fragment of a Winchester receiver's account of as early as 1280–1) The Register of the Common Seal of the Priory of St.Swithun, Winchester, 1345–1497, ed. Greatrex, J. (Hampshire Record Series, ii, 1979), 268Google Scholar.

6 The Archives of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, ed. Thomson, R. M. (Suffolk Records Society, xxi, 1980), 4–5Google Scholar; Pantin, W. A., ‘English Monastic Letter-Books’, Historical Essays in honour of James Tait, ed. Edwards, J. G., Galbraith, V. H., and Jacob, E. F. (Manchester, 1933), 201–22Google Scholar. Several monastic cathedral registers are in fact more informative about diocesan affairs than the external and internal concerns of the convent; see, e.g., Canterbury Cathedral Library, Registers F, R, G, Q, (Sede Vacante Registers, 1292–1502); Register of Common Seal, passim.

7 A fully developed system of internal accounting is visible at Christ Church, Canterbury, by the early thirteenth century: see the Assisa Scaccarii rolls which survive there from as early as 1224. It was at a meeting of the Black Monk Chapter of the northern province at Durham in 1276 that Selby Abbey was instructed to introduce the then novel office of bursar ‘to account for the receipts of that house’: Chapters of Black Monks, i. 226, 238, 251; cf. Smith, R. A. L., ‘TheRegimen Scaccarii in English Monasteries’, Supra, 4th ser. xxiv (1942), 73–94Google Scholar.

8 Letters to Cromwell and Others on the Suppression of the Monasteries, ed. Cook, G. H. (1965), 229–30Google Scholar. The 20 Benedictines who served the cathedral church of Coventry eventually surrendered their convent to the Crown in the very same month (January 1539) as did the 13 monks of Bath cathedral priory: Knowles, D. and Hadcock, R. N., Medieval Religious Houses, England and Wales (2nd edn, 1971), 59, 63Google Scholar.

9 Dobson, R. B., ‘Cathedral Chapters and Cathedral Cities: York, Durham and Carlisle in the Fifteenth Century’, Northern History, xix (1983), 24–5Google Scholar.

10 Owen, D., The Library and Muniments of Ely Cathedral (Dean and Chapter of Ely, 1973)Google Scholar. To the approximately 1,500 surviving medieval obedientiary account rolls of Norwich cathedral priory the handlist available in the Norwich Record Office is a clearer guide than Saunders, Rolls of Norwich.

11 For obvious reasons, chantry and other chapels, private chambers and the offices or ‘checkers’ of obedientiaries seem to have been especially vulnerable to destruction or alteration in the years after 1540: see, e.g., The Rites of Durham, ed. Fowler, J. T. (Surtees Soc. cvii, 1903), 83–4, 99, 102–4, 283–4Google Scholar.

12 Clifton-Taylor, A., The Cathedrals of England (1967), 195–6Google Scholar; Harvey, J., The Perpendicular Style, 1330–1485 (1978), 215–33Google Scholar.

13 Southern, R. W., Saint Anselm, A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge, 1990), 308–29Google Scholar; Chibnall, M., Anglo-Norman England, 1066–1166 (Oxford, 1986), 41–3Google Scholar.

14 Knowles, D., The Monastic Order In England (2nd edn., Cambridge, 1963), 619CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The cathedral chapter at Coutances was in fact reorganised on a secular basis before the end of the eleventh century: see Gallia Christiana, ed. Marthe, D. de Sainte (Paris, 1870–), xi, Instrumenta, 220Google Scholar; Edwards, K., The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages (2nd. edn., Manchester, 1967), 8–17, 169Google Scholar.

15 After an exceptionally severe demographic crisis in 1376, when only 46 Christ Church monks were present at Archbishop Simon Sudbury's visitation of that year, the extensive evidence suggests that the number of Canterbury Cathedral brethren never seems to have fallen below 70 during the course of the fifteenth century: see Canterbury Cathedral Library, Register G, fos. 229V, 235V–237, 285; Wilkins, D., Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae (4.Vols, London, 1737), iii, 110Google Scholar; Jacob, E. F., Archbishop Henry Chichele (1967), 20Google Scholar; Smith, R. A. L., Canterbury Cathedral Priory, A Study in Monastic Administration (Cambridge, 1943), 3–4Google Scholar.

16 See, e.g., Dean and Chapter of Durham Muniments, 1.7. Pont., no. 17; Locellus XIII, no. n; Register III, fos. 22–3, 213; The Register of Thomas Langley, Bishop of Durham, ed. Storey, R. L. (Surtees Soc., 6 vols. 1956–1970), i. 67–8; ii. 117–19Google Scholar.

17 Dobson, , Durham Priory, 297–341Google Scholar. However, these advantages, if such they were, were largely denied some of the other fifteenth-century monastic cathedrals, among whom only Norwich possessed as many as 5 daughter houses (all comparatively small) while Winchester held none at all (Knowles and Hadcock, 59, 61, 64–5, 72, 74, 80–1).

18 These provisional estimates will undoubtedly soon require refinement in the light of Dr Joan Greatrex's recent researches; but see, e.g., Cambridge University Library, Ely Cathedral Priory Muniments 5/3/1–2 (chamberlains' accounts), nos. 25, 26, 29, 33 (1404–46); 5/11 (feretrars' accounts), no. 3 (1423–4); Norfolk Record Office, DCN 1/5/95, nos. 94 III (chamberlains' accounts); Saunders, , Rolls of Norwich, 160–2Google Scholar; Knowles and Hadcock, 64–5, 72, 81; Russell, J. C., ‘The Clerical Population of Medieval England’, Traditio, ii (1944), 189–90Google Scholar.

19 Register of Common Seal, p. 151; cf. pp. 24, 100—1.

20 Russell, , ‘Clerical Population’, 190Google Scholar; Dobson, , ‘Cathedral Chapters’, 24–5Google Scholar; Swanson, R. N., ‘Sede Vacante Administration in the Medieval Diocese of Carlisle; the Accounts of the Vacancy of December 1395 to March 1396’, Trans, of Cumberland and Westmorland Antiq. and Archaeol. Soc., xc (1990), 190Google Scholar.

21 Visitations of the Diocese of Norwich, A.D. 1492–1532, ed. Jessopp, A. (Camden Society New Series, xliii, 1888), 73Google Scholar; Literae Cantuarienses, ed. Sheppard, J. B. (Rolls ser. lxxxv, 1887–1889)Google Scholar, i. 24; Knowles and Hadcock, 81; Dobson, R. B., ‘Mynistres of Saynt Cuthbert;’ the Monks of Durham in the Fifteenth Century (Durham Cathedral Lecture, 1972), 10–11Google Scholar.

22 Knowles, D., The Religious Orders in England (Cambridge, 1948–1959), ii. 261Google Scholar.

23 Snape, R. H., English Monastic Finances in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1926)Google Scholar, passim. For an extreme example of a cathedral prior (William Fressel of Rochester in 1511) simultaneously occupying the offices of treasurer, cellarer, chamberlain, almoner, precentor and infirmarian, see Smith, , Collected Essays, 53Google Scholar.

24 Powell, J. Enoch and Wallis, K., The House of Lords in the Middle Ages (1968), 303–4, 499, 536, 553Google Scholar; Knowles, , Religious Orders, ii. 299–306Google Scholar; Swanson, R. N., Church and Society in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1989), 109–10Google Scholar.

25 Chapters of Black Monks, ii. 95–223; Chapters of the Augustinian Canons, ed. Salter, H. E. (Oxford Historical Soc., lxxiv, 1920)Google Scholar. The complete exemption of the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury, from the authority of the English Black Monk chapters had been confirmed by Urban VI in 1379: Canterbury Cathedral Library, Register G, fo. 213; Wilkins, , Concilia, iii, 126Google Scholar.

26 Dean and Chapter of Durham Muniments, Reg. Parv. ii, fos. 111–12; Dobson, , Durham Priory, 229Google Scholar.

27 Lit. Cant., ii. 328–32; Wilson, J. M., The Worcester Liber Albus (1920), xivGoogle Scholar.

28 Rule of St Benedict, 1980, 313.

29 Morris, R., Cathedrals and Abbeys of England and Wales: The Building Church, 600–1540 (1979), 56Google Scholar.

30 Knowles, D., ‘The Cathedral Monasteries’, Downside Review, li (1933), 88Google Scholar.

31 As late as 1228 Gregory IX had been prepared to discuss the archbishop's proposals to replace the Christ Church monks as the cathedral clergy of the see of Canterbury by canons, secular: Royal and other Letters illustrative of the Reign of Henry III ed. Shirley, W. W. (Rolls ser. xxvii, 1862–1868), i. 339Google Scholar; Gibbs, M. and Lang, J., Bishops and Reform, 1215–1272 (1934), 78–9Google Scholar.

32 Le Neve, John, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae: 1066–1300. ii (1971), 19–21, 76–8Google Scholar; 1300–1541, iv (1963), 37–40; 1300–1541, vi (1963), 97–9.

33 Neve, Le, Fasti, 1066–1300, ii. 6–8Google Scholar; 1300–1541, iv. 4–5, 45. Henry Woodlock (elected bishop of Winchester in 1305 when prior of St Swithun's) was the only member of the regular clergy ever to preside over the diocese of Winchester in the later middle ages. See Johnstone, H., ‘Henry Woodlock of Winchester and his Register’, Church Quarterly Rev. cxl (1945), 154–64Google Scholar.

34 Richard of Gloucester's powerful influence undoubtedly helped to secure the promotion to high ecclesiastical office of Richard Redman and Richard Bell: Ross, C., Richard III (1981), 43, 156, 181Google Scholar; Dobson, B., ‘Richard Bell, Prior of Durham (1464–78) and Bishop of Carlisle (1478–95)’, Trans, of Cumberland and Westmorland Antiq. and Archaeol. Soc., new ser. lxv (1965), 207–11, 215Google Scholar.

35 For Wolsey's decisive role in ensuring the completion of the English Augustinian canons' academic college of St Mary's at Oxford, see Chapters of the Augustinian Canons, 129–30, 134–5; Evans, E., ‘St. Mary's College in Oxford for Austin canons’, Oxfordshire Arch. Soc. Reports, no. 26 (1931), 369–89Google Scholar. Cf. Bowker, M., The Henrician Reformation: the Diocese of Lincoln under John Longland, 1521–1547 (Cambridge, 1981), 17–28Google Scholar; Humanism, Reform and the Reformation, The Career of Bishop John Fisher, ed. Bradshaw, B. and Duffy, E. (Cambridge, 1989), 73–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Collett, , ‘Fox's Translation of Benedictine Rule’, 214–24Google Scholar; Milne, J. G., The Early History of Corpus Christi College, Oxford (Oxford, 1946), 2Google Scholar; Harper-Bill, C., The Pre-Reformation Church in England, 1400–1530 (1989), 43Google Scholar.

37 Cf. Harper-Bill, C., ‘Dean Colet's Convocation Sermon and the Pre-Reformation Church in England’, History, lxxiii (1988), 195–6Google Scholar.

38 Thompson, A. Hamilton, The Cathedral Churches of England (1925), 22–3, 165Google Scholar; The English Clergy and their Organisation in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1947), 72–5Google Scholar.

39 See, e.g., Dobson, , Durham Priory, 227–9Google Scholar.

40 At Rochester in the early sixteenth century it has been calculated that only 4% of the bishop's ecclesiastical patronage was derived from non-parochial sources: Humanism, Reform and Reformation, 72–3, 251–2. For the scarcity of episcopal clerical counsellors in the diocese of Carlisle, see Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, York, Reg. 18 (Henry Bowet, 1407–23), fos. 284–5.

41 Wilson, E., ‘A Poem presented to William Waynflete as Bishop of Winchester’, Middle English Studies presented to Norman Davis in honour of his seventieth birthday (Oxford, 1983), 139Google Scholar. Cf. Lit. Cant., iii. 274, 285, 287, 304, 333; Dobson, , Durham Priory, 238Google Scholar.

42 Register of Common Seal, 105–7, 113–14; Harriss, G. L., Cardinal Beaufort, A Study of Lancastrian Ascendancy and Decline (Oxford, 1988), 378–9Google Scholar; Woodruff, C. E. and Danks, W., Memorials of the Cathedral and Priory of Christ in Canterbury (1912), 194–5Google Scholar.

43 See, e.g., Visitations of Norwich, 7–8; Kentish Visitations of Archbishop William Warham and his Deputies, 1511–12, ed. Wood-Legh, K. L. (Kent Records, xxiv, 1984), 1–6Google Scholar. Cf. Greatrex, J., ‘Episcopal Relations with monastic chapters as reflected in 14th Century Visitation Records’, Sonderdruck aus Regulae Benedicti Studia, Annuarium Internationale 14/15 (1988), 309–22Google Scholar; Harbottle, B., ‘Bishop Hatfield's Visitation of Durham Priory in 1354’, Archaeologia Aeliana, 4th ser. xxxvi (1958), 81–100Google Scholar; Cheney, C. R., ‘Norwich Cathedral Priory in the Fourteenth Century’, Bull, of John Rylands Library, xx (1936), 105–17Google Scholar.

44 Dean and Chapter of Durham Muniments, 2.7. Pont. nos 8, 9; Dobson, , ‘Mynistres of Saynt Cuthbert’, 22–38Google Scholar; cf. Ely Chapters and Visitation Records, 1241–1515, ed. Evans, S. J. A., in Camden Miscellany, xvii (Camden 3rd ser. lxiv, 1940), pp. xiv–xvi, 52–67Google Scholar.

45 Chapters of Black Monks, ii. 162; iii. 82–4; Dobson, , Durham Priory, 247–8Google Scholar.

46 Dean and Chapter of Durham Muniments, 1.4. Pont. no. 4; Greatrex, J., ‘Monastic or Episcopal Obedience: the Problems of the Sacrists of Worcester’, Worcestershire Historical Society, Occasional Publications, 3 (1980), 1–16Google Scholar.

47 Canterbury College, Oxford, ed. Pantin, W. A. (Oxford Historical Society, vi–viii, xxx; 1947–1950, 1985), iii. 148–55Google Scholar; Letters and Papers, Henry VIII, xiii (i), no. 527.

48 E.g., Canterbury Cathedral Library, Reg. S, fos. 231, 249, 251–4; Dobson, , Durham Priory, 84–8Google Scholar.

49 Stone's, Chronicle, 21, 39, 46, 105–6, 116Google Scholar.

50 Canterbury Cathedral Library, ‘Eastry Correspondence’; Lit. Cant., i. 221–43, in. 70–2, 138–40; Hogan, T. L., ‘The Memorandum Book of Henry of Eastry, Prior of Christ Church Canterbury’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1966)Google Scholar, i. passim.

51 Pollard, A. J., ‘St Cuthbert and the Hog: Richard III and the County Palatine of Durham, 1471–85’, in Kings and Nobles in the Later Middle Ages: A Tribute to Charles Ross, ed. Griffiths, R. A. and Sherborne, J. (Gloucester, 1986), 118–19Google Scholar; Dobson, , ‘Richard Bell’, 205–6Google Scholar.

32 Emden, A. B., A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500 (3 vols, 1957–1959), ii 783Google Scholar; Jacob, , Henry Chichele, 90Google Scholar; Churchill, I. J., Canterbury Administration (2 vols, 1933), ii. 5–6Google Scholar.

53 Owen, D. M., Ely Records: A Handlist of the Records of the Bishop and Archdeacon of Ely (Cambridge, 1971), pp. vii–viii, 20–21Google Scholar; Woodruff, and Danks, , Canterbury, 274Google Scholar; Rites of Durham, 73, 252.

54 Haines, R. M., Ecclesia Anglicana: Studies in the English Church of the Later Middle Ages (Toronto, 1989), 39–52Google Scholar.

55 Ibid., 46; cf. Register of Henry Chichele, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1414–1443, ed. Jacob, E. F. (Canterbury and York Soc., 1937–1947), iv. 150–2, 241–2Google Scholar.

56 Pantin, W. A., ‘General and Provincial Chapters of the English Black Monks’, Supra, 4th ser. x. (1927), 195–263Google Scholar; Chapters of Black Monks, iii. 400; Harvey, B., ‘The Monks of Westminster and the University of Oxford’, in The Reign of Richard II, ed. du Boulay, R. H. and Barron, C. M. (1971), 118–20Google Scholar.

57 Chapters of Black Monks, ii. 214. For the university sermons regularly preached by the senior Black monk scholars at Oxford, see, e.g., Oxford University Archives, Reg. Eee, fos 362V, 366V, 392V.

58 Stone's, Chronicle, 24, 32–3, 188, 190, 193Google Scholar.

59 Ibid. 137; BRUO, ii. 1094; Owst, G. R., Preaching in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1926), 28–32, 181–6, 249–51Google Scholar; Emden, A. B., A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford, A.D. 1501 to 1540 (Oxford, 1974), 504Google Scholar.

60 Chapters of Black Monks, iii. p. ix.

61 Some Durham College Rolls, ed. Blakiston, H. E. D., in Collectanea iii (Oxford Historical Society, xxxii, 1896), 1–76Google Scholar; Dobson, , Durham Priory, 351–3Google Scholar; Canterbury College, iv. 218–28.

62 J. Greatrex, ‘Monk Students from Norwich Cathedral Priory at Oxford and Cambridge: their attendance record and their impact on their community, c. 1300–1530’ (E. H. R., forthcoming).

63 Mackean, W. H., Rochester Cathedral Library (Rochester, 1953), 8Google Scholar; Owen, , Library and Muniments of Ely Cathedral, 1–4Google Scholar.

64 James, M. R., The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover (Cambridge, 1903), xxxvlvGoogle Scholar; Piper, A. J., ‘The libraries of the monks of Durham’, in Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts and Libraries: Essays presented to N. R. Ker, ed. Parkes, M. B. and Watson, A. G. (1978), 213–49Google Scholar; Newman, J., ‘Oxford Libraries before 1800’, Archaeological Journal, cxxxv (1978), 248–50Google Scholar.

63 Cambridge University Library, EDR, G2/3, fo. 28; cf. Rites of Durham, 48.

66 No comprehensive investigation of saints' cults and shrines at fifteenth-century cathedrals has yet been attempted; but see Finucane's, R. C. discussion of ‘new shrines and old saints’ in Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in Medieval England (1977), 191–202Google Scholar.

67 Canterbury College iii. 151–4; cf. Compotus Rolls of the Obedientiaries of St Swithun's Priory, Winchester, ed. Kitchin, G. W. (Hampshire Record Society, vii, 1892Google Scholar), passim; Dobson, , Durham Priory, 66–9Google Scholar.

68 The Monastic Setting of Ely, ed, Holmes, R. and Youell, G. (Ely, 1974), 42–7Google Scholar; Gilyard-Beer, R., Abbeys (HMSO, 1958), 48Google Scholar.

69 Rooke, G. H., ‘Dom William Ingram and his Account-book, 1504–1533’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, vii (1956), 30–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.