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Some Developments in English Monastic Life, 1216-1336 Some Developments in English Monastic Life, 1216-1336 Dom David Knowles Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th Ser., Vol. 26. (1944), pp. 37-52. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0080-4401%281944%294%3A26%3C37%3ASDIEML%3E2.0.CO%3B2-2 ...

Some Developments in English Monastic Life, 1216-1336
Some Developments in English Monastic Life, 1216-1336 Dom David Knowles Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th Ser., Vol. 26. (1944), pp. 37-52. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0080-4401%281944%294%3A26%3C37%3ASDIEML%3E2.0.CO%3B2-2 Transactions of the Royal Historical Society is currently published by Royal Historical Society. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/rhs.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. http://www.jstor.org Tue Aug 7 18:12:30 2007 SOME DEVELOPMENTS IN ENGLISH MONASTIC LIFE, 1216-1336 BY DOM DAVID KNOWLES, O.S.B., M.A., Litt.D., F.R.Hist.S. Read II October 1943 THE history, as distinct from the antiquities, of English monastic life in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries has received far less attention than has the story of the earlier times or that of the Disso1ution.l The reasons for this neglect are not far to seek : i t is enough to mention the lack of per- sonalities of outstanding influence or sanctity and the absence of literary records at all comparable in number and interest to those of the Anglo-Norman or Angevin periods. As a result, the whole sweep of time between Magna Carta and the accession of Henry VIII is often treated in handbooks and essays as one long slow decline unrelieved by developments or changes of any kind. I t may indeed be granted that in the three centuries con- cerned such changes as occurred were less significant and far less dynamic than in the past, and that isolated records of visitations differ little between the days of Grosseteste and Pecham and those of Warham and Wolsey. Changes there were, nevertheless, which were not without influence both on the monastic body itself and on the relations between the monks and society. I t is the purpose of the present paper to indicate some of these from a study of the sources covering part of the period. By way of preface, a word may be said in explanation of the limiting dates. Of these the earlier needs little attention. There would be a general agreement that the pontificate of Innocent 111, culminating in the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215,marks a turning point in Western Church history more significant than any other between the age of Hildebrand and the advent of Luther. The exploitation of the papal pre- rogative in political as well as in ecclesiastical affairs, the reforming and centralising legislation of the great Council, the arrival of the friars, and the expansion of the universities This paper is a summary of the findings of research still in progress, which will, i t is hoped, issue in a larger work on later medieval monasticism in England. Since the topics touched upon will then find more detailed treatment, with full reference to the sources, footnotes have here been restricted to the minimum, and no attempt has been made to give complete documentation. and scholastic theology all make of the thirteenth century something strikingly different from the twelfth, while for the monks in particular the reforms of the Council, supplemented by papal activities, mark a new epoch. For the lower date there is less to be said. The middle of the fourteenth century is indeed felt to be a time of change in many ways. The series of plagues, the social and economic unrest, the religious innovations and revolts, and the eclipse of the papacy, whatever the degree of their influence and mutual relationship, undoubtedly make the England of 1380 very different from that of 1320, but no single year or event marks the change. The date that has been taken is that of the reforming constitutions of Benedict XII, which defined a number of controversial points for the monks and amal- gamated the two chapters of north and south into a single congregation. In the century and a quarter between these dates there was a marked development in a t least three spheres of monastic life : in the legislation of discipline and reform ; in the orien- tation of intellectual life towards the universities ; and in the economic exploitation of the monastic estates. In all these departments there was a period of maturity round and about the year 1300. The Lateran Council of 1215, under the personal guidance of Innocent 111, effected a greater change in black monk polity than any other occurring between the death of St. Benedict and the pontificate of Leo X1II.l Hitherto the typical non- Cluniac abbeys of the West-that is, all the English abbeys and cathedral priories-had been entirely independent and autonomous. In theory, indeed, the bishop of the diocese was charged with maintaining a decent discipline, but in practice the duty of visitation had been rarely if ever undertaken save by an occasional papal legate, and in the case of the exempt abbeys only a legate had the right of visitation. This freedom from all control had led, at the end of the twelfth century, to a number of deplorable scandals and a series of lawsuits which had given rise to justifiable criticism of the monks. To end all this, Innocent I11 and the fathers of the Council For the circumstances of the Lateran decree, v. D. Knowles, The Monastic Order in England, 370-4 ; its principal clauses are there cited from Mansi, vol. xxii, but the full text has often been printed, most recently by Mr. W. A. Pantin in an appendix to vol. i of his Chapters of the black monks. For a fuller discussion v. Do? U. Berlikre, ' Innocent I11 et la reorganisation des monastkres b6nCdictins , in Revue Bbne'dictine xxxii, 1920, and ' Honorius I11 et les monastkres bknkdictins, in Revue Belge de Philologie et d'Hisfoire, tome 2 , 1923. SOME DEVELOPMENTS IN ENGLISH MONASTIC LIFE 39 in the decree In singulis regnis instituted triennial general chapters to be attended by the heads of all autonomous houses in each ecclesiastical province ; these were to have power of legislation for the whole body and the duty of appointing visitors for all houses. The chapters were to be convoked and directed by two abbots president elected at the previous assembly ; these had, besides unspecified general powers, authority to direct the visitations between chapters. The presidents, however, unlike their modern counterparts, had no direct jurisdiction over the superiors and monks of the province, nor did they visit in person, and the individual monasteries retained full autonomy. The history of the ensuing century is largely a record of the tension between the centrifugal, isolationist tendencies, which have always been a note of Benedictine monachism, and the centralising ten- dencies of the age, which in the Church saw the papacy touch the zenith of its power, and witnessed the rise of the first great religious orders to be fully centralised and pivoted on Rome, while in the State it produced in the England of Edward I such a growth of legislation and administrative efficiency. The Lateran decree was put into effect in England with a readiness scarcely to be found elsewhere. The first chapter met at Oxford in the autumn of 1218, and thenceforward meetings were held with comparative regularity. No register of these chapters survives, but there are many scattered notices of meetings, and copies of the more important sets of decrees have survived from medieval libraries, together with a mass of miscellaneous documents bearing on the matter. The whole corpus, it need scarcely be recalled, has recently been admirably edited for this Society by Mr. W. A. Pantin in volumes which are a model of careful scholarship and informed judgment .l The provincial chapters, as has been said, were charged with two duties : that of reform by means of legislation, and that of the maintenance of discipline by means of visitation. The visitation system introduced in 1215 was explicitly modelled on that of the Cistercians. The chapter was to appoint two or three pairs of visitors, usually themselves ruling superiors, who were to visit the monasteries situated in one or more dioceses. So far as is known these triennial visitations were made with fair regularity throughout our period, but unfortunately not a single copy of acta earlier than Chapters of the English black monks, 1215-1540,ed. W.A. Pantin (Camden Soc., 3rd ser., nos. 45, 47, 54). See also his paper in Trans . R. Hist. S., 4th ser., vol. x, p. 195. the mid-fourteenth century has survived, and the only records are a few scattered references in chronicles or chapter decrees to cases of unusual difficulty or notoriety. Along with this regular visitation the Lateran decrees also reasserted the right and duty of the ordinary to visit all non-exempt houses. These episcopal visitations, though perhaps made with less regularity owing to long vacancies of sees and absences of bishops, have left fuller record, as from the middle of the thirteenth century the acta, or a summary of them, have often survived in such episcopal registers as are extantel Even when the bishop had called, the monks were not done with visitors, for during the first half of the century a series of legates were despatched to England who toured the country with some energy, while in the latter half the metropolitans, especially the two friars, Kilwardby and Pecham, made a series of very thorough visitations in the dioceses of their suffragans. I t was indeed the golden age of visitation, and the institution as an engine of reform was tried out with a thoroughness that might have satisfied even Gerald of Wales, who clamoured for i t so loudly. The legislative activities of the chapters can be divided roughly into four periods. In the first, covering the twenty years following the Council, the decrees were tentative and unmethodical. The prelates seem to have fallen into two groups : that of a few able and influential abbots of leading houses, who were sincerely concerned to implement the Lateran decrees with a view to reform, and that of the majority, the inert mass of conservatives, who wished for no change and put up a passive resistance that was successful in slowing the pace, or even reversing the decrees, of the chapter. These last generally took the form of disconnected enactments directed towards a closer observance of the Rule in the matter of diet and the common life. A second period from c. 1235 to c. 1268 covered some thirty years during which distinguished papal legates such as Otho and Ottobon visited England with an explicit com- mission to put into force the whole body of decretals bearing on the monastic life issued by the three reforming popes Innocent 111, Honorius I11 and Gregory IX. During these years it was the function of chapter to pass on the legatine constitutions, and in 1249 in particular a very complete set of decrees was promulgated and appointed to be read in public 1 C. R. Cheney, Episcopal visitation of nzonasteries i n the thirteenth century (Manchester, 1931)~with its valuable bibliography. Cf. also Bishops and reform, 1215-1272 by M . Gibbs and J . Lang (Oxford, 1934). a t recurring interva1s.l I t was perhaps the first occasion when something like a formal body of constitutions was recognised as binding all the houses. The third period, from 1270 to 1300, saw the legislative efficiency of chapter reach its peak. The meetings of this period were presided over by three or four abbots of marked ability who had grown to manhood in the new world of the thirteenth century-the world of reforming bishops such as Grosseteste, Poore and Richard of Chichester-who had seen the new centralised orders of friars at their maximum of zeal, and who knew of the new learning of the schools, not excepting that of St. Thomas. I t was, moreover, the age of Edward I, notable for legislative advance and administrative reform alike in the royal household, the courts of law and the diocesan chanceries. The abbots, therefore, were reflecting the forces of the age when they drew up and approved in 1277 a long and comprehensive set of constitutions surveying the whole monastic life in a methodical manner, and for the next twenty- five years a series of ordinances of various kinds issued from the chapter^.^ While a large part of this lawmaking dealt with minor issues, and though every clear-cut set of decrees was followed a few years later by records of appeals and mitigations, the party of reform, which aimed at keeping to the letter of the Rule in the matter of diet and the common life, succeeded in carrying its proposals and at least till c. 1300 did not soften its programme. After c. 1300, in the fourth of our divisions, there was a general slowing down of activity and a tendency to scamp attendance at the chapters. The most significant part of the legislation of 1277, how- ever, was not its colour of reform, but the serious attempt made in it to alter the framework of monastic life to suit the changing times. In the Anglo-Norman period the literary and artistic culture of the monasteries had been the highest in the land. Boys entered the cloister young, received a training in grammar and calligraphy, spent long years in memorising the psalter, the lessons and the chant, and then, if talented, proceeded to literary studies or the illumination of manuscripts. Room for these pursuits, which were of a personal nature and did not suffer by delay, was found in the interstices of the very lengthy functions in choir. All this was changed by the rise of secular schools and universities. Recruits no longer came in childhood, but after a schooling in grammar, or even after Pantin, Chapters, i. 34-45. a Ibid., i. 64 ff. a course in arts and law. The intellectual currents shifted from the monasteries to the universities, and from a literary culture to one primarily philosophical or legal. As a result, the monasteries no longer received the intellectual flower of the country ; brilliant young men of twenty were repelled by the prospect of spending years in memorising liturgical texts, and of being without any hope of pursuing their philo- sophical or theological studies in the cloister in after life. The problem thus posed had been met with small and hesitating concessions here and there, but had not been faced as a whole until the able presidents of 1277 made i t a part of their scheme of legislation. Their first task was to clear the way : this they did by greatly lessening the quantity of memory work i.n the novitiate and by allowing special dis- pensations to the older and more distinguished recruits ; they then proceeded to let air into the horarium by shortening some of the chant and by cutting off some of the accretions of psalmody and prayers. Their efforts met with opposition in two quarters-from the mass of conservatism which had no interest in theologyI1 and from the reforming archbishop Pecham, who deplored the loss of liturgical service and was perhaps jealous of the monks' competition in the schools with the friars 2-but the presidents stood firm and the changes were made at many of the greater houses, though they never became universal. Having thus cleared the ground the chapter proceeded to positive measures by ordering a daily lecture on theology in the monasteries. This, however, did not go far, and can only have been valuable at a few large houses ;the chapter, therefore, took the further and revolutionary step of proposing the foundation of a house of studies a t Oxford for students from the whole province, to be maintained by a tax on all the m~nasteries.~ This proposal, again, was strongly opposed by Pecham.4 He was not, however, all-powerful, and in any case he was 1 For this conservative opposition v. documents in Chapters, i. 93-4, 106-7. The two presidents were the abbots of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, and Glastonbury. a For this episode v. D. Knowles, 'Some aspects of the career of Arch- bishop Pecham ', part ii, in English Historical Review, Ivii, 1942, pp. 196-7. For the daily lecture v. Chapters, i. 28, 75. The fullest account of the origins of Gloucester College is Professor V. H. Galbraith's New documents about Gloucester College in Snappe's Formulary, ed. H. E. Salter (Oxf.Hist. Soc. lxxx,1gz4), pp. 336-86b, where a number of the sources are printed. Cf. Pecham, Registrum epistolarum (Rolls Series), ep. cxxvi. If the abbots president are to be believed (Chapters, i. 133) Pecham wished to have i t both ways against the monks, calling them ignorant dunces in his visitations while opposing their scheme of university education as being unmonastic. SOME DEVELOPMENTS IN ENGLISH MONASTIC LIFE 43 mortal. A far more formidable and lasting difficulty was the unwillingness of the independent abbeys, who had never before acted as a body, to agree upon the policy and practical measures necessary for the foundation and functioning of a common house, and to support it when founded with a regular con- tribution of money. The delays and false starts need not be set out here at length ; i t is enough to note that in 1283-4 what later became Gloucester College (the modem UTorcester College) began to exist, though i t was not till c. 1300, after repeated efforts on the part of successive presidents, that the establishment was in full working order as a house of studies for the province, with a somewhat complicated domestic arrangement and a cumbrous constitution which exactly reflected the difficulties experienced in every age by those who attempt to unite black monk houses for a common purpose. Within a few years of the first arrival of the southern monks at Oxford the great Northumbrian monastery of Durham set up a small hall, later Durham College, which received other northern monks,= in 1286-90 ; and in 1331 Christ Church, Canterbury, which almost alone of the greater monasteries had successfully claimed exemption from chapter, set up a hall of its own.2 Thus from c. 1290 onwards there was a steady, if not a spectacular, flow to Oxford of the ablest minds from among the black monks, and many of the best remained to take a doctor's degree and to act as regent master or prior in one of the three halls. This movement to Oxford (followed much later by a similar though more modest establishment a t Cambridge) was perhaps the most important event in the history of the black monks during the whole period between 1215 and the Dissolution. By it the monasteries of England, including the Cistercians, who had actually preceded the others with the foundation of Rewley at Oxford in 1281, renounced all intention either of maintaining a domestic literary culture of their own, or of ret
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