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.
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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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