English Monastic Life. Gasquet Francis Aidan

were to show their respect for the community by bowing towards its members, as they passed in procession before them. For the same reason officials, like the cellarer, the kitchener, and the refectorian were bound to see that all was ready in their various departments, so that the convent should never be kept waiting for a meal. In these and numberless other ways monastic regulations emphasised the respect that must be paid to the community as a corporate whole.

      As the end and object of all forms of religious life was one and the same, the general tenor of that life was practically identical in all religious houses. The main features of the observances were the same, not merely in houses of the same Order, which naturally would be the case, but in every religious establishment irrespective of rule. A comparison of the various Custumals or Consuetudinaries which set forth the details of the religious life in the English houses of various Orders, will show that there is sometimes actual verbal agreement in these directions, even in the case of bodies so different as the Benedictines and the Cistercians on the one hand, and the Premonstratensians or White Canons and the Canons Regular on the other. Moreover, where no actual verbal agreement can now be detected, the rules of life are more than similar even in minute points of observance. This is, of course, precisely what anyone possessing a knowledge of the meaning and object of regular life, especially when the number of the community was considerable, would be led to expect. And, it is this fact which makes it possible to describe the life led in an English pre-Reformation monastery in such a way as to present a fairly correct picture of the life, whether in a Benedictine or Cistercian abbey, or in a house of Canons Regular, or, with certain allowances, in a Franciscan or Dominican friary.

      This is true also in respect to convents of women. The life led by these ladies who had dedicated themselves to God in the cloister, was for practical purposes the same as that lived by the monks, with a few necessary exceptions. Its end, and the means by which that end was sought to be obtained, were the same. The abbess, like the abbot, had jurisdiction over the lives of her subjects, and like him she bore a crosier as a symbol of her office and of her rank. She took tithes from churches impropriated to her house, presented the secular vicars to serve the parochial churches, and had all the privileges of a landlord over the temporal estates attached to her abbey. The abbess of Shaftesbury, for instance, at one time, found seven knights’ fees for the king’s service and held her own manor courts. Wilton, Barking, and Nunnaminster as well as Shaftesbury “held of the king by an entire barony,” and by the right of this tenure had, for a period, the privilege of being summoned to Parliament. As regards the interior arrangements of the house, a convent followed very closely that of a monastery, and practically what is said of the officials and life of the latter is true also of the former.

      In order to understand this regular life the inquirer must know something of the offices and position of the various superiors and officials, and must understand the parts, and the disposition of the various parts, of the material buildings in which that life was led. Moreover, he must realise the divisions of the day, and the meaning of the regulations, which were intended to control the day’s work in general, and in a special manner, the ecclesiastical side of it, which occupied so considerable a portion of every conventual day. After the description of the main portion of the monastic buildings given in the last chapter, the reader’s attention is now directed to the officials of the monastery and their duties.

      In most Benedictine and Cistercian houses the superior was an abbot. By the constitution of St. Norbert for his White canons, in Premonstratensian establishments as in the larger houses of Augustinian, or Black, canons, the head also received the title and dignity of abbot. In English Benedictine monasteries which were attached to cathedral churches, such as Canterbury, Winchester, Durham and elsewhere, the superiors, although hardly inferior in position and dignity to the heads of the great abbeys, were priors. This constitution of cathedrals with monastic chapters was practically peculiar to this country. It had grown up with the life of the church from the days of its first founders, the monastic followers of St. Augustine. No fewer than nine of the old cathedral foundations were Benedictine, whilst one, Carlisle, belonged to the Canons Regular. Chester, Gloucester, and Peterborough, made into cathedrals by Henry VIII., were previously Benedictine abbeys.

      In the case of these cathedral monasteries the bishop was in many ways regarded as holding the place of the abbot. He was frequently addressed as such, and in some instances at least he exercised a certain limited jurisdiction over the convent and claimed to appoint some of the officials, notably those who had most to do with his cathedral church, like the sacrist and the precentor. Such claims, however, when made were often successfully resisted, like the further claim to appoint the superior, put forward at times by a bishop with a monastic chapter. So far, then, as the practical management of the cathedral monasteries is concerned, the priors ruled with an authority equal to that of an abbot, and whatever legislation applies to the latter would apply equally to the former. The same may be said of the superior of those houses of Canons Regular, and other bodies, where the chief official was a prior. This will only partially be true in the case of the heads of dependent monasteries, such as Tynemouth, which was a cell of St. Alban’s Abbey, and whose superior, although a prior ruling the house with full jurisdiction, was nominated by the abbot of the mother house, and held office not for life, but at his will and pleasure. The same may be said of the priors of Dominican houses, and of the guardians of Franciscan friaries, whose office was temporary; and of the heads of alien monasteries, who were dependent to a greater or less extent upon their foreign superiors.

      Roughly speaking, then, the office of superior was the same in all religious houses; and if proper allowance be made for different circumstances, and for the especial ecclesiastical position necessarily secured by the abbatial dignity, any description of the duties and functions of an abbot in one of the great English houses will be found to apply to other religious superiors under whatever name they may be designated.

      1. THE ABBOT

      The title abbot (abbas) means father, and was used from the earliest times as a title appropriate to designate the superior of a religious house, as expressing the paternal qualities which should characterise his rule. St. Benedict says that “an abbot who is worthy to have charge of a monastery ought always to remember by what title he is called,” and that “in the monastery he is considered to represent the person of Christ, seeing that he is called by His name.” The monastic system established by St. Benedict was based entirely upon the supremacy of the abbot. Though the Rule gives directions as to an abbot’s government, and furnishes him with principles upon which to act, and binds him to carry out certain prescriptions as to consultation with others in difficult matters, etc., the subject is told to obey without question or hesitation the decision of the superior. It is of course needless to say that this obedience did not extend to the commission of evil, even were any such a command ever imposed. Upon this principle of implicit obedience to authority depended the power and success of the monastic system, and in acknowledging the supreme jurisdiction of the superior, whether abbot or prior, all pre-Reformation religious Orders agreed.

      It is useful at the outset to understand how the abbot was chosen. According to the monastic rule, he was to be elected by the universal suffrages of his future subjects. In practice these could be made known in one of three ways: (1) By individual voting, per viam scrutinii; (2) by the choice of a certain number, or even of one eminent person, to elect in the name of the community, a mode of election known as electio per compromissium; and (3) by acclamation, or the uncontradicted declaration of the common wish of the body. Prior, however, to this formal election there were certain preliminaries to be gone through, which varied according to circumstances. Very frequently the founder or patron, who was the descendant of the original founder of the religious house, had to be consulted, and his leave obtained for the community to proceed to an election. In the case of many of the small houses, and, of course, of the greater monasteries, the sovereign was regarded as the founder; and not unfrequently one condition imposed upon a would-be founder for leave to endow a religious house with lands exempt from the Mortmain Acts, was that, on the death of the superior, the convent should be bound to ask permission from the king to elect his successor. This requirement of a royal congé d’élire was frequently regarded as an infringement of the right of the actual founder, but in practice it appears to have been maintained very generally in the case of houses largely endowed with lands, as a legal check upon them, rendered fitting by