It's fascinating how interwoven the monasteries were with daily life. Whenever I end up reading a will from the 1400s and early 1500s, it always strikes me how much money the wealthy were leaving for monks in as many places as possible to "sing for their souls". And then they'd hire one person in particular (sometimes even specifying who, if it was a relative) to be a priest to "sing for their souls" ("and the souls of my mother and father, and my late wives, and all Christian souls" - I do love it when they list them!) in a specific church or even in a particular chapel in a church, for a set number of years. I always picture the priest kneeling in front of an altar and over and over again praying for the person who's paid them to do so. I suppose the priest would feel they were undertaking a very important duty for a soul in Purgatory, but with my modern brain, I just think... Blimey, didn't they get bored?
I really need to read that book! Although the missing anchoresses is a shame. I studied Julian of Norwich briefly at university.
Yes! I find the completeness of the pre-Reformation world quite breathtaking. Perhaps ‘completeness’ is the wrong word, but the interconnectedness of it all. I imagine it would have been impossible to conceive of a world without monasticism because they were so important, not just for spiritual matters, but as sources of healthcare and education, as landowners, as arbiters of trade, and so on.
He doesn’t entirely ignore anchorites but he says from the get-go that he hasn’t been able to give them the attention they deserve. It’s still a fascinating book, though!
As somebody who studied the (very modest) restoration of English monasticism in the 1550s, what has always struck me is that, as you rightly say, monasteries were a blend of spirituality, transaction, tradition and intercession, so tightly interwoven that it was scarcely possible to separate the strands; but once it was done away with, certainly in the English context, it was all but impossible to recreate in its old form.
It’s fascinating how quickly and irrevocably they fell. I often think of them when contemporary institutions are under attack from various quarters. I think people don’t realise how vulnerable even the most durable institutions are.
A combination of a clever and determined man seeking to destroy them and circumstances which benefited a wide coalition of powerful and would-be-powerful people.
Agree with the second part. Not sure about the first. I’ve changed my mind on that a bit in recent years. James Clark’s book on the Dissolution is very good, but it confirmed what I already thought. I don’t know how much in control of the process Cromwell was.
I think to some extent Cromwell had in mind the effective end of monasticism in any recognisable form. He would certainly have realised the potential financial windfall, even if most of the expropriated monastic estates didn't remain in Crown hands for very long; as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1533-40) and Chancellor of the Court of Augmentations (1536-40), he would have understood in very practical terms what benefits were on offer. But my hunch is he objected theologically too: and there isn't much logic to the two-stage process of the Suppression of Religious Houses Act 1535 applying only to smaller convents and the Suppression of Religious Houses Act 1539 dealing with the larger monasteries if the process was ever genuinely about reform. The implication would be that smaller houses were inherently less virtuous than larger ones, which makes no sense. Henry VIII is still playing with the idea of intercessory prayer well into the late 1530s (probably till his death, actually) but Cromwell seems much more clear-sighted and I don't think he intended any house to be reformed and then left in peace. The way he approached the dissolution is not how you'd do it if you were sincere.
He certainly objected on theological grounds to what he regarded as superstitious practices, most obviously the veneration of relics. I think closing the smaller houses did make sense on its own terms because many of them were both too poor and with insufficient numbers to sustain themselves effectively. Consolidating the monastic communities therefore made solid administrative sense. And I think the visitation undertaken by Cromwell's agents in 1535-6 is also consistent with a reform agenda. I suspect the involvement of monastic communities in the Pilgrimage of Grace was a mark against them, although even after than Henry was happy to refound Bisham Abbey in 1537.
I think we have to separate Henry and Cromwell. The former never really ceased being a Catholic in significant theological terms (authority and jurisdiction were of course a whole other business) and he blew very hot and cold within a basically orthodox framework. Cromwell, I think, was quite the opposite. The guilt-by-association of the Pilgrimage of Grace was a black mark against monasticism, but even if Cromwell hadn’t fallen in 1540, I find it very hard to envision thriving, reformed religious houses by, say, 1545; and the conversion of cathedral priories and abbeys into secular communities of deans and canons, like Westminster Abbey, showed alternative uses for those institutions. I wrote a paper about Bisham some years ago, which hopefully picks apart the different threads of what was happening.
That book sounds great, as is your review of it.
It's fascinating how interwoven the monasteries were with daily life. Whenever I end up reading a will from the 1400s and early 1500s, it always strikes me how much money the wealthy were leaving for monks in as many places as possible to "sing for their souls". And then they'd hire one person in particular (sometimes even specifying who, if it was a relative) to be a priest to "sing for their souls" ("and the souls of my mother and father, and my late wives, and all Christian souls" - I do love it when they list them!) in a specific church or even in a particular chapel in a church, for a set number of years. I always picture the priest kneeling in front of an altar and over and over again praying for the person who's paid them to do so. I suppose the priest would feel they were undertaking a very important duty for a soul in Purgatory, but with my modern brain, I just think... Blimey, didn't they get bored?
I really need to read that book! Although the missing anchoresses is a shame. I studied Julian of Norwich briefly at university.
Yes! I find the completeness of the pre-Reformation world quite breathtaking. Perhaps ‘completeness’ is the wrong word, but the interconnectedness of it all. I imagine it would have been impossible to conceive of a world without monasticism because they were so important, not just for spiritual matters, but as sources of healthcare and education, as landowners, as arbiters of trade, and so on.
He doesn’t entirely ignore anchorites but he says from the get-go that he hasn’t been able to give them the attention they deserve. It’s still a fascinating book, though!
As somebody who studied the (very modest) restoration of English monasticism in the 1550s, what has always struck me is that, as you rightly say, monasteries were a blend of spirituality, transaction, tradition and intercession, so tightly interwoven that it was scarcely possible to separate the strands; but once it was done away with, certainly in the English context, it was all but impossible to recreate in its old form.
It’s fascinating how quickly and irrevocably they fell. I often think of them when contemporary institutions are under attack from various quarters. I think people don’t realise how vulnerable even the most durable institutions are.
A combination of a clever and determined man seeking to destroy them and circumstances which benefited a wide coalition of powerful and would-be-powerful people.
Agree with the second part. Not sure about the first. I’ve changed my mind on that a bit in recent years. James Clark’s book on the Dissolution is very good, but it confirmed what I already thought. I don’t know how much in control of the process Cromwell was.
I think to some extent Cromwell had in mind the effective end of monasticism in any recognisable form. He would certainly have realised the potential financial windfall, even if most of the expropriated monastic estates didn't remain in Crown hands for very long; as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1533-40) and Chancellor of the Court of Augmentations (1536-40), he would have understood in very practical terms what benefits were on offer. But my hunch is he objected theologically too: and there isn't much logic to the two-stage process of the Suppression of Religious Houses Act 1535 applying only to smaller convents and the Suppression of Religious Houses Act 1539 dealing with the larger monasteries if the process was ever genuinely about reform. The implication would be that smaller houses were inherently less virtuous than larger ones, which makes no sense. Henry VIII is still playing with the idea of intercessory prayer well into the late 1530s (probably till his death, actually) but Cromwell seems much more clear-sighted and I don't think he intended any house to be reformed and then left in peace. The way he approached the dissolution is not how you'd do it if you were sincere.
He certainly objected on theological grounds to what he regarded as superstitious practices, most obviously the veneration of relics. I think closing the smaller houses did make sense on its own terms because many of them were both too poor and with insufficient numbers to sustain themselves effectively. Consolidating the monastic communities therefore made solid administrative sense. And I think the visitation undertaken by Cromwell's agents in 1535-6 is also consistent with a reform agenda. I suspect the involvement of monastic communities in the Pilgrimage of Grace was a mark against them, although even after than Henry was happy to refound Bisham Abbey in 1537.
I think we have to separate Henry and Cromwell. The former never really ceased being a Catholic in significant theological terms (authority and jurisdiction were of course a whole other business) and he blew very hot and cold within a basically orthodox framework. Cromwell, I think, was quite the opposite. The guilt-by-association of the Pilgrimage of Grace was a black mark against monasticism, but even if Cromwell hadn’t fallen in 1540, I find it very hard to envision thriving, reformed religious houses by, say, 1545; and the conversion of cathedral priories and abbeys into secular communities of deans and canons, like Westminster Abbey, showed alternative uses for those institutions. I wrote a paper about Bisham some years ago, which hopefully picks apart the different threads of what was happening.
https://www.academia.edu/31135454/Second_Thoughts_The_Strange_Case_of_Henry_VIII_and_the_Refounded_Monasteries?source=swp_share