The Dependent Priories of Medieval English Monasteries

Studies in the History of Medieval Religion #22

by Martin Heale

A history of the 140 or so daughter houses of English monasteries, considering the reasons for their foundation and their everyday life.

Although hundreds of dependent priories were founded across medieval Europe, they remain little studied and much misunderstood. Usually dismissed as just administrative units, many were in fact genuine religious houses set up forspiritual reasons. This study charts for the first time the history of the 140 or so daughter houses of English monasteries, which have always been overshadowed by the French cells in England, the so-called alien priories. The first part of the book examines the reasons for the foundation of these monasteries and the relations between dependent priories and their mother houses, bishops and patrons. The second part investigates everyday life in cells, the priories' interaction with their neighbours and their economic viability. The unusual pattern of dissolution of these houses is also revealed. The experience of daughter houses sheds a great deal of light on the world of the smallreligious house, and suggests that these shadowy institutions were far more central to medieval religion and society than has been appreciated.
MARTIN HEALE is Lecturer in Late Medieval History, University of Liverpool.

400 pages, Hardcover

First published July 15, 2004

Reviews

[Roland Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jesus promised that “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them,” (Matt 18:20), but the accepted wisdom when it comes to dependent priories is that this wasn’t always true. Beginning with Ramsey Abbey’s establishment of the St Ives priory in Cambridgeshire (pictured) in 1017, it became quite fashionable for large monasteries or lay patrons to set up small monasteries that depended on their “mother” abbeys for everything from food to monks and reading material. Martin Heale has identified 124 such dependent priories that were established between 1017 and 1250, and adds another 19 that were set up over the next 300 years. Many of these dependent priories only ever had a handful of monks living in them, and before Heale’s book we knew very little about them. What we did know was that they weren’t very impressive places, and that life there was “characterised by poverty, indiscipline, and boredom.” Dom David Knowles’ three volume history of The Religious Orders in England (1948), which remains the authoritative text on English monasticism, called these priories “the most considerable of all the elements of spiritual decay in the monastic life of the country.” Heale challenges this interpretation, and although he cannot prove that these were exciting centres of intense spiritual devotion, he does successfully force us to move beyond the stereotypes and to think about them as complex, multifaceted communities with their own unique advantages and disadvantages.

See my full review here: https://wordsbecamebooks.com/2016/05/...