Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages / Third Edition

by Edward Lewes Cutts

Under the abbot were a number of officials (obedientiarii), the chief of whom were the Prior, Precentor, Cellarer, Sacrist, Hospitaller, Infirmarer, Almoner, Master of the Novices, Porter, Kitchener, Seneschal, &c. It was only in large monasteries that all these officers were to be found; in the smaller houses one monk would perform the duties of several offices. The officers seem to have been elected by the convent, subject to the approval of the abbot, by whom they might be deposed. Some brief notes of the duties of these obedientiaries will serve to give a considerable insight into the economy of a convent. And first for the Prior:—

In some orders there was only one abbey, and all the other houses were priories, as in the Clugniac, the Gilbertine, and in the Military and the Mendicant orders. In all the orders there were abbeys, which had had distant estates granted to them, on which either the donor had built a house, and made it subject to the abbey; or the abbey had built a house for the management of the estates, and the celebration of divine and charitable offices upon them. These priories varied in size, from a mere cell containing a prior and two monks, to an establishment as large as an abbey; and the dignity and power of the prior varied from that of a mere steward of the distant estate of the parent house, to that of an autocratic head, only nominally dependent on the parent house, and himself in everything but name an abbot.

The majority of the female houses of the various orders (except those which were especially female orders, like the Brigittines, &c.) were kept subject to some monastery, so that the superiors of these houses usually bore only the title of prioress, though they had the power of an abbess in the internal discipline of the house. One cannot forbear to quote at least a portion of Chaucer’s very beautiful description of his prioress, among the Canterbury pilgrims:—

“That of her smiling ful simple was and coy.”

She sang the divine service sweetly; she spoke French correctly, though with an accent which savoured of the Benedictine convent at Stratford-le-Bow, where she had been educated, rather than of Paris; she behaved with lady-like delicacy at table; she was cheerful of mood, and amiable; with a pretty affectation of courtly breeding, and a care to exhibit a reverend stateliness becoming her office:—

“But for to speken of her conscience,
She was so charitable and so piteous,
She would wepe if that she saw a mouse
Caught in a trappe, if it were dead or bled;
Of smalé houndés had she that she fed
With rosted flesh, and milk, and wastel bread;
But sore wept she if one of them were dead,
Or if men smote it with a yerdé smerte;
And all was conscience and tendre herte.
Ful semély her wimple y-pinched was;
Her nose tretis,[59] her eyen grey as glass,
Her mouth full small, and thereto soft and red,
And sickerly she had a fayre forehed—
It was almost a spanné broad I trow,
And hardily she was not undergrow.”[60]

Her habit was becoming; her beads were of red coral gauded with green, to which was hung a jewel of gold, on which was—

“Written a crowned A,
And after, Amor vincit omnia.
Another nun also with her had she,
That was her chapelleine, and priestés three.”

But in abbeys the chief of the obedientiaries was styled prior; and we cannot, perhaps, give a better idea of his functions than by borrowing a naval analogy, and calling him the abbot’s first lieutenant; for, like that officer in a ship, the prior at all times carried on the internal discipline of the convent, and in the abbot’s absence he was his vicegerent; wielding all the abbot’s powers, except those of making or deposing obedientiaries and consecrating novices. He had a suite of apartments of his own, called the prior’s chamber, or the prior’s lodging; he could leave the house for a day or two on the business of the house, and had horses and servants appropriated to his use; whenever he entered the monks present rose out of respect; some little license in diet was allowed him in refectory, and he might also have refreshment in his own apartments; sometimes he entertained guests of a certain condition in his prior’s chamber. Neither the prior, nor any of the obedientiaries, wore any distinctive dress or badge of office. In large convents he was assisted by a sub-prior.

The Sub-prior was the prior’s deputy, sharing his duties in his residence, and fulfilling them in his absences. The especial functions appropriated to him seem to have been to say grace at dinner and supper, to see that all the doors were locked at five in the evening, and keep the keys until five next morning; and, by sleeping near the dormitory door, and by making private search, to prevent wandering about at night. In large monasteries there were additional sub-priors.