The history of these days therefore is best told in a biographical form, for Islip’s activities and Boston’s slack rule touched every department of monastic life. There are few subjects about which greater misconceptions still prevail than the dissolution of the monastic houses, and while this little book cannot hope to clear these away it may at least provide the true story of one such dissolution. The tale of the revival of the monastery under Feckenham in the reign of Queen Mary has not been told. It is a detached episode of very great interest but of very little importance save in one respect quite unconcerned with the after history of Westminster Abbey, namely that one of Feckenham’s monks lived to pass on the lighted torch of the Benedictine succession.
H. F. Westlake.
The Cloisters,
Westminster Abbey.
CONTENTS
| Foreword | [Page v.] | ||
| [Chapter] | I. | The Management of the Monastery | [1] |
| � | [II.] | Early Years of Brother John Islip | [26] |
| � | [III.] | From 1492 to 1498 | [37] |
| � | [IV.] | Islip as Prior | [53] |
| � | [V. ] | Islip as Abbot | [67] |
| � | [VI.] | Islip in Public Life | [84] |
| � | [ VII. ] | Islip as a Builder | [98] |
| � | [VIII. ] | The Last Days of the Monastery | [112] |
CHAPTER I.
THE MANAGEMENT OF THE MONASTERY.
The Rule of St. Benedict, made about the year 540, contemplated only some four officials as in the main responsible for the management of the monastery. These were the Abbot, Prior, Cellarer and Porter. St. Benedict indeed makes mention of a class of officers called Deans, each of whom would be responsible for a group of ten monks engaged in the work of the field which formed an essential part of his scheme of life, but in actual practice no record exists, in England at least, of the subsequent existence of such officers. In the monastic government also some further distinction was made as between the few monks who were priests and the majority who in the earlier years of monastic history were commonly laymen.
By the time of Lanfranc, in the course of a quite natural development, additional officers had come to be necessary, and besides those of the Rule there is mention in his Constitutions of the Cantor, Sacrist, Guestmaster, Almoner and Infirmarer. In the Customary of St. Peter’s, Westminster, compiled by Abbot Ware about the year 1266, the number of Obedientiaries or principal officers had risen to at least fourteen, while to these must be added the many junior officers who worked directly under them either as deputies or assistants.