English monasteries

by J. Charles Cox

CHAPTER I
VOCATION

IT is proposed, in the course of a few chapters, to put on record certain facts and statements on the “religious” (using the word in its technical signification) life of England from the seventh century to the sixteenth. Such statements, though based on the original study of a large number of episcopal registers and monastic chartularies, as well as on a variety of old documents at the Public Record Office or in private keeping, will, in many cases, only yield evidence familiar to those well acquainted with a too little studied subject; but some of the points brought forward may be novel to all.

It may be well, in the first instance, to disabuse the mind of the low motives that are often supposed to have actuated men and women in seeking admission to the cloistered life.

A recent American writer of repute, on Monks and Monasteries (Mr. Wishart, 1900) has said:—

“The jilted lover and the commercial bankrupt, the devoted or bereaved wife, the pauper and the invalid, the social outcast and the shirker of civic duties, the lazy and the fickle, were all to be found in the ranks of the monastic orders.”

Now and again, in a very small minority of cases, such instances as these found their way into the mediæval monasteries, with the result that those whose intentions were so poor became the very ones about whom scandal afterwards arose. But, broadly speaking, such a statement, as applicable to the monastic life generally, is simply an impossible libel, that could not be put forth by any genuine student of monastic life. The notion of a “lazy” man or woman desiring to take vows is an absurdity; that laziness, and other sins, might of course attack cloistered as well as uncloistered lives, no one would deny. The difficulties surrounding the first steps to enter a monastery were by no means inconsiderable, the harshest side of the cloistered life was always set sternly before the applicant, and the novices were severely tested ere they were permitted to take the habit. As we read the extraordinary and heart-rending methods adopted by the English Carthusians to keep all save the most devoted out of their ranks—precautions that were maintained, as can be proved, by the Carthusians of Sheen up to the very moment of their terrible treatment by Henry VIII.—who a short time before had praised them as the very salt of the earth—the marvel is that they could ever find applicants with sufficient courage to enter their ranks.

Among the Lansdowne MSS. of the British Museum is a small fifteenth-century manuscript of the rule of the Carthusians of Sheen. It opens with the form of receiving postulants and novices in English. After a variety of preliminary questions had been put to the postulant in chapter, he retired. Thereupon the prior asked each of the chapter in turn whether they thought the applicant worthy to be admitted. If the replies were in the affirmative, the candidate was recalled, and was thus addressed by the prior:—

“The convent hath deliberated of your humble petition. And now our Statutes doe appoint me breefly to set before your eyes the strictness and austoritie of our order, and the length and prolixitie of the divine office as well of the day office as the night office, which in the wynter is farr longer, beside the office of our Blessed Lady which you are to say daylie in your cell; morover you are to say yearly a hundred dead offices in private, likewise many Psalters (or as we tearme them monachales) which you are yearly to say unless you performe them in masses. For your cloathing and lodging, after you have received the habitt, you can make no further use of lynen except handkerchers towels and the like, but for your body you are to weare a shirte of heare and a cord aboute your loynes and a wolen shirte. You are to lie upon strawe or a bed of chaffe with a blanket betweene. For your diet it is a perpetuall abstinence from flesh, insomuch that in the greatest or most dangerous sickness you can expect no dispensation theirin. Also a good parte of the yeare we abstaine from all Whitmeates, as in Advent, Lent and all the Fridayes of the yeare, besides many other fasts both of the church and of our order in which wee abstain from Whitmeat.

“Likewise from the exaltation of the holie Crosse until Easter wee fast with one meall a day, except some few days of recreation before Advent and Lent. For silence and solitude it ought to be perpetuall, except when our Statutes giveth license or that you aske leave. These be the generall observances of our order common to all as well as seniours as juniours. But besides these generall there are some particular ordained and appointed for novices or newly professed to exercise them in the purgative way, and for theire soner attaining of humility and solid vertue, as is the dressing up of Alters, sweeping of churches and chappels, making cleane of candelstickes, serving of others and suchlike. Which workes by how much they are more vile and contemptible in the eyes of the world, by so much they are more precious and meritorious in the sight of Almighty God, and by how much that men, wether more noble, better learned, or of greater talents doth willingly and affectionately perform the same for the love of God by so much soner they will obtain remission of theire sinnes, be purged from their reliques, be freed from theire former evil habitts and obtaine puritie of hart, humility, and other solid vertues, which are not gotten without humiliation, and therefore those who doe flye or withdraw themselves from y^e works of humility, doe deprive themselves of the best meanes to gaine the vertue itselfe. These according to our Statutes and the Custome of our house I have layed unto you. Putasne ista posse performare?”

In the great majority of cases, it is arguing against fact and reason to try and believe that aught save a generous Christian enthusiasm for the higher life led England’s sons and daughters to embrace the vowed life, from the dawn of monasticism down to its suppression. No one intending to be true to the rule would be moved to embrace it through a worldly motive, or to gain any temporal end, or leisured spiritual ease. Some of the causes that have led men of education, without perhaps any particular prejudice, and only badly informed, to adopt such views, or to write such passages as those just cited from Mr. Wishart’s book are not far to seek. The chief factor in bringing about such a belief was the desire shown and often carried out by the high-born founders or benefactors of religious houses to end their days within the cloister and wearing the monk’s habit. Sometimes such as these passed the last few years of their life in religious retirement, and in other cases only months or even days. In the rough days from which England suffered for some little time after the Conquest, certain of the monastic founders led lives or committed acts unworthy of a Christian layman, and their retirement to a monastery when their powers were failing seems to us, from a modern standpoint, a rather cowardly proceeding. Thus Hugh d’Avranches, made by the Conqueror Count Palatine of Chester, whose active military life was disgraced by many excesses, entered the monastery of St. Werburgh of Chester, of his own foundation, there to end his days; but his religious life was of brief duration, for he died on the fourth day of his retirement from the world. Others beyond doubt entered the monastery, without any expectation of early death, after particular excesses or special crimes, with the idea of doing a something by way of satisfaction for the expiation of their sins, and perchance to put hindrances in the way of their re-occurrence. Those, however, who are ready to draw large conclusions from such cases are quite forgetful of the terms under which those who sought some share in the religious life far on in their earthly career were admitted. No doubt, in several cases, such as that of Count Hugh and other founders who entered their monasteries with the hand of death already on them, the chapter would permit the dying knight to be clad in a professed monk’s habit—and who can blame their charity? But such a line of action was an acknowledged irregularity, and quite at variance with the ordinary custom. Those who study English monastic terms, and know that in the Cistercian abbeys, and not infrequently in other religious houses, such as those of the White Canons, the lay-brothers were termed conversi or converts, sometimes wonder how it came to pass that those who were not quire-monks, who wore a different habit, whose hours for manual labour were far more and for offices and meditation far less, came to be distinguished by such a title as ‘converts.’ It was indeed a special triumph of the established religious life that knights and other unruly men of violent passions should be moved to lead a docile and humble life within the abbey’s precincts, or working in the fields around; and such men when they joined a community and proved themselves amenable to discipline, occasionally joined the conversi, or converts, who were thus originally styled to distinguish them from those who from their youth had been dedicated to the cloister. It was but very rarely that such as these were admitted to the priesthood or became chapter or quire-monks; they only found entrance to the more menial position, and hence by degrees the term conversi or converts became equivalent to lay-brothers. Just the same story is true of the quire-nuns and the working sisters of the other sex. It therefore follows that those jaundiced minds of Mr. Wishart’s cataloguing would after all, if they succeeded in gaining admission, find the way open to nought save the inferior position, and would not become, in any real sense of the term, either monks or nuns.