Mediæval London, Volume 2: Ecclesiastical

by Walter Besant

Lastly, They were great ornaments to the country, many of them were really noble buildings, and though not actually so grand and neat, yet, perhaps, as much admired in their times as Chelsea and Greenwich Hospitals are now. Many of the abbey churches were equal, if not superior, to our present cathedrals, and they must have been as much an ornament to the country, and employed as many workmen in building and keeping them in repair, as noblemen’s and gentlemen’s seats now [1744] do.”

It will be observed as a doubtful advantage that the nobility and gentry provided for their old servants by corrodies, and had further privileges in the way of making their own “younger children and impoverished friends” monks and nuns, abbots and abbesses. But Tanner belonged to a time when it was still firmly believed that everything good and worth having belonged to gentlefolk, so that, if the Monastic House was of advantage to them, it must necessarily be of advantage to the country. In other respects, also, one cannot altogether agree with the learned writer. If, for instance, the Monastic Houses kept schools open to all comers, what was the need of founding new schools in London in the fifteenth century? Nor can it be accepted as proved that the children of poor parents were admitted either to the abbey or the nunnery school. Let, however, this plea for the Religious stand. There is enough, and too much, to be said on the other side.

“As to the extent of church property,” Milman remarks (v. 201) “in London and the neighbouring counties of Middlesex, Surrey, Essex, the church lands must have been enormous. Hardly a parish in Middlesex which did not belong, certainly so far as manorial rights, to the Bishop of London, the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, the Abbots and Monks of Westminster, and other Religious Houses; the Carthusians, St. John Clerkenwell (Hospitallers), Sion, and many smaller foundations. The chapter of St. Paul’s swept in a broad belt round the north of London till they met the church of Westminster at Hampstead and Paddington. The Abbot of Westminster was almost a Prince of Westminster.”

Again, to quote from the same writer:—

“The wealth of the Clergy, the landed property, even with the tithe, was by no means the whole: and, invaded as it was by aggression, by dilapidation, by alienation through fraud or violence, limited in its productiveness by usage, by burthens, by generosity, by maladministration, it may be questioned whether it was the largest part. The vast treasures accumulated by the Avignonese Pontiffs when the Papal territories were occupied by enemies or adventurers, and could have yielded but scanty revenues, testify to the voluntary or compulsory tribute paid by Western Christendom to her Supreme Court of Appeal. If the Bishops mainly depended on their endowments, to the Clergy, to the monastic houses, oblations (in many cases now from free gifts hardened into rightful demands) were pouring in, and had long been pouring in, with incalculable profusion. Not only might not the altars, hardly any part of the church might be approached without a votive gift. The whole life, the death of every Christian was bound up with the ceremonial of the church: for almost every office was received from the rich and generous the ampler donation, from the poorer or more parsimonious was exacted the hard-wrung fee. Above all, there were the masses, which might lighten the sufferings of the soul in purgatory: there was the prodigal gift of the dying man out of selfish love for himself, the more generous and no less prodigal gift of the bereaved, out of holy charity for others. The dying man, from the King to the peasant, when he had no further use for his worldly riches would devote them to this end: the living, out of profound respect or deep affection for the beloved husband, parent, brother, kinsman, friend, would be, and actually was not less bountiful and munificent. Add to all this the oblations at the crosses of the Redeemer, or the shrines of popular or famous saints, for their intercessory prayers to avert the imminent calamity, to assuage the sorrow, or to grant success to the schemes, it might be, of ambition, avarice, or any other passion, to obtain pardon for sin, to bring down blessing: crosses and shrines, many of them supposed to be endowed with miraculous powers, constantly working miracles. To most of these were made perpetual processions, led by the Clergy in their rich attire. From the basins of gold or the bright florins of the King to the mite of the beggar, all fell into the deep insatiable box which unlocked its treasures to the Clergy. Besides all these estates, tithes, oblations, bequests to the Clergy and the monasteries, reckon the subsidies in kind to the Mendicants in their four Orders—Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, Carmelites. In every country of Latin Christendom, of these swarms of Friars, the lowest obtained sustenance: the higher, means to build up and maintain splendid churches, cloisters, houses. They were a vast standing army, far more vast than any maintained by any kingdom in Christendom: at once levying subsidies to an enormous amount and living at free quarters throughout the land.”

Any investigation into the conditions of monastic life brings the reader into many strange and unexpected places. At first, probably, he is impatient over the futility of the life, the loss of the old ideals, the worship of a Rule which is broken away and disregarded at every point, the contrast between the profession of sanctity and the life of idleness. Presently, he begins to understand that at its worst the monastery always presented some kind of example, if only in its freedom from violence, and in a discipline, lax perhaps, but far more severe than could be found outside. And then he observes how much was done by the monastery, and how much was expected of it. I do not suppose that the indiscriminate charity enjoined upon the brethren, and always practised by them, was favourable to the repression of mendicity, and the discouragement of the tramp and masterless man. Still there is always the immediate need of the starving and the sick and the suffering, which should be met without too jealous questioning into records and antecedents. We need not ask what contributions to Mediæval Literature and Learning were made by this or that convent: it is enough to know that here was a Library, and that here the monks set up reading boxes in their cloisters for those who wished to study. The example was there. We need not ask how far the town folk or the village folk were admitted to the monastery school, or if it was used only for the children of noble parents confided to the Abbot for education. The school was there, it was an example. We need not, even, pry too closely into the private lives of the Religious, though I think that as a rule they were as blameless as could be expected, considering the time and the manners: the example was there: the rule of chastity, temperance, obedience, and contempt of wealth.

Again, the reader cannot fail, presently, to understand the eagerness, the pathetic eagerness, with which the people ran after every new Order of Religion which appeared. One after the other, they were Reformers: they would introduce a sterner discipline, fiercer austerities. One after the other they fell off; the pristine zeal cooled; the new Order followed in the same lines as the old; the brethren preserved the letter and threw away the spirit. Most pathetic of all is the respect, the admiration, the awe, with which the people regarded the Franciscans in their first splendid self-devotion. They saw a company to whom nothing was unclean, nothing was beneath their care, no criminal too base, no wretched woman too low for them, no disease too loathsome, no hovel or den too filthy for the bearers of consolation and of succour to approach. What could be too good, too costly, too precious for such men? They would accept no endowment. They lived on the broken meats of charity. Then let their church be adorned; let the pillars bear aloft the roof over chapels and altars ablaze with gold and lights; let their sacred vessels be of gold—nothing less would serve; let the vestments be of cloth of gold and silver. And so on until the dreadful suspicion arose that the Grey Friars were not so holy and so devoted as of old. They lived upon their reputation for a hundred years and more; and for a hundred years to follow they slowly decayed, until there was no reproach too bitter, no invective too vehement, for the poor Franciscan.

Again, as to the uses to which their Houses were put. They were sanctuaries; they were hospitals; they were places of education for the sons of nobles; they were places of training for young ecclesiastics: great ladies, whom it was not politic to punish with imprisonment were sent to a Monastic House, where they were allowed everything except the liberty of leaving it. Thus Queen Katharine of Valois, after the discovery of her secret marriage, was sent to Bermondsey Abbey till she died: Queen Elizabeth Woodville, who surely must have proved all the miseries that belong to a crown, was also sent to Bermondsey. Dame Badlesmere, after her husband’s execution, was sent to the Clares of London. Then we find the King’s clerks expecting a pension for one of their body whenever a new Abbot or Prior was elected: and we find the King sending his old and incompetent servants to the Monastic Houses for maintenance for the remainder of their lives. Of those who professed much, more was expected.

In a word, what we find in these glimpses of monastic life is that it is all so human—so intensely human. Did we expect anything else? Yes, the Rule demands a life that is superhuman: therefore the Rule breaks down. Its weakness is that men cannot endure it; yet they have taken the vows; they cannot break free from the Rule; but they may introduce alleviations and palliatives—in every Monastic House there was the Misericordia, where indulgences were granted and conferred.

So we begin with prejudice and with contempt, and we end with sympathy and pity. After so many years we no longer feel, though we may understand, the exasperation with which the abuse of the Monastic system came to be regarded: the accumulation of vast estates in the hands of a multitude who toiled not neither did they spin: who professed an austere Rule and lived a luxurious life: who despised wealth but enjoyed all that wealth could give: who pretended to pay no regard to birth yet admitted into their ranks none but those of gentle blood: with whom the difference between profession and practice was monstrous and scandalous.