A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

The most ancient mitres were very low and simple, being not more than from three to six inches in elevation, and they thus continued till the end of the thirteenth century. In the fourteenth century they gradually increased in height to a foot or more, and became more superbly enriched; their contours also presented a degree of convexity by which they were distinguished from the older mitres. The two horns of the mitre are generally taken to be an allusion to the cloven tongues as of fire, which rested on each of the apostles on the day of Pentecost.

Mitres, although worn in some of the Lutheran Churches, (as in Sweden,) have fallen into utter desuetude in England, even at coronations. They were worn however at the coronations of Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth. See Hiereugia Anglicana, p. 81, et seq. In which work, however, at p. 89, there is an assertion of Dr. Milner’s, which is incorrect, viz. that they were worn at the coronation of George III. In the detailed accounts of that ceremony (see e. g. the Annual Register for 1761) the bishops are described as carrying their square caps, and putting them on when the lay peers assumed their coronets. The mitre is now merely an heraldic decoration, and, as such, occasionally carried at funerals.

MODUS DECIMANDI. This is when lands, or a yearly pension, or some money or other thing, is given to a parson in lieu of his tithes.

MONASTERIES. Convents or houses built for those who profess the monastic life, whether abbeys, priories, or nunneries. (For the origin of monasteries, see Abbey and Monk.)

In their first institution, and in their subsequent uses, there can be no doubt that monasteries were amongst the most remarkable instances of Christian munificence, and they certainly were in the dark ages among the beneficial adaptations of the talents of Christians to pious and charitable ends. They were schools of education and learning, where the children of the great received their education; and they were hospitals for the poor: they afforded also a retirement for the worn-out servants of the rich and noble; they protected the calmer spirits, who, in an age of universal warfare, shrunk from conflict, and desired to lead a contemplative life. But the evils which grew out of those societies seem quite to have counterbalanced the good. Being often exempted from the authority of the bishop, they became hotbeds of ecclesiastical insubordination; and were little else but parties of privileged sectaries within the Church. The temptations arising out of a state of celibacy, too often in the first instance enforced by improper means, and always bound upon the members of these societies by a religious vow, were the occasion of great scandal. And the enormous wealth with which some of them were endowed, brought with it a greater degree of pride, and ostentation, and luxury, than was becoming in Christians; and still more in those who had vowed a life of religion and asceticism.

The dissolution of houses of this kind began so early as the year 1312, when the Templars were suppressed; and, in 1323, their lands, churches, advowsons, and liberties, here in England, were given by 17 Edward II. stat. iii. to the prior and brethren of the hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. In the years 1390, 1437, 1441, 1459, 1497, 1505, 1508, and 1515, several other houses were dissolved, and their revenues settled on different colleges in Oxford and Cambridge. Soon after the last period, Cardinal Wolsey, by licence of the king and pope, obtained a dissolution of above thirty religious houses for the founding and endowing his colleges at Oxford and Ipswich. About the same time a bull was granted by the same pope to Cardinal Wolsey to suppress monasteries, where there were not above six monks, to the value of eight thousand ducats a year, for endowing Windsor and King’s College in Cambridge; and two other bulls were granted to Cardinals Wolsey and Campeius, where there were less than twelve monks, to annex them to the greater monasteries; and another bull to the same cardinals to inquire about abbeys to be suppressed in order to be made cathedrals. Although nothing appears to have been done in consequence of these bulls, the motive which induced Wolsey and many others to suppress these houses, was the desire of promoting learning; and Archbishop Cranmer engaged in such suppression with a view of carrying on the reformation. There were other causes that concurred to bring on their ruin: many of the monks were loose and vicious; they were generally thought to be in their hearts attached to the pope’s supremacy; their revenues were not employed according to the intent of the donors; many cheats in images, feigned miracles, and counterfeit relics, had been discovered, which brought the monks into disgrace; the Observant friars had opposed the king’s divorce from Queen Catharine; and these circumstances operated, in concurrence with the king’s want of a supply, and the people’s desire to save their money, to forward a motion in parliament, that, in order to support the king’s state, and supply his wants, all the religious houses which were not able to spend above £200 a year, might be conferred upon the Crown; and an act was passed for that purpose, 27 Henry VIII. c. 28. By this act about 380 houses were dissolved, and a revenue of £30,000 or £32,000 a year came to the Crown; besides about £200,000 in plate and jewels. The suppression of these houses occasioned discontent, and at length an open rebellion: when this was appeased, the king resolved to suppress the rest of the monasteries, and appointed a new visitation, which caused the greater abbeys to be surrendered apace; and it was enacted by 31 Henry VIII. c. 13, that all monasteries which had been surrendered since the 4th of February, in the twenty-seventh year of his Majesty’s reign, and which thereafter should be surrendered, should be vested in the king. The knights of St. John of Jerusalem were also suppressed by the 32nd Henry VIII. c. 24. The suppression of these greater houses by these two acts produced a revenue to the king of above £100,000 a year, besides a large sum in plate and jewels. The last act of dissolution in this king’s reign was the act of 37 Henry VIII. c. 4, for dissolving colleges, free chapels, chantries, &c., which act was further enforced by 1 Edward VI. c. 14. By this act were suppressed 90 colleges, 110 hospitals, and 2374 chantries and free chapels.

Whatever were the offences of the race of men then inhabiting them, this destruction of the monasteries was nothing less than sacrilege, and can on no ground be justified. They were the property of the Church; and if, while the Church cast off divers errors in doctrine which she had too long endured, she had been permitted to purge these institutions of some practical errors, and of certain flagrant vices, they might have been exceedingly serviceable to the cause of religion. Cranmer felt this very forcibly, and begged earnestly of Henry VIII. that he would save some of the monasteries for holy and religious uses; but in vain. Ridley also was equally anxious for their preservation. It is a mistake to suppose that the monasteries were erected and endowed by Papists. Many of them were endowed before most of the errors of the Papists were thought of: and the founders of abbeys afterwards built and endowed them, not as Papists, but as churchmen; and when the Church became pure, she did not lose any portion of her right to such endowments as were always made in supposition of her purity. (See Num. xviii. 32; Lev. xxv. 23, 24; Ezek. xlviii. 14.)

Although much of the confiscated property was profligately squandered and consumed by the Russells, the Cavendishes, &c., still, out of the receipts, Henry VIII. founded six new bishoprics, viz. those of Westminster, (which was changed by Queen Elizabeth into a deanery, with twelve prebends and a school,) Peterborough, Chester, Gloucester, Bristol, and Oxford. And in eight other sees he founded deaneries and chapters, by converting the priors and monks into deans and prebendaries, viz. Canterbury, Winchester, Durham, Worcester, Rochester, Norwich, Ely, and Carlisle. He founded also the colleges of Christ Church in Oxford, and Trinity in Cambridge, and finished King’s College there. He likewise founded professorships of divinity, law, physic, and of the Hebrew and Greek tongues in both the said universities. He gave the house of Greyfriars and St. Bartholomew’s Hospital to the city of London, and a perpetual pension to the poor knights of Windsor, and laid out great sums in building and fortifying many ports in the Channel. It is observable that the dissolution of these houses was an act, not of the Church, but of the State, in the period preceding the Reformation, by a king and parliament of the Roman Catholic communion in all points except the king’s supremacy; to which the pope himself, by his bulls and licences, had led the way.

Of the monasteries which had been attached to cathedrals before the Reformation, the heads were called Priors, (which answered to dean,) never Abbots; as the bishop was considered as virtually the abbot. The bishop of Ely actually occupied, as he still does, the abbot’s place in the choir, (i. e. the stall usually assigned by the dean,) as he did since the Reformation at Carlisle, though in the latter place he had a throne also. Christ Church monastery in Dublin, which had always been a cathedral chapter, was also secularized at the Reformation.

MONASTERY. In architectural arrangement, monastic establishments, whether abbeys, priories, or other convents, followed nearly the same plan.