The Last Monks of Worcester Cathedral Priory (original) (raw)
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ResearchSPAce, Bath Spa University, 2016
This paper is part of a large work in progress based on previously unseen material from the Haslemere collection at Downside Abbey. 1 The main sources consist of approximately 28 boxes of loose, mainly unsorted, documents, kept in the archives of the Abbey. This collection contains the profession lists; obituaries; financial and legal documents; histories and other documents which demonstrate the social, cultural and religious activities of the nuns of the English Benedictine Monastery of the Assumption of Our Blessed Lady between foundation in 1597 and suppression in 1976.
Changing to Suit the Times, a Post-Dissolution History of Monk Bretton Priory, South Yorkshire
Post-Medieval Archaeology 47/1, 2013
The Dissolution of the Monasteries is usually seen as the fi nal event in the lifecycle of monastic sites, and consequently is often discussed in terms of the destruction wrought or the motivations of those who profi ted immediately from their demise. However, the majority of former monastic sites continued to be occupied, maintained and developed in new ways for decades after these events. This paper takes the case study of Monk Bretton Priory, a fairly unremarkable monastic institution, and attempts to demonstrate how an explicitly biographical and long-term examination of a site's post-Dissolution history can provide a more nuanced and balanced narrative.
Archives: The Journal of the British Records Association
This paper evaluates a number of series of document at The National Archives as evidence for the prosopography of monastic orders in England and Wales during the second half of the 1530s. In particular, the testimony of the acknowledgments of the Oath of Supremacy in 1534 (TNA, E 25), the certificates of the suppression commissioners in 1536, the deeds of surrender from 1538-40 (TNA, E 322), and the various types of document which outline monastic pensions are assessed in so far as they record the identity and numbers of monks, regular canons and nuns at the time of the Dissolution. The paper demonstrates that, despite the importance of these various primary sources, none when taken alone completely and accurately describe the religious personnel of individual monasteries, and concludes with a call for a fresh examination and publication of the relevant documents.
The tenth-century Benedictine Reform in England
Early Medieval Europe, 2003
The tenth-century Benedictine Reform in England has rightly been regarded as one of the most signi¢cant episodes in Anglo-Saxon history. Its leaders, Dunstan of Canterbury, Óthelwold of Winchester and Oswald of York and Worcester, infected by contemporary continental enthusiasm for reformed monasticism and inspired by Carolingian texts and practices, transformed English religious life, regenerated artistic and intellectual activities and forged a new relationship between church and king. The Reform^underpinned by the prosperity of the late Saxon economy, and sustained by continental contacts generated by trade and diplomacy as much as by religious needs^touched upon an extraordinary range of Anglo-Saxon life. Three new volumes published over nearly a decade and commemorating the centenaries of the deaths of the Reform's trio of leaders bring together an immense wealth of new research and fresh insights^Yorke's St Óthelwold ("ñðð) is the shortest, with seven essays all sharply focused upon their subject and his milieu. Dunstan's Festschrift, St Dunstan: his Life, T|mes and Cult, ed. N. Ramsay, M. Sparks and T. Tatton-Brown ("ññá), is the most wide-ranging with sixteen essays covering both Dunstan's lifetime and aspects of his posthumous cult and in£uence. St Oswald of Worcester (ed. N. Brooks and C. Cubitt, "ññå) weighs in with ¢fteen articles, particularly exploiting the wealth of the Worcester Cathedral archive to shed new light upon the Bishop. My aim here is to provide a synthesis of this diverse new research and to point to fresh areas for exploration. As co-editor of St Oswald of Worcester (having been commissioned to write this review article before I was asked by Nicholas Brooks to assist him in the book's completion), I have attempted to highlight the signi¢cant conclusions of the three volumes and to emphasise their emergent themes rather than to provide a critique of them. All three books display a proper concern for the nature and context of the primary evidence: the tenth-century Reform was the subject of later mythologising while the dating and provenance of many contem
Medieval society was a 'traditional' society -not in the sense that society was unchanging, because in fact society and culture were highly dynamic. But it was traditional in that tradition legitimized." 1 Surely no truer words were written. Applicable in all sectors of medieval society, these words carry particular relevance for Benedictine monastic society, as groups of men and women, in hugely varying places and contexts, over vast centuries, chose to live and work and strive together, always drawing guidance from unchanging texts while at the same time applying those texts within their own specific contexts. The Rule of St. Benedict -an appreciation of which so many of Michael Casey's publications have both derived from and contributed to -is of course a key medieval example here.