Monastic And Religious Orders In Britain 1000 1300

This book traces the development of monasticism in England, Scotland and Wales from the last half century of Anglo-Saxon England to 1300. It explores the nature of the impact of the Norman settlement on monastic life, and how Britain responded to new, European ideas on monastic life. In particular, it examines Britain's response to the needs of religious women. It covers every aspect of the life and work of the religious orders: their daily life, the buildings in which they lived, their contribution to intellectual developments and to the economy. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between religious houses and their founders and patrons. This shows the degree of dependence of religious houses on local patrons. Indeed, one major theme which emerges from the book is the constant tension between the ideals of monastic communities and the demands of the world.

"Monasticism in Late Medieval England, c.1300-1535 provides the first collection of translated sources on this subject. The volume covers both male and female houses of all orders and sizes, and offers a range of new perspectives on the character and reputation of English monasteries in the later middle ages. The documents, many translated into English for the first time, illuminate every facet of monastic life in late medieval England. The first section surveys the internal affairs of English monasteries, including recruitment, the monastic economy, standards of observance and learning. The second part looks at the relations between monasteries and the world, exploring the monastic contribution to late medieval religion and society and lay attitudes towards monks and nuns in the years leading up to the Dissolution."--Publisher description.

Challenging the view that England's monasteries and mendicant convents fell into a headlong decline long before Henry VIII set about destroying them at the Dissolution, these essays offer a reassessment of the religious orders on the eve of the Reformation.

Dom David Knowles surveys the monastic life and activities in the early Tudor period. He examines different abbots, bishops and others that shed new light on the fortunes of the Cistercian abbeys and on the influence upon the monks of the new humanist education.

This is the first of a series of volumes which have become recognised as one of the great monuments of English historical scholarship. The late Dom David Knowles began work on the subject in 1929; The Monastic Order in England appeared in 1948, 1955 and 1959. This volume begins the account of a whole way of Christian life and a unique element of English civilisation, from Anglo-Saxon times to the mid-sixteenth century. It opens with a survey of monastic life and activities of the old orders to 1340; goes on to record the impact of the Friars, and concludes with a general survey of the monasteries and their world.

This book was originally published in 1940 and was quickly recognised as a scholarly classic and masterpiece of historical literature. It covers the period from about 940, when St Dunstan inaugurated the monastic reform by becoming abbot of Glastonbury, to the early thirteenth century.

New approaches to understanding religious women's involvement in monastic reform, demonstrating how women's experiences were more ambiguous and multi-layered than previously assumed. Over the last two decades, scholarship has presented a more nuanced view of women's attitude to and agency in medieval monastic reform, challenging the idea that they were, by and large, unwilling to accept or were necessarily hostile towards reform initiatives. Rather, it has shown that they actively participated in debates about the ideas and structures that shaped their religious lives, whether rejecting, embracing, or adapting to calls for "reform" contingent on their circumstances. Nevertheless, fundamental questions regarding the gendered nature of religious reform are ripe for further examination. This book brings together innovative research from a range of disciplines to re-evaluate and enlarge our knowledge of women's involvement in spiritual and institutional change in female monastic communities over the period c. 1000 - c. 1500. Contributors revise conventional narratives about women and monastic reform, and earlier assumptions of reform as negative or irrelevant for women. Drawing on a diverse array of visual, material and textual sources, it presents "snapshots" of reform from western Europe, stretching from Ireland to Iberia. Case-studies focussing on a number of different topics, from tenth-century female saints' lives to fifteenth-century liturgical books, from the tenth-century Leominster prayerbook to archaeological remains in Ireland, from embroideries and tapestries to the rebellious nuns of Sainte-Croix in Poitiers, offer a critical reappraisal of how monastic women (and their male associates) reflected, individually and collectively, on their spiritual ideals and institutional forms.

What impact did the Church have on society? How did social change affect religious practice? Within the context of these wide-ranging questions, this study offers a fresh interpretation of the relationship between Church, society and religion in England across five centuries of change. Andrew Brown examines how the teachings of an increasingly 'universal' Church decisively affected the religious life of the laity in medieval England. However, by exploring a broad range of religious phenomena, both orthodox and heretical (including corporate religion and the devotional practices surrounding cults and saints) Brown shows how far lay people continued to shape the Church at a local level. In the hands of the laity, religious practices proved malleable. Their expression was affected by social context, status and gender, and even influenced by those in authority. Yet, as Brown argues, religion did not function simply as an expression of social power - hierarchy, patriarchy and authority could be both served and undermined by religion. In an age in which social mobility and upheaval, particularly in the wake of the Black Death, had profound effects on religious attitudes and practices, Brown demonstrates that our understanding of late medieval religion should be firmly placed within this context of social change.