Christian monasticism sprang from the Egyptian desert, where hermits sought a solitary life. By the 4th century some were so renowned that they drew disciples, who formed communities.
Thereafter, the monastic movement spread to Ireland, where St. Patrick, the son of a Roman official, set out to convert the Irish to Christianity. The Irish monks introduced Christianity into Cornwall, Wales, and Scotland.
St. Ninian established a monastery at Whithorn in Scotland about 400 AD, and he was followed by St. Columba (Iona), and St. Aidan, who founded the monastery at Lindisfarne in Northumbria. These earliest (Celtic) monasteries were generally built on isolated islands, since the lifestyle of the monks was one of solitary contemplation and self-sacrifice.
modern and open institution, offering bed and breakfast accommodation, meeting rooms, a gift shop and museum.
St Benedict was one of those who fled the world for a hermitage, only to find disciples beating a path to his door. He devised, for the abbey he founded at Monte Cassino in Italy c.530, a code which emphasised obedience, communal life and moderation. Its vision was of people living and working in prayer and isolation from the outside world. The Benedictine Rule was brought to the British Isles with St Augustine when he landed in Kent in AD 597. It proved a practical and flexible model for the monastic movement in the West, and became largely standard within monasteries established throughout Britain and Ireland founded from the 6th century onwards.
EARLY DAYS: There were about seventy religious houses in Yorkshire before the Reformation. These included abbeys, priories, nunneries, and friaries. The Benedictine Order established Whitby Abbey in AD 657, now mostly famous for its association with Abbess (Princess) Hilda and the poet Caedmon. The original building was destroyed by the Danes in AD 687, and this fate was shared by other early foundations. A chronicler in 1069 wrote that there was then “not a single monk left in Yorkshire”. Monastic building resumed in the first decade after the Norman conquest.
LATER DEVELOPMENT: Most of the Yorkshire monasteries whose traces survive today are foundations of the post-Conquest period, and belonged to religious orders which originated on the continent. At this time Christendom was an all-European concept, held together by a common allegiance to the Pope in Rome and a common language of devotion (Latin). Monks travelled freely from monasteries in France, Spain and Italy to found new communities in Britain. Often their motivation was a protest against the wealth, easy-going manners, and ostentation of their brethren who had forgotten the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience which had been the guiding principles of the founders. Thus, the Cluniacs broke away from the Benedictines and established priories at Pontefract and Monk Bretton, and a nunnery at Arthington.
However, the Cluniacs soon came to outdistance their parents, the Benedictines, in wealth and splendour, and another reform movement, the Augustinians or Austin Canons (also known as Black Canons) was formed. They came to Yorkshire in the early 12th century and founded Nostell Priory (1113-14) and Bridlington Priory at about the same time. A few years later, in 1120, encouraged by Archbishop Thurston (1119-1140), they established a house at Embsay, near Skipton. In 1154 Alice de Romilly, the daughter of Cecily who had first granted the site at Embsay, gave the canons a piece of land on a bend of the Wharfe at Bolton, where Bolton Priory was founded. During the next few decades Augustinian houses were established at Kirkham, Guisborough, Warter, Drax and Newburgh.
OTHER MONASTIC MOVEMENTS: The most important of the monastic reform movements was that of the Cistercians which, like the Cluniacs, was an offshoot of the Benedictines, and whose parent house at CIteaux in Burgundy was founded in 1098. Every Cistercian house was independent, and was ruled by its own abbot. There were 20 of them in Yorkshire.
Although, with a few exceptions, these were the richest of the Yorkshire monasteries, the monks who lived in them followed a simple, austere way of life. They did not concern themselves with study or scholarship, but believed in plain food and plenty of hard manual work on the land. When the Cistercian Order was spreading in England, monks of the other principal orders were already established on rich lands in the south of England. Partly for this reason, and partly because of their desire for a simple life, the Cistercians chose the fertile valleys amid the barren highlands of Yorkshire, far from the great centres of population. Because of their remoteness, many of the Cistercian houses were spared the plundering which those of other orders suffered when local people used them as stone quarries. The ruins of the Yorkshire Cistercian houses are not only the most beautiful, but are also the largest and most important monastic remains in England.
The Cistercians were, in a sense, puritanical, in that they distrusted colour and elaborate ornament. The new, and very attractive, style of architecture (Early English, the style of the lancet arch) which developed in the 13th century, fitted in very well with their ideas. Many of the Yorkshire houses include beautiful examples of this style. The great Yorkshire Cistercian monastic houses were Rievaulx, Fountains, Jervaulx, Meaux, Kirkstall, Roche and Sawley, all founded 1131-1150. Nowhere else in England is there anything quite like this group of Cistercian houses. Kirkstall Abbey was founded by Henry de Lacy, grandson of the Ilbert de Lacy who had been granted land in Skyrack Wapentake by William the Conqueror. Fountains Abbey originated from a dispute amongst monks in the Benedictine abbey of St Mary’s in York, one of the richest of the Yorkshire houses, whose Abbot was a great prince of the Church. He was a mitred abbot - i.e. the Pope had granted him the privilege of wearing a bishop’s mitre - and he was later summoned regularly to sit in the House of Lords, along with the Abbot of Selby.
About 1130 a group of monks living in St Mary’s became dissatisfied with the slackness and negligence which they found around them. The idea of reform was gaining ground and it was said that at the newly founded Cistercian Abbey of Rievaulx monks were living as they really should. Taking this as an example, thirteen of the St Mary’s monks, led by one known as Richard the Prior, attempted to improve the discipline of their own house. and left, subsequently establishing a new monastery on land by the river Skell granted by the Archbishop of Ripon. This became known as Fountains Abbey, perhaps the most famous of all the Yorkshire religious houses. However, Fountains, like many other abbeys lost, as it prospered, many of its early ideals. Visitations by church authorities report, for example, that the nuns of Nun Appleton occasionally left their nunnery to visit the local alehouse, and the canons of Warter frequently ‘slept off the premises’.
OTHER ATTEMPTS AT REFORM: Attempts at religious reform did not always lead to the establishment of new monastic orders and to the building of monasteries which in due course became centres of wealth and power. Some dissidents became mendicant friars, living simply, begging for alms and ministering to the poor and the sick. The best known of the mendicant friars were the Franciscans, or Grey Friars, who came to Yorkshire in 1258 at the invitation of Ralph FitzRandal, Lord of Middleham. He settled them on a site outside the walls of Richmond, where they built a simple church. Although they later enlarged the church and added other buildings, they never aspired to the magnificence of the monastic orders. The last addition to the Richmond Friary was a bell tower, which was finished towards the end of the 15th century, about fifty years before the Order was suppressed by Henry VIII. The Franciscans built friaries and churches at Beverley, Doncaster, York and Scarborough. Five other orders of mendicant friars operated in Yorkshire between the 13th and 16th centuries. The best known were the Dominicans (Black Friars) and the Carmelites (White Friars). Whitefriar Gate in Hull and the Friarage Hospital at Northallerton, are reminders of their presence.
Another reform movement which influenced the religious and social life of Yorkshire in the 14th century was that inspired by John Wycliffe, who was born at Hipswell, near Richmond, in 1320. Wycliffe translated the Bible into English, and advocated radical egalitarian ideas. He was judged a heretic in 1382 for his views on the doctrine of transubstantiation (the translation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ at the Eucharist). His followers, known as Lollards, were involved in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, which drew in a number of Yorkshire barons—including Nevilles and Cliffords - and there were disturbances in York, Beverley, Scarborough and Pontefract. These towns were heavily fined when the revolt was suppressed. These events, however, were less to do with religion than with the political struggles against the power of John of Gaunt. Wycliffe’s religious ideas survived his death in 1384 and influenced the course of the Reformation during the next century.
MONASTIC LIFE: People were attracted to the monastic life for various reasons; the desire for piety, the fact that it was a respected career choice, the availability of medical care, the prospect of power if one rose to high office and the guarantee of decent accommodation and above-average meals for life. Second or third sons of the aristocracy, who were not likely to inherit their father's lands, were often encouraged to join the church, and one of the paths to a successful career was to join a monastery and receive an education (reading, writing, arithmetic, and Latin). Children were sent in their pre-teens, often aged as young as five and then known as oblates, while those who joined aged 15 or over were known as novices. Both of these groups did not usually mix with monks although neither oblates nor novices were ever permitted to be alone, unsupervised by a monk.
THE MONASTIC DAY: Although these varied considerably between different orders, the Benedictine day may be considered typical: Vigils: The first Vigil began at 4am and consisted of about 12 psalms, a lesson, and a reading. This was followed at about 5.45am by: Lauds, the prayer of the church as light returned to the earth. This was followed in turn by Mass in which the monks received ‘The Bread of Heaven’ and subsequently ate Breakfast. Then: Chapter Meeting at around 8.30am was an opportunity for announcements, allocation of work and duties. Terce at about 8.45, one of three ‘little hours’, was chanted in the choir, whilst daily work was undertaken until midday. The second ’little hour’, Sext took place at about 1pm before the main meal of the day and coincided with a reading from a text so that the mind should be fed as well as the body. Brothers then rested until: None at 3.30pm, the third of the ‘little hours’ after which an hour was devoted to Lectio Divina during which monks engaged in reading and reflection, or the teaching of novices. Vespers at around 6pm included psalms and prayers of intercession, and a reading of a chapter from the Rule of St Benedict. The final Office of the day was Compline consisting of psalms and a hymn. This was followed by the Great Silence as the monks retired for the night.
THE DISSOLUTION: Collectively, monastic houses, and especially the monasteries, became over time, extremely wealthy, not least by the grant of lands by the nobility in exchange for prayers to promote the latter’s salvation. They thus proved an important element in the social life of rural Yorkshire. They encouraged sheep farming in the Yorkshire Dales - Fountains Fell, above Maiham, for example, provided grazing land for sheep from Fountains Abbey. Bolton Priory, one of the smaller houses, probably employed over 200 craftsmen, shepherds, foresters, etc., in addition to the monks. As well as their economic activities, the monastic houses provided the rudiments of a welfare state for the poor of their districts.
Well aware of this, Henry VIII became determined to destroy the monasteries, partly because he saw them as centres of Papal influence, and partly because he felt that their wealth could be put to better use (most especially to finance his military campaigns).
The Dissolution, sometimes referred to as the Suppression of the Monasteries, was authorised by a set of administrative and legal processes between 1536 and 1541. The Act of Supremacy, passed by Parliament in 1534, and the First and Second Suppression Acts (1535 and 1539), made the King Supreme Head of the Church in England, and separated England from papal authority. It was one of the most revolutionary events in English history. There were nearly 900 religious houses in England, comprising around 260 for monks, 300 for regular canons, 142 nunneries and 183 friaries; housing around 4,000 monks, 3,000 canons, 3,000 friars and 2,000 nuns, some 12,000 in total. Estimates of the male population at that time are around 500,000, which suggests that one adult man in fifty was in religious orders prior to the Dissolution.
The smaller houses were dissolved in 1536, and the larger ones in 1539. Their treasures were confiscated by the King; their estates being granted or sold to his courtiers; religious houses and churches were torn down or allowed to decay, or were converted into mansions for the new Tudor nobles. Otherwise the most marketable fabric in monastic buildings was likely to be the lead on roofs, gutters and plumbing, and buildings were burned down as the easiest way to extract this. Building stone, and slate roofs were sold off to the highest bidder. Many monastic outbuildings were turned into granaries, barns and stables.
AND AFTERWARDS: The dissolution Acts were concerned solely with the disposal of endowed property; at no point do they explicitly forbid the continuance of a regular life. Local commissioners were instructed to ensure that, where portions of abbey churches were also used by local parishes or congregations, this use should continue. Accordingly, parts of 117 former monasteries survived (and mostly still remain) in use for parochial worship; fourteen former monastic churches in England survived in their entirety as cathedrals. In around a dozen instances, wealthy benefactors or parishes purchased a complete former monastic church from the commissioners, and presented it to their local community as a new parish church building. Many other parishes bought and installed former monastic woodwork, choir stalls and stained glass windows. As was commonly the case, by the late medieval period, the abbot's lodging had been expanded to form a substantial independent residence, and these properties were frequently converted into country houses by lay purchasers. In other cases, such as Lacock Abbey and Forde Abbey, the conventual buildings themselves were converted to form the core of a Tudor great mansion.
The Dissolution of the Monasteries in England and Ireland took place in the political context of other attacks on the ecclesiastical institutions of Western Roman Catholicism, which had been under way for some time. Many of these were related to the Protestant Reformation in Continental Europe. By the end of the 16th century, monasticism had almost entirely disappeared from those European states whose rulers had adopted Lutheran or Reformed confessions of faith (Ireland being the only major exception). They continued in those states that remained Catholic, and new community orders such as the Jesuits and Capuchins emerged alongside the older orders.
The Dissolution of the Monasteries impinged relatively little on English parish church activity. Parishes which had formerly paid their tithes to support a religious house, now paid them to a lay impropriator, but rectors, vicars and other incumbents remained in place, their incomes unaffected and their duties unchanged. Congregations which had shared monastic churches for worship continued to do so, the former monastic parts now walled off and derelict. Most parish churches had been endowed with chantries, each maintaining a stipendiary priest to say Mass for the souls of their donors, and these continued unaffected. In addition there remained over a hundred collegiate churches in England, whose endowments maintained regular choral worship through a corporate body of canons, prebends or priests. All these survived the reign of Henry VIII largely intact, only to be dissolved under the Chantries Act 1547, by Henry's son Edward VI, their property being absorbed into the Court of Augmentations and their members being added to the pensions list. Since many former monks had found employment as chantry priests, the consequence for these clerics was a double experience of dissolution, perhaps mitigated by being economically in receipt thereafter of a double pension.
THE PRESENT: Monastic communities still thrive in North Yorkshire. Perhaps best known is Ampleforth Abbey,founded in 1802. The community relocated from Dieulouard in Lorraine, where its members had joined with Spanish and Cassinese Benedictines to form the monastery of St Laurence. The monastery set up a school at Ampleforth which is now the co-educational independent boarding school Ampleforth College, with about 600 students. Since 2020 the college has separated from the Abbey by splitting the site, each having their own independent governance.
Stanbrook Abbey in Wass is a Roman Catholic contemplative Benedictine nunnery. The community was founded in 1625 at Cambrai in Flanders (then part of the Spanish Netherlands, now in France) under the auspices of the English Benedictine Congregation. After being imprisoned during the French Revolution, the surviving nuns fled to England and in 1838 settled at Stanbrook, Worcestershire, where a new abbey was built. The community left this to relocate to Wass leaving the earlier property to be operated as a luxury hotel and events venue named "Stanbrook Abbey Hotel".
The Bar Convent in York is the oldest surviving Catholic convent in England,
established in 1686. The laws of England at that time prohibited the foundation of
Catholic convents, and as a result the convent was both established and operated in
secret. Frances Bedingfeld, a member of the Sisters of Loreto (also known as
the IBVM), signed the deeds for the land upon which the convent was to be built
under the alias Frances Long. Relating to earlier ideals of hospitalty it is very much a
February 2021 Ian Peel
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