Cistercian Abbey Research Articles

Rufford Abbey and its Gardens in the 17th and 18th Centuries

Rufford Abbey was largely demolished in 1956, although the remains of the former Cistercian abbey buildings, and part of the 16th- or 17th-century house into which the abbey buildings were converted, are displayed as ruins. The house, built for one of the most influential politicians of Charles II's reign, the first marquess of Halifax ('the Trimmer'), is here attributed to a recently discovered architect, William Taylor. Around the house lay a huge baroque garden designed by a gardener whose name appears to have been Thonous. In the 1730s Sir George Savile, seventh baronet, a fellow of the Royal Society who was evidently interested in hydrostatics, designed waterworks in a form which was technically complex, but which might be aesthetically categorized as rococo; his designs are without any known parallel. Sir George's son, the eighth baronet, famous as a pioneer of parliamentary reform, replaced most of his predecessors' gardens by a landscape garden of standard later 18th-century type, and engaged John Platt of Rotherham to construct useful buildings for the estate.

Rethinking the pillar of Eliseg

AbstractThe Pillar of Eliseg, originally an ambitious round-shafted cross, stands on a barrow near the Cistercian abbey of Valle Crucis. It was carved with a lengthy inscription, now illegible, but transcribed in 1696 by Edward Lhuyd. Two copies have survived, enabling a reconsideration of the significance of the inscription. This article reassesses the history of the monument, its archaeological context, form and function. The inscription shows that the cross was erected by Concenn, ruler of Powys (dad854), to honour his great-grandfather, Eliseg, who had expelled the Anglo-Saxons from this part of Powys. The inscription also links the rulers of Powys with the Roman usurper Magnus Maximus and the sub-Roman ruler Guarthigirn. It is argued that the inscription was intended to be read out loud and that the monument was an important piece of public propaganda erected at a time when the kingdom of Powys was severely under threat.

Le temps de la Grande Couronne d’Aragon du roi Pierre le Catholique. À propos de deux documents relatifs à l’abbaye de Poblet (février et septembre 1213)

The Age of the Great Crown of Aragon of King Peter the Catholic. About two Documents concerning the Abbey of Poblet (February and September 1213). This article aims at analyzing two charters in favor of the Cistercian abbey of Poblet. These charters attest the existence of a political entity that took form during the year 1213 : the Great Crown of Aragon of King Peter the Catholic. After having explained the peculiar context in which these two documents are situated, our attention is brought to the protection granted by the sovereign in the name of the great southern princes, and on the territories concerned by his decision, all of his lands, Occitan domains included. The second protection published here is due to Nuño Sanchez, lord of Roussillon and Cerdagne, who led back to Aragon the survivors of the Catalan and Aragonese army that had just been defeated at Muret. With the death of the King disappeared the project of a new space of transpyrenean sovereignty.

À la redécouverte du monastère de Marquette: une méthode originale ?

This article describes the methods used for localizing, and perhaps excavating, the remains of the powerful Cistercian abbey for women at Marquette, buried under waves of industrialization on the outskirts of Lille. The abbey’s charters yielded most of the basic information, but research in secondary archives proved very useful. The data gathered was classed under three headings : written, illustrated, and oral sources. They were worked up in three stages : the state of knowledge and unanswered questions for each building ; a synthetic view of how the succeeding periods, including the industrial era, contributed to forming the current appearance of the site ; an evaluation aimed at proposing locations for probes. A basic procedure was followed in three customary phases : heuristic research, critical analysis, general synthesis. But by starting from nothing, one was obliged to explore some unusual avenues, to rationalize the process of examination of the information gathered, and to broaden the over-views into an evolving framework. Formally, the intention was to replicate so far as possible a veritable preparatory study. The unstinting support of the company Rhodia, which owns the site, the active intervention of the municipality of Marquette, and the competence of Archéopole (all three of which eliminated the usual red tape) were all essential in making possible the conception, realization, and happy conclusion to this astonishing adventure. To top it all, there was the rediscovery of the tomb of the Countess Jeanne († 1244), a key figure in the medieval history of Flanders.

Archaeological window glass from Cistercian Abbeys: Developing a new method from a selection of relevant excavations throughout Europe

Abstract Although historical and art historical evidence shows an interesting contemporary practice in glazing, profound archaeological research into the flat glass and lead cames of medieval windows has not yet been undertaken. The purpose of this research project is to create a methodology to compare and evaluate archaeological window glass (collections). The archaeological window glass from Cistercian monasteries throughout Europe will be used as the central research topic. For this we will focus in particular on the Belgian site of the Abbey of the Dunes, Koksijde (County of Flanders), with its exceptional window glass collection. This collection contains around 15 000 fragments of stained and plain window glass. The dating ranges from 13th century to 1578. The principal aim is to place this collection in its context with other Cistercian sites, preferably within the context of the Clairvaux filiation. Specific information about the dating range, the number of fragments, the typology and the historical importance of the sites will lead to a final and limited selection of sites from a geographical area that is as large as possible. The selected sites will hopefully represent sites all over Europe, from the north of England down to Cyprus and from Portugal to Sweden.

Visualizations of Furness Abbey: From Romantic Ruin to Computer Model

The suppressed Cistercian abbey at Furness in Lakeland was left as a ruin by its owners. It was first recorded as such by Samuel and Nathaniel Buck in 1727 and the earliest known plan was published by Thomas West in 1774. More than 50 artists have recorded it since then, the majority responding to its picturesque qualities, in print, oil, watercolour and photography. Wordsworth's and Ruskin's opposition to the proximity of the railway made Furness a national cause, and accurate surveys, some made by architects, followed. Archaeological excavations were begun in 1896, and the site was placed in the hands of the Office of Works in 1923. The first guidebook did not appear until 1943, photogrammetry in the 1980s and computer modelling in 1988.

Holm Cultram Abbey: A Story of Success?

The Cistercian Abbey of Holm Cultram was a twelfth-century royal foundation of Prince Henry, son of King David I when this part of northern England was under Scottish control. The abbey developed a successful network of benefactors spanning both sides of the Border. It was also effective in developing positive relationships with key ecclesiastical figures including Bishop Christian of Whithorn and bishops of Glasgow. The economic strength of the abbey was derived from wool, salt and fish production. In 1193, a daughter house named Grey Abbey was founded in Ulster. The benefits of the frontier location were cut short with the onset of the wars in the 1290s. Holm Cultram Abbey found itself on the path of the marching armies and had to provide supplies and lodgings. When the estates of the abbey and the precinct were attacked by the Scots on several occasions in the fourteenth century, the community turned to the English kings for compensation. On other occasions the abbots did not hesitate to pay ransom to prevent damages to the abbey. Not only the economic difficulties brought by the war, but also loss of contact with the mother house of Melrose and Scottish benefactors more generally, altered the character of Holm Cultram, which became a much more English institution when the cross-Border networks were cut off.

Ferveur des laïcs ou précaution monastique ? Étude des pics documentaires observés dans les chartriers cisterciens à la veille des deuxième et troisième croisades

Following the capture of Edesse in 1144, and again after the fall of Jerusalem in 1187, the popes sent out spiritual orators to preach the crusade. On Easter day in 1146, Bernard of Clairvaux urged the crowd to take up the mission. After Hattin, Henri de Marcy, (cardinal of Albano, papal legate, and former abbot of Hautecombe and Clairvaux), would preach the crusade. Before leaving, the pilgrims gave precious possessions to monasteries for the salvation of their souls or pledged their goods in order to raise money for their voyage. Cistercian abbeys would have been among the first to benefit from this generosity. The number of charters at Clairvaux and Morimond increases at the end of the 1140s and between 1189 and 1190. Is the increase due to the donations made by crusaders ? Is there a similar situation in other Cistercian abbeys ?

The Life of Pons de Léras: Knights and Conversion to Religious Life in the Twelfth Century

AbstractComparing the Life of Pons de Léras with the evidence of charters for a variety of Cistercian abbeys allows us to conclude that the term conversus as applied in the charters to Pons in fact meant “convert to the religious life.” Only in the 1150s did peasant recruits as lay brothers appear at Silvanès and elsewhere. That Pons is referred to as conversus therefore does not require an explanation of humility.

Past Models and Contemporary Concerns: the Foundation and Growth of the Cistercian Order

Of all the medieval monastic orders the Cistercian has undoubtedly received the most attention from historians, and this engagement with the White Monks shows no sign of abating. In the words of David Robinson in his recent volume on the Cistercian abbeys of Wales, ‘to turn one’s back on the subject, even for a moment, is to lose the plot’. Current scholarship continues to be concerned with a range of issues. However, much of the most controversial scholarship has centred on the dating of key Cistercian documents: the narratives of the origins of Citeaux, that is, the Exordium Parvum and the Exordium Cistercii, as well as various versions of the Cistercian constitution, the Carta Caritatis, and successive capitula, that is, the pronouncements of the Annual General Chapter. The debate is not new. For over seventy years scholars, including in an English context Dom David Knowles, have sought to unravel the textual and manuscript complexities of the documents relating to the foundation and growth of the mother house itself and of the order. In the last six years two significant contributions to this area of scholarship have appeared, the first more controversial than the second. First, Constance Berman argued that the key Cistercian documents were inventions of the latter part of the twelfth century, designed to create a past for the Cistercian order, an organization which, she argues, did not exist before the mid-twelfth century.

Cheshire including Chester. Records of Early English Drama ed. by Elizabeth Baldwin, Lawrence M. Clopper, and David Mills (review)

ELIZABETH BALDWIN, LAWRENCE M. CLOPPER, and DAVID MILLS, eds., Cheshire including Chester. Records of Early English Drama. 2 vols. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. Pp. ccxxv, 1231. ISBN: 978-0-7123-0935. $400. This latest publication by the Records of English Drama (REED) project expands on and revises one of the first offerings in the series, Chester, which was edited by Lawrence M. Clopper in 1979. The product of years of painstaking archival research, the present volume incorporates an updated version of that early Chester volume, while broadening the scope to include new material on the whole county of Cheshire. The volume also takes advantage of clearer guidelines, adopted by REED in the 1980s, for assigning dates and deciding on what forms of entertainment to include and incorporates discoveries of new documentary records such as guild accounts from Chester and the letters of the Puritan preacher Christopher Goodman, who in the early 1570s sought to prevent the performance of the Chester Whitsun plays. Additionally, the editors have examined county and diocesan archives-the quarter session and ecclesiastical court records-now known to be important sources of information for early performances. The result is a comprehensive and detailed collection of documentary evidence for dramatic performance, minstrelsy, and civic ceremony in Cheshire to 1642. Among the most useful features are extensive introductions to the historical background and significance of the documents printed in the two volumes. We learn about the topography of the region, its roads, patterns of settlement, government, schools, towns, prominent families, and religious institutions-notably the Cistercian abbey of Vale Royal in Delamere and the Benedictine abbey of St. Werburgh in Chester, whose most famous monk was Ranulf Higden, the author of the Polychronicon. The editors also helpfully discuss what their findings reveal about drama in Cheshire, particularly about Chester's civic biblical play, which can be charted from the first mention in 1422 of a Corpus Christi play up through the sixteenth-century Whitsun plays, whose final performance was in 1575. One of the many strengths of the introductory material is the way it situates Chester's civic play in the context of a broad range of performances, reminding us that despite the impression sometimes conveyed by the preservation of its script it was far from the only show in town. Pageants from the civic play could be extracted for individual performance for a visiting dignitary; there were liturgical 'representations,' civic triumphs, and popular entertainments such as rush-bearing, cockfights, and bear-baitings; and performances by traveling players, including royal companies, supplemented home-grown entertainments. …

Four Scottish indulgences at Sens

English interest in the great Cistercian abbey of Pontigny was stimulated by the exiles there of two archbishops of Canterbury, Thomas Becket and Stephen Langton.1 As archbishops of Canterbury, Langton and Edmund of Abingdon made gifts to Pontigny abbey in consideration of the welcome given to Becket.2 Edmund did not die at Pontigny, but was a confraterof the community, and the abbot claimed the body, asserting that Edmund had expressed a wish to be buried there. The process of canonisation was rapid.3 After Edmund's canonisation, Henry III sent a chasuble and a chalice for the first celebration of the feast, and granted money to maintain four candles round the saint's shrine.4 In 1254, en route from Gascony to meet Louis IX in Chartres and Paris,5 Henry visited Pontigny, as his brother Richard of Cornwall, who seems to have pressed for canonisation, had done in 1247.6 Archbishop Boniface of Canterbury ordered the celebration of the feast to be observed throughout his province.7 Pope Alexander IV granted a dispensation to allow Englishwomen to enter the precinct of Pontigny abbey on the feast of the translation of the relics of St Edmund8 (women were normally forbidden to enter a Cistercian monastery). Matthew Paris, the greatest English chronicler of the age, wrote a life of the saint.9 English interest continued into the fourteenth century. In 1331 an English priest was given a licence to visit the shrine,10 but it seems likely that the Hundred Years’ War made pilgrimage to Pontigny difficult.11 The indulgences preserved by the abbey reveal an interest in the shrine throughout the Western Church, granted as they were by prelates from Tortosa to Livonia and Estonia, and from Messina to Lübeck.12

Croxden Abbey Church: Architecture, Burial and Patronage

Croxden Abbey Church is best known for its chevet of radiating chapels. New architectural and historical research significantly revises the architectural development of the church and redates this unique feature. Evidence of the liturgical arrangements within the church is scant, but evidence for the relationship between the abbey and its patrons (the Verduns) is rich. By understanding the building as architecture, as the prayer-house of a Cistercian abbey, and as a mausoleum to the patronal family, the architectural origins of the chevet become clearer, while the meanings it may have held for later members of the family can be discussed.

Croxden Abbey Church: Architecture, Burial and Patronage

Croxden Abbey Church is best known for its chevet of radiating chapels. New architectural and historical research significantly revises the architectural development of the church and redates this unique feature. Evidence of the liturgical arrangements within the church is scant, but evidence for the relationship between the abbey and its patrons (the Verduns) is rich. By understanding the building as architecture, as the prayer-house of a Cistercian abbey, and as a mausoleum to the patronal family, the architectural origins of the chevet become clearer, while the meanings it may have held for later members of the family can be discussed.

Bibliotheken in Neuburg an der Donau: Sammlungen von Pfalzgrafen, Mönchen und Humanisten (review)

Reviewed by: Bibliotheken in Neuburg an der Donau: Sammlungen von Pfalzgrafen, Mönchen und Humanisten Matthew Z. Heintzelman Bibliotheken in Neuburg an der Donau: Sammlungen von Pfalzgrafen, Mönchen und Humanisten. Edited by Bettina Wagner . Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005. x, 216 pp. €38,00. ISBN 3-447-05197-3. Books, collections, and even whole libraries move—a lot. This set of essays celebrates the two hundredth anniversary of the Staatliche Bibliothek (previously, the Provinzialbibliothek) Neuburg an der Donau. Growing out of a series of lectures given in the summer of 2003, these contributions provide both a historical overview of the library and insights into social and political history, the history of collections and libraries, rare books and manuscripts, and monastic history. [End Page 91] Complementing the texts are several photographs of related materials in Neuburg and elsewhere as well as thirty-two color plates depicting architectural history, decoration, and collections. Thus, this is neither a catalog nor an introduction to the use of the collections but rather a celebration of libraries and collections in or from Neuburg. In the opening essay Reinhard Seitz outlines the history of the Staatliche Bibliothek from the earliest records of the building through the formative stages in the early nineteenth century and up to the present. The essay concludes with an overview of directors in the last two centuries. Under the direction of Johann Christoph Freiherr von Aretin the initial core of the library grew out of secularized collections from the Cistercian abbey of Kaisheim (1804) and the Dominican library at Obermedlingen (1806). In 1822 the library absorbed the collection from the former Jesuit school in Neuburg. Medieval manuscripts and incunables from these libraries were largely transferred to the Hofbibliothek (today, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek) in Munich. While secularization improved access to the collections for scholars and the public, periodic removal of duplicate copies has greatly complicated studies of the provenance and earlier history of the collections. Franz Jürgen Götz describes the medieval books from the Cistercian abbey of Kaisheim (founded 1135) in the next essay. Approximately 225 manuscripts from this collection have found their way to Munich, although some disappeared during foreign occupation and during the secularization. While most of the Kaisheim incunables found their way to Munich, some remained behind in Neuburg. Götz explains the roots of the Cistercian book culture and the minimal library necessary to establish a Cistercian house (e.g., the psalter, antiphonal, gradual, missal, etc.). After an early blossoming in the thirteenth century the Kaisheim scriptorium gradually lost out to books imported from Italy and France. As with manuscripts, incunables require copy-specific study. Bettina Wagner discusses the history of research into the incunables from Neuburg collections and the role of the secularization of monastic libraries in the opening of antiquarian collections to the public. These collections did not represent the full range of fifteenth-century published works, in that most monastic libraries contained works on theology but not as many literary or other kinds of texts. At the same time, the secularized collections in Bavaria formed the foundation of some of the earliest authoritative incunable studies, such as Ludwig Hain's Repertorium Bibliographicum (Stuttgart, 1826–38). Manuscript notes in incunables can also supply invaluable information about the early history of printing, such as the authorship of the popular Schatzbehalter or the dating of the earliest German-language edition of the Bible. In 1557, after several years of peregrination across Reformation-era Germany and Austria, the classicist Hieronymus Wolf (1516–80) found stability in Augsburg, where he remained until his death. Helmut Zäh recounts Wolf's practice of collecting books to support his teaching and translation activities in classical literature, theology, and philology. In 1572, with his eyesight failing and after many unsuccessful attempts, Wolf was able to sell his collection to the Protestant-oriented Gymnasium illustre in Neuburg. When the Neuburg counts reverted to Catholicism in the early seventeenth century, the Jesuits took over the collection, and upon their dissolution in 1773 the collection came under the control of the Knights of Malta. Eventually, the collection was absorbed into the provincial library, where it still represents a rare example of a relatively complete personal library...

Four Scottish indulgences at Sens

English interest in the great Cistercian abbey of Pontigny was stimulated by the exiles there of two archbishops of Canterbury, Thomas Becket and Stephen Langton.1 As archbishops of Canterbury, Langton and Edmund of Abingdon made gifts to Pontigny abbey in consideration of the welcome given to Becket.2 Edmund did not die at Pontigny, but was a confraterof the community, and the abbot claimed the body, asserting that Edmund had expressed a wish to be buried there. The process of canonisation was rapid.3 After Edmund's canonisation, Henry III sent a chasuble and a chalice for the first celebration of the feast, and granted money to maintain four candles round the saint's shrine.4 In 1254, en route from Gascony to meet Louis IX in Chartres and Paris,5 Henry visited Pontigny, as his brother Richard of Cornwall, who seems to have pressed for canonisation, had done in 1247.6 Archbishop Boniface of Canterbury ordered the celebration of the feast to be observed throughout his province.7 Pope Alexander IV granted a dispensation to allow Englishwomen to enter the precinct of Pontigny abbey on the feast of the translation of the relics of St Edmund8 (women were normally forbidden to enter a Cistercian monastery). Matthew Paris, the greatest English chronicler of the age, wrote a life of the saint.9 English interest continued into the fourteenth century. In 1331 an English priest was given a licence to visit the shrine,10 but it seems likely that the Hundred Years’ War made pilgrimage to Pontigny difficult.11 The indulgences preserved by the abbey reveal an interest in the shrine throughout the Western Church, granted as they were by prelates from Tortosa to Livonia and Estonia, and from Messina to Lübeck.12

Śmierć Aelreda z Rievaulx - między teorią a rzeczywistością

This article describes the death of the famous medieval abbot, Aelred, from the Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx (England, Yorkshire) (1110-1167). Walter Daniel of Rievaulx, Aelred’s secretary and caretaker, was the only person who wrote about his death. Daniel was a very skillful monk, whose description of Aelred’s death constituted a last part of his writings about Aelred’s life.

Buildings analysis at Coombe Abbey, Warwickshire, 1993–94

A major programme of building recording and analysis was carried out by Northamptonshire Archaeology in 1993–94 during the conversion of Coombe Abbey, Warwickshire. This charted the conversion of the dissolved Cistercian abbey into a house and successive alterations over four centuries until its partial demolition after 1923. Among its most striking features are two ambitious phases of late 17th-century building, the first by Sir Isaac Gibson, the second by William Winde with ceilings by the leading London plasterer Edward Gouge. Works of 1863–64 by William Eden Nesfield reflect an antiquarian reinterpretation of the site's medieval past.

The Road to Senanque, and: On the Appian Way, and: Semele, and: Ariadne in Verona

The Road to Sénanque On the Sunday afternoon we entered the canyon road to Sénanque, we were feeding ourselves on daydreams, we were wondering if this was our last trip to France even as we craved the stern, hard-breathing beauty of one more Cistercian abbey. If we were clothing the memories of our youthful bodies in bikinis and thongs instead of monastic gowns it was because of the hot dry wind in Provence or because of the scent of each other's groins on our fingertips or because of the way our cremated ashes would sizzle the day they hit the water. Lovely are the thighs and shoulders of the monks still living in seclusion at Sénanque, knotting the corners of their robes before they walk in the wind and imagine themselves wearing garments of owl feathers and pine. To love beyond all measure: would we finally learn what that means if we meditated on stone benches and slept on straw beds on the floor, if we prayed, planted lavender and cultivated honey, if we lost all courage but stayed on the high narrow road to Sénanque? Beautiful are your shoulders and your voice at the moment when it first breaks the morning silence as we enter another day to imagine ourselves traveling a blue, intimate void chanting words that leave echoes like protective charms and watch while the snow fills our door until we feel ourselves become both mountain pass and sky. [End Page 101] On the Appian Way When I reached the Tomb of Cecilia Metella along the road lined with cypresses and the timbre of the custodian's greeting was the sting of your radiance in my veins, when I looked beyond the walls into open fields and deciphered in the cryptic markings of parasol pines a code for passion signified outside the forms of flesh, when I stood with other travelers under ruined stone arches to hear the custodian praise the love of Metellus for Cecilia – "dispossessed, she was his only possession," – the burnt eloquence of words – so much a part of you – returned and line by line I began to read that book of smoke your illness. Semele Dusk leaning into night the moon's weedy nest glows in a tree of stars in the darkness of his lair she sleeps and dreams he comes to her as fire [End Page 102] the sequined air whirls hot kisses test her lips there is the shock of sparks flung like arms around her waist a wild sweet terrifying taste of flame in her mouth now her soul ignites weightless and finally free the bold fingers of light rush to please her smoke rises through floodlit branches of sky and now she feels herself both sun and moon the fire has opened her forever her body blooms white and intelligible among glittering leaves. Ariadne in Verona To wander the ruined amphitheater with a taste of tar in her mouth. To sleep in a vacant square as her marble bed grows softer. To wake in a babble of hailstones with unrelenting comraderie – with weariness. To share at noon the anxious watch of statues in a deserted garden. [End Page 103] To lift her arms because grief is spacious – a plunge through the satins of Naxos! To mark and slit the rustling bolts into falling down days. To sit alone and smoke until she finds a pattern in the maze of myrtle through which his restless body drifts like a sleepwalker.

Melrose Abbey (review)

Reviewed by: Melrose Abbey Neil Rushton Melrose Abbey. By Richard Fawcett and Richard Oram. Pp. 288. ISBN 0 7524 2867 5. Stroud: Tempus Publishing. 2004. £14.99. This account of one of Scotland's most important medieval monasteries has been written for the interested general reader and forms part of a series of occasional publications that aim to contribute to an increased awareness of historic monuments in the care of Historic Scotland. Melrose Abbey was a Cistercian house, filiated to Rievaulx in Yorkshire, founded in the Borders in 1137 by King David I. It was thus the earliest Cistercian house founded in Scotland and for most of its existence was one of the richest abbeys in the country with an extensive endowment of landed estates, based on a core of land between the River Tweed and the Eildon Hills, but which contained estates throughout lowland Scotland. From the 1560s a diminishing number of monks [End Page 340] carried out the monastic offices, but it was not until 1609 that the last monk, John Watson, died and the abbey was officially dissolved. This book splits the description and interpretation of the development of the abbey into three sections entitled: the history of the abbey, the architecture of the abbey and the estates and possessions of the abbey. The history of the abbey and the analysis of its endowment are written by Richard Oram. He first explores the existence of Old Melrose, a seventh-century monastic foundation in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Bernicia, but most of the discussion concerns the Cistercian house and its swift development into an important religious and political centre from the mid-twelfth century. Melrose's history was fundamentally affected by the endemic warfare between Scotland and England from the late thirteenth century onwards, and its location on one of the major routes north for invading English armies meant that it was not only of vital strategic importance but also suffered periodic attacks requiring reconstruction of the church and conventual buildings. The most damaging of these attacks was in 1385, when Richard II's army made a particularly thorough job of sacking of the abbey. Oram has produced an eloquent narrative, which demonstrates why Melrose Abbey played such an important part in the politico-religious medieval history of Scotland. The text is arranged into a chronological sequence rather than thematically, and benefits from such an approach, largely due to the lucid and approachable writing style. Particularly important is the examination of the way in which the abbey was affected by periods of both warfare and stability in the Scottish borders from the 1290s throughout the fourteenth century. The third section of the book includes a relatively detailed discussion of the landed endowment of the abbey, estate by estate. This integrates discussion of the ways in which a large Cistercian abbey was able to consolidate its landholdings with the realities of building up an endowment in the Scottish lowlands during the Middle Ages and the inevitable disputes with other large landowners such as Kelso Abbey and the bishopric of St Andrews. This section also includes a useful review of the urban properties of the abbey and its appropriated churches, important subjects that are often excluded from histories of monastic houses. This discussion of the abbey's estates and possessions allows us to understand Melrose within its socio-economic setting rather than simply as an isolated religious institution. The middle section is written by Richard Fawcett, Principal Inspector of Ancient Monuments for Historic Scotland. This details the architectural development of the abbey, concentrating primarily on the church but also discussing the other precinct buildings such as the claustral ranges, the abbot's house and the commendator's house. Fawcett's discussion is authoritative and well-illustrated, with almost 100 black-and-white photographs, sketches and plans. The sacking of the abbey by Richard II's army in 1385 resulted in the destruction of the church and most of the monastic buildings, so evidence for the plan and character of the pre-1385 church can only be retrieved through the results of the limited excavations carried out at Melrose in the first half of the twentieth century. However, for the...