English Monasteries Research Articles

Osbert of Clare and the reforging of Westminster Abbey’s past

Twelfth-century Westminster Abbey was a centre of forgery production: its scriptorium not only produced charters claiming rights and privileges for its own house but also contributed to the production of spurious documents for other English monasteries. Among these forgeries, the distinctive draftsmanship of one monk—Osbert of Clare—has been traced in some of Westminster’s longer and more elaborate creations. But Osbert was more than a forger, he also wrote hagiographical Lives of saints, including that of Edward the Confessor, whose cult he fiercely championed. Osbert’s different identities have long been recognised, but never reconciled. This essay investigates both Osbert’s forgeries and hagiography, and in doing so reveals that it is only by considering these different genres of writing together that Osbert’s (and his abbey’s) ambitions can be fully recognised. In particular, it appears that Osbert’s forgeries sought to claim prestige for Westminster not only through their contents, but also through the memories they invoked and invented.

The Impact of the Anglo-Scottish Wars (1286–1347) upon Institutional Memories in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Century Monastic Chronicles and Cartularies of Furness and Byland

The Anglo-Scottish Wars (1286–1347) had a significant impact on lay and monastic communities across the North of England physically and psychologically, as the pressures of war between England and Scotland divided people along increasingly hostile and “national” lines. Monastic chronicles, such as that of Lanercost, have often been used to make sense of the material effect of Scottish raids, and how identities came to possess an increasingly “national” sense. However, less attention has been paid to how the cartularies of Northern English monasteries contributed to how monastic communities affected by the Anglo-Scottish Wars came to make sense of them. This article will analyse and compare the Furness Chronicle and Anonimalle Chronicle, produced in the fourteenth century, with the early-fifteenth century cartularies produced by Furness Abbey and Byland Abbey. It will contribute towards recent scholarly assessments of how these sources, and the events they recounted, were selectively edited to inform how the monastic communities who engaged with them remembered the impact of the Anglo-Scottish Wars upon them. Chronicles and cartularies were used together to reinforce an institutional memory, or a collective sense of connection with the history of an institution that Furness and Byland were creating in the early fourteenth century.

“Furnaces of all letcherousness”: Narratives of Sexual Depravity and the Dissolution of the English Monasteries

“Furnaces of all letcherousness”: Narratives of Sexual Depravity and the Dissolution of the English Monasteries

‘You Collared a Maiden Young Ireland in this House’: The Patriotism of Dom Francis Sweetman and His School – Mount St Benedict, Gorey, Co. Wexford

‘What you in England call “politics” we call “patriotism”’ Dom John ‘Francis’ Sweetman (1872–1953) replied in 1919 to the Abbot of Downside’s reminder that he had previously been instructed ‘not to take public part in politics’. Although Sweetman complied with Cuthbert Butler’s order to resign from the executive of the North Wexford Sinn Fein, his ongoing ‘patriotism’ continued to cause problems for the Irish monk and his English monastery. In 1925, following a succession of complaints to Rome by the Bishop of Ferns which included the charge Sweetman had ‘organised and encouraged military activities against the Free State Government’, Downside closed his school. This paper provides an account of how the 1916 Easter Rising affected Sweetman and his school, describes how Sweetman’s political activities affected Downside’s plan to establish an English Benedictine monastery in Ireland and, examines his involvement in the Irish War of Independence and Civil War.

Thomas More and the Defence of the Religious Orders in Henry VIII's England

AbstractMuch has been written about Thomas More's alleged monastic vocation and spirituality, but rather less about his views on the religious orders of his day. This article argues that a consistent position towards contemporary English monasticism can be discerned across More's (highly varied) oeuvre and in his personal connections with religious houses. He was an enthusiastic supporter of strictly observant monasticism throughout his career, but seems to have looked much more critically upon other branches of the religious orders in early Tudor England (which comprised the large majority). This orientation was shared with some other English humanists, but clashed with the position of Erasmus who held no special regard for strictly observant monasteries. More's misgivings about general monastic standards in the realm held a wider significance, in view of his status as the most prolific and influential polemicist writing in support of the early Tudor church. The defence of the religious orders in the controversialist works that More wrote and oversaw in the later 1520s and early 1530s was distinctly lukewarm, and even at times evasive. Partly as a result, the mounting evangelical and anticlerical attacks on English monasteries in these years went largely unanswered.

The Long-Run Impact of the Dissolution of the English Monasteries

AbstractWe use the effect of the Dissolution of the English Monasteries after 1535 to test the commercialization hypothesis about the roots of long-run English economic development. Before the Dissolution, monastic lands were relatively unencumbered by inefficient feudal land tenure but could not be sold. The Dissolution created a market for formerly monastic lands, which could now be more effectively commercialized relative to nonmonastic lands, where feudal tenure persisted until the twentieth century. We show that parishes affected by the Dissolution subsequently experienced a rise of the gentry and had more innovation and higher yield in agriculture, a greater share of the population working outside of agriculture, and ultimately higher levels of industrialization. Our results are consistent with explanations of the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions which emphasize the commercialization of society as a key precondition for taking advantage of technological change and new economic opportunities.

The Deeds of the Abbots of St Albans: Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani ed. by James G. Clark

Reviewed by: The Deeds of the Abbots of St Albans: Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani ed. by James G. Clark Peter McDonald Clark, James G., ed., and David Preest, trans., The Deeds of the Abbots of St Albans: Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani, Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 2019; hardback; pp. xvii, 990; R.R.P. £150.00; ISBN: 9781783270767. The Gesta Abbatum of St Albans, from the foundation under King Offa until the death of Abbot Thomas de la Mare in 1396, is the longest continuous chronicle of an English monastery. H. T. Riley's Latin edition in the Rolls Series (1867–69) has shaped the work of historians of the abbey, such as James Clark and Michelle Still, and scholars of broader monastic history, especially David Knowles. But it has been available in English only in excerpts, by G. G. Coulton and Richard Vaughan, and has attracted less notice than St Albans's national chronicles by [End Page 204] Matthew Paris, Thomas Walsingham, and others. The present volume fills that gap admirably. The translation uses Riley's Latin, based on Walsingham's final ('C') version, as a starting point, but Clark and Preest have done the comparative work on the manuscripts necessary for a critical edition of the Latin. Each chapter has an annex with notes recording manuscript variants, in parallel with comprehensive footnotes that identify people, places, and subjects in the text and provide helpful commentary. Documents reproduced in the text appear in précis for brevity, but the work still runs to a thousand pages—a massive achievement in every sense. Only a few minor typographical errors have crept through. The translation is excellent. It is unfailingly accurate in the passages that I have checked against the original, but not slavishly literal. Rather, it is fluent and lively, recapturing the voice, mentality, and outlook of the authors and their community. A corporate work of many hands over more than 300 years, the Gesta conveys a sense of memory handed down. The thirty abbatial portraits are neither liturgical necrologies nor hagiographies. Indeed, each concludes with a reflection on the subject's faults and failings, for moral education and perhaps to put the incumbent's in perspective. They may have originated in a roll kept by the cellarer; by Walsingham's time the responsibility was the precentor's. The early entries are brief, formulaic, and sometimes inaccurate. But from the late eleventh century the detail and colour increase, reflecting the growing need for written historical validation. The hands of Paris and Walsingham are evident in the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century entries (for example, some vintage Matthew Paris invective on pp. 484–88), and Walsingham draws extensively on the abbey's records. But even they keep to the inherited format, mute their personal styles, and look internally rather than out to the wider world. The insight into the inner life of the house is unrivalled among English monasteries. We have detailed accounts of liturgy, devotion, and observance of the Rule in the abbey and its cells and of the thinking behind the abbots' measures, which other houses' customaries lack. The tension between upholding the Rule and the humane urge to mitigate runs through the chronicle, including the sections on Michael of Mentmore and de la Mare as presidents of the provincial chapter. The portraits of the abbots are matched elsewhere only by Jocelin of Brakelond and Walter Daniel, and then only for one man. The chronicles detail not only the house's acquisition of liturgical items but also its interest in books and learning, in which St Albans stood out; the monastic school, the move into the universities and the achievements of university-educated abbots are documented. We also get rare glimpses of monastic preaching (pp. 769–70) and pastoral care. The text displays the tendency of St Albans, like other monasteries, to see the abbot's duty as building up the house's resources, to its glory and that of its patron saint. Each chapter proudly documents his acquisitions and catalogues his losses as failings, or even as sin. That mentality also shapes the chroniclers' dismissive [End Page 205] attitudes towards the townsmen and peasants, who rebel wickedly against...

Beyond Words: New Research on Manuscripts in Boston Collections, ed. Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Lisa Fagin Davis, Anne-Marie Eze, Nancy Netzer, and William P. Stoneman. Text, Image, Context: Studies in Medieval Manuscript Illumination, 8. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2021, 361 pp, 291 col. Ill.

This study stems from an exhibition/ conference of the same name, “Beyond Words,” presented in Boston in 2006; however, it goes well beyond the bounds of a conventional exhibition catalog, which was produced at the time to accompany the objects on display. The volume produced here expands these initial parameters to consider additional questions about the manuscripts held in these Boston collections, notably Houghton Library at Harvard University, McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum of Boston. The book is divided into four major sections, devoted respectively to monastic manuscripts (3 essays), courtly culture and patronage (5 essays), princes, patricians, prelates and pontiffs (4 essays), and illuminating history (3 essays) with a coda on manuscripts in the modern era provided by the final essay. As the editors remark in their introduction, the emphasis is Christian and central European; this is due in part to the collection parameters themselves (the above institutions have no Ethiopian or Hebrew manuscripts, for example) and in part by limitations of time and focus (there are a number of Islamic manuscripts in the Boston collections which have not been included here but would be well worth exploring in a separate study of their own). The richness and depth of the sixteen essays here offer insights into many aspects of the late medieval world. The chapter by Patricia Stirnemann on Gilbert de la Porrée traces book collection of the works of a single, theologically problematic author, and offers a valuable case study on the transmission of writings by a scholar charged (though exonerated) with heresy. Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak demonstrates how the charters of the abbey of Sawley preserved in the Houghton library allow us to consider the “medial role” of document writing, and how this practice assisted an English Cistercian monastery to shape its own representation with its neighbors by crafting records of land ownership disputes. Kathryn M. Rudy examines manuscript workshops among nuns in Delft in the fifteenth century, providing a vivid model of book production practices in these devotional contexts.

The Regulation of Religious Communities in the Late Middle Ages: A Comparative Approach to Ming China and Pre-Reformation England

This article examines the regulation of religious life in the late Middle Ages (14th and 15th centuries), focusing comparatively on Catholic monastic communities in pre-Reformation England and Buddhist monasticism in early Ming China. This comparative approach to two of the most important monastic traditions across Eurasia allows us to problematize the paradigm of ideas and praxes surrounding monastic self-governance in Latin Christendom and to integrate the current scholarship on Ming regulation of religious communities by investigating the pivotal changes in imperial religious policies taking place in the early period of this dynasty. We find that monks and secular authorities at the two ends of Eurasia often shared the same concerns about the discipline of religious men and women, the administration of their properties, and the impact of these communities on society at large. Yet, the article identifies significant differences in the responses given to these concerns. Through the analysis of primary sources that have thus far been overlooked, we show how in early Ming China the imperial government imposed a strict control over the education, ordination and disciplining of Buddhist monks. This bureaucratic system was especially strengthened during the reign of Zhu Yuanzhang (r. 1368–1398), when the figure of the Monk-Official and other tools of secular regulation were introduced, and limits to property claims and economic activities of monasteries were imposed. Instead, during the same period, English monasteries benefited from the previous disentangling of the Church from secular political authorities across Europe. In fact, in late medieval England, the Benedictine tradition of self-governance and independence from the secular sphere was arguably even more marked than in the rest of the continent.

De modo meditandi vel contemplandi: A Pedagogical Treatise for Novices from Bury St. Edmunds in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 240

abstractThis article presents the first study, edition, and modern English translation of a Latin treatise for novice Benedictine monks copied at the English monastery of Bury St. Edmunds in the fourteenth century in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 240. The treatise is comprised of two primary parts, the first describing a monastic program of meditation or contemplation to be followed throughout the day, the second discussing the benefits and nature of “the discipline” (the practice of flagellation) for curing a lack of devotion to monastic practice. The introduction and notes place the treatise within the larger context of the manuscript, of religious life and history in England and the West more generally, and of the treatise author's sources, monastic heritage, and a variety of traditional and innovative medieval genres. The text is finally placed in the context of newer historiography on late medieval English monasticism and the relationship of monastics to their lay associates.

The Linguistic Past in Twelfth-Century Britain by Sara Harris

Reviewed by: The Linguistic Past in Twelfth-Century Britain by Sara Harris Scott Gwara sara harris, The Linguistic Past in Twelfth-Century Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. 292. isbn: 978–1–107–18005–5. $105. In this fine book, Sara Harris has explored the Dark Continent of twelfth-century English historical, literary, and legal writings. Focusing on the incipient awareness of a layered linguistic past—Brittonic giving way to Latin, giving way to Old English (including Norse), giving way to Anglo-Norman—Harris identifies the theoretical means of conveying pastness in etymologies, archaisms, discursive commentary, and outright invention. Engagement with such a linguistic past, she suggests, embraces multi-ethnic ancestral identity, cultural awareness, political authority, and models of conquest. In her introduction, Harris grounds native perceptions of language history in scriptural terms, describing how languages fall away from a pre-lapsarian transparency, disperse worldwide at the Tower of Babel, and then suffer ‘corruption.’ She explains how Latin ultimately provides the grammatical structures for analyzing vernacular tongues. This promising start triggers an avalanche of percipient deductions. Chapter One covers efforts in English monasteries to validate Anglo-Saxon privileges through documents incorporating Old English, either in the original or in translation. Norman encroachments on pre-Conquest monastic possessions explain why vernaculars were thought to convey authenticity. Ramsey Abbey apparently translated authentic grants. Bury St. Edmunds, by contrast, concocted forgeries, as did St. Albans. Its charters [End Page 80] (one uses the term advisedly) underpinned the lost Gesta abbatum monasterii Sancti Albani, which survives in the Liber additamentorum of Matthew Paris. The Gesta was allegedly translated from a Romano-British book found in a wall at the abbey. The manuscript disintegrated after being translated. Æðelwold of Winchester also found an ancient source in a wall at Peterborough, presumably a version of the Relatio Hedde abbatis, which verifies the founding of Peterborough in 654–55. Chapter Two concerns the prestige of Old English texts in the twelfth century. Henry of Huntingdon is shown to have had a solid, but imperfect, knowledge of Old English. He usually translated sense-for-sense but could also produce more granular renderings. Reflecting on Henry’s appreciation for linguistic mutability, Harris illustrates his strategies and failings. His translation of the ‘Battle of Brunanburh’ correctly rendered ‘heardes hondplegan’ as ‘duro manus ludo’ (p. 73), while ‘hamora lafan’ was misconstrued as ‘domesticae reliquiae’ (p. 75), confusing OE hamor (‘hammer’) as OE ham (‘home’). Regardless of the inaccuracies, Henry’s effort acknowledges ‘the authority of ancient documentation’ (p. 78). ‘Brunanburh,’ in fact, highlights the ‘literal meaning and the literary experience of reading’ (p. 75), in which pastness can be re-imagined and re-deployed. Harris finds a similar theoretical statement made by the Eadwine Psalter, a complex, multi-lingual, illustrated manuscript. Its historical ‘accretions’ include artwork drawn from the Utrecht Psalter, a Romanum exemplar of demonstrable antiquity, and Old English glosses from multiple sources, many unknown. Harris interprets this complexity, and especially the English vernacular, as evidence of Canterbury Psalm scholarship established in a co-linguistic context. Writings by Geoffrey of Monmouth are the subject of Chapter Three. In Harris’ view, Geoffrey’s ‘liber vestustissimus,’ the alleged source of Gesta regum Brittaniae, validated Brittonic languages for historical study. The antiquity, content, style, and etymological interest of Welsh rivaled that of English and Anglo-Norman. Geoffrey’s gambit of validating Brittonic sources recalls how Historia Brittonum assimilated Brittonic legend and folktale genres into Latin chronicle history. Endorsing the etymological strategies used for Latin or English place names, Geoffrey legitimized Brittonic writings for an audience of skeptical Normans. Harris concludes, ‘[Geoffrey] endowed the Britons with a much fuller history’ and ‘located the significance of that history in their language’ (p. 97). The success of Geoffrey’s Prophetia Merlini, also advertised as a translation, likewise proved the status of vernacular sources. Commentaries that emerged around the prophecies invited interpretation via a Latin exegetical tradition. Gerald of Wales, finally, employed language to ‘[reconstruct] ethnic history’ (p. 117). In one notable episode from the Itinerarium Kambriae, the Welsh phrase ‘halgerin ydorum’ (‘pass the salt’) evoked the origin of Welsh in the Greek tongue spoken by Trojans. Chapter Four centers on legal language. Just as ‘archaic...

“A Pitiful Thing”? The Afterlife of the Dissolution of the English Monasteries in Early Modern Chronicles, ca. 1540–ca. 1640

“A Pitiful Thing”? The Afterlife of the Dissolution of the English Monasteries in Early Modern Chronicles, ca. 1540–ca. 1640

CROWLAND ABBEY AS ANGLO-SAXON SANCTUARY IN THE PSEUDO-INGULF CHRONICLE

Crowland Abbey was one of many English monasteries after the Norman Conquest to forge documents that claimed a right to permanent sanctuary rooted in the Anglo-Saxon period. Yet Crowland's claims stand out because while other ecclesiastical chronicles that grounded their sanctuary claims in an earlier tradition did so in order to defend those rights in the twelfth century or later, Crowland never claimed this privilege for anything other than the abbey's Anglo-Saxon past. Indeed, I argue that the three forged “Anglo-Saxon” charters that make this assertion, which all appear in the Pseudo-Ingulf section of the abbey's chronicle, theHistoria Croylandensis, do so in order to emphasize a more fundamental claim about the institution's authority — its association with one of the most significant fenland saints, Guthlac. Moreover, I argue that the most likely date when this material was forged is the late twelfth century. In the context of the narrative in which they appear, these charters reveal that later medieval Crowland constructed a narrative that saw permanent sanctuary as an important feature of the abbey's Anglo-Saxon past.

Envisioning Episcopal Exemption: The Life of Christina of Markyate

This article examines the biography of a twelfth-century English holy woman, theLife of Christina of Markyate—particularly its account of a vision that she had in which she was crowned in the likeness of a bishop's miter—within the context of campaigns undertaken by English monasteries in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries to obtain the papal privilege of full exemption from the sacramental and juridical control of their diocesan bishop. Reading Christina's vision in view of the bids for independence made by St. Albans—the community responsible for commissioning and writing her biography—especially helps to shed light on why theLifeseems to figure her in a distinctly episcopal cast. Significantly, theLife's account of this vision may have been shaped by a miniature cycle of the passion and miracles of St. Edmund, produced by Burycirca1125, seemingly in an effort to provide further confirmation of the abbey's exempt status. In a miniature depicting Edmund's apotheosis, the saint divinely receives a miter-like crown, which is nearly identical in its ornamentation to the one that Christina would later receive. Ultimately under investigation in this article is whether St. Albans' campaign for exemption was one of the influences dictating the composition of theLife of Christina.

The Dissolution of the Monasteries and its Impact on Education in Tudor Times

In 1536 the English Parliament under pressure from Henry VIII and the Lord Chancellor, Thomas Cromwell, gave its consent for the dissolution of the lesser monasteries and abbeys in the king’s realm, and three years later with the sanction of MPs some of the greater religious houses also suffered the same fate. The principal aim of this paper is to assess the importance of this political decision with a view to examining the progress being made in the field of education in England in the middle of the sixteenth century resultant upon this dissolution. The evaluation of the merits and demerits originating from the suppression of the English monasteries is made in terms of both primary and academic education. The answers to these key questions are preceded by a short analysis of the reputation monasteries and abbeys had acquired by that time. Also on a selective basis, some opinions have been presented here to provide an overall picture of the standing of the monks and nuns and their concomitant activities, as perceived through the eyes of English society; the eminent scholars and humanists In particular. Subsequently, before assessing the consequences resulting from the dissolution of the religious houses in England, some consideration is given to the reasoning and rationale which lay behind both Henry VIII and his Lord Chancellor’s political decisions.

Aelred, the Doctor — In What Sense?

This paper is designed to explain the title of ‘Doctor of Christian Friendship’ that contemporary theological tradition conferred on Aelred (1110 – 1167), a Cisterican abbot from the English monastery in Rievaulx. The title, set in the tradition of the Church, has a lot in common with the institution of ‘Doctor of the Church’, an honor officially conferred on eminent saints and scholars of philosophy and theology, who laid the foundation for the growth of Christian theology. Aelred, lacking in sufficient erudition and official proclamation on the part of the institutional Church, is called the ‘doctor of friendship’ more in academic circles, because his theological influence is mostly noted in the teaching on friendship. And indeed, his teaching, despite its Ciceronian-Augustine form, is systematic, coherent, original, and therefore deserves him the title of the master of philosophy and the ‘theology of friendship’.

Memory's Library: Medieval Books in Early Modern England by Jennifer Summit (review)

Reviewed by: Memory's Library: Medieval Books in Early Modern England by Jennifer Summit Toby Burrows Summit, Jennifer , Memory's Library: Medieval Books in Early Modern England, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2008; cloth; pp. x, 343; 8 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US$35.00; ISBN 9780226781716. The Act against Superstitious Books and Images (1550) ordered the public destruction of all medieval service books that had survived the dissolution of the English monasteries during the previous decade. Though a majority of medieval manuscripts were indeed destroyed, some still managed to survive into the post-Reformation period. Jennifer Summit is interested in the fate of these medieval books in early modern England, seen especially in the context of the history of libraries. She focuses on the period between 1431 and 1631, stretching from the collecting activities of Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester, to the equally influential work of Sir Robert Cotton. Disclaiming 'a general history of libraries' as her goal, she proceeds through close readings of texts written by a number of important figures of this period: John Lydgate, Thomas More, Thomas Starkey, Thomas Elyot, [End Page 312] Matthew Parker, Edmund Spenser, Robert Cotton, William Camden, John Weever, Francis Bacon, and Thomas James. These readings draw out the authors' views about the medieval past, the nature of libraries, the organization of knowledge, and much more. The result is a rich and sophisticated study that deals with a wide range of topics and ideas. It is exhaustively documented, with the notes making up more than a quarter of the text. This is a challenging book, which addresses a number of significant questions. Ultimately, though, the results are unsatisfactory, in several important ways. To start with the title: though the book begins and ends with the statement that 'memory is a library', and the 'Coda' contains some brief allusions to concepts of memory in cognitive science and computer science, the substance of the book is not really about memory. Where the concept of 'memory' does occur, it is used loosely to refer to a whole series of different types of 'remembering'. 'Memory as a library' tends to be used interchangeably with 'library as memory' - whereas, in reality, they are two very different things that ought to be carefully distinguished. In her Introduction, Summit draws a contrast between monastic libraries which upheld the authority of the Church of Rome and the major post-Reformation libraries which became 'centers of national memory' (p. 3). This is a surprisingly simplistic statement from an author who, on several occasions, emphasizes her commitment to a more 'nuanced' view of the relationship between the pre- and post-Reformation eras. It begs a whole series of questions about the nature and purposes of medieval libraries, let alone the nature of 'national memory' and the role of libraries in the modern world. At the very least, the statement needs to be explained and discussed more fully. Summit's assumptions about the nature and history of libraries tend to be over-simplified in other ways too. Medieval libraries and monastic libraries are referred to as if they were one and the same - even though cathedral, college, and school libraries (and even personal libraries) are referred to several times in passing. The extent and contents of post-Reformation libraries are never fully discussed, and the fact that they contained many more printed books than medieval manuscripts is largely glossed over. But this has significant implications for the survival of 'medieval books'. How did the manuscripts fit into the larger context of the post-Reformation library as a whole? Should the survival of medieval manuscripts be distinguished from the survival of medieval texts in printed form? Libraries were only one aspect of the various collecting activities of men like Cotton, as Summit acknowledges. How did their collections of 'curiosities' affect their approach to medieval manuscripts and their understanding of the meaning and significance of those manuscripts? [End Page 313] The methodology adopted for this book produces a series of admirably close and sensitive readings of specific texts. But this is achieved at some cost to the coherence of the overall argument. The themes in More's Utopia, Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Camden...

A History of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, 1182-1256

There can be no doubting the central importance of the great Benedictine abbey of Bury St Edmunds in English medieval monastic history. Growing up around the shrine of Edmund, the East Anglian king murdered in 843, the abbey came to be one of only five English monasteries to be fully exempt from diocesan and provincial jurisdiction and to enjoy direct dependence on the papacy. Moreover, its control of a liberty of eight and a half hundreds—the whole of west Sussex—and of the town of Bury itself, gave it an immense economic and political role in the region and beyond. Bury St Edmunds also has the good fortune to be extensively documented, with more than forty registers and cartularies, a substantial number of books from the abbey library (though only a fraction of what once existed) and literary and historical works produced by its monks. As editor of several of these sources, notably the chronicle of Bury St Edmunds and the abbey customary, there is no one better placed than Antonia Gransden to write a full history of the abbey. This is the first of two projected volumes which will cover the period from the late twelfth century to 1301. It spans the abbacy of Samson of Tottington (1182–1211), so vividly chronicled by Jocelin of Brackland (Part I, pp. 1–147), and the vacancy that followed his death (1212–15), and the rule of his four successors (1215–56) (Part II, pp. 149–248). That the first section of the book is rather longer than the second is a result of the imbalance of source material. Not only did Samson find a lively and eloquent chronicler in the person of Jocelin, but his abbacy also saw the compilation of the earliest surviving register. Using these and other sources Gransden is able to write at length about Samson's career before and after his election, the process of the election itself, his administration of the abbey, and his relations with external authorities. Full attention is given to his government of the abbey and his attempts to resolve the chronic economic difficulties which he inherited from his predecessor. What emerges is a vivid snapshot of the tensions between the abbot and convent in a large, powerful, and potentially wealthy Benedictine house by the close of the twelfth century. So, too, do the external demands on the abbot as landowner, secular justice (on his election Samson had to appoint his own legal advisers to bring himself up to the levels of knowledge required in his new situation), papal judge delegate, and lord of the town where he enjoyed regalian rights. In his relations with the kings of England, the popes, archbishops of Canterbury, his fellow abbots, his knights, and the townspeople of Bury, Samson's overriding concern was for the liberties of his monastery.

Monastic Life in Anglo-Saxon England, c. 600-900 (review)

Reviewed by: Monastic Life in Anglo-Saxon England, c. 600-900 David Rollason Monastic Life in Anglo-Saxon England, c. 600–900. By Sarah Foot. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2006. Pp. xvi, 398. $90.00.) The publishers of this handsomely and generously produced book have included on the jacket an evaluation of it by Nicholas Brooks as "a beautifully structured and magisterial treatment." It is certainly a capable and well-informed commentary on the English church before the tenth-century Reformation, which shows a comprehensive knowledge of the written sources for its history, and students will find it a useful guide. It is, however, in essence the author's doctoral thesis of 1990, and, although she emphasizes that it has been much revised and improved, there is still a sense that it belongs to a somewhat earlier generation of discussion. Foot adheres to her previously expounded view that all English churches of the period in question should be called minsters and that the word monastery should be abandoned, although not apparently the adjective monastic. Her argument that early monasteries were various and their pastoral functions essentially unpredictable is set out in more detail than previously, but given the limitations of the written sources, certainty is not possible. It is striking how often Foot declares that something is hard or impossible "to imagine," as in "it is impossible to imagine that all ministers of baptism belonged to episcopal households" (p. 301). The imagining seems to depend as much on our preconceptions as on precise evidence. Crucially, the nature of lay interaction with monasteries, which is an issue for any period of monastic history and which Foot declares to be central to her book, is not handled in the sort of depth which it receives in other contexts, for example, from Arnold Angenendt, even in the case of the importance of monasteries for land tenure. It is unfortunate for Foot that her book has been overtaken by John Blair's The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society (Oxford, 2005). Blair has been very successful in pushing the analysis of English monasteries in new directions, noting that further study of the origins of parishes and their relationship to monasteries "cannot [End Page 329] progress significantly without another generation of local studies, and ultimately a complete catalogue of Anglo-Saxon religious sites supported by a cartographic database" (p. 7). One of Blair's great strengths in his book is his cross-disciplinary approach, especially his expertise in topographical, archaeological, and to some extent art historical research. By contrast, Foot's book contains plates of manuscripts and churches and plans of sites that are never more than illustrations without close analysis or even particular relevance. The plate of Escomb church (p. 104) is apparently to illustrate a point about the (dubious) antiquity of its churchyard enclosure, which is not shown on the plate, while the highly relevant issues of the proportions and liturgical function of the church are not touched upon. Students will need to be encouraged to look more closely at the nonwritten sources, not least stone sculpture following the publication of the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, than this book does. [End Page 330] David Rollason Durham University Copyright © 2008 The Catholic University of America Press

Anti-Jewish Parody around Miracles of the Virgin?: Thoughts on an Early Nonsense-Cento in Berkeley, Bancroft Library, BANC MS UCB 92

MOST of us are familiar with the conspicuous anti-Jewish content of Miracles of the Virgin by way of Chaucer's Prioress's Tale, and the brutality of that narrative is not atypical. Most collections of Miracles of the Virgin, whether Latin or vernacular, will include a handful of narratives in which violence against Jews is a crucial feature.2 Although such tales by no means make up the majority of these widely circulated medieval texts, they are among the most frequently repeated and long-lived,3 and it is an observable fact that the genre often calls for the punishment or conversion of Jews. While the usual scholarly introductions to vernacular Miracles of the Virgin explain that ‘devotion to the Virgin [was] of a universal and personal character’, that her miracles were ‘the stuff of popular homiletics’, or offer a ‘cross-section of medieval thought, culture, and narrative traditions’,4 in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Latin collections of Marian legends, which had their birth in English monasteries and which became the great source books of the late-medieval vernacular examples,5 these miracles functioned within the clerical domains of theology and parody.