CHAPTER IVMONASTIC CHARITIES
THE accounts of every monastery show certain definite sums set apart for charitable distribution, either in money, clothing, or food. These sums being charged on real property, came within the cognizance of the Commissioners who drew up theValorof 1534. The amounts in some cases were considerable, especially when they are compared with the total revenue of the house. Bishop Hobhouse has thus tabulated them for Somersetshire:—
For the much smaller county of Warwickshire, the amount of income assigned of obligation to the poor or in hospitality from the religious houses was far more considerable, as is shown by the following table:—
But such tables as these are wholly inadequate if we desire to give a true idea of English monastic charity.
In addition to these definitely pledged sums, a really much larger amount was distributed in kind by many a religious house up and down the country. Nor were these doles the mere lazy handing out of surplus food to be scrambled for by the sturdiest beggars, as is not infrequently represented by cynical and ill-informed writers of romance.
All monastic custumals lay down the most careful directions as to the duties of the almoner. “Every conventual almoner,” says one English mediæval writer, “must have his heart aglow with charity; his pity should know no bounds, and he should possess the love of others in a most marked degree; he must show himself as the helper of orphans, the father of the needy, and as one who is ever ready to cheer the lot of the poor and help them to bear their hard life.” As alms were a chief daily function of every monastic house, the almoner had leave of absence from the morning offices whenever his duties required him. He was not only the distributor of the alms of the house to those who sought them, but he was to visit all the aged, blind, or bedridden poor within a reasonable distance.
According to the wording of the custumal of St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, recently printed by the Henry Bradshaw Society, the almoner was tomake the most solicitous enquiry, through some trustworthy servant, as to the cases of illness and infirmity in the neighbourhood. When he went in person on visits of inquiry, two servants accompanied him, carrying the materials for immediate or urgent relief. If perchance the sick man asked for anything that the almoner did not possess, he was to do all in his power to acquire it for him. Although the poor in their need were never sent empty away from the monastery gate on whatever day they might apply, every house had its general day or days in the week when a general distribution was made to all the needy. At St. Augustine’s there were two such days every week throughout the year, when the needy attended at the monastic almshouse for the general distribution of food and broken meat that had been collected from the refectory, the “misericorde,” and the abbot’s chamber and hall. For this purpose attendants went round after meals with baskets, and vessels for beer. Moreover, such was their care that no needy applicant should fall short, that the almoner had full power to go to the granary and take sufficient grain for the making of fresh bread for these two days of general relief if there was any probability of the surplus bread falling short.
In most monasteries the whole commons of a deceased monk were distributed to the poor for thirty days after his death.
To the almoner and his subordinates wereentrusted the old clothes of the convent for distribution to the necessitous. Nor were such gifts always second-hand, for the almoner was instructed to lay in a store of stockings and shoes and other small presents for widows and orphans before the Christmas season.
In another way also the hospitality of every monastery was bound to be exercised in proportion to its size, and that was in the entertainment of travellers of whatever degree. The custumals insist, in differing terms but with much explicit detail, on the due discharge of this obligation with all courtesy and kindness. According to the very wording of St. Benedict’s rule, guests were to be received as if they were Christ Himself. None were to be refused admission; all were to be made welcome, but more especially monks, clergy, poor, and foreigners. Every custumal enjoins on the hosteler or guest-master the primary duties of having everything ready, clean, and sweet in the guest-house or the appointed chambers, such as wood for the fire, straw for the beds, water for the jugs and basins, rushes for the floor, and candles for lighting. Guests were to be supplied, if possible, with better food than the ordinary monastic commons. Well-to-do guests, using the house as a convenience on their travels, would doubtless, from time to time, make presents to the convent treasury, but such offerings would be quite the exception.
In almost every English episcopal register of the fourteenth century occur petitions from monasteriesasking the Bishop’s sanction to the appropriation of churches or rectories, of which they already held the advowson. In such cases it is generally found that the main reason given for asking the favour is that the stress of hospitality on the particular house is so great—owing very often to increase of traffic on a neighbouring highway—that the income is insufficient. There certainly were several objections that can readily be urged to this removal from a parish of the greater part of the income arising from tithe and glebe; but it may be remarkeden passantthat in pre-Reformation days there was, broadly speaking, much more security for the just administration of the Church revenues of an appropriated parish rather than of one that remained a rectory. If there is any one thing certainly established by the study of episcopal Act-books, it is that the best of mediæval Bishops were practically powerless to prevent the evils of lay patrons appointing youths in minor Orders to rectories and of the frequent non-residence of even older rectors. Consequently the rectories were far too often merely served by parochial chaplains removable at will. In the case of ordination of vicarages, the vicars were perpetual, and their residence insisted on; whilst the income from the greater tithes was, as a rule, fairly used for good purposes by the religious house to which it was appropriated, a certain portion of it being definitely assigned to the poor of the particular parish.
Another point to bear in mind with regard to, at all events, the spirit of monastic charity, as shown in statutes and custumals, was the endeavour that all the professed religious should cultivate a special sympathy with the poor, as God’s poor, and that such ideals should not be the exclusive privilege of the almoner and sub-almoner, or to some extent of the hosteler. Hence came about the maundy, or washing of the feet of the poor. This was under the superintendence of the almoner. At Abingdon monastery there was a daily maundy, when every morning, after the Gospel of the morrow or early Mass, the almoner went to the door of the abbey, and selected three from the poor waiting for an alms, whose feet were washed by the abbot, or by some monk deputed by him; the chosen almsmen were afterwards fed and given a small present of money. On the great maundy of Thursday in Holy Week it was the custom in most Benedictine houses to call in as many very poor men as there were monks. They were placed opposite each other in two rows, the poor men on one side, the monks on the other. Then, after certain appropriate antiphons, psalms, and collects, each brother crossed over to his poor man, knelt before him, endeavouring to see in him Christ Himself, and washed his feet; then rising he kissed him on the mouth and eyes, sat him down to meat and ministered to him.
At the great monastery at Evesham the rule provided for the continuous support of thirteenpoor persons, who were fed from the surplusage of the abbot’s table; and this in addition to the twelve “maundy” poor who were clothed as well as fed, and fifty sick persons who were also supported at the abbey’s expense.
The one only claim to monastic alms and monastic charity was to be poor and needy. Modern “Charity Organization” methods of subjecting every claimant to strict interrogatories as to the cause of poverty were as unknown to England’s mediæval monks as they were to the Christian Fathers of the sub-apostolic age.
It remains to mention under this heading that many a monastery, in fact the great majority of the larger houses, were the chief supporters of subsidiary hospitals under their control, where beds were provided for the sick and infirm, and where food and lodging were also given to needy wayfarers. This was specially the case when the religious house was on the confines of or within a town. Derby, Coventry, and Northampton are among the many towns that afford examples of this kind of charitable work. In many other instances a modicum of assistance to hospital work formed a regular charge on the eleemosynary funds of the greater foundation. Thus the bursar’s rolls of the great priory of Durham, for the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, show under the head of customary alms—in addition to £5 4s.8d.distributed to the poor on Maundy Thursday, and £13 on the thirteen principal feasts—a sum ofabout half a mark for shoes for the poor of the Domus Dei or God’s House, and a furthur sum for a like purpose for five widows of the hospital of St. Mary Magdalen. The actual almoner’s rolls of the same priory of the fourteenth century and onwards show that they maintained a great infirmary at Durham for the poor entirely in their own management, £5 6s.being the annual charge merely for the garments and shoes supplied to the inmates. There was also a hospital at Witton, originally designed for lepers, which was managed and supported by the Durham priory.
Like evidence can be readily produced all over the country. An interesting item of practical charity in the West of England may fittingly conclude these brief gleanings as to instances of monastic charity. The priory of Bath supported the hospital that was designed to help the poorest to the use of the city’s curative waters.
BYLAND ABBEYBYLAND ABBEY (Cistercian)
BYLAND ABBEY (Cistercian)
BYLAND ABBEY (Cistercian)