CHAPTER VIIVISITATIONS
IN accordance with the various Canons and Councils, both general and particular, all English monasteries in pre-Norman times were subject to the Bishop as visitor; but after the Conquest, when special houses gained in power, and new or reformed congregations obtained a lodgment, the diocesan’s right of visiting became materially abridged. Up to their end all the English Benedictine houses of men or women, which numbered about 200, were subject, save for a few exceptions, to the Bishop. In fact, so great was the Benedictine influence in England that no fewer than nine of the old cathedral foundations had monastic chapters, whilst another one (Carlisle) belonged to the canons regulars of St. Austin. In these cases, which were peculiar to England, the Bishop was regarded as taking the place of the abbot, whilst the acting superior of the house itself was only termed prior. All the Austin houses, save one, were also subject to their diocesan. The exempt Benedictine abbeys were Westminster, St. Albans, Bury St. Edmunds, Battle, St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, and Peterborough; the last named was, moreover, subject to the Primate. To these must be added the Austin abbey of Waltham. In these cases the cumbrous and costly custom prevailed of either very heavy fees or a journey to Rome for confirmation; their exemption seems to have proved a hindrance to discipline and good order.
LLANTHONY PRIORYLLANTHONY PRIORY (Austin Canons)
LLANTHONY PRIORY (Austin Canons)
LLANTHONY PRIORY (Austin Canons)
The two great orders of the reformed Benedictines, the Cluniacs, and the Cistercians—the latter of whom were a great power in England—were free from diocesan visitation, and the appointment of their superiors had not to be confirmed by the Bishop, though his benediction was usually sought. The exemption in each of these cases arose from the central houses, which were respectively at Cluny and Citeaux, in Burgundy, obtaining general powers of visitation throughout Christendom. The White or Premonstratensian canons, who were subject to some extent to their central house at Prémontré in the diocese of Laon, also obtained papal exemption from their diocesans, although it was not unusual for the abbot and chapter-general of Prémontré to appoint a Bishop as visitor-general of the whole of the English province. The Gilbertines, as well as all houses of mendicant friars, were also exempt.
It thus came to pass that in certain dioceses where the Benedictines or Austins were not very strong, the Bishop only visited a minority of the religious houses of his diocese. It has sometimes been assumed that these exemptions of whole orders conduced to disorder and carelessness. Although it would seem that the episcopal supervision of the diocesan of each religious house was on the whole most desirable, the supposition of laxness in its absence cannot be sustained; and the visitations made by the Commissioners of particular orders were, as a rule, more regular in occurrence, and, for the most part, as searching in character.
The customary time for visitations was once in every three years; but in the cases where the diocesan was visitor the period was not unfrequently deferred; though sometimes, in cases of delinquency, repeated at much shorter intervals. The object of the visit was twofold—namely, to ascertain the temporal as well as the spiritual and moral conditions of the house. The former was a most important part of the inquiry, for not only were houses taught to be as far as possible self-contained, but in the days when funded property was almost unknown, the very existence of the house depended upon the condition of its pasturage and tillage, and the amount of cattle, grain, and general stores for the sustaining of life. The visitor was received with peculiar honour, met at the gates in procession, and conducted to church and chapter-house.In addition to the usual services, the Bishop preached a sermon in the chapter-house to the inmates, and his secretary often entered the text in the brief entry of the visitation made in the episcopal register—possibly with a view to check the Bishop giving the like discourse on the next occasion. The Bishop, with whom was generally associated some diocesan official as assessor, began the visitation by asking for a report from the superior as to the general condition of the house, both temporal and spiritual, and as to the conduct of the inmates. Then the obedientiaries, or those who held office, were called before him in due gradation, each one being specially questioned as to the affairs of his own office. After this each religious inmate, novices as well as the professed, was called up in turn before the visitor, the examination being always conducted severally and separately, so that the communication might be unchecked and frank. All were expected to be absolutely open in their declarations without fear or favour, and to conceal no evil of any kind of which they were aware. Meanwhile the Bishop’s secretary took notes of the evidence given by each. Where everything seemed going smoothly, and there was no reason to suspect any hidden mischief, the visitor sometimes allowed inmate after inmate merely to testify hisOmnia bene, or that all was well; on the contrary, the questions became searching if there appeared to be any attempt at concealment.
It was difficult under such a system, not only for scandals to escape, but even for the milder forms of disorder or laxity to avoid detection.
The most complete record of English monastic visitation is to be found in a volume at the Bodleian, pertaining to Norwich diocese during the episcopates of Bishops Goldwell and Nicke; it covers a period of forty years, namely from 1492 to 1532. The number of religious houses, exclusive of hospitals and collegiate churches, under episcopal visitation in this diocese was 34; those that were exempt, including thirty friaries, were 38. Details are given of 141 formal visits paid to the religious houses of Norfolk and Suffolk, the actual statements of each inmate being briefly recorded. In the large majority of cases the visitor found that no reform of any kind was needed. Fifteen visits, or about one in nine, brought to light matters that certainly required mending, and for the reformation of which strict injunctions were issued.
Out of thirty-four visits paid to the eight nunneries of the diocese, one resulted in detecting a case of grievous sin, and there was a painful scandal brought to light in one of the inspections of the Austin canons of Westacre. By the end of the fifteenth century the numbers had become much reduced through poverty in many of the houses of East Anglia, particularly in the small settlements of Austin canons. It is estimated that there were then in Norfolk diocese about 230 Austin canons, 120 Benedictine monks, and 80 Benedictine nuns.There seems no reason whatever to doubt that the vast majority of these were leading exemplary lives. As an evidence of the patience of the visitor in hearing every kind of complaint, it may be mentioned that the older nuns of Flixton complained to the Bishop of the mutton served in the refectory being burnt, and the beer being too weak; the further complaint as to the too rapid repetition of the psalter at the offices would probably appeal to him as more worthy of the attention of the diocesan. The whole of these visitations were printed a few years ago for the Camden Society, under the capable editorship of Dr. Jessopp. In commenting upon this valuable proof as to the real condition of England’s religious houses just before their fall, the learned editor cordially welcomes all possible publicity being given to further documentary evidence from any known source, adding that “... then it may happen that we shall be forced to confess that in the sixteenth century there were creatures in human form who exhibited as shocking examples of truculent slander, of gratuitous obscenity, of hateful malignity, as can be found among the worst men of any previous or succeeding age, but we shall have to look for them, not within the cloisters, but outside them, among the robbers, not among the robbed.”
The Worcestershire Historical Society has done good service in printing the importantSede VacanteRegister in the possession of the Dean and Chapter of Worcester. When there was a vacancy in thesee, the spiritualities were administered by the Prior of Worcester, who then had the right to visit both the parochial clergy and the religious houses subject to diocesan control. This register covers all the vacancies—sometimes extending over more than a year—between the death of Bishop Giffard in 1301 to the enthronement of Bishop Bourchier in 1435. During this period the prior, either in person or through two commissioners, visited the episcopally-controlled monasteries, eighteen in number, on eleven different occasions. Eighty-four of these visits are duly recorded; only two of them revealed any special cause of offence, one of them being at Wroxall nunnery and the other at Studley priory. This voluminous register has been fully edited, with prolonged introductions, by Mr. J. Willis Bund, chairman of Quarter Sessions, etc.; a gentleman entirely free from mediæval proclivities. Commenting on the usually received supposition of monastic immorality, he considers that this register disproves such charges, and gives it as his opinion that the English monastic clergy were not one bit more immoral “than the secular clergy of the nineteenth century.”
The jests and jeers of cynical and satirical writers of mediæval days, who were themselves usually men of depraved lives, as to the supposed laxity of life of monks and nuns, based upon the actions of a few degraded and disgraced religious, coupled with the foul slanders of Henry VIII.’s self-interested tools, have so long succeeded insaturating unreflective minds with scandal that it has become difficult for even well-intentioned writers (who have made no personal investigations) to escape from the evil and lying atmosphere with which the whole subject has been so long surrounded.
A particularly fine and exhaustive topographical work has recently appeared entitledThe Records of Wroxall. Wroxall Priory, Warwickshire, was a small house of Benedictine nuns with an interesting history. In these pages full extracts are given (with one overlooked omission) of all the visitations of the priory recorded in the Worcester diocesan registers. The earliest of these is 1268, and the latest in 1433. There are fourteen recorded visitations in all, made either by the Bishop or by the prior of Worcester’s Commissariessede vacante, and in only three of the fourteen was any evil detected—namely, in 1323, 1339, and 1410. Yet Wroxall is by far the worst case of any nunnery in the Worcester diocese, so far as extant visits are concerned. Its character was remarkably good on the eve of its suppression. Henry VIII.’s own Commissioners of 1536, six in number, reported that the nuns then numbered five with the prioress, and were all “off good converssacion and lyvyng, and all desyer yf the house be suppressed to be sent to other religious houses.” The priory itself is described as “a propre litle house, and in convenyent and good repaire.” The writer of this Wroxall book, who is evidently not desirous to gobeyond the truth, has failed to find a scrap of evidence between the visitation of 1433 and that of 1536; and yet, although not a breath of scandal is known to have rested on the nuns of Wroxall since 1410, he actually ventures thus to libel the last days of this house entirely out of his own imagination: “Idleness had crept within its walls, together with the vices of the world; it had become more a source of danger than a blessing to the community itself and to the public outside.” Such an unsupported statement is a blot on the book where it occurs, and it is cited here as a proof of the usual unfairness of the average English mind, saturated with over three centuries of reckless misrepresentation, when it approaches the question of the vowed religious life.
During the vacancy between the death of Archbishop Morton in October, 1500, and the election of his successor in the following April, the prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, asserted his right to hold metropolitical visitationssede vacante. At this time the sees of Winchester and Ely were also both vacant, and Dr. Hede, as commissary of the prior, made a visitation tour of both dioceses. The results, giving the details of the individual statements of the inmates, are extant in a volume at Canterbury, which, it is hoped, may ere long be printed. The record of this series of visits, unknown save perhaps to half-a-dozen ecclesiologists, is of considerable value in bearing remarkable witness to the general integrity of the religioushouses. Such evidence is all the more valuable, because of the obvious thoroughness of the work undertaken by Dr. Hede; in a single case, the large nunnery of Romsey, there was a sad scandal, and the investigation led to the dismissal of the abbess.
With regard to the visitations scattered throughout episcopal registers, the few who are acquainted with the whole series of these act-books will agree—and they only are competent to judge—(1) that only those cases where injunctions were issued are entered in any detail, in order that it might be seen whether thereformandawere carried out; (2) that where injunctions on one or two points were required, it was usual for the Bishop’s official to introduce a variety of customary decrees, which were for the most part a summary of the salient points of the general rule, and which were considered suitable for the admonition of the religious all over the country; (3) that allowance must always be made for the stilted and hyperbolical phrasing of official ecclesiastical Latin—a fact universally admitted by all mediæval scholars; and (4) that incidental mention is made in these registers of a very great number of visitations taking place of which there is no detailed record, and in which it is but common sense to conclude there was nothing to redress.
To these reflections may be added the caution that ought to be obvious to everyone of intelligence, that the object of a visitation is to detectlaxity and possible evil, and not to record devoutness and good discipline. To judge of the bulk of the religious from a few given up to bad living, and who were heavily punished for their misdeeds, is as monstrous and childish as it would be to condemn the inhabitants of some given area by the actions of the minute minority who figure in the police-court records.
So far as the visitation of monasteries by delegated ecclesiastics from the parent house is concerned, we are not aware of any general record of that character having come to light, either at home or on the continent, with regard to the Cistercians. As to the visitations of English Cluniac foundations, Sir G. F. Duckett did good service in printing a great amount of matter of the thirteenth century, together with some of later date, from the original records in the National Library at Paris. As these important visitations have recently been the subject of controversy, it is not necessary to allude to them any further, save by saying that it is best to consult Duckett’s two volumes in Latin, rather than the abbreviated English rendering; and that they cannot possibly fail to carry conviction to every unjaundiced mind of the good lives that were on the whole led by the monks under alien rule amid circumstances of peculiar difficulty.
The Royal Historical Society has lately printed the first of two volumes entitledCollectaneæ Anglo-Premonstratensiaby Abbot Gasquet, which aredevoted to the contents of an original register of the order of White Canons, in the Bodleian and other documents in the British Museum. The second volume will contain also details of Richard Redman’s visitations of all the English Premonstratensian houses. Redman was originally Abbot of Shap, Cumberland. In 1478 he was nominated by the Abbot of Prémontré to be vicar of the English province; at that time he had been already Bishop of St. Asaph for ten years, and thence he was successively translated to Exeter and Ely, dying Bishop of Ely 1505. He remained visitor of the Premonstratensians till the time of his death. Redman’s visitation register, well known to the writer of these chapters, shows that there was often much to correct; but the houses far oftener could show a clean bill of health, and where there was evil it only affected one or two individuals. It will also be found that the punishment of the guilty was usually most genuine and severe.
For serious sins Redman’s usual punishment was forty daysgravioris culpa, with the further penance of being sent to another house of the same order for seven years, during which long period the offender was under a certain amount of particular discipline and observation, and never allowed to leave the precincts. The chief points of the preliminary forty days’ punishment were:—To sit alone in the refectory on the ground at meal-times, with bread and water as the onlyfare; to lie prostrate at the entrance to the choir when the canons were entering or departing at the various hours; to be spoken to by no one; and to be excluded from the Communion.