The Abbot and the Rule

Religious Life at St Albans, 1290–1349

Michelle Still

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351895309
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

St Albans was one of the greatest Benedictine abbeys of medieval England, and the early 14th century was a period during which the concerns of the community and the role of the abbot emerge particularly clearly. Yet the history of the abbey during this period has received little attention since general surveys undertaken over eighty years ago, and the manorial history by Levett in 1938. Basing herself on the unique and relatively unexploited Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani, Michelle Still examines the position of St Albans in both the secular and monastic worlds, with a focus on the period 1290-1349. The study includes discussion of the role of the abbot as a feudal landlord, a provider of education (at the abbey's grammar school), and a dispenser of charity. In conclusion, she notes the pivotal importance of the personality and influence of the abbot of St Albans in ensuring the strict observance of the Rule of St Benedict in an age when traditional monasticism was increasingly challenged. Through the detailed study of this one abbey, this book makes an important contribution to the overall picture of monastic life in medieval England.

Chapter 1

Introduction

In his Mirror of the Church, composed in the early years of the thirteenth century, Gerald of Wales mounted a specific attack on the great monastery of St Albans, rebuking it for its overweening pride and opulence.¹ What particularly upset Gerald was the abbey’s seemingly arrogant attitude towards no less a figure than its own bishop, Hugh of Lincoln (1186–1200).² Gerald recounts how, following his consecration in London in 1186, the saintly Hugh was making his way back to Lincoln for his enthronement when the monks of St Albans took it upon themselves to refuse him his right to celebrate Mass in the abbey church in order to safeguard their cherished exemption privilege. Bishop Hugh’s retribution was swift. Excommunicating both the monastery and the monks, he ordered that their churches should be placed under interdict with the result that the community was unable to buy or sell or obtain food and lodgings anywhere within the seven shires of the vast. diocese of Lincoln.³ According to Gerald, the community at St Albans was soon brought to heel and sought their bishop’s pardon. The attitude of the monks is, of course, understandable as they felt that right was on their side. In the course of the twelfth century, they had sought and obtained a variety of privileges and exemptions which had made St Albans one of the three most important abbeys in England. The pre-eminence of their house, according to Gerald, owed much to the English pope, Adrian IV (1154–59), whose favour towards the monks was such that he had not only granted them everything that they asked for but much more besides.⁴

Certainly, as a result of these and other papal privileges, St Albans was able to claim with justification from the mid-twelfth century to be the premier Benedictine monastery of all England. It is, therefore, surprising that St Albans has attracted relatively little scholarly interest from antiquarians and historians alike and most particularly for the period covered by this book. Following the briefest of references in Dugdale,⁵ and Tanner,⁶ it was not until 1795 that Peter Newcome, local antiquarian and Rector of Shenley, published his account of the abbey’s history from its foundation to the Dissolution.⁷ This scholarly work includes plans of the abbey, values for its property and a history of the principal events during each abbacy. Newcome’s initiative for St Albans was continued by such nineteenth-century architects and clerks of works at the abbey as James Neale,⁸ John Chapple,⁹ and Henry Nicholson¹⁰ who was Rector of the abbey from 1835–66 before it acquired cathedral status.¹¹ While two wider scholarly surveys of this period were undertaken in the second decade of the twentieth century, Galbraith’s beginning at 1300¹² and Williams’s offering a broad local perspective,¹³ more recent articles have tended to concentrate on the tenth,¹⁴ eleventh,¹⁵ twelfth¹⁶ and sixteenth¹⁷ centuries. Eighty years on, this study of the abbey in the highly significant early fourteenth century sets out to remedy previous neglect of the period. While an account concentrating on St Albans alone may seem myopic to some, the aim is to place the house in a wider context. For it is only through the gradual process of studying individual abbeys that it will ever be possible to draw up a composite picture of monastic life in England. St Albans should thus take its place beside Bury St Edmund’s, Christ Church, Canterbury, Durham, Westminster and the other great medieval religious houses. This book is intended as one small piece of the jigsaw, a contribution to our better understanding of the peculiarly medieval institution of monasticism as practised at St Albans in the first half of the fourteenth century. It does not set out to continue the admirable work of Levett¹⁸ by providing either a manorial or an economic history of the abbey, yet such evidence enhances the essential context for this work.

This study of the internal history of the abbey deals with both the organisation of monastic life and with monastic spirituality. Since a monastery has no life apart from the lives of its monks, it is necessary to concentrate on individuals as well as institutions and so the present study focuses in particular on abbots John de Berkhamstede (1290–1301), John de Maryns (1302–08), Hugh de Eversdone (1308–27), Richard de Wallingford (1327–36) and Michael de Mentmore (1336–49). During the abbacies of these five men, considerable developments occurred in English monasticism and the abbots’ own concerns emerge with particular clarity. The period 1290–1349 stands out as an era of renewed vitality in which the character of the abbot and his ability to ensure the strict observance of the Rule of St Benedict in accordance with the best practice of the time is revealed. Monastic life in the early fourteenth-century was not merely a feeble forerunner of the later much documented achievements of Abbot Thomas de la Mare (1349–96).¹⁹ Rather, this period stands on its own in deserving our attention. This is not, of course, to say that there were no serious problems to be faced but, by 1349, the abbey of St Albans was in a more stable condition than it had been at any time in the previous sixty years.

The lives of the monks within the community between 1290 and 1349 also warrant attention because of the range of surviving documentary evidence available. A variety of different categories of document survives to inform us about the internal life at the abbey. This particular study requires more reconstruction than those for other houses such as Durham Priory²⁰ as the St Albans’ manuscripts are highly fragmented, never having been collected together and catalogued as a whole. The major source for this era in St Albans’ monastic history is the Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani, a chronicle account which charts the rule of the abbots of the monastery of St Albans from its foundation by Offa in 793 to almost the end of the rule of Thomas de la Mare (d. 1396). The three-volume printed edition of the Gesta²¹ is taken from the large volume of St Albans’ manuscripts contained in BL, Cotton Claudius, E IV.²² It is divided into three sections, the first copied from the work of the thirteenth-century chronicler, Matthew Paris (c. 1200–59) and his anonymous predecessor, perhaps Adam the Cellarer who died c.1170.²³ This first section of the Gesta covered the period from 793 to 1255.²⁴ The second section from 1255, by an early fourteenth-century chronicler, perhaps William Rishanger, takes the history up to the death of Abbot John de Maryns in 1308.²⁵ In the 1380s, a third section, created from the second, was revised and then continued by Thomas Walsingham, monk and chronicler to the abbey,²⁶ writing between 1376 and 1422. Walsingham’s Gesta is a remarkable source for the history of St Albans. Indeed, it is one of the best internal sources for any monastery anywhere. Other contemporary narratives composed within monastic houses were chiefly concerned with their own domestic history. Such typical examples include the later part of the chronicle written at Bury St Edmunds covering the period from the Creation to 1301,²⁷ the thirteenth-century chronicle of St Mary’s abbey, York,²⁸ and the chronicle of St Augustine’s abbey, Canterbury, written by William Thorne and taking the history of that abbey down to 1397.²⁹ All of these chronicles, including that of Walsingham, combined a domestic history of the house with a description of more general national events and the ways in which these affected the monks of the particular house. Such chronicles, including as they often did (and as does the Gesta) transcriptions of the abbey’s important charters, papal bulls and other documents, served as a written defence of the monastery’s rights and privileges.³⁰ The Gesta of St Albans provides us with much precise detail about the internal religious life of the monastery and its monks in the fourteenth century. Walsingham’s chronicle sets out an account of events that took place many years before his own day but also gives a narrative on details that may well have been within his own memory or that of his contemporaries. The Gesta serves as the starting point for all aspects of the history of the abbey in the fourteenth century. However, as with most monastic chronicles, the source must remain exactly that, a starting point. Its account of events needs to be supplemented wherever possible by reference to the administrative records of the house and sources from outside the monastery.

For an abbey of the size and importance of St Albans one would expect to find a wealth of surviving documentary records, normally including the central records of the community, most notably administrative accounts relating to the various official departments within the monastery, together with the accounts of the almoner, the cellarer and the sacrist. Manorial records would ideally supplement any attempt to gain an idea of the size and the workings of the abbey estates but, sadly, few of these have survived. Correspondence between the abbey and the diocesan bishop, the crown, the pope and other influential figures is also crucial in helping to build up a more complete picture. It is unfortunate that for St Albans many of these categories of records are lacking, whereas similar houses such as Durham, and Wes...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Alban and his Monastery
• Chapter 3 The Abbot and the Monastic Community
• Chapter 4 The Abbot and Secular Life
• Chapter 5 The Abbot and the Cells of St Albans
• Chapter 6 Education at St Albans in the Fourteenth Century
• Chapter 7 The Provision of Charity
• Chapter 8 Conclusions
• Appendix A Appropriated Churches
• Appendix B Priors
• Appendix C Education at St Albans in the First Half of the Fourteenth Century
• Appendix D The Provision of Charity
• Select Bibliography
• Index