Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Maps: The Dependent Priories of the Monasteries of Medieval England (England and Wales)
- Introduction
- Part I The Dependent Priory as Daughter House
- Part II The Dependent Priory as Small Monastery
- 4 Monastic Life in Dependent Priories
- 5 Dependent Priories and their Neighbours
- 6 The Economy of English Cells
- Epilogue: The Dissolution of English Cells
- Appendices
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- Other Volumes in Studies in the History of Medieval Religion
5 - Dependent Priories and their Neighbours
from Part II - The Dependent Priory as Small Monastery
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Maps: The Dependent Priories of the Monasteries of Medieval England (England and Wales)
- Introduction
- Part I The Dependent Priory as Daughter House
- Part II The Dependent Priory as Small Monastery
- 4 Monastic Life in Dependent Priories
- 5 Dependent Priories and their Neighbours
- 6 The Economy of English Cells
- Epilogue: The Dissolution of English Cells
- Appendices
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- Other Volumes in Studies in the History of Medieval Religion
Summary
The importance of the role played by monasteries in local society is one of the most difficult questions of monastic history. Due to deficiencies in evidence, basic issues like the economic impact of religious houses on their locality, the extent of the social services they provided or how much layfolk showed an interest in the monks' religious activities remain very hard to elucidate. Perhaps most difficult of all to establish is the degree of favour with which monasteries were viewed by their secular neighbours. This issue has appeared particularly urgent to historians of the Dissolution seeking to explain why the wholesale suppression of religious houses provoked relatively little uproar in the 1530s. It used to be fashionable to attribute the ease of the Dissolution to the unpopularity of monasticism in Tudor England, but more recent studies have argued that there was no hostility and even some support for the monastic ideal at this time. But although considerable effort has been invested in stressing the popularity and vigour of parochial religion in the period preceding the Reformation, much less work has been done to locate the place of religious houses in this picture of apparent vitality and strength.
The role of monasteries in local society occupies a relatively minor place in Professor Knowles' history of the religious orders, but considerable advances have been made in this subject over the past thirty years.
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- The Dependent Priories of Medieval English Monasteries , pp. 194 - 228Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2004