4 - Beyond the Cloister

Summary

The communities described above had land and property in varying amounts, intended to support the friars or nuns, but they also always depended on gathering direct donations. Described as a limit, limitation or terminus, each priory had a territory within which limitors (questors) of the house were authorised to preach and beg for alms. This sometimes led to dispute, as between Clare and Orford in 1373 or between Clare and London ten years later. New foundations thus necessitated that borders be established between houses of the same order. In 1388, the provincial chapter held at Newcastle instructed the prior provincial to determine the limitations of Clare and of a new priory to be established at Thetford. Clare gave up forty-seven villages to the new house. Controversies over limitations or termini nonetheless continued in England and elsewhere: in the 1360s Cologne disputed rights in the city of Dortmund with its former daughter-house in Lippstadt. A century later, a conflict between the limitors of the friaries at Enghien (province of Cologne) and Tournai (province of France) was initially resolved by appeal to the prior general, Guglielmo Becchi, who entrusted the case to two masters, Bernardo di Volterra and Andrea di Alessandria. These two divided the disputed area between the houses, but the argument continued. In the same decade controversy erupted between Trier and Thionville (then in the French province) over the right to beg in Luxemburg.