from Part IV - Forms of Monasticism in the Late Middle Ages
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2020
In November 1519, Cardinal Wolsey (d. 1530), the most powerful religious leader in England, presented a series of proposed reforms to the Benedictine order of monks. Although Wolsey’s proposals have not survived, the Benedictines’ response to them has. In a letter to the cardinal, the order pleaded that the reforms should not be adopted since they would lead to “flight and apostasy,” and that “in our age (with the world now drawing to its close) those who seek austerity of life and regular observance are very few and very rare.” Many contemporary critics agreed with Wolsey on the necessity of monastic reforms. Indeed, the closing centuries of the Middle Ages had witnessed a host of monastic criticism. From humanists such as Erasmus to poets such as William Langland (d. c. 1386) or Chaucer (d. 1400), late medieval monks and nuns were frequently the subject of derision for, among other things, their perceived wealth and slothfulness.
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