MONASTIC CHARITIES
The accounts of every monastery show certain definite sums set apart
for charitable distribution, either in money, clothing, or food. These
sums being charged on real property, came within the cognizance of the
Commissioners who drew up the _Valor_ of 1534. The amounts in some
cases were considerable, especially when they are compared with the
total revenue of the house. Bishop Hobhouse has thus tabulated them for
Somersetshire:--
£ _s._ _d._
Glastonbury 140 16 8
Wells, St. John’s 3 6 8
Bruton 26 6 8
Taunton 41 9 0
Keynsham 10 15 0
Worspring 8 0 0
Bath Abbey 10 2 6
Bath, St. John’s 8 0
Muchelney 11 3 0
Montacute 23 8 6
Athelney 22 18 2
Cleve 26 18 4
Barlynch 8 1 0
Dunster 14 8
Bridgewater, St. John 32 6 8
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Total £356 14 10
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For the much smaller county of Warwickshire, the amount of income
assigned of obligation to the poor or in hospitality from the religious
houses was far more considerable, as is shown by the following table:--
£ _s._ _d._
Warwick, St. Sepulchre’s 25 7 0
Studley 25 6 3
Alcester 6 13 4
Wroxall 23 0 0
Pensley 9 9 4
Thelesford 2 13 4
Coventry, Benedictines 60 18 6
” Carthusians 77 6 9
Combe 45 16 8
Erbury 26 19 8
Kenilworth 23 17 7
Stoneleigh 52 19 8
Merivale 12 16 8
Maxstoke 22 1 8
Avecote 18 0 6
Nuneaton 34 6 8
Polesworth 31 6 0
Henwood 8 10 8
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£507 9 7
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But such tables as these are wholly inadequate if we desire to give a
true idea of English monastic charity.
In addition to these definitely pledged sums, a really much larger
amount was distributed in kind by many a religious house up and
down the country. Nor were these doles the mere lazy handing out of
surplus food to be scrambled for by the sturdiest beggars, as is not
infrequently represented by cynical and ill-informed writers of romance.
All monastic custumals lay down the most careful directions as to the
duties of the almoner. “Every conventual almoner,” says one English
mediæval writer, “must have his heart aglow with charity; his pity
should know no bounds, and he should possess the love of others in a
most marked degree; he must show himself as the helper of orphans,
the father of the needy, and as one who is ever ready to cheer the
lot of the poor and help them to bear their hard life.” As alms were
a chief daily function of every monastic house, the almoner had leave
of absence from the morning offices whenever his duties required him.
He was not only the distributor of the alms of the house to those who
sought them, but he was to visit all the aged, blind, or bedridden poor
within a reasonable distance.
According to the wording of the custumal of St. Augustine’s,
Canterbury, recently printed by the Henry Bradshaw Society, the almoner
was to make the most solicitous enquiry, through some trustworthy
servant, as to the cases of illness and infirmity in the neighbourhood.
When he went in person on visits of inquiry, two servants accompanied
him, carrying the materials for immediate or urgent relief. If
perchance the sick man asked for anything that the almoner did not
possess, he was to do all in his power to acquire it for him. Although
the poor in their need were never sent empty away from the monastery
gate on whatever day they might apply, every house had its general
day or days in the week when a general distribution was made to all
the needy. At St. Augustine’s there were two such days every week
throughout the year, when the needy attended at the monastic almshouse
for the general distribution of food and broken meat that had been
collected from the refectory, the “misericorde,” and the abbot’s
chamber and hall. For this purpose attendants went round after meals
with baskets, and vessels for beer. Moreover, such was their care that
no needy applicant should fall short, that the almoner had full power
to go to the granary and take sufficient grain for the making of fresh
bread for these two days of general relief if there was any probability
of the surplus bread falling short.
In most monasteries the whole commons of a deceased monk were
distributed to the poor for thirty days after his death.
To the almoner and his subordinates were entrusted the old clothes of
the convent for distribution to the necessitous. Nor were such gifts
always second-hand, for the almoner was instructed to lay in a store
of stockings and shoes and other small presents for widows and orphans
before the Christmas season.
In another way also the hospitality of every monastery was bound to be
exercised in proportion to its size, and that was in the entertainment
of travellers of whatever degree. The custumals insist, in differing
terms but with much explicit detail, on the due discharge of this
obligation with all courtesy and kindness. According to the very
wording of St. Benedict’s rule, guests were to be received as if they
were Christ Himself. None were to be refused admission; all were to be
made welcome, but more especially monks, clergy, poor, and foreigners.
Every custumal enjoins on the hosteler or guest-master the primary
duties of having everything ready, clean, and sweet in the guest-house
or the appointed chambers, such as wood for the fire, straw for the
beds, water for the jugs and basins, rushes for the floor, and candles
for lighting. Guests were to be supplied, if possible, with better food
than the ordinary monastic commons. Well-to-do guests, using the house
as a convenience on their travels, would doubtless, from time to time,
make presents to the convent treasury, but such offerings would be
quite the exception.
In almost every English episcopal register of the fourteenth century
occur petitions from monasteries asking the Bishop’s sanction to
the appropriation of churches or rectories, of which they already
held the advowson. In such cases it is generally found that the main
reason given for asking the favour is that the stress of hospitality
on the particular house is so great--owing very often to increase of
traffic on a neighbouring highway--that the income is insufficient.
There certainly were several objections that can readily be urged to
this removal from a parish of the greater part of the income arising
from tithe and glebe; but it may be remarked _en passant_ that in
pre-Reformation days there was, broadly speaking, much more security
for the just administration of the Church revenues of an appropriated
parish rather than of one that remained a rectory. If there is any one
thing certainly established by the study of episcopal Act-books, it is
that the best of mediæval Bishops were practically powerless to prevent
the evils of lay patrons appointing youths in minor Orders to rectories
and of the frequent non-residence of even older rectors. Consequently
the rectories were far too often merely served by parochial chaplains
removable at will. In the case of ordination of vicarages, the vicars
were perpetual, and their residence insisted on; whilst the income from
the greater tithes was, as a rule, fairly used for good purposes by the
religious house to which it was appropriated, a certain portion of it
being definitely assigned to the poor of the particular parish.
Another point to bear in mind with regard to, at all events, the spirit
of monastic charity, as shown in statutes and custumals, was the
endeavour that all the professed religious should cultivate a special
sympathy with the poor, as God’s poor, and that such ideals should not
be the exclusive privilege of the almoner and sub-almoner, or to some
extent of the hosteler. Hence came about the maundy, or washing of the
feet of the poor. This was under the superintendence of the almoner. At
Abingdon monastery there was a daily maundy, when every morning, after
the Gospel of the morrow or early Mass, the almoner went to the door of
the abbey, and selected three from the poor waiting for an alms, whose
feet were washed by the abbot, or by some monk deputed by him; the
chosen almsmen were afterwards fed and given a small present of money.
On the great maundy of Thursday in Holy Week it was the custom in most
Benedictine houses to call in as many very poor men as there were
monks. They were placed opposite each other in two rows, the poor men
on one side, the monks on the other. Then, after certain appropriate
antiphons, psalms, and collects, each brother crossed over to his poor
man, knelt before him, endeavouring to see in him Christ Himself, and
washed his feet; then rising he kissed him on the mouth and eyes, sat
him down to meat and ministered to him.
At the great monastery at Evesham the rule provided for the continuous
support of thirteen poor persons, who were fed from the surplusage of
the abbot’s table; and this in addition to the twelve “maundy” poor
who were clothed as well as fed, and fifty sick persons who were also
supported at the abbey’s expense.
The one only claim to monastic alms and monastic charity was to be poor
and needy. Modern “Charity Organization” methods of subjecting every
claimant to strict interrogatories as to the cause of poverty were
as unknown to England’s mediæval monks as they were to the Christian
Fathers of the sub-apostolic age.
It remains to mention under this heading that many a monastery, in fact
the great majority of the larger houses, were the chief supporters of
subsidiary hospitals under their control, where beds were provided
for the sick and infirm, and where food and lodging were also given
to needy wayfarers. This was specially the case when the religious
house was on the confines of or within a town. Derby, Coventry, and
Northampton are among the many towns that afford examples of this kind
of charitable work. In many other instances a modicum of assistance
to hospital work formed a regular charge on the eleemosynary funds of
the greater foundation. Thus the bursar’s rolls of the great priory
of Durham, for the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, show under
the head of customary alms--in addition to £5 4_s._ 8_d._ distributed
to the poor on Maundy Thursday, and £13 on the thirteen principal
feasts--a sum of about half a mark for shoes for the poor of the Domus
Dei or God’s House, and a furthur sum for a like purpose for five
widows of the hospital of St. Mary Magdalen. The actual almoner’s rolls
of the same priory of the fourteenth century and onwards show that
they maintained a great infirmary at Durham for the poor entirely in
their own management, £5 6_s._ being the annual charge merely for the
garments and shoes supplied to the inmates. There was also a hospital
at Witton, originally designed for lepers, which was managed and
supported by the Durham priory.
Like evidence can be readily produced all over the country. An
interesting item of practical charity in the West of England may
fittingly conclude these brief gleanings as to instances of monastic
charity. The priory of Bath supported the hospital that was designed to
help the poorest to the use of the city’s curative waters.
[Illustration: BYLAND ABBEY (Cistercian)]