VISITATIONS
In accordance with the various Canons and Councils, both general and
particular, all English monasteries in pre-Norman times were subject
to the Bishop as visitor; but after the Conquest, when special houses
gained in power, and new or reformed congregations obtained a lodgment,
the diocesan’s right of visiting became materially abridged. Up to
their end all the English Benedictine houses of men or women, which
numbered about 200, were subject, save for a few exceptions, to the
Bishop. In fact, so great was the Benedictine influence in England
that no fewer than nine of the old cathedral foundations had monastic
chapters, whilst another one (Carlisle) belonged to the canons regulars
of St. Austin. In these cases, which were peculiar to England, the
Bishop was regarded as taking the place of the abbot, whilst the
acting superior of the house itself was only termed prior. All the
Austin houses, save one, were also subject to their diocesan. The
exempt Benedictine abbeys were Westminster, St. Albans, Bury St.
Edmunds, Battle, St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, and Peterborough; the
last named was, moreover, subject to the Primate. To these must be
added the Austin abbey of Waltham. In these cases the cumbrous and
costly custom prevailed of either very heavy fees or a journey to Rome
for confirmation; their exemption seems to have proved a hindrance to
discipline and good order.
[Illustration: LLANTHONY PRIORY (Austin Canons)]
The two great orders of the reformed Benedictines, the Cluniacs,
and the Cistercians--the latter of whom were a great power in
England--were free from diocesan visitation, and the appointment of
their superiors had not to be confirmed by the Bishop, though his
benediction was usually sought. The exemption in each of these cases
arose from the central houses, which were respectively at Cluny and
Citeaux, in Burgundy, obtaining general powers of visitation throughout
Christendom. The White or Premonstratensian canons, who were subject to
some extent to their central house at Prémontré in the diocese of Laon,
also obtained papal exemption from their diocesans, although it was
not unusual for the abbot and chapter-general of Prémontré to appoint
a Bishop as visitor-general of the whole of the English province. The
Gilbertines, as well as all houses of mendicant friars, were also
exempt.
It thus came to pass that in certain dioceses where the Benedictines
or Austins were not very strong, the Bishop only visited a minority
of the religious houses of his diocese. It has sometimes been assumed
that these exemptions of whole orders conduced to disorder and
carelessness. Although it would seem that the episcopal supervision of
the diocesan of each religious house was on the whole most desirable,
the supposition of laxness in its absence cannot be sustained; and the
visitations made by the Commissioners of particular orders were, as a
rule, more regular in occurrence, and, for the most part, as searching
in character.
The customary time for visitations was once in every three years;
but in the cases where the diocesan was visitor the period was not
unfrequently deferred; though sometimes, in cases of delinquency,
repeated at much shorter intervals. The object of the visit was
twofold--namely, to ascertain the temporal as well as the spiritual and
moral conditions of the house. The former was a most important part of
the inquiry, for not only were houses taught to be as far as possible
self-contained, but in the days when funded property was almost
unknown, the very existence of the house depended upon the condition
of its pasturage and tillage, and the amount of cattle, grain, and
general stores for the sustaining of life. The visitor was received
with peculiar honour, met at the gates in procession, and conducted
to church and chapter-house. In addition to the usual services, the
Bishop preached a sermon in the chapter-house to the inmates, and his
secretary often entered the text in the brief entry of the visitation
made in the episcopal register--possibly with a view to check the
Bishop giving the like discourse on the next occasion. The Bishop,
with whom was generally associated some diocesan official as assessor,
began the visitation by asking for a report from the superior as to
the general condition of the house, both temporal and spiritual, and
as to the conduct of the inmates. Then the obedientiaries, or those
who held office, were called before him in due gradation, each one
being specially questioned as to the affairs of his own office. After
this each religious inmate, novices as well as the professed, was
called up in turn before the visitor, the examination being always
conducted severally and separately, so that the communication might be
unchecked and frank. All were expected to be absolutely open in their
declarations without fear or favour, and to conceal no evil of any kind
of which they were aware. Meanwhile the Bishop’s secretary took notes
of the evidence given by each. Where everything seemed going smoothly,
and there was no reason to suspect any hidden mischief, the visitor
sometimes allowed inmate after inmate merely to testify his _Omnia
bene_, or that all was well; on the contrary, the questions became
searching if there appeared to be any attempt at concealment.
It was difficult under such a system, not only for scandals to escape,
but even for the milder forms of disorder or laxity to avoid detection.
The most complete record of English monastic visitation is to be found
in a volume at the Bodleian, pertaining to Norwich diocese during
the episcopates of Bishops Goldwell and Nicke; it covers a period
of forty years, namely from 1492 to 1532. The number of religious
houses, exclusive of hospitals and collegiate churches, under episcopal
visitation in this diocese was 34; those that were exempt, including
thirty friaries, were 38. Details are given of 141 formal visits paid
to the religious houses of Norfolk and Suffolk, the actual statements
of each inmate being briefly recorded. In the large majority of cases
the visitor found that no reform of any kind was needed. Fifteen
visits, or about one in nine, brought to light matters that certainly
required mending, and for the reformation of which strict injunctions
were issued.
Out of thirty-four visits paid to the eight nunneries of the diocese,
one resulted in detecting a case of grievous sin, and there was a
painful scandal brought to light in one of the inspections of the
Austin canons of Westacre. By the end of the fifteenth century the
numbers had become much reduced through poverty in many of the houses
of East Anglia, particularly in the small settlements of Austin
canons. It is estimated that there were then in Norfolk diocese about
230 Austin canons, 120 Benedictine monks, and 80 Benedictine nuns.
There seems no reason whatever to doubt that the vast majority of
these were leading exemplary lives. As an evidence of the patience of
the visitor in hearing every kind of complaint, it may be mentioned
that the older nuns of Flixton complained to the Bishop of the mutton
served in the refectory being burnt, and the beer being too weak; the
further complaint as to the too rapid repetition of the psalter at the
offices would probably appeal to him as more worthy of the attention
of the diocesan. The whole of these visitations were printed a few
years ago for the Camden Society, under the capable editorship of
Dr. Jessopp. In commenting upon this valuable proof as to the real
condition of England’s religious houses just before their fall, the
learned editor cordially welcomes all possible publicity being given
to further documentary evidence from any known source, adding that
“... then it may happen that we shall be forced to confess that in the
sixteenth century there were creatures in human form who exhibited as
shocking examples of truculent slander, of gratuitous obscenity, of
hateful malignity, as can be found among the worst men of any previous
or succeeding age, but we shall have to look for them, not within the
cloisters, but outside them, among the robbers, not among the robbed.”
The Worcestershire Historical Society has done good service in printing
the important _Sede Vacante_ Register in the possession of the Dean
and Chapter of Worcester. When there was a vacancy in the see, the
spiritualities were administered by the Prior of Worcester, who then
had the right to visit both the parochial clergy and the religious
houses subject to diocesan control. This register covers all the
vacancies--sometimes extending over more than a year--between the death
of Bishop Giffard in 1301 to the enthronement of Bishop Bourchier
in 1435. During this period the prior, either in person or through
two commissioners, visited the episcopally-controlled monasteries,
eighteen in number, on eleven different occasions. Eighty-four of these
visits are duly recorded; only two of them revealed any special cause
of offence, one of them being at Wroxall nunnery and the other at
Studley priory. This voluminous register has been fully edited, with
prolonged introductions, by Mr. J. Willis Bund, chairman of Quarter
Sessions, etc.; a gentleman entirely free from mediæval proclivities.
Commenting on the usually received supposition of monastic immorality,
he considers that this register disproves such charges, and gives it
as his opinion that the English monastic clergy were not one bit more
immoral “than the secular clergy of the nineteenth century.”
The jests and jeers of cynical and satirical writers of mediæval
days, who were themselves usually men of depraved lives, as to the
supposed laxity of life of monks and nuns, based upon the actions
of a few degraded and disgraced religious, coupled with the foul
slanders of Henry VIII.’s self-interested tools, have so long succeeded
in saturating unreflective minds with scandal that it has become
difficult for even well-intentioned writers (who have made no personal
investigations) to escape from the evil and lying atmosphere with which
the whole subject has been so long surrounded.
A particularly fine and exhaustive topographical work has recently
appeared entitled _The Records of Wroxall_. Wroxall Priory,
Warwickshire, was a small house of Benedictine nuns with an interesting
history. In these pages full extracts are given (with one overlooked
omission) of all the visitations of the priory recorded in the
Worcester diocesan registers. The earliest of these is 1268, and the
latest in 1433. There are fourteen recorded visitations in all, made
either by the Bishop or by the prior of Worcester’s Commissaries
_sede vacante_, and in only three of the fourteen was any evil
detected--namely, in 1323, 1339, and 1410. Yet Wroxall is by far the
worst case of any nunnery in the Worcester diocese, so far as extant
visits are concerned. Its character was remarkably good on the eve
of its suppression. Henry VIII.’s own Commissioners of 1536, six in
number, reported that the nuns then numbered five with the prioress,
and were all “off good converssacion and lyvyng, and all desyer yf
the house be suppressed to be sent to other religious houses.” The
priory itself is described as “a propre litle house, and in convenyent
and good repaire.” The writer of this Wroxall book, who is evidently
not desirous to go beyond the truth, has failed to find a scrap of
evidence between the visitation of 1433 and that of 1536; and yet,
although not a breath of scandal is known to have rested on the nuns
of Wroxall since 1410, he actually ventures thus to libel the last
days of this house entirely out of his own imagination: “Idleness
had crept within its walls, together with the vices of the world; it
had become more a source of danger than a blessing to the community
itself and to the public outside.” Such an unsupported statement is a
blot on the book where it occurs, and it is cited here as a proof of
the usual unfairness of the average English mind, saturated with over
three centuries of reckless misrepresentation, when it approaches the
question of the vowed religious life.
During the vacancy between the death of Archbishop Morton in October,
1500, and the election of his successor in the following April,
the prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, asserted his right to hold
metropolitical visitations _sede vacante_. At this time the sees of
Winchester and Ely were also both vacant, and Dr. Hede, as commissary
of the prior, made a visitation tour of both dioceses. The results,
giving the details of the individual statements of the inmates, are
extant in a volume at Canterbury, which, it is hoped, may ere long be
printed. The record of this series of visits, unknown save perhaps
to half-a-dozen ecclesiologists, is of considerable value in bearing
remarkable witness to the general integrity of the religious houses.
Such evidence is all the more valuable, because of the obvious
thoroughness of the work undertaken by Dr. Hede; in a single case, the
large nunnery of Romsey, there was a sad scandal, and the investigation
led to the dismissal of the abbess.
With regard to the visitations scattered throughout episcopal
registers, the few who are acquainted with the whole series of these
act-books will agree--and they only are competent to judge--(1) that
only those cases where injunctions were issued are entered in any
detail, in order that it might be seen whether the _reformanda_ were
carried out; (2) that where injunctions on one or two points were
required, it was usual for the Bishop’s official to introduce a variety
of customary decrees, which were for the most part a summary of the
salient points of the general rule, and which were considered suitable
for the admonition of the religious all over the country; (3) that
allowance must always be made for the stilted and hyperbolical phrasing
of official ecclesiastical Latin--a fact universally admitted by all
mediæval scholars; and (4) that incidental mention is made in these
registers of a very great number of visitations taking place of which
there is no detailed record, and in which it is but common sense to
conclude there was nothing to redress.
To these reflections may be added the caution that ought to be obvious
to everyone of intelligence, that the object of a visitation is to
detect laxity and possible evil, and not to record devoutness and good
discipline. To judge of the bulk of the religious from a few given up
to bad living, and who were heavily punished for their misdeeds, is as
monstrous and childish as it would be to condemn the inhabitants of
some given area by the actions of the minute minority who figure in the
police-court records.
So far as the visitation of monasteries by delegated ecclesiastics
from the parent house is concerned, we are not aware of any general
record of that character having come to light, either at home or on
the continent, with regard to the Cistercians. As to the visitations
of English Cluniac foundations, Sir G. F. Duckett did good service in
printing a great amount of matter of the thirteenth century, together
with some of later date, from the original records in the National
Library at Paris. As these important visitations have recently been
the subject of controversy, it is not necessary to allude to them
any further, save by saying that it is best to consult Duckett’s two
volumes in Latin, rather than the abbreviated English rendering; and
that they cannot possibly fail to carry conviction to every unjaundiced
mind of the good lives that were on the whole led by the monks under
alien rule amid circumstances of peculiar difficulty.
The Royal Historical Society has lately printed the first of two
volumes entitled _Collectaneæ Anglo-Premonstratensia_ by Abbot Gasquet,
which are devoted to the contents of an original register of the order
of White Canons, in the Bodleian and other documents in the British
Museum. The second volume will contain also details of Richard Redman’s
visitations of all the English Premonstratensian houses. Redman was
originally Abbot of Shap, Cumberland. In 1478 he was nominated by the
Abbot of Prémontré to be vicar of the English province; at that time he
had been already Bishop of St. Asaph for ten years, and thence he was
successively translated to Exeter and Ely, dying Bishop of Ely 1505.
He remained visitor of the Premonstratensians till the time of his
death. Redman’s visitation register, well known to the writer of these
chapters, shows that there was often much to correct; but the houses
far oftener could show a clean bill of health, and where there was evil
it only affected one or two individuals. It will also be found that the
punishment of the guilty was usually most genuine and severe.
For serious sins Redman’s usual punishment was forty days _gravioris
culpa_, with the further penance of being sent to another house of
the same order for seven years, during which long period the offender
was under a certain amount of particular discipline and observation,
and never allowed to leave the precincts. The chief points of the
preliminary forty days’ punishment were:--To sit alone in the refectory
on the ground at meal-times, with bread and water as the only fare;
to lie prostrate at the entrance to the choir when the canons were
entering or departing at the various hours; to be spoken to by no one;
and to be excluded from the Communion.