A monk is a man who lives a life dedicated to God under the guidance of an abbot in a building with other monks. He observes three or more vows, usually, poverty, chastity and obedience. That means that he agrees to live simply without any personal belongings (no game boy or play station!- just joking; people did not have electricity the Middle Ages), not to marry and have a family (or even a girl friend) and to do as his superiors tell him. In the case of the Benedictine Order, the monk also makes the vow of stability, which means he will never leave his monastery unless there is an extremely good reason for doing so.

The business about personal possessions and living simply was interpreted differently by different orders. Some monks were extremely ascetic (that means they lived with as few physical comforts as possible), perhaps were vegetarian and only ate one small meal a day. Some orders did not allow the monks or nuns to speak unless it was the recreation period which may have lasted half an hour. A number of signs were invented so that monks could communicate with each other during the silent periods, which included meals.

How could a monk make his wishes known if he was not allowed to talk?

• If you want to indicate anything about the church, then make with your two hands as if you were ringing a bell, then put your index finger to your mouth and raise it up.
• If you need a thin candle, then blow on your index finger.
• If you need a knife, then cut with your finger over the other, as if you were eating.
• The sign for honey is that you place your finger on your tongue.
• If you want fish, then move your hand in the way that it moves its tail when it swims.
• If you need water, then make as if you were going to wash your hands.
• The sign for a quill is that you join your three fingers together as if you were holding a quill, and dip them, and move your fingers as if you were going to write.

Practice these signs with a partner. Can you think of signs for modern things such as television, ice cream or cars?

(from: "Monasteriales Indicia" ed. D.Banham, Anglo-Saxon Books, 1991. With thanks to E.Semper from the Hereford Record Office for pointing out this source.)

One thing all monks had in common is that they spent long hours in prayer. To help the older monks who might not be able to stand for so long, the misericord was invented. That is a lip on the bottom of the seat so that you could prop yourself up when the seat was folded back. Often misericords were decorated with interesting carvings. These pictures are of a misericord with a gargoyle-design in Holme Lacy church.

Without heating in most rooms of the monastery, monks and nuns would have frozen in the winter. They spent long hours praying or working in the fields and very few hours sleeping. Other monasteries were more relaxed in their approach and critics have filled many a page complaining about the wealthy and often sinful life style of some religious houses.

If you would like to see a manuscript illumination of nuns in a wealthy convent,
click here.

Nuns also had to follow strict rules. Sometimes there were "double houses", with a monastery on one side and a convent on the other. These double houses were usually ruled by an abbess. (What does that tell us about the status of women? But on the other hand, the Bishop would come along periodically and tell her what to do and he was always a man! So even though some women had important roles or were famous saints, the true power of the Church always lay with men).

During the Middle Ages becoming a monk or a nun was a popular career choice. Either you chose to live the religious life or, and this is just as likely, your parents or guardians would choose this vocation for you. In fact in some cases people put their often tiny children into monasteries to be raised and educated by the monks. These children were called "oblates". Some left the monasteries when they became adults, but most stayed on and became fully fledged monks. Some women became nuns after their husband died.

This picture from a medieval manuscript shows young monk being taught.  You can tell the students are in holy orders because their hair is tonsured, that means they have a bald spot shaved on top of their heads. Scribes often decorated capital letters with pictures.  This scene decorates the letter "O".
	© Hereford Cathedral Library

© Hereford Cathedral Library

Within the Christian church are many different groupings of monks and nuns, called "orders". Each order has different rules and regulations and a different ethos and way of life. Some orders concentrated on praying and working the land, others built hospitals and ran schools. Some monasteries had scriptoria, where monks would copy and decorate manuscripts. As books had to be hand-written in the Middle Ages, they were very valuable and only few individuals could afford to own them. In Hereford Cathedral and formerly also at All Saints Church, the books in the library were chained to the desks. You can still see the famous "Chained Library" at Hereford Cathedral today.

Two large orders, the Franciscans and the Dominicans were preaching orders. Initially the friars, as the monks were called, travelled about and preached. Eventually they settled and built schools. Many small orders were also created or split off from one of the larger ones.

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At the time of the Norman Conquest, the Saxons had only two monastic establishments of note in Herefordshire, a monastery in Leominster and St. Guthlac's in Hereford itself. The Priory at Leominster has very early beginnings as a nunnery in the 9^th century, founded probably by one of the female members of the ruling Saxon family. These convents were run by very influential Abbesses, who were in many cases royal princesses and often very scholarly. According to one source, the nuns at Barking, were "well versed not only in Latin, writing and grammar but also in law, history and poetry." It is important to remember that this is a period in history when few people could read and write, and it was even more unusual for a woman to be able to do so.

Historians have traditionally underestimated the sphere of influence of women and the paucity of sources makes a study of the role of women in this early period of English history difficult. However, more recent scholarship is reassessing the position of women in both the Saxon period and the later Middle Ages.

It is well known that many Saxon monasteries and convents were attacked and pillaged by Vikings.

However, the convent at Leominster suffered at the hands of a powerful Saxon nobleman. In 1046, on his way home from a military expedition to Wales, Swein, brother of Harold Godwinson, (later to be King Harold) had the abbess dragged out of the convent by force and then raped her. In fact, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, he "kept her as long as it suited him, and afterwards let her travel home"(p.164). After this appalling incident, the convent was closed and Swein exiled from England. This was one of several reasons why the Godwinson family fell out of favour with King Edward and why he appointed his Norman nephew Ralph as Earl of Hereford. Leominster Priory was not re-founded until 1123, when it was set up as a priory under the rule of Reading Abbey.

Leominster Priory Church

St.Peter's, Hereford

St.Guthlac's was situated in the castle precinct in Hereford, until it was moved to a site near the present Commercial Street and Bus Station in 1143 when it became affiliated with St.Peters, Hereford and the Abbey in Gloucester. During excavations on Castle Green numerous bones were uncovered which it is believed came from St.Guthlac's cemetery. Both Leominster and St.Guthlac's followed the rule of the Benedictine Order.

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Abbey Dore

Monasteries were an important part of the Norman building programme for England. 16 monastic foundations in Herefordshire date from the period 1066-1200. The three largest monasteries in the county were Wigmore, Abbey Dore and Leominster Priory.

The Augustinian Canons believed in living a life of service and good works and often took over the responsibility for the parish churches. Their largest house in Herefordshire was Wigmore Abbey, which was founded in 1131 by Oliver de Merlimond, steward of Hugh Mortimer, following a pilgrimage he had undertaken to Santiago di Compostela in Spain.

Sometimes religious houses had problems. These problems could be of a financial nature, or perhaps of a disciplinary nature. The monks may have lost interest in following the strict rules that governed their way of life. To prevent things from getting out of hand, the bishop would conduct a visitation, that means an inspection. This is what happened at Wigmore Abbey when Bishop Orleton heard that things were not as they should be. From his report we can see that there were certainly problems. He made the abbot (the leader of the community) resign and appointed a new one. He also sent some of the worst troublemakers to live in other houses of the order. [Although it turns out that the other houses did not want them either.] Then he gave the remaining canons a new set of rules to follow. They were not allowed to have pages (personal servants) or to own private horses, greyhounds, pigs or sheep. The fact that he spells this out means that the canons (Augustinian monks were called canons) must certainly have been hunting, a form of entertainment not usually allowed. The canons must also have been overindulging because he forbade breakfast and limited the meals to two a day, to be taken together in the refectory (dining hall). Perhaps some of the canons were discovered to have been feasting on their pigs and sheep!

As you can see visitation records are excellent sources for the historian and in Herefordshire we are lucky to have a set of Bishop's registers in print at the Record Office.

By the beginning of the12th century many religious orders had become very rich and powerful, and a movement for reform had sprung up. Several new orders were established, three of which had properties in Herefordshire. The Tironensians established a cell at Titley, the Grandmontine order had a priory at Craswall and the Cistercians founded Abbey Dore.

The largest monasteries were usually known as abbeys because their leaders were known as abbot or abbess. These large abbeys often established priories or small cells in areas far removed from the mother-house (sometimes monastic orders were given gifts of land or estates which needed some form of supervision. It was not unusual for knights from England to give land to French monasteries.) The Benedictine Abbey of Conches in Normandy, for example, set up a cell for only two or three monks at Monkland.

Abbey Dore, a Cistercian foundation, was a daughter house of Morimond on the French border to Lorraine (Germany) This Cistercian Abbey was founded by Robert, the grandson of Lord Ralph of Ewyas in 1147. Abbey Dore itself started up three daughter houses with varying degrees of success. One of these, Grace Dieu, a few miles west of Monmouth was founded in 1226, but completely destroyed by Welsh forces in 1233 - a reflection of the perils facing people living in the Marches. Another daughter house, Vale Royal in Chester, has a royal connection. When Prince Edward, later Edward I, was imprisoned in Hereford during the Barons Revolt of 1265, he was cared for by monks from Abbey Dore. Grateful for their kindness, he later provided the means whereby this daughter house could be founded.

Engraving of Abbey Dore (J.Wathen, Gentleman's Magazine, 1792)

Conversi or lay brothers:

A conversus was a man, often from a lower status background, who had joined a Cistercian order in a desire to lead the life of a monk, albeit it with special adjustments to the rule. He wore a modified, shorter form of the habit which made manual work easier and had a shortened form of prayer so that he could say his prayers in the fields while he was working.

He could not read Latin, had separate living quarters, and yet had to obey the same rules of poverty, obedience and chastity. The monks were expected to spend such long hours in prayer and in study that they would have only had about 30 hours a week for manual labour, which would not have been enough to run their often vast estates. Therefore the conversi became an important part of the Cistercian monastic life.

The Grange:

Cistercian monasteries managed their agricultural land with the aid of granges, which were small farms worked by conversi under the supervision of the granger who was responsible to the mother house. These granges usually had a barn, with some accommodation for the lay brothers, animal sheds and an oratory, or place to pray. These buildings were often surrounded by a ditch, hedge or wall and there might even have been a protective gate house. 18 granges are listed on the HSMR, several belonging to Abbey Dore. Some granges also had mills, fishponds or dovecots.

Cluniac House at Clifford was a small Cistercian priory founded by Simon Fitzwalter during the time of Henry I (1100-1135). Today Priory Farm stands on the site of the medieval priory.

The Dominicans and Franciscans came to Hereford in the 13th century. Blackfriars near Widemarsh St. became the Dominican establishment after a move from the Eign Gate suburb. The Franciscans were located just outside Friar's Gate to the west of the town.

Eign Gate in Hereford

The ruins of Blackfriar's Monastery

The restored Blackfriar's Preaching Cross

This is an engraving of the preaching cross at Blackfriar's Monastery.  The picturesque remains of Blackfriars are to be found via St.John's Museum, Widemarsh Street.  There is a pretty little garden and the restored preaching cross.

Apart from the Knights Templars and Hospitallers foundations which are mentioned in the section on the crusades, there were several other, minor religious houses, such as the Benedictine Priory at Kilpeck and the Augustinian Priory at Flanesford.

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Why weren't there more monasteries in Herefordshire?

In other parts of England there was a higher concentration of religious houses than in Herefordshire.

One of the reasons for the predominance of castles over monasteries, is the geographic location of the county. Being frontier land, it was important that the major land holders were knights, able to lead men into battle and to defend their territory.

In fact, it was official policy for these Marcher Lords, as the lords who held the land on the border to Wales were called, to try to conquer more land for the King of England. Monasteries were not able to field any knights unless they hired mercenaries. During the Middle Ages monasteries were often very successful land lords, however, in an area torn by constant strife, a monastery or convent was vulnerable. In discussing the problems facing Leominster Priory, one 19^th century historian put it like this:

…the Priory continued to experience the general fate of the ecclesiastical establishments in these border lands. It was a frequent prey to the lawless bands which ravaged the country during the disputed succession of king Stephen and queen Matilda. The monks were at times, and that only too frequently, reduced to absolute beggary and want. The only pioneers of religion, peace, civilization, and education in the district, they appear to have enjoyed anything but the quiet, roseate life sometimes attributed to them."

The Grandmontine priory at Craswall faced problems of a different kind during the Hundred Years' War. This order was French in origin and the mother-house was in France. During the on-going dispute with France many of these properties were confiscated by the crown. In 1341 Edward III appointed a crown custodian to watch over the monks and to make sure they were not spying for the enemy. These custodians were also to confiscate all the income of the priory for the exchequer (the government department in charge of finance) and to leave the monks only enough to live on. The priory at Craswall was so poor though that nothing was left for the exchequer. In 1342 therefore, Bartholomew de Burghersh was appointed as its guardian, free of rent, on condition that he provide for the needs of the monks. Craswall priory managed to survive until Henry VI gave the priory to Christ's College, Cambridge.

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TFM