Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages: Third EditionCutts, Edward Lewes
History
Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages: Third Edition
Cutts, Edward Lewes
Civilization, Medieval; Middle Ages -- Social life and customs
and baker's mate, the baker, brewers, tailor, cowherd, waggoners, pages of
the kitchen, poultry-keeper, labourers, a keeper of animals and birds,
bailiffs, foresters, shepherds, smiths: there are others mentioned by
name, without a note of their office. But it was only a few of the larger
houses which had such numerous establishments as these; the majority of
the monasteries contained from five to twenty cloister monks. Some of the
monasteries were famous as places of education, and we must add to their
establishment a number of children of good family, and the learned clerks
or ladies who acted as tutors; thus the abbey of St. Mary, Winchester, in
1536, contained twenty-six nuns, five priests, thirteen lay sisters,
thirty-two officers and servants, and twenty-six children, daughters of
lords and knights, who were brought up in the house.
Lastly, there were a number of persons of all ranks and conditions who
were admitted to "fraternity." Among the Hospitallers (and probably it was
the same with the other orders) they took oath to love the house and
brethren, to defend the house from ill-doers, to enter that house if they
did enter any, and to make an annual present to the house. In return, they
were enrolled in the register of the house, they received the prayers of
the brethren, and at death were buried in the cemetery. Chaucer's
Dominican friar (p. 48), writes the names of those who gave him donations
in his "tables." In the following extract from Piers Ploughman's Creed, an
Austin friar promises more definitely to have his donors enrolled in the
fraternity of his house:--
"And gyf thou hast any good,
And will thyself helpen,
Help us herblich therewith.
And here I undertake,
Thou shalt ben brother of oure hous,
And a book habben,
At the next chapetre,
Clerliche enseled.
And then our provincial
Hath power to assoylen
Alle sustren and brethren
That beth of our ordre."
_Piers Ploughman's Creed_, p. 645.
In the book of St. Alban's, which we have before quoted, there is a list
of many persons, knights and merchants, ladies and children, vicars and
rectors, received _ad fraternitatem hujus monasterii_. In many cases
portraits of them are given: they are in the ordinary costume of their
time and class, without any badge of their monastic fraternisation.
Chaucer gives several sketches which enable us to fill out our realisation
of the monks, as they appeared outside the cloister associating with their
fellow-men. He includes one among the merry company of his Canterbury
pilgrims; and first in the Monk's Prologue, makes the Host address the
monk thus:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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