The English Cathedral Priories and the Pursuit of Learning in the Later Middle Ages

Joan Greatrex

34 citations0/0 files storedThe Journal of Ecclesiastical History

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Medieval Literature and History Libraries, Manuscripts, and Books Medieval Philosophy and Theology

Abstract

It has frequently been observed that the intellectual activities of the English Black Monks were in decline during the last two-and-a-half centuries before the Dissolution. There is, indeed, a remarkable contrast between the fecundity of the monastic scriptoria in the two centuries after the Conquest and the apparent inertia of later years, when the creative stimulus seems to have dwindled to the verge of extinction and few, if any, original minds are found at work within the cloister. This generalisation cannot be challenged, as the evidence leaves little room for doubt, but the ‘apparent inertia’ may be questioned since it is a contradiction of the emerging facts. The latter suggest not apathy but persistence in the pursuit of learning, that is, a continuing concern for study on the part of the monastic community; and this should not be disparaged because it bore little more than the practical, commonplace fruits of preaching and teaching. We cannot regard these as fruits of scholarship to be compared with the original compositions which grew out of the philosophical and theological disputations at the centre of university life; they were daily or weekly activities, quite unremarkable, and probably for this very reason left scant record of their occurrence. Moreover, the Black Monk Chapter was promoting these fruits by stating unequivocally, in its statutes of c. 1363, that the principal reason behind the joint decision to send one monk in twenty for further study at the university was to fulfil these precise and practical requirements. A clear indication of the enduring commitment to this policy on the part of most of the cathedral monasteries is to be found in many of the surviving documents, which affirm a consistent adherence to their obligations.

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References

1941Medieval libraries of Great Britain : a list of surviving books 2010The English Church in the Fourteenth Century 1937The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages 1989Schools and Scholars in Fourteenth-Century England 1947Canterbury College, Oxford 1931Documents illustrating the activities of the general and provincial chapters of the English Black Monks 1215-1540 1973Durham Priory 1400–1450 1984Historical Writing in England II. c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century.

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2006The medieval library (toc. 1450)2006Anglo-Saxon England 2006The dispersal of the monastic libraries and the salvaging of the spoils 2006The libraries of religious houses in the late middle ages 2006Matthew Parker’s manuscripts: an Elizabethan library and its use 2006Celtic Britain and Ireland in the early middle ages

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