The Dissolution of the Monastries

The "regular Clergy"

• Took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience
• Ordained Monks = choir monks
• Unordained Monks = lay brothers
• Monks and Nuns are "claistered" i.e. isolated from the world as a member of a religious order

Monasteries in 16th Centry

• monastery = term to describe religious houses
• AKA = Abbey
• 850 instituitions in England
• significant for = archietcutre, learning, production of illuminated manuscripts
• majority of books/library
• Abbot - person in charge - had finacial ability, socialise with members of nobility and gentry

Monastic Order:

1. Benedictines - 4 vows = obedience, chastity, poverty and manual labour
2. Cistercians - lived in isolated rural locations, not as scholary as the Benedictines but focused on agriculture and hard manual labour
3. Carthusians - lived lifes of isolation and silence
4. Augustiniuns - called "black canons", lived in communities, popular among the people
5. Cluniacs - tried to return the Benedictines rule to its original simplicity, spent much of their time in devotion, left agriculture to paid servants
6. Carmelites - white friars
7. Dominicans - black friars
8. Franciscans - grey friars

Preparing for the Dissolution

• 1520s = Wolsey dissolved 29 monastries, purpose of funding a grammar school in Oxford
• Monasteries were "decayed" i.e. they had ceased to be viable
• All closures - totally legal, papal permission
• As Wolsey fell from power before the paperwork was complete, Henry took the money for himself
• Most of the work was completed by Thomas Cromwell

     What was significant?

• before Wolsey's fall
• before Break from Rome
• Wolsey's idea
• not attack but reform
• Precedent (event that occured and is used again)
• Cromwell…