Thanks for this wonderfully informative view of monastic life.
Years ago, I took a tour of the Abbaye de Fontfroide near Narbonne in south eastern France. Of course, a tour is always heavily flavoured by the guide's interests and knowledge. This particular guide focused on the economic productivity of the abbey. When the abbey was founded, I imagine people were living in a quasi Malthusian world - for most food was at least some of the time in very short supply. As a result the abbey had no end of men asking to join. The monastery offered stability and produced food. Using this labour supply and the constantly growing land holdings of the abbey (nobles donating land to the abbey was apparently common), the abbey become a source of great wealth generation. In fact, so much so that when the king of France caught wind of it, he sent his own tax agents to make sure he was on the take. Was it the same for Barking Abbey? Did the nuns generate significant wealth that made its way to the King's coffers or to the Vatican?
Thanks so much for listening/watching and the thoughtful comment. I have a couple more episodes to come on Barking Abbey, so stay tuned!
To answer your questions, in short, yes. Abbeys like Barking were extremely important (and wealthy) landowners in England, just as you mention for the abbey in France. They held lands directly of the king in the same manner as any other member of the nobility or upper class. But because they had such large land holdings, they were capable of generating loads of income from them, so over time they became even richer. The surviving account books that I mentioned in the episode do address tax collection. They paid taxes to the king, and the surviving records show at times they even received exemptions due to hardship when things like flooding of their lands happened, making farming (and hence income generation) difficult.
Also, as you mention about the Malthusian world, the abbey was an important resource for survival both inside and outside convent walls. They were indeed like "company towns" in that so many locals relied on the services and jobs the abbey provided. As I noted in the episode, the primary job for the nuns was praying for the souls of the Christian faithful, but particularly for those souls who supported them by being their patrons and benefactors. It was common for the super rich to endow chapels or monasteries on their lands as visible manifestations of their piety but also to ensure the salvation of their souls by essentially hiring monks and nuns to pray for them. Many also left bequests of money to the abbey in their wills. But the monasteries were also communities that needed to sustain themselves as much as possible, in accordance with their Rule, which necessitated them being working agricultural estates. So, for the survival of everyone inside and out, they were income-generating manors like any other. As a matter of fact, some of the manor houses that you can go and visit in England today were once abbeys that had been dissolved in the 1530s and then parceled out to the king's cronies as landed estates.
In my final episode on the abbey's dissolution, you'll see just how much the king coveted the significant wealth generated by Barking and the other large houses like her. The politics of reformation England and King Henry VIII's ultimate split with the Catholic Church led him to view the wealth of those institutions as his for the taking.
Thank you for taking the time to write such a thorough response. It answered my question and so much more.
Understanding the economics of abbeys gives me hints about why someone would place their child in one. In joining one, a person trades away fundamental parts of life, such as finding a spouse and having children. What did the person get in return? The financial prowess of these institutions guaranteed a basic level of subsistence for the member that the outside world did not. Initially I thought placing a child in a convent or monastery was a malicious, possibly punitive, act. Maybe it wasn’t (or at least not always). Perhaps a parent would dedicate their child to an abbey as a way to guarantee the child would not starve or, if a member of an upper class, not suffer the hard labour commonly experienced by the peasantry.
Again, thanks for your highly informative response to my question. This reply is mostly me spilling half formed ideas. I don’t mean to take more of your time. Thanks again!
You're very welcome! I don't know if you have seen my original post "And thus it began" but in it I talk about Galileo's daughter whom he put into monastic life when she was 13 (and her younger sister too), because he was busy as a superstar scholar and not married to her mother, so that made her unmarriageable for someone of her status, hence to the convent. We also know people of the time still practiced infanticide in times of crisis (sickly child or can't feed just one more mouth, etc.), and it was often monasteries who ended up raising those unwanted, discarded children. People entered that type of religious life for all kinds of reasons.
One of my central arguments in my graduate research is that even though it seems boring at best and hyper-restrictive at worst, the life of a nun may have been the best option for many women because of the agency they had in managing their own lives (admittedly, I'm saying this from a 21st century western perspective where this is valued) and also they did not run the same risk of dying in childbirth that women outside convent walls did, particularly for the upper class like Barking Abbey's women whose primary responsibility would have been to provide heirs. The risk for both mother and child were very high in the Middle Ages, but not so if you were a Bride of Christ.
In short, for women in medieval Europe it was actually a shot at a half-decent life, relatively-speaking.
Please don't worry about taking more of my time! I'm a historian, so any opportunity to provide more context and information about the past is a good thing to me :)
Yes, boring and hyper-restrictive, that is a good succinct description of how monastic life seems. But of course this is from my 21st century perspective. Were I a girl born of unwed parents in medieval Europe, the world would have already been hyper-restrictive and probably pushing me in an unsavoury direction. A place like Barking would have taken on a lustre that is difficult for me to fully appreciate. Maybe Galileo’s daughter was fortunate. Thanks for the context; it makes all the difference! I’m looking forward to the rest of your series on Barking Abbey. Thanks for making your graduate work accessible in this way and thanks for your patient explanations.
Thanks for this wonderfully informative view of monastic life.
Years ago, I took a tour of the Abbaye de Fontfroide near Narbonne in south eastern France. Of course, a tour is always heavily flavoured by the guide's interests and knowledge. This particular guide focused on the economic productivity of the abbey. When the abbey was founded, I imagine people were living in a quasi Malthusian world - for most food was at least some of the time in very short supply. As a result the abbey had no end of men asking to join. The monastery offered stability and produced food. Using this labour supply and the constantly growing land holdings of the abbey (nobles donating land to the abbey was apparently common), the abbey become a source of great wealth generation. In fact, so much so that when the king of France caught wind of it, he sent his own tax agents to make sure he was on the take. Was it the same for Barking Abbey? Did the nuns generate significant wealth that made its way to the King's coffers or to the Vatican?
Hi Dan,
Thanks so much for listening/watching and the thoughtful comment. I have a couple more episodes to come on Barking Abbey, so stay tuned!
To answer your questions, in short, yes. Abbeys like Barking were extremely important (and wealthy) landowners in England, just as you mention for the abbey in France. They held lands directly of the king in the same manner as any other member of the nobility or upper class. But because they had such large land holdings, they were capable of generating loads of income from them, so over time they became even richer. The surviving account books that I mentioned in the episode do address tax collection. They paid taxes to the king, and the surviving records show at times they even received exemptions due to hardship when things like flooding of their lands happened, making farming (and hence income generation) difficult.
Also, as you mention about the Malthusian world, the abbey was an important resource for survival both inside and outside convent walls. They were indeed like "company towns" in that so many locals relied on the services and jobs the abbey provided. As I noted in the episode, the primary job for the nuns was praying for the souls of the Christian faithful, but particularly for those souls who supported them by being their patrons and benefactors. It was common for the super rich to endow chapels or monasteries on their lands as visible manifestations of their piety but also to ensure the salvation of their souls by essentially hiring monks and nuns to pray for them. Many also left bequests of money to the abbey in their wills. But the monasteries were also communities that needed to sustain themselves as much as possible, in accordance with their Rule, which necessitated them being working agricultural estates. So, for the survival of everyone inside and out, they were income-generating manors like any other. As a matter of fact, some of the manor houses that you can go and visit in England today were once abbeys that had been dissolved in the 1530s and then parceled out to the king's cronies as landed estates.
In my final episode on the abbey's dissolution, you'll see just how much the king coveted the significant wealth generated by Barking and the other large houses like her. The politics of reformation England and King Henry VIII's ultimate split with the Catholic Church led him to view the wealth of those institutions as his for the taking.
Thank you for taking the time to write such a thorough response. It answered my question and so much more.
Understanding the economics of abbeys gives me hints about why someone would place their child in one. In joining one, a person trades away fundamental parts of life, such as finding a spouse and having children. What did the person get in return? The financial prowess of these institutions guaranteed a basic level of subsistence for the member that the outside world did not. Initially I thought placing a child in a convent or monastery was a malicious, possibly punitive, act. Maybe it wasn’t (or at least not always). Perhaps a parent would dedicate their child to an abbey as a way to guarantee the child would not starve or, if a member of an upper class, not suffer the hard labour commonly experienced by the peasantry.
Again, thanks for your highly informative response to my question. This reply is mostly me spilling half formed ideas. I don’t mean to take more of your time. Thanks again!
You're very welcome! I don't know if you have seen my original post "And thus it began" but in it I talk about Galileo's daughter whom he put into monastic life when she was 13 (and her younger sister too), because he was busy as a superstar scholar and not married to her mother, so that made her unmarriageable for someone of her status, hence to the convent. We also know people of the time still practiced infanticide in times of crisis (sickly child or can't feed just one more mouth, etc.), and it was often monasteries who ended up raising those unwanted, discarded children. People entered that type of religious life for all kinds of reasons.
One of my central arguments in my graduate research is that even though it seems boring at best and hyper-restrictive at worst, the life of a nun may have been the best option for many women because of the agency they had in managing their own lives (admittedly, I'm saying this from a 21st century western perspective where this is valued) and also they did not run the same risk of dying in childbirth that women outside convent walls did, particularly for the upper class like Barking Abbey's women whose primary responsibility would have been to provide heirs. The risk for both mother and child were very high in the Middle Ages, but not so if you were a Bride of Christ.
In short, for women in medieval Europe it was actually a shot at a half-decent life, relatively-speaking.
Please don't worry about taking more of my time! I'm a historian, so any opportunity to provide more context and information about the past is a good thing to me :)
Yes, boring and hyper-restrictive, that is a good succinct description of how monastic life seems. But of course this is from my 21st century perspective. Were I a girl born of unwed parents in medieval Europe, the world would have already been hyper-restrictive and probably pushing me in an unsavoury direction. A place like Barking would have taken on a lustre that is difficult for me to fully appreciate. Maybe Galileo’s daughter was fortunate. Thanks for the context; it makes all the difference! I’m looking forward to the rest of your series on Barking Abbey. Thanks for making your graduate work accessible in this way and thanks for your patient explanations.