Benedictine jurisdiction: A case study in a manuscript from Reading Abbey

Abstract

In 2012 London bookseller Maggs Bros Ltd approached Professor Brian Kemp, as editor of the Reading cartulary, with an invitation to view a previously unseen fourteenth-century book apparently originating from Reading Abbey. This book was a formulary, or collection of exemplary legal texts, previously described by Alan Coates in English Medieval Books, but never before made available for public study. This thesis is an analysis of the Reading formulary, encompassing the reasons for its compilation, as well as discussion of the individual exemplary texts it records and the connecting tracts between those texts describing how they should be used to achieve desired legal outcomes. It fills some important gaps in current scholarship about Reading Abbey, a monastic house which has been somewhat neglected to date when compared to similar sized, but better-known abbeys such as St Albans and Peterborough. It also sheds new light on monastic administration and jurisdiction in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, in particular over the monastic boroughs of Reading and Leominster, where the abbot held extensive rights over the lay courts, and over the large parochie controlled by the mother churches of Reading, St Mary and Leominster. In doing so it illustrates how complex legal issues at the intersections of common and canon law, such as the rights of patronage, were understood and communicated by non-legal professionals. This thesis also uses formulary texts to demonstrate the many roles that monks could be expected to play outside of the cloister, as royal messengers, politicians, negotiators, legal representatives, wardens, pilgrims and scholars, in contrast with the ideals of secluded life envisioned by St Benedict

More information

Identifiers

Catalogue record

Export record