Here's a guest review from my lovely wife! Not exactly a parenting book, or a zombie book, but fascinating nonetheless.
Brief overview of content:
Yorkshire
is just packed with monasteries, abbeys and nunneries in various stages
from well preserved to total ruins. We've visited
Durham Cathedral,
Hexham Abbey, and
Fountains Abbey, and I was left with lots of
questions like "What was life like inside the monasteries? How could all
these thriving communities get wiped out so quickly by Henry VIII's
decree? What happened to all the monks and nuns during that time?" This
book answers those questions and also provides a detailed, scholarly
treatment of the economic basis for monastic life, how the monasteries
interacted with each other and with the communities where they were
located, and how historical events (the plague, raids by the Scots)
affected the monasteries.
Author overview:
Blurb from the
book flap: "Bernard Jennings has spent his whole working life in
Yorkshire, first as a WEA tutor in the Yorkshire Dales, and later on the
staff of the universities of Leeds and Hull. As editor and co-author he
has brought out several books on Yorkshire history, including A History
of Lead Mining in the Pennines, A History of Nidderdale" and far too
many others to list here, though they do list them on the book flap.
Recommendations:
1. Read cover to cover vs. consult as needed.
This
book is loaded with beautiful photographs and drawings of various
abbeys and monastic sites. It also has a very good index. However, the
text is often a bit dry, covering details of land grants in depth with
lots of exact measurements, etc. For a tourist it is probably best to
consult as needed, reading the introduction and conclusion chapters and
then dipping in to sections about sites of interest. For a graduate
student or serious historian, the book is probably a cover to cover
read.
2. Readability.
As mentioned, some sections are a bit
dry. After a long chapter on who deeded what to which monastery in
their will I had to put the book aside and read a
Brother Cadfael
mystery by Ellis Peters. But, that only made me more curious about
monastic life, so I came back and finished this book.
3. Helpful to a parent tourist?
This
book answered my questions about the dissolution of the monasteries.
Basically, Yorkshire was always a hotbed of monastic life and at the
time of the dissolution, the author makes the case that the monasteries
were no less popular than usual. They had plenty of vocations, the rich
monasteries were still rich, the poor ones were still struggling, they
had the usual mix of saints and sinners, etc. According to the book:
"The wealth of the Church was a temptation which the impoverished
monarch showed no desire to resist. The
Valor Ecclesiasticus of
1535 gave the net annual income of the Church as £320,000...The current
yield of the Crown lands was about £40,000 a year." In a nutshell, the
tactics the king used were to 1. Tax all the monasteries. 2. Send a
committee to visit all the monasteries with the express goal of finding
evidence of laxity or crime. 3. Pick off the smaller monasteries, take
their property and consolidate their monks and nuns into the larger
houses. 4. Move against the larger houses, closing them and seizing
their extensive properties. There was resistance to this, both from
monks and from the people. In Yorkshire this became an armed rebellion
called
The Pilgrimage of Grace. The rebellion and
resistance by the monks were dealt with lethally. Various people were
hung, drawn and quartered, etc., etc. Those monks who weren't seen as
rebellious were allowed to live and were given a pension to provide for
their living expenses outside the monastery.
4. Did we use it?
There's
something appealing about the simplicity that the monastic orders
strove for. This book is a historical treatment, not a devotional, but
it's impossible not to put yourself into the story and wonder what it
would be like to spend all day, every day in prayer and work. The
Carthusian order is of particular interest because it was one of the
strictest. The monks spent most of their time effectively in solitary
confinement, only gathering for silent group meals on Sundays and feast
days. For a harried parent, this sometimes sounds like a great idea, but
it's also amazing that people would voluntarily do what we now reserve
for our worst criminals.
Sample text
The better-endowed
priory at Bridlington had become established as a centre of learning.
The leading figure was the fourth prior, Robert, known as 'the
scribe'...Robert is best known for the Bridlington Dialogue, written
about 1150, which takes the form of exchanges between a 'master', Robert
himself, and a 'disciple'...No doubt drawing on his own experience as
head of the community, the Master argues that allowances should be made
for different talents and temperaments:
It is
necessary therefore both that the quiet mind be not distracted by over
much work, and that the restless one should not force itself to the
practice of contemplation. For often those who were able to contemplate
God when they were at repose have failed when pressed by work; and often
those who might have lived well while they were busy with human
occupations have been slain by the sword of their own repose.
Fortunately
there was plenty of work to be done in and about the priory, apart from
the scriptorium: indoor pursuits such as sewing new clothes for the
brethren and mending old ones, making wooden spoons and candlesticks,
fashioning baskets and nets, weaving mats, and the whole range of
farming and gardening tasks, including 'planting, trimming, pruning,
grafting and transplanting trees'. [p. 115-117]
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