Trevor Yorke - Abbeys Monasteries and Priories Explained. Britains Living History

Before looking into the history and features of abbeys, it is worth differentiating between the myriad of names that we associate with the subject. A religious house is a community of monks or nuns living together, more commonly called a convent when applied to the latter (but the term can be used for either sex). In most cases, therefore, a monastery is a religious house comprising monks, while a nunnery is a convent of nuns (it seems, though, that the word monastery is often applied to all types of religious houses and to both the community of monks and the buildings in which they live).

The important words for the purposes of this book are abbey, which is a monastery or nunnery of large size or high status, and priory, which is a smaller house, often subordinate to an abbey, although some grew in size and status to become just as important. A friary is the home of friars, a later group who relied upon begging for their income and spent much of their time preaching in the outside world, as opposed to monks and nuns who resided almost permanently within their abbey or priory. Between these are canons, who are divided into two types: regular and secular. The former (from the word regula, meaning rule) lived like monks by strict monastic rules within their own abbey or priory, but unlike them also preached outside. Secular canons were not connected with monasteries and were usually associated with other religious establishments such as cathedrals and colleges.

The principal member of the community was the abbot or abbess in an abbey and the prior or prioress in a priory, the latter often acting as deputies to their superiors at the abbey. Below these on the monastic social ladder were the obedientiaries, who were monks put in charge of the various departments of a monastery and typically named after them, like the cellarer, kitchener and infirmarer.

Monasticism is divided into two forms: eremitic, where monks live an isolated existence as hermits, and coenobitic (derived from the Greek for common life), where the monks spend at least part of their time within a community. Although this book will focus on the latter form and the spectacular abbeys these religious groups built in Britain, eremitical monasticism was not only ever present here, but also appeared alongside the coenobitic form when monasticism first took shape.

There have been men and women who have isolated themselves from the outside world to seek a closer union with God since the earliest days of Christianity. A life of denying themselves indulgences (known as asceticism) and spending their days in solitary prayer began to appeal to a growing number of people more than 1,700 years ago. Perhaps inspired by Jesus and his forty days and forty nights spent in the desert, they sought a similar environment, the area along the River Nile, to the north-east of the Sahara (modern day Egypt) proving particularly attractive.