The dissolution of the Monastère S is an episode of the reign of Henri VIII of England which begins in 1538, when the king undertakes to confiscate the goods of the religious orders of England, Wales and Ireland, and to destroy or resell the buildings of them.

This company obeys a double logic, policy and economic. The Church had more than one fifth of the grounds in England. The king not only recovers the richnesses of the monasteries but it grows rich by the resale of the abbeys. By doing this it avoids having recourse to the tax to fill the cases of the state and durably rejoins the purchasers of these ecclesiastical goods to the cause of the reform Anglican.

History

The dissolution of the monasteries falls under the context of the religious reform in Western Europe which sees a certain number of sovereigns and princes to give up the Roman Catholic church and to convert with the Protestantisme. The reform Anglican carried out by the king of England is not strictly speaking an adoption of Protestantism, as shows it the Acte of the six articles, but it means the abandonment of the authority of the pope on the English Church and the will to reform a very criticized institution.

See also: Anglicanism

Religious and political context

The Crown faced a population (in particular theologists and clergy) divided on the question of the reform. Since John Wyclif, whose doctrines had been diffused by the Lollards, there existed in England a favorable ground with the ideas reformists, so much on the doctrinal level (return to the bible) that policy (will of national independence). Nicholas Ridley, procurator of the University of Cambridge, specialist in interpretation biblical, had obtained University the following resolution: That the bishop of Rome does not have more authority nor of reserved jurisdiction by God on this kingdom of England that another foreign bishop .

If Thomas Cranmer supported the independence of the Church of England, many intellectuals, and not of least, like the ex-chancellor Thomas More or Reginald Pole, refused the schism while on the other side of the personalities as Hugh Latimer called on the contrary with a Protestant reform much more radical than the Église Anglican proposed by the king.

Between 1524 and 1527, the cardinal Wolsey had undertaken an outline of reform, closing thirty entirely corrupted monasteries, in particular with Ipswich, its birthplace, and with Oxford where it had made its studies. The benefit of the operation were used with construction of establishments as public education. After having closed the monastery of St Frideswide, Wolsey thus founded Cardinal college which was going to become the college of Christ Church (Oxford).

In November 1529 were published a series of laws which aimed at reforming the abuses, limiting the rights charged on the validation of the wills and the devoted ground burials, stating more severe rules relating to the right of asylum for the delinquents and the criminals, limiting the office plurality of ecclesiastical employment to four functions. One can notice that these religious reforms also caused to reinforce the royal authority.

According to the catholic Encyclopedia, the dissolution of the monasteries was envisaged in advance in the political program of the king and did not rest on any context of the moment.

Precedents in England

The policy of Henri VIII could be based on precedents, unquestionable old two hundred years.

After the conquest Norman, many French abbeys had vast properties and houses juniors in England. They were for some simple farms managed by a monk expatriate, but sometimes also of rich person foundations such as the priory of Lewes, depend on the Ordre of Cluny and its abbot. Because of the ceaseless conflicts between France and England during the War One hundred Year old, the English governments had worried about the money sums transferred towards France, sums which the king of France could confiscate with his advantage, as well as authority exerted by French religious orders on the English ground.

The agents of the royal administration had started by sequestering the goods of the foreign priories between 1295 and 1303, i.e. under the reign of Edouard I {{er}}. The foreign priories were constrained to pay large sums with the treasure, while the exploitations were confiscated and put under supervision, their incomes being used to feed the cases of the king, which represented a considerable source of profits. Certain houses obtained their naturalization on the condition of paying heavy fines and force bribes, but the majority disappeared when Henri V ordered their closing by an act of the Parliament in 1414. The grounds increased with the crown which preserved some of them, yielded or sold others with allied of the king, and divided the remainder between monasteries of them coldly create like the abbey of Syon or the Chartreux of the priory of Sheen, and new educational establishments. This policy was taken again by Henri VI, with in particular the foundation of the Collège of Eton.

The tranfert of the ecclesiastical goods to educational establishments largely inspired the English episcopate and of new foundations multiplied towards the end of the 15th century and continued at the beginning of the 16th century. The victims of these transfers were in general of small establishments without great resources nor supports sheltering of the monks Bénédictin S or Augustins. The large abbeys and the religious orders which escaped the authority diocésaine, in particular the Cistercien S, did not make the expenses of these requisitions. The large recipients were the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

When the Wolsey cardinal made close a score of monasteries to create a new college, he requested and obtained a papal Bulle (1524).

The European example

In 1521, Martin Luther had published the votis monasticis , informant that nothing in the writings justified the monachism, that Ci was useless and even immoral with the direction where it was in contradiction with the spirit of Christianity. The marked wishes did not have any value and nobody was held to observe them. These declarations had an immediate effect: a special assembly of the German augustins (to which Luther belongbelonged) gathered the same year, accepted the proposals of Luther and decided in the majority that all the members of the regular clergy had freedom to give up their wishes and to give their resignation. In the monastery of Luther, with Wittenberg, all the monks except one reflect this decision with execution. In 1524, burst the Révolte of the bumpkins, whose Luther was disunited but what supported reformers as Thomas Münzer which required the dissolution of the religious orders. the revolt was a failure, but the idea that the religious orders had fraudulently adapted grounds belonging to the community made their way.

The news was not long in arriving at the ears of princes and European sovereigns favorable to the reform and the idea to put the hand on the goods of the Church. In 1527, the king of Sweden, Gustave I {{er}} obtained a decree of the diet authorizing it to confiscate as many ecclesiastical land goods than he would consider it necessary to the increase in the incomes of the treasure. Certain grounds originally conceded with the Church by their owners should from now on return to their heirs. This project enriches the king and deprived the Swedish convents their incomes, obliging them to still close or live sparely a few years before disappearing in the years 1580.

Frederic I {{er}} of Denmark reacts in its turn in 1528, sequestering the goods of fifteen of the religious houses belonging to the richest orders but most unpopular. Its successor made pass a series of laws in the years 1530 which precipitated the decline of the Danish monachism.

In Swiss, a similar threat weighed on the monasteries. In 1523, the city of Zurich authorized the nuns to be married, and the following year it closed all the monasteries which were on its territory, using the sums recovered to subsidize education and to help the poor. The former monks transfer themselves to offer a formation of reintegration and pensions. The city of Basle encased the step in 1529 to him, then that of Geneva in 1530. In 1530, the abbey of Saint-Gall saw a time threatened but it was on grounds belonging to the Saint Germanic Roman empire and the attempt was a failure.

Stages of dissolution

It is in this problematic context that Henri, not being able to obtain from the pope the cancellation of its first marriage, proclaimed supreme leader of the Church of England in February 1531. In April 1533, a law was voted prohibiting the clergy from making call in front of a foreign court (Roman in fact) of a royal decision in spiritual or financial matters.

In 1534, under the pressure of the king, the Parliament authorized Thomas Cromwell with going to inspect the monasteries, i.e. all the abbeys, priories and convents under the pretext acknowledged to check the way in which one explained the reform with the monks, to actually evaluate the value of their goods. A few months later, when the emotion caused by the arrival of laic in places accustomed to episcopal inspections had been calmed, Cromwell delegated its powers to laic police chiefs who carried out what one called later the visit of the monasteries .

This one began during the summer 1535, while preachers and sermonizers (the railers ) were charged to go up in pulpit and to develop the three theses following:

  • That the monks and the sisters were sinners, hypocrites and irreligious people carrying out a life of luxury and vice
  • That these monks and nuns lived in unproductive parasites on the back of the workers and thus constituted an economic threat
  • That if the king recovered the fortune of the monasteries it would need never again to raise taxes.
During this time Cromwell accumulated the reports/ratios of the police chiefs announcing all the allegedly noted abuses, as well financial as sexual. In 1536, on the basis of charge of irregularities received by Cromwell, the Parliament voted a law which made it possible to the king to seize all the monasteries with the annual incomes lower than 200 pounds sterling. The most modest convents and least influential were put at bag, their residents accepted a pension while their goods were confiscated. The Monachisme was already on the decline, and in 1536 there remained nothing any more but 85 monks in all the thirteen cistercians establishments of the Wales.

These first measurements proved financially disappointing. In April 1539, a new Parliament voted a law authorizing the royal seizure on the remainder of the English monasteries. Certain abbots revolted and with the autumn the abbots of Colchester, Glastonbury and Reading were carried out for high treason. The priors of the chartreuse S of Beauvale, London and Axholme had been carried out in 1535 to have challenged the law which made of the king the chief of the Church of England. Only the abbey of Saint Simpleton, in the Norfolk, escaped dissolution.

The other abbots agreed to sign the act which made of the king the owner of their abbey. A certain number of confiscated buildings were destroyed to recover the lead of the roof and the stones which were used to build secular buildings. Small houses bénédictines were transformed into parish churches, and sometimes even bought for this purpose by communities which had the means of them.

The tradition according to which a wave of destruction iconoclasts prevails then often comes from a confusion between the made depredations one century later by the puritans with those which took place in the years 1530. However the relics were dispersed and the disadvised pilgrimages. It was an hard blow carried to the saving in centers like Glastonbury, Walsingham, Bury St Edmunds, Shaftesbury and Canterbury which had grown rich thanks to the surge by the pilgrims.

Henri needed money. Most of the abbeys were resold with a new class of landowners whose fidelity with the reform Anglican was seen thus consolidated.

Consequences

The abbeys of England, Wales and Ireland counted among the land great landowners and the most important institutions of the kingdom. In the areas furthest away from the capitals, they played a fundamental role in the lodging of the travellers, the transmission of the knowledge, works caritative, the hospital care and of health, while providing work to the local craftsmen. The sudden disappearance of more than eight hundred of these hearths of activity was going to cause many problems and it is obvious that the capacity could not have attacked the abbeys thus if it had not recontré a certain support measure in the population.

  • the destruction of the libraries appears among the greatest losses of the English reform. There remain only six volumes of the six hundreds which had the priory of Worcester (today cathedral of Worcester) at the time of dissolution. Three volumes remain only of the library of the augustins of York after the destruction of six hundred and forty six books. Certain works were destroyed to recover their invaluable binding, others sold per whole cart-loads, among which irreplaceable works dating from the beginnings of the English literature. It is thought that the majority of the manuscripts written in Vieil English were lost during this episode.

has great number off them whych purchased those supertycyous mansyons, resrved off those lybrarye bokes, nap to serf theyr jakes, nap to scoure candelstyckes, and nap to rubbe to their bootes. Summon they balance to the grossers and soapsellers (John Basle, 1549)

  • the religious hospitals also closed, with serious consequences with the local plan. The monasteries had nourished the poor and had distributed alms for the periods of food shortage. The disappearance of the monasteries revealed to an army of robust beggars who was a constant worry under the reign of Tudor, contributing to the social agitation which caused the laws on the poor under the reign of Edouard and Elisabeth. Moreover abbeys were employers more understanding than the new aristocratic owners who increased the rents by requiring an increased productivity their farmers and sharecroppers.

  • more generally, the disappearance of the monasteries contributed to the decline of the contemplative practices in Western Europe during the following centuries, with some rare exceptions like that of the Quakers.

  • the destruction of the monasteries met a certain opposition according to the areas. In the north of England, in particular the Yorkshire and the Lincolnshire, one attended a popular rising, the Pilgrimage of the grace, which held the Crown in failure during a few weeks. The following year there was another rising in the Norfolk. Rumors circulated according to which the king counted measured with bag the churches and to tax the livestock. The rioters claimed the end of dissolution, the resignation of Thomas Cromwell and the insurance that his/her oldest daughter, the catholic Marie Tudor, would be named heiress of the crown in the place of Edouard, its junior. Henri calmed the spirits by making promises, then made carry out part of the chiefs of the rebellion without another form of lawsuit. In the west, the rebellion of the delivers prayer of 1549 was accompanied by a request for restoration of the monasteries.

  • Finally on the financial plan, one could calculate that the king had recovered only approximately 37.000 Pound sterling per annum between 1536 and 1547, that is to say approximately a fifth of the benefit that withdrew the monks from them, whereas the full value of the confiscated goods had been evaluated with 200.000 books. Indeed certain goods were sold for ridiculous sums, and even purely and simply offered to the partisans of the king, and it was necessary to give a pension to the dispossessed clerks who in many cases continued with officer in their parish.

See too

Internal bonds

External bonds

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