Some Sources for English Benedictine History

SOME SOURCES FOR ENGLISH BENEDICTINE HISTORY by DOM VINCENT MARRON T h is article concerns the history of the English Benedictine Congregation in particular during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when all the communities which made up the Con gregation were living abroad and sending monks to England to serve on the mission. In recent years, the study of Catholicism in England during these centuries has intensified, and many are now engaged in research into Recusant history. When, as a result of all this labour, the records are known and understood, an assess ment may become possible. In such an assessment the part played by the clergy is bound to be an important factor, and among the clergy the Benedictines, though less numerous than the secular priests or the Jesuits, are worthy of consideration.1 There is at once a difficulty. The records of the Congregation are to be found not only in England but in many places in Europe. The scope, importance and exact location of those that have sur vived the upheavals of the past are known only to a few. Before any history can be attempted, a systematic account must be given of the extant records. My purpose here is to say where some records are today and to suggest where others might be found. The account given will, no doubt, prove incomplete, and may serve as a starting point for a more systematic account. Before considering the records themselves, it will be well to rehearse, for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar with the subject, the origin of the term ‘English Congregation’. The present English Congregation has been in existence since the union of August 1619, when there were about one hundred and 1 The size o f the English Benedictine Congregation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is given in a table in The Education o f Eighteenth-Century English Monks by Dom Hugh Aveling in th e d o w n sid e r e v ie w , 1961, p. 135* 50 ENGLISH BENEDICTINE HISTORY :'nrty monks engaged in the mission. These monks belonged to :hree distinct bodies: to the Italian or Cassinese Congregation of St Justina; to the Congregation of Spain; and to what was recognized = s the old English Congregation. The Cassinese were only six or seven in number. They did not accept the terms agreed to by the other two bodies and did not enter the Congregation when it was -estored in 1619. By far the largest group was that composed of English monks, about a hundred in number, who had made their profession either in Spain or under the obedience of the Congre gation of Spain. They were governed immediately by an English rjperior who was answerable to the superiors in Spain by whom he was appointed. For some years before the union of 1619 four convents of English nonks had been in existence: St Gregory’s at Douai; St Laurence’s at Dieulouard; St Benedict’s at St Malo; and St Edmund’s at Paris. Shortly after the Chapter of 1641 a German house was made over to the English Congregation, the former nunnery of St Adrian 2nd St Denis at Lamspring in the diocese o f Hildesheim. In 1669 St Benedict’s at St Malo was handed over to the Maurist Con gregation. St Gregory’s, St Laurence’s and St Edmund’s remained undisturbed until the French Revolution, and the Abbey of Lamspring until it was suppressed by the Prussian Government in 1803. After the French Revolution, St Gregory’s and St Laurence’s returned to England and settled at Downside and Ampleforth respectively. St Edmund’s eventually found a home in the convent at Douai which had been evacuated by the community of St Gregory’s and remained there for nearly a century, from 1818 rill 1903, when they returned to England and settled at Woolhampton, retaining the name ‘Douai Abbey’. Many of the records of the English Congregation were destroyed it the French Revolution. Since then only one full history of the Congregation has been completed, and this has remained in manu- :ript. It is the work of Dom Athanasius Allanson, a monk of St Laurence’s, who was appointed Annalist of the Congregation at :he General Chapter in 1842.2 As Annalist, he had access to every ! Allanson *s MSS works are at Ampleforth. These are: History o f the English Bene- : : tine Congregation, in two volumes; Acts o f General Chapter, in two volumes; records, in five volumes; and Biographies o f Monks o f the E.B.C., in two volumes. THE DOWNSIDE REVIEW species of document then available. In the Preface to his History he gives an account of earlier historians of the Congregation: ‘Great pains appear to have been bestowed in the beginning of the Congregation in keeping ample Registers of passing events. But after the lapse of some years, this useful practice began to grow into disuse, and though the standing Laws of the Body called upon the various Superiors to chronicle any important matters which occurred during their administration, yet the work was either overlooked or postponed at the time and then afterwards neglected; so that notwithstanding several Capitular Regulations, it has never been properly enforced either in ancient or modern times." Allanson does not refer by name to any early works on the history of the Congregation. He certainly knew Fr Augustine Baker’s Treatise o f the English Benedictine Mission, but may have omitted it on the grounds that it was only partly historical. Most of this work was written to impress upon the younger monks the spiritual dangers of the mission in England and to induce them to choose the safer way by living, if possible, always in their monasteries. The historical portion, which forms the final section of the work, is printed in the volume of records of English monks published by the Catholic Records Society.3 Allanson apparently did not know of the texts concerning Fr Baker preserved in the Bibliothèque Mazarine in Paris. Of these, Fr Baker’s Autobiography and Fr Leander Prichard’s Life of Fr Baker are printed in the same volume of records, together with Fr Thomas Woodhope’s Obits o f Eminent Benedictines of which Allanson likewise makes no mention.4 The first of the Congregational Annalists to be mentioned by name is Fr Philip Ellis, who was commissioned by President Shir- burne, after the Chapter in 1681, to compile the Annals of the Congregation. Allanson remarks that his indifferent state of health prevented Fr Ellis from making all the researches that were necessary. From the Biographies we learn that in 1685 Fr Ellis was one o f the Royal Chaplains appointed on the erection of a convent of Bene dictine monks at the Palace of St James. In 1688, when Innocent 8 C.R.S. XXXIII (1933), edited by Dom Justin McCann and Dom Hugh Connolly, p. 155. 4 Op. cit., pp. 1-154. Woodhope’s Obits are from Wood MS. B 6 in the Bodleian Library: see Dom Hugh Connolly’s Introduction» op. cit., p. 240. 52 ENGLISH BENEDICTINE HISTORY wy XI divided England into four districts, he was selected for the Western Vicariate and consecrated Bishop in May of that year of at the Royal Chapel of St James. When the Revolution broke out us. in the following November, he was imprisoned in Newgate. On to regaining his liberty, he joined the exiled James II at St Germain led and later lived in Rome.5 The next to be mentioned, Fr John ers Townson, was a monk of Lamspring who had been sent in 1688 ras to the University of Trier, where he took the degree of Doctor of rds Divinity. On his return, his Abbot set him to search the archives ins, of the Abbey and to write its history, which he duly completed, era in Latin, four years later. The most important work, in Allanson’s opinion, was that of :ory Br Bennet Weldon. Weldon was born in 1674, converted to the er’s Faith at an early age and professed as a choir monk at St Edmund’s tied in 1692. In 1707 President Gregson asked him to draw up a history this of the Congregation, but Weldon felt himself to be lacking the tual necessary experience for this task. Instead he set down in writing rose a large mass of miscellaneous information on the Benedictines and ries. collected and transcribed numerous papers and records so that ork, some other, more qualified than himself, might later compose a d by full history. His manuscript Memorials, or Collections, in two now large volumes, are preserved at Douai Abbey. The whole work èque was completed in five months and is certainly the most valuable I Fr collection of materials for the history of the English Benedictines lume after the Reformation. For this work Weldon had access to two ment important sources which have since disappeared: a Chronology compiled by Fr Philip Ellis and the revision and continuation of d by Woodhope’s Obits by Fr Thomas Vincent Sadler. Shir- Weldon also composed a summary of his larger work, known as f the Chronological Notes. He did this by selecting some of the passages :ealth where he himself tells the story from the documents at his disposal, ssary. while omitting all but a few of the documents copied or inserted ?f the in the Collections. This was completed in 1709; and two years Bene- later Weldon produced ‘a reviewed, corrected and augmented’ ijcent version of the same work.

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