MONASTERY
45Y
MONASTERY
dissolved, and their revenues applied by Wolsey to the purpose contemplated.
The following calculation has been made as to the number and wealth of the religious houses in England dismantled and scattered at the period of the Reforma- tion : " The number of houses and places suppressed from first to last in England, so far as any calculations appear to have been made, seems to be as follows : Of lesser monasteries, of which we have the valua- tion 374
Of greater monasteries 186
Beionging to the Hospitallers 4S
Colleges 90
Hospitals 110
Chantries and free chapels 2374
Total 3182
These are in addition to the friars' houses, and those suppressed b}' Wolsey, and many small houses of which ■we have no particular account. The sum total of the clear yearly revenue of the several houses at the time of their dissolution, of which we have any account, seems to be as follows :
Of the greater monasteries i;i04,919 13 3
Of all those of the lesser monasteries of
which we have the valuation 29,702 1 10
Knights Hospitallers, head house in Lon- don 2,385 12 S
We have the valuation of only twenty-eight
of their houses in the couutry 3,026 9 5
Friars' houses, of which we have the valu- ation 751 2 0
Total ^140,784 19 2
If proper allowances are made for the lesser monasteries and houses not included in this estimate, and for tlie plate, etc., which came into the hands of the king by the dissolution, and for the valuation of money at that time, which was at least six times as much as at present, and also consider that the estimate of the lands was gen- erally supposed to be much under the real worth, we must conclude their whole revenues to have been im- mense. It does not appear that any exact computation has been made of the number of persons contained in the religious houses. Those of the lesser monasteries dissolved by 27
Henry VllI were reckoned at about 10,000
If we suppose the colleges and hospitals to have contained a proportionable number, these will
make about 6,347
If we reckon the number in the greater monasteries according to the proportion of their revenues, they will be about 35,000; but as, probably, they had larger allowances in proportion to their num- ber tluui those of the lesser monasteries, if we abate upon that account 5000, they will then be . . 30,000
One for each chantry and free chapel 2,374
Total 47,721
But as there was probably more than one person to offi- ciate in several of the free chapels, and there were other houses which are not included within this calculation, jierhaps they may be computed in one general estimate at about 50,000. As there were pensions paid to almost all those of the greater monasteries, the king did not immediately come into the full enjoyment of their whole revenues ; however, by means of what he did receive, he founded six new bishoprics— viz. those of Westmin- ster (which was changed by queen Elizabeth into a deanery, with twelve prebends and a school), Peterbor- ough, Chester, Gloucester, Bristol, and Oxford. And in eight other sees he founded deaneries and chapters, by converting the priors and monks into deans and prebendaries — viz. Canterbury, Winchester, Durham, Worcester, Rochester, Norwich, Ely, and Carlisle. He founded also the colleges of Chris't Church in Oxford and Trinity in Cambridge, and finished King's College there. He likewise founded professorships of divinity, law, physic, and of the Hebrew and Greek tongues, in both the said universities. He gave the house of Gray Friars and St. Bartholomew's Hospital to the city of London, and a perpetual pension to the poor knights of Windsor, and laid out great sums in building and forti- fying many ports in the channel" (Baxter, Hist, of the Church of England). Compare Hook, Lives of the A rch-
bishops of Canterbury, vol i (Lond. 1868, 8vo) ; Fuller, Church Hist, i, 115 sq. ; Burnet, Hist, of the Reforma- tion ; Soames, Ref Ch. of Englatul, vol. i, especially the Introd. ; Fosbrooke, Bi-it. Monachism, ch. i-v, and Ixii ; Hill, English Monasticisvi, its Rise and Influence (Lond. 1867, 8vo), p. 488 sq., 515 sq.
It is hardly necessary to state that all the Reformed churches in the 16th century discarded the practice of monachism, and suppressed^ monasteries as useless. In some of the German states', however, the temporalities of the suppressed monasteries were retained, and were granted at pleasure by the sovereign, to be enjoyed to- gether with the titular dignity. In Roman Catholic countries also, as, e. g., France, Spain, Austria, and It- aly, the suppression of monasteries has been more or less general in more recent times. See Monasticism. But, as count Montalembert has well put it in his cele- brated work on the Moitks of the West (Edinb. 1861-7, 5 vols. 8vo), " this work of spoliation, which may be said to have fairly set in with the Reformation, is now pro- ceeding with methodical gravity." In the five years from 1830 to 1835 no less than "3000 monasteries have disappeared from the soil of Europe." In Portu- gal some 300 were destroyed, 200 in Poland, and the number annihilated bj' queen Christina of Spain, though it has never been estimated, was certainly not much smaller than in Poland. The destruction, however, has proved greatest in the recent reforms in France, and especially in Italy. The great monastery of Clairvaux, which once held St. Bernard and his five hundred monks, is now a prison with five hundred convicts in i it. The celebrated abbey at Clugny, which figures so largely in the history of the Middle Ages, has been turned into stud-stables, and in 1844 the place of the high-altar was " the starting-post of the stallions." The abbey of Le Bee, in Normandy, from which Lanfranc and Anselm came forth successively to fiU the see of Canterbury, has been utilized in the same fashion, and horses fatten where monks once fasted and prayed. A china manufactory is carried on in the Chartreux of Seville, and swine have taken possession of the cells in the Cistercian abbey of Cadouin. Everj^vhere, as the count informs us, the work of ruin proceeds. " Some- times," saj-s he, "the spinning-mill is installed under the roof of the ancient sanctuary. Instead of echoing night and day the praises of God, these dishonored arches too often repeat only the blasphemies and ob- scene cries, mingling with the shrill voice of the ma- chinery, the grinding of the saw, or the monotonous clank of the piston." Nor is this all. John Knox has been sometimes stigmatized as a barbarian for the en- couragement which he is said to have given the popu- lace in demolishing Christian edifices where the relics of idolatrj' were enshrined ; j'et even where the excited rabble diil their worst, the ivied ruin still remains to tell of a grandeur which has passed away, and to mark, for the present and other generations, the spot where their fathers prayed. But in France, it appears, the work of demolition is done much more scientifically and thoroughly. They are not content there with confisca- tion, plunder, profanation; they overthrow, raze from the foundation, leave not a single stone standing on an- other. " The empire of the East," says the count, "has not been ravaged by the Turks as France has been and still is by the band of insatiable destroyers who, after having purchased these vast constructions and immense dominions at the lowest rate, work them like quarries for sacrilegious profit. I have seen with my own eyes the capitals and columns of an abbey-church which I could name employed as so much material for the neigli- boring road." And again : " What remains of so many- palaces raised in silence and solitude for the products of art, for the progress and pleasure of the mind, for disin- terested labor? Masses of broken wall inhabited by owls and rats, shapeless remains, heaps of stones, and pools of water. Everywhere desolation, filth, and dis- order" (Introduction, ch. viii). The yomig and free