Medieval Church, Saints and Religious Orders 1

While undertaking research into the cults of Anglo-Saxon saints that continued into the late medieval era, I prepared two glossaries to help explore the thick undergrowth of church terminology. One was of Church terms and the other was my summarised guide to religious orders. I thought that other researchers on a similar journey might find them helpful, and also help improve their accuracy and the width of coverage. Please post comments and the Glossary can be updated.

This is the Glossary of Religious Orders, written from an English aspect:

Glossary of Religious Orders

 

Augustinian: 1) order of regular canons following the Rule of St Augustine; established from pre-existing orders in Italy and France in the 12th century: 2) order of mendicant friars founded in Italy in 1244; known in England as the Austin Friars, arriving in 1248. They were invited by Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester and Hertford, who gave land at Clare for the first Augustinian foundation. In 1253 they settled in London where ‘Austin Friars’ was to become the most important house of the Order in England.

 

Benedictine: Order of monks or nuns living according to the Rule of St Benedict. Monks take vows of personal poverty, chastity and obedience to their abbot and the Benedictine Rule. The first Benedictines came to England in 597 with Augustine’s mission. Known as the Black Monks, the Benedictines were most prominent of monastic orders in England. 

 

Canons Regular: Regular canons were ordained priests, living a quasi-monastic, regular life (i.e. life according to a rule) in a community; a term applied to Augustinian canons

 

Carmelites: Order of mendicant friars originally founded in Palestine in the 12th century, then reformed in Europe in the 13th century after the failure of the Crusades; also known as the White Friars

 

Carthusian: Monastic order founded by Bruno of Cologne at Chartreuse in 1084; a contemplative order whose brethren were bound to vows of silence and renunciation of the world. The first English house was founded by Henry II at Witham Friary, Somerset in 1181, as penance for the murder of Thomas of Canterbury. Hugh of Lincoln was its first prior. There were nine Carthusian monasteries in England at the time of the Dissolution, and one in Scotland

 

Cistercian: Monastic order derived from the Benedictines, founded as reformed order at the French monastery of Citeaux in 1098. Supported by William Giffard, Bishop of Winchester, the first Cistercian house in England was founded at Waverley, Surrey in late 1128. All monasteries were dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

 

Cluniac: Reformed Benedictine order, founded at Cluny in France in 910. They operated under a modified Rule of Benedict. The first Cluniac house in England was at Lewes in 1077. By the Dissolution, there were 33 to 35 houses (sources vary) in England and Wales, with a further three in Scotland.

 

Conventuals: Members of the Franciscan order advocating change to the original rules on property

 

Dominican: Order of mendicant friars founded in the early 13th century by the Spanish St Dominic; also known as the Friars Preacher or the Black Friars. The first Dominicans arrived in England in 1221

 

Franciscan: Order of friars founded by St Francis of Assisi in 1217 in Italy; also known as the Friars Minor or the Grey Friars. The first Franciscans arrived in England in 1224, led by Agnellus of Pisa

 

Friars of the Sack: Also called the Friars of the Penance of Jesus Christ; the largest of the lesser groups of friars in England. All of their houses were abandoned by 1314 and members obliged to join one of the major mendicant orders

 

Gilbertines: The Gilbertine Order of Canons Regular was founded around 1130 by St Gilbert in Sempringham, Lincolnshire; a double order comprising male and female members under the spiritual guidance of the Augustinian canons.

 

Hospitallers: Military order first recognised in 1113, founded to assist in the Crusades; their full name was Knights of the Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem

 

[Mendicant orders: Term for the friars which refers to begging because of their dependence on alms for support]

 

Pied Friars: Also called the Friars of Blessed Mary or the Friars De Domina; disbanded and the members obliged to join one of the major orders in the early 14th century

 

Poor Clares: Female branch of the Franciscan order, maintaining an enclosed monastic life rather than one equivalent to that of the friars

 

Premonstratensian: The Order of Canons Regular of Prémontré (near Laon), founded by Norbert of Xanten in 1120 or 1121. Influenced by the Cistercians and living to the Rule of Augustine. Known in England as the White Canons; elsewhere as Norbertines. They arrived in England around 1143. By the Dissolution, there were 35 houses, including Dryburgh Abbey.

 

Spirituals: Members of the Franciscan order devoted to maintaining the ideals of the founder with respect to money and property

 

Templars: Order of military monks founded in 1119 to assist in the Crusades; also known as the Knights Templar or the Poor Knights of Christ

 

Waldensians: Sect organised in the 12th century in Lyons; the founder became a mendicant preacher and expounded against the worldliness of the established church; the sect survives today.

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Monastic rules

 

Rule of St Augustine: A rule for religious community life first devised by a follower of St Augustine of Hippo in the 5th century; revived in the 11th century for use by the regular canons

 

Rule of St Benedict: Set of rules for monastic life devised by an Italian monk, Benedict of Nursia, in the 6th century; became the basis for Western monasticism

Sources

 

The main source was http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/churchglossary/glossaryc.htm, accessed on 2^nd October 2019, supported by a range of other sources. Orders marked are included in data published in Alison M. Binns, Dedications of Monastic Houses in England and Wales 1066-1216. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1989.

St Candida – a unique local saint with relics

St Candida and Holy Cross Church,
Whitchurch Canonicorum

At the village of Whitchurch Canonicorum in south west Dorset, set in a valley about a mile from the sea, is a unique English example of a local saint’s cult. It epitomizes the religious culture of the early Middle Ages and is still a place of pilgrimage.

Even the village’s name gives clues to its link to the saint: broadly translated it means the ‘white church that belongs to the canons’. However, ‘white church’ could be a play on words related to this saint whose relics are still stored in a lead lined coffin in the church’s north transept.

            The saint is known as St Whyte, St Wite, St Witta or St Candida,¹ all alluding to the colour white. The church is dedicated to St Candida and Holy Cross and is the only non-urban church in England that retains the original medieval shrine and relics of the saint to which it was dedicated.² Only Westminster Abbey’s shrine to St Edward the Confessor shares this status. How this saint’s relics survived the wholesale destruction of saints’ tombs and cults effected during the English Reformation is not known.

            Little is known about St Wite although evidence from 1900 when the tomb -marked in Latin with ‘Here rest the remains of St Wite’ - was opened for church repairs indicates that St Wite was a small woman aged around forty, probably a West Saxon who may have been killed during a Viking raid in 831 at nearby Charmouth.³

St Candida/Wite's tomb is above a foramina

The Oxford Dictionary of Saints offers three versions of the saint’s identity: A West Saxon woman; a Welsh saint whose relics were given to the church by King Athelstan (d. 939); and a monk, a martyred companion of the missionary St Boniface, whose remains were translated from Germany back to Dorset.⁴ Locally, there is speculation that Wite was a virgin hermit or anchoress and her hermitage was close to the current site of the church, which was built on the site of a previous church in the late twelfth century.⁵

The site is recorded as being given by King Alfred (d. 899) to his youngest son Ethelwald in 881 with the Anglo-Saxon name of Hwitancircian (Whitechurch) which indicates that it was already established as a place of worship.

Although Whyte or Wite was the church’s original dedication, it changed to Candida, occasionally varied with White, sometime between 1200 and the early sixteenth century. During the fifteenth century, the dedication of Holy Cross was added.⁶

            No Vitae (Life) was written about St Wite or has survived, but her relics are mentioned in much later writings of William Worcester (fifteenth century) and the Jesuit John Gerard (sixteenth century)⁷ indicating that the cult continued long after her death.

Locally, the church became known as the ‘Cathedral of the (Marshwood) Vale’. Pilgrims travelled to Whitchurch by tracks and paths to visit the Purbeck marble-topped tomb placed on a stone base (foramina) with three oval openings into which afflicted body parts were inserted for healing.⁸

These pious visitors made an important contribution to the local economy and sustained a nearby hostelry, the Shave Cross Inn built in the fourteenth century. After leaving the shrine, pilgrims could travel to the saint’s well at nearby Morcombelake which reputedly cured eye conditions. In late 2017, this author found that pilgrims still visit the tomb to place messages of hope, thanks and prayer into the oval openings, thus continuing a tradition that has lasted a millennium.

Pilgrim's messages in
foramina

            The cult of St Wite/Candida was just one of several hundred, possibly as many as one thousand, saints’ cults to be found in England from the seventh century onwards to the early Tudor period of the sixteenth century. It is an exceptional example of a local cult that would probably have been erased by the English Reformation which obliterated all others except that of the monarchs’ preferred cult of St Edward the Confessor whose shrine area became the royal mausoleum from Henry III onwards.9

It was one of several cults that existed in the south and south-west of England including St Aldhelm (Malmesbury), St Birinus (Dorchester/Winchester), SS Grimbald, Hedde and Swithun (Winchester), St Edward the Martyr (Shaftesbury), St Piran (Cornwall), St Sidwell (Exeter), St Petrock (Bodmin), St Cuthburga (Wimborne), St Edith (Wilton), St Melor (Amesbury), SS Augustine and Dunstan (Canterbury).

            The Dorset cult shared characteristics with the other cults. Pilgrims came to the saint’s tomb to seek intercession with God, both by prayer and physically touching the tomb. Physical access to the tomb was common, unlike modern times. Pilgrimage was an important aspect of religious practices as well as being economically beneficial to the church and its surrounding community.

It is highly probable that the saint’s feast day of 1 June was included in the regional church calendar of festivals and commemoration, and that prayers and liturgy had regular reference to St Whyte/Candida. However, unlike many other saints, there does not appear to have been any hagiographic Vitae written. This may be the reason that there are so many stories about who the saint may have been. Even the gender of Whyte/Candida is still under question, although it seems highly likely from the evidence of the tomb that the saint was female.

References

1.      Farmer, David Hugh. Oxford Dictionary of Saints. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, 447.

2.     Ibid.

3.     Syer, S. G. The Cathedral of the Vale, revised edition. Bridport: Creeds the Printers, 2005, 21.

4.     Farmer, op.cit., 447.

5.     Syer, op. cit., 21

6.     Ibid., 5

7.     Farmer, op. cit., 447.

8.     Syer, op. cit., 21.

9.     Tavinor, Michael. Shrines of the Saints in England and Wales. Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2016, 25.