St Mary's Priory (Worcester)
The Priory of St. Mary at the Cathedral at Worcester was a monastery of the Benedictine , which reports directly to the bishop was assigned to Worcester and its cathedral. The Benedictines here took on the role reserved elsewhere for canons . Similar constellations existed at other English bishops in England during the Middle Ages, but not outside of England.
history
The Diocese of Worcester was founded in 680 by the Hatfield Synod . A monk from Whitby was appointed as the first bishop, and he founded a monastery directly at the bishopric. The first cathedral in Worcester was dedicated to St. Peter . Later, in 743, thanks to a donation from Ethelbald , King of Mercia , the monastery of St. Mary was founded, to which the monks from the cathedral moved.
In 961 the Fleury- trained Benedictine Oswald became Bishop of Worcester. On the basis of the Fleury monastery rules, Oswald developed a rule for Worcester, the Regularis concordia anglicae nationis , which was then also used for other Benedictine foundations. At the time of Oswald, the construction of a new cathedral dedicated to St. Mary began. This new cathedral was destroyed by a Viking raid in 1041 . Wulfstan, who became Bishop of Worcester in 1062, began a major new building, which was completed in 1218. The new cathedral, which still stands today, was consecrated to St. Mary, St. Peter and the now canonized bishops Oswald and Wulfstan.
Even under Wulfstan, the number of monks increased from 12 to 50. In 1364 a total of 32 monks died from the plague , and from 1381 a number of 37 monks is recorded. This number then remained stable for a long time.
During the Reformation, the prior and the monks accepted the acts of supremacy . On January 18, 1540, the monks had to leave the monastery. The role of monks was then taken over by secular canons . The cathedral has belonged to the Anglican Church since then .
Library
The priory had a comparatively extensive library, of which a good two hundred manuscripts have remained in the current library at the cathedral. Further manuscripts from Worcester can be found among others. a. in Cambridge , the British Library and the Bodleian Library at Oxford University . The oldest surviving manuscripts from Worcester include fragments of a Bible text from the 7th or 8th century and a Regula Benedicti from the 8th century. The library also owned a manuscript from Brittany from the 9th century with various canonical texts from Ireland including the hibernensis .
literature
- NR Ker (Ed.): Medieval Libraries of Great Britain . Royal Historical Society, 1964.
- David Knowles and R. Neville Hadcock: Medieval Religious Houses, England & Wales . Longman, 2nd edition, 1971, ISBN 0-582-112303 .
- Wolfgang Braunfels : Monasteries of Western Europe . Thames and Hudson, 1972, ISBN 0-500-27201-8 . (This work deals with Oswald and his journey from Fleury to Worcester on page 154.)
Web links
Coordinates: 52 ° 11 ′ 19 ″ N , 2 ° 13 ′ 16 ″ W.