Richard of Ware

Richard of Ware (also Richard de Ware ) OSB († December 8, 1283 in London ) was an English religious and civil servant. From 1258 he was abbot of the Benedictine Abbey of Westminster Abbey . He also served the English kings as a diplomat and from 1280 as Treasurer of the Exchequer .

Promotion to abbot

The origin of Richard of Ware is unknown. He is first mentioned as a monk of Westminster Abbey in 1257 when he was serving as attorney for Abbot Richard of Croxley . Richard of Croxley died a little later, whereupon Philip of Lewisham was elected abbot. When he died a few months later, King Heinrich III allowed . the monks of Westminster on December 1, 1258, the election of a new abbot and on December 15, confirmed the election of Richard of Ware. At the beginning of 1259 he traveled to Italy to obtain confirmation from the Pope. Pope Alexander IV confirmed his election and on March 11, 1259 appointed him papal chaplain .

The Cosmati Works at Westminster Abbey

When Ware met the Pope in Anagni in 1259 , Ware must have seen the magnificent marble paneling in the nave and crypt of the cathedral , later known as Cosmati . After his return to England Ware seems to have persuaded the king, who was just having the new Westminster Abbey built, to decorate the shrine of Edward the Confessor with Cosmati works. This shrine was believed to have been in progress as early as 1262, and the impact of the Cosmati work led to further Cosmati work being commissioned for the church. In 1266 or 1267, Ware traveled to the papal court again. From this visit he brought both marble stones and craftsmen to Westminster who created the floor decorations in front of the high altar of the abbey church, completed in 1268. Presumably, Ware assumed most of the cost of these floor decorations. The king later reimbursed him only part of the sum, as the monk John Flete lamented in his chronicle from the early 15th century.

Restorers at work on the Cosmati floor decorations at Westminster Abbey, 2009

Service as royal diplomat and treasurer

During the Second War of the Barons , Simon de Montfort , the leader of the aristocratic opposition, sent Ware as an envoy to the French royal court in 1265. After Heinrich III. a little later had regained power, Ware also served him and later his son Edward I as a diplomat. In 1279 he negotiated the marriage of Margaret , a daughter of Edward, with the eldest son of Duke John I of Brabant . In 1278 he had also been appointed chief judge of a traveling court commission for northern England, but ultimately did not take part in the court trip. For this he was appointed on June 18, 1280 Treasurer of the Exchequer and thus the chief tax officer of England. In this office, however, he did not acquire any major importance.

Activity as dept

However, the favor of Edward I meant that Ware received the abbey privileges confirmed and even expanded. In 1280 the king upheld most of the Royal Charters issued in favor of the abbey. In 1283, Ware vigorously fended off the attempt by Bishop Godfrey Giffard of Worcester to place Great Malvern Priory , which had previously been subject to Westminster Abbey, under his spiritual supervision. In addition, Ware proved himself as an economist. He was able to redeem the abbey's debt of over £ 400 to Italian merchants, bought the estate of Great Amwell in Herefordshire for £ 566, set up a hunting park at Tiddesley by Pershore and built a house on the grounds of the Abbey's cemetery at Westminster rented. The proceeds were used for lighting candles in the abbey church. Ware tried to improve the coexistence of the monastery community that had certainly been significantly disrupted by the new building of the abbey church. That is why he commissioned a customary , a manual in which the usual processes of worship and living together in the abbey were described. He was able to fall back on older templates, but the manual was unprecedented in its detail. This work began in 1266, and the manual, which consisted of several parts, was only completed after several years. Only the fourth part of the work has survived, but it contains, for example, descriptions of the work in the abbot's office to the work of the gardener, as well as instructions for the care of sick or dying monks.

1268 the papal legate ordered Ottobono Fieschi a visitation at the abbey of de Pierre Tarentaise and the dean of the Cathedral of Bayeux was performed. It was found that the prior's bedchamber had to be relocated to the convent building, and a gate had to be locked so that the infirmary could not be used as a shortcut to the adjacent royal palace . The monks were forbidden to undertake property transactions without the abbot's consent, which was certainly in the sense of goods. The visitation resulted in few points of criticism for the time, for which the goods were not directly responsible. The result is a recognition of Ware's work as abbot.

Death and aftermath

Ware suddenly died in early December 1283 while serving the king. He was buried under the Cosmati mosaic in front of the high altar of Westminster Abbey. According to the chronicler of Dunstable , the death of the strict abbot was mourned little by the monks. This claim does not seem to be wrong, because the monks used part of the funds that Ware had earmarked for his annual offices to buy food. In the 15th century, however, the monk Flete described him as a wise and level-headed man. The floor mosaic created under him and the manual for monastery life survived him.

Web links

• DA Carpenter: Ware, Richard of (d. 1283). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004
• Westminster Abbey: Our History - Richard de Ware

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Westminster Abbey - Our History: Richard de Ware. Retrieved March 29, 2018 . 
2. ^ Richard Foster: Patterns of Thought. The hidden meaning of the Great Pavement of Westminster Abbey. Jonathan Cape, London 1991, ISBN 0-224-02910-X , p. 17
3. ↑ Michael Prestwich: Edward I . Berkeley, University of California Press, 1988, ISBN 0-520-06266-3 , p. 234

predecessor	Office	successor
Phillip de Lewisham	Abbot of Westminster Abbey 1258–1283	Walter de Wenlock
Joseph of Chauncy	Lord High Treasurer 1280-1283	John Kirkby