Word Finder - abbeys

definition

The office or dominion of an abbot or abbess.

definition

A monastery or society of people, secluded from the world and devoted to religion and celibacy, which is headed by an abbot or abbess; also, the monastic building or buildings.

definition

The church of a monastery.

definition

A residence that was previously an abbatial building.

All bishoprics, abbeys and priories were in the royal nomination, the canonical institution belonging to the pope.

He had accumulated an immense private fortune, possessing in addition to his see the revenues of seven abbeys.

The following are a few of the most famous abbeys.

The Hessians were converted to Christianity mainly through the efforts of St Boniface; their land was included in the archbishopric of Mainz; and religion and culture were kept alive among them largely owing to the foundation of the Benedictine abbeys of Fulda and Hersfeld.

By way of penance William and his wife founded the abbeys of St Stephen and the Holy Trinity at Caen.

In the old town are the two largest of the Höfe, extensive blocks of buildings belonging to the great abbeys of Austria, which are common throughout Vienna.

They were established by the abbeys, the nobles and the crown, frequently by two of these authorities in co-operation, and were intended to serve as defensive posts and centres of population for sparsely-inhabited districts.

He was educated by a certain Tigernach, and having become a monk he crossed over to the continent of Europe in 1056, and his subsequent life was passed in the abbeys of St Martin at Cologne and of Fulda, and at Mainz.

Doubtless the king's sore financial needs had much to do with the dissolution of the abbeys and the plundering of the shrines, but there is no reason to suppose that he was not fully convinced that the monks had long outlived their usefulness and that the shrines were centres of abject superstition and ecclesiastical deceit.

But notwithstanding all these movements, the majority of the great Black Monk abbeys continued to the end of the 12th century in their primeval isolation.

The chief external work of the Benedictines at the present day is secondary education; there are 114 secondary schools or gymnasia attached to the abbeys, wherein the monks teach over 12,000 boys; and many of the nunneries have girls' schools.

Since the landed proprietors disposed of churches and convents, and the kings of bishoprics and abbeys, it became possible for them too to commit the sin of simony; hence a final expansion, in the iith century, of the meaning of the term.

Both de Courci and his wife Affreca were benefactors of the church, and founded several abbeys and priories in Ulster.

Other priories were originally offshoots from the larger abbeys, to the abbots of which they continued subordinate; but in later times the actual distinction between abbeys and priories was lost.

Its rigid rule was adopted by a vast number of the old Benedictine abbeys, who placed themselves in affiliation to the mother society, while new foundations sprang up in large numbers, all owing allegiance to the "archabbot," established at Cluny.

They did not secure their independence nor become "abbeys" till the reign of Henry VI.

The characteristic of the Cistercian abbeys was the extremest simplicity and a studied plainness.

The position of the refectory is usually a marked point of difference between Benedictine and Cistercian abbeys.

Of a castle taken by Cromwell in 1650, and of several former abbeys, there are no remains.

The practice of the nomination of bishops by the Curia and of papal recommendation to prebends and benefices of every kind grew daily more general, and the number of appeals to Rome and exemptions granted to abbeys and even to simple churches increased continually.

Their elections gave rise to innumerable lawsuits, which all terminated at the court of Rome, and in most cases it was the pope himself who designated the monks to fill vacant posts in the abbeys.

In 1803, accordingly, in the territorial rearrangements consequent on Napoleon's suppression of the ecclesiastical states, and of many free cities of the Empire, Bavaria received the bishoprics of Wurzburg, Bamberg, Augsburg and Freisingen, part of that of Passau, the territories of twelve abbeys, and seventeen cities and villages, the whole forming a compact territory which more than compensated for the loss of her outlying provinces on the Rhine.'

The present Prussian Rhine province was formed in 1815 out of the duchies of Cleves, Berg, Gelderland and Jiilich, the ecclesiastical principalities of Trier and Cologne, the free cities of Aix-la-Chapelle and Cologne, and nearly a hundred small lordships and abbeys.

The Benedictine houses never coalesced in this manner; even when, later on, a system of national congregations was introduced, they were but loose federations of autonomous abbeys; so that to this day, though the convenient expression " Benedictine order " is frequently used, the Benedictines do not form an order in the proper sense of the word.

When the religious houses were dissolved by Henry VIII., in the case of the greater abbeys and priories the exemptions from payment of tithes enjoyed by them passed to the Crown or the persons to whom the Crown assigned them, and thus any lands which might have been thus exempted, whether they had been actually so or not, were presumed to be exempt; and a further exemption was created by parsonages coming into the same hands as tithable lands, which lasted so long as such union continued.

The old monastic orders had had attached to their abbeys confraternities of lay men and women, going back in some cases to the 8th century.

Emperors and kings and the most illustrious men in church and state were commonly confraters of one or other of the great Benedictine abbeys.

This year or the next a council was held near the River Nidd, the papal letters were read, and, despite the opposition of the bishops, Wilfrid once more received the abbeys of Ripon and Hexham.

The bishoprics erected by him, and his many Lowland abbeys, Holyrood, Melrose, Dryburgh, Kelso, Jedburgh and others, confirmed the freedom of the Scottish church from the claims of the see of York, encouraged the i mprovement of agriculture and endowed the country with beautiful examples of architecture.

No region was more often ravaged than that of the lower Loire, so rich in abbeys - St Martin of Tours, Marmoutiers, St Benedict, &c. But the country ceded to the vikings under Hasting at the Loire mouth was insignificant and not in permanent occupation.

He wished to bring about the subjection of the church, and to this end sold bishoprics to the highest bidder, annulled the wills made in favour of the bishoprics and abbeys, and sought to impose upon his subjects a rationalistic conception of the Trinity.

The extension of the system of sauvegarde, by which abbeys, towns or lay vassals put themselves under the special protection of the king, and that of pariage, by which the possessor surrendered half the interest in his estate to the king in return for protection or some further grant, increased the royal power.

Adalbert, who wished to free his lands entirely from the authority of the duke, aroused further hostility by an attack on the privileges of the great abbeys, and after the emperor's death in 1056 his lands were ravaged by Bernard.

In the year 1663, the Pere de Moustier gave to his work on the churches and abbeys of Normandy the title of Neustria pia.

The reign of " Brother Sacristan, " the nickname given to Joseph by Frederick the Great, was one continual suppression of superfluous abbeys, feast-days, pilgrimages.

He lived successively at various abbeys - at Soreze, where he specially studied Greek and examined the numerous MSS.

He also founded several religious houses, among them the abbeys of Beaulieu, near Loches (c 1007), of Saint-Nicholas at Angers (1020) and of Ronceray at Angers (1028), and, in order to expiate his crimes of violence, made three pilgrimages to the Holy Land (in 1002-1003, c. 1008 and in 1039).

Specimens of Latinized names in connexion with ecclesiastical foundations are preserved in Strata Florida and Valle Crucis Abbeys.

In the days of medieval abbeys, when the provident Cistercian monks attached great importance to pond culture, they gave the first place to the tench and bream, the carp still being unknown in the greater part of Europe.

Stigand was an avaricious man and a great pluralist, holding the bishopric of Winchester after he became archbishop of Canterbury, in addition to several abbeys.

Of the renowned group of Border abbeys - Jedburgh, Melrose, Dryburgh and Kelso - that of Jedburgh is the stateliest.

From this date to the Reformation the monastery, one of the chief Benedictine abbeys in England, continued to flourish, the chief events in its history being connected with the maintenance of its claims to the possession of the bodies or tombs of King Arthur and St Dunstan.

Appointed by Odo ruler of several counties, including the county of Paris, and abbot in commendam of many abbeys, Robert also secured the office of duke of the Franks, a military dignity of high importance.

A curious combination of the fierce warrior and the pious churchman, he manifested the one aspect of his character in his ruthless suppression of an insurrection in his northern dominion (thus gaining for himself the title of "the Fierce"), the other in his munificent foundation of bishoprics and abbeys.

Itzehoe - survived to designate the heads of abbeys which since the Reformation have continued as Stifle, i.e.

These are the cloisters of La Brang (Jokhang) and Ra Moche, still, though much changed and enlarged, the most sacred abbeys in Tibet, and the glory of Lhasa.

Its representatives continued for some time to claim the sovereignty; but the country was practically very much in the condition of Germany at about the same time - chieftains of almost independent power ruled from their castles on the hill-tops over the adjacent valleys, engaged in petty wars, and conducted plundering expeditions against the neighbouring tenants, whilst the great abbeys were places of refuge for the studious or religious, and their heads were the only rivals to the barons in social state, and in many respects the only protectors and friends of the people.

In abbeys exempt from episcopal jurisdiction, the confirmation and benediction had to be conferred by the pope in person, the house being taxed with the expenses of the new abbot's journey to Rome.

The practice of commendation, by which - to meet a contemporary emergency - the revenues of the community were handed over to a lay lord, in return for his protection, early suggested to the emperors and kings the expedient of rewarding their warriors with rich abbeys held in commendam.

The enfeoffment of abbeys differed in form and degree.