Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies

This article provides a comparative analysis of the medieval cults of SS Mildred and Augustine at the abbey of St Augustine in Canterbury, England. The author argues that while Augustine was widely recognized as a saint in medieval England, Mildred’s cult was of equal importance at the abbey in the post-conquest period. By examining the placement of their eleventh-century shrines, hagiographies, charters, and later testamentary evidence, the article shows the complementary nature of these two saints’ cults.

The nuns of Ballymore, Ireland, vanish from the historical record in the later fifteenth century. Previous scholarship on the house has adhered to an older view of medieval Cistercian women, suggesting that Ballymore’s failure was due to enclosure and an inability on the nuns’ part to manage their landholdings effectively. This article argues that both the foundation of the convent and its eventual disappearance owe more to political circumstances than to economic mismanagement: Ballymore was located on the border between Anglo-Irish and Gaelic-Irish areas, and the town was the caput of the de Lacys’ Westmeath manor. As the Gaelic Irish lords experienced a resurgence in power, the fortunes of the de Lacys — and therefore the nuns of Ballymore whom they patronized — went into decline.

In Portugal, as in the rest of Europe, the mendicants settled in almost all cities and towns from the beginning of the thirteenth century. Their buildings marked the urban landscape and contributed to the development of the urban centres. This article explores the process by means of which the friars settled in the cities and the factors that determined their choice of site, with attention to the spatial, economic, political, and social characteristics of the mendicant establishments in the largest Portuguese cities between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. It aims to demonstrate that competition between the different mendicant communities for preaching space was a crucial factor in the definition of the site where each religious building was to be built. Although the article focuses essentially on the Portuguese situation, it also draws comparisons with other European contexts, thereby affirming the transnational character of the religious orders, particularly evident in the way these communities marked medieval European cities in different contexts.

This paper presents the first results of a study that compares the Dominican settlements of East Munster and Leinster in medieval Ireland. It aims to examine the involvement of both the friars and their patrons in the establishment of new friaries while taking into account the political and economic context of these regions as well as the general context of the Dominican Order in Ireland and elsewhere in the Middle Ages. It also explores the physical setting and landscape context of each group of foundations, attempting to evaluate the extent of the impact and role of the friars and their friaries in relation to their surrounding environment.

This paper discusses evidence for retrospection in the art and architecture of the Cistercians in northern England in the late Middle Ages. The retrospection encountered at these monasteries includes the deliberate use of archaic forms of ornament, an ‘antiquarian’ interest in benefactors, and investment in art and architecture that affirmed the Order’s association with the religious traditions of the region. This evidence is discussed within the context of challenges to the historic privileges of the Order.

This article investigates the finances of eight convents of Palermo in the middle of the fifteenth century, based on archival work conducted on unpublished documents. Nicolò Tudisco, archbishop of Palermo between 1435 and 1445, took part in the Council of Basle and supported the antipope Felix V. In 1443 Pope Eugenius IV levied a tax of 20,000 florins on the Sicilian Church without exempting the convents, which prompted their procurator to appeal. By comparing the tithes of these eight convents we find out that the richest of them was Santa Caterina of the Dominican Order, whose prioress, Maria Alaymo, had been dismissed in 1440. As a consequence of the tithe imposed by Callixtus III in 1456, the economic situation of Palermo’s convents had changed, but Santa Caterina remained the most important of them.

The prevailing view has long been that the monastic houses operating in medieval Iceland functioned somewhat differently than their counterparts elsewhere in Europe. The results of an archaeological investigation of the ruins of the Augustinian monastery of Skriđuklaustur in East Iceland (1493–1554) show how the objectives of monasticism appeared in the buildings and artefacts uncovered. The investigation reveals how social systems can cross borders without necessitating fundamental change apart from that triggered by the constant process of hybridization. No less importantly, the results from the Skriđuklaustur monastic site demonstrate that cloistral institutions, wherever they operated, should by no means be observed as a passive element of monasticism. Rather, they should be approached as interactive participants in developments across regions and time.