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Violence in the Medieval Cloister
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 April 2011
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On 25 April 1244 Pope Innocent iv granted Henry III's petition for absolution from any sentence of excommunication he might incur for violence against clerks. At first sight it might seem unlikely that the king of England would get involved in scuffles with clerks. He was in his thirty-seventh year and has been described by Sir Maurice Powiek? as devout, if not spiritually minded. He was of a fiery temperament, however, and may have been aware of the opinion of some canonists as to the culpability of those who instructed or ordered others to violence.
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References
1 PRO SC7/20/4 and 20/16 (duplicate). For the assessment of the king's character, see Powieke, F. M., King Henry III and the Lord Edward i, Oxford 1947, 70–3, 342.Google Scholar
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20 See Statuta, 1232 no. 54, and 1230 no. 12.
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33 Statuta, 1195 no. 66.
34 Statuta, 1202 no. 10. This is either the abbot of Croxden (Staffs) or the abbot of Vallis S. Marie in the diocese of Paris.
35 Statuta, 1206 no. 23.
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39 PRO SC7/15/36, and BL Harl. Ch. 43 A 38 and 83 A 23. Without evidence of the kind provided by the Statuta of the Cistercians, one can discover no more details.
40 Abbot Stephen of Lexington's register of his visitation progress is also unique. It gives a first-hand account of the violence threatened in Ireland in the late 1220s when, as abbot of Stanley (Cist., Wilts) and visitor, he and his party came to Mellifont ‘anticipating and prepared for martyrdom’; see Watt, J. A., The Church and the Two Nations in Medieval Ireland, Cambridge 1970, 91–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
41 Durham took the precaution of getting papal letters allowing the prior to absolve from excommunication those monks of the house who had laid violent hands on one another, etc., in 1259, 1262, 1274 and 1281, Durham, Dean and Chapter Muniments, 4.1 Pap. 13; 1.2 Pap. 2; 2.1 Pap. 45; and 4.2 Pap. 8.
42 See Chronicle of the Reigns of Stephen… by Gervase, the monk of Canterbury i, ed. Stubbs, W. (Rolls Series lxxiii, 1879), 382Google Scholar; and Chronkon Abbatiae de Evesham, ed. Macray, W. D. (Rolls Series xxix, 1863), 102–5 and 126–7.Google Scholar
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44 Chron. Maj. v. 33.
45 Examples from Harper-Bill, , ‘Monastic apostasy’, 11 and 15.Google Scholar
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50 Decretales, XV. 39 c. 32 (P 1326).
81 See P. Herde, Audientia Litterarum Contradictarum, 2 vols, Bibliothek des Deutschen Historischen Instituts in Rom xxxi, xxxii for formulary examples connected with the ‘super manuum iniectione’ canons, esp. i. 392 nn. 115, 116, and ii. 199–224.
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