Statutes in English Monastic Cartularies

Abstract

Medieval English monastic houses were used to compile collections of various texts important for them for some reason. There are a number of such cartularies and registers, mostly dated to the 13—15th centuries. Their contents were usually concerned with proving of ownership rights of a religious house (writs, property deeds, rentals, etc.). However, there are copies of some legislative monuments. The content analysis of such compilations allows us to determine which legislative texts were of more importance to the monastic authorities and in which context there was need to right them down. The research is based on the materials of Benedictine Canterbury Cathedral priory, as compared with compilations of some English religious houses. Legislative documents are characteristic for the cartularies of later 13th — early 14th centuries. They are usually set in a separate unit, and their repetition could indicate the authority of these texts. The most frequently reproduced legal text is that of the Magna Carta, which is often accompanied by statutes of Edward I. Thus, the preference is given to the acts contemporary to the compilation. In the Canterbury priory’s collection, these cartularies are connected with Prior Henry Eastry. The comparison with other monastic collections demonstrates that the attention to the legislation was perhaps more pronounced in Canterbury priory than in other religious houses. As a whole, monastic interest in legislative documents was quite sporadic, and it is problematic to deduce their selection logic.