Gilbert initially established a community for enclosed contemplative nuns. He accepted seven women whom he had taught in the village school and in 1131 founded an order of nuns based on the Cistercian Rule.[2] Gilbert set up buildings and a cloister for them against the north wall of the church, which stood on his land at Sempringham, and gave them a rule of life, enjoining upon them chastity, humility, obedience, and charity. Their daily necessaries were passed to them through a window by some girls chosen by Gilbert from among his people.[3]
As the serving maids requested that they too might have a dress and rule of life, on the advice of William, abbot of Rievaulx, he decided to add lay sisters to the community.[3] Eventually Gilbert added lay brothers to work the fields.[1] In 1139 the small order opened its first new foundation on the island of Haverholm, a gift from Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln. Each Gilbertine house now practically consisted of four communities, one of nuns, one of canons, one of lay sisters, and one of lay brothers.[1] Over the years, more and more new foundations were established.
In 1147 he left England for Continental Europe to seek assistance, and approached the Cistercian Order at its major house in Cîteaux to take on the running of his foundations. The Cistercians declined, apparently because they felt unable to administer houses for both men and women, but Pope Eugene III, himself a Cistercian, intervened to ask the abbot, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, to assist Gilbert in drawing up Institutes for a new Order, which combined Benedictine and Cistercian influences. Pope Eugene then appointed Gilbert as the first Master of the Order of Sempringham or Gilbertines. Gilbert returned to England in 1148, and completed the order, by appointing canons, who lived according to variant of the Augustinian rule, to serve his community as priests, and to help him in the work of administration.[3]
Habits
The Nuns wore a black tunic and a black scapular for work. They also wore a black lamb's wool head-dress with a coarse black cloth veil.[4]
The Sisters wore a dark tunic without the scapular. They also wore a sheepskin cloak and a long hood.[4]
The Canons Regular wore a black cassock with a white hooded cloak[5] (lined with lamb's wool)[6] with shoes of red leather.[4] When labouring, they would use the scapular. In choir, they each wore a white cowl.[4]
The Brothers wore a dark tunic with a dark cloak lined with rough skins. In church they wore a cloth cowl which descended to the heels.[4]
Layout
Each Gilbertine priory had one church, divided unequally by a wall. The nuns had the larger part, and the canons the smaller. The latter would join the nuns only to celebrate mass. From the church, the nunnery normally stood to the north and the canons' lodgings to the south.
Scandals
Towards the end of Gilbert's life, when he was around 90 years old, some of the lay brothers at Sempringham rose up against him,[1] complaining of too much work and too little food. The rebels, led by two skilled craftsmen, received money from both religious and secular supporters and took their case to Rome. Pope Alexander III ruled in Gilbert's favour, but the living conditions of the lay brothers were improved thereafter.[7]
The Gilbertine order was always popular in England and Wales. Its houses were the final homes of the last of the Welsh royal family, young daughters, after the rest had been defeated and killed in the 1280s. Principal among these was Gwenllian who was sent to Sempringham Priory and a monument commemorating her was placed near the Priory site in the 1990s. Many English kings gave the order generous charters, and yet it always had financial problems. By the end of the 15th century, the Order was greatly impoverished, and King Henry VI exempted all of its houses from paying taxes and from any other sort of payment. He could not force his successors to do the same.[1]
Dissolution
Malton Priory, West front
By the time of the Dissolution, there were twenty-six houses of Gilbertines, but only four of these were ranked as "greater houses", having annual incomes above £200. Following the Suppression of Religious Houses Act 1535, these houses gave in to King Henry VIII in 1538 without a fight, surrendering "of their own free will".[1] Each nun and canon then received a pension for the rest of their lives.
The Gilbertines were the only purely English order[1] (except for one short-lived house in Scotland), therefore the Dissolution marked their permanent end.
Legacy
The Gilbertine legacy is fairly small; only fifteen extant manuscripts are associated with the Order, originating from only five of the Gilbertine houses. Four additional works ascribed to Gilbertines, but not surviving in Gilbertine copies, include the Vita of Gilbert of Sempringham, the Gilbertine Rule, the so-called 'Sempringham Continuation' to Le Livere de Reis Engleterre, and the works of Robert Mannyng.
The remains of one Gilbertine monastery, Malton Priory, have been incorporated into the parish church at Malton in North Yorkshire. The original monastery was established around 1150, and, though it has suffered considerable abuse, the surviving fragment remains impressive. Although the Priory at Sempringham was destroyed, the adjacent and contemporary parish church of St Andrew remains and some evidence of mediaeval decoration is still to be found.
In 2001, British Channel 4 Television's archaeological series Time Team[9][10] excavated a Gilbertine monastery in Chicksands, Bedfordshire. The programme was shown in 2002 as part of series 9 of Time Team.
Gilbertine revivals
Oblates of St Gilbert
In 1983, following celebrations of the 900th anniversary of Gilbert's birth, a number of lay people in the East Midlands undertook to sustain the memory and work of Gilbert and the Gilbertine Order by establishing a new secular order. The Oblates of St Gilbert exist to promote the Gilbertine contemplative spirit and to foster interest in the study of Gilbert and his Order. They are supported by the Cistercian monastery of Mount St Bernard Abbey in Leicestershire.[11]
In about 1998, Carlos Aparicido Marchesani, a Catholic priest of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of São Paulo in Brazil, visited the Gilbertine Oblates as he had had a devotion to Saint Gilbert since his time as a seminarian in the United States. He obtained permission from his bishop to found a small religious community, the Fraternidade São Gilbert, ad experimentum, which was set up near São Paulo.[12] This experimental community was dissolved in 2012.[13]
The Companions of St Gilbert of Sempringham
A Roman Catholic Gilbertine community, The Canons Regular of St Gilbert of Sempringham (GSmp), began in 2017 in Canada within the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter.[14][bettersourceneeded] In August 2019 members discerned that a full restoration could not take place as was desired.[15][bettersourceneeded][failed verification] The Companions of St Gilbert of Sempringham, which existed alongside the canons regular, not unlike a third order in structure and purpose, will now be the main expression of Gilbertine spirituality resulting from this attempt at a restoration; it had begun as a de factoassociation of the faithful.[citation needed]
In popular fiction
The detective novel, The Beautiful Mystery (2012), by Louise Penny is set in a fictional Gilbertine abbey in rural Quebec.[citation needed]
A scapular is a Western Christian garment suspended from the shoulders. There are two types of scapulars, the monastic and devotional scapular; both forms may simply be referred to as "scapular". As an object of popular piety, a scapular serves to remind wearers of their commitment to live a Christian life.
Lay brother is a largely extinct term referring to religious brothers, particularly in the Catholic Church, who focused upon manual service and secular matters, and were distinguished from choir monks or friars in that they did not pray in choir, and from clerics, in that they were not in possession of holy orders.
Haverholme Priory was a monastery in Lincolnshire, England. Its remains are situated 4 miles (6 km) north-east of the town of Sleaford and less than 1 mile (1.6 km) south-west from the village of Anwick.
Gilbert of Sempringham the founder of the Gilbertine Order, was the only Medieval Englishman to found a conventual order, mainly because the Abbot of Cîteaux declined his request to assist him in organising a group of women who wanted to live as nuns, living with lay brothers and sisters, in 1148. He founded a double monastery of canons regular and nuns in spite of such a foundation being contrary to canonical practice.
Sempringham is a village in the civil parish of Pointon and Sempringham, in the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. It is situated 2 miles (3.2 km) south from the A52 road, 12 miles (19 km) east from Grantham and 8 miles (13 km) north from Bourne. The hamlet is on the western edge of the Lincolnshire Fens, the closest village being Billingborough, 0.5 miles (0.80 km) to the north on the B1177 road. Sempringham is noted as the home of Gilbert of Sempringham, the son of the lord of the manor. Gilbert is the only English Saint to have founded a monastic order, the Gilbertines. In 1921 the parish had a population of 112. On 1 April 1931 the parish was abolished to form "Pointon and Sempringham".
In Christianity, an oblate is a person who is specifically dedicated to God and to God's service.
Canons regular are priests who live in community under a rule and are generally organised into religious orders, differing from both secular canons and other forms of religious life, such as clerics regular, designated by a partly similar terminology.
A canoness is a member of a religious community of women living a simple life. Many communities observe the monastic Rule of St. Augustine. The name corresponds to the male equivalent, a canon, though some women may use the title canon and not canoness similar to the way actor is used rather than actress, e.g. Sarah Foot. The origin and Rule are common to both. As with the canons, there are two types: canonesses regular, who follow the Augustinian Rule, and secular canonesses, who follow no monastic Rule of Life.
Chicksands Priory is a former monastic house at Chicksands in Bedfordshire.
A religious habit is a distinctive set of religious clothing worn by members of a religious order. Traditionally some plain garb recognizable as a religious habit has also been worn by those leading the religious eremitic and anchoritic life, although in their case without conformity to a particular uniform style.
The Nun of Watton was a young nun at Watton Priory in Yorkshire who, according to an account recorded by St Aelred of Rievaulx around 1160 in De Quodam Miraculo Mirabili, long known as De Sanctimoniali de Wattun., was impregnated by a young friar and miraculously cleansed of sin.
There are a number of Benedictine Anglican religious orders, some of them using the name Order of St. Benedict (OSB). Just like their Roman Catholic counterparts, each abbey/priory/convent is independent of each other. The vows are not made to an order, but to a local incarnation of the order, hence each individual order is free to develop its own character and charism, yet each under a common rule of life after the precepts of St. Benedict. Most of the communities include a confraternity of oblates. The order consists of a number of independent communities.
Robert Holgate was Bishop of Llandaff from 1537 and then Archbishop of York. He recognised Henry VIII as head of the Church of England.
Malton Priory, Old Malton, North Yorkshire, England, is near to the town of Malton. It was founded as a monastery of the Gilbertine Order by Eustace fitz John, the lord of Malton Castle. Fitz John founded both Malton Priory and Watton Priory around 1150; some sources suggest that this was an act of penance for his support for the Scots in the Battle of the Standard.
Marmont Priory was a priory for Gilbertine Canons in Cambridgeshire, England. It was established by landowner Ralph de Hauvill as a small priory or chantry of three canons who prayed for the souls of de Hauvill and his wife, Maud. Fifteen years earlier, Maud had a vision of Gilbert of Sempringham ascending to Heaven on the day of his death.
Watton Priory was a priory of the Gilbertine Order at Watton in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. The double monastery was founded in 1150 by Eustace fitz John.
Alvingham Priory was a Gilbertine priory in St. Mary, Alvingham, Lincolnshire, England. The Priory, established between 1148 and 1154, was a "double house", where religious of both sexes lived in two separate monasteries. They did not commonly communicate with one another, and there was an internal wall dividing their priory church. The superior of every Gilbertine house was the prioress, the prior being really an official of her house.
Sempringham Priory was a priory in Lincolnshire, England, located in the medieval hamlet of Sempringham, to the northwest of Pointon. Today, all that remains of the priory is a marking on the ground where the walls stood and a square, which are identifiable only in aerial photos of the vicinity. However, the parish church of St Andrew's, built around 1100 AD, is witness to the priory standing alone in a field away from the main road.
References
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain:Butler, Richard Urban (1909). "Order of Gilbertines". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol.6. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved 12 October 2014.
1 2 3 4 Page, William, 'Houses of the Gilbertine order: The priory of Sempringham', A History of the County of Lincoln: Volume 2 (1906), pp. 179–187, (Public domain text), accessed via British History online
1 2 3 4 5 S. Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertines, Graham, Rose, 1901, p. 71
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