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Religious houses that are presided over by a prior or prioress
A
priory
is a
monastery
of men or women under religious vows that is headed by a
prior
or prioress. Priories may be houses of
mendicant
friars
or
nuns
(such as the
Dominicans
,
Augustinians
,
Franciscans
, and
Carmelites
), or monasteries of
monks
or nuns (as with the
Benedictines
). Houses of
canons regular and canonesses regular
also use this term, the alternative being "canonry".
In
pre-Reformation England
, if an
abbey
church was raised to cathedral status, the abbey became a
cathedral
priory. The
bishop
, in effect, took the place of the abbot, and the monastery itself was headed by a prior.
History
[
edit
]
Priories first came to existence as subsidiaries to the
Abbey of Cluny
. Many new houses were formed that were all subservient to the abbey of Cluny and called Priories. As such, the priory came to represent the
Benedictine
ideals espoused by the
Cluniac reforms
as smaller, lesser houses of Benedictines of Cluny. There were likewise many conventual priories in Germany and Italy during the
Middle Ages
, and in England all monasteries attached to cathedral churches were known as cathedral priories.
[1]
The Benedictines and their offshoots (
Cistercians
and
Trappists
among them), the
Premonstratensians
, and the
military orders
distinguish between
conventual
and simple or
obedientiary
priories.
- Conventual priories
are those autonomous houses that have no
abbots
, either because the canonically required number of twelve monks has not yet been reached, or for some other reason.
- Simple
or
obedientiary priories
are dependencies of abbeys. Their superior, who is subject to the abbot in everything, is called a simple or obedientiary prior. These monasteries are satellites of the mother abbey. The
Cluniac order
is notable for being organised entirely on this obedientiary principle, with a single abbot at the Abbey of Cluny, and all other houses dependent priories.
Priory is also used to refer to the geographic headquarters of several
commanderies
of
knights
.
Sources and references
[
edit
]
- ^
Ott, Michael.
"Priory"
.
The Catholic Encyclopedi
a. Vol. 12. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. 4 May 2014.
External links
[
edit
]
- Media related to
Priories
at Wikimedia Commons