MEDIEVAL FRIARS
On a mission
Rather than hiding away in cloisters, medieval friars sought to spread the gospel far and wide. Professor Nicholas Orme explores the origins of these influential religious figures
In the first two decades of the 13th century, the monastic life was turned on its head by two reformers: Saint Dominic (died 1221 in France, and Saint Francis (died 1226 in Italy. Both men saw a scope for clergy who would live together like monks but, rather than shutting themselves from the world, would go into it to spread the gospel by preaching and hearing confessions. Moreover, these clergy – called friars – would not depend on landed endowments for their support, but on donations. ey were, in effect, the forerunners of modern charities.
copy of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
There were eventually four main orders of friars: Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians and Carmelites. They first came to England in the 1220s, and established friaries in towns. ese seemed to offer the best field for missions, and their wealth provided the donations that the friars depended on. Most English towns of any size came to have a friary, and the biggest had one of each order. For the rest of the Middle Ages, friars were active in towns and became closely enmeshed with local people, especially the wealthy. They also made journeys outside the towns to work in the countryside.
There were other unusual features of life as a friar. Friars did not have a settled home like monks. Their leaders could send them wherever they were needed, even overseas. Then, for friars to be effective preachers and confessors, they had to be well-educated. From the start they established bases in the new universities: Oxford from 1221 and Cambridge from about 1226.
Schools of thought
Each order developed an elaborate system of training its members. New recruits were taught Latin in their initial friary, after which they studied philosophy and theology either there or at a regional centre. e best students then went to university, where they gained degrees in theology. The Oxbridge friaries were, in effect, the earliest colleges, in the sense of large communities of students following a curriculum.
considered one of Christianity’s greatest theologians
This system enabled the friars to make a huge contribution to learning. They became skilled at putting knowledge into a logical and accessible form. The great theological summary, Summa Theologica, by Saint Thomas Aquinas (died 1274 was written by a friar. Others compiled dictionaries, encyclopedias and treatises on politics and education. In England, the Franciscan Bartholomew Glanvill (mid-13th century) put together a general encyclopedia in Latin. It was translated into English in 1398 and was still being published in Elizabethan England. A Dominican recluse of King’s Lynn named Geoffrey produced the first English-and-Latin dictionary in 1440, which was also the first dictionary of English words in alphabetical order.
The success of the friars had effects both positive and negative. Monks, who were at first held aloof from university education, were stimulated to follow them in this respect by the end of the 13th century. They, too, came to found colleges. Some friars rose to high office in the Church, including Robert Kilwardby, archbishop of Canterbury 1273 78 , and his successor John Pecham 1279 92 . Others gained influence as confessors to kings and queens.
At the same time, the friars encountered some hostility, with many parish clergy viewing them as unwelcome rivals. Disputes arose when people wished to be buried in friaries rather than in their parish churches. ere were also satirical remarks about friars begging for food and money, and their alleged preference for the rich than the poor (something that surfaces in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales). Nevertheless, the friars continued to recruit and survive until they were abolished at the English Reformation in 1538.
Nicholas Orme is emeritus professor of history at the University of Exeter. His latest book is Going to Church in Medieval England (Yale University Press, 2021)