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In this section:
In this section:
Burton, "The Monastic Economy".
Devroey and Webb, “Monastic Economics in the Carolingian Age”.
Raftis, "Western Monasticism and Economic Organization"
Source 1: "The Monastic Economy"
Source 1: "The Monastic Economy"
Janet Burton is a Professor of Medieval History at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. Her 1994 book "Monastic and Religious Orders in Britain, 1000–1300" contains a chapter (11) entitled "The Monastic Economy". Burton addresses two key economic factors in British monasteries in this chapter; firstly, the monastery's sources of income; and secondly, their management of resources.
Burton begins with the important observation that while individual monks, as laid down in the rules of life, were to have no private possessions. However, it was always expected that the monasteries would possess resources, and "poverty was personal, not corporate". Several factors influenced the nature of monastic economy. These included the particular religious order it belonged to (some orders had more strict poverty requirements than others, and some were intended to be mobile), the monastery's geographic location, and the scale of its landholdings. Larger monasteries kept better records, so they are disproportionately represented in the historical record. The wealthiest monasteries in England tended to be the oldest ones, as they had had more time to amass large estates.
Monasteries, as landowners, were economic agents. The most important resource a religious order had was its physical land, most often used to farm and provide the food for the monastery. Surplus food was sold and the proceeds used to purchase other goods. Arable land held by monasteries was often in the thousands of acres. Pastoral farming was also common, especially with sheep, which were the "main cash-crop of twelfth-century Britain". Monasteries sometimes went to great pains to clear forest and marshlands for agriculture, demonstrating its economic value. This was especially true following the growth of the medieval population between the 11th and 12th centuries, when the size and importance of monastic farmland grew. Depending on where religious houses were located, they may have had access to many other natural resources, such as fisheries, saltpans, quarries, timber, and peat. Mills also provided an important income stream for monasteries, especially in smaller villages with no other competing mills around. Another important source of revenue was often derived from town property. More powerful monasteries, located in towns, would rent or lease their property in droves to tenants. These properties also facilitated trade among merchants. In England and Wales, thirty towns were under the total control of a monastery, including Bury St. Edmunds, chronicled by my primary source from Jocelin of Brakelond. In these towns, income was also derived from fines, court fees, and market and mill tolls. Revenue was also derived from spiritualia, ecclesiastical assets, as opposed to the above forms of temporalia. Tithes and offerings made up most of this spiritualia.
The income from all these assets was managed in expenditure by monks appointed to positions by their abbot. Leasing land to tenants allowed monasteries to outsource their management and gave them a fixed income in the form of rent. However, in the 1100s, agricultural produce prices rose as rents remained fixed, causing many monasteries to reclaim their land, as occurred under Abbot Samson at Bury St. Edmunds. As a result of these changes, economic management became more centralized, with abbots establishing treasuries, headed by cellarers, and directly appointing other monks as managers of individual estates, allowing for more accountability to the abbot. Differences in management did exist between orders; for example, Cistercians rejected the outsourcing of labor which the Benedictines regularily relied upon.
Source 2: "Monastic Economics in the Carolingian Age"
Source 2: "Monastic Economics in the Carolingian Age"
Chapter 24 of the 2020 book The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West, written by Jean-Pierre Devroey and Michael Webb, is entitled "Monastic Economics in the Carolingian Age", and is an excellent overview of the values and practice of those institutions. Jean-Pierre Devroey is a Belgian historian, and a Professor Emeritus at the Université libre de Bruxelles. The chapter explores two questions central to the understanding of monastic economics: how monks under a vow of poverty "cope[d] with their economic necessities" and how monasteries interacted with their environment (microeconomics) and the economic structures of their time (macroeconomics).
The concept of oikonomia, "administration of the household", was inherited in Carolingian monasteries from Aristotle and "applied as much on a spiritual level...as on a physical one". The "idea of domestic peace" as a result of a responsible relationship between the powerful and the week, derived from St. Augustine, informed the monastic hierarchy, with the abbot as a paternalistic leader. Nevertheless, decisions concerning resources were, at least nominally, made by the whole community, in accordance with the ancient Christian ideal of communal property. As in the Rule of Benedict, manual labor was seen as the mark of a "true monk".
The chapter describes monasteries as "economic players" in five ways: as landowners and agriculturalists, as consumers, as traders, as wealth and property managers, and as "reservoirs of wealth". Monastic production and trade in the medieval market economy was always subjected to the ethical and moral principles of "monastic needs and service". A "just price for monastic merchandise" was usually set below market value. The chapter emphasizes the centrality of economic organization; it was "at the core of monastic property networks", even if those networks were as large as they were in big landholder monasteries.
The medieval monastic economy was at the intersection between self-sufficiency and exchange with the outside world. Though sometimes presented as an either-or, Devroey writes that "the choice between commerce and autarky...is a false dichotomy". If the monastery produced surplus goods, it was seen as its duty to sell them and use the proceeds to further their mission. "This balance placed monastic communities on the edge of, rather than outside, the world." In order to balance cloistered and external life, all external management was entrusted to the abbot and a small group of monks appointed by him. Monasteries with larger land holdings could find themselves at the center of a town or region's economic activity, and it was therefore unavoidable that they would participate in economic exchanges. Monastic trade with each other was also common, especially in well-connected areas such as the Frankish Rhineland.
Monastic connections to the outside world were most apparent in their relationships with rulers. In the Christian Carolingian Empire, the emperors and local rulers used monasteries to "legitimize" the Christian nature of their state. The Carolingians charged monasteries with the duty to "receive the poor of Christ" and providing food entitlements to the poor during famines and economic crises. Monasteries conducted these affairs as part of their mission of hospitality expressed in the Rule of Benedict. This "public service monasticism" rooted itself in "making wealth available for public use and assistance to the poor". As monasticism became an important institution within the empire, those responsible for external affairs became "closely integrated into the political milieu" as "elites of the Church".
The growth of monasteries in urban areas sustained villages for many centuries, but large rural monasteries did not bring about increased urbanization in those regions, probably because monks were expected to remain secluded from the laity. This lack of urbanization did not, however, preclude the macroeconomic impact of the monastery from extending beyond its walls. The presence of a monastery stimulated both demand, by the presence of monks in need of agricultural and artisanal products, and supply, especially since monasteries might often be the only suppler of a particular good or service in the area.
Source 3: "Western Monasticism and Economic Organization"
Source 3: "Western Monasticism and Economic Organization"
The paper "Western Monasticism and Economic Organization", by J.A. Raftis, written in 1961, is a foundational treatment in the analysis of medieval economics. "Western monasticism was closely tied in with the growth of European civilization," and so its study provides important insights into the ways that economics developed out of the post-classical period of history.
Raftis's first section concerns the embedded of the monastery within medieval Europe. Among the tripartite class division of the First, Second, and Third Estates, those who prayed, fought, and worked, respectively, monasteries occupied the former. The monasteries were the premier places of economic action in medieval society, and the "repositories of economic wisdom", and "with this wisdom came success". Monasteries became the most concentrated centers of wealth throughout much of western Europe.
Raftis also addresses the economic question of how monasteries managed resources while also remaining committed to monastic life. Monasteries could not remain fully self-sufficient or isolated from the social world, so some resource management was necessary. It additionally requires its own goods and services that it must purchase. The large administrative bodies that developed in monasteries centralized economic management and resource allocation. Raftis points out that the Cistercian order, which sought a return to a more asetic interpretation of the Rule of Benedict, appeared in Western Europe after the Benedictines had developed institutionalized economies and finances, which indicates some of them may have done a poor job maintaining their commitment to poverty. "Statements of monastic reformers have plenty to say of greedy and worldly monks". This led to more variety and diversity in how monasteries were related to the economy from the 12th century onwards.
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