A monk in a habit of white, undyed wool. Candlelight flickers round the church, wax the colour of warm honey straight from the hive burns odourless and pure. In the vineyard a lay brother holds a grape between two fingers and contemplates the mystery in its mottled translucence.
The wool business
Dunstable Priory was founded in 1132 by Augustinian Canons under the patronage of Henry II. Some of the priory’s flocks were grazed on Dunstable Downs and the surrounding countryside but others were further afield, the priory held farms, churches and granges as far away as the Peak District.
The income from the fleeces was used to support the priory’s work with pilgrims and the poor. It wasn’t just the Priory that benefited from the trade, the town thrived too, becoming a regional hub for merchants. Sheep connected monastic communities to their town, to other parts of the country via trade networks, dealers, drove roads, and built links with other religious houses.
Other connections were further flung, Warden Abbey also had a thriving wool business, selling fleeces to merchants from Italy, France and Flanders. The success of the enterprise led them to start extending the abbey church, however they overreached themselves and the combination of famine and challenges to the wool trade in the early fourteenth century led them into financial difficulty.
Hive of industry
At Warden Abbey the self-sufficient holdings included two vineyards, pasture, gardens, hay meadows, fish ponds, rabbit warrens, orchards, beehives, mills, dovecotes, woods, workshops and farms. The 273 acre Abbot’s Grange filled a shallow valley on the Greensand Ridge, while the full holdings gave them assets in eight counties and six urban centres. In this busy context, bees might seem an insignificant creature to focus on but they provide a fascinating insight into the life of a medieval monastery.
The beehives were straw skeps, essentially an upside down conical basket. This simple hive housed an insect that came to be a symbol of diligence, work, good order and co-operation, all features of the monastic life. Honey had a wide variety of uses in food and drink – for example in bread making or fermented to make mead, and medicine where its antiseptic properties helped wounds heal. It could be used in veterinary medicine as well as human, rubbed into horses legs when they were sick. Selling the excess was another way of contributing to the financial stability of the abbey.
Bees also meant beeswax, the candles made from beeswax were prized for their pure, odourless light. The alternative was tallow, made with fat from cows or sheep, which was smoky and smelled unpleasant. In this period, beeswax was the preserve of churches and of the rich and powerful. If bees were symbolic of industriousness and cooperation, then the light the candles provided for worship and prayer in the abbey church was even more emblematic, being a reminder of God’s presence and light.
The heart of the faith
Cistercian monasteries like Warden Abbey kept the canonical hours, fixed times of daily prayer, beginning with Lauds at daybreak, then Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, Compline and finally Vigils during the night. The monks would have heard Mass daily and received Communion weekly. In parish churches across the county, the laity would have only received Communion once a year, at Easter.
Lay brothers attended fewer services and did more manual work, their rhythms perhaps more in tune with the agricultural year than its liturgical counterpart. At Warden Abbey one of the places they would have spent time were the two vineyards. The resulting wine would have been used in a variety of ways in the monastery. The best quality wine was kept for services, high ranking clergy and special guests. However, hospitality was an important Cistercian principle and monasteries welcomed guests from every level of society, wine mixed with water was widely drunk as the alcohol helped to kill bacteria found in water. The monks also distributed food, clothing and money and tended the sick. Wine was used across many of these other functions including for flavouring food, as a preservative, disinfectant, insect repellent and tonic.
It is the simple stuff of everyday life that so often helps us to reach back into the past. Bales of newly shorn wool, grain for bread, beeswax for the candles that would flicker in the church, grapes for Communion wine.
If you enjoyed this post then you might also like my essay Following in monastic footsteps from Yorkshire to Bedfordshire.
Shelly Dennison 