Nortish religious houses

Colleges in the Church of Nortend
Camevole Abbey in Bissex is a Royal College.
Part of a series on the Church of Nortend
Liturgy	Nortish Rite
Theology	Akeepian Frympellite
Structure Places Sulthey Cathedral Abbey Lendert Cathedral Priory Chepingstow Cathedral Minster Polton Cathedral Minster Allord Abbey University of Aldesey Nortish religious houses Churchmen Archbishop of Sulthey Archbishop of Limmes Archbishop of Rhise
Art and Music	Church music Illuminated manuscripts Architecture

Colleges in the Church of Nortend are ecclesiastical corporate foundations where clerks either in holy orders or lay, maintain a common life for the purpose inter alia of divine service. Great Nortend has a long and unbroken history of ecclesiastical common life which dates back to Sulthey Abbey founded in the 8th century by St. Laurence in 751.

Historically, common life was classified into religious or secular life, the former encompassing the houses of the various religious orders—monasteries, friaries and regular canonries—and the latter being independent colleges. During the Reformation, religious life in particular was attacked by some reformers as being corrupt and their vows vain and elevated into a supererogatory good or good in se. Over a period of several decades, the secularisation of religious houses slowly occurred piecemeal until the reformed body of canon law issued in 1597 by the Great Convocation significantly reformed common life, establishing all houses as colleges of secular clerks.

There are currently as of 2020, 623 colleges in Great Nortend under the auspices of the Church of Nortend, with a total of approximately 10,000 clerks living in community, excluding in these numbers the numerous other members „living out”. Many colleges have hospitals, almshouses or schools attached to them, including the collegiate houses of the University of Lendert.

To-day

Cireford School is run by the canons of Cireford College.

Common, corporate life in the Church of Nortend continues to be characterised by modesty, piety, chastity, canonical obedience and above all, divine service in common, as well as, to a varying extent, common residence and common dining. Under the Canons-General, colleges are „secular houses” living under Statutes where there is maintained a corporate life with a purpose of maintaining daily Divine Service for the corporation.

Cathedral churches are notable instances of a college formed by the chapter. Other collegiate churches include the great abbeys, priories and minsters as well as the university colleges and chauntry colleges. The head of a college may be accorded the prelatial titles of „abbot”, „prior” or „dean” (or the female equivalent, „abbess”, „prioress” and „deaness”), elevating the college to an abbey, priory or minster respectively. Ordinary colleges are typically headed by a „master”, „warden”, „archpriest” or „rector” (in the case of appropriated parochial churches).

The daily life of a college varies according to its particular statutes. Most require that the resident clerks, or their vicars, sing daily Mattins and Vespers, as well as a daily service of Holy Communion. Colleges generally provide rooms for their members and require that they dine together regularly, although accommodation differs between individual houses for prebendaries to dormitories shared by multiple clerks. While nearly all colleges employ servants for the upkeep and sustenance of the college, colleges also usually require their members to attend to non-religious duties for the support of the community, such as gardening and the like, as well as the production of manuscripts, paintings, candles and other ornaments for religious purposes, depending on the particular traditions of the college.

Colleges use the Latin Services but where a parish church has been appropriated, English services must be said for the parish. Larger colleges often have various chapels with dedicated daily or weekly services, e.g. in honour of the Virgin Mary or in memory of the dead. Choral music forms an important part of worship in most colleges, and the corpus of Nortish collegiate music is significant, being composed in Latin for a reformed liturgy. As part of their works of Christian charity, colleges also play an important pastoral role for the local population, often including almshouses or hospitals associated with its foundation. Colleges often have schools for the education of the youth. A large number of the common schools of Great Nortend are part of collegiate foundations, in addition to the university colleges of the University of Lendert.

Endowments

The abbey mill at Bassham Abbey.

Colleges are endowed with land, called the „stight”, to produce a sufficient income for the sustenance of the house through tithes and rents or the sale of produce. An average abbey holds a stight of 15,000 acres of land, roughly equivalent to around 8 to 9 medium-sized manors. Stights usually include mills, cornhouses and tithe barns. The colleges in total own roughly 15% of the land of Great Nortend. Colleges rely on a stight in addition to alms and government funding for their public services. It also relatively common for testators to bequeath money to houses for the endowment of a chauntry or for regular services for a certain number of years, although new perpetual chauntries or endowment with land in frankalmoign is forbidden by law without a licence.

Reformation

The gatehouse at Rundelset Priory which was a daughter house of Staithway Abbey. It was dissolved in 1668. The house was refounded at the same site in 1822 by Edmund VII, the first new foundation in centuries.

At the time of the promulgation of the Statute of Supremacy in 1569 which formally severed the Church of Nortend from the papal authority and placed Alexander I as head of the Church, the religious houses were in a general period of decline and corruption in life, morals and faith.

Under the 1572 Statute for the Obedience of Clerks, as with other clerks, members of colleges, priories and abbeys were required to renounce allegiance to the Pope by taking the Oath of Obedience. Those foundations whose members refused to take the oath forfeited their lands to the Crown, who appointed an official to administer them, although the members were usually allowed to stay. Despite the threat of loss of income, many houses refused to take the oath and recognise Alexander as head of the Church. This led to the confiscation of nearly 100 houses before 1670.

After the suppression and execution of the Six Heretics in 1575, numerous houses very quickly „voluntarily” chose to recognise William and take the Oath of Obedience. The same year, the first step was taken in reform with the dissolution of the order of Franciscans, and the secularisation of their friaries. Even so, the corruption of the remaining religious houses continued to cause controversy, especially between peasants and their monastic landlords. In 1582, the Dominicans were ordered to reform their preaching, secured by a requirement that friars take degrees at the reformed Faculty of Divinity at the University of Lendert, while choir monks were similarly ordered to be examined in their learning.

In 1585, the Great Annulment was issued by the Archbishop of Lendert, which annulled all religious vows, although this did not generally result in significant change in daily life in the religious houses. That same year, the Visitation of the houses was completed and the King beaun dissolutions of houses in significant debt. The entire order of Carmelites were dissolved the next year with their friaries completely dispersed on account of the theological objection taken to their „mystical” spirituality. Several religious houses saw that continuation as monastic or mendicant houses would soon not be possible under the reforms of Cardinal Frympell and Alexander I. Several houses had already secularised after the forced secularisations of the Greyfriars in 1575, seeing it as a way of maintaining their communities with the least disruption.

In 1597, the Great Convocation issued the new, reformed Canons-General which effectively put an end to the piecemeal reforms of houses by immediately secularising all existing religious houses, monastic or mendicant, and founding them as colleges of secular canons, ordering that new, reformed statutes be issued for each foundation by the Chancery and that they adopt the reformed books of Divine Service.

See also

• Lendert Cathedral Priory, a cathedral college in Lendert-with-Cadell
• Allord School, a school attached to Allord Abbey.