Veneration and renovation at a small Norfolk priory: St. Leonard's, Norwich in the later middle ages*

Abstract

Much remains obscure about the many small monasteries of late medieval England, and it is generally thought that they made little contribution to the religious life of the country. The large collection of accounts surviving from St. Leonard's priory, Norwich (a daughter house of the cathedral priory), however, presents an interesting picture of a priory sustained almost entirely by offerings to its image of St. Leonard. This cult continued to attract broad support throughout the later middle ages, with its income reaching a peak at over forty pounds per year in the mid fifteenth century. Almost the entirety of this windfall was set aside for a systematic renovation of the monastery, which can be chronicled in some detail. Although the cult was on the wane by 1500, the importance of the priory for the popular religion of the region emerges clearly.Relatively little is known about the many small monasteries of late medieval England, and what evidence is readily available often does not present a happy picture. Records of their visitation regularly show moral and financial shortcomings, and although the greater monasteries generally do not appear to much better advantage in these reports, very few administrative documents -which tend to display a more positive facet of monastic life -survive from small houses in mitigation. Equally, many of the references to lesser houses found in episcopal or government documents highlight problems, such as individual misdemeanours or the need for financial support. As a result, a clear impression of the impracticability of the small religious house has lodged itself securely into the historiography of the late medieval * The author is indebted to the Arts and Humanities Research Board and to the British Academy for the funding which has made this article possible, and to Neil Rushton who kindly made available his microfilm of the St. Leonard's accounts for the checking of references.

Male Saints and Devotional Masculinity in Late Medieval England

“…This relates to the efforts which several late medieval English monasteries put into promoting the shrines and cults of monastic saints. 100 James G. Clark identifies this as part of a wider propaganda campaign to reassert the importance of monasticism in society, particularly from the Benedictines, in the face of encroachment by the mendicant orders and criticisms of their lifestyle penned by secular clergy and laity (some clearly influenced by Lollard ideas). 'We are the princes of the priesthood and the masters of the people' as one early fifteenth-century sermon, delivered to a Benedictine audience, put it.…”

Review of periodical literature published in 2003

“…Suggesting that perhaps one‐fifth of local timber production could have been used for charcoal production, in this case linked to iron processing, they stress the importance of non‐arable resources to the local economy. Heale looks at the income and expenditure of St Leonard’s, Norwich, a daughter house of the cathedral priory. Lacking in landed endowment, its income came almost entirely from oblations to the images in its chapels, that of St Leonard being by far the most important.…”