The Mendicant Houses of Medieval London 1221-1539 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 533 sound, the conclusion is clear, and Dr. Wood has good reason to raise the question about the consequences for “the origins of scholasticism.” Scholarship is not etched in stone, but nurtured in debate. In the exchange, gratitude accrues to those who, by adducing new material and proposing sound theses, urge the debate into a new stage. Of such gratitude Dr. Wood merits a goodly portion for her edition and presentation of Richard Rufus’s commentary on Aristotle’s Physics. The Franciscan Institute DAVID FLOOD, OFM St. Bonaventure New York Jens Röhrkasten. The Mendicant Houses of Medieval London 12211539 . (Vita Regularis Ordnungen und Deutungen religiösen Lebens im Mittelalter, 21) Münster, 2004. Pages: xii + 670. The friars were part of the fabric of life in medieval London, where they were known through their charitable activities as well as their teaching, preaching and hearing confessions. Each of the friaries developed its own network of devotees and benefactors, who turned to them for spiritual assistance and advice. Friars filled many of the ecclesiastical offices from the ministry to the underprivileged to an apostolate carried out in the royal household, where mendicant confessors and preachers were in vogue. The arrival of the first friars in the capital city in 1221 and 1224, the friaries constructed for them and their urban influence form the basis of a major study by Dr Jens Röhrkasten, lecturer in the Department of Medieval History at the University of Birmingham. The seeds of this most impressive monograph have been germinating for the last decade in a series of articles and contributions to conference acta and monographs on the friars. This volume, which has been eagerly awaited, demonstrates the author’s unflagging search for materials to illuminate the life and work of the friars. A volume based on the ordination and probate registers would have produced an enriching account of the friars’ lives and their influence. Not content to rely on these valuable sources alone, the author has investigated a number of archives containing information on the friars and their 534 BOOK REVIEWS benefactors. The result is a volume which lifts the veil on the friars’ lives and ministry and in the process demonstrates the highest standards of academic thoroughness and excellence. This study dwells on the Blackfriars, the Greyfriars, the Whitefriars , the Austin Friars, the Friars of the Cross and the Poor Clares. Due attention is given to the smaller orders of friars, which were suppressed by the second council of Lyons in 1274. This comparative study of six religious houses offers a large canvas for the detection of patterns and common experiences shared by these communities. It opens with an examination of the historiography of the mendicants in the capital city. One advantage of a comparative study appears in the early sixteenth century. Despite some numerical buoyancy in the later fifteenth century, all the mendicant orders felt the draught of new ideas when vocations plummeted. Novitiates stood virtually empty and ordinations were reduced to a trickle in the 1530s. Falling numbers went hand-in-hand with increasing financial hardship as the friars struggled to maintain their spacious friaries and churches at the heart of the city. The Observants, who had settled at Greenwich in 1492, enjoyed no exemption from this contraction. Although they enjoyed royal favour and experienced a more vigorous growth than the Conventuals in the first quarter of the century, the number of ordinands dried up. Thomas Sinal and Ralph Creswell, ordained subdeacons on 11 June 1530, were the last friars of Greenwich to appear in the register of ordinations recorded by the bishop of London. Three friars of Greenwich and Richmond – John Yonge, William Simpson and Ralph Creswell – were ordained by John Fisher in his Episcopal palace at Rochester on 7 May 1532. The Greyfriars wasted no time in establishing themselves in London, their second foundation in September 1224. The leader of the mission, Agnellus of Pisa, the first minister provincial, made his home there, as did many of his successors. Initially the friars were given hospitality by the Dominicans before they obtained lodgings in Cornhill, probably in the parish of St Peter, which was located in the centre of...