WHY ‘Abbey900’ asks one of your correspondents.

Because the Abbey was more than just a building.

Though little remains of the structures, there are fifty or more manuscripts which were once in the Abbey Library still extant, including the great Cartulary. 

The manuscripts were saved by one of Henry VIII’s commissioners who oversaw the Dissolution of the Abbey.

These documents reveal the importance of the Abbey not only locally but nationally and in a European context. 

Several of the Abbots were Papal Judges, in its later years the Abbot was summoned to Parliament and one Abbot negotiated a settlement between the King and Barons in revolt against him. 

Through the management of their estates in the Cotswolds the Abbots and Canons, (the Abbey was Augustinian with Canons rather than Monks), took the name of the town far into Europe as the wool produced under their stewardship gained prominence as the best that could be obtained. 

The Abbey also brought to the town many influential people including Kings and the Black Prince. 

But it is not only in the fields of Church and State politics and in commerce that the Abbey is important.

It was also the home of several notable scholars. 

Canon Jocelyn is noted as one of the first to understand the significance of the new mathematics arriving from the Middle East in the 10th and 11th centuries. 

Robert of Cricklade, who was a Canon here before moving to Oxford, is known as the author of important works. 

Then there is Abbot Alexander Nequam, foster-brother of Richard the Lionheart and a noted international scholar who, in the later 12th century, championed the newly re-discovered works of Aristotle and shared in the beginnings of a scientific attitude to learning, the 12th Century Renaissance. 

Alexander’s memorial in Worcester Cathedral reads: “Wisdom suffers an eclipse. A sun is buried, which, while it lived, every branch of learning flourished. Nequam is dissolved into ashes. Had he one heir on this earth, his death would be less cause for tears.”

Our medieval inheritance is as worthy of celebration as is our place in Roman Britain.

Alan Welsford
Cirencester