Communities, Custom, and Canon Law

Abstract Following the Fourth Lateran Council, the Benedictine Order became increasingly centralized. Individual houses, however, maintained a strong sense of their own privileges and identity as independent communities. The tension between communal autonomy and the enforcement of canon law was exhibited and tested in the process of abbatial election. This article takes as a case study the diocese of Lincoln, England's largest medieval diocese, which offers the largest sample of Benedictine monastic superiors. Using episcopal registers alongside monastic cartularies and customaries, it examines the process and significance of the election of monastic superiors. The article also seeks to integrate the study of male and female monasteries and to study relationships between individual houses and both secular and ecclesiastical hierarchies. The research findings come from the author's database of all known monastic superiors of independent Benedictine houses in the diocese of Lincoln from 1183–1340.