Vatican Regesta 706: 1485

Calendar of Papal Registers Relating To Great Britain and Ireland: Volume 14, 1484-1492. Originally published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London, 1960.

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'Vatican Regesta 706: 1485', in Calendar of Papal Registers Relating To Great Britain and Ireland: Volume 14, 1484-1492, ed. J A Twemlow( London, 1960), British History Online https://prod.british-history.ac.uk/cal-papal-registers/brit-ie/vol14/pp101-107 [accessed 6 November 2024].

'Vatican Regesta 706: 1485', in Calendar of Papal Registers Relating To Great Britain and Ireland: Volume 14, 1484-1492. Edited by J A Twemlow( London, 1960), British History Online, accessed November 6, 2024, https://prod.british-history.ac.uk/cal-papal-registers/brit-ie/vol14/pp101-107.

"Vatican Regesta 706: 1485". Calendar of Papal Registers Relating To Great Britain and Ireland: Volume 14, 1484-1492. Ed. J A Twemlow(London, 1960), , British History Online. Web. 6 November 2024. https://prod.british-history.ac.uk/cal-papal-registers/brit-ie/vol14/pp101-107.

In this section

Vatican Regesta, Vol. DCCVI. (fn. 1)

Bullarum Liber IX.

1 Innocent VIII.

16 Kal. July.
(16 June.)
St. Peter's, Rome.
(f. 115r.)		 Union and appropriation, etc., as below. The recent petition of the dean and chapter of the free chapel called [the chapel] royal of the college of St. George, founded in honour of the glorious Virgin Mary and SS. George the Martyr and Edward the Confessor in the town of Vindesore in the diocese of Salisbury, immediately subject to the apostolic see, contained:—
that formerly divers kings of England caused a certain place in the city of London, wherein was a synagogue of the Jews, to be dedicated to God, and erected and consecrated into a chapel of St. Anthony, which chapel, with the buildings adjoining to the same and all its rights and appurtenances, was granted in frank and perpetual almoin to the then master and brethren of the poor [hospital] of St. Anthony in the place or town of Saint-Antoine, in the diocese of Vienne, and was appointed for hospitality to the poor, and was thenceforth held to be a member and hospital or poor house of the said hospital of St. Anthony; (fn. 2)
that the said hospital of St. Anthony, London, with all its members and their rights, etc., was afterwards by papal authority united, etc., in perpetuity to the monastery, sometime priory, of the said St. Anthony, of the order of St. Augustine, then newly erected by the same authority into an abbey; and that it was ordained that the abbot of the said monastery should in future govern it and the said hospital of St. Anthony, that he should no longer be called the master or lord of the hospital, but only abbot of the monastery, that all the brethren of the said hospital and of its members should obey him and be called canons or brethren of the said monastery, that the rule of St. Augustine should be observed in the same monastery and hospital of St. Anthony, and in its members, that the said abbot and canons or brethren should be bound for ever to live in accordance therewith, and always and everywhere to wear the habit with the sign called a potent [alias potence] in honour of the same St. Anthony, after the wonted manner of the said hospital; that the same monastery, with the said hospital of St. Anthony and all its members and goods wheresoever situate, and likewise the abbot [and] canons and brethren for the time being, were absolutely exempted from all jurisdiction, etc., of archbishops, bishops, and any other ordinaries; that all and singular, of whatsoever condition and estate, except only canons or brethren of the said monastery and its members who had faculty from the abbot, were strictly forbidden in any wise to presume, under pretext of any oratory or altar dedicated to the said Saint, to ask or receive alms, votive offerings or legacies in his name, so that collectors who received such alms, etc., against the will of the abbot and convent should incur eo ipso sentence of excommunication, unless after being warned they made restitution within a certain term appointed by one of the canons or brethren; that all and singular archbishops, etc., and other ecclesiastical prelates were ordered, in virtue of holy obedience, not to grant their letters regarding the collecting of such alms, etc. (except to those whom the said abbot and convent should name or send for the purpose), cause all others to be arrested and kept under arrest until they made proper satisfaction to the said abbot and convent, and compel the said [sic] proctors and ministers to give up the alms collected by them to the said abbot and convent, or their brethren and ministers;
that the said hospital of London has, by the mere gift of the king of England for the time being, been ruled and governed, sometimes by certain persons chosen by the brethren thereof (calling themselves at one time preceptors, and at another time masters or wardens), and very often by secular priests who had not made their profession of the rule; that meanwhile pope Nicholas V utterly exempted and freed the said hospital of London and its master or warden, priests, secular clerks, brethren, and its other persons, both clerks and laymen, and all its goods, etc., and its rights, etc., from all jurisdiction, visitation, etc., both spiritual and temporal, of any archbishops, bishops, and judges ordinary, and especially of the abbot and convent of the said monastery, took it under the immediate special protection of himself and St. Peter and the apostolic see, and by his special privilege granted to the king of England for the time being the right of patronage or presenting or nominating to certain abbots, its conservators, or to one of them, a fit person as master or warden, to be instituted by the same conservators, or one of them, within a certain term then expressed;
and that the said hospital of London was subsequently granted by the late Edward IV, king of England, to the said dean and chapter of the free chapel royal [of Windsor], (fn. 3) wherefore its status has been weakened and changed, its spirituals and temporals have suffered grave injury, and the wonted hospitality to the poor has not been duly observed, with the result that the devotion of the people has been greatly diminished, that for a long time past few there are in the said city, or almost none, who have made, or have been found desirous of making, their profession of the said Order, and that, during the wars which have been raging between the kings and realms of England and France, the canons of the said monastery [of St.-Antoine], which is situate in the parts subject to the king of France, could not betake themselves without danger to the said hospital of London, or be received therein, seeing that they were able to report and divulge to the enemy many things to the great prejudice and hurt of the king and realm of England;
that if the said hospital of London, which still depends on the said hospital or monastery of St. Anthony, the aforesaid exemption notwithstanding, and is a member thereof, were dismembered, and if it and the parish churches of St. Benet Fynke, London (the fruits, etc., of which have been wont to be converted to the maintenance, etc., of the poor and other useful purposes of the said hospital), and All Saints, Hereford (to which the chapel of St. Martin is canonically annexed in perpetuity), (fn. 4) which are canonically united and appropriated in perpetuity to the said hospital or monastery of St. Anthony, (fn. 5) were dismembered, divided, and separated, and if any dependence on the same hospital and monastery of St. Anthony were also suppressed and extinguished, and the union, etc., of the same churches were dissolved, and they were restored, etc., to the state in which they were before such unions, etc., and if, after such dismemberment, dissolution, restoration, etc., the hospital of London and the aforesaid parish churches (the fruits, etc., of which are not very abundant), and the said chapel, and other rights, etc., were united, etc., in perpetuity to the capitular or collegial mensa of the said collegiate or free chapel of Win[d]sore (in which the kings of England and other knights, called the knights of the Order of the Garter, have been wont to make and celebrate chapters, congregations, etc., concerning the estate, etc., of the said Order), it would be to the manifest benefit of the said hospital of London in the said spirituals and temporals, the pious keeping of hospitality therein, and the increase of divine worship and the devotion of the faithful, and that the said danger would be avoided, and the devout desire of the said dean and chapter would be greatly satisfied. Whereof the pope has been petitioned on behalf of the said dean and chapter to dismember and separate from the aforesaid monastery and hospital of St. Anthony the said hospital of London, the chapel of St. Anthony without the walls of York, subject and pensionary thereto, (fn. 6) and the said united churches, suppress and extinguish their dependence, if any, absolve and set free the brethren and ministers of the same hospital of London from the observance of the said rule, dissolve and revoke all unions, etc., and, after making such suppression, extinction, dissolution and separation, to unite, annex, and appropriate the things thus separated to the said mensa in perpetuity, etc. (fn. 7)
The pope, therefore, hereby dismembers and separates the said hospital (fn. 8) of London and annexed parish churches from the said monastery and hospital of St. Anthony, and suppresses and extinguishes such dependence, if any there be, of the same hospital of London, absolves and frees its brethren and ministers from the observance of the said rule, dissolves and revokes the unions, etc., of the same [parish churches], and restores, etc., them to the state in which they were before they were united, etc., and unites, annexes, and appropriates them, thus separated, etc., with the said chapel of St. Martin, and also the said hospital of London, with the said chapel of St. Anthony without the walls of York, and all its other goods, etc., to the said mensa in perpetuity, so that if the said hospital of London be void in any way the said dean and chapter may take forthwith, or, upon the cession or death or dimission of its master and warden or preceptor, may take possession by their own authority and retain for ever the said hospital of London, parish churches, and chapels of St. Martin and St. Anthony, and of the said members, rights and appurtenances, and convert their fruits, etc., to their own uses and to the uses of the said mensa and hospital of London, and to the maintenance and hospitality of the poor and infirm, etc., etc.; with mandate executory hereby to the abbots of St. Peter's, Westminster, without the walls of London, and St. Mary's without the walls of York, and St. Mary's, Glastonbury, in the diocese of Bath and Wells. Ad perp. rei mem. Pastoralis officii. [11 pp.] (fn. 9)

Footnotes

  • 1. On the back of the volume: ‘Inn. vii. Bullar. Ann. i. Lib. ix.’ On the front half of the original sheepskin binding, preserved at the beginning of the volume, is ‘Non rubricatus,’ and the usual later ‘Innoc. 8. Lib. ix.' Accordingly, there are no ‘rubricelle.’ There are 1–310 ff. of text.
  • 2. Monasticon, vol. vi, p. 766, quotes Tanner: ‘on the north side of Threadneedle Street, in the Parish of St. Benet Fink, was a synagogue of the Jews, A.D. 1231, which was given by King Henry the Third to the brethren of St. Anthony of Vienne in France.’ The grant is not mentioned in the Close Rolls, Patent Rolls, or Cal. Charter Rolls, of Henry III. See, however, Close Rolls, 1254–6, p. 369 (an. 1256), and cf. 1247–51, pp. 202 (1249) and 380–1 (1250).
  • 3. Viz. on 27 Feb. 1474–5, printed in Monasticon, vol. vi, p. 1359; summarized in Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1467–77, p. 484, and in R. R. Tighe and J. E. Davis, Annals of Windsor, vol. i (1858), p. 379, on p. 390 of which is the item in Edward IV's will, dated 1475, by which he wills that the house and hospital of St. Anthony be appropriated to the dean and canons of Windsor.
  • 4. Cf. ‘St. Martin in Hereford V. [church now demolished] with All Saints, V. consolidated’ (Bacon's Liber Regis, p. 362.)
  • 5. For the appropriation by pope Boniface IX of the parish church of St. Benet Fink in Broad Street to St. Anthony's hospital in 1400, see Cal. Papal Letters, vol. V, p. 311.
  • 6. For the house of chapel of St. Anthony without the walls of York, O.S.A., dependent on and subject and wont to pay a yearly pension to the house of St. Anthony, London, of the same Order, see Cal. Papal Letters, vol. ix, p. 527 (an. 1445).
  • 7.
  • 8. Substituted in the margin for ipsiusque regis, cancelled.
  • 9. Similarly substituted for dicti Richardi regis, cancelled.
  • 10. hospitalis, recte hospitale.
  • 11. The foregoing bull is not amongst the muniments at Windsor. See R. L. Poole's report on ‘The Muniments of the Dean and Canons of St. George's Chapel, Windsor,’ in Hist. MSS. Comm., Various Collections, vol. vii (1914), pp. 10 sqq.
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