Brakelonds The Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds - Essay Example

ABBEY Brakelond’s “The Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds,” although it is an ancient manuscript, speaks to issues that resonate in society today, as well, such as the separation of church and state, isolation vs. community based monasticism, and the idea of the assimilation of monks into the local community. Jocelyn Brakelond, who became chaplain to the abbot four months after the contemporaneous elections, was in the administration described under Samson. The narrative tells us that the narrator was with Samson all the time for six years, in a system of patronage and authority, in which the record is fairly approximate to what the monks actually did in terms of day-to-day operations. The text is familiar and easy, but the opposite of classical. The narrator thinks and writes like one whose interests are wrapped up in his own perception, and the only advantage of their work is minuteness that describes the policy administration of the monastery, which was during these days acting as a template for monastic control of society and the economy. One thing that strikes the modern reader about the Brakelond text is that a lot of it seems very anti-Semite in nature, referring to Jews and the Jewish people by races and stereotypes, and also chronicling action taken by the abbey against local Jews. It must be remembered, however, that in medieval and early modern Europe, and also during these times, Jews were demonized, persecuted, and often killed outright by Muslims and Christians alike, as in the Crusades. It was a natural function of societies to use Jews as a scapegoat. The monks of the narrative assimilate into their surroundings; they are not isolated. Assimilation is one thing, but keeping one’s own culture separate is another that needs significant attention, and may not fit in with the idea of the monastery being part of society. Increasing diversity also means that people need to look at what is going on in the abbey, to make sure that others are being taught and helped to become respectful of diversity and pluralism so that they can bring this to the team. At the same time they also bring tradition. Diversity, in analysis of the case, is more about keeping the facets of the individual’s integral culture intact despite movement across socio economic and government lines. It is interesting to think about multicultural diversity in the context of assimilation and integration because multicultural diversity seems to challenge traditional notions of the medieval society being a place in which integral cultures are lost or changed to form a new sort of hybrid identity, whereas assimilation and integration seem to be more supportive of this traditional notion of society. Thinking of diversity, multiculturalism, and assimilation, one must keep an open mind to the ways in which these theories interact and inform each other, in terms of the monks. In other words, it is not recommended to take an exclusivist view of these definitions and theories in determining how they impact productive reality for the abbey, and what it accomplished for the citizens, and what it did to them. It was less the ideal of a monastic retreat in comparison to the reality lived by the abbey of Bury St Edmunds, where the monks were quite active in community life, crime and punishment, the garnishment of funds and property, etc. They were not removed from the secular world; they were deep within it, while having spiritual titles. The abbot had jurisdictional, feudal, political, and economic roles to play:  “HERE was a certain chaplain who had maintained him in the schools of Paris by the sale of holy water, when he was poor. This man the abbot caused to be summoned to him, and conferred on him an ecclesiastical benefice, with the position of vicar, whereby he might be supported” (Brakelond, 2010). This example shows the power of positional authority. Positional authority and plutocracy are shown strongly. The situation is clearly geared to a practical application of rhetorical values of cooperation and openness in terms of reform. Reform measures may do better to concentrate on education and training for those who would otherwise be adrift and unqualified than to concentrate on imposing limits on a situation that is often limited in terms of providing opportunities and resources. The poor of the abbey’s village often face limitations in terms of human capital, such as the lack of quality education and schooling, the lack of specific job training, and the resultant lack of working experience as a result of these. This also leads to issues like higher rates of alcoholism among the lower socioeconomic status, and also physical and mental health problems which can make employment more difficult. “When FitzElias, the cup bearer of abbot Hugh, came to do him homage for his fathers land, the abbot said to him in open court, "I have delayed now for seven years to receive your homage for the land which abbot Hugh gave to your father, since that gift was to the detriment of the manor of Elmswell” (Brakelond, 2010). There are various perspectives regarding the exact roles that the abbot played in terms of ultimate positional authority, but the fact remains that the abbey was a serious socio-economic structure in the local area. There is the definite theme of charity in Brakelond’s text, especially when the abbey finds itself under new leadership, and old grudges are avenged, as well as old debts being repaid. “Now I give way, since I am mindful of the good which your father did to me when I was in bonds. For he sent to me some of the very wine which his lord drank, with a message that I should be of good courage in God” (Brakelond, 2010). The individual in the class of the working poor’s position in this milieu is complicated in terms of influence by the nature of the federal program and the changing environment in which reform takes place. Optimally, the abbey can be effective by seeing this changing environment as representing dynamism instead of chaos. If the working poor are coming out of a poor situation, they may face fewer resources, or a confusing new mix of private and public resources, many of which have hidden costs in terms of the viability of the original documents and vision of the nation, which was not to have a separation of church and state. Options for the working poor have also altered in this environment, in which poverty is also a significant problem. Poverty is insidious because it works in a vicious circle: the individual becomes trapped in a cycle of being working poor in poverty or near-poverty conditions. And because of the continuation of social factors and lack of educational opportunities and the way it mixes with other social and economic factors, the individual may become trapped in a cycle of poverty. “A CERTAIN young girl, who was begging her bread from door to door, made complaint to the abbot that one of the sons of Richard FitzDrogo had assaulted her. This wrong, by the abbots intervention, was at last settled for the sake of peace by the acceptance of one mark by the girl” (Brakelond, 2010) . It may be that this girl had to go around town begging for bread because she was totally crazy, but in any case, the decision of the abbot was that she was to have a shotgun wedding. In other words, she was assaulted by a man, and then made to marry him; this was considered justice. The abbot lived in a different time and place. Definitions of culture should focus around this primary definition, in terms of narrowing down a way of compartmentalizing the assimilation process as it is shown in the movies through a stage-based platform that can be attributed to the monks. The first sub-process involves culture explicitly. Acculturation, which is the first sub-process of assimilation, occurs when an group’s cultural behaviors change over to the cultural behaviors of the host society, in this case the village rather than the abbey. This is a type of conformity. Generally, it can be said that the host culture is both changed and reaffirmed by the process of assimilation, in which, especially in the abbey, the villager is often seen in terms of revitalization of the culture as a whole. Assimilation is not simply absorption into the host culture, it is also a process of reading the host culture and deriving one’s own meanings and making one’s own additions. Again, this seems to be best described as an individual rather than a group process, so this report focuses on the individual member of a community rather than the abstract grouping of a community around nationalist, religious, or socio-cultural guidelines, which is to say that from the modern perspective, it is difficult to fully imagine the times of Brakelond. These were times when church and state were not separate at all, and being an abbot was basically a political position. Therefore, the monastic ideal of the monk as living isolated and separated from society is not held up by the monks of the abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, because they were inherently and explicitly involved in the society of their surroundings, and acted in many ways within this society as arbiters of morality and justice. They were not isolated, but were involved in society in economic ways, social ways, and legislative ways, because the villagers and townspeople looked to them to settle disputes. The monks did not live apart from society; they lived as the exemplars of society, acting as its agents of the status quo in their time. REFERENCE Brakelond, J (2010). Chronicle of the abbey of Bury St. Edmunds. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/jocelin.html Read More