Priory
priory
A monastery having a prior for superior. A conventual priory is an autonomous house having no abbot ; a simple or obedientiary priory is a dependency of an abbey. In England, monasteries attached to cathedral churches were termed cathedral priories. Only one priory exists today as a diocesan organization, Ciudad Real, in Spain, founded in 1875, and ruled by a prior, who is always titular Bishop of Dora.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Priory
A monastery whose superior is a prior. The Dominicans, Augustinian Hermits, Carthusians, Carmelites, Servites, and Brothers of Mercy call all their monasteries priories. The Benedictines and their offshoots, the Premonstratensians, and the military orders distinguish between conventual and simple or obedientiary priories. Conventual priories are those autonomous houses which have no abbots, either because the canonically required number of twelve monks has not yet been reached or for some other reason. The Congregation of Cluny had many conventual priories. There were likewise many conventual priories in Germany and Italy during the Middle Ages, and in England all monasteries attached to cathedral churches were known as cathedral priories. Nearly all the monasteries of the famous Maurist Congregation in France (seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) were called priories. At present the Benedictine Order has twenty-seven conventual priories. Simple or obedientiary priories are dependencies of abbeys. Their superior, who is subject to the abbot in everything, is called simple or obedientiary prior.
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For bibliography see PRIOR.
MICHAEL OTT Transcribed by Herman F. Holbrook Ut in omnibus glorificetur Deus per Iesum Christum.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIICopyright © 1911 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, June 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Priory
is a religious house occupied by a society of monks or nuns, the chief of whom is termed a prior (q.v.) or prioress; and of these there are two sorts: first, where the prior is chosen by the convent, and governs as independently as any abbot in his abbey; such were the cathedral priors, and most of those of the Augustine order. Secondly, where the priory is a cell subordinate to some great abbey, and the prior is placed or displaced at the will of the abbot. There was a considerable difference in the regulation of these cells in the mediaeval times; for some were altogether subject to their respective abbots, who sent what officers and monks they pleased, and took their revenues into the common stock of the abbeys; while others consisted of a stated number of monks, under a prior sent to them from the superior abbey; and those priories paid a pension yearly, as an acknowledgment of their subjection, but acted in other matters as independent bodies, and had the rest of the revenues for their own use. The priories or cells were always of the same order as the abbeys on which they depended, though sometimes their inmates were of a different sex; it being usual, after the Norman Conquest, for the great abbeys to build nunneries on some of their manors, which should be subject to their visitation.
Alien priories were cells, or small religious houses, in one country dependent on large foreign monasteries. When manors or tithes were given to distant religious houses, the monks, either to increase the authority of their own order, or perhaps rather to have faithful stewards of their revenues, built convenient houses for the reception of small fraternities of their body, who were deputed to reside at and govern those cells. Hook, s.v. In the fourth year of Henry V, during the war with France, all the alien priories (that is, those cells of the religious houses in England which belonged to foreign monasteries) which were not conventual were dissolved by act of Parliament and granted to the crown. About the year 1540 the cathedrals founded for priories were turned into deaneries and prebends.