3 - JOHN WESSINGTON AS PRIOR OF DURHAM (1416–46)

Summary

Sciatque sibi oportere prodesse magis quam praeesse.

It is a familiar conclusion of monastic historians as well as a truism implicit in the Rule of Saint Benedict itself that the character of a religious house depends largely upon the personality of its abbot or prior. In so far as the primary duty of any religious superior is the care of both the bodies and the souls in his community, John Wessington cannot expect to avoid either praise or criticism for the material and spiritual state of Durham cathedral priory between 1416 and 1446. But in practice the absorption of the prior in his extramural responsibilities, his absences from the convent, the peculiarities of his status as head of a cathedral monastery and, above all, the confining effects of custom and routine make Wessington's personal contribution to the life of his monastery by no means easy to assess. Virtually all official business at Durham was conducted in the joint names of the prior and chapter, or of the prior alone, and accordingly little evidence survives of action taken by the monks independently of their superior. The legal personification of the convent by the prior in its dealings with the outside world has the inevitable effect of concealing the extent to which monastic policy was a communal enterprise and makes it dangerously easy to assume that the will of the superior was the source and origin of all decisions.