Benedictines return to Westminster

After the monasteries in this country were suppressed in the 1530s men and women were soon making their way across the Channel to find places where they could pursue the contemplative monastic life.

It was only in the early 1600s that the idea of bringing these monks and nuns together began to develop momentum, and soon after the foundation in Douai of St Gregory’s, a link was forged between these monks and the earlier Benedictine congregation in England through Dom Sigeburt Buckley, the last surviving monk of Westminster abbey, which had been briefly restored under Queen Mary Tudor. This link was a kind of ‘clothing’, and was supposed to have conferred on the new monks all the rights and privileges of the old congregation. Certainly the continuity of the new English Congregation (‘restored’ in 1633) was regarded by the Holy See as the legitimate heir of the old, as a result of which our Congregation ranks as the oldest in the worldwide Confederation of Benedictine monasteries.

To mark the 400th anniversary of this so-called ‘Buckley succession’, the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey welcomed representatives of the Congregation to Evensong in the Church on the 21st November 2007, which was also the day on which Queen Mary had restored monastic life to the Abbey under Abbot John Feckenham.

The pictures show the High Altar and sanctuary of the Abbey Church as well as what has become of St Benedict’s Chapel, now rather buried in the monuments of Poet’s Corner, where the Dean and Chapter have included a stone memorial of the event, as well as the head of the shrine of St Edward, King and Confessor. We are all very grateful to the Dean for his generous hospitality.