Doubtless the king's sore financial needs had much to do with the dissolution of the abbeys and the plundering of the shrines, but there is no reason to suppose that he was not fully convinced that the monks had long outlived their usefulness and that the shrines were centres of abject superstition and ecclesiastical deceit.
From this date to the Reformation the monastery, one of the chief Benedictine abbeys in England, continued to flourish, the chief events in its history being connected with the maintenance of its claims to the possession of the bodies or tombs of King Arthur and St Dunstan.
The question of the right of regale (right of the Crown to the revenues of vacant abbeys and bishoprics), which touched the essential rights of sovereignty, further inflamed the hostility between Innocent XI.
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It is highly probable that the churches of the south part of this district owe their origin to the munificence of the abbeys of Crowland and Spalding.
The Hessians were converted to Christianity mainly through the efforts of St Boniface; their land was included in the archbishopric of Mainz; and religion and culture were kept alive among them largely owing to the foundation of the Benedictine abbeys of Fulda and Hersfeld.
Other priories were originally offshoots from the larger abbeys, to the abbots of which they continued subordinate; but in later times the actual distinction between abbeys and priories was lost.
This year or the next a council was held near the River Nidd, the papal letters were read, and, despite the opposition of the bishops, Wilfrid once more received the abbeys of Ripon and Hexham.
The characteristic of the Cistercian abbeys was the extremest simplicity and a studied plainness.
Many of the faithful founded abbeys and churches on condition that the right of patronage, that is the choice of beneficiaries, should be reserved to them and their heirs.
Itzehoe - survived to designate the heads of abbeys which since the Reformation have continued as Stifle, i.e.