The Syon Household at Denham, 1539–50

Late medieval monastic households shared many features in common with the large secular households of the gentry and aristocracy Indeed, the language used in describing monastic households had always echoed that of the extended secular family with ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ living together under the authority of a superior representing Christ but exercising control of the religious community as a ‘father’ or ‘mother’ figure. While the common life of the monastery was very different in many of its details to the lifestyle of a lay family, monastic legislators used the family relationship to describe the modus operandi of the monastic community St Augustine enjoined his monks to ‘obey your superior as you would a father’, and reminded an errant community of nuns that their superior had been ‘the mother not of your body but of your mind’. St Benedict wrote as ‘a father who loves you’, reminding his followers that God is ‘a loving father’ and urging them to show each other ‘the pure love of brothers’ while accepting the abbot as both the ‘father of the household’ and a ‘spiritual father’ who would provide for all their worldly and spiritual needs. David Rnowles therefore considered the medieval monastic conventus to be a ‘family’ in which a ‘simple family life’ was led by monks under the care of an ever-present superior who acted as a loving paterfamilias in governing the monastery; the monastery was ‘the home of a spiritual family whose life and work begin and end in the family circle’.