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Understanding the Role of Abbots in Benedictine Monasticism

This quiz explores the historical and contemporary roles of abbots within Benedictine monasticism, focusing on their authority, titles, and the significance of various abbeys.

#Benedictine #Abbots #Monasticism #Catholic Church #Church History

1 There are several Benedictine Abbeys throughout the ________.

2 Abbots more and more assumed almost episcopal state, and in defiance of the prohibition of early councils and the protests of St Bernard and others, adopted the episcopal insignia of ________, ring, gloves and sandals.

3 In the Roman Catholic Church, abbots continue to be elected by the monks of an abbey to lead them as their religious superior in those orders and monasteries that make use of the term (some orders of monks, as the ________ for instance, have no abbots, only priors).

4 Those monasteries which enjoy the status of being stauropegiac will be subject only to a primate or his ________ and not the local bishop.

5 Of these the most noteworthy is Loccum Abbey in Hanover, founded as a ________ house in 1163 by Count Wilbrand of Hallermund, and reformed in 1593.

6 In the Church of England, the ________, by royal decree given by Henry VIII, also holds the honorary title of "Abbot of St.

7 This use of the title is said to have originated in the right conceded to the king of France, by the concordat between ________ and Francis I (1516), to appoint abbés commendataires to most of the abbeys in France.

8 By the ________, which, until the reform of Cluny, was the norm in the West, the abbot has jurisdiction over only one community.

9 ________ reported (Itinerary, ii.iv) the common customs of lay abbots in the late 12th-century Church of Wales:

10 Thus at the first Council of Constantinople, AD 448, 23 archimandrites or abbots sign, with 30 ________.

💡 Interesting Facts

  • bad advice from Flaithbertach mac Inmainén, abbot of Scattery Island and chief adviser to King Cormac mac Cuilennáin, is said to have caused a war in which Cormac and many others died.
  • the abbot of Linh Son Pagoda, one of the tourist attractions in Da Lat, Vietnam, has held the post for more than forty years.
  • the first Western abbot of Singapore's Buddhist Poh Ern Shih Temple was an American.
  • after serving as a border guard, Saint Claudius of Besançon became, successively, a priest, monk, abbot, bishop, and then an abbot again, in the 7th century.
  • Laurence Mancuso was the founding abbot of the Eastern Orthodox monastic community of New Skete (pictured), which is known for its dog training.
  • Áed Ua Crimthainn, abbot of Terryglass, Ireland, was the compiler and principal scribe of the Book of Leinster, a Middle Irish illuminated manuscript (pictured).
  • Ólchobar mac Cináeda, king of Munster and abbot of Emly, may be the "king of the Irish" who sent an embassy to Charles the Bald announcing Irish victories over the Vikings in 848.
  • Abbot's Palace, a roccoco palace in Oliwa funded by the last Cistercian abbot of the Oliwa monastery, Jacek Rybiński, was burned down by German troops during World War II.
  • monastic historian David Knowles wrote that Dominic of Evesham (who died before 1145) authored the deathbed account of the Abbot Æthelwig of Evesham in the Chronicon Abbatiae de Evesham.
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