WESSEX MINSTERS. 63 



In studying this question of the name we have to recollect 

 that, in the centuries (the 8th and 9th) of which we are 

 treating, the general adoption of the strict Benedictine 

 Rule had not come, and that the definite separation into 

 Regulars and Seculars did not take place till the time of 

 S. Dunstan, who did not begin his career till A.D. 943, when 

 he became Head of the Glastonbury House, at which date 

 even that ancient establishment was not a Monastery in the 

 strict sense of the term. From Dunstan's time onward 

 we may trace the distinctive use of the two terms " Collegium " 

 and " Monasterium ; " the former meaning a body of Secular 

 Canons attached to a Collegiate Church, so specially fre- 

 quent in the West of England, and the latter a body of 

 Regulars under strict Benedictine Rule. In Bede there is 

 no such distinction. He speaks in H.E. IV., Chap. 12., 

 of two Bishops of Lindisfarne, who were Monks in the strict 

 sense, as " ambo de collegio monachorum." Returning to 

 instances of the use of the name " Mynstre," a quotation 

 may be made from Leach's " Schools of Mediaval England," 

 in which notice is made of the use of the word " Mynstre " 

 as applied to Winchester in the llth Century copy of the 

 A.S. Chronicle, where apparently the word " Churche " had 

 been used in the older copy. This is taken by Leach to show 

 that in the llth century we may take it that the word 

 " Mynstre " was coming into use for a large or important 

 church. The application of the title to York, Ripon, Lincoln, 

 Beverley, &c., may be as early as that date ; but the term 

 often used by Bede for York is Basilika, and the same is used 

 by Ordericus for the Cathedral of Rouen. Other interesting 

 facts are that the five Royal Minsters of Staffordshire, which 

 are generally dated from early in the 9th century, were never 

 Monastic in the regular sense, and have always borne the 

 Minster name. It would appear also that West -minster 

 was attached as a name to a Church and clergy on Thorney 

 Isle long before there was the definite establishment of 

 Westminster Abbey as a House of ; ' Regulars." Our 

 conclusion is that monasterium is certainly the original 



