Apriory is amonastery of men or women underreligious vows that is headed by aprior or prioress.[1] They are found in theCatholic Church,Lutheran Churches, andAnglican Communion.[2] Priories may be monastic houses ofmonks ornuns (such as theBenedictines, theCistercians, or theCharterhouses). Houses ofcanons & canonesses regular also use this term, the alternative beingcanonry.Mendicant houses, offriars, nuns, or tertiary sisters (such as theFriars Preachers,Augustinian Hermits, andCarmelites) also exclusively use this term.
Inpre-Reformation England, if anabbey church was raised tocathedral status, the abbey became a cathedral priory. Thebishop, in effect, took the place of the abbot, and the monastery itself was headed by a prior.
Priories first came to existence as subsidiaries to theAbbey of Cluny. Many new houses were formed that were all subservient to the abbey of Cluny and called Priories. As such, the priory came to represent theBenedictine ideals espoused by theCluniac reforms as smaller, lesser houses of Benedictines of Cluny. There were likewise many conventual priories in Germany and Italy during theMiddle Ages, and in England all monasteries attached to cathedral churches were known as cathedral priories.[3]
The Benedictines and their offshoots (Cistercians andTrappists among them), thePremonstratensians, and themilitary orders distinguish betweenconventual and simple orobedientiary priories.
Priory is also used to refer to the geographic headquarters of severalcommanderies ofknights.
Choosing to live according to theRule of Benedict, it was not until 1987that bishop Werner Leich, of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia, approve their monastic way of life.
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