A priory is a monastery of men or women under religious vows that is headed by a prior or prioress. They were created by the Catholic Church . Priories may be monastic houses of monks or nuns (such as the Benedictines , the Cistercians , or the Charterhouses ). Houses of canons & canonesses regular also use this term, the alternative being "canonry". Mendicant houses, of friars , nuns, or tertiary sisters (such as the Friars Preachers , Augustinian Hermits , and Carmelites ) also exclusively use this term.
3-537: Priory Church is the name of many Christian churches which have had a connection with a priory . Examples (arranged by order of country, then place-name) include: When monasteries were closed in the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, the churches were often given a new role as parish churches . At Oxford a priory church became the city's cathedral. While priory churches are usually associated with former priories rather than active priories,
6-578: A few priories have been constructed since the Reformation, for example St Dominic's Priory Church . Priory In pre-Reformation England , if an abbey church was raised to cathedral status, the abbey became a cathedral priory. The bishop , 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 the Abbey of Cluny . Many new houses were formed that were all subservient to
9-715: The abbey of Cluny and called Priories. As such, the priory came to represent the Benedictine ideals espoused by the Cluniac reforms as smaller, lesser houses of Benedictines of Cluny. There were likewise many conventual priories in Germany and Italy during the Middle Ages , and in England all monasteries attached to cathedral churches were known as cathedral priories. The Benedictines and their offshoots ( Cistercians and Trappists among them),
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