English Monastic Life
Francis Aidan Gasquet
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Francis Aidan Gasquet, O.S.B. (5 October 1846 – 5 April 1929 in Rome) was an English Benedictine monk and historical scholar. He was created Cardinal in 1914. His historical work has been attacked by later writers. Geoffrey Elton wrote of “the falsehoods purveyed by Cardinal Gasquet and Hilaire Belloc.” His collaboration with Edmund Bishop has been described as “an alliance between scholarship exquisite and deplorable.” A polemical campaign by G. G. Coulton against Gasquet was largely successful in discrediting his works in academic eyes. One of his books contained an appendix “A Rough List of Misstatements and Blunders in Cardinal Gasquet’s Writings. David Knowles wrote a reasoned piece of apologetics on Gasquet’s history in 1956. In it he speaks of Gasquet’s “many errors and failings”, and notes that he “was not an intellectually humble man and he showed little insight into his own limitations of knowledge and training.” Eamon Duffy said in an interview: ” Cardinal Francis Aidan Gasquet, a great Benedictine historian, was both a bad workman and not entirely scrupulous about what he said. So you can be a churchman and a lousy historian.” This book is Gasquet’s historical investigation of English monasticism. Gasquet treats the nature of monastic life, the material parts of a monastery, the organizational structure, daily life, nuns, servants, the various orders, and relationships between them.