Burford, Dorchester Abbey, Ewelme & Rotherfield Greys in Oxfordshire. Burford lies about 30 kilometres west of Oxford on the River Windrush. The name derives from the Old English words burh meaning fortified town or hilltown and ford meaning ford. A parish church, in Christianity, is the church which acts as the religious centre of a parish, the basic administrative unit of episcopal churches. The town centre features some houses dating from the 15th century. Its most notable building, however, is the Norman parish church. Between the 14th and 17th centuries, Burford was important for its wool.
| The Priory of Our Lady, a community of Anglican Benedictine monks and nuns is to be found in the town. The town in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds that has hardly changed since Georgian times, when it was an important coach stop between Oxford and the West Country. It's magnificent High Street, one of the finest in the Cotswolds, slopes down to a bridge crossing the River Windrush. |  |
Dorchester, an important Roman city of Mercia, about nine miles from Oxford, had been the seate of a bishopric from 634, when Saint Birinus, the first bishop, was sent to that district by Pope Honorius I, until 1085, when the See of Mercia was transferred to Lincoln.
Dorchester Abbey is a parish church, formerly an abbey church in the place of a cathedral, situated in the centre of the village of Dorchester-on-Thames in Oxfordshire. Dorchester Abbey was founded in 1140 by Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, for Augustinian, or Black canons (strictly speaking, for that particular group of Augustinian canons known as the Arrouaisian Order). The Arrouaisian Order, which was popular among the founders of abbeys during the decade of the 1130s, when the Abbey of Arrouaise was the centre of a form of the Augustinian monastic rule. The order of Arrouaise was differentiated from others by being basically that of St. Augustine with the more restrained approach of the Cistercians as a guide to its more austere philosophy. The forest was in the form of a belt extending westwards from the Forest of The Ardennes, to the north of the town of St. Quentin and towards the town of Bapaume. The routes were important commercially and diplomatically for traffic between Paris and Flanders, also between England and Burgundy. It will have been mainly by this route that the English and Western Flemings went to Rome on pilgrimages and diplomatic journeys. Since Artois belonged to the Normans, it connected them to France, the Low Countries and England. Arrouaisian houses are often referred to as being Augustinian.
In 1120 monks embraced the Rule of St. Augustine "ad experimentum"; in 1134 a papal bull referred to them as canons regular; and finally in 1168 they officially and definitively became part of the canonical order. They continued to grow rapidly and accepted the responsibility for the pastoral care of several parishes in Lombardy and Piedmont. During the pontificate of Innocent II, they embraced 14 abbeys and priories and by that of Urban III, 43 abbeys and priories. It was at this time that the canon counted among their numbers, St. Quirinus (Guarinus). A second saint, St. Albert, would later become patriarch of Jerusalem and give a rule of the Carmelites. Others became Bishops as well including Bl. Thomas of Milan.
In 1121 the community elected its first abbot, a young canon, named Gervais, who was a cleric in the court of Boulogne. Under his long reign (1121-47), the members of the community took the title of canons in place of the original title of hermit and its golden age commenced. The Rule of Arrouaise, which combined the Regula Tertia of St. Augustine with the customs of the hermitage, was identified with the success of the community and thereupon became a power incentive for other canonical houses to associate with Arrouaise. Moreover, on account of the fact that Abbot Gervais came from a port town, the fame of the house spread swiftly to England and Ireland. The Abbey of Henin-Lietard was the first house to join in 1123. During the next 10 years, the congregation expanded throughout Artois, including the cathedral chapters of Theouanne, Boulogne, Noyon and Soisson. In 1133 the first English house in Lincoln joined and in 1139 the Bishop of Carlisle regularized his cathedral chapter according to the Rule of Arrouaise. At the same time in Ireland, St. Malachy was promoting the customs of Arrouaise as a mean of reform. Later, in 1160 St. Lawrence O'Toole regularized the cathedral chapter in Dublin. The Rule of Arrouaise found widespread adherence in Ireland, but the Irish were often unwilling to attend the annual Chapters, leading to tensions between Arrouaise and the Irish houses (go to canons regular in Ireland). Arrouaise also claimed houses into Germany, Spain and Poland (Silesia, Stift Sagan).
Following Gervais’ resignation in 1147 until 1180, when Gualterius became abbot. He reorganized the order by dropping difficult or distant houses and clarified the rights and obligations of member abbeys. Though his efforts were valiant, larger forces, especially political intrigues between France and Flanders, prevented them from being successful. At the opening of the 13th Century, the congregation was already in decline.