The Monastery Annotated

📖 The Scoop

The Monastery: a Romance is a historical novel by Sir Walter Scott. Along with The Abbot, it is one of Scott's Tales from Benedictine Sources and is set in the time of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Elizabethan period.In the many conflicts between England and Scotland the property of the Church had hitherto always been respected; but her temporal possessions, also as her spiritual influence, were now in serious danger from the spread of the doctrines of the Reformation, and therefore the occupants of the monasteries were hooked in to the military services of their tenants and vassals for cover against the forays of Protestant barons and other heretical marauders. Dame Elspeth's husband Simon had fallen within the battle of Pinkie (1547), and therefore the hospitality of her lonely tower had been sought by the widow of the Baron of Avenel and her daughter Mary, whose mansion had been seized and plundered by invaders, and subsequently taken possession of by her brother-in-law Julian. While confessing the baroness on her death-bed, Father Philip discovered that she possessed a Bible, and as he was carrying it to the Lord Abbot, it was, he declared, taken from him by a spectral White Lady, a personality resembling the Undine, which Scott borrowed from Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's Undine.[1] Disbelieving the sacristan's tale, the sub-prior visited the tower, where he met Christie of the Clinthill, a freebooter, charged with an insolent message from Julian Avenel, and learnt that the Bible had been mysteriously returned to its owner. Having exchanged it for a missal, he was unhorsed on his return by the apparition; and, on reaching the monastery, the book had disappeared from his bosom, and he found the freebooter detained in custody on suspicion of getting killed him. The White Lady was next seen by Elspeth's son Halbert, who was conducted by her to a fairy grotto, where he was allowed to grab the Bible from a flaming altar.Melrose Abbey in 1800During his absence from the tower, Happer the miller and his daughter Mysie arrived on a visit, and shortly afterwards came Sir Piercie Shafton, as a refugee from English Court. subsequent day the abbot came to dine with them, and offered Halbert, who had quarrelled with the knight for his attentions to Mary, the office of ranger of the Church forests. He, however, refused it, and startled his rival with a token he had obtained from the mysterious spectre. the subsequent morning they fought during a glen, and Halbert fled to the Baron of Avenel, leaving Sir Piercie apparently mortally wounded. His companion thither was Henry Warden, who offended the laird, and assisted Halbert in his determination to flee from the castle, instead of serve under his host's standard. The knight, however, had miraculously recovered, and on making his way back to the tower, was accused by Edward of getting murdered his missing brother, in spite of his assurance that the youth was alive and uninjured. With the sub-prior's approval he was treated as a prisoner; but during the night Mysie assisted him to flee , and accompanied him northwards, dressed as his page. Mary Avenel, meanwhile, within the midst of her grief at the supposed death of her lover, was visited by the White Lady, who comforted her by disclosing the place where he had hidden the Bible, which she had secretly read together with her mother.

Genre: Fiction / General (fancy, right?)