A priory is a monastery of men or women under religious vows that is headed by a prior or prioress. They are found in the Catholic Church, Lutheranism, and Anglican Communion. Priories may be monastic houses of monks or nuns (such as the Benedictines, the Cistercians, or the Carthusians). Houses of canon regular also use this term, the alternative being "canonry". mendicant order houses, of , nuns, or tertiary sisters (such as the Dominican Order, Augustinian Hermits, and Carmelites) also exclusively use this term.
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.
History
Priories first came to existence as subsidiaries to the
Cluny Abbey. Many new houses were formed that were all subservient to the abbey of Cluny and called Priories. As such, the priory came to represent the
Benedictines 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.
[Ott, Michael. . The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 12. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. 4 May 2014.]
The Benedictines and their offshoots (Cistercians and Trappists among them), the Premonstratensians, and the military orders distinguish between conventual and simple or obedientiary priories.
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Conventual priories are those autonomous houses that have no , either because the canonically required number of twelve monks has not yet been reached, or for some other reason.
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Simple or obedientiary priories are dependencies of abbeys. Their superior, who is subject to the abbot in everything, is called a simple or obedientiary prior. These monasteries are satellites of the mother abbey. The Cluniac order is notable for being organised entirely on this obedientiary principle, with a single abbot at the Abbey of Cluny, and all other houses dependent priories.
Priory is also used to refer to the geographic headquarters of several commanderies of .
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