The rosy bosses thread made me wonder: where does the word minster come from, please?
where does the word minster come from, please?
From Greek monasterion 'monastery' (from monos 'alone'), via Latin monestarium.
and
etymonline.com gave:
minster O.E. mynster "the church of a monastery," from L.L. monasterium (see monastery). Cf. O.Fr. moustier, Fr. moûtier, O.Ir. manister.
which is basically what z said, but what the hell...
Merci, gentlemen. So, were York Minster, Westminster (that is all one word, isn't it?), etc. all monasteries? Or am I interpreting too literally?
yeah, lots of them were monasteries--and lots of the country homes that are called 'abby' were once abbies.
a good many ceased being monasteries and abbies when Henry the VIII took over catholic church's (and created C of E)
but monasteries and abbies were abandon for various reasons long before HVIII.
monastaries often served as hotels, schools, town halls, and other civic functions.
(the ministered to the poor, the ill, and provide clerks (the were often the only literate people in a small town.)
they knew (a little at least) latin, and had almanacs to tell time (and rang out the hours on church bells that served as 'timekeepers' to everyone.
even in the bronx in the 1950's church bells sounded the hours.. (and i was expected to be home after they rang 6PM--with no excuses!)
the monks often kept bee's (for bee's wax candles for church) and sold honey.. they were brewers too, and had bakeries.. (most small cottages didn't have ovens.. just hearths.) they made "small ale" too. and wine..
generally they were very useful places.. but they did fail sometimes (if they pissed off the local lord (or worse the king!) they could be taxed out of existance..
(or they could be awarded orphans to care for.. with a very small stipend to pay for the orphans care. they couldn't refuse to take in an orphan, and if awarded a few dozen, the resourses of the monastary could be overwhelmed (to the point of failure.) once that happened, the monastary might be taken over by a lord, or town, or others for some other used (and still be called, the monastary (or minstery)
just as you often call a neighbors home by the name of the previous owner (you know, they live in the old smith place sort of thing.)
there is a great series of books (by Frances & Joseph Gies)
about "life in.. "
"a medieval villiage"
"a medieval castle"
"a medieval city"
and a book about "castles, forges and waterwheels"
and "Marriage and Family in Medieval Times" and others..
(i haven't read every book in the series, but they are great.)
(one fact i remember.. just as parking is a problem in modern cities, it was a problem in medieval cities. trades men, farmers, all sorts of folk came to the city to do business. the cities had narrow streets, and few open places to park a farm wagon, or a coach, or any even a hand pulled 'barrow"... cities were bound by 'walls' and were always crowded!-- cities are (and always have been)congested!
How interesting. Thanks O.T.
For my info only; are the books novels or are they a type of educational vehicle?
educational but light reads.
(all the footnotes are there, but not cluttering up the text.)
they make it fun. but there aspects of medeaval life that are hard to understand--the sense of duty (to church, to lord, to land)the basic brutality of life--which was often short, painful and lonely. but they also convey some of the joys.. simple pleasures. life was more communal, villiages were often really extended families--you knew all your neighbors, and they knew you--its been pointed out, by some historian that prior to WWI, over 90% of the people living in UK lived and died with in 10 miles of their place of birth, and over 50% had never been more than 10 miles from home.
the Cheddar man( a bog man found in cheddar england) yeilded viable DNA. about 40% of the people in Cheddar are related to him! imagine! almost 1000 years after his death, there are still people in the area who share his DNA.
(the americas, (US, Canada and Mexico-and large parts of south america) are very different. there is lots of immigration, and lots of mobility.
(my mother can trace her family back 500 years in one city, dublin) me and my siblings were all born here in NYC, but
once neice and nephew were born in Japan, (another in VA) and my grandchildren in CA. how different our life is here. its not just technology, but how we live in our community. our bonds are so much looser..
yes, i know every living person is related to (pick famous personage from 2,000 years ago) but the odds are i am less related to any native americans (since i have european heritage) and i am no doubt related to about half the people living in ireland today, (my parents have a 500 year documented history living in dublin)
and curiously, while consuela and i aren't related, it seems likely that my kids and her kids are.. (they share a very unusual, made up family name, that date back to a single settler of NE.) in my kids case, it was their maternal great gradmother who had the name, (in consuela's childrens case, their father carried the name!)
The family is widely dispursed, (that can't be spelled right, but i have tried several combination and none looked right either!) with very few member left in NE, and large portions of the family in the western part of the US.
in the case of the cheddar man, it is unusally, not that he has close relations still alive, but that so many are still to be found in cheddar!
Maybe I saw a couple of them last night on the Travel Channel: the lady was in England--Buckinghamshire, I believe--and went to a cheese shop in or near Cheddar.
Synchronistically, I was just in my car running an errand and listening to a BBC Radio program about a huge gathering of people named Jones in Wales trying to break a Guinness record. There was a geneticist on explaining how these Joneses were all descended from men whose first name was John when the English forced the Welsh to take "regular" last names. He said they were no more likely to be related than the average degree of relatedness for Britain which is 6th cousins.