Religious Patronage
Lucy, as widowed countess, founded the convent of Stixwould in 1135, becoming, in the words of one historian, "one of the few aristocratic women of the late eleventh and twelfth centuryes to achieve the role of independent lay founder". Her religious patronage however centered on Spalding Priory, a religious house for which her own family was the primary patron. This house (a monastic cell of Crowland) was founded, or re-founded, in 1085 by Lucy and her first husband Ivo Taillebois.
Later, she was responsible for many endowments, for instance in the 1120s she and her third husband Earl Ranulf granted the priory the churches of Minting, Belchford and Scamblesby. In 1135, Lucy, now widowed for the last time, granted the priory her own manor of Spalding for the permanent use of the monks. The records indicate that Lucy went to great effort to ensure that, after her own death, her sons would honour and uphold her gifts.
Read more about this topic: Lucy Of Bolingbroke
Famous quotes containing the words religious and/or patronage:
“I have been grateful to you from the day you turned your attention to the follies and fanaticisms of religious sects. Against those fools and impostors you employ the most appropriate weapons: to use others would be to imitate them. It is by ridicule that they must be attacked, and by scorn that they must be punished.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“She loved money, but could occasionally part with it, especially to men of learning, whose patronage she affected. She often conversed with them, and bewildered herself in their metaphysical disputes, which neither she nor they themselves understood.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)