THE LAST DIVINE OFFICE

The magnificent Benedictine Durham Priory is the protagonist of this latest from historian Moorhouse (Great Harry’s Navy: How Henry VIII Gave England Seapower, 2006, etc.).

The priory serves as a focal point for the author’s elegiac history recounting King Henry VIII’s dissolution of England’s Catholic monasteries. After his break with Rome over the pope’s refusal to countenance his second marriage, the king took over the English church and disbanded hundreds of monastic communities in the 1530s and ’40s. The monks could remain in the religious life, if they accepted Henry’s spiritual leadership, or enter secular society. The dissolution was tremendously disruptive to English society. Monasteries like Durham had been vital centers of their communities, providing jobs, rental housing and crucial supply to, as well as demand for, local food markets. All those services, as well as charitable aid to the poor, were lost when Henry’s henchmen destroyed a monastery—and they destroyed quite a few. Durham survived—it’s the Anglican Durham Cathedral today—and Moorhouse revels in descriptions of its architectural splendor and the monks’ routine. His ladling of details is occasionally excessive, but the author’s gusto for his topic resonates like a Gregorian chant, and he draws his villains in all their outsized venality. Henry was a tyrant who practiced several of the deadly sins, including lust and greed. He hijacked the monasteries for their loot as much as for religious motives, needing to replenish an exchequer drained by his profligacy. Those who refused to cooperate with his makeover of the nation’s spiritual structure went to their deaths. The overseers of Durham capitulated, thus sparing from destruction a breathtaking monument to a past world. Moorhouse celebrates their acquiescence, if not their timidity.

Dense at times, but conducted with brio.