St. Gilbert originally wanted to found a men's order, but found that to be impossible. Instead, he accepted seven women, whom he had taught in the village school and founded the a women's order based on the Cistercian Rule in 1131.
Eventually he added lay sisters to do daily chores, so that the nuns could attend to their duties, and lay brothers to do the hardest work in the fields. In 1139 the small order opened its first new foundation on the island of Haverholm, a gift from Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln. Over the years more and more foundations were established, and Gilbert soon became overwhelmed. He left England for the Continent to seek assistance.
Layout
Each Gilbertine priory had one church, divided unevenly by a wall. The nuns had the larger part, and the canons the smaller. The latter would join the nuns only to give mass. From the church, the nunnery was normally to the north, and the canons' dwellings to the south.
Lay Brothers
One source of perpetual pain for Gilbert were the lay brothers. These came purposely from low peasant families, because they spent their days working hard on the farms and in the fields. The problem was that they did not take well to discipline and needed a firm hand to guide them. There seem to have been many instances of insubordination and scandal from them, and of these two stand out:
The Nun of Watton
In the mid-twelfth century, a girl was brought to the Priory of Watton as a child, but had no real religious vocation. This Nun of Watton became pregnant by a lay brother, who fled, but was brought back for punishment. The other nuns then made the girl castrate him, and then stuck the removed parts down her throat. They then chained her up, where she mysteriously lost the baby. It is said that Henry Murdac, the Archbishop of York and the man who had brought her to the priory, appeared with two heavenly women who cleansed the girl's body of her sin and her pregnancy. Her chains then fell off. St Aelred of Rievaulx was called in to investigate and declared it to be a miracle. However, he was also intensely critical of the Nun's fellow sisters and Gilbert of Sempringham himself for their lack of pastoral care.
The Sempringham Revolt
Towards the end of Gilbert's life, when he was around 90 years old, some of the lay brothers in Sempringham rose up against him, complaining of too much work and too little food. The rebels, led by two skilled craftsmen, received money from both religious and secular backers and took the case to Rome. Pope Alexander III ruled in Gilbert's favour, but the living conditions of the lay brothers were improved thereafter.
The Middle Ages
The Gibertine order was always popular. They were the final homes of the last members of the Welsh royal family, young daughters, after the rest had been defeated and killed in the 1280s. King after king gave the order liberal charters, yet it always had financial problems. By the end of the 15th century the order was greatly impoverished, and Henry VI exempted all of its houses from paying taxes or any other sort of payment. He could not and did not force his successors to do the same.
Dissolution
By the time of the Dissolution, there were 26 houses of Gilbertines, but only four were ranked as "greater houses" with annual incomes of over £200. These gave in without a fight and surrendered "of their own free will" in 1538. Each nun and canon then received a pension for the rest of their days. The last prior of all, Robert Holgate, Bishop of Llandaff, was promoted to Archbishop of York in 1545. The Gilbertines were the one truly English order, so the Dissolution marked its permanent end.
Legacy
The Gilbertine legacy remains quite small; only 15 extant manuscripts are associated with the order, attached to five of the Gilbertine houses. Four additional works ascribed to Gilbertine members, but not surviving in Gilbertine copies, include the Vita of Gilbert of Sempringham, the Gilbertine Rule, the so-called 'Sempringham Continuation' to Le Livere de Reis Engleterre, and the works of Robert Mannyng.
Bibliography
Brian Golding: Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertine Order: Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1995: ISBN 0198200609
"Gilbertine Order".
