In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, however, it became necessary for the general good of each family to secure some kind of union.  The Chapter then came into existence, which was a representative body, composed of the heads of the different houses and ordinary monks regularly appointed as delegates.  To the Chapter were committed various matters of jurisdiction, and also the power of sending visitors to the different abbeys in the pope’s name.

Each society was ruled by an abbot, who governed in Christ’s stead.  Sometimes the members of the monastery were consulted, the older ones ordinarily, the whole congregation; in important matters.  But implicit obedience to the abbot, as the representative of God, was demanded by the vows.

The abbot was to be elected by the monks.  At various periods popes and princes usurped this power, but the monks always claimed the right as an original privilege.  Carlyle quotes Jocelin on Abbot Samson, who says that the monks of St. Edmundsbury were compelled to submit their choice to Henry II., who, looking at the committee of monks somewhat sternly, said:  “You present to me Samson; I do not know him; had it been your prior, whom I do know, I should have accepted him; however, I will now do as you wish.  But have a care of yourselves.  By the true eyes of God, if you manage badly, I will be upon you.”

In Walter Scott’s novel, “The Abbot,” there is an interesting contrast drawn between the ceremonies attending an abbot’s installation, when the monasteries were in their glory, and the pitiable scenes in the days of their decline, when Mary Stuart was a prisoner in Lochleven.  In the monastery of Kennaquhair, which had been despoiled by the fury of the times, a few monks were left to mourn the mutilated statues and weep over the fragments of richly-carved Gothic pillars.  Having secretly elected an abbot, they assembled in fear and trembling to invest him with the honors of his office.  “In former times,” says Scott, “this was one of the most splendid of the many pageants which the hierarchy of Rome had devised to attract the veneration of the faithful.  When the folding doors on such solemn occasions were thrown open, and the new abbot appeared on the threshold in full-blown dignity, with ring and mitre and dalmatique and crosier, his hoary standard-bearers and juvenile dispensers of incense preceding him, and the venerable train of monks behind him, his appearance was the signal for the magnificent jubilate to rise from the organ and the music-loft and to be joined by the corresponding bursts of ‘Alleluiah’ from the whole assembled congregation.

“Now all was changed.  Father Ambrose stood on the broken steps of the high altar, barefooted, as was the rule, and holding in his hand his pastoral staff, for the gemmed ring and jewelled mitre had become secular spoils.  No obedient vassals came, man after man, to make their homage and to offer the tribute which should provide their spiritual superior with palfrey and trappings.  No bishop assisted at the solemnity to receive into the higher ranks of the church nobility a dignitary whose voice in the legislature was as potent as his own.”