In July 1914 Knowles finished at Downside School and immediately moved into the monastery. He was clothed in the September and became a member of the monastic community, being given the religious name of David, by which he was always known thereafter. After completing the novitiate he was sent by the abbot to the Pontifical Athenaeum of St. Anselm in Rome for his theological studies. Returning to Downside, he was ordained a priest in 1922. His research into the early monastic history of England was assisted by the library built up at Downside by Dom Raymund Webster.[3]
Dom David Knowles became the leader of a faction of the younger monks of the abbey who wanted to resist the growing demands of the school on the pattern of monastic life at the abbey. They advocated a more contemplative life as the goal of their lives as monks. This effort led to a period of major conflict within the community and he was transferred to Ealing Abbey, another teaching establishment, where he resided 1933–1940.[4]
While pursuing his academic life at Cambridge, Knowles was eventually, at the instigation of Abbot Christopher Butler, exclaustrated from Downside Abbey and finally released from his vows. Before his death on 21 November 1974 from a heart attack,[8][9] however, he was readmitted to the order.[10]
Knowles is best known for his history of early English monasticism, The Monastic Order in England: A History of Its Development from the Times of St. Dunstan to the Fourth Lateran Council, 940–1216 (1940). His three-volume work, The Religious Orders in England (1948–1959), is also highly regarded by scholars in English medieval ecclesiastical history.[11] In 1962 he published a textbook, The Evolution of Medieval Thought (2nd ed. 1988), that "dominated medieval history courses in U.S. colleges for a quarter of a century".[12] He has been criticised for excluding nunneries from consideration in Medieval Religious Houses on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence to draw on (a lack remedied in more recent scholarship).[13]
Published works
The American Civil War: A Brief Sketch (1926)
The Monastic Order in England: A History of Its Development from the Times of St Dunstan to the Fourth Lateran Council, 943–1216 (1940, 2nd ed. 1963)
The Religious Houses of Medieval England (1940)
The Prospects of Medieval Studies (1947)
The Religious Orders in England (three volumes, forming a continuation after 1216 AD of The Monastic Order in England) (1948–59)
Archbishop Thomas Becket: A Character Study (1949)
Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc (1951) translator
Episcopal Colleagues of Archbishop Thomas Becket (1951) Ford Lectures 1949
Monastic Sites From The Air (1952) with J. S. K. St. Joseph
Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales, with R. Neville Hadcock (1953, 2nd ed. 1971)
The Historian and Character (1954) Inaugural Lecture
Charterhouse: The Medieval Foundation in the Light of Recent Discoveries (1954) with W. F. Grimes
Cardinal Gasquet as an Historian (1957)
The English Mystical Tradition (1961)
The Evolution of Medieval Thought (1962)
Saints and Scholars: Twenty-Five Medieval Portraits (1962)
The Benedictines: A Digest for Moderns (1962)
Great Historical Enterprises; Problems in Monastic History (1963)
The Historian and Character and Other Essays (1963) with others, presentation volume
Lord Macaulay, 1800–1859 (1963)
From Pachomius to Ignatius: A Study in the Constitutional History of the Religious Orders (1966)
The Nature of Mysticism (1966)
What is Mysticism? (1967)
Authority (1969)
Christian Monasticism (1969)
The Christian Centuries: The Middle Ages, volume 2 (1969) with Dimitri Obolensky
The Heads of Religious Houses: England and Wales, 940–1216 (1972) with Christopher N. L. Brooke, Vera C. M. London
Bare Ruined Choirs: The Dissolution of the English Monasteries (1976)
^Gorman, Sara (2011). "Anglo-Norman Hagiography as Institutional Historiography: Saints' Lives in Late Medieval Campsey Ash Priory". Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures. 37 (2): 110–128. doi:10.5325/jmedirelicult.37.2.0110. eISSN2153-9650. ISSN1947-6566.. See also Thompson, Sally (1984). "Why English Nunneries Had No History: A Study of the Problems of the English Nunneries Founded After the Conquest". In Nichols, J. A.; Shank, L. T. (eds.). Distant Echoes: Medieval Religious Women. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications. pp. 131–49.
Cantor, Norman F., ed. (1991). Inventing the Middle Ages: The Lives, Works, and Ideas of the Great Medievalists of the Twentieth Century. New York: William Morrow and Co.
Ellis, John Tracy (1983). "Review of David Knowles: A Memoir by Adrian Morey". The Catholic Historical Review. 69 (1). Washington: Catholic University of America Press: 87–89. ISSN1534-0708. JSTOR25021547.
Lovatt, Roger (1991). "David Knowles and Peterhouse". In Brooke, Christopher; Lovatt, Roger; Luscombe, David; Sillem, Aelred (eds.). David Knowles Remembered. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 82–122. ISBN978-0-521-37233-6.
Knowles, Michael David; Gilson, Étienne Henry (1991). "After the Fall". In Cantor, Norman F. (ed.). Inventing the Middle Ages: The Lives, Works, and Ideas of the Great Medievalists of the Twentieth Century. New York: William Morrow and Co.
Morey, Adrian (1979). David Knowles: A Memoir. London: Darton, Longman & Todd. ISBN978-0-232-51435-3.
