GRANGIA. - It is a Benedictine and especially Cistercian organization of persons and economic assets, displaying the characteristics of a large lowland agricultural enterprise, in which all the economic roles of production—that is, those of owner, entrepreneur, and worker—are united in abbey (v.).
The economic asset is represented by landed capital, which comes to the abbey through donation or purchase. The persons are the monks and the lay brothers, to whom wage labourers are added. The g., sometimes consisting of several farmsteads, are independent of one another, but together form a social unit under the authority of the abbot and an economic unit dependent on the cellarer or administrator of the abbey’s property. The abbot is represented in the g. by a « præpositus prior » (rector of the farm chapel), and the cellarer by a grange monk or farm manager. The latter directs the agricultural work and is responsible for the purchases and sales pertaining to his g.
It is important to note that the Benedictine g., protected by numerous safeguards—though in truth these were not always respected—together with the smaller monastic structures constituted the only isolated medieval rural buildings, situated at the economic centre of the estate.