My
memory is
shady, and I haven't touched this stuff in a while, but this deserves at least a brief mention:
In the early days of the abbey, in the 11th century, a monk by the name of Jocelyn of Brakelond began to record the affairs of the chapter in what would later be called simply the Chronicle of Bury St. Edmunds. (Brief note for other Classics dorks: now survives completely only in a single manuscript in the British Museum collection, written in the 12th century and pasted into later volumes, written in a good, late insular minuscule in two columns, on vellum).
In it, Jocelyn details the transition of power from the Abbot Hugo to the Abbot Samson, and the mismanagement and wacky shenanigans which required the removal of the former and the installation of the latter. Hugo had blown his entire yearly budget for several years on entertaining guests to lavish banquets, while simply ignoring most day to day affairs. Monks, without any supervision and still required to complete their assigned tasks, would creep out of the abbey to the shrine of St. Edmund, upon which was hung a seal for use in business transactions by illiterate merchants, locals, and non-Christians, and would borrow money from Jewish bankers to pay for expenses. Unable to pay exorbitant interest-rates, the abbey started pawning off relics just to pay the bills, while avoiding inspection from local authorities through the purchase of papal exemptions. All the while, the Jewish bankers were getting screwed, since they couldn't attack the abbey or the order in court, and had no recourse to church intervention.
The second half of the book is a lot less interesting, basically about the now-blind Hugo taking a forced vacation to the Holy Land and Samson stepping in with disciplinary reforms.
All in all, a nice piece of social history, and well worth a read (there are several translations out there).