THE CONVENT.
Having thus given a sketch of the history of the various monastic orders in England, we proceed to give some account of the constitution of a convent, taking that of a Benedictine monastery as a type, from which the other orders departed only in minor particulars.
Theconventis the name especially appropriate to the body of individuals who composed a religious community. These were the body of cloister monks, lay and clerical; the professed brethren, who were also lay and clerical; the clerks; the novices; and the servants and artificers. The servants and artificers were of course taken from the lower ranks of society; all the rest were originally of the most various degrees of rank and social position. We constantly meet with instances of noble men and women, knights and ladies, minstrels and merchants, quitting their secular occupations at various periods of their life, and taking the religious habit; some of them continuing simply professed brethren, others rising to high offices in their order. Scions of noble houses were not infrequently entered at an early age as novices, either devoted to the religious life by the piety of their parents, or, with more worldly motives, thus provided with a calling and a maintenance; and sometimes considerable interest was used to procure the admittance of novices into the great monasteries. Again, the children of the poor were received into the monastic schools, and such as showed peculiar aptitude were sometimes at length admitted as monks,[55]and were eligible, and were often chosen, to the highest ecclesiastical dignities.
The whole convent was under the government of theabbot, who, however, was bound to govern according to the rule of the order. Sometimes he was elected by the convent; sometimes the king or some patron had a share in the election. Frequently there were estates attached to the office, distinct from those of the convent; sometimes the abbot had only an allowance out of the convent estates; but always he had great power over the property of the convent, and bad abbots are frequently accused of wasting the property of the house, and enriching their relatives and friends out of it. The abbots of some of the more important houses were mitred abbots, and were summoned to Parliament. In the time of Henry VIII. twenty-four abbots and the prior of Coventry had seats in the House of Peers.[56]
The abbot did not live in common with his monks; he had a separate establishment of his own within the precincts of the house, sometimes over the entrance gate, called the Abbot’s Lodgings.[57]He ate in his own hall, slept in his own chamber, had a chapel, or oratory, for his private devotions, and accommodation for a retinue of chaplains and servants. His duty was to set to his monks an example of observance of the rule, to keep them to its observance, to punish breaches of it, to attend the services in church when not hindered by his other duties, to preach on holy days to the people, to attend chapter and preach on the rule, to act as confessor to the monks. But an abbot was also involved in many secular duties; there were manors of his own, and of the convent’s, far and near, which required visiting; and these manors involved the abbot in all the numerousduties which the feudal system devolved upon a lord towards his tenants, and towards his feudal superior. The greater abbots were barons, and sometimes were thus involved in such duties as those of justices in eyre, military leaders of their vassals, peers of Parliament. Hospitality was one of the great monastic virtues. The usual regulation in convents was that the abbot should entertain all guests of gentle degree, while the convent entertained all others. This again found abundance of occupation for my lord abbot in performing all the offices of a courteous host, which seems to have been done in a way becoming his character as a lord of wealth and dignity; his table was bountifully spread, even if he chose to confine himself to pulse and water; a band of wandering minstrels was always welcome to the abbot’s hall to entertain his gentle and fair guests; and his falconer could furnish a cast of hawks, and his forester a leash of hounds, and the lord abbot would not decline to ride by the river or into his manor parks to witness and to share in the sport. In the Harl. MS. 1,527, at fol. 108 (?), is a picture of an abbot on horseback casting off a hawk from his fist. A pretty little illustration of this abbatial hospitality occurs in Marie’s “Lay of Ywonec.”[58]A baron and his family are travelling in obedience to the royal summons, to keep one of the high festivals at Caerleon. In the course of their journey they stop for a night at a spacious abbey, where they are received with the greatest hospitality. “The good abbot, for the sake of detaining his guests during another day, exhibited to them the whole of the apartments, the dormitory, the refectory, and the chapter-house, in which last they behelda splendid tomb covered with a superb pall fringed with gold, surrounded by twenty waxen tapers in golden candlesticks, while a vast silver censer, constantly burning, filled the air with fumes of incense.”
A Benedictine Abbot.
An abbot’s ordinary habit was the same as that of his monks. In the processions which were made on certain great feasts he held his crosier, and, if he were a mitred abbot, he wore his mitre: this was also his parliamentary costume. We give on the opposite page a beautiful drawing of a Benedictine abbot of St. Alban’s, thus habited, from theCatalogus Benefactorumof that abbey. When the abbot celebrated high mass on certain great festivals he wore the full episcopal costume. Thomas Delamere, abbot of St. Alban’s, is so represented in his magnificent sepulchral brass in that abbey, executed in his lifetime, circa 1375A.D.Richard Bewferest, abbot of the Augustine canons of Dorchester, Oxfordshire, has a brass in that church, date circa 1520A.D., representing him in episcopal costume, bareheaded, with his staff; and in the same church is an incised gravestone, representing Abbot Roger, circa 1510A.D., in full episcopal vestments. Abbesses bore the crosier in addition to the ordinal costume of their order; the sepulchral brass of Elizabeth Harvey, abbess of the Benedictine Abbey of Elstow, Bedfordshire, circa 1530A.D., thus represents her, in thechurch of that place. Our representation of a Benedictine abbess on the previous page is from the fourteenth century MS. Royal, 2 B. vii.
Benedictine Abbess and Nun.
Under the abbot were a number of officials (obedientiarii), the chief of whom were the Prior, Precentor, Cellarer, Sacrist, Hospitaller, Infirmarer, Almoner, Master of the Novices, Porter, Kitchener, Seneschal, &c. It was only in large monasteries that all these officers were to be found; in the smaller houses one monk would perform the duties of several offices. The officers seem to have been elected by the convent, subject to the approval of the abbot, by whom they might be deposed. Some brief notes of the duties of these obedientiaries will serve to give a considerable insight into the economy of a convent. And first for thePrior:—
In some orders there was only one abbey, and all the other houses were priories, as in the Clugniac, the Gilbertine, and in the Military and the Mendicant orders. In all the orders there were abbeys, which had had distant estates granted to them, on which either the donor had built a house, and made it subject to the abbey; or the abbey had built a house for the management of the estates, and the celebration of divine and charitable offices upon them. These priories varied in size, from a mere cell containing a prior and two monks, to an establishment as large as an abbey; and the dignity and power of the prior varied from that of a mere steward of the distant estate of the parent house, to that of an autocratic head, only nominally dependent on the parent house, and himself in everything but name an abbot.
The majority of the female houses of the various orders (except those which were especially female orders, like the Brigittines, &c.) were kept subject to some monastery, so that the superiors of these houses usually bore only the title of prioress, though they had the power of an abbess in the internal discipline of the house. One cannot forbear to quote at least a portion of Chaucer’s very beautiful description of his prioress, among the Canterbury pilgrims:—
“That of her smiling ful simple was and coy.”
She sang the divine service sweetly; she spoke French correctly, though with an accent which savoured of the Benedictine convent at Stratford-le-Bow,where she had been educated, rather than of Paris; she behaved with lady-like delicacy at table; she was cheerful of mood, and amiable; with a pretty affectation of courtly breeding, and a care to exhibit a reverend stateliness becoming her office:—
“But for to speken of her conscience,She was so charitable and so piteous,She would wepe if that she saw a mouseCaught in a trappe, if it were dead or bled;Of smalé houndés had she that she fedWith rosted flesh, and milk, and wastel bread;But sore wept she if one of them were dead,Or if men smote it with a yerdé smerte;And all was conscience and tendre herte.Ful semély her wimple y-pinched was;Her nose tretis,[59]her eyen grey as glass,Her mouth full small, and thereto soft and red,And sickerly she had a fayre forehed—It was almost a spanné broad I trow,And hardily she was not undergrow.”[60]
Her habit was becoming; her beads were of red coral gauded with green, to which was hung a jewel of gold, on which was—
“Written a crowned A,And after,Amor vincit omnia.Another nun also with her had she,That was her chapelleine, and priestés three.”
But in abbeys the chief of the obedientiaries was styled prior; and we cannot, perhaps, give a better idea of his functions than by borrowing a naval analogy, and calling him the abbot’s first lieutenant; for, like that officer in a ship, the prior at all times carried on the internal discipline of the convent, and in the abbot’s absence he was his vicegerent; wielding all the abbot’s powers, except those of making or deposing obedientiaries and consecrating novices. He had a suite of apartments of his own, called the prior’s chamber, or the prior’s lodging; he could leave the house for a day or two on the business of the house, and had horses and servants appropriated to his use; whenever he entered the monks present rose out ofrespect; some little license in diet was allowed him in refectory, and he might also have refreshment in his own apartments; sometimes he entertained guests of a certain condition in his prior’s chamber. Neither the prior, nor any of the obedientiaries, wore any distinctive dress or badge of office. In large convents he was assisted by a sub-prior.
TheSub-priorwas the prior’s deputy, sharing his duties in his residence, and fulfilling them in his absences. The especial functions appropriated to him seem to have been to say grace at dinner and supper, to see that all the doors were locked at five in the evening, and keep the keys until five next morning; and, by sleeping near the dormitory door, and by making private search, to prevent wandering about at night. In large monasteries there were additional sub-priors.
TheChantor, orPrecentor, appears to come next in order and dignity, since we are told that he was censed after the abbot and prior. He was choir-master; taught music to the monks and novices; and arranged and ruled everything which related to the conduct of divine service. His place in church was in the middle of the choir on the right side; he held an instrument in his hand, as modern leaders use a bâton; and his side of the choir commenced the chant. He was besides librarian, and keeper of the archives, and keeper of the abbey seal.
He was assisted by aSuccentor, who sat on the left side of the choir, and led that half of the choir in service. He assisted the chantor, and in his absence undertook his duties.
TheCellarerwas in fact the steward of the house; his modern representative is the bursar of a college. He had the care of everything relating to the provision of the food and vessels of the convent. He was exempt from the observance of some of the services in church; he had the use of horses and servants for the fulfilment of his duties, and sometimes heappears to have had separate apartments. The cellarer, as we have said, wore no distinctive dress or badge; but in theCatalogus Benefactorumof St. Alban’s there occurs a portrait of one “Adam Cellarius,” who for his distinguished merit had been buried among the abbots in the chapter-house, and had his name and effigy recorded in theCatalogus; he is holding two keys in one hand and a purse in the other, the symbols of his office; and in his quaint features—so different from those of the dignified abbot whom we have given from the same book—the limner seems to have given us the type of a business-like and not ungenial cellarer.
Adam the Cellarer.
TheSacrist, orSacristan(whence our word sexton), had the care and charge of the fabric, and furniture, and ornaments of the church, and generally of all the material appliances of divine service. He, or some one in his stead, slept in a chamber built for him in the church, in order to protect it during the night. There is such a chamber in St. Alban’s Abbey Church, engraved in theBuilderfor August, 1856. There was often a sub-sacrist to assist the sacrist in his duties.
The duty of theHospitallerwas, as his name implies, to perform the duties of hospitality on behalf of the convent. The monasteries received all travellers to food and lodging for a day and a night as of right, and for a longer period if the prior saw reason to grant it.[61]A special hall was provided for the entertainment of these guests, and chambers for their accommodation. The hospitaller performed the part of host on behalf of the convent, saw to the accommodation of the guests who belonged to the convent, introduced into the refectory strange priests or others who desired and had leave to dine there, and ushered guests of degree to the abbot to be entertained by him. He showed the church and house at suitable times to guests whose curiosity prompted the desire.
Every abbey had an infirmary, which was usually a detached building with its own kitchen and chapel, besides suitable apartments for the sick,and for aged monks, who sometimes took up their permanent residence in the infirmary, and were excused irksome duties, and allowed indulgences in food and social intercourse. Not only the sick monks, but other sick folk were received into the infirmary; it is a very common incident in mediæval romances to find a wounded knight carried to a neighbouring monastery to be healed. The officer who had charge of everything relating to this department was styled theInfirmarer. He slept in the infirmary, was excused from some of the “hours;” in the great houses had two brethren to assist him besides the necessary servants, and often a clerk learned in pharmacy as physician.
TheAlmonerhad charge of the distribution of the alms of the house. Sometimes money was left by benefactors to be distributed to the poor annually at their obits; the distribution of this was confided to the almoner. One of his men attended in the abbot’s chamber when he had guests, to receive what alms they chose to give to the poor. Moneys belonging to the convent were also devoted to this purpose; besides food and drink, the surplus of the convent meals. He had assistants allowed him to go and visit the sick and infirm folk of the neighbourhood. And at Christmas he provided cloth and shoes for widows, orphans, poor clerks, and others whom he thought to need it most.
TheMaster of the Noviceswas a grave and learned monk, who superintended the education of the youths in the schools of the abbey, and taught the rule to those who were candidates for the monastic profession.
ThePorterwas an officer of some importance; he was chosen for his age and gravity; he had an apartment in the gate lodge, an assistant, and a lad to run on his messages. But sometimes the porter seems to have been a layman. And, in small houses and in nunneries, his office involved other duties, which we have seen in great abbeys distributed among a number of officials. Thus, in Marie’s “Lay le Fraine,” we read of the porter of an abbey of nuns:—
“The porter of the abbey arose,And did his office in the close;Rung the bells, and tapers light,Laid forth books and all ready dight.The church door he undid,” &c.;
and in the sequel it appears that he had a daughter, and therefore in all probability was a layman.
TheKitchener, orCook, was usually a monk, and, as his name implies, he ruled in the kitchen, went to market, provided the meals of the house, &c.
Alan Middleton.
TheSeneschalin great abbeys was often a layman of rank, who did the secular business which the tenure of large estates, and consequently of secular offices, devolved upon abbots and convents; such as holding manorial courts, and the like. But there was, Fosbroke tells us, another officer with the same name, but of inferior dignity, who did the convent business of the prior and cellarer which was to be done out of the house; and, when at home, carried a rod and acted as marshal of the guest-hall. He had horses and servants allowed for the duties of his office; and at the Benedictine Abbey of Winchcombe he had a robe of clerk’s cloth once a year, with lamb’s fur for a supertunic, and for a hood of budge fur; he had the same commons in hall as the cellarer, and £2 every year at Michaelmas. Probably an officer of this kind was Alan Middleton, who is recorded in theCatalogusof St. Alban’s as“collector of rents of the obedientiaries of that monastery, and especially of those of the bursar.”Prudenter in omnibus se agebat, and so, deserving well of the house, they put a portrait of him among their benefactors, clothed in a blue robe, of “clerk’s cloth” perhaps, furred at the wrists and throat with “lamb’s fur” or “budge fur;” a small tonsure shows that he had taken some minor order, the penner and inkhorn at his girdle denote the nature of his office; and he is just opening the door of one of the abbey tenants to perform his unwelcome function. They were grateful men, these Benedictines of St. Alban’s; they have immortalised another of their inferior officers,Walterus de Hamuntesham, fidelis minister hujus ecclesiæ, because on one occasion he received a beating at the hands of the rabble of St. Alban’s—inter villanos Sci Albani—while standing up for the rights and liberties of the church.
Walter of Hamuntesham attacked by a Mob.
Next in dignity after the obedientiaries come theCloister Monks; of these some had received holy orders at the hands of the bishop, some not. Their number was limited. A cloister monk in a rich abbey seems to have been something like in dignity to the fellow of a modern college, and agood deal of interest was sometimes employed to obtain the admission of a youth as a novice, with a view to his ultimately arriving at this dignified degree. Next in order come theProfessed Brethren. These seem to be monks who had not been elected to the dignity of cloister monks; some of them were admitted late in life. Those monks who had been brought up in the house were callednutriti, those who came later in lifeconversi; the lay brothers were also sometimes calledconversi. There were again theNovices, who were not all necessarily young, for aconversuspassed through a noviciate; and even a monk of another order, or of another house of their own order, and even a monk from a cell of their own house, was reckoned among the novices. There were also theChaplainsof the abbot and other high officials; and frequently there were other clerics living in the monastery, who served the chantries in the abbey church, and the churches and chapels which belonged to the monastery and were in its neighbourhood. Again, there were theArtificers and Servantsof the monastery: millers, bakers, tailors, shoemakers, smiths, and similar artificers, were often a part of a monastic establishment. And there were numerous men-servants, grooms, and the like: these were all under certain vows, and were kept under discipline. In the Cistercian abbey of Waverley there were in 1187A.D.seventy monks and one hundred and twentyconversi, besides priests, clerks, servants, &c. In the great Benedictine abbey of St. Edmund’s Bury, in the time of Edward I., there were eighty monks; fifteen chaplains attendant on the abbot and chief officers; about one hundred and eleven servants in the various offices, chiefly residing within the walls of the monastery; forty priests, officiating in the several chapels, chantries, and monastic appendages in the town; and an indefinite number of professed brethren. The following notes will give an idea of the occupations of the servants. In the time of William Rufus the servants at Evesham numbered—five in the church, two in the infirmary, two in the cellar, five in the kitchen, seven in the bakehouse, four brewers, four menders, two in the bath, two shoemakers, two in the orchard, three gardeners, one at the cloister gate, two at the great gate, five at the vineyard, four who served the monks when they went out, four fishermen, four in the abbot’s chamber, three in thehall. At Salley Abbey, at the end of the fourteenth century, there were about thirty-five servants, among whom are mentioned the shoemaker and barber, the prior’s chamberlain, the abbot’s cook, the convent cook and baker’s mate, the baker, brewers, tailor, cowherd, waggoners, pages of the kitchen, poultry-keeper, labourers, a keeper of animals and birds, bailiffs, foresters, shepherds, smiths: there are others mentioned by name, without a note of their office. But it was only a few of the larger houses which had such numerous establishments as these; the majority of the monasteries contained from five to twenty cloister monks. Some of the monasteries were famous as places of education, and we must add to their establishment a number of children of good family, and the learned clerks or ladies who acted as tutors; thus the abbey of St. Mary, Winchester, in 1536, contained twenty-six nuns, five priests, thirteen lay sisters, thirty-two officers and servants, and twenty-six children, daughters of lords and knights, who were brought up in the house.
Lastly, there were a number of persons of all ranks and conditions who were admitted to “fraternity.” Among the Hospitallers (and probably it was the same with the other orders) they took oath to love the house and brethren, to defend the house from ill-doers, to enter that house if they did enter any, and to make an annual present to the house. In return, they were enrolled in the register of the house, they received the prayers of the brethren, and at death were buried in the cemetery. Chaucer’s Dominican friar (p. 48), writes the names of those who gave him donations in his “tables.” In the following extract from Piers Ploughman’s Creed, an Austin friar promises more definitely to have his donors enrolled in the fraternity of his house:—
“And gyf thou hast any good,And will thyself helpen,Help us herblich therewith.And here I undertake,Thou shalt ben brother of oure hous,And a book habben,At the next chapetre,Clerliche enseled.And then our provincialHath power to assoylenAlle sustren and brethrenThat beth of our ordre.”Piers Ploughman’s Creed, p. 645.
In the book of St. Alban’s, which we have before quoted, there is a list of many persons, knights and merchants, ladies and children, vicars and rectors, receivedad fraternitatem hujus monasterii. In many cases portraits of them are given: they are in the ordinary costume of their time and class, without any badge of their monastic fraternisation.
Chaucer gives several sketches which enable us to fill out our realisation of the monks, as they appeared outside the cloister associating with their fellow-men. He includes one among the merry company of his Canterbury pilgrims; and first in the Monk’s Prologue, makes the Host address the monk thus:—
“‘My lord, the monk,’ quod he ...‘By my trothe I can not tell youre name.Whether shall I call you my Lord Dan John,Or Dan Thomas, or elles Dan Albon?Of what house be ye by your father kin?I vow to God thou hast a full fair skin;It is a gentle pasture ther thou goest,Thou art not like a penaunt[62]or a ghost.Upon my faith thou art some officer,Some worthy sextern or some celerer.For by my father’s soul, as to my dome,Thou art a maister when thou art at home;No poure cloisterer, ne non novice,But a governor both ware and wise.’”
Chaucer himself describes the same monk in his Prologue thus:—
“A monk there was, a fayre for the maisterie,An out-rider that lovered venerie,[63]A manly man to be an abbot able.Ful many a dainty horse had he in stable;And when he rode men might his bridle hearGingling in a whistling wind as clear,And eke as loud as doth the chapel bell,Whereas this lord was keeper of the cell.The rule of Saint Maur and of Saint Benet,Because that it was old and somedeal strait,This ilke monk let olde thinges pace,And held after the newe world the trace.He gave not of the text a pulled hen,That saith, that hunters been not holy men;Ne that a monk, when he is regneless,[64]Is like a fish that is waterless;That is to say, a monk out of his cloister:This ilke text he held not worth an oyster.And I say his pinion was good.Why should he study, and make himselven wood,Upon a book in cloister alway to pore,Or swinkin with his handis, and labour,As Austin bid? How shall the world be served?Therefore he was a prickasoure aright:Greyhounds he had as swift as fowls of flight;Of pricking and of hunting for the hareWas all his lust, for no cost would he spare.I saw his sleeves purfled at the handWith gris, and that the finest of the land.And for to fasten his hood under his chinHe had of gold y-wrought a curious pin:A love-knot in the greater end there was.******His bootis supple, his horse in great estate;Now certainly he was a fair prelate.”
Again, in the “Shipman’s Tale” we learn that such an officer had considerable freedom, so that he was able to pay very frequent visits to his friends. The whole passage is worth giving:—
“A marchant whilom dwelled at St. Denise,That riche was, for which men held him wise.******This noble marchant held a worthy house,For which he had all day so great repairFor his largesse, and for his wife was fair.What wonder is? but hearken to my tale.Amonges all these guestes great and smallThere was a monk, a fair man and a bold,I trow a thirty winters he was old,That ever anon was drawing to that place.This youngé monk that was so fair of face,Acquainted was so with this goodé man,Sithen that their firste knowledge began,That in his house as familiar was heAs it possible is any friend to be.And for as mochel as this goodé man,And eke this monk, of which that I began,Were bothé two y-born in one village,The monk him claimeth as for cosinage;And he again him said not onés nay,But was as glad thereof, as fowl of day;For to his heart it was a great plesaunce;Thus ben they knit with eterne alliance,And eche of them gan other for to ensureOf brotherhood, while that life may endure.”
Notwithstanding his vow of poverty, he was also able to make presents to his friends, for the tale continues:—
“Free was Dan John, and namely of despenceAs in that house, and full of diligenceTo don plesaunce, and also great costage;He not forgat to give the leaste pageIn all that house, but, after their degree,He gave the lord, and sithen his mennie,When that he came, some manner honest thing;For which they were as glad of his comingAs fowl is fain when that the sun upriseth.”
Chaucer does not forget to let us know how it was that this monk came to have such liberty and such command of means:—
“This noble monk, of which I you devise,Hath of his abbot, as him list, licence(Because he was a man of high prudence,And eke an officer), out for to rideTo see their granges and their barnés wide.”
THE MONASTERY.
We proceed next to give some account of the buildings which compose the fabric of a monastery. And first as to the site. The orders of the Benedictine family preferred sites as secluded and remote from towns and villages as possible. The Augustinian orders did not cultivate seclusion so strictly; their houses are not unfrequently near towns and villages, and sometimes a portion of their conventual church—the nave, generally—formed the parish church. The Friaries, Colleges of secular canons, and Hospitals, were generally in or near the towns. There is a popular idea that the monks chose out the most beautiful and fertile spots in the kingdom for their abodes. A little reflection would show that the choice of the site of a new monastery must be confined within the limits of the lands which the founder was pleased to bestow upon the convent. Sometimes the founder gave a good manor, and gave money besides, to help to build the house upon it; sometimes what was given was a tract of unreclaimed land, upon which the first handful of monks squatted like settlers in a new country. Even the settled land, in those days, was only half cultivated; and on good land, unreclaimed or only half reclaimed, the skill and energy of a company of first-rate farmers would soon produce great results; barren commons would be dotted over with sheep, and rushy valleys would become rich pastures covered with cattle, and great clearings in the forest would grow green with rye and barley. The revenues of the monastic estates would rapidly augment; little of them would be required for the coarse dress and frugal fare of the monks; they did not, like the lay landowners, spend them on gilded armour and jewelled robes, and troopsof armed retainers, and tournaments, and journeys to court; and so they had enough for plentiful charity and unrestricted hospitality, and the surplus they spent upon those magnificent buildings whose very ruins are among the architectural glories of the land. The Cistercians had an especial rule that their houses should be built on the lowest possible sites, in token of humility; but it was the general custom in the Middle Ages to choose low and sheltered sites for houses which were not especially intended as strongholds, and therefore it is that we find nearly all monasteries in sheltered spots. To the monks the neighbourhood of a stream was of especial importance: when headed up it supplied a pond for their fish, and water-power for their corn-mill. If, therefore, there were within the limits of their domain a quiet valley with a rivulet running through it, that was the site which the monks would select for their house. And here, beside the rivulet, in the midst of the green pasture land of the valley dotted with sheep and kine, shut in from the world by the hills, whose tops were fringed with the forest which stretched for miles around, the stately buildings of the monastery would rise year after year; the cloister court, and the great church, and the abbot’s lodge, and the numerous offices, all surrounded by a stone wall with a stately gate-tower, like a goodly walled town, and a suburban hamlet of labourers’ and servants’ cottages sheltering beneath its walls.
There was a certain plan for the arrangement of the principal buildings of a monastery, which, with minor variations, was followed by nearly all the monastic orders, except the Carthusians. These latter differed from the other orders in this, that each monk had his separate cell, in which he lived, and ate, and slept apart from the rest, the whole community meeting only in church and chapter.[65]Our limits will not permit us to enter into exceptional arrangements.
The nucleus of a monastery was the cloister court. It was a quadrangular space of green sward, around which were arranged the cloister buildings, viz., the church, the chapter-house, the refectory, and the dormitory.[66]The court was called the Paradise—the blessed garden in which the inmates passed their lives of holy peace. A porter was often placed at the cloister-gate, and the monks might not quit its seclusion, nor strangers enter to disturb its quiet, save under exceptional circumstances.
The cloister-court had generally, though it is doubtful whether it was always the case, a covered ambulatory round its four sides. The ambulatories of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries have usually an open arcade on the side facing the court, which supports the groined roof. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, instead of an open arcade, we usually find a series of large traceried windows, tolerably close together; in many cases they were glazed, sometimes with painted glass, and formed doubtless a grand series of scriptural or historical paintings. The blank wall opposite was also sometimes painted. This covered ambulatory was not merely a promenade for the monks; it was the place in which the convent assembled regularly every day, at certain hours, for study and meditation; and in some instances (e.g., at Durham) a portion of it was fitted up with little wooden closets for studies for the elder monks, with book-cupboards in the wall opposite for books. The monks were sometimes buried in the cloister, either under the turf in the open square, or beneath the pavement of the ambulatory. There was sometimes a fountain at the corner of the cloister, or on its south side near the entrance to the refectory, at which the monks washed before meals.
The church was always the principal building of a monastery. Many of them remain entire, though despoiled of their shrines, and tombs, and altars, and costly furniture, and many more remain in ruins, and they fill us with astonishment at their magnitude and splendour. Our existing cathedrals were, in fact, abbey churches; nine or ten of them were the churches of Benedictine monasteries, the remainder of secular Augustines. But these, the reader may imagine, had the wealth of bishops and the offerings of dioceses lavished upon them, and may not be therefore fair examples of ordinary abbey churches. But some of them originally were ordinary abbey churches, and were subsequently made Episcopal sees, such as Beverley, Gloucester, Christ Church Oxford, and Peterborough, which were originally Benedictine abbey churches; Bristol was the church of a house of regular canons; Ripon was the church of a college of secular canons. The Benedictine churches of Westminster and St. Alban’s, and the collegiate church of Southwell, are equal in magnitude and splendour to any of the cathedrals; and the ruins of Fountains, and Tintern, and Netley, show that the Cistercians equalled any of the other orders in the magnitude and beauty of their churches.
It is indeed hard to conceive that communities of a score or two of monks should have built such edifices as Westminster and Southwell as private chapels attached to their monasteries. And this, though it is one aspect of the fact, is not the true one. They did not build them for private chapels to say their daily prayers in; they built them for temples in which they believed that the Eternal and Almighty condescended to dwell; to whose contemplation and worship they devoted their lives. They did not think of the church as an appendage to their monastery, but of their monastery as an appendage to the church. The cloister, under the shadow and protection of the church, was the court of the Temple, in which its priests and Levites dwelt.
The church of a monastery was almost always a cross church, with a nave and aisles; a central tower (in Cistercian churches the tower was only to rise one story above the roof); transepts, which usually have three chapels on the north side of each transept, or an aisle divided into three chapels by parclose screens; a choir with or without aisles; aretro-choir or presbytery; and often a Lady chapel, east of the presbytery, or in some instances parallel with the choir.
The entrance for the monks was usually on the south side opposite to the eastern alley of the cloisters; there was also in Cistercian churches, and in some others, a newel stair in the south transept, by means of which the monks could descend from their dormitory (which was in the upper story of the east side of the cloister court) into the church for the night services, without going into the open air. The principal entrance for the laity was on the north side, and was usually provided with a porch. The great western entrance was chiefly used for processions; the great entrance gate in the enclosure wall of the abbey being usually opposite to it or nearly so. In several instances stones have been found, set in the pavements of the naves of conventual churches, to mark the places where the different members of the convent were to stand before they issued forth in procession, amidst the tolling of the great bell, with cross and banner, and chanted psalms, to meet the abbot at the abbey-gate, on his return from an absence, or any person to whom it was fitting that the convent should show such honour.
A Semi-choir of Franciscan Friars.
The internal arrangements of an abbey-church were very nearly like those of our cathedrals. The convent occupied the stalls in the choir; the place of the abbot was in the first stall on the right-hand (south) side to one entering from the west—it is still appropriated to the dean in cathedrals; in the corresponding stall on the other side sat the prior; the precentor sat in the middle stall on the right or south side; the succentor in the middle stall on the north side.
The beautiful little picture of a semi-choir of Franciscan friars on the opposite page is from a fourteenth-century psalter in the British Museum (Domitian, A. 17). It is from a large picture, which gives a beautiful representation of the interior of the choir of the church. The picture is worth careful examination for the costume of the friars—grey frock and cowl, with knotted cord girdle and sandalled feet; some wearing the hood drawn over the head, some leaving it thrown back on the neck and shoulders; one with his hands folded under his sleeves like the Cistercians at p. 17. The precentor may be easily distinguished in the middle stall beating time, with an air of leadership. There is much character in all the faces and attitudes—e.g., in the withered old face on the left, with his cowl pulled over his ears to keep off the draughts, or the one on theprecentor’s left, a rather burly friar, evidently singing bass.[67]On the next page is an engraving from the same MS. of a similar semi-choir of minoresses, which also is only a portion of a large church interior.
A Semi-choir of Minoresses.
When there was a shrine of a noted saint[68]it was placed in the presbytery, behind the high-altar; and here, and in the choir aisles, were frequently placed the monuments of the abbots, and of founders and distinguished benefactors of the house; sometimes heads of the house and founders were buried in the chapter-house.
It would require a more elaborate description than our plan will admit to endeavour to bring before the mind’s-eye of the reader one of these abbey churches before its spoliation;—when the sculptures were unmutilated and the paintings fresh, and the windows filled with their stained glass, and the choir hung with hangings, and banners and tapestries waved from the arches of the triforium, and the altar shone gloriously with jewelled plate, and the monuments[69]of abbots and nobles were still perfect, and the wax tapers burned night and day[70]in the hearses, throwing a flickering light on the solemn effigies below, and glancing upon the tarnished armour andthe dusty banners[71]which hung over the tombs, while the cowled monks sat in their stalls and prayed. Or when, on some high festival, the convent walked round the lofty aisles in procession, two and two, clad in rich copes over their coarse frocks, preceded by cross and banner, with swinging censers pouring forth clouds of incense, while one of those angelic boy’s voices which we still sometimes hear in cathedrals chanted the solemn litany—the pure sweet ringing voice floating along the vaulted aisles, until it was lost in the swell of the chorus of the whole procession—Ora! Ora! Ora! pro nobis!
The Cloister was usually situated on the south side of the nave of the church, so that the nave formed its north side, and the south transept a part of its eastern side; but sometimes, from reasons of local convenience, the cloister was on the north side of the nave, and then the relative positions of the other buildings were similarly transposed.
The Chapter-house was always on the east side of the court. In establishments of secular canons it seems to have been always multi-sided[72]with a central pillar to support its groining, and a lofty, conical, lead-covered roof. In these instances it is placed in the open space eastward of the cloister, and is usually approached by a passage from the east side of the cloister court. In the houses of all the other orders[73]the chapter-house is rectangular, even where the church is a cathedral. Usually, then, the chapter-house is a rectangular building on the east side of the cloister, and its longest axis is east and west; at Durham it has aneastern apse.[74]It was a large and handsome room, with a good deal of architectural ornament;[75]often the western end of it is divided off as a vestibule or ante-room; and generally it is so large as to be divided into two or three aisles by rows of pillars. Internally, rows of stalls or benches were arranged round the walls for the convent; there was a higher seat at the east end for the abbot or prior, and a desk in the middle from which certain things were read. Every day after the service called Terce, the convent walked in procession from the choir to the chapter-house, and took their proper places. When the abbot had taken his place, the monksdescended one step and bowed; he returned their salutation, and all took their seats. A sentence of the rule of the order was read by one of the novices from the desk, and the abbot, or in his absence the prior, delivered an explanatory or hortatory sermon upon it; then from another portion of the book was read the names of brethren, and benefactors, and persons who had been received into fraternity, whose decease had happened on that day of the year; and the convent prayed arequiescant in pacefor their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed this life. Then members of the convent who had been guilty of slight breaches of discipline confessed them, kneeling upon a low stool in the middle, and on a bow from the abbot, intimating his remission of the breach, they resumed their seats. If any had a complaint to make against any brother, it was here made and adjudged.[76]Convent business was also transacted. The woodcut gives an example of the kind. Henry VII. had made grants to Westminster Abbey, on condition that the convent should perform certain religious services on his behalf;[77]and in order that the services should not fall into disuse, he directed that yearly, at a certain period, the chief-justice, or the king’s attorney, or the recorder of London, should attend in chapter, and the abstract of the grant and agreement between the king and the convent should be read. The grant which was thus to be read still exists in the British Museum; it is written in a volume superbly bound, with the royal seals attached in silver cases; it is from the illuminated letter at the head of one of the deeds in this book[78]that our woodcut is taken. It rudely represents the chapter-house, with the chief-justice and a group of lawyers on one side, the abbot and convent on the other, and a monk reading the grant from the desk in the middle.
Monks and Lawyers in Chapter-house.
Lydgate’s “Life of St. Edmund” (Harl. 2,278) was writtenA.D.1433, bycommand of his abbot—he was a monk of St. Edmund’s Bury—on the occasion of King Henry VI. being received—
“Of their chapter a brother for to be;”
that is, to the fraternity of the house. An illumination on f. 6 seems to represent the king sitting in the abbot’s place in the chapter-house, with royal officers behind him, monks in their places on each side of the chapter-house, the lectern in the middle, and a group of clerks at the west end. It is probably intended as a picture of the scene of the king’s being received to fraternity.
Adjoining the south transept is usually a narrow apartment; the description of Durham, drawn up soon after the Dissolution, says that it was the “Locutory.” Another conjecture is that it may have been the vestry. At Netley it has a door at the west, with a trefoil light over it, a two-light window at the east, two niches, like monumental niches, in its north and south walls, and a piscina at the east end of its south wall.
Again, between this and the chapter-house is often found a small apartment, which some have conjectured to be the penitential cell. In other cases it seems to be merely a passage from the cloister-court to the space beyond; in which space the abbot’s lodging is often situated, so that it may have been the abbot’s entrance to the church and chapter.
In Cistercian houses there is usually another long building south of the chapter-house, its axis running north and south. This was perhaps in its lower story the Frater-house, a room to which the monks retired after refection to converse, and to take their allowance of wine, or other indulgences in diet which were allowed to them; and some quotations in Fosbroke would lead us to imagine that the monks dined here on feast days. It would answer to the great chamber of mediæval houses, and in some respects to the Combination-room[79]of modern colleges. The upper story of this building was probably the Dormitory. This was a long room, with a vaulted or open timber roof, in which the pallets were arranged in rows on each side against the wall. The prior or sub-prior usually slept in thedormitory, with a light burning near him, in order to maintain order. The monks slept in the same habits[80]which they wore in the day-time.
About the middle of the south side of the court, in Cistercian houses, there is a long room, whose longer axis lies north and south, with a smaller room on each side of it, which was probably the Refectory. In other houses, the refectory forms the south side of the cloister court, lying parallel with the nave of the church. Very commonly it has a row of pillars down the centre, to support the groined roof. It was arranged, like all mediæval halls, with a dais at the upper end and a screen at the lower. In place of the oriel window of mediæval halls, there was a pulpit, which was often in the embrasure of a quasi-oriel window, in which one of the brethren read some edifying book during meals.
The remaining apartments of the cloister-court it is more difficult to appropriate. In some of the great Cistercian houses whose ground-plan can be traced—as Fountains, Salley, Netley, &c.—possibly the long apartment which is found on the west side of the cloister was the hall of the Hospitium, with chambers over it. Another conjecture is, that it was the house of the lay brethren.
In the uncertainty which at present exists on these points of monastic arrangement, we cannot speak with any degree of certainty; but we throw together some data on the subject in the subjoined note.[81]
The Scriptorium is said to have been usually over the chapter-house. It was therefore a large apartment, capable of containing many persons, and, in fact, many persons did work together in it in a very business-like manner at the transcription of books. For example, William, Abbot of Herschau, in the eleventh century, as stated by his biographer: “Knowing, what he had learned by laudable experience, that sacred reading is the necessary food of the mind, made twelve of his monks very excellent writers, to whom he committed the office of transcribing the holy Scriptures, and the treatises of the Fathers. Besides these, there were an indefinite number of other scribes, who wrought with equal diligence on the transcription of other books. Over them was a monk well versed in all kinds of knowledge, whose business it was to appoint some good work as a task for each, and to correct the mistakes of those who wrote negligently.”[82]The general chapter of the Cistercian order, held inA.D.1134, directs that the same silence should be maintained in the scriptorium as in the cloister. Sometimes perhaps little separate studies of wainscot were made round this large apartment, in which the writers sat at their desks. Sometimes this literary work was carried on in the cloister, which, being glazed, would be a not uncomfortable place in temperate weather, and a very comfortable place in summer, with its coolness and quiet, and the peep through its windows on the green court and the fountain in the centre, and the grey walls of the monastic buildings beyond; the slow footfall of a brother going to and fro, and the cawing of the rooks in the minster tower, would add to the dreamy charm of such a library.[83]
Odo, Abbot of St. Martin’s, at Tournay, about 1093, “used to exult in the number of writers the Lord had given him; for if you had gone into the cloister you might in general have seen a dozen young monks sitting on chairs in perfect silence, writing at tables carefully and artificiallyconstructed. All Jerome’s commentaries on the Prophets, all the works of St. Gregory, and everything that he could find of St. Augustine, Ambrose, Isodore, Bede, and the Lord Anselm, then Abbot of Bec, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, he caused to be transcribed. So that you would scarcely have found such a monastery in that part of the country, and everybody was begging for our copies to correct their own.” Sometimes little studies of wainscot were erected in the cloisters for the monks to study or transcribe in. At Gloucester Cathedral, at Beaulieu, and at Melrose, for example, there are traces of the way in which the windows of the cloisters were enclosed and turned into such studies.[84]
Monk in Scriptorium.
There are numerous illuminations representing monks and ecclesiastics writing; they sit in chairs of various kinds, some faldstools, some armed chairs, some armed backed; and they have desks and bookstands before them of various shapes, commonly a stand with sloping desk like a Bible lectern, not unfrequently a kind of dumb-waiter besides on which are several books. We see also in these illuminations the forms of thepens, knives, inkstands, &c., which were used. We will only mention two of unusual interest. One is in a late fourteenth-century Psalter, Harl. 2,897, at p. 186, v., where St. Jude sits writing his Epistle in a canopied chair, with a shelf across the front of the chair to serve as a desk; a string with a weight at the end holds his parchment down, and there is a bench beside, on which lies a book. A chair with a similar shelf is at f. 12 of the MS. Egerton, 1,070. Our woodcut on the preceding page is from a MS. in the Library of Soissons. We also find representations of ecclesiastics writing in a small cell which may represent the enclosed scriptoria—e.g.St. Bonaventine writing, in the MS. Harl. 3,229; St. John painting, in the late fifteenth-century MS. Add. 15,677, f. 35.
The Abbot’s Lodging sometimes formed a portion of one of the monastic courts, as at St. Mary, Bridlington, where it formed the western side of the cloister-court; but more usually it was a detached house, precisely similar to the contemporary unfortified houses of laymen of similar rank and wealth. No particular site relative to the monastic buildings was appropriated to it; it was erected wherever was most convenient within the abbey enclosure. The principal rooms of an abbot’s house are the Hall, the Great Chamber, the Kitchen, Buttery, Cellars, &c., the Chambers, and the Chapel. We must remember that the abbots of the greater houses were powerful noblemen; the abbots of the smaller houses were equal in rank and wealth to country gentlemen. They had a very constant succession of noble and gentle guests, whose entertainment was such as their rank and habits required. This involved a suitable habitation and establishment; and all this must be borne in mind when we endeavour to picture to ourselves an abbot’s lodging. To give an idea of the magnitude of some of the abbots’ houses, we may record that the hall of the Abbot of Fountains was divided by two rows of pillars into a centre and aisles, and that it was 170 feet long by 70 feet wide.[85]Half a dozen noble guests, with their retinues of knights and squires, and men-at-arms and lacqueys, and all the abbot’s men to boot, would be lost insuch a hall. On the great feast-days it might, perhaps, be comfortably filled. But even such a hall would hardly contain the companies who were sometimes entertained, on such great days for instance as an abbot’s installation-day, when it is on record that an abbot of one of the greater houses would give a feast to three or four thousand people.
Of the lodgings of the superiors of smaller houses, we may take that of the Prior of St. Mary’s, Bridlington, as an example. It is very accurately described by King Henry’s commissioners; it formed the west side of the cloister-court; it contained a hall with an undercroft, eighteen paces long from the screen to the dais,[86]and ten paces wide; on its north side a great chamber, twenty paces long and nineteen wide; at the west end of the great chamber the prior’s sleeping-chamber, and over that a garret; on the east side of the same chamber a little chamber and a closet; at the south end of the hall the buttery and pantry, and a chamber called the Auditor’s Chamber; at the same end of the hall a fair parlour, called the Low Summer Parlour; and over it another fair chamber; and adjoining that three little chambers for servants; at the south end of the hall the Prior’s Kitchen, with three houses covered with lead, and adjoining it a chamber called the South Cellarer’s Chamber.[87]
A Present of Fish.
There were several other buildings of a monastery, which were sometimes detached, and placed as convenience dictated. The Infirmary especially seems to have been more commonly detached; in many cases it had its own kitchen, and refectory, and chapel, and chambers, which sometimes were arranged round a court, and formed a complete little separate establishment.
The Hospitium, or Guest-house, was sometimes detached; but moreusually it seems to have formed a portion of an outer court, westward of the cloister-court, which court was entered from the great gates, or from one of the outer gates of the abbey. In Cistercian houses, as we have said, the guest-house, with its hall below and its chambers above, perhaps occupied the west side of the cloister-court, and would therefore form the eastern range of buildings of this outer court. At St. Mary’s, Bridlington, where the prior’s lodging occupied this position, the “lodgings and stables for strangers” were on the north side of this outer court. The guest-houses were often of great extent and magnificence. The Guesten-hall of St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, still remains, and is a very noble building, 150 feet long by 50 broad, of Norman date, raised on an undercroft. The Guesten-hall of Worcester also remains, a very noble building on an undercroft, with a fine carved timber roof, and portions of the painting which decorated the wall behind the dais still visible.[88]Besides the hall, the guest-house contained often a great-chamber (answering to our modern drawing-room) and sleeping-chambers, and a chapel, in which service was performed for guests—for in those days it was the custom always to hear prayers before dinner and supper.
Thus, at Durham, we are told that “a famous house of hospitality was kept within the abbey garth, called the Guest-hall, and was situate in the west side, towards the water. The sub-prior of the house was the master thereof, as one appointed to give entertainment to all estates, noble, gentle, or what other degree soever, came thither as strangers. Their entertainment was not inferior to that of any place in England, both for the goodness of their diet, the clean and neat furniture of their lodgings, and generally all things necessary for travellers; and, with this entertainment, no man was required to depart while he continued honest and of good behaviour. This hall was a stately place, not unlike the body of a church, supported on each side by very fine pillars, and in the midst of the hall a long range for the fire. The chambers and lodgings belonging to it were kept very clean and richly furnished.” At St. Albans, the Guest-housewas an enormous range of rooms, with stabling for three hundred horses.
There is a passage in the correspondence of Coldingham Priory (published by the Surties Society, 1841, p. 52) which gives us a graphic sketch of the arrival of guests at a monastery:—“On St. Alban’s-day, June 17 [year not given—it was towards the end of Edward III.], two monks, with a company of certain secular persons, came riding into the gateway of the monastery about nine o’clock in the morning. This day happened to be Sunday, but they were hospitably and reverently received, had lodgings assigned them, a special mass service performed for them, and after a refection and washing their feet, it being supposed that they were about to pursue their journey to London the next morning, they were left at an early hour to take repose. While the bell was summoning the rest of the brotherhood to vespers, the monk who had been in attendance upon them (the hospitaller) having gone with the rest to sing his chant in the choir, the secular persons appear to have asked the two monks to take a walk with them to look at the Castle of Durham,” &c.[89]
There could hardly have been any place in the Middle Ages which could have presented such a constant succession of picturesque scenes as the Hospitium of a monastery. And what a contrast must often have existed between the Hospitium and the Cloister. Here a crowd of people of every degree—nobles and ladies, knights and dames, traders with their wares, minstrels with their songs and juggling tricks, monks and clerks, palmers, friars, beggars—bustling about the court or crowding the long tables of the hall; and, a few paces off, the dark-frocked monks, with faces buried in their cowls, pacing the ambulatory in silent meditation, or sitting at their meagre refection, enlivened only by the monotonous sound of the novice’s voice reading a homily from the pulpit!
Many of the remaining buildings of the monastery were arranged around this outer court. Ingulphus tells us that the second court of the Saxon monastery of Croyland (about 875A.D.) had the gate on the north, andthe almonry near it—a very usual position for it; the shops of the tailors and shoe-makers, the hall of the novices, and the abbot’s lodgings on the east; the guest-hall and its chambers on the south; and the stable-house, and granary, and bake-house on the west. The Gate-house was usually a large and handsome tower, with the porter’s lodge on one side of the arched entrance; and often a strong room on the other, which served as the prison of the manor-court of the convent; and often a handsome room over the entrance, in which the manorial court was held. In the middle of the court was often a stone cross, round which markets and fairs were often held.