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The Cambridge Manuals of Science and
Literature

ENGLISH MONASTERIES




CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
London: FETTER LANE, E.C.
C. F. CLAY, Manager

[Illustration]

Edinburgh: 100, PRINCES STREET
Berlin: A. ASHER AND CO.
Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS
New York: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
Bombay and Calcutta: MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd.

_All rights reserved_

[Illustration: ST MARY'S ABBEY, YORK.

Crossing, north transept, and north aisle of nave.]




[Illustration:

ENGLISH
MONASTERIES

BY

A. HAMILTON THOMPSON,
M.A., F.S.A.

Cambridge:
at the University Press
1913
]




Cambridge:
PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS


_With the exception of the coat of arms at the foot, the design on
the title page is a reproduction of one used by the earliest known
Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521_




PREFACE


In view of the growth of interest in medieval history and art, so
conspicuous of late years, it is thought that this small volume may
meet the needs of those who desire to know something about one of the
most interesting sides of the life of the middle ages. There is no
dearth of literature relating to monasteries, and the general facts
of monastic history are accessible to the ordinary student in various
handbooks. Monographs, however, which describe the plans of monasteries
and the position and use of the principal buildings, exist for the most
part in forms which are more difficult of access. Special attention has
therefore been paid in the present case to the question of plan, and it
is hoped that visitors to the remains of our English religious houses,
who wish to gain some co-ordinate idea of their various parts, may find
some help from this manual.

The writer desires to acknowledge gratefully the assistance of his
wife, who is responsible for the plans and illustrations. The master
of Emmanuel, the general editor of the series, has kindly read through
the proofs and furnished valuable suggestions. The book has also had
the great advantage of perusal and criticism by Mr W. H. St John Hope,
Litt.D., D.C.L., to whose kindness and learning the writer is deeply
indebted. Some idea of what students of English monastic life owe to
Mr Hope may be gained from the bibliography at the end of this volume.
Thanks are also due to the editors of the _Archaeological Journal_ for
permission to found the plan of Haughmond abbey (p. 114) on that by Mr
H. Brakspear, F.S.A., in _Archaeol. Journal_, vol. LXVI.

        A. H. T.

  Gretton, Northants.
  _12 April, 1913._




CONTENTS


CHAPTER I

THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS

§ 1. The medieval monastery. 2. Growth of monachism in the east. 3.
Beginnings of western monachism: Italy, Gaul and Ireland. 4. The rule
of St Benedict. 5. The Benedictine order in England: early Saxon
monasteries. 6. The Danish invasions and the monastic revival. 7.
Monasticism after the Norman conquest. 8. Benedictine abbeys and
priories. 9. Priories of alien houses. 10. The Cluniac order. 11. The
Carthusian order. 12. The orders of Thiron, Savigny and Grandmont.
13. Foundation and growth of the Cistercian order. 14. Cistercian
monasteries. 15. Monks and _conversi_. 16. Orders of canons: secular
chapters. 17. Augustinian canons. 18. Premonstratensian canons. 19. The
order of Sempringham. 20. Nunneries. 21. Decline of the regular orders.
The friars. 22. Monastic property: parish churches. 23. Monasteries
as land-owners: financial depression. 24. Moral condition of the
monasteries. 25. Numbers of inmates of monasteries. 26. The suppression
of the monasteries. 27. Remains and ruins of monastic buildings      1-39


CHAPTER II

THE CONVENTUAL CHURCH

§ 28. Divisions of the monastery precinct: varieties of plan. 29. The
plan of church and cloister: necessities governing the church-plan.
30. General arrangement of the church. 31. Eastern arm of the church:
Anglo-Norman Benedictine and Cluniac plans. 32. The presbytery and
quire. 33. Transept-chapels. 34. Aisled enlargements of the eastern
arm. 35. The nave: processional doorways, altars and screens. 36.
Parochial use of the nave. 37. The normal Cistercian plan: presbytery
and transepts. 38. Cistercian aisled presbyteries. 39. Cistercian
transepts. 40. Arrangement of the Cistercian nave. 41. Cistercian
influence on the plan of canons' churches. 42. Aisled quires and
presbyteries in canons' churches. 43. Naves with single aisles in
canons' churches. 44. Aisleless naves. 45. Aisleless plans: churches of
nuns, Carthusian monks, friars and Gilbertine canons      39-71


CHAPTER III

THE CLOISTER AND ITS BUILDINGS

§ 46. Plan and position of the cloister. 47. The cloister-walk next
the church. 48. The eastern range: the parlour. 49. The chapter-house:
its uses. 50. Varieties of the chapter-house plan. 51. Sub-vault of
the dorter: treasury and common-house. 52. The dorter stairs. 53. The
dorter and rere-dorter. 54. Buildings opposite the church: the frater.
55. The kitchen. 56. The cloister lavatory. 57. The western range: the
cellarer's building and its upper floor. 58. Exceptional uses of the
western range: Worcester, Durham and Easby      72-95


CHAPTER IV

THE CISTERCIAN CLOISTER, ETC.

§ 59. Plan of the eastern range: the vestry and library. 60. The
Cistercian chapter-house. 61. Parlour, infirmary passage and
sub-dorter. 62. Dorter, rere-dorter and day-stair. 63. The range
opposite the church: plan of the frater. 64. Arrangements of the
warming-house and frater. 65. The kitchen: convenience of its place in
the plan. 66. The western range: cellarer's building and house of the
lay brothers. 67. Later changes in the Cistercian plan: misericords in
cloister. 68. Plans of houses of canons, friars, etc.: their kinship to
the normal Benedictine plan. 69. Carthusian houses: the plan of Mount
Grace      95-113


CHAPTER V

THE INFIRMARY AND THE OUTER COURT

§ 70. Objects of the infirmary. 71. Buildings and position of the
infirmary. 72. Plan and arrangement of the infirmary hall. 73. The
infirmary kitchen and the misericord. 74. The abbot's lodging:
Cistercian usages. 75. Abbots' and priors' lodgings in other orders.
76. The guest-houses: division of hospitality. 77. The outer court or
_curia_: Cistercian entrance-courts. 78. The gatehouse. 79. The almonry
and its uses      113-132


CHAPTER VI

DISCIPLINE AND THE DAILY LIFE

§ 80. Officers of the monastery: the obedientiaries. 81. The monastic
day and its divisions: the night-office. 82. Services and work of the
morning in summer. 83. The day from sext to compline. 84. Arrangement
of the day in winter: variations of daily custom. 85. The Carthusian
day      133-142


Bibliography      143


Index      149




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


FIG.      PAGE

St Mary's abbey, York. Crossing, north transept, and
north aisle of nave      _Frontispiece_

1. Plan of the cathedral priory, Canterbury (after Professor
Willis)      40

2. Croyland abbey: rood-screen and nave from S.E.      50

3. Plan of typical Cistercian church, shewing original form
and later eastern enlargement      56

4. Tintern abbey: north transept and presbytery, shewing
doorways to dorter and sacristy      60

5. Mount Grace priory: tower-arches and nave from N.E.      69

6. Gloucester: south walk of cloister with monks' carrels      74

7. Bristol: chapter-house, looking W.      78

8. Worcester: lavatory in west walk of cloister      88

9. Durham: ceiling of dorter (now the chapter library)      93

10. Netley abbey: south transept and south aisle of nave,
shewing doorways to sacristy and dorter, and eastern
processional doorway      96

11. Fountains abbey: plan     102

12.    "        "    _cellarium_, looking north      106

13. Haughmond abbey: plan      114

14. Peterborough: infirmary, looking west      118

15. Kirkham priory: gatehouse      130




CHAPTER I

THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS


§ 1. A monastery is a community of men or women, devoted to the service
of God and obeying a fixed rule. Monastic rules of life varied in
strictness and in detail; while each community supplemented the rule of
its order by its own code of observances. The object, however, of these
different rules and codes was one. The general term for the monastic
life was 'religion' (_religio_): the 'religious' (_religiosus_) was
bound by three vows, to poverty against the deceits of the world, to
chastity against the lusts of the flesh, to obedience against the
snares of the devil. His chief duty was to take part with his brethren
in the recitation of the canonical hours, and in the celebration of
daily masses. A portion of his day was set apart for meditation in the
cloister; but his surplus time was devoted to labour. The business
affairs of a monastery brought some religious into touch with the
practical side of life. Others found their vocation in manual labour in
the fields or workshops; while a certain number devoted themselves to
literary work in the cloister.


§ 2. The rule of St Benedict, on which western monachism was founded,
distinguishes between four classes of religious. Of these the two
principal were cenobites, monks living in a community (_coenobium_)
under rule, and the anchorites, who have departed (ἀναχωρεῖν) from the
world to live a solitary life of prayer. These were the sources of
the two main streams of Christian monachism. Naturally, the anchorite
came first into existence. The cenobite followed, by the combination
of anchorites in monasteries. The development of the _coenobium_ was
gradual. About 305 A.D., St Anthony inaugurated the 'lauras' (λαῦραι)
of northern Egypt, monasteries in which each anchorite lived in his
separate cell and met for common services only on Saturday and Sunday.
A few years later St Pachomius founded his first _coenobium_ at
Tabennisi in southern Egypt. Here the social principle was more fully
organised: common services in church were more frequent and labour was
recognised as a factor in the monastic life; but the monks still lived
separately. A further step was taken by St Basil, who about 360 founded
a _coenobium_ near Neocaesarea. His rule introduced the idea of common
life under one roof. It became the basis of the monastic system of the
eastern Church, and its principles had a lasting effect on the monastic
life of western Europe.


§ 3. The influence of the monachism of the east naturally spread
westward. No general rule of life was followed at first. Each
collection of monks was governed by its own special observances, aiming
generally at the ascetic ideal of separation from the world pursued by
the early anchorites. Monachism, however, was a powerful agent in the
Christianising of the west. Each monastery under its abbot or father
became a training-ground for monk-bishops who ruled dioceses in new
monastic centres of missionary effort. The beginnings of organised
monachism in Ireland may be traced to the monastery of Lerins, on an
island near Cannes, where St Patrick received his training. The success
of Irish monasticism soon reacted upon Gaul and Italy, when St Columban
founded the monasteries of Luxeuil and Bobbio upon a rule derived from
Irish practice. About the same time St Columba at Iona established the
vogue of the Irish system in northern Britain.


§ 4. Meanwhile, a new development of the principle arose. St Benedict,
a native of Norcia near Spoleto, retired about the beginning of the
sixth century to a hermitage at Subiaco. Here he attracted a number of
followers, and several monasteries arose in the neighbourhood under
his direction. It was for the monastery of Monte Cassino, which he
ruled for some thirty years, that he composed the rule which became
the law of the monastic life of western Europe. The success and the
general adoption of the rule of Monte Cassino in the west were due to
the statesmanship with which its injunctions were adapted to climate
and physical capacity. The Benedictine monk entered upon a life of
work and prayer, which needed the habitual exercise of self-control;
but his bodily health ran no risk of being ruined by pious excess.
Isolated devotion was superseded by religious life in a common
church and cloister. This was the end to which Pachomius and Basil
had contributed; but the mystical temperament of the east fostered a
contemplative and ascetic tendency which modified the conception of
a common life of uniform duty. The early monasteries of Gaul, such
as that of St Martin at Tours, followed the model of the _laura_
rather than the _coenobium_; and the separate cell and the practice
of self-imposed austerities seem to have been general in early Celtic
monasteries. The voluntary hardships of St Cuthbert in his cell on
the Farne islands, the prayers and visions of the Saxon Guthlac at
Croyland, were western survivals of the ideals of St Anthony and
St Simeon Stylites. St Benedict, on the contrary, while casting no
reflexions on a life which he himself had at first adopted, recommended
to the aspirant for salvation no heroic tasks of prayer and fasting.
His aim was the growth in grace of a brotherhood, living under a common
rule in obedience to an abbot to whom considerable discretion was
given. The natural tendency of the solitary life was to produce an
emulation in religious endeavour; and monasteries which were little
more than collections of anchorites were liable to the decay consequent
upon the rivalry of their inmates. St Benedict enjoined emulation
in good works among his monks; but their emulation had its root in
humility and obedience, and its outward sign was a mutual deference far
removed from spiritual pride. There can be little wonder that a rule,
difficult but possible to follow, and allowing for individual weakness,
spread far outside the community for which it was made, and that the
Benedictine order by the end of the seventh century supplanted all
other forms of monasticism in western Europe.


§ 5. The rule of St Benedict was introduced into England by St
Augustine, prior of the monastery on the Coelian hill in Rome. At
this time the chief strength of Celtic monachism was naturally in
the north, although it had penetrated southwards to such isolated
outposts as Glastonbury. Gradually Roman customs gained ground in
the strongholds of Celtic Christianity. The grant of the monastery
of Ripon to Wilfrid was followed by the departure of the Scottish
monks. Little is definitely known of English monastic life at this
period, but it is clear that it began to approximate more closely to
the Benedictine model. Thus the nuns of Hackness, an offshoot of the
monastery of Whitby, had a common dormitory; while the monasteries
of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow differed in many respects from the local
pattern, and were certainly established upon a principle of common
life. In certain features a compromise seems to have been arrived at,
as in the survival of the custom, which had probably been introduced
by Irish missionaries, of grouping monks and nuns in one monastery
under the presidency of an abbess. The most famous instance of this
was the abbey of Whitby, but other examples are known in various parts
of England remote from each other. For a few of these models may have
been found in Gaul, where the Benedictine rule was not introduced until
a period later than the coming of Augustine. Another feature was the
establishment of bishops' sees in monasteries. In European countries
where the traditions of the Roman occupation were more or less
continuous, the cathedral within the city was a distinct foundation
from the monasteries which, as at Paris or Rouen, rose at a later date
outside the walls. But the Celtic missionaries in England broke new
ground in a country from which the traces of Roman Christianity had
almost disappeared, and their sees were founded in monasteries. This
custom was followed in the natural order of things by Augustine at
Canterbury. In the reorganisation of dioceses after the Norman conquest
it was still continued. In eight of the seventeen medieval dioceses of
England the cathedral, and in two others one of the two cathedrals, was
a monastic church.


§ 6. The Danish invasions brought extinction to the monastic life in
the greater part of England. It was not until about a hundred years
later that it was revived. Odo, archbishop of Canterbury 942-59,
prepared the way for the movement. Its success was achieved under his
successor, St Dunstan, with the co-operation of Edgar the peaceful.
Ethelwold, bishop of Winchester, and Oswald, archbishop of York,
were its most active promoters. Both were disciples of the reformed
Benedictine rule which, early in the tenth century, had begun to spread
from the abbey of Cluny. The abbey of Fleury or Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire,
which, after the sack of Monte Cassino by the Lombards in 660, had
become the resting-place of the body of St Benedict, was reformed under
Cluniac influence. Oswald studied the Benedictine rule at Fleury. Made
bishop of Worcester in 961, he was active in replacing the secular
clergy of the churches of his diocese by monks. At Evesham, Pershore,
Winchcombe, Worcester and elsewhere, Benedictine monks were introduced.
In 971 Oswald aided Aelfwine, an East Anglian nobleman, to found the
monastery of Ramsey in Huntingdonshire, and a few years later he and
Ethelwold persuaded Abbo of Fleury to visit England and help them
in extending the religious life. Ethelwold was equally active at
Winchester, and, under a charter from king Edgar, restored destroyed
monasteries throughout the country, including Ely and Peterborough.
Dunstan, the reformer of Glastonbury, gave active sympathy to the
movement, but was more cautious in his attitude to the secular clergy;
and it is noteworthy that the reform did not at once extend to his
cathedral church at Canterbury.


§ 7. This glorious period in the history of English monasticism closed
with the disasters of the early part of the eleventh century. Canute
and Edward the Confessor favoured and enriched many religious houses,
and Edward, by his foundation of the abbey of Westminster, takes a
foremost place among benefactors of the religious life in England. But,
during this disturbed epoch, few new monasteries were founded, and
the tendency to slackness in observance of the rule again appeared.
The permanent triumph of monasticism was achieved after the Norman
conquest. The Conqueror and his followers sought the salvation of
their souls by the foundation of abbeys and priories on their new
estates. The victory of Hastings was marked by the foundation of the
abbey of Battle, the first of the long series of Norman monasteries
in England. In the work of organisation ecclesiastics from the
great abbeys of Normandy took, as was natural, the chief part. Two
successive archbishops of Canterbury, Lanfranc, formerly a monk of
Bec and abbot of St Stephen's at Caen, and Anselm, formerly abbot of
Bec, were instrumental in giving the Benedictine order in England its
pre-eminence under the early Norman kings.


§ 8. The Benedictine monasteries in England were colonised, or,
where they were older than the conquest, received new blood from the
monasteries of Normandy and France. We have seen that the rule of St
Benedict was made for a special monastery: the order was a collection
of independent houses which found the rule suitable to their needs.
Thus each of the larger English Benedictine monasteries was a separate
community, under the jurisdiction of the diocesan bishop, from whose
visitations some powerful abbeys, such as St Albans, Evesham and
Westminster, eventually obtained exemption. It was also subject to the
visitation of two abbots, chosen annually by a general chapter of heads
of English houses. The ruler of the monastery was the abbot: under him
was his deputy, the prior, on whom a large part of the direct oversight
of the house devolved. Where, as at Durham, the church of the monastery
was also the cathedral of the diocese, the bishop was nominally abbot,
but the actual ruler of the house was the prior; and to such houses
the name of cathedral priory was given. The larger houses, however,
frequently founded off-shoots on distant portions of their property,
which were governed by priors appointed by the mother house, and were
known as priories or cells. Although some of them became important
houses, they were at first part and parcel of the mother house, and
many continued to be so throughout the middle ages. Thus St Martin's
at Dover was a priory of Christ Church, Canterbury, and Tynemouth in
Northumberland was a priory of St Albans.


§ 9. There were also certain priories founded in subordination to
foreign houses. Thus Bec had a priory at St Neots in Huntingdonshire;
the abbey of Mont-Ste-Cathérine at Rouen had one at Blyth in
Nottinghamshire. Both these houses contained several monks: in
the thirteenth century there were fourteen at Blyth, all probably
foreigners, and many of them sent from the parent house for a change
of air. But there were also a large number of monastic possessions
known as priories, which were not strictly conventual, but were simply
manors in the possession of alien monasteries, on which a prior or
_custos_, sent from the mother abbey with another monk as his _socius_,
resided for a portion of the year, practically as estate agent.
Sometimes he was allowed, as at Ecclesfield in Yorkshire, a priory
of Saint-Wandrille, to serve the cure of the parish church; but this
was not common. Where these small 'alien priories' are known to have
existed, we need not expect to find any trace of monastic arrangements
in the parish church. Still less need we look for traces of a cloister.
During the hundred years' war with France, the alien priories
were repeatedly confiscated by the Crown, and before their final
confiscation in 1414 many had been granted to English charterhouses,
chantry colleges, and similar foundations. Conventual priories, such
as Blyth and St Neots, were continued as independent monasteries under
English priors.


§ 10. The popularity and wealth of the Benedictine order naturally led
in many monasteries to relaxation of the rule. From time to time monks
who felt the necessity of closer communion with God and a stricter
life sought their need in the foundation of new houses under a more
severe form of their rule. The first important move in this direction
was made in the abbey of Cluny, from which, founded in 910, proceeded
the monastic reform of the tenth century. St Berno, the first abbot,
died in 927. One essential point distinguished Cluniac monasteries
from Benedictine. Each Benedictine abbot was the president of his own
republic. The Cluniac houses, on the other hand, were priories directly
under the supervision of the abbot of Cluny, the autocrat of the order.
They were exempt from episcopal visitation, and the abbot, holding
his general chapters at Cluny, was responsible to the pope alone. In
England their chief house was the priory of St Pancras at Lewes,
founded in 1077 by William de Warenne for a prior and twelve monks:
the prior of Lewes took second rank among Cluniac priors. Of some
thirty-two English houses of the order several were cells of the larger
priories, and at the general chapter would be represented by the priors
of their parent monasteries. Owing to the dependence of the order upon
Cluny, its English priories shared confiscation with the other alien
foundations. They were allowed to continue, however, as 'denizen'
houses with English priors, and the priory of St Saviour at Bermondsey
was raised to the dignity of an abbey. Of ruins of Cluniac priories
in England, the most complete are at Wenlock in Shropshire and Castle
Acre in Norfolk. The plans of Lewes and Thetford priories have been
recovered from foundations and fragments, and there are substantial
remains at Bromholm in Norfolk.


§ 11. The Carthusian order was founded by St Bruno at the
Grande-Chartreuse near Grenoble in 1086. Its members were vowed
to fasting and the solitary life. Each had his separate cell,
the monastery being composed of one or more courts, round which
these dwellings were arranged. The brethren met in church for the
night-office, mass, and vespers: the lesser hours were said, and
meals, save on certain days, were taken by each monk separately. The
order thus was a revolt against the common life, and a return to the
anchoritic ideal. In England only two houses, Witham (_c._ 1179-81)
and Hinton (_c._ 1227), both in Somerset, were founded before the
middle of the fourteenth century. The remaining seven were all founded
after 1340. The royal foundation of Shene priory in Surrey (1414)
was the latest and wealthiest of all. In England the word Chartreuse
(_Certosa_ in Italian) took the form Charterhouse. Considerable remains
of charterhouses exist at Beauvale in Nottinghamshire (founded 1343),
in London (founded 1371) and at Hinton; but the most complete idea of
a Carthusian priory may be gained from the ruins of Mount Grace in
Yorkshire (founded 1396).


§ 12. One of the many off-shoots of the Benedictine order was a
congregation of monks and lay brothers founded in 1114 in the diocese
of Chartres. The name of Thiron (_Tiro_) was given to the abbey from
the _tirones_ or apprentices whom the founder united there, to pursue
their trades in the service of God. Closely akin to this was the abbey
of Savigny in the diocese of Avranches, founded in 1112, which between
that date and 1147 planted some thirteen houses in England and Wales.
When the order of Savigny was merged about 1147 in that of Cîteaux,
its monasteries were said to belong to the Tironensian order. This,
however, was not because of any definite affiliation to Thiron, but on
account of similarity of observances between the two congregations.
English Tironensian houses, such as Humberston abbey in Lincolnshire,
became identical with the ordinary Benedictine monasteries, although a
nominal distinction was recognised. Important remains of a Tironensian
house exist at Caldey, a priory of St Dogmaels, on an island near
Tenby. Such Savigniac houses as Buildwas and Furness became famous as
Cistercian monasteries. Neither of these congregations possessed the
organising capacity which the founders of the Cistercian order brought
to their work. The same may be said of the Grandimontine order, founded
in 1046 at Grandmont in the diocese of Limoges, which during the
twelfth century founded three small priories in England.


§ 13. The Cistercian order took its name from the abbey of Cîteaux in
Burgundy, which was founded in 1098 by Robert, abbot of the Benedictine
house of Molesme. His monks aimed at a literal observance of the rule
of St Benedict on the most austere lines. Meat was banished from
their meals: their buildings followed simple laws of construction and
were free from ornament. The real founders of the order were Stephen
Harding, an Englishman, who became abbot of Cîteaux in 1109, and his
disciple St Bernard, who in 1115 became abbot of the first daughter
house, Clairvaux. Largely owing to the energy of St Bernard, the order
spread with extraordinary rapidity. When Waverley abbey, its first
English house, was founded in 1128, it possessed more than thirty
houses. In 1152 an order forbade the foundation of new abbeys; there
were then fifty houses in England and Wales out of 339. In spite of
this prohibition, the number in the thirteenth century exceeded 600. In
all, the houses of the order in England and Wales numbered 75, some of
which possessed cells.


§ 14. Cîteaux, like Cluny, stood at the head of a federation of
religious houses exempt from episcopal authority. These houses,
however, were ruled by their own abbots, not by priors dependent on
the abbot of Cîteaux; and thus the Cistercian abbeys were saved from
the difficulties which befell the Cluniac in common with other alien
houses. The Charter of Charity, drawn up in 1119, regulated the growth
of the order and the relations between its monasteries. When the
numbers of any house grew too large, it might, with the consent of the
annual chapter at Cîteaux, send out at least twelve brethren, with
a thirteenth as abbot, to found a new monastery. Thus Waverley was
colonised from the abbey of L'Aumône in Normandy. Fountains, founded in
1132 and augmented from Clairvaux in 1134 or 1135, sent out colonies to
Newminster in Northumberland (1138), Louth Park in Lincolnshire (1139),
Woburn in Bedfordshire (1145) and Lysa in Norway (1146). The right of
visitation of Cistercian houses belonged to the abbots of their parent
monasteries: the abbot of Cîteaux was visitor of Clairvaux, the abbot
of Clairvaux visitor of Fountains, and so on; while Cîteaux itself
was visited by the abbots of Clairvaux and its three other eldest
daughters. Monasteries thus founded were to be in places remote from
the conversation of men. Such names as Vaudey (_Vallis Dei_) and Valle
Crucis mark the favourite site of such abbeys in secluded valleys: it
was seldom that the rule was transgressed, as in the case of St Mary
Graces near the tower of London. The churches were dedicated in honour
of our Lady: stone bell-towers were forbidden as well as wooden towers
of excessive height, the windows were filled with plain glass, all
paintings were prohibited save painted wooden crucifixes, and vestments
and other ornaments were of the plainest kind compatible with dignity.
All workshops, stables, etc. were within the abbey precincts, and
precautions were taken against the growth of any colony of lay-folk
near the monastery by the order that any house built outside the
precinct wall was to be pulled down. A similar precaution regulated
the establishment of the abbey farms or granges at a specified minimum
distance from each other. Temporary guests were admitted under special
conditions; but, after the dedication of the church and its octave were
over, the presence of women within the precinct was forbidden.


§ 15. One point in the Cistercian rule, which arose from this
self-contained ideal and had an important influence upon the planning
of Cistercian buildings, was the division of the brethren of each
abbey into monks (_monachi_) and lay brothers (_conversi_)[1].
The Cistercian monk was a clerk who could read and write. Like a
Benedictine monk, he was not necessarily a priest, although it became
very general for monks to proceed to priest's orders. His duties lay
in the church and cloister, and, unless he held an office such as that
of cellarer or kitchener, he was not immediately concerned with the
business affairs of his convent. These, which in Benedictine houses
were largely transacted by tenants or hired labourers and servants,
were performed in Cistercian houses by the _conversi_. A _conversus_
was a layman who had turned from the service of the world to that of
God. He entered the convent as a novice and in due course made his
profession. He was precluded from learning to read or write and from
taking holy orders. He was taught a few prayers and psalms by heart,
but his business was manual labour in the convent workshops, or in its
fields and granges. On ordinary work-days he had to attend part of
the night-office and, if he was not stationed in a grange, had to come
to compline. He observed the other hours by the recitation of special
prayers at his work. His life was regulated by statutes which in
respect of abstinence, silence and other similar essentials resembled
those of the monks. The _conversi_ had their own separate common rooms
in the cloister buildings, their own quire in the church and their
own infirmary. They rose at an hour which was specially calculated to
allow them enough sleep before their day's work: their chapter was held
by the abbot only on Sundays and certain feast-days. Thus the convent
was provided with all the workmen whom it needed. Some _conversi_
were deputed to live upon the convent granges, each of which had a
_conversus_ as prior. The white frocks and cowls of the monks gave the
Cistercians their distinctive name of white monks as opposed to the
Benedictines or black monks: the dress of the _conversus_ was a cloak
(_cappa_), tunic, stockings (_caligae_), boots (_pedules_) and a hood
(_capucium_) covering only the shoulders and breast[2].


§ 16. The monastic movement was not in the first instance a clerical
movement, nor can the earliest founders have contemplated that their
convents would include more than a few priests for the ministration
of the Sacraments. But the ideal of the regular life as pursued in
the monasteries attracted clergy as well as laymen. As early as 391,
St Augustine established communities of regular clergy in Africa.
In the later years of the eighth century, Chrodegand, bishop of
Metz, introduced a rule of life, founded upon that of St Benedict,
among the clergy of his cathedral, which was copied by other similar
congregations of clergy. From this adoption of a rule (_canon_, κάνων)
the members of such bodies became known as canons, and the bodies
themselves, meeting in chapter-houses, where, as in monasteries,
a chapter (_capitulum_) of the rule was read daily, took the name
of chapters (_capitula_). The main object of the movement was the
daily recitation of the canonical hours: the canons had their meals
in common, and in some cases had a common dorter or dormitory. The
tendency during the ninth and tenth centuries seems to have been for
canons to establish their separate households in the neighbourhood of
the church which they served. A marked distinction arose between the
monks of cathedral priories such as Canterbury and the secular canons
who served such churches as the cathedral of York. In the secular
chapters the recitation of the hours was maintained and certain common
funds were administered; but each canon had his own separate estate,
a church or manor known as a prebend (_prebenda_), and the richer
prebends became the perquisites of clerks in constant attendance upon
the king or upon some bishop or nobleman. The number of resident canons
was very small, and the duties of absentees were taken by their vicars
(_vicarii_) or deputies. Colleges of chantry-priests, usually of late
foundation, were organised as similar associations of secular clergy,
who were bound, however, from the nature of their duties to continual
residence. The colleges of Oxford and Cambridge had a similar basis.
They were associations of clergy for teaching and study, with a common
hall and church, and are therefore derived from a source distinct from
the monastic movement.


§ 17. Bodies of canons regular, however, came into existence, distinct
from the chapters of canons secular, living in monasteries, reciting
the canonical hours, and leading the common life of monks. Their rule
was modelled on an adaptation of a letter from St Augustine of Hippo
to a congregation of religious women. It was shorter and couched in
more general terms than the rule of St Benedict; but its aim was
similar. Its followers became known as Augustinian or Austin canons.
From their hooded black cloaks with white surplices and black cassocks
beneath, they were often called black canons. The order did not
appear in England until about 1106, when the priory of St Botolph at
Colchester was founded by a Benedictine monk named Ernulf; nor did
the papacy definitely recognise the order until 1139, when its houses
were already numerous. The number of English Augustinian houses at its
highest point reached 218, and of these 138 were founded before 1175.
At the suppression of the monasteries there were about 170 Augustinian
houses, while of Benedictine houses there were from 130 to 140.
Augustinian houses varied greatly in size and wealth, and at no time
did their wealthier abbeys approach the immense revenues of the greater
Benedictine houses; while their average income was very moderate. Each
house was governed by a 'prelate,' generally known as the prior, but in
some 24 cases as the abbot. Most of their abbeys were in the midland
districts: in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Norfolk, where their
houses were numerous, the title of prior was universal. In 1133 one
of their convents, Carlisle, was raised to the dignity of a cathedral
priory. Their growth was analogous to that of the Benedictines: each
house with its cells was an independent community: their visitor was
the diocesan bishop, and very few of their houses became permanently
exempt from visitation. The order also held its general chapters, at
which two visitors were appointed yearly for each of the provinces
into which its houses were divided.


§ 18. The order of Premonstratensians, known from their white habit
as white canons, was founded by St Norbert at Prémontré, to the west
of Laon, about 1120. The canons followed the Augustinian rule in the
main, but their constitution shewed a tendency to follow Cistercian
models. The order was centralised under the abbot of Prémontré, where
the general chapters were held, and was extended by the Cistercian
process of colonisation, each house sending out its body of canons as
the nucleus of a new abbey. Lisques, a daughter of Prémontré, colonised
Newhouse abbey in north Lincolnshire in 1143. In 1147 Newhouse founded
a daughter house at Alnwick, and between that time and 1212 founded
ten other abbeys. Of these Welbeck (1153) was responsible for seven
more between 1175 and 1218. In all there were thirty-one abbeys of the
order in England, not counting two cells. Cistercian influence can be
seen in the constitution of each new house as an abbey, in the choice
of secluded sites for the houses of the order, and in the principal
dedication of most of its churches to our Lady. Like other centralised
orders, the Premonstratensians were exempt from the jurisdiction of the
diocesan bishop; but the allegiance of the English canons to Prémontré
gradually slackened, and the administration of their order in England
was delegated in course of time to a commissary. In 1512 Julius II
exempted the English houses from obedience to Prémontré and placed them
under the control of the abbot of Welbeck.


§ 19. The order of Prémontré originally made some provision for
houses of nuns side by side with those of canons. The experiment
languished, and although a body of nuns or canonesses followed the
Premonstratensian rule, they had few houses. Only two are known
in England, and neither of these was connected with any house of
canons. But in the second quarter of the twelfth century Gilbert,
rector of Sempringham in Lincolnshire, with the advice of the abbot
of Rievaulx, founded a house of seven nuns following the Cistercian
rule. The Cistercian order refused to take charge of the community,
and Gilbert, possibly following the example of Prémontré, provided
for its spiritual needs by associating with the nuns a body of canons
under the rule of St Augustine. Gilbertine houses were thus at first
regarded as nunneries in which the Sacraments were administered by
an auxiliary community of at least seven canons. Minutely composed
statutes provided for the seclusion of the two bodies from each other
in two adjacent cloisters. In such double houses the maximum number of
nuns ordained by statute was generally double that of canons: thus at
Watton in Yorkshire, the largest house of the order, nominal provision
was made for 140 nuns and 70 canons. The order, which was exempt from
episcopal control, was placed under a general, known as the master of
Sempringham. Sempringham was the mother house of a number of priories:
new houses were founded on the Cistercian plan of the migration of
twelve canons and a prior from one of the existing houses. _Conversi_
and _conversae_ formed a part of each establishment. The total number
of Gilbertine houses was some 27, of which eleven were in Lincolnshire:
with the exception of two houses in Wiltshire, one in Devonshire and
one in Durham, the monasteries of the order were all within the four
eastern dioceses of Lincoln, York, Ely and Norwich. The order never
spread beyond England.


§ 20. Houses of Benedictine nuns were numerous in England. The most
important of these lay within the dioceses of Salisbury and Winchester.
In the midlands, the east and north, where they were numerous, they
were with a few exceptions small foundations of which scanty traces
are left. A few priories of nuns, chiefly in the dioceses of York and
Lincoln, followed the Cistercian rule. In the sixteenth century the
wealthiest of the Cistercian nunneries, which as a rule were small
and poor, was at Tarrant in Dorset; and it was for the three nuns who
originally settled here in the thirteenth century that the famous
_Ancren Riwle_ or _Regulae inclusarum_ were composed. Cistercian
nunneries were not subject to Cîteaux, but were visited by their
diocesan bishop. Houses of nuns or canonesses following the rule of
St Augustine were few; but of their two abbeys, Burnham and Lacock,
there are substantial remains. The richest nunnery at the suppression
was Sion abbey in Middlesex, founded by Henry V in 1414 for Bridgetine
nuns, whose rule was modelled on that of St Augustine. The Bridgetine
order, as well as that of Fontevrault, to which Nuneaton priory
in Warwickshire originally belonged, attempted to provide regular
chaplains for its members by uniting a convent of men to one of women.
In connexion with some of the older Benedictine nunneries there were
from an early date secular chaplains who had their own prebends in
the monastic estates and their stalls in quire. In process of time
such prebendal stalls in the churches of Romsey, Shaftesbury, Wilton,
Wherwell and St Mary's, Winchester, became perquisites of clerks in the
royal service, whose duties in the nunneries were performed by vicars.


§ 21. After the beginning of the fourteenth century the foundation
of monasteries practically ceased, although the Carthusian order at
a later date enjoyed some popularity, which was enhanced by royal
patronage. Religious houses no longer afforded the only career possible
to those who were unfitted for the limited professions open to the
medieval layman. With the growth of a well-to-do middle class came the
tendency to devote benefactions which at an earlier date would have
been given to monasteries to parish churches. From the reign of Edward
II onwards chantries and colleges of chantry-priests in parish churches
were founded in great numbers. In one respect, however, the regular
life kept in touch with national progress. The orders of friars found
their way to England in the thirteenth century. In 1221 Dominicans
(Friars preachers or black friars) settled at Oxford: about 1224
houses of Franciscans (Friars minor or grey friars) were established
at Canterbury and London: Hulne priory in Northumberland and Aylesford
priory in Kent were founded for Carmelites (white friars) about 1240:
Clare priory in Suffolk was founded for the order known later as
Austin friars in 1248. Of the lesser orders the most important was the
Trinitarian, whose most famous house was St Robert's at Knaresborough.
Although the general plan of a friary was similar to that of a
monastery, the lives of monks and friars were totally different. The
friar was a wanderer who lived on alms: his circuit was bounded by a
special province, and he was not confined to the limits of a single
house. The favourite places for friaries were thus the larger towns.
No less than seven houses of friars were founded in Cambridge: there
were six each in London and Oxford: Bristol, Lincoln, Lynn, Newcastle,
Northampton, Norwich, Stamford, Winchester and York contained
houses of all the four chief orders. An order of nuns, known as the
Poor Clares from their foundress St Clare, was an off-shoot of the
Franciscan order, and had five houses in England. The influence gained
by these new bodies served to turn popular attention from the older
orders. Not merely were the friars the revivalist preachers of the
age, in antagonism to the conservative spirit of the monks and secular
clergy[3]; but the great learning of many of their leading members
earned them distinction and no little weight in the universities
of Europe. The moral dangers of their life, their independence of
episcopal control and their unchecked influence among the common people
brought about an early decline from the ideals of their founders; but
their achievements during the first century of their existence are one
of the most remarkable episodes in religious history.


§ 22. Although monks and canons were bound to individual poverty
and all who attempted to accumulate a private store of money were
liable to punishment, the greater monasteries were large landowning
corporations. Their early benefactors bestowed gifts of manors and
churches upon them for which they were bound in return to the sole
service of praying for the souls of the donors. Such alienations were
regulated by the statute of mortmain (1279). Benefactions continued
under the procedure established by this act, and the monasteries thus
became owners of a very large number of parish churches. The custom of
appropriation and its effects on the fabrics of parish churches has
been stated in another volume of this series[4]. The constant plea
for appropriation was founded on the insufficiency of the funds of a
monastery to fulfil its duty of hospitality to wayfarers and of relief
to the poor. In churches of which monks were proprietors, the vicar
was a resident secular priest. Monks were not allowed, save in very
exceptional cases, to serve the cures of parishes, which would have
interfered with their duties in quire and cloister. Wherever we find it
stated in print that an incumbent of a parish church or chantry was a
monk, we should hesitate to believe it without consulting the original
record of his institution. Canons, on the other hand, whose orders
began in the association of secular priests under a rule, were given
more licence in this respect. Premonstratensian canons were generally
allowed to serve the parish churches belonging to their houses; and
bishops granted similar licences, though not without demur, to Austin
canons. It is sometimes stated that the object of the Augustinian order
was to supply parochial clergy to churches on their estates. If this
was so, the custom was severely checked in the thirteenth century;
and, when in the later middle ages the number of appropriated churches
served by Austin canons considerably increased, the quire services
in their monastic churches suffered to an extent which was never
contemplated by their founders.


§ 23. The position of monasteries as landowners naturally led to
some slackening of the rule. Abbots and priors of the larger houses
took their place among the spiritual barons of the realm. From the
fourteenth century to the suppression twenty-four Benedictine and
three Augustinian abbots, with the prior of Coventry and the English
prior of the knights hospitallers, had a prescriptive right to seats
in parliament. These are sometimes confounded with 'mitred' abbots:
the right, however, of an abbot or prior to wear episcopal insignia
depended, not upon a parliamentary summons, but upon a privilege
granted by the pope. In addition to the extra-monastic duties thus
incumbent upon certain heads of houses, the care of large estates took
many of the brethren away from constant attendance in their house.
When bishop Alnwick of Lincoln visited Peterborough abbey in 1437,
he found that out of 44 monks there were seldom on ordinary days more
than ten or twelve at any service in church. The obedientiaries or
officers who looked after the chief departments of the convent came
to church only on great festivals: some monks lived upon the abbey
granges: every week at least seven were on furlough for blood-letting:
two were at their studies at Oxford: several were old and infirm and
could not attend service regularly. The somewhat trite remark of the
cellarer at Leicester in 1440 that 'abundance of money is the cause
of many evils' is justified over and over again in the records of
episcopal visitations. In spite, however, of their wealth, even the
richest houses, as a rule, were beset by money difficulties. Their
expenses were great: hospitality and the daily alms were a serious
drain on income: pensions and corrodies or shares in the common revenue
were too liberally granted to outsiders: there was much necessary
outlay on property: young monks had sometimes to be maintained in
hostels belonging to monasteries at the universities: an ambitious
abbot might run his house into extravagant expense on buildings:
episcopal visitations meant a large fee to the bishop and expense
upon his entertainment. The improvidence of officers, joined with the
damage caused to property by pestilence and storm, constantly reduced
monasteries to a state of bankruptcy. The heavy debts of monasteries,
their insufficient assets, the irregularity with which accounts were
rendered, and the consequent decay of discipline are abundantly
illustrated in the registers of fourteenth and fifteenth-century
bishops and in the patent rolls of the reigns of Henry V and Henry VI.


§ 24. '_Decem sunt abusiones claustralium_,' runs an inscription
upon the quire-stalls of St Agatha's abbey, now in Richmond church,
'The abuses of those in cloister are ten: costly living, choice
food, noise in cloister, strife in chapter, disorder in quire, a
neglectful disciple, a disobedient youth, a lazy old man, a headstrong
monk, a worldly religious.' The actual evidence of documents, when
compared with the counsels of perfection in the rules of orders and
the custom-books of monasteries, supplies a commentary on this text
which applies to every century from the thirteenth to the sixteenth.
It must also be owned that grave moral offences were not uncommon.
Where slackness of rule was prevalent, temptations of this kind must
have abounded, and convents which had the misfortune to possess an
unworthy or lazy head were liable to succumb to them. Such weaknesses,
however, are just those on which satirists lay excessive emphasis and
to which scandal lends a too ready ear. The evidence of episcopal
visitations, while it discloses much that is repellent to our ideal
of the religious life, seldom proves that moral corruption was
general in any given monastery, or that individual backslidings went
without punishment. Cases of immorality, though not few, are generally
treated with an individual prominence which would be impossible, if
a whole monastery were implicated in them. This fact must be laid
against the credence which is still sometimes given to the so-called
_comperta_ of Henry VIII's commissioners, the trustworthiness of which
is now rightly discredited. Bishops like Alnwick would spend months
of hard work in visitations and several days, if necessary, on the
impartial examination of the evidence for a single crime, while such
commissioners as Dr Layton rushed at full speed through the monasteries
committed to their inquiry, with prejudices already formed and with the
most casual examination of witnesses, enforcing resignations of abbots
and extorting confessions and bribes from frightened monks and nuns,
with the closely allied objects of bringing the revenues of the houses
to the royal exchequer and of earning grants of prebends and deaneries
for themselves.


§ 25. There can be no doubt, however, that during the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries the life of monks and canons regular became
generally more lax and easy, while the numbers of those who embraced
the monastic life decreased. In the twelfth century the monasteries had
been full to overflowing: each newly-founded house was a sign that the
parent monastery had no more room. In the middle of the thirteenth
century the numbers were still large but not unwieldy. Such numbers as
we have indicate that the monasteries were kept up to the complement
of inmates required by their statutes, but that there was no general
increase. In Cistercian abbeys the number of _conversi_ swelled the
total of inmates: at Louth Park during the same period there were 66
monks, while the _conversi_ numbered 150[5]. Such numbers, however,
decreased greatly within the next hundred years. In 1349, the year of
the great pestilence, there were 42 monks at Meaux, but only seven
_conversi_: 32 monks and all the _conversi_ died. The pestilence worked
similar havoc in other houses. In the small nunnery of Wothorpe, near
Stamford, only one nun was left: Greenfield priory in Lincolnshire
remained without a head for three months. There can be little doubt
that the religious houses as a whole never recovered from the
pestilence: there were not enough recruits from outside to compensate
for the sudden decrease in numbers. Alnwick's visitations in the middle
of the fifteenth century shew that the monasteries of his diocese were
far from full. Later visitations in the diocese of Norwich strengthen
the conclusion that even in important houses like the cathedral priory
of Norwich a number of from 40 to 50 monks was exceptionally large. In
1492 there were only 17 canons in the wealthy priory of Walsingham.
In the largest Premonstratensian houses, during the last quarter of
the fifteenth century the numbers seldom exceeded 25. The distinction
between the various orders was no longer clearly marked. After 1349
_conversi_ ceased to form a part of most Cistercian monasteries. Within
the next fifty years they disappeared altogether, and the monks, like
the Benedictines, administered their estates by hired labour. At the
suppression of the monasteries the number of monks at Furness, where
the accommodation was unusually large, was only 30. In Bury St Edmunds,
one of the largest Benedictine abbeys, there were about 60.


§ 26. The decline in numbers after 1349 would inevitably tend to
the extinction of small and poor houses. A few nunneries, such as
Wothorpe, were amalgamated with larger foundations. Various causes
also led to the suppression of small monasteries. An example had been
set as early as 1312 by the extermination of the military order of
knights Templars, whose rule was founded upon the Cistercian _Carta
Caritatis_. Their lands in great part went to enrich the order of
knights of St John of Jerusalem, whose property at the general
suppression was very large. During the French wars, as we have seen,
the smaller possessions of foreign abbeys were gradually appropriated
to other religious foundations. Alien priories also formed a large
portion of the possessions of Eton and King's college, Cambridge. For
the purposes of later colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, this example
was followed in the suppression of small English houses: Jesus college
at Cambridge in 1497 entered upon the buildings and possessions of
the nunnery of St Radegund. Wolsey founded Christ Church at Oxford in
place of the priory of St Frideswide, and obtained the suppression of
several small monasteries for the endowment of his colleges at Oxford
and Ipswich. To Wolsey indeed the beginning of the general suppression
may be fairly attributed. His measures, however, had reform for their
end. Later acts of suppression were prompted by far different causes.
Yet not even the financial advantages of the step could lead to the
destruction of the monasteries at one blow. The act of 1536 put in
the king's hands only those houses whose revenues were under £200 a
year, and of these thirty-two, against which even the commissioners
could find no evidence, were refounded. Such an act naturally produced
serious economic changes: the ringleaders of the subsequent northern
rebellion complained of the damage incurred by the poor from the loss
of convent alms. The Pilgrimage of Grace brought disaster to the
abbeys which had lent it support. Other houses made terms with the
king by surrendering their possessions: the rest fell in consequence
of the act of 1539, which extended the provisions of 1536 to all the
surviving foundations. It may be granted that the dissolution of the
monasteries was inevitable. But for their arbitrary seizure by the
state there was only the shadow of a legitimate reason, and the motives
of the suppression are exposed by the traffic in their property which
followed. Pensions were granted to monks and canons from the exchequer;
but the bulk of monastic property went to enrich private owners for the
temporary relief of the extravagance of the Crown.


§ 27. Many monasteries were entirely ruined after the suppression,
and of about a third of the number no vestige is left. Of rather less
than a third there are substantial remains. In many cases, these are
confined to the church, which, if it served the needs of a parish, was
granted to the parishioners and partially used by them, the monastic
quire being generally allowed to go into decay. More rarely, as at
Christchurch priory, the whole church was retained. Secular chapters
were founded in the cathedral priories, and six abbey and priory
churches, including Westminster, were raised to the rank of cathedrals.
Thus, allowing for the inevitable change of use to which the monastic
buildings were put, at Canterbury, Chester, Durham, Ely, Gloucester,
Norwich, Peterborough, Rochester, Westminster, Winchester and
Worcester, the arrangements of a Benedictine monastery can be studied
more or less satisfactorily, and at Bristol, Carlisle and Christ
Church, Oxford, those of a house of Austin canons may be fairly well
seen. Of ruined houses by far the most complete series of remains are
those of the Cistercian abbeys, which, generally in remote situations,
have been allowed to go to decay with little removal of material.
Benedictine, Cluniac and Augustinian houses have suffered more: the
remains of Benedictine houses like Reading or St Mary's, York, are
not complete; while of Cluniac houses Wenlock, and of Augustinian,
Haughmond and Lilleshall are some of the few exceptions to the general
rule of destruction. Only three Cistercian churches remain partly in
use as parish churches, viz. Dore, Holme Cultram and Margam: they were
converted to this use at periods later than the suppression. On the
other hand, the remains of nearly half the monasteries enable us to
reconstruct the life which was led in them with great completeness.
Pre-eminent among these is the magnificent ruin of Fountains.
Kirkstall and Tintern are hardly less complete. Beaulieu, Buildwas,
Cleeve, Croxden, Ford, Furness, Jervaulx, Neath, Netley, Valle Crucis
and Rievaulx have singularly perfect remains of large portions of
the cloister buildings, and to these may be added several other
instances where churches or other buildings remain or may be traced by
foundations. Traces of most of the Premonstratensian houses are left.
The most perfect is the splendid abbey of St Agatha at Easby near
Richmond. Part of one Premonstratensian church, that of Blanchland in
Northumberland, has been converted into a parish church. Of Carthusian
plans, as already said, much is known, and for completeness Mount
Grace priory is not far behind Fountains. One Gilbertine plan, that of
Watton in Yorkshire, has been recovered by excavation. Of houses of
nuns the remains are somewhat scanty, but of Benedictine foundations
St Radegund's priory at Cambridge, and of Augustinian houses Lacock
abbey in Wiltshire deserve special mention; while the great Benedictine
church of Romsey abbey remains entire. Fragments of friaries are left
in many of our large towns: of their general arrangements much can be
seen at the Dominican friary in Bristol and in the ruins of the Austin
friary at Clare and the Carmelite friary at Hulne. The church of the
Austin friars in London is still a place of worship: the quire of the
Dominican friary at Brecon is the chapel of Christ college. Fragments
of churches may be seen at Lynn (black friars) and Richmond (grey
friars), while the church of the Dominicans at Norwich and that of the
Franciscans at Chichester have been converted to secular uses. At
Cambridge the colleges of Emmanuel and Sidney Sussex were founded on
the sites of Dominican and Franciscan friaries. The Dominican buildings
at Emmanuel were cleverly adapted to the plan of the new college, the
hall of which, in spite of transformation, is substantially the church
of the friary.




CHAPTER II

THE CONVENTUAL CHURCH


§ 28. The precinct of a religious house was separated from the outer
world by an enclosing wall or dyke, on the line of which a gatehouse
gave admission to the outer court (_curia_). Here were placed various
offices and storehouses, and such buildings as the almonry and
guest-house, in which the monastery came into necessary contact with
secular affairs. The church and cloister, devoted to the religious
life, occupied approximately the middle of the precinct, the cloister
and its surrounding buildings being generally placed on the south
side of the nave of the church. At the east end of the church was the
graveyard; while outside the cloister was a collection of buildings,
sometimes arranged round a court or smaller cloister, of which the
chief was the infirmary. In dealing with these divisions, the church
and cloister, the centre of the daily life of the monastery, must
be taken first. It is necessary to remember that while the relative
position of _curia_, cloister and infirmary buildings was almost
always the same, their actual position varied according to the site of
the monastery. The natural place for the _curia_ was on the west side
of the church and cloister, and in Cistercian monasteries, where the
site was unencumbered by other buildings, it is usually found in this
position. On the other hand, as at Durham and Worcester, where the site
was longer from north to south than from east to west, the _curia_ was
on the south side of the cloister. Again, where a monastery was founded
on the north side of a town, as at Canterbury, Chester and Gloucester,
it was convenient that the cloister should be on the north side of the
church, where seclusion and quiet were possible. Occasionally, as at
Tintern, where a river ran north of the abbey, the cloister was placed
on that side for purposes of drainage; while in a few instances a river
on the west side of the cloister was the cause of important variations
in the plan of the buildings. In one exceptional case, at Rochester,
the confined nature of the site led to the building of the cloister on
the south side of the eastern arm of the church.

[Illustration: Fig. 1. Plan of the cathedral priory, Canterbury (after
Professor Willis).]


§ 29. The position of the chief buildings round the cloister was
arranged upon a convenient principle, which commended itself to monks
and canons alike. The chapter-house was always in the eastern range
of buildings: the dormitory or dorter was nearly always on the first
floor of the same range: the refectory or frater was always in the
range opposite the church[6]. This was the usual Benedictine plan, and
its dispositions, allowing for some variation, were followed by most
of the religious orders. But the Cistercian order, while maintaining
the relative position of the cloister buildings, developed a special
type of church and plan of cloister, which were in no small degree
the result of its peculiar constitution. Its claustral arrangements
were peculiar to itself, but its church-plan had some effect upon the
churches of other orders, particularly upon those of Premonstratensian
canons. In considering the monastic church, it will be useful in the
first place to take the main features of the Benedictine plan, and in
the sequel, after noting the peculiarities of Cistercian churches, to
observe the effect of both plans on the churches of other orders. In
all monastic churches, however, the plan was governed by three common
necessities. (1) A quire had to be provided for the recitation of the
canonical hours by the convent. (2) A sufficient number of altars
was necessary, so that brethren in holy orders might have frequent
opportunities of celebrating mass. (3) Arrangements had to be made for
processions, and especially for the procession before high mass on
Sundays, which began and ended in the church and made the round of the
claustral buildings.


§ 30. The result of these common requirements was the general
prevalence of the cruciform plan in churches of monks and canons. The
eastern arm contained the high altar and presbytery. The quire occupied
the crossing of the transepts and one or more of the eastern bays of
the nave. The transepts were provided with eastern chapels, and in the
transept next the cloister direct access was given to the dorter by the
night-stair, which was used by the convent in going to and returning
from the night office of matins and lauds. The quire was separated from
the rest of the nave by a stone screen with a loft above, known as the
_pulpitum_, a bay west of which came another screen, the rood-screen.
The nave usually had north and south aisles. In the aisle-wall next the
cloister were two doorways, one opening into the east, the other into
the west walk of the cloister. The Sunday procession left the church by
the eastern doorway, which was also the entrance used by the convent
for the day offices, and returned by the western. There was frequently
a tower above the crossing, and the larger churches had additional
towers at the west end of the aisles. Even Cistercian churches, in
defiance of the statutes, succumbed in the later middle ages to the
attractions of tower-building. A tower was built above the crossing at
Kirkstall and at the west end of the nave at Furness. At Fountains,
after a futile attempt to build above the crossing, the tower was added
to the end of the north transept.


§ 31. The eastern arm of a Benedictine church was normally aisled. In
the common plan of a Norman abbey church the presbytery ended in an
apse, which contained the high altar, standing clear of the eastern
wall, and projected a bay east of the ends of the aisles, which were
internally apsidal but externally were finished off square. This
plan was followed in Lanfranc's church at Canterbury, at Durham,
Peterborough, Westminster and elsewhere, and was not confined to
monastic churches. In England, however, a plan was sometimes followed
which was unusual in Normandy, although it is common in Romanesque
churches in other parts of France. The aisles in this case were
continued round the apse, so as to form a processional path behind
the altar; and out of this path opened three apsidal chapels, as at
Gloucester and Norwich, or five, as in the Cluniac church of Lewes,
where the plan was borrowed from the parent church of Cluny. This plan
was of great convenience for processions and afforded room for at
least one additional altar. It was adopted in the abbey church of St
Augustine at Canterbury, and in the rebuilding of the eastern arm of
the neighbouring cathedral priory. Gloucester, Norwich and Tewkesbury
are examples of its use in Benedictine churches; and it occurs in the
Augustinian priory church of St Bartholomew, Smithfield. In these cases
the processional path was retained through all later alterations, and
the original arrangement is still quite clear; while the alternative
and at one time more common plan has generally disappeared in England,
and Peterborough is the one large church in which there are substantial
remains of it above the foundations. Although the influence of Cluny
upon foreign Romanesque architecture was considerable, the English
Cluniac churches had no distinct plan of their own. Castle Acre, for
example, followed the ordinary Norman plan as seen at Durham and
Peterborough; and later developments at Castle Acre and Wenlock were
carried out on models common to churches of other orders.


§ 32. The presbytery or space west of the altar in churches of the
Norman period varied in length from two bays to four. At its west end
a step (_gradus presbyterii_) divided it from the quire, which, as
already noted, occupied the length of the crossing and the eastern
bay or bays of the nave. The quire was an oblong enclosure cut off
from the nave, aisles and transepts by screens on three sides,
against which the stalls of the convent were arranged. It had three
doorways. The western entrance, in the middle of the _pulpitum_ or
quire screen, was called the lower entry (_introitus inferior_). The
upper entries (_introitus superiores_) or quire-doors (_ostia chori_)
were lateral entrances in the screens next the transepts, on either
side of the presbytery step, and were the way by which the convent
came into quire. When the Sunday procession left the high altar, it
passed out of the quire by the upper entry on the side furthest from
the cloister, and returned, after making the circuit of the church and
cloister-buildings, through the lower entry in the _pulpitum_. The
stalls in the quire were occupied according to seniority. In an abbey
church, the abbot sat against the western screen, on the south side
of the lower entry, while the prior sat in the corresponding stall on
the north. Where a prior was head of the house, he sat in the southern
stall and the sub-prior in the northern. In the middle of the quire was
the lectern, where, as at Durham, 'the Moncks did singe ther Legends at
Mattins and other tymes.' On certain festivals, the epistle and gospel
were chanted from the _pulpitum_ at the west end of the quire. In these
general arrangements, allowing for the divergences in the ritual of the
various orders, there was very little difference between the interior
of a monastic quire and that of a church of secular canons. Where
medieval stall-work remains, as at Winchester and Chester, or in the
collegiate quires of Lincoln, Beverley, and Ripon, the similarity is at
once apparent; but monastic quires were effectually isolated from the
nave by the rood-screen west of the _pulpitum_, an arrangement which,
though not unknown, was very rare in collegiate churches.


§ 33. On leaving the quire by one of the upper entries, the Sunday
procession first visited the altars in the transept on that side, and,
while the celebrant sprinkled each with holy water, anthems were sung
by the convent. The transept-chapels varied in number. In the great
abbey churches of the Norman period, as at Norwich, Gloucester and
Tewkesbury, a single apsidal chapel projected from the east wall of
either transept. In churches with short presbyteries, such chapels
formed an effective group with the apse and its chapels. Thus at St
Mary's, York, and St Albans, where the plan of the eastern apse without
a processional path was followed, the apse, projecting beyond the rest
of the church, was flanked on either side by a row of three chapels, of
which two opened out of the transept; and of these two, the inner one,
nearest the aisle, projected further east than the outer. At Durham,
Ely and Peterborough, the transepts were provided with eastern aisles,
divided by low screens or perpeyn walls into three chapels on either
side. There were thus in the plan of these three churches, eight
altars in the transepts and presbytery aisles: at St Mary's, York,
and St Albans there were six: at Westminster four; while at Norwich,
Gloucester and Tewkesbury, where there was a processional path round
the high altar, there were five.


§ 34. The lengthening of the eastern limbs of monastic churches, of
which an early example was the enlargement of Canterbury cathedral,
completed in 1130, provided additional chapels and a clear course
for the procession at the back of the high altar. At Canterbury, the
new eastern limb was as long as the nave and crossing together: the
quire was moved into its western part, and additional transepts, each
containing two chapels, were thrown out on either side of the new
presbytery, while three chapels opened out of the processional path
which encircled the apse. In this plan the night-entry was a doorway in
the eastern transept. In the second rebuilding, some fifty years later,
the plan was lengthened further to include a chapel for the shrine
of St Thomas between the high altar and the ambulatory. Although in
several cases, with the lengthening of the eastern limb, the quire was
transferred to a position east of the transepts, this alteration was by
no means general. In the thirteenth century rebuilding at Westminster,
the high altar, presbytery and quire remained in their old places,
and the additional space in the new apse was devoted to the chapel
and shrine of St Edward. The plans of Canterbury and Westminster were
both elaborate versions of the Norwich and Gloucester plan. But, while
this type of plan prevailed in the great churches of France, the plan
which was preferred in England from the beginning of the thirteenth
century onward was a long rectangular eastern limb. At Winchester and
St Albans, the longest of our great churches, the quire did not extend
east of the transepts, and the presbytery and high altar occupied their
relative positions as in the older plan. Behind the screen or reredos
of the high altar a bay was screened off as a feretory or shrine for
the local saint. At this point the high roof of the church ceased, and
the roof of the eastward extension was on a level with that of the
aisles, which were thus returned to afford a processional path at the
back of the feretory. On the east side of the processional path were
chapels enclosed by screens, while a long aisleless Lady chapel was
built out from the centre of the east wall. At Chester the eastern
chapel, which contained St Werburgh's shrine, is directly at the back
of the high altar, and no space was left for a processional path: this
was remedied to some extent in the fifteenth century by prolonging
the north aisle eastwards and so affording a lateral entrance to the
chapel. In the east and north of England, as at Ely and Selby, it was
customary to continue the high roof to the extreme east end of the
church, and to prolong the aisles to the same length on either side, so
that externally the ambulatory and eastern chapels are not definitely
expressed. In such cases a row of altars, divided by screens or perpeyn
walls, stood side by side against the east wall. These alternative
plans were not peculiar to the religious orders, and the second plan
was freely used in the larger Yorkshire churches, by secular canons at
York and Ripon, by Benedictines at Selby, Whitby and St Mary's, York,
by Cistercians at Jervaulx and Rievaulx, and by Augustinian canons at
Guisbrough and Kirkham.

[Illustration: Fig. 2. Croyland abbey: rood-screen and nave from S.E.]


§ 35. The Sunday procession, after making stations at each of the
eastern chapels in turn, came down the aisle into the transept next
the cloister, and, having visited the altars there, passed into the
cloister through the eastern processional doorway in the nave. It
returned through the western processional doorway. If, as at Durham,
there was a chapel at the west end of the church, the procession would
enter it by the doorway at the end of one aisle, and leave it by the
other. The western chapel at Durham, as at Glastonbury, was the Lady
chapel. It was known at Durham as the Galilee because the celebrant,
entering it in front of the convent at the end of the procession on
Sunday, the feast of the Resurrection, symbolised our Lord going before
His disciples into Galilee. The name Galilee was also applied, as at
Ely, or in the Cistercian churches of Byland and Fountains, to porches
in front of the western doorway of a church. The final station of
the procession was in the middle of the nave before the rood-screen.
Here the convent stood in two long rows, the position of each member
being regulated by stones inserted in the floor of the nave at equal
intervals: such stones still remain beneath the grass at Fountains,
and are known to have existed elsewhere. Meanwhile, the celebrant
sprinkled the chief nave altar, which stood against the middle of
the screen, and was at Durham enclosed at the sides and in front by
wooden screens, which formed a chapel or 'porch.' On either side of
the altar was a doorway through the screen, above which was the great
rood or crucifix, with a figure of St Mary on one side and St John
on the other: at Durham there were also figures of archangels. The
rood-screen was flanked by screens across the aisles, so that the
western part of the nave was entirely shut off from the quire and from
the eastern processional doorway. The eastern part of the south aisle
at Durham was screened off as a chantry chapel, and there were also two
enclosed chapels further west, beneath opposite arches of the nave,
one of which was visited on the way to the Galilee, and the other in
returning. There was frequently, as at St Albans, a row of chapels
beneath the arches, while in some cases, as at Ely and Peterborough,
where the nave projected some distance west of the cloister, more
altars were provided in a transept at the west end. After the station
at the rood altar and its neighbouring chapels had been concluded,
the convent passed through the two doorways in the rood-screen, and,
reuniting in the bay beyond, entered the quire through the doorway in
the middle of the _pulpitum_. In many churches, as at Norwich, the
_pulpitum_ was formed by two parallel stone screens carrying the loft
and occupying a bay of the nave. At Malmesbury it enclosed the bay west
of the crossing, and its eastern screen is the reredos of the present
parish altar. At Durham and Canterbury, where the quire was east of the
crossing, the _pulpitum_ was between the eastern piers, the rood-screen
between the western. At Canterbury the eastern processional doorway was
in the west wall of the transept next the cloister. At Durham it is in
the usual position, but covered by a vestibule formed by placing the
screen at the end of the south aisle one bay west of the rood-screen.
The rood-screens at Croyland and at Tynemouth priory still remain
among the ruins. At St Albans the _pulpitum_ is gone, but the stone
rood-screen remains; while at Blyth priory the place of the rood-screen
was taken by a wall the whole height of the nave.


§ 36. Lay-folk were permitted to enter the naves of monastic churches;
and, even in Cistercian churches, where the whole building was strictly
devoted to the uses of the monastery, doorways are sometimes found, as
at Kirkstall, which may have been made for this purpose. In a large
number of Benedictine and Augustinian churches, though by no means
in the majority, an altar in the nave was appropriated to parochial
services, and was served by a secular vicar or a curate appointed
by the convent. The lay-folk entered the church by a doorway in the
aisle opposite the cloister: the great western doorway was used only
on special occasions, as in the procession on Palm Sunday or at
an episcopal visitation. Sometimes, as at Blyth and Leominster, a
special addition of an aisle or a second nave and aisle was made to
the original nave, for the sake of parochial services. Such services,
however, frequently interfered with the monastic offices, especially
if the convent was singing one thing and the parishioners another. At
Wymondham in Norfolk a dispute about the use of the bells by the parish
led to a serious quarrel in the fifteenth century. The parishioners
fastened up the rood-screen doors and appropriated the nave, and the
dispute was healed only by the building of a separate bell-tower for
the parish at the west end of the church. The monks of Rochester and
the canons of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, built churches within their outer
precincts for the parishioners whose services interfered with their
own. This arrangement, like that by which the pairs of parish churches
at Coventry, Evesham and Bury St Edmunds were distinct from the
monastery churches hard by, put an end to such constant wrangling as
occurred between monks and lay-folk over the use of the south transept
at Chester.


§ 37. Cistercian churches developed a special plan of their own in
keeping with the austere ideals of their order. Some of their earliest
churches, as at Waverley and Tintern, had aisleless naves, short
transepts, each with one rectangular chapel upon its eastern side and
an aisleless rectangular presbytery. This is a simple form of the
normal Cistercian plan, which may be seen to perfection at Kirkstall
and Buildwas, and was preserved with some modifications in a late
rebuilding at Furness. The presbytery, aisleless and rectangular,
projected some two bays east of the crossing, the high altar being
placed slightly in advance of the east wall. The western bay of the
presbytery was covered on either side by two or three rectangular
chapels ranged along the east side of the transepts, divided from each
other by solid walling, but with a continuous eastern wall. The nave
was aisled. The quire was in the usual position, in the crossing and
the eastern bays of the nave, and was enclosed on north and south by
stone walls which were built flush with the inner faces of the columns
and across the length of the crossing. The lower entry of the quire
was, as usual, in the middle of the _pulpitum_: the upper entries were
doors in the side-walls close to the presbytery.

[Illustration: Fig. 3. Plan of typical Cistercian church, shewing
original form and later eastern enlargement.]


§ 38. Such a plan obviously gave little scope for processions, while
the number of altars was limited by the aisleless presbytery. While
some churches, such as Buildwas and Kirkstall, kept their early plan
without alteration, and while thirteenth-century churches such as
those of Sweetheart abbey in Kirkcudbrightshire and Valle Crucis in
Wales were built on the traditional plan, others were rebuilt with
aisled presbyteries and ranges of eastern chapels. In two instances,
at Croxden and in the extension of Hayles made in 1271-7, the ordinary
French Gothic plan of an apse with a processional path and apsidal
eastern chapels was adopted. Special Cistercian models, however, were
provided by the rebuildings at Clairvaux (1174) and Cîteaux (1193).
At Clairvaux an apse took the place of the rectangular presbytery:
the east walls of the chapels next the presbytery were removed, and
these chapels were continued round the apse as a processional path,
out of which opened a series of chapels, one from each bay, divided
by walls and covered by a common lean-to roof. The plan of Cîteaux
was simply a rectangular version of that of Clairvaux: the presbytery
was aisled, the aisles were returned across the east end, and all
three sides surrounded by similar chapels walled off from each other.
Of the Clairvaux plan the only known example in England is the
thirteenth-century church of Beaulieu. The Cîteaux plan in a modified
form was more general. It is well seen at Dore, where there are no
chapels opening from the north and south aisles, but the processional
path has an eastern aisle containing five chapels, originally divided
from one another by perpeyn walls. This plan was followed in the
earlier church at Hayles (1249-51), before the eastern arm was extended
to include the chapel of the Holy Blood. In some churches, as at
Byland and Waverley, the processional path was provided by moving the
high altar a bay west of the main east wall, and placing the chapels
in the returned aisle, instead of building a special aisle for them
beyond. On the other hand, the eastern limbs at Jervaulx, Rievaulx,
Tintern, and elsewhere were rebuilt in the thirteenth century upon the
ordinary aisled rectangular plan. The high altar was placed two bays
west of the east end: the processional path was in the bay between
it and the eastern chapels, which were ranged against the east wall.
The presbyteries in these churches were usually walled off from the
aisles, as may be seen in Tintern: the walls were provided for from the
beginning and were sometimes bonded into the piers. As a rule, such
aisled presbyteries were short. Four bays was a usual length, as at
Jervaulx, Netley and Tintern: this allowed two bays for the high altar
and presbytery, and the quire was left in its normal position. But at
Rievaulx the eastern arm was lengthened to seven bays and included the
quire. The thirteenth-century enlargement at Fountains gave four bays
to the altar and presbytery, without removing the quire; while behind
the altar was built a vast eastern transept two bays deep, with nine
chapels against its east wall and a processional path in the western
bay. This unusual and beautiful plan was imitated with great splendour
in the Benedictine church of Durham.


§ 39. The chief peculiarity of the Cistercian transept was the
arrangement, already described, of its eastern chapels. This was
modified in later times, as at Furness, where the vaulting of the
chapels was removed and replaced by a wooden roof at a higher
level, and screen-walls took the place of the solid divisions. The
night-stair from the monks' dorter was very generally placed against
the west wall of the adjacent transept; while in the end wall of the
opposite transept was the doorway through which funerals passed to the
graveyard. At Furness, where the church, by an exceptional arrangement,
stands between the greater part of the _curia_ and the cloister, this
doorway formed the main entrance to the church and was covered by a
porch. Beaulieu, like Cîteaux, has the unusual feature of a western
aisle in the transept opposite the cloister. Such aisles, though
sometimes found in both transepts of Benedictine churches, are rare
in the churches of Cistercians.

[Illustration: Fig. 4. Tintern abbey: north transept and presbytery,
shewing doorways to dorter and sacristy.]


§ 40. Cistercian naves were not affected by the problem of parochial
services, but served special purposes required by the peculiar
constitution of the order. So far as the Sunday procession was
concerned, their arrangements did not greatly vary from those of other
monasteries, although the position of the western processional doorway
with regard to the cloister was rather different. The west end of the
quire was shut off by the _pulpitum_, which in the longer naves, as
at Fountains, consisted of two parallel screens with a loft above,
occupying a full bay, but was often a single screen-wall with a loft.
Against the west face of the _pulpitum_ there were two altars, one on
each side of the middle doorway. The bay west of these was called the
retro-quire, where infirm and aged monks attended service, and was shut
off on the west by the rood-screen. This was of the usual character,
with an altar against its western face between two doorways. The nave
west of the rood-screen was used as the quire of the lay brothers, who
had a night-stair from their dorter in the adjacent aisle, and used the
western processional doorway as their day-entrance. Their stalls were
set against the walls which, as in the presbytery, shut the nave off
from its aisles: these were discontinued in the westernmost bay, so as
to give a clear entry for the lay brothers and for processions. This
arrangement can be well seen at Tintern, where only the west bay on the
north side, next the cloister, was left unwalled. The plan received its
fullest extension at Fountains, where the nave was eleven bays long,
of which seven were west of the rood-screen, while of the rest one was
devoted to the quire, and one each to the _pulpitum_, the altars in
front of it and to the retro-quire. At Furness, where there were ten
bays, two were given to the quire, five were west of the rood-screen
and the intermediate three were divided as at Fountains. In shorter
churches, such as Buildwas (seven bays) and Tintern (six) some economy
of space between the screens had to be studied. Thus, of eight bays at
Kirkstall two were in the quire, four were west of the rood-screen,
the _pulpitum_ occupied a whole bay, and the remaining bay contained
the altars on its western side: the space beneath the _pulpitum_ may
in this case have been used as a retro-quire. The _pulpitum_ at Valle
Crucis was a single screen-wall between the western piers of the
crossing, and the quire did not extend into the short nave. After the
lay brethren had ceased to be a part of Cistercian convents, the walls
dividing their quires from the nave-aisles were removed where they were
not in bond with the piers, and chapels were then made in the eastern
bays of the aisles. There is no trace of any new chapels at Furness,
but there was probably always an altar there in each of the aisles, in
a line with the altars next the _pulpitum_.


§ 41. The preference for a rectangular chancel, in our larger churches
at any rate, may be attributed in some measure to the architectural
influence exercised by the Cistercian order. It is certainly possible
to trace Cistercian influence in some of the churches of canons
regular. It cannot be said that churches of Augustinian canons
followed any definite or uniform plan. Some, like St Bartholomew's,
Smithfield, preferred plans for which the best contemporary models
were Benedictine. But the plan of the first church at Haughmond was
very like the early plans of Waverley and Tintern; and when this was
superseded by a larger church with its longer axis further north than
before, the new presbytery was still aisleless and was still walled
off from the transept-chapels immediately adjoining. Of these there
were two on either side, both rectangular in shape, and those next the
presbytery were longer than those on the outside. The same plan of
presbytery and transept-chapels is found at Lilleshall, and is known to
have existed at Fountains before the presbytery was aisled. Similarly
the plan of presbytery and transepts at Bolton and Brinkburn is
distinctly Cistercian in origin, and, when the presbytery at Bolton was
lengthened in the fourteenth century, its aisleless form was retained.
In Premonstratensian churches the likeness to the normal Cistercian
plan is often obvious. The original plan of the eastern portion of the
church at St Agatha's was almost the same as that of Kirkstall; while
the plan of the same part of Torre is virtually identical with those
of Buildwas and Roche. As at Bolton, the aisleless presbytery at St
Agatha's was prolonged in the fourteenth century to twice its original
length.


§ 42. The plan of Haughmond and Lilleshall, in which the presbytery
walls remained unpierced, while they were flanked with aisle-like
chapels, is found in some Premonstratensian churches, as at Dale.
At West Langdon the chapels were continued the whole length of the
presbytery. Usually, however, they stopped short of the east end. The
aisleless projection thus formed might contain, as at Alnwick, the high
altar. But at St Radegund's near Dover, the eastern bay was the Lady
chapel, and between it and the high altar was a space for processions,
entered by doorways in the walls which divided it from the aisles and
in the screen on either side of the high altar. In many Augustinian
churches a further development of this plan is found, in which the
chapels are real aisles, divided by arcades from the presbytery, as
at Cartmel and Lanercost, and the eastern arm is so lengthened as to
include the quire or a portion of it. At St Frideswide's, Oxford (now
Christ Church cathedral), Repton and Dorchester, where the plans are
somewhat complicated by the addition of one or more extra chapels on
one side, the high altar was, as at Cartmel and Lanercost, in the
eastern bay, and the procession in going from one aisle to another had
to pass in front of it. The aisled portion, however, was sometimes
planned, as at Bristol, to include the quire and presbytery and a
bay for the processional path behind the high altar: this was also
the plan of the church of secular canons at Southwell. The eastern
limb of Christchurch, Hants, is similar in plan to that of Bristol;
but here the high roof stopped above the altar, and the roofs of the
processional path and Lady chapel, as at Winchester, are on a level
with those of the aisles, while above them is an upper story or loft,
formerly the chapel of St Michael. The ground-plan of the Cluniac
church of Castle Acre was enlarged on the lines followed at Cartmel
and Lanercost: that of Wenlock approximated to those followed at
Bristol and Christchurch. Variations of these types of plan are seen
in the thirteenth-century enlargements of the Benedictine churches of
Rochester and Worcester, in which the quires were placed in the eastern
arm. Both churches have eastern transepts, and in both cases the high
vault was continued to the end of an aisleless eastern projection, in
which the high altar stood at Rochester with a clear space behind it.
At Worcester the aisleless bay was the Lady chapel, and the high altar
stood west of the processional path.


§ 43. The naves of the larger churches of canons, such as Bridlington,
Guisbrough and Worksop, were provided with their full complement of
aisles. Christchurch and St Botolph's at Colchester are conspicuous
instances of Augustinian conventual naves which were aisled in the
twelfth century. But it is also certain that many canons' churches,
like Haughmond, had no aisles to begin with. This, as we have seen,
was a point in common between them and some early Cistercian churches.
The nave at Lilleshall was never provided with aisles: the same thing
happened at Kirkham, where the eastern arm was fully aisled in the
thirteenth century. In such cases, where a nave had been originally
planned without aisles, no aisle could be added on the side next
the cloister without contracting the cloister or necessitating its
rebuilding. Consequently aisleless naves were left as they were or were
enlarged by an aisle only on the side which admitted of extension,
opposite the church. The nave with a single aisle, although it is
found in some Benedictine churches, as at the priories of Abergavenny
and Bromfield, is certainly characteristic of churches of canons, and
may be explained on these grounds. Among Augustinian examples are the
churches of Bolton, Brinkburn, Canons Ashby, Haughmond, Hexham (as
planned in the thirteenth century), Lanercost, Newstead, Thurgarton
and Ulverscroft: Dorchester, where the broad south aisle is a westward
continuation of the original south transept, may be placed in the
same category. Premonstratensian churches of the type were Coverham,
West Langdon, Shap and Torre. It has been suggested that this partial
addition of aisles may have been caused by the canons' desire to
rival aisled Benedictine churches. Large canons' churches, however,
such as those already mentioned, if they were smaller than the great
Benedictine churches, were at any rate as completely planned; and it is
probable that the enlargement of aisleless naves was merely the result
of the inconvenience of the cramped space, especially where new altars
were needed. It had nothing to do with the needs of parishioners: only
four out of the ten Augustinian, and none of the Premonstratensian
examples given above contained parochial altars. The enlargement
was frequently achieved, as at Canons Ashby and Thurgarton, with a
beautiful and perfectly unambitious effect. At Newstead, however, the
builders, in projecting their western façade, seem to have felt that
the one-sided plan hardly gave them an opportunity for the elevation
they wanted; and so they disingenuously balanced the west front of
their north aisle by building out a screen-wall, similar in design,
against the west wall of the cloister buildings. This work, executed
with elaborate detail, shews that no funds can have been wanting to
build a south aisle, but that the sole reason which prevented this was
the inconvenience which would have been caused to the cloister.


§ 44. The division of an aisleless nave by screens is well illustrated
at Lilleshall, where the bases of the _pulpitum_ and rood-screen both
remain, and there was a wall further west which screened the nave
from a vaulted vestibule, apparently planned as the ground-floor of
a tower. Examples of aisleless naves are found in churches of all
orders. Instances of Benedictine churches, such as St Benet's, Hulme,
in Norfolk, are known, where this plan seems out of keeping with the
importance and wealth of the convent. The Cluniac priory church of
Bromholm is another case from the same county. Salley, a Cistercian
church on the borders of Yorkshire and Lancashire, had a fully aisled
quire, but a very short aisleless nave, which was little more than
a vestibule to the church and covered only the eastern part of the
north walk of the cloister. The nave of the Scottish abbey of Kelso,
which belonged to the order of Thiron, was also a mere vestibule or
_narthex_, and forms a striking contrast to the long nave, with north
and south aisles, of the neighbouring Augustinian church of Jedburgh.

[Illustration: Fig. 5. Mount Grace priory: tower-arches and nave from
N.E.]


§ 45. An entirely aisleless plan, in which the church was a mere
parallelogram without transepts and without an arch between
presbytery and nave, is found at the Cistercian abbey of Cymmer, near
Dolgelly, where, however, a short north aisle or chapel was built later
near the west end of the nave. Such a plan may have been used in many
small houses, where there were only two or three brethren in priest's
orders, and very few altars were needed in addition to the high altar.
It was, in fact, the characteristic plan of the churches of certain
orders. (1) Nuns' churches, such as Nun Monkton in Yorkshire, were
very generally planned as aisleless rectangles, for the obvious reason
that little more than one altar was necessary. It is rare to find a
nunnery church planned on the scale of Romsey, with a full complement
of aisles and transepts and a carefully contrived processional path.
Sometimes, as at Lacock, a chapel was added to the church, but this
was an excrescence which did not conceal the character of the original
plan. (2) The ascetic Carthusian order preferred this plan, which was
adopted at Mount Grace. It was modified, however, some years after
the church was built, by the insertion of a tower upon arches between
the presbytery and nave, west of which transeptal chapels were built
out from the nave walls on either side. Still later, a long chapel,
containing two altars, was built at right angles to the south wall of
the presbytery. (3) The plans of friars' churches, which frequently,
as at Lynn and Richmond, had a tower between the nave and presbytery,
bear a strong family likeness to that of Mount Grace; and in some
cases, as at Brecon and at Hulne, near Alnwick, they were without a
structural division. The naves, however, of some of their later town
churches, where large congregations attended the preaching of the
Dominican order, were built, as in the splendid example at Norwich,
with north and south aisles. (4) It is evident that churches of
Gilbertine canons, as at Malton, sometimes followed an ordinary aisled
plan. But in the double houses of the order, if Watton is typical of
the rest, the church was a long aisleless building on one side of the
nuns' cloister, and was divided lengthways by a wall, the division next
the cloister being appropriated to the nuns, and the outer division,
which had its own doorway, to the canons. There was a doorway in the
wall between the two altars, which could be used for processions and by
the celebrant at the nuns' altar; but the seclusion of the two portions
of the convent was carefully maintained, and the holy-water and pax
were passed from the nuns' to the canons' quire through a turn-table in
the wall. The canons also had a chapel on the south side of their own
cloister, which was a simple aisleless rectangle.




CHAPTER III

THE CLOISTER AND ITS BUILDINGS


§ 46. The cloister (_claustrum_) was, as its name implies, an
enclosed space, surrounding all four sides of a rectangular court.
The four walks of the cloister were roofed in: the walls next the
court were pierced at first with open arcades, and later with large
window-openings. One walk adjoined the nave of the church, and part of
the east walk was overlapped by the adjacent transept. On the east and
the two remaining sides of the cloister were the buildings necessary to
the daily life of the convent, the chapter-house being invariably at
the back of the east walk and the refectory or frater at the back of
the walk opposite the church. The entrance from the outer court varied
in position according to the site of the monastery: in many houses, as
at Torre, it was a passage through or at one end of the western range,
but at Durham, Worcester and some of the larger Benedictine houses
it was a vaulted entry at the end of the east walk furthest from the
church. There were, as we have seen, two doorways from the church, of
which the eastern was the ordinary entrance used by the convent in the
daytime. The Sunday procession left the church by this doorway, and
passed along the east walk; and, after visiting the chief buildings on
three sides of the cloister, returned into church by the doorway at the
end of the west walk.

[Illustration: Fig. 6. Gloucester: south walk of cloister with monks'
carrels.]


§ 47. In all monasteries, save in those of the Carthusian order, the
walk next the church was the ordinary place where the convent spent the
hours of the day allotted to study and contemplation. For this reason
the cloister was normally planned on the south, the sunnier side of the
church, where the high walls of nave and transept checked the north and
east winds. This walk, which was omitted from the route of the Sunday
procession, was sometimes enclosed at either end by screens. In early
times the brethren seem to have sat side by side on the stone benches
which, as at Worcester, were set against the church wall between the
buttresses. But at a later date the part of the walk next the court was
divided by short partition walls into a number of small studies called
carrels (_caroli_, i.e. enclosed spaces). At Durham, where the walk was
ten bays long and was lighted by ten three-light windows, there were
thirty carrels, three to each window. The carrels remain at Gloucester,
twenty in number, two to each of the ten four-light windows. They were
roofed at the level of the window-transoms, so that the upper portions
of the windows gave plenty of light to the walk behind. Each contained
a desk for books: at Durham they were wainscoted, and entered by doors,
the tops of which were pierced, so that each monk as he worked was
under survey. As private property was forbidden, no religious was
allowed to keep books of his own in his carrel. Manuscripts in use were
kept in special cupboards or almeries (_armaria_), which at Durham were
ranged against the church wall. Such book-cupboards were placed in the
cloister where there was room for them. At Worcester there are two in
the east walk near the chapter-house door, while at Gloucester the
easternmost carrel and two small cupboards projecting into the court
from the east walk were probably used for this purpose. In Cistercian
houses a special place was set aside for the library; but in the houses
of most orders no definite part of the plan was so distinguished, and
it is not until a late date that, at Canterbury and Durham, we hear of
separate rooms assigned to the library, as distinct from the cupboards
and presses in the cloister[7].


§ 48. In the ordinary Benedictine plan, which, although subject to
some variation, was the model, founded on convenience, for the other
monastic orders, the eastern range of buildings had a ground-floor and
upper story, and projected some distance to the south or north, as the
case might be, beyond the cloister. The upper story was the dorter
(_dormitorium_) of the convent, which normally was carried through the
whole range as far as the transept of the church. On the ground-floor,
the chapter-house, entered by a doorway near the middle of the east
walk, was a long building which projected eastwards at right angles
to the range. It was very frequently separated from the church, as
at Durham and Worcester, by a vaulted passage which gave access to
the graveyard at the east end of the church. This was the parlour
(_locutorium_), where the rule of silence was relaxed and necessary
conversation could be held. At Durham, merchants were allowed to bring
their wares here for sale, but for this purpose an outer parlour was
often provided, as at Gloucester, in the western range, and the eastern
parlour was reserved for the convent. Occasionally, as at Rochester and
Wenlock, the chapter-house joined the church without the intervening
parlour; and at Westminster the place of the parlour was taken by the
chapel of St Faith, the only entrance to which was from the south
transept.


§ 49. The chapter-house (_domus capitularis_) was the place where,
every day after prime, the convent met together for the confession and
correction of faults and for the discussion of business concerning the
house as a whole. At these meetings a chapter (_capitulum_) of the
rule was read daily, and from this circumstance the name of chapter
was transferred both to the meeting and the building. Here too the
visitor of the monastery held his periodical inquiries, prefaced by a
sermon from one of his clerks or of the senior members of the house. In
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as at Durham and Fountains, the
chapter-house was the customary burial-place for abbots and other heads
of houses. The dead bodies of monks rested in the chapter-house at
Durham, and matins of the dead were sung for them here before they took
their last journey through the parlour to the graveyard. The building
was normally oblong in shape, undivided by columns into aisles, and was
usually vaulted. At Durham, Gloucester and Reading it ended in an apse.
The abbot or prior occupied a raised seat at the east end, with the
principal officers on his right and left. The rest of the convent sat
on stone benches round the walls; while near the centre of the floor
was the desk or lectern (_analogium_) from which the daily lection from
the martyrology and the chapter for the day were read. The breadth of
the chapter-house generally corresponded to three bays of the cloister,
with a doorway in the middle of the west wall and a window on either
side.

[Illustration: Fig. 7. Bristol: chapter-house, looking W.]


§ 50. In most houses, as in the Augustinian abbey of canons at
Haughmond and of canonesses at Lacock, the chapter-house roof was on a
level with that of the cloister, to allow of the continuation of the
dorter or of a passage from the dorter to the transept across its
western end. But in the larger houses, especially of the Benedictines,
it was often an aisleless hall occupying the whole height of the range.
Where, as at Canterbury, Gloucester and Reading, it was of this type
and opened directly from the cloister, the dorter was obviously shut
off from direct communication with the church. But at Bristol, Chester,
Westminster and elsewhere, the lofty chapter-houses stood entirely
at the back of the eastern range, and the dorter was carried across
a vaulted vestibule, which was divided by columns into three or, at
Westminster, into two alleys, and was either open to the cloister,
as at Bristol, or, as at Chester, was entered by a doorway with a
window on either side, like the doorway of the chapter-house beyond.
It has been said that the chapter-house was usually planned without
aisles: this was the case in the larger Benedictine houses, and in
such houses of moderate size as Haughmond, the Premonstratensian abbey
of Dryburgh in Scotland, or the Benedictine nunnery of St Radegund at
Cambridge. But the Cistercian order preferred chapter-houses divided
into alleys by rows of columns, and the influence of their beautiful
buildings may be seen in the aisled chapter-houses of Lacock or of the
Premonstratensian abbey of Beeleigh. Nor was the chapter-house always
oblong. Apsidal examples have been given; and, when that at Gloucester
was rebuilt in the fifteenth century, it was finished with a
three-sided apse. There are also circular and polygonal chapter-houses.
At Worcester the twelfth-century chapter-house is a circular building,
entered directly from the cloister, and vaulted from a central
column. In the fifteenth century, when the abutments shewed signs of
giving way, it was remodelled externally into a ten-sided polygon.
No vestibule was necessary here, as the dorter was placed in another
part of the cloister, and more room could accordingly be given to the
chapter-house. At Dore, the chapter-house was polygonal; at Margam
it was internally circular, externally twelve-sided. The Benedictine
chapter-house at Evesham was ten-sided. Between 1245 and 1250 was
built the octagonal chapter-house of Westminster, the prototype of the
secular buildings at Salisbury and Wells, raised upon an undercroft and
divided from the cloister by a long vestibule; and there was another
octagonal chapter-house in the Augustinian priory of Carlisle. The
most peculiar plan was that of the twelfth-century Premonstratensian
chapter-house at Alnwick, where a rectangular western vestibule was
combined with a circular eastern portion of the same height, roofed in
one span without a central column.


§ 51. Where the infirmary buildings stood due east of the cloister,
as at Canterbury, they were approached by a passage through the east
range, next the chapter-house. Their position, however, was variable;
and in such instances the infirmary passage represented a bay cut
off from the vaulted undercroft of the dorter, which formed the rest
of the ground-floor of the eastern range. At Westminster, where this
sub-vault belongs to the earliest portion of the monastery, the
ordinary custom was followed of dividing it into two apartments. The
northern and smaller, occupying the two bays at the south end of the
east walk, was the treasury, known at Westminster as the chapel of
the Pyx, because the currency, contained in a box or casket (_pyxis_)
was brought there for trial. The southern division extended for five
bays beyond the cloister, and was the common house or warming-house
(_calefactorium_), which contained the fireplace where the monks
warmed themselves in winter. In Cluniac monasteries this was also the
bleeding-house of the monks. If, however, the Westminster arrangement
may be quoted as typical, it was not invariable. The customary position
for the warming-house was beneath the dorter; and consequently, if
the dorter, as sometimes happened, occupied an abnormal situation,
the warming-house followed suit. Thus, on the contracted site at
Gloucester, the dorter was on the first floor of a building at right
angles to the cloister, parallel to the chapter-house. At Worcester,
it was at right angles to the west walk of the cloister. Probably the
early plan at Durham was like that at Westminster, but eventually the
dorter and common house were removed to the west range. The plan of
St Agatha's, which in more than one respect resembles that of Durham,
also shews the dorter and common house in the west range; but, while
the treasury at Durham was the part of the dorter sub-vault between the
common house and the church, the treasury at St Agatha's, as in many
canons' houses, was probably the sacristy in the east range, between
the church and chapter-house, where at Durham we find the parlour. The
dorter and common house at Canterbury were in the usual place; but the
treasury was in quite a different part of the monastery, between the
infirmary and one of the chapels of the apse; and at Gloucester, at
any rate after the fourteenth century, the treasury was a first-floor
room above the monks' parlour, between the chapter-house and north
transept[8].


§ 52. The dorter generally communicated with the transept of the
church by the night-stair, of which a splendid example remains at
Hexham, the head of the stair being divided from the dorter by a
lobby or a room over the parlour. Even where, as at Haughmond, the
dorter did not extend over the chapter-house, there was sometimes
a passage or gallery which led from it to the transept. There was
always a day-stair to the dorter from the cloister, the ordinary
position for which, as at Westminster, was between the chapter-house
or its vestibule and the treasury or the common house; and when, as
in examples already cited, the chapter-house entirely cut off the
dorter from the church, this stair would be used for the night-services
as well as for ordinary access in the daytime. In such cases, the
entrance to the church was through the eastern processional doorway,
but at Canterbury the monks, on their way from the dorter to the
night-service, passed through a gallery on the first floor of the
eastern or infirmary cloister to the doorway in the north-eastern
transept. In smaller monasteries there was often some difficulty in
fitting the day-stair into the plan of the eastern range. In the
Premonstratensian house of St Radegund the day-stair was a straight
flight of steps from the lobby between the dorter and the church wall,
at the other end of which was a turret containing the night-stair. At
Lacock there was a single stair next the church, parallel with the east
walk and dividing it from the large sacristy which filled the space
between the church and chapter-house.


§ 53. Wainscot partitions divided the dorter internally into a series
of cubicles with a passage down the centre. Each cubicle was lighted
by a window, and at Durham each contained a desk at which monks could
work, if, as for example at the mid-day _siesta_ in summer, they were
unable to go to sleep. This was the ordinary late arrangement: it is
probable that in early monasteries the beds stood against the wall
between the windows without any partitions. Although several monastic
dorters are still roofed, as at Westminster and Durham, where they
are in use as chapter libraries, at the Cistercian abbeys of Cleeve,
Ford (where the dorter is now divided into many small rooms) and Valle
Crucis, and at the Premonstratensian abbey of Beeleigh, the internal
partitions have disappeared. At the further end of the dorter or at
right angles to the further wall from the cloister, there was always
a building known as _domus necessaria_, _necessarium_, or in English
the rere-dorter, which was a long gallery with a row of seats against
one wall, each lighted by a window and divided by a partition from the
next. Beneath the seats was a drain or running stream, above which
the partitions were carried by transverse arches: on the ground-floor
the drain was shut off by a wall from the vaulted undercroft of the
gallery. The _necessarium_ at Canterbury, known as the third dorter,
was 145 feet long: it opened from the north-east corner of the great
dorter, and was at right angles to the east wall, parallel to the
second dorter, in which the obedientiaries or officers of the house
slept. It contained 55 seats at first, 50 later. At Lewes the later
_necessarium_, a separate building on lower ground than the dorter
and connected with it by a bridge and stair, was 158 feet long and
contained 66 seats. At Furness the _necessarium_ stood east of the
dorter and parallel to it, with a two-storied building connecting the
two. Here the seats were arranged back to back against a middle wall,
with a passage at either side.


§ 54. In the monasteries of all orders, the Cistercian order alone
excepted, the range of buildings opposite the church, uniting the
eastern and western cloister-buildings, had its major axis parallel
with that of the church, and was entered by a doorway from the cloister
near its west end. There was often at its east end a vaulted passage
through the range, which continued the east walk of the cloister, and
led either, as at Durham, into the outer court, or, as at Gloucester
and Peterborough, to the infirmary buildings, and from this passage
or 'dark cloister' at Westminster the common house beneath the dorter
was entered. The larger part of the range was devoted to the frater or
dining-hall of the monastery (_refectorium_). In several cases, the
frater was raised upon a cellar, which was in many such instances, as
at Gloucester, the great cellar and buttery of the house. Where such
cellars existed, a stair led up through the frater doorway to the
west end of the hall, which, as in ordinary houses, was partitioned
off from the rest by screens. The screens, entered on the level where
there was no cellar, formed a passage to the kitchen at the back of
the range, and had a pantry on the west side. This passage existed at
Durham and St Agatha's, where, above the pantry, the roof of which
was of course on a much lower level than that of the hall, there
was a loft, used in later days at Durham for the daily meals of the
monks, who used the frater only on certain festivals, leaving it to
the novices on ordinary days. The frater itself was an aisleless hall
with a wooden roof. Across the east end was the high table for the
principal members of the convent: the others sat at two or more tables
set lengthways in the body of the hall. Near the high table, in the
wall opposite the cloister, was the pulpit, from which a portion of
Scripture or of some homily in Latin was read by one of the brethren
during meals. A window-recess was generally enlarged to form the
pulpit, the floor and parapet of which were corbelled out towards the
hall: it was entered by a stair, as at Chester or in the beautiful
Cistercian example at Beaulieu, in the thickness of the wall, with an
open arcade in its inner face. There were also cupboards and shelves in
the frater for plate, linen and earthenware. In the Cistercian abbey
of Cleeve there remains above the high table a mural painting of the
Crucifixion: a similar painting was made in 1518 at Durham upon the
upper part of the west wall. At Worcester a sculptured figure of our
Lord in majesty occupies the middle of the east wall.


§ 55. The kitchen was, as has been said, external to the cloister,
though necessarily in close connexion with the frater. In some of
the greater houses, as at Canterbury, Durham and Glastonbury, it was
a detached building, which was rebuilt in the fourteenth century on
a square plan, with fireplaces in the angles, the arches of which
supported an octagonal superstructure and vaulted roof, the smoke being
conveyed through flues to a central louvre. A passage connected the
kitchen with the frater and screens, and at Durham food was served
through an opening in the frater wall called the dresser window. The
great kitchens of Durham and Glastonbury are still entire. In the
majority of cases, the kitchen was probably a rectangular building;
and sometimes, as at Lacock, it stood west of the frater, in the angle
between it and the western range. Here, where the frater was upon an
upper floor, the lobby at the foot of the stair was the entrance to the
kitchen, and the fireplaces were in the outer walls.

[Illustration: Fig. 8. Worcester: lavatory in west walk of cloister.]


§ 56. In the cloister, near the entrance to the frater, was the
lavatory (_lavatorium_), where the brethren washed their hands
before meals. In some cases, as at Durham and Wenlock, an octagonal
or circular building, projecting into the cloister-garth opposite
the frater doorway, contained a great laver, filled by taps from a
pipe in a central pillar. Each monk could wash at his separate tap,
the water from which fell into a basin at the foot of the laver
and was carried away by a waste-pipe. The ingeniously contrived
water-supply at Canterbury served three such laver-houses and a fourth
laver in the so-called north hall[9]. The great laver-house in the
infirmary cloister was used by monks on their way from the dorter to
the night-office, when they entered the church through the eastern
transept: this still remains, as well as the arches and the base of
the trough of that near the frater. At Wenlock there remains a small
apartment in the west wall of the south transept, close to the eastern
processional doorway from the cloister, which contained a lavatory
for use before the night-office: in this case, the lavatory evidently
followed the more usual arrangement and was not an isolated laver, but
a trough fed by a horizontal pipe in the wall behind and emptied by a
waste-pipe at one end. This is the form of which traces most commonly
remain in cloisters, where the lavatory and its towel-cupboards were
placed in arched recesses either, as at Peterborough or in several
Cistercian houses, in the wall of the frater, or, as at Worcester,
Haughmond and Hexham, in the wall of the western range, not far
from the frater doorway. The lavatory at Gloucester, on the trough
principle, remains within a rectangular building projecting from the
wall opposite the frater into the cloister-garth: the towel-cupboard
was in the north wall of the cloister next the frater. Towel-cupboards
also were formed by recesses in similar positions in the south wall at
Durham[10].


§ 57. The ground-floor of the western range of buildings, as at
Canterbury, Chester and Peterborough, was usually the cellarer's
building (_cellarium_), containing the great cellar and buttery of
the monastery, and frequently divided from the church by a vaulted
passage, which was the main entrance to the cloister from the _curia_
and was the outer parlour, where necessary business could be done
with lay-folk. But the variable position of the _curia_ with regard
to the cloister made the use of this range liable to variation; and
sometimes, as we have seen, the great cellar was a vault beneath the
frater. In two convents of women, the Benedictine house of St Radegund
at Cambridge and the Augustinian house at Lacock, the ground-floor was
divided into separate rooms. The outer parlour at Lacock was a passage
near the centre of the range: the rooms next the church may have been
used by the chaplains of the convent, while a large room north of
the passage may have been the guest-hall where inferior visitors or
pilgrims were entertained by the cellaress. The upper floor probably
contained the abbess' lodging or _camera_, with her guest-hall, in
which visitors of the better class were accommodated, above the
cellaress' hall. It was at any rate a very general custom, save in
Cistercian monasteries, for the upper floor to form part of the abbot's
or prior's separate lodging, and to contain his guest-hall. Originally
the head of the house slept in the dorter with his brethren; but before
the end of the twelfth century he began to occupy separate rooms, which
in the larger monasteries developed into a house of some size. At
Peterborough the abbot's lodging, now the bishop's palace, consisted of
a separate block of buildings standing to the west of the _cellarium_,
and entered from the outer court through its own gatehouse. It was
joined to the _cellarium_ by a wing, on the upper floor of which was
the abbot's solar or great chamber; and this communicated with the
guest-hall on the first floor of the _cellarium_, between which and
the church, above the outer parlour, was the abbot's chapel. The older
abbot's lodging at Gloucester, afterwards appropriated to the prior,
and now used as the deanery, was also separated by a small court from
the cloister, and a wing next the church contained the abbot's chapel
above the outer parlour; but here there was no western cloister range,
and consequently the abbot's guest-hall was not within the claustral
buildings. The archbishop's palace at Canterbury occupied practically
the whole space west of the _cellarium_, with entrances to the cloister
at both ends: the _curia_ was on the north of the cloister, and the
outer parlour was a passage between the west end of the frater and the
cellarer's building.


§ 58. An important variation of plan in the western range occurs in
three prominent instances. In each case the peculiarity is determined
by the fact that a river forms the western boundary of the site, and
afforded special convenience for drainage, while in two cases, at
Durham and Worcester, the western range was on the side furthest from
the town houses near the monastery. (1) At Worcester the cellarage
was beneath the frater, and there was no western range parallel to
the cloister. The dorter, with the common house below, was at right
angles to the west walk of the cloister, and the rere-dorter was at
the further end of this building next the river. A passage between the
common house and the church led to the infirmary. (2) At Durham the
older dorter and common house seem to have been, as at Peterborough,
in the eastern range and its southward extension, next the
chapter-house. But in the thirteenth century a long range was built at
the back of the west walk. The great dorter occupied the whole of the
upper floor. Its southern end, which crossed the west end of the frater
range, was appropriated to the novices; and a stair into the cloister,
close to the church, at the northern end, served for day and night use
alike. The vaulted ground-floor next the cloister was divided into a
treasury next the church and a common house. In the bay at the junction
of the south and west walks a passage led through the range to the
infirmary, which, as at Worcester and for the same reasons, was on the
west side of the monastery. The bays beyond this contained the cellar
and buttery, now known as the crypt, with entrances at one end from the
infirmary and at the other from the cellarer's checker or office and
the kitchen buildings in the outer court. A part of the old eastern
range next the chapter-house was used as a prison for refractory monks,
while the place of the rest was taken by the prior's lodging, now
part of the deanery. (3) In the Premonstratensian house of St Agatha,
the dorter was on the first floor of the western range and extended
southwards, as at Durham, across the west end of the frater: its stair
descended to the cloister at the south end of the west walk, dividing
the common house and adjacent cellarage from the cellarer's guest-hall,
which formed the five southern bays of the dorter sub-vault. There
was, however, a large two-storied annexe west of the dorter, the
upper story of which seems to have been used for lodging guests of
the better class, while, of the three divisions of its ground-floor,
the middlemost and largest may have been occupied by their servants,
with a narrow cellar on the east, and a drain, crossed by transverse
arches, on the west side. The whole arrangement is quite exceptional
and was probably unique; but the plan of the dorter sub-vault, allowing
for some difference in use, bears a strong resemblance to the plan at
Durham.

[Illustration: Fig. 9. Durham: ceiling of dorter (now the chapter
library).]




CHAPTER IV

THE CISTERCIAN CLOISTER


§ 59. Having thus traced the position of the various buildings in
the normal cloister-plan, we may consider the features peculiar to
cloisters of the Cistercian order—features for which the internal
arrangement of their churches have in some degree prepared us. It has
been pointed out by Mr Micklethwaite that the plan of the Cistercian
cloister is indicated by the order in which the buildings are directed
to be visited in the Sunday procession—viz. chapter-house, parlour,
dorter, rere-dorter, warming-house, frater, kitchen, cellarer's
building. It will be observed that the parlour in this list comes
between the chapter-house and dorter, and was therefore on the
further side of the chapter-house from the church. On the other hand,
although at Furness and Waverley the chapter-house directly joins the
south transept of the church, there was in most Cistercian houses
an intervening building. The ground-floor of this, however, was not
a passage—for the way to the graveyard was through the doorway in
the opposite transept—but was divided into two parts by a transverse
wall. The eastern division, entered from the transept, was a vestry
(_vestiarium_): the western, entered from the cloister, was probably
the library (_librarium_), outside which, in the west wall of the
transept, was the book-cupboard (_armarium commune_), a wainscoted
recess in which the books wanted for constant use in cloister were
kept. At Furness, where the chapter-house was entered by a short
vestibule, the entrance-arch was flanked by two similar arches, each of
which opened into a rectangular apartment: these rooms probably formed
the library. In the later middle ages the partition-wall between the
library and vestry was taken down at Fountains, and the double chamber
was converted into a passage. The books appear to have been removed
into closets formed by enclosing the western bays of the north and
south alleys of the chapter-house.

[Illustration: Fig. 10. Netley abbey: south transept and south aisle of
nave, shewing doorways to sacristy and dorter, and eastern processional
doorway.]


§ 60. Lofty chapter-houses, like those of Gloucester and Bristol,
are not found in the Cistercian plan, in which the dorter was almost
invariably continued as far as the church and was provided with an
annexe above the eastern projection of the chapter-house. Furness is a
case in which the chapter-house, as already stated, had a vestibule;
but here the vestibule is not a passage through the whole width of the
eastern range, but a porch, above which a gallery was carried from
the dorter to the night-stair. The roof of the chapter-house itself
was somewhat higher, but there was the usual room on the upper floor.
The chapter-house was usually an oblong, as at Fountains, or, as at
Furness, a nearly square building, divided into alleys, generally three
in number, by rows of columns which supported vaulting. The entrance,
in most cases, followed the customary plan of a central doorway with
a window on either side. Vaulted chapter-houses may still be seen at
Buildwas, Kirkstall and Valle Crucis. That at Buildwas is of the normal
plan, vaulted in three alleys. At Kirkstall the western part is vaulted
in four alleys and has two wide archways from the cloister, while the
eastern part beyond the range, rebuilt at the close of the thirteenth
century, is vaulted in two alleys. The Valle Crucis chapter-house is a
fourteenth-century rebuilding with the usual three alleys, but has a
thick west wall, in which, on the south side of the central entrance,
is the day-stair to the dorter, while on the north side is a vaulted
book-cupboard, entered from the interior of the building. At Ford,
where the chapter-house is now used as a private chapel, it is a
vaulted building of the twelfth century, undivided by columns.


§ 61. The monks' parlour (_auditorium juxta capitulum_) was a narrow
vaulted apartment in the ground-floor of the eastern range between the
chapter-house and the sub-vault of the dorter. It was occasionally
used, as at Beaulieu and Waverley, for a passage to the infirmary; but
a separate passage, where the infirmary stood east of the range, was
also made, as at Fountains, through the adjacent bay of the dorter
sub-vault, which was walled off from the rest. The sub-vault, a long
apartment, which at Furness extended no less than twelve bays south
of the passage, was generally divided into two vaulted alleys by a
central range of columns. It may have been partitioned off and applied
to various uses, but at Furness it seems to have been undivided. From
arrangements which are known to have existed at Clairvaux in 1517, it
is now supposed to have been used, at any rate in part, as the house
of the novices, possibly divided into a day-room, dorter and lodging
for the novice-master. In a few instances, as at Croxden, Furness and
Jervaulx, one or two of the southernmost bays originally formed an
open _loggia_, with piers and arches taking the place of the outer
walls: this space, however, in the two latter cases, was walled in
after no long time. It may be noted that in the Benedictine houses of
Peterborough and Westminster, where the common house was, according to
the ordinary plan, in the sub-vault, a chapel was built as an eastern
annexe, which was probably used at Peterborough as the chapel of the
novices. This appears to bring corroborative evidence to the prevailing
theory of the use of the Cistercian sub-vault, of which no part,
however, was employed as the common or warming-house.


§ 62. The Cistercian dorter and rere-dorter shew no important variation
from the habitual plan. The position of the rere-dorter, at the end of
the dorter or at right angles to it, or, as at Furness, in a separate
building, was dictated by convenience for drainage. The room above the
chapter-house was sometimes separate, as at Kirkstall and Valle Crucis,
but was open to the rest of the dorter at Buildwas and Fountains. It
may possibly have been appropriated to the abbot in the first instance,
and afterwards, like the second dorter at Canterbury, may have been
used by the obedientiaries or by the prior. At Valle Crucis the room
contains a fireplace and is entered by a passage on the north side,
which also leads to a small room next the church. Originally the
day-stair to the dorter was placed in the eastern range of buildings,
between the parlour and the dorter sub-vault: clear indications of
this remain at Fountains and Kirkstall, and the day-stair is still in
this position at Cleeve. But in most cases the stair was afterwards
removed and placed against the west side of the sub-vault, between the
eastern range and the range opposite the church, in the position which
in Benedictine houses is generally occupied by a passage to the outer
buildings. By a most unusual arrangement, the dorter at Waverley was
on the ground-floor of the range, raised only by a few steps above the
cloister. There was no upper floor, although a room between the dorter
and parlour was divided into two stages[11]. The chapter-house was an
undivided oblong building, vaulted in three bays; and there was, of
course, no special night-entry to the church.

[Illustration: Fig. 11. Fountains abbey: plan.]


§ 63. The buildings connecting the east and west ranges of the
Cistercian cloister were divided into three parts, with the
warming-house on the east, the frater in the middle and the kitchen
on the west, all entered from the cloister. It is probable that in
the first instance the Cistercian frater was built in the usual way,
with its major axis from east to west. This was always the plan of the
frater at Sibton in Suffolk: there are clear traces of it at Kirkstall,
and evidences of foundations at Fountains. In the Savigniac houses,
afterwards Cistercian, the frater seems to have been built from east
to west, and at Buckfast this position was apparently never altered.
But such fraters were cramped in size by their position between the
warming-house and kitchen, and, before the end of the twelfth century
they were built or, as at Fountains and Kirkstall, rebuilt at right
angles to the cloister with their major axes from north to south.
This gave more room for the kitchen on the west: it also permitted a
readjustment of the warming-house, and left room at the east end for
the insertion of a wide and convenient day-stair to the dorter, with a
landing at the head, from which, as at Fountains, access was given to a
room, possibly the treasury or muniment-room, above the warming-house.
We have no definite reason for the change of plan; but that it was
due to the uncontemplated growth of numbers in Cistercian houses is
at least probable. At Furness, where the dorter was of remarkable
length, the frater, built in place of the old frater of the Savigniac
monastery, had to be lengthened during the thirteenth century, the only
reason for which can have been that, even on the new plan, it afforded
insufficient room for all the brethren.


§ 64. The warming-house was a rectangular building, which at Fountains
is vaulted in four compartments from a middle pillar. The fireplace
was usually in a side-wall or, as at Waverley, in the further wall
from the cloister. Two huge fireplaces remain in the east wall at
Fountains, one of which has been blocked. At Tintern the fireplace was
a middle hearth, surrounded by open arches and connected by smaller
arches with the end walls. The outer wall was generally pierced by
a window and a doorway which led into a yard at the back. Here at
Fountains, against the west wall of the dorter sub-vault, was the
wood-house from which the fire was replenished. The west wall of the
warming-house was part of the east wall of the frater, and two openings
in it at Fountains may have been intended to give the frater some of
the benefit of the fire. The arrangements of the frater, of which
a perfect example, now used as a church, remains at Beaulieu, were
similar, allowing for the difference in plan, to those of Benedictine
and other houses, but were less elaborate. It was raised a step or two
above the cloister, and on one or both sides of the entrance were the
lavatory arches. The magnificent frater at Rievaulx had a sub-vault,
entered from the foot of the stair to the pulpit; but this is a rare
instance of a feature often found in Benedictine houses. At Fountains
the frater was divided by a row of columns into two alleys, each with
its separate wooden roof; but the undivided plan, as at Beaulieu, was
general.


§ 65. The position of the kitchen was so planned as to communicate
readily on one side with the monks' frater, which was served from it
through a turn-table in the wall, and the frater of the lay brothers
on the other, which was served at Fountains through a hatch in the
west wall. It had a doorway from the cloister, which brought it into
close connexion with the cellar and buttery in the western range; while
at the back a door opened into a yard, where fuel could be kept. The
fireplaces at Fountains and Kirkstall, where the kitchens were vaulted,
were placed back to back in the middle of the room. Kitchens of the
size of those at Durham or Glastonbury were unknown in Cistercian
houses, where, even after the relaxation of the ordinary simple diet,
meat was never cooked in the frater kitchen. The plan, which provided
for the simultaneous supply of two fraters when necessary, was more
compact and less secular in some of its features than the Benedictine
plan; while the actual admission of the kitchen into the cloister
buildings was made possible by the fact that the monks themselves
did their own work, instead of using hired servants under the
superintendence of the kitchener.

[Illustration: Fig. 12. Fountains abbey: _cellarium_, looking north.]


§ 66. The western range of a Cistercian cloister was sometimes
separated from the west walk by an intervening passage or yard, as at
Kirkstall, Pipewell and a few other houses, probably more in number
than has been supposed. At the end of this yard was the western
processional doorway of the church, the position of which depended on
convenience for the Sunday procession, which always passed outside the
west cloister, through the ground-floor of the western range. If the
church extended west of the range, the doorway, as at Fountains, was
in the building itself, or, as at Jervaulx, where the building did not
directly join the church, in the bay west of it. If the range was to
the west of a short nave, as at Hayles and Tintern, and there was no
intermediate yard, the doorway was cut obliquely through the corner
of the building which touched, or was near the church. The whole of
the first floor was given up to the dorter of the lay brothers, to
which was attached a rere-dorter, the arrangements of which are still
remarkably perfect at Fountains. A night-stair descended into the
church, as at Fountains, or, as at Jervaulx, just outside the western
processional doorway: in houses where there was an intervening yard,
the night-stair was placed against the east wall of the range. The
ground-floor was divided by a passage, which was the outer parlour and
main entrance of the cloister and entered the west walk close to the
kitchen, into a long apartment on the side furthest from the church,
and into a series of smaller rooms adjoining the church and cloister.
The large room was the frater of the lay brothers: the rooms on the
other side of the outer parlour were the buttery and cellars, and could
be entered by doorways from the outer court and cloister-walk, while
there were doors in the partition-walls between them. The building
varied much in length. The splendid example at Fountains is twenty-two
bays long, divided by columns into two alleys. The marks of the
original partitions and doorways shew that two bays next the church
were possibly the earlier outer parlour. The cellar was in the four
bays following. Two bays were occupied by the buttery, two by the main
entrance-passage; while the remaining twelve were the lay brothers'
frater, two bays at the north end of which were screened off and had an
outer doorway to the cellarer's checker. The western face was covered
by one of those wooden pentises which were a very general feature in
medieval buildings to cover doorways from a court or yard and form a
sheltered means of access from one building to another. The day-stair
to the dorter was naturally on this side of the building, and mounted
against the north wall of the cellarer's checker, the upper floor of
which was a lobby to the dorter. The arrangements at Furness were very
similar, but there were only fifteen bays, of which the cellar seems to
have occupied only two, the cloister-entry one, and the lay-brothers'
frater eight, the buttery and the two bays next the church remaining as
at Fountains. The division into alleys, although it occasionally was
employed, as at Furness and Waverley, was not general, and the building
was frequently narrow in proportion to its length. When the cloister
of Waverley was enlarged in the thirteenth century, the cellarer's
building was taken down to make way for the west walk, but its southern
part, containing the lay brothers' frater and dorter, was rebuilt and
extended southward.


§ 67. In the later middle ages the Cistercian plan underwent some
modification. The disappearance of lay brothers from the convents
caused the disuse of a large part of the western range, which at
Hayles was converted into the abbot's lodging. In some instances,
as at Furness and Hayles, new processional doorways were made into
the church from the west walk of the cloister, so that the course
of the Sunday procession no longer differed from the Benedictine
usage. At Waverley, on the other hand, after the destruction of the
old cellarer's building, the procession still returned to the church
outside the cloister, through a narrow passage between the cloister
and an outer wall on the west. A further approximation to Benedictine
use is seen in the fifteenth-century rebuilding of the frater at
Cleeve upon a plan parallel to the church and adjacent cloister walk.
Relaxation of discipline and the diminished number of monks allowed for
more individual privacy: thus at Jervaulx some bays of the sub-dorter
were cut off to form small rooms, each with its own fireplace. An
important change was introduced in some houses owing to the removal of
restrictions upon flesh-diet, which went so far that in the fifteenth
century flesh was eaten on three days a week[12]. Hitherto a special
flesh-frater or misericord (_misericordia_, i.e. indulgence) for monks
undergoing bleeding had been provided in connexion with the infirmary
buildings and kitchen. It now became convenient to place the misericord
in closer communication with the cloister, and at Ford and Kirkstall
this was done by dividing the frater into an upper and lower floor, the
lower floor being probably used as the misericord. A new and smaller
two-storied frater was built at Furness. In such cases meat was never
cooked in the old kitchen, but a special meat-kitchen was provided; and
the south end of the destroyed frater at Furness may have been kept for
this purpose. At Jervaulx a new misericord was built at right angles to
the east end of the frater, and a meat-kitchen was made about the same
time on the other side of the sub-dorter.


§ 68. The chief peculiarities of the Cistercian plan were without
influence on the houses of other orders, which adhered to Benedictine
precedent in such points as the position of the warming-house, frater
and kitchen. Thus the plan of the Augustinian house of Haughmond,
allowing for special exigencies of site, is that of a Benedictine
monastery, with the exception that the building between the church and
chapter-house appears, as at St Agatha's and many smaller monasteries,
to have been a sacristy, while the canons' parlour, as again at St
Agatha's and at Repton, was in the Cistercian position, south of the
chapter-house. At Alnwick the sacristy and parlour stood side by
side south of the church. Variations may be found in such points as
the connexion of the dorter with the church: in the Carmelite friary
of Hulne, for example, the night-stair opened, not into the church
itself, but into a small court next it. But the collation of plans,
such as those of the Augustinian St Frideswide's at Oxford and the
Premonstratensian St Radegund's at Bradsole, with those of other
orders, shews clearly that the arrangement of canons' and friars'
cloisters was modelled upon the convenient Benedictine plan. The same
conclusion applies to nunneries, as may be gathered from the foregoing
pages. Little is known of the buildings of Cistercian nunneries, but
the nuns' cloister at Watton was upon the Benedictine plan, with the
exception that the ground-floor of the western range was probably the
house of the lay sisters. The canons' cloister was very similar in
plan; but its vaulted chapter-house, like others already mentioned,
may shew the architectural influence of the Cistercian order. The
two cloisters were connected by a long passage, in which was the
turning-window (_fenestra versatilis_), where necessary communication
was carried on between the two divisions of the monastery.


§ 69. The plan of the Carthusian cloister, however, owing to the
solitary life prescribed by the rule, was unique. The monastery at
Mount Grace consisted of two courts, the northern or cloister-court
being surrounded on three sides by a series of separate cells, each
with its own garden. On the south side were the chapter-house and the
cells occupied by the sacrist and prior; while the frater occupied the
south-west angle of the court. The church stood at the back of the
chapter-house and part of the south range, next the outer court. The
chapter-house was, in fact, a northern annexe to the church, parallel
and almost exactly equal in dimensions to the presbytery. Some years
after the foundation of the priory, owing to an increase in endowments
and the number of monks, a second cloister was formed south of the
church by enclosing a long rectangular space in the north-east part of
the outer court: later still, the north-west angle of the same court
was divided by partition walls into one or more courts covering the
west front of the church and the west wall of the new cloister. The
outer court, thus curtailed, contained as usual the storehouses of the
convent, the building on the west side, through which the monastery was
entered, being probably devoted to the use of guests.




CHAPTER V

THE INFIRMARY AND THE OUTER COURT


§ 70. Of the extra-claustral buildings of a monastery, the most
important was the infirmary (_domus infirmaria_, _infirmitorium_).
This was not merely used for the accommodation of the sick, but was
the dwelling-place of those who were too infirm to take part in the
regular routine of the cloister, known in most orders as _stagiarii_
or _stationarii_, and of the _sempectae_ who, in the Cistercian order,
had been professed for fifty years. It was also generally used by the
_minuti_ or religious who were undergoing their periodical bleeding
(_minutio_) for the sake of their health. Each of the Augustinian
canons of Barnwell was allowed to be bled once every seven weeks, if he
so desired: he might even be bled once a month, if his health demanded
it, but in this latter case he was not allowed to take his furlough
in the infirmary. The leave allowed at Barnwell lasted three days,
and canons were permitted during such periods to talk to each other
and take walks within a limited area[13]. Thus there were usually a
few _minuti_ on leave, whose absence made little difference to the
number of those in quire; and in the larger houses it is clear that
opportunities of bleeding took place once a week. In the Cistercian
and Carthusian orders the rules were stricter: the monks were bled
in batches appointed by the prior at fixed seasons in the year—four
seasons in Cistercian, five in Carthusian monasteries. According to the
statutes, Cistercian _minuti_ were obliged to take their meals in the
frater, but this rule appears to have been gradually relaxed, and monks
probably went into the infirmary, as in other orders, and were allowed
a flesh-diet[14]. In Cluniac houses the actual operation of bleeding
took place in the common house. Several Benedictine houses—e.g. Bardney
and Croyland—sent their _minuti_ to small houses or granges at a little
distance from the monastery, under the supervision of a prior.

[Illustration: Fig. 13. Haughmond abbey: plan. N.B. The chapter-house
was originally rectangular: the present ending was built after the
suppression.]


§ 71. The buildings of the infirmary, known colloquially as the
'farmery,' consisted of a hall, chapel and kitchen, close to which
was usually a hall in which the convent might eat flesh-meat on
certain days. This hall was commonly called the misericord: it was
known at Canterbury as the _deportum_ and at Peterborough as the
'seyny.' As already stated, access to these buildings, which formed a
self-contained group, was obtained by a passage through the east range
of the cloister or at the further end of the east walk. Their position,
however, was dictated by convenience, and they followed no very
consistent plan. Thus, at Durham and Worcester, where the dorter was
west of the cloister, the infirmary was also on the west side, between
the cloister and the river. At Canterbury the infirmary was on the east
side of a smaller eastern cloister, of which the west side was occupied
by the great dorter and its sub-vault, the north side by the second or
obedientiaries' dorter, and the south side by the laver-house and the
night-passage to the church on the upper floor of the cloister. The
infirmary at Gloucester was entered from the north-east side of a small
cloister north of the great cloister. At Peterborough it was a detached
building to the north-east of the cloister. In Cistercian abbeys it
was generally connected with the east walk of the cloister by a long
covered gallery or passage, which usually threw off a branch, nearly
at right angles, to the eastern part of the church. The twelfth-century
infirmary at Rievaulx is in this position, and its plan, with the major
axis north and south and a chapel opening from it on the eastern side,
was followed in the later infirmary at Fountains. But at Jervaulx the
earlier infirmary appears to have been beneath the rere-dorter, and
its successor formed an eastern continuation of the same building.
Similarly, at Netley there is a hall with a great fireplace beneath the
rere-dorter. At Furness, where the eastern part of the site is much
contracted, the old infirmary, to the south-east, was converted into a
lodging for the abbot: the new infirmary, with its chapel, was built
south of the cloister in the fourteenth century. In Cistercian houses a
special infirmary was also needed for the lay brothers: the remains of
this at Fountains are on the west side of the western cloister-range,
with which they are connected by the lay brothers' rere-dorter.

[Illustration: Fig. 14. Peterborough: infirmary, looking west.]


§ 72. The infirmary hall in its simplest form was an aisleless oblong,
on either side of which was a row of beds. From the east side or end
opened the infirmary chapel. The hall, however, was sometimes too wide
to be roofed in one span without support, and consequently aisled halls
became very usual, divided either by regular arcades with a clerestory
above or by upright posts of wood. The beds were placed within the
aisles, the nave forming a central gangway. This was a common plan in
medieval hospitals, many of which were quasi-conventual establishments
following the rule of St Augustine: St Mary's hospital at Chichester,
a long hall running east and west, with a wooden roof of one span
supported on each side of the nave by upright posts which are bound
together by longitudinal trusses, and with an aisleless chapel screened
off at the east end, is a famous surviving example of its use. At Ely
and Canterbury the Norman infirmaries were divided by stone arcades
and clerestoried; while at Gloucester and Peterborough there are
substantial remains of aisled infirmaries of the thirteenth century.
Most of the south aisle at Peterborough is now included in one of the
canons' houses, while the chapel at the east end of the infirmary
forms the dining-room of another. In the infirmary hall at Fountains,
which ran north and south, with the chapel and kitchen on its eastern
side, the arcades were returned across the ends, and there were large
fireplaces in the end walls. A fireplace was a necessity, and, where
no original fireplaces can be traced in the side or end walls, there
was presumably a middle hearth, the smoke from which escaped through a
louvre in the roof. As a rule the beds were arranged at right angles
to the side walls. At Furness, however, where there were no arcades
and the hall was lighted by windows in the upper part of the walls,
the north and south walls contained a number of arched recesses near
the floor, each lighted by a small window and wide enough to contain a
bed with its side against the wall. Similar recesses have been noted
in a portion of the east aisle of the infirmary of the lay brothers
at Fountains, against the end wall of the lay brothers' rere-dorter.
In later days it became the general custom to divide the aisles into
separate rooms, often with their own fireplaces. This was usual by the
beginning of the fifteenth century: it is known to have been done at
Meaux before 1396, and there is much evidence for it in the Lincoln
episcopal registers of the next fifty years. At Canterbury the south
aisle was walled up before 1400 and divided into rooms as a lodging for
the sub-prior. In Cistercian infirmaries, as at Fountains, Kirkstall,
Tintern and Waverley, there are abundant traces of this practice. A
peculiar arrangement was adopted in the fourteenth-century infirmary at
Westminster, where the hall was removed and a number of separate rooms
were arranged round a cloister, the aisled chapel of the hall being
retained on the east side. At Jervaulx, where the infirmary hall was
not large, part of the sub-vault of the dorter was partitioned off into
separate rooms, probably as an annexe to the infirmary.


§ 73. A special kitchen, where more delicate food (_cibi subtiliores_)
could be cooked for the infirm, was a necessary adjunct to an
infirmary, and is usually found divided from it by a narrow yard,
crossed by a covered passage, as at Fountains. The infirmary kitchen
at Furness was octagonal, but the normal plan was rectangular. The
Furness kitchen served the old infirmary: when this was converted into
the abbot's lodging and a new infirmary built, it probably served both;
but in the fifteenth century a kitchen was made in the abbot's lodging,
the octagonal kitchen seems to have been taken down, and the infirmary
was probably served from a meat-kitchen which, as has been explained
in the previous chapter, also served the new frater and misericord.
The misericord or flesh-frater had no fixed position in the plan of
the infirmary buildings. At Fountains, it was an aisleless hall, lying
between the infirmary hall and the abbot's lodging, and must have been
served through the infirmary hall from the kitchen.


§ 74. Heads of religious houses were provided, as time went on, with
separate lodgings (_camerae_, i.e. chambers), which, as has been
seen, frequently occupied or were partly upon the upper floor of the
western cloister-range. In Cistercian abbeys, where the western range
had its own use, the abbot's _camera_ was very generally built, as is
recorded of Croxden and Meaux, on the east side of the dorter, between
the eastern cloister-range and the infirmary. As the first floor of
the lodging generally communicated with the monks' rere-dorter, the
spirit, if not the letter, of the custom which required Cistercian
abbots to sleep in the dorter was still observed. The construction
of these separate lodgings in Cistercian monasteries seems to have
become general towards the beginning of the fourteenth century; but
at Kirkstall there is a three-storied house of the later part of the
twelfth century, standing between the rere-dorter and an eastern
annexe of the thirteenth century in which were additional rooms and
the abbot's chapel. At Fountains the abbot's lodging was made by
remodelling an older block of buildings between the dorter and the
infirmary. Additions were made to this in later times: the living rooms
were upon the first floor and must have included the abbot's great
chamber or solar and his bedroom and chapel or oratory. It has been
suggested that he used the misericord, to which there was a passage
from the ground-floor of his lodging, as his hall for the entertainment
of guests; and monastic visitations shew that in houses of other orders
the abbot's hall was sometimes used as the misericord. The upper floor
of the long passage which led from the cloister to the infirmary at
Fountains was apparently the gallery of the abbot's lodging, and
another gallery over the passage which branched off to the church led
to a pew overlooking the nine altars, which allowed the abbot and his
guests to hear mass without leaving his lodging. The connexion with the
dorter, which was to some extent preserved at Fountains, was entirely
severed at Furness, where the old infirmary hall was converted into the
abbot's hall, and a new block, containing his great chamber, chapel
and bedroom was built on the narrow space between the hall and the low
cliff on the east. It has been noted before that the western range at
Hayles was turned into an abbot's lodging. The same change took place
at Ford, where, not long before the suppression, abbot Chard built the
magnificent abbot's hall, which, extending westwards from the site of
the lay-brothers' frater, forms part of the existing dwelling-house.
Evidence of additional _camerae_ is often found in the neighbourhood
of the abbot's lodging and infirmary of Cistercian houses, as at
Kirkstall, Furness and Waverley. These may have been applied to the use
of the visiting abbot; but it is clear that in houses of other orders,
as in the Cluniac priory of Daventry, such lodgings were appropriated
to abbots or priors who had resigned their office, and this may account
for the existence of more than one such _camera_ at Furness[15].


§ 75. The normal position of the abbot's lodging in monasteries of
other orders was, however, west of the cloister. Exceptional positions
are found, for example at Haughmond, where the thirteenth-century
abbot's lodging was a building south of the cloister, nearly parallel
with the dorter and its sub-vault. The abbot seems to have used the
ground floor, while the upper floor was used as part of the infirmary,
the great hall of which, parallel with the frater, adjoined it on the
west. In canons' houses, however, the abbot or prior might entertain
his guests in the frater, and there was consequently no need for the
large hall which was a feature of his lodging in the great Benedictine
houses. In these, and especially in monasteries where pilgrimages were
frequent, considerable provision had to be made for housing guests.
In such houses as Canterbury, Durham and Worcester, where the prior
was the actual head, under the archbishop or bishop, of the cathedral
priory, he had his own lodging with its hall and guest-chambers. At
Durham and Worcester these were to the south-east of the cloister,
near the great gatehouse of the monastery: at Canterbury the prior's
lodging was at the north-east angle of the infirmary cloister, where
it is shewn in the famous Norman plan of the monastery. The same plan
shews another building further east, called the _nova camera prioris_,
divided from the older lodging by the kitchen and _necessarium_ of the
infirmary. This was the prior's guest-house. Both lodgings underwent
much enlargement, and a third lodging or guest-house, which is now
the deanery, was built by prior Goldstone (1495-1517) on a site north
of the infirmary and north-east of the old lodging. The ruins of the
prior's guest-house at Worcester still remain: it was destroyed as
recently as 1860. The older abbot's lodging at Gloucester, west of the
cloister, was in course of time devoted to the prior, while the abbot
built himself a new house north of the monastery. As at Peterborough,
the abbot's lodging became in 1541 the bishop's palace, while the
prior's lodging was appropriated to the dean. In monasteries where
cathedral chapters were founded by Henry VIII, the prior's lodging,
as at Durham, was usually occupied by the dean. It was the deanery at
Worcester until some seventy years ago, when the dean removed to the
old bishop's palace on the north-west side of the cathedral. Part of it
is used as the deanery at Ely: the prior's chapel, built in 1325-6 by
prior John of Crauden, adjoins a portion of the lodging now converted
into a canon's house.


§ 76. The hospitality of the abbot or prior, however, was accorded only
to distinguished guests. For the more ordinary type of guest a special
hostry or guest-house (_hospitium_) was built in the outer court. In
the ninth-century plan of St Gall, there are two hostries, one on each
side of the main entrance, one of which was the general guest-house,
while the other was the lodging for the poor. At Canterbury this
double division of guest-houses existed. On the west side of the outer
court, immediately to the left of the main gatehouse, was the hall
known as the north hall, a long building with a sub-vault, entered
by a covered stair which is one of the most celebrated examples of
Anglo-Norman architecture. This, in close connexion with the almonry,
is generally recognised to have been the casual ward, to borrow a
modern term, of the monastery. From the other side of the gatehouse, a
pentise along the west wall of the court formed a covered way towards
the north-west angle of the cloister, where a small gatehouse gave
admission to a court between the kitchen on the east and the cellarer's
guest-hall on the west. About the beginning of the fifteenth century,
the accommodation for guests under charge of the cellarer was enlarged
by the building of a range of guest-chambers on the north side of
the kitchen[16]. In the _Rites of Durham_ there is no mention of a
special guest-house in connexion with the almonry; but there is a
description of the guest-house on the east side of the _curia_, with
its aisled hall and central fireplace, and its separate chambers or
lodgings. It was served from the prior's kitchen and was conveniently
situated with regard to the cellarer's checker and the cellar. The
guests, however, were as a rule under charge, not of the cellarer,
but of a special guest-master or hosteller (_hospitarius_), who was
known at Durham as the terrer (_terrarius_), a name implying other
duties in connexion with the lands of the monastery. The office of
the hosteller is minutely described in the customs of the Augustinian
priory of Barnwell: he had complete supervision of the guest-house and
its furniture, and was in close communication with the cellarer and
kitchener, from whom he obtained supplies for his guests. In Cistercian
abbeys the usual division between classes of guests appears to have
been observed: thus at Fountains and Kirkstall there are remains of two
guest-houses in the outer court. A special infirmary for lay-folk was
a feature of Cistercian monasteries, and at Fountains there seems also
to have been an infirmary for the poor. A Benedictine infirmary for
lay-folk existed at Durham, where it stood outside the monastery gates.


§ 77. In addition to the guest-houses, the outer court generally
contained the brew-house, the bake-house and granary of the monastery.
In Cistercian houses, where the statutes required that all the
offices should be within the precinct, there was generally another
court outside the main gatehouse. In the great monastery of Clairvaux
this additional court was of large extent and included workshops and
smithies with numerous other offices. It may be seen on a smaller
scale at Beaulieu, where the mill of the monastery adjoins the outer
gatehouse, and at Furness. There was frequently, near the outer gateway
and, as at Furness and Fountains, just within it, a chapel (_capella
extra portas_), provided for the use of persons not allowed within the
great gateway. Such chapels, at Merevale in Warwickshire and Tiltey
in Essex, were enlarged in the later middle ages to serve as parish
churches. At Kirkstead in Lincolnshire the chapel is perfect, though
now disused, and chapels at Coggeshall and Rievaulx have been repaired
and are used for service. At Beaulieu and Whalley there was a chapel
upon the first floor of the main gatehouse, and one was begun at Meaux
to supersede an older _capella extra portas_[17]. Such chapels are to
be distinguished from the parish churches which are often found, as
at Bury St Edmunds or Coventry and in the small example at Barnwell
priory, close to the precinct of a religious house.


§ 78. Monasteries of other orders were generally content with a single
outer court, although there is evidence, for example at Gloucester,
of some of the offices being arranged round a smaller court entered
from the _curia_[18]. The great gatehouse of the _curia_, of which
many fine examples remain, was the main entrance to the monastery, and
was usually a building with one or more upper floors and a vaulted
passage or gate-hall on the ground-floor. In the earlier examples, as
at Peterborough, the gateway was a single wide arch, as is also the
case in the early fourteenth-century gatehouse at Kirkham. This gave
entrance to carriages and foot-passengers alike. Later gatehouses
were built on a larger scale, and the gate-hall was entered by a wide
portal with a low doorway or postern at the side for pedestrians, as at
Bridlington, Christchurch gate, Canterbury, Torre, and St Albans. On
one side of the gate-hall was the porter's lodge. Occasionally, as at
Peterborough, the chamber on the upper floor was used as a chapel. The
finest of all existing English examples is the gatehouse at Thornton,
remarkable for the barbican which gives it as important a place in
military as in monastic architecture; but the Christchurch and St
Augustine's gatehouses at Canterbury, and the two gatehouses at Bury
St Edmunds are hardly second to it in interest and beauty. The southern
and earlier gatehouse at Bury was the _porta coemeterii_ directly
opposite the west front of the church, and is a square Norman tower,
not unlike the great tower of a Norman castle: the northern gatehouse,
built in the fourteenth century, was the entrance to the outer court
of the monastery. Large monasteries were frequently provided with more
than one outer gatehouse: thus the Christchurch gateway at Canterbury
was the entrance to the cathedral and the part of the churchyard set
apart for lay burials, while the main gatehouse was in the western wall
of the outer court. Special entrances to the lay-folks' cemetery are
also found at Gloucester and Rochester; while at Norwich, as at Bury,
one of the two western gateways leads directly to the cathedral, while
the other was the main entrance to the precinct.

[Illustration: Fig. 15. Kirkham priory: gatehouse.]


§ 79. Close to the gatehouse of the _curia_, and, as at Canterbury,
immediately outside it, was the almonry (_domus elemosinaria_), where
the daily dole of broken meat from the tables of the monastery was
given to the poor by the almoner (_elemosinarius_). The almoner at
Durham had control of the infirmary without the gate, where four old
women were maintained. Such monastic almshouses, which had parallels
in the bede-houses attached to some secular colleges in the later
middle ages, were not uncommon: it is clear, from a passage in the
Ripon chapter act-book, that the chamber over the outer gateway at
Fountains was used for the same purpose. In the upper part of the
almonry at Durham were lodged the 'children of the almery,' who were
educated at the expense of the monastery and were taught daily in
the outer infirmary. Elsewhere, as at Barnwell and Thornton, these
children were known as the clerks of the almonry, and their position
was similar to that of the _clerici secundae formae_, who in secular
colleges were under the direction of the chancellor. They were educated
with the intention of entering holy orders. Some of them, no doubt,
became novices in the monastery, but ordination lists shew that many of
them became secular clergy, who obtained their titles to orders from
the religious houses in which they had received their education. In
1431 a papal dispensation was granted to the abbot and convent of St
Augustine's, Canterbury, to build a grammar school outside their gates
for the poor boys of their almonry and to appoint a special master or
rector, and it is evident that, although there was some doubt as to
the canonical propriety of the application of alms in this direction,
the education of poor children was a common part of the activity of
monasteries[19].




CHAPTER VI

DISCIPLINE AND THE DAILY LIFE


§ 80. The chief object of this book has been to explain the position
and use of the various buildings of a monastery, and in its course
reference has been made to several leading features of the life which
was led within them. The sketch may be completed by some brief notes on
the arrangements for monastic discipline and the ordinary life of the
house. The abbot was the head and father of the house, who presided in
chapter and was responsible for the due correction of erring brethren
and the treatment of the complaints which monks and canons were
encouraged to make publicly in the daily chapter-meeting. His duties,
however, were largely delegated to the prior, who was the officer
charged with the maintenance of order in the cloister[20]. Where
the prior was head of the house, the sub-prior took this secondary
position. In monasteries where the number of brethren was large, as
at Lewes or Peterborough, the prior was helped in the cloister by
other monks, who were known as the sub-prior and the third and fourth
prior. An old name for the junior priors was _circae_ or _circatores_:
their duty was to make periodical rounds of inspection in the cloister
and dorter. But, in addition to these disciplinary officers, there
were other officials, each of whom administered a special department
of the convent. Their offices, held by commission from the abbot,
were called obediences (_obedientiae_), and they themselves were
known collectively as obedientiaries (_obedientiarii_). In the
great monasteries the abbot had his own household officers, chosen
from the monks: at Peterborough in 1440 he had his own seneschal,
receiver or bailiff, cellarer, chamberlain, and chaplain[21]. Of the
obedientiaries usually found in connexion with the convent, two, the
precentor and sacrist, were in charge of the church. The precentor
was responsible for the singing, the direction of processions and the
repair and proper notation of the quire-books: he also, as at Barnwell,
filled the office of librarian (_armarius_). The sacrist had control
of the clock, bells, lights and ornaments of the church. They were
sometimes assisted in their offices by a succentor or sub-chanter and
sub-sacrist. The sacrist at Peterborough was excused from attendance
in quire save on certain festivals. The same excuse applied for more
obvious reasons to the cellarer and almoner, and to the monks who
filled the offices of treasurer and master of the works, the second of
whom controlled the repairs of the church and monastery. The cellarer
and almoner were invariably found in all monasteries. The cellarer
was the chief means of communication between the house and the world
outside: he marketed and went to fairs, and bought the necessary
provisions and furniture. The duties of the almoner have already been
noticed: he and the cellarer were frequently assisted by a sub-almoner
and sub-cellarer. The cellarer, whose checker was usually in the
neighbourhood of the _cellarium_ and kitchen, was in close touch with
the fraterer (_refectorarius_) and kitchener (_coquinarius_), whose
chief duties were to arrange the meals in the frater and to regulate
the activities of the cook and his assistants[22]. He also was, as we
have seen, responsible in some degree for the hospitality of the house,
which was administered directly by the hosteller (_hospitarius_).
Equally necessary to the conduct of the monastery were the infirmarer
(_infirmarius_), who looked after the brethren in the infirmary and
sometimes, as at Peterborough, had his separate lodging in its
neighbourhood, and the chamberlain (_camerarius_), who attended to the
clothes of the brethren and their bedding in the dorter. The receiver
(_receptor_), treasurer (_thesaurarius_) or bursar (_bursarius_)
collected rents in money: the garnerer or granger (_granatarius_)
collected the tithe in corn which belonged to the monastery, and
supplied the cellarer with his stores of bread and beer. These offices
of course varied in different houses, and in the later middle ages some
are found in combination; but, as the needs of all orders were to some
extent the same, the differences are trifling[23]. Each was bound to
render an account of his administration yearly or quarterly, and, where
such accounts survive, the information which they give is from the
social and economical point of view of the highest value.


§ 81. The time-table of a monastic day in church and cloister must be
reckoned with attention to the fact that the day, between sunrise and
sunset, was divided, irrespective of the season, into twelve equal
parts. The hours in winter were thus some twenty minutes shorter
than in summer, and, with this in view, a different arrangement was
adopted during the winter months, which began on Holy Cross day (14
September) and lasted till Easter. Artificial light was impossible in
the cloister after sunset, and consequently in winter the brethren
went to bed earlier. Their night was divided into two equal portions,
between which came the night-office of matins followed by lauds. The
rule of St Benedict contemplated an undivided night, with matins as
the first day-office, said before daybreak; but the general practice
followed in all orders was to rise in the middle of the night for
matins and to return to the dorter afterwards. At Durham the monks
dressed by the light of cressets—bowls filled with oil and floating
wicks, and set in hollows in square stone stands at either end of the
dorter. In most monasteries the brethren entered and left the church
in procession before and after matins by the night-stair, and the
time between dressing and the signal to go to church was occupied in
private prayer. After preparatory psalms, the service began with the
invitatory, which included the psalm _Venite exultemus_. It was divided
into nocturns, each consisting of a group of psalms followed by three
lessons: on ordinary days matins consisted of a single nocturn, but
on most feast-days there were three. Lauds followed: this service
derived its name from the three final psalms of the psalter, known from
their opening words, _Laudate Dominum_, as the _laudes_. The whole
night-office was of considerable length—equal, in fact, to that of the
day-hours taken together—and was further increased by the addition of
the office of our Lady and on certain days of _Placebo_, or matins of
the dead. When it was over, the brethren returned to bed and rose, at
daybreak in winter, at sunrise in summer, for prime, when the sub-prior
unlocked the day-stair and the church was entered by the ordinary
doorway from the cloister.

§ 82. The day-hours were said every three hours, as their names
imply—prime at the first, terce at the third, sext at the sixth,
none at the ninth. In summer prime was followed in Benedictine and
Cistercian houses by chapter. This began with the versicle _Pretiosa_
('Right dear in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints')
which preceded the martyrology or account of the saints commemorated on
the day: this was followed by the necrology, or list of the dead to be
remembered, and by a chapter of the rule with a sermon or commentary.
The work of each monk was allotted for the day, and the meeting closed
with _clamationes_ or individual complaints, public confessions and
corrections by the head of the house. The interval between chapter and
terce was occupied by the monks in work in the cloister or in their
various offices. Terce was followed by the chapter mass, during which
at Durham half the monks in priest's orders said their private masses.
The other half said their masses during high mass, which was sung about
an hour after the chapter mass and immediately before sext. During this
time, no food was taken. Bread soaked in wine (_mixtum_) was allowed
to those whose strength was hardly equal to the long morning. In the
Premonstratensian order, where, as in Augustinian houses, the chapter
mass seems to have been sung immediately after prime, and chapter was
followed after an interval by terce, the _mixtum_ was distributed after
terce to the infirm and the novices. All spare intervals were filled by
work, and silence was rigorously maintained, all necessary conversation
taking place in the parlour.


§ 83. The first meal (_prandium_) took place at mid-day in the
frater, soon after sext. During the meal the reader for the week, who
had taken his repast before the rest, occupied the pulpit and read
from the Bible or some pious book. Grace after meat ended with the
_Miserere_, which was sung in procession through the cloister, the
concluding collect and suffrages being said in church. The brethren
then retired to rest in the dorter, until none. Work of various
kinds filled up the time between none and vespers, a service which
corresponded in its general structure to lauds. After vespers and the
usual grace came supper (_caena_). During the interval between supper
and compline (_completorium_), the last office, the convent met in
the chapter-house for collation, at which the _Collationes_ of Cassian
or a chapter from some other monastic author were read. Compline ended
the day, although, in times of lax discipline, there arose a custom
of sitting up late in the warming-house which called for correction
from episcopal visitors. The strict rule, however, required that the
brethren should repair directly after compline to the dorter, and that
all doors in the church and cloister should be locked until prime. At
Durham the sub-prior went the round of the dorter towards the middle
of the night to see that all was in good order. The rule required
constant vigilance on the part of the officers, especially with regard
to the maintenance of silence and the prevention of the accumulation of
private property by the brethren.


§ 84. In winter the morning or chapter mass was sung between prime
and terce, and terce was succeeded by chapter. High mass and sext
followed. Between sext and none the convent was at work. After none
came the mid-day meal, and the rest of the day was spent as usual
until compline, with the omission of the post-prandial rest, which
in a season of long nights was not needed. In orders in which manual
labour played a large part—the Cistercian and Premonstratensian, for
example—special portions of the day were set aside for such work. The
Cistercians worked in the morning between chapter and terce, and in
the afternoon between none and vespers. In winter they usually worked
from chapter after terce till none, apparently saying sext privately:
in Lent they also said none at their work, and did not have their
meal until after vespers. Their periods for reading and contemplation
were an interval between matins and lauds in all seasons, the time
between the morning mass and sext in summer (for in this order there
seems to have originally been no high mass before sext), and part of
the interval between vespers and compline. Premonstratensian canons
worked in summer from chapter to terce, and in hay-time and harvest
spent the greater part of the day in the fields, saying their hours
privately, and dining and sleeping in the granges, if necessary. In
winter work was done after terce. The Premonstratensian hours for
reading were between sext and the mid-day meal in summer or none in
winter, and again after none or the mid-day meal till vespers. In the
summer the canons were allowed their daily bevers or draught of wine
before vespers in the frater. The conduct of the daily life in the
various orders applies equally to houses of female religious, where
the officers corresponded to those in male convents, the night and
day-hours were said and chapters were held on the same model, and the
only important difference was that chaplains had to be imported to say
mass and hear private confessions, the hour for which in all orders was
usually after chapter.


§ 85. It is probable that the observances of all orders in the two
centuries before the suppression tended to become very similar. Records
of visitations in the fifteenth century shew that there had grown to
be scarcely any difference between the ordinary customs of Benedictine
monks and Augustinian canons: injunctions delivered to a house of one
order were repeated in almost the same terms to a house of another. The
Carthusian order stood apart from the rest, however, by virtue of its
ascetic rule—a rule stricter and more frugal even than that followed
by the early Cistercians. Each monk lived his own life in his cell,
going to church for the night-office, the early masses and vespers, and
to the frater for the mid-day meal and supper on Sundays and certain
feast-days, but otherwise saying his offices alone and served with his
two meals a day through a hatch in the wall of his cell. On Sundays and
chapter festivals all the hours, except compline, were said in church,
and two chapters were held, one after prime and the second after
none. In this life of lonely austerity, given up to contemplation and
precluded even from the field-work and farming which were part of the
activity of the strictest orders, later medieval sentiment found much
to admire; and the popularity of the Carthusians in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries was probably a recognition of their maintenance of
the primitive simplicity from which the older and greater houses had
declined.




BIBLIOGRAPHY


A. EARLY MONASTIC HISTORY. See _Cambridge Medieval History_, vol.
I, pp. 521-42 (by Dom E. C. Butler, abbot of Downside). A full
bibliography will be found on pp. 683-7 of the same volume.

B. RELIGIOUS ORDERS. (1) Benedictine monks. The rule of St Benedict has
been edited by Dom E. C. Butler, Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1911. There is a
translation by abbot Gasquet in the 'King's Classics' series.

(2) Carthusian monks. See H. V. le Bas in _Yorks. Archaeol. Journal_,
XVIII, 241-52.

(3) Cistercian monks. See _Cistercian Statutes_, ed. J. T. Fowler, 1890
(reprinted from _Yorks. Archaeol. Journal_, with preface containing
references to original sources). See also J. T. Micklethwaite, _The
Cistercian Order_ (_Yorks. Archaeol. Journal_, XV, 245-68, reprinted as
separate pamphlet).

(4) Augustinian canons. The letter of St Augustine on which the rule
was founded is no. CCXI in his _Epistolae_, printed with his other
works in Migne, _Patrologiae Latinae Cursus_. The rule is printed by
J. W. Clark, _Observances in Use at the Augustinian Priory of S. Giles
and S. Andrew at Barnwell, Cambridgeshire_, Cambridge, 1897, pp. 2-23:
see also the introduction to the same volume, pp. xxxi-civ, for a
description of the customs of the order.

(5) Gilbertine canons. See Rose Graham, _St Gilbert of Sempringham and
the Gilbertines_, 1902.

(6) Premonstratensian canons. See F. A. Gasquet, _Collectanea
Anglo-Premonstratensia_, 3 vols., 1906 (Camden Soc., 3rd ser.). Some of
the statutes are printed by J. W. Clark, _op. cit._ pp. 101-4.

(7) Nuns. See Lina Eckenstein, _Women and Monasticism_, Cambridge, 1896.

(8) Friars. See _Monumenta Franciscana_, 2 vols., 1858, 1882 (Rolls
ser.), ed. J. S. Brewer and R. Howlett.

A number of general documents of great importance are prefixed to
the accounts of individual houses of the several orders in Dugdale's
_Monasticon Anglicanum_, 8 vols., 1817-30, ed. Caley, Ellis and
Bandinel—e.g. the Carthusian _Tractatus statutorum ... pro noviciis_,
and the _Vita_ and _Institutiones Sancti Gileberti_ prefixed to the
accounts of houses of the order of Sempringham.

C. ENGLISH MONASTERIES: HISTORY. Dugdale, _Monasticon_, ut sup.,
contains the text of a great number of documents, taken from various
sources, relating to the large majority of English religious houses,
together with a carefully annotated account of each house and a list
of its heads. These accounts and lists have been supplemented and to
some extent superseded by the articles upon the several religious
houses which are contained in the published volumes of the _Victoria
History of the Counties of England_, now in progress. The documents
are in great part selected from the MS. chartularies of the various
monasteries, of which many have been preserved in public and private
collections. Some chartularies have been printed in full—e.g. the
Surtees Society has published those of Newminster, Rievaulx and Whitby
abbeys, and of Brinkburn and Guisbrough priories, and chartularies of
Gloucester, Hyde and Ramsey abbeys, and the register of Malmesbury
abbey have appeared in the Rolls series. _Memorials of Fountains
Abbey_, 2 vols., ed. J. R. Walbran, and _The Priory of Hexham_, 2
vols., ed. J. Raine (Surtees Soc.), contain collections of charters in
addition to other historical matter.

A bibliography of some of the most important sources for the history
of the monastic life is prefixed to abbot Gasquet's _English Monastic
Life_, 1904, a valuable account of the constitution and customs of
religious houses, followed by an appendix containing the most complete
list which has yet appeared of English monastic foundations. An
annotated list (_The English Student's Monasticon_) forms vol. II of
Mackenzie E. C. Walcott's _English Minsters_, 1879.

A large number of monastic chronicles have been printed in the Rolls
series. The period before the Norman conquest is represented by the
_Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon_, Thomas of Elmham's _Historia
Monasterii S. Augustini Cantuariensis_, the _Liber Monasterii de Hyda_,
the _Chronicle of the Abbey of Ramsey_, and the _Vita S. Oswaldi_ (in
_Historians of the Church of York_, vol. I). Later history is contained
in the _Annales Monastici_, 5 vols. (Annals of Bermondsey, Burton,
Margam, Oseney, Tewkesbury and Waverley abbeys, and of Dunstable,
Winchester and Worcester priories), the _Chronicon Abbatiae de
Evesham_, _Historia et Cartularium Monasterii S. Petri Gloucestriae_, 3
vols., _Chronicon Monasterii de Melsa_ (Meaux), 3 vols., Walsingham's
_Gesta Abbatum Monasterii S. Albani_, 3 vols., _Registra quorundam
abbatum S. Albani_ (15 cent.), 2 vols., and _Memorials of St Edmund's
Abbey_, 3 vols. Jocelyn of Brakelond's and other chronicles were
printed by the Camden Society among their publications: there is a
translation of Jocelyn in the 'King's Classics.'

For custom-books, monastic account-books, etc., reference may be made
to abbot Gasquet's bibliography, ut sup., where also there are notes
of printed editions of monastic visitations and episcopal registers.
The registers of archbishops Giffard and Wickwane of York (ed. W. Brown
for the Surtees Soc.) and that of archbishop Romeyn, about to appear
under the same editorship, contain many valuable documents relating
to visitations of monasteries. The present writer is engaged upon an
edition of similar documents from the Lincoln episcopal registers for
the Lincoln Record Soc., of which vol. I (1420-36) is now in the press.

Three books of recent times are of the highest importance to students
of monastic history, viz. (1) J. W. Clark's _Observances of Barnwell_,
already mentioned; (2) _Inventories of Christ Church, Canterbury_,
ed. W. H. St John Hope and J. Wickham Legg, 1902; (3) _The Rites of
Durham_, ed. J. T. Fowler, 1903 (Surt. Soc.), the notes to which are a
mine of information as to monastic customs, ritual, etc.

D. ENGLISH MONASTERIES: ARCHITECTURE AND PLAN. There is a lack
of general treatises on this subject; but the account of monastic
architecture by C. Enlart, _Manuel d'Archéologie française_, Paris,
1904, II, 1-57, applies, _mutatis mutandis_, to English monasteries,
and contains a general bibliography.

The foundation of the study of the Benedictine plan was laid down
by Professor Willis in his articles on _Worcester Cathedral and
Monastery_ (_Archaeol. Journal_, vol. XX), and in _The Architectural
History of the Conventual Buildings of the Monastery of Christ Church
in Canterbury_, 1869. D. J. Stewart's _Architectural History of Ely
Cathedral_, 1868, is another remarkable work of the same period. Other
important works are J. T. Micklethwaite's _Notes on the Abbey buildings
of Westminster_ (_Archaeol. Journal_, vols. XXXIII, LI), W. H. St John
Hope's _Notes on the Benedictine Abbey of St Peter at Gloucester_
(_Ibid._ vol. LIV) and _Architectural History of the Cathedral Church
and Monastery of St Andrew at Rochester_ (reprinted from _Archaeol.
Cantiana_, 1900), the accounts of Peterborough abbey by C. R. Peers
(_Vict. Co. Hist. Northants_, vol. II), of St Albans abbey by C.
R. Peers and W. Page (_Ibid._ _Herts_, vol. II) and of Winchester
cathedral priory by C. R. Peers and H. Brakspear (_Ibid._ _Hants_, vol.
V), and W. H. Knowles' _Tynemouth Priory_ (_Archaeol. Journal_, vol.
LXVII). F. Bond's _Westminster Abbey_, 1909, is an admirably written
and well illustrated volume.

The Carthusian plan is treated by Mr Hope in _Mount Grace Priory_
(_Yorks. Archaeol. Journal_, vol. XVIII, with historical articles by
H. V. le Bas and W. Brown) and in _The London Charterhouse and its old
water supply_ (_Archaeologia_, vol. LVIII).

The peculiarities of the Cistercian order have received much attention:
see E. Sharpe, _Architecture of the Cistercians_ (_Journal R.I.B.A._,
1870-1, pp. 189-210), and J. T. Micklethwaite, _Of the Cistercian
plan_ (_Yorks. Archaeol. Journal_, vol. VII). The chief monograph on
the Cistercian plan is W. H. St John Hope's _Fountains Abbey_ (_Yorks.
Archaeol. Journal_, vol. XV, reprinted separately, 1900), and to
the same writer's _Kirkstall Abbey_ (_Thoresby Soc. Publications_,
vol. XVI) is added an essay by J. Bilson on _The Architecture of the
Cistercians_, reprinted, with some alterations, in _Archaeol. Journal_,
vol. LXVI. It may be noted that Mr Hope, among other discoveries,
established for the first time in his _Fountains Abbey_ the use of the
Cistercian nave as the quire of the _conversi_, the arrangement of the
Cistercian kitchen, and the fact of the disappearance of the _conversi_
from Cistercian houses after the middle of the fourteenth century.
Mr Hope has further discussed Cistercian arrangements in _The Abbey
of St Mary in Furness_ (_Cumb. and Westm. Antiq. and Archaeol. Soc.
Trans._, vol. XVI, reprinted 1902), and with H. Brakspear in _Beaulieu
Abbey_ (_Archaeol. Journal_, vol. LXIII) and _Jervaulx Abbey_ (_Yorks.
Archaeol. Journal_, vol. XXI). Mr Brakspear's monographs include _On
the first Church at Furness_ (_Lanc. and Chesh. Antiq. Soc. Trans._,
vol. XVIII), _The Church of Hayles Abbey_ (_Archaeol. Journal_, vol.
LVIII; see also _Bristol and Glouc. Archaeol. Soc. Trans._, vol. XXIV),
_Pipewell Abbey_ (_Assoc. Archit. Soc. Reports_, vol. XXX), _Stanley
Abbey_ (_Wilts. Archaeol. Journal_, vol. XXXV), and _Waverley Abbey_
(_Surrey Archaeol. Soc._, 1905). See also R. W. Paul, _The Church and
Monastery of Abbey Dore_ (_Bristol and Glouc. Archaeol. Soc. Trans._,
vol. XXVII).

For Cluniac plans see Mr Hope's _Architectural History of the Priory of
St Pancras at Lewes_ (_Archaeol. Journal_, vol. XLI; see also _Sussex
Archaeol. Collections_, vols. XXXIV, XLIX) and _Castleacre Priory_
(_Norfolk Archaeologia_, vol. XII).

The chief monographs on houses of Augustinian canons are Mr Hope's
_Repton Priory_ (_Derby Archaeol. Soc. Trans._, vols. VI, VII;
_Archaeol. Journal_, vol. XLI), Messrs Hope and Brakspear's _Haughmond
Abbey_ (_Archaeol. Journal_, vol. LXVI), and R. W. Paul's _Plan of the
Church and Monastery of St Augustine, Bristol_ (_Archaeologia_, vol.
LXIII). See also J. W. Clark, _Observances of Barnwell_, ut sup., C. C.
Hodges, _Hexham Abbey_ (sic), 1888, and the learned series of articles
by J. F. Hodgson on the plans of Augustinian churches (_Archaeol.
Journal_, vols. XLI-XLIII). Mr Brakspear has described two houses of
Augustinian canonesses, viz., _Burnham Abbey_ (_Ibid._, vol. LX; see
_Bucks. Archit. and Archaeol. Soc. Records_, vol. VIII) and _Lacock
Abbey_ (_Archaeologia_, vol. LVII; see also _Wilts. Archaeol. Journal_,
vol. XXXI).

The Gilbertine plan is elucidated by Mr Hope in _The Gilbertine Priory
of Watton_ (_Archaeol. Journal_, vol. LVIII).

Mr Hope is further responsible for a series of articles upon various
Premonstratensian abbeys, viz. Alnwick (_Archaeol. Journal_, vol. XLIV;
see also _Archaeologia Aeliana_, vol. XIII), Dale (_Derby Archaeol.
Soc. Trans._, vols. I, II), St Agatha's (_Yorks. Archaeol. Journal_,
vol. X), St Radegund's (_Archaeol. Cantiana_, vol. XIV), Shap (_Cumb.
and Westm. Antiq. and Archaeol. Soc. Trans._, vol. X) and West Langdon
(_Archaeol. Cantiana_, vol. XV). See also J. F. Hodgson, _Eggleston
Abbey_ (_Yorks. Archaeol. Journal_, vol. XVIII).

For the plans of friaries, see Mr Hope's _On the Whitefriars or
Carmelites of Hulne_ (_Archaeol. Journal_, vol. XLVII) and A. W.
Clapham, _On the Topography of the Dominican Priory of London_
(_Archaeologia_, vol. LXIII).

The above list embraces the most important contributions to the subject
made during recent years. Many plans of other monasteries with brief
descriptions will be found in the accounts of the summer meetings of
the Royal Archaeological Institute in recent volumes of the _Archaeol.
Journal_, and there are also plans of the chief monasteries in various
volumes of _The Builder_. Mr Hope's plans of Durham are given in _The
Rites of Durham_, ut sup. For further plans, see the topographical
sections of the _Victoria County History_ and the _History of
Northumberland_ (now in progress).

Historical monographs on religious houses, in which attention is
paid to plan and architectural features, should not be forgotten. As
examples of these may be cited S. O. Addy's _Beauchief Abbey_, Dr W.
de Gray Birch's histories of _Neath Abbey_ and _Margam Abbey_, C.
Lynam's _Croxden Abbey_, and S. W. Williams' _Cistercian Abbey of
Strata Florida_. Guide-books are not as a rule very trustworthy, but
the official guide-book to Tintern abbey, for the architectural part
of which Mr Brakspear is responsible, and F. Bligh Bond's guide to
Glastonbury abbey are among the notable exceptions.

Articles of great historical value will be found under various headings
in Smith's _Dictionary of Christian Antiquities_, the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_ and the _Catholic Encyclopaedia_. It is unnecessary to
refer to these in detail.




FOOTNOTES


[1] _Conversi_ were found in houses of other orders, e.g. the
Augustinian, but their position in such cases was less definite than
in the Cistercian order. Male _conversi_ were attached to houses
of Cistercian nuns: examples of this are known in Lincolnshire and
Yorkshire.

[2] In 1301 the Benedictine monks of Gloucester were allowed a frock
and cowl out of the wardrobe at least once a year, day-shoes once in 18
months, boots once in five years, pairs of woollen shirts (_langelli_)
once every four years. They could change when necessary a thick and
thin tunic, their pilch or fur cloak (_pellicea_), ordinary boots,
under-shirt (_stamen_) and drawers (_femoralia_).

[3] In 1230 the monks of St James', Bristol, a cell of Tewkesbury,
petitioned the bishop of Worcester against the consecration of the
Dominican church in St James' parish. Various documents in the York
episcopal registers between 1279 and 1296 deal with the rivalry between
the _custodes_ of the alien priory of Scarborough and the local
Dominicans. In both cases the root of ill-feeling was the diversion by
the friars of the oblations due to the parish altar.

[4] _Historical Growth of the English Parish Church_, 1911, pp. 11-15.

[5] At Waverley, late in the twelfth century, there were 70 monks, 120
_conversi_. That the monks sometimes found the _conversi_ difficult
to manage is shewn by the action of abbot Richard (1220-35) at Meaux,
who removed them from the granges and confined them to menial and
craftsmen's work.

[6] The order in which the parts of a monastery were built followed the
immediate needs of the convent. Thus at Evesham the eastern part of
the church and the eastern range of the cloister were built first: the
frater and western range, with the permanent outer buildings and the
rest of the church, were not finished till later. At Meaux a temporary
two-storied building, church above and dorter below, was used for some
years until permanent buildings were ready.

[7] At St Albans, where we have much information about the library,
two-thirds of the demesne tithes in Hatfield and some tithes in
Redbourn were assigned between 1077 and 1098 _ad volumina ecclesiae_
(i.e. the church-books) _facienda_.

[8] At Evesham two of the obedientiaries' checkers or offices were in
the sub-vault of the dorter. Here also was the misericord, which had a
door into the infirmary garden. The bleeding-house was a vaulted room
beneath the rere-dorter.

[9] Notices relating to water-supply are frequent in monastic
chronicles. In 1216, when the old spring at Waverley dried up, a
monk named Simon brought the waters of several springs by a culvert
into a conduit which was called St Mary's fount. The new lavatory at
Malmesbury was finished in 1284.

[10] The weekly maundy (_mandatum_) or foot-washing took place at the
lavatory; the arrangement is well seen at Fountains, where the monks
sat on an upper ledge with their feet in the trough below.

[11] The upper stage was probably the treasury, which the account of
the flood of 1265 shews to have been on an upper floor.

[12] In Benedictine houses the use of the misericord for monks in
ordinary health was permitted at an earlier period. Abbot Colerne
(1260-96) made regulations in 1292 for the daily use of the misericord
at Malmesbury by a certain number of monks.

[13] Jocelyn of Brakelond says that in bleeding-time 'monks are wont
to open to one another the secrets of the heart and to take counsel
together,' and describes how at such a time, in the vacancy before
his election as abbot of Bury, Samson the sub-sacrist sat in silence,
smiling at the gossip of the brethren.

[14] Abbot Paul (1077-98) ordained that the _minuti_ at St Albans,
instead of feeding on meat pasties, should have a dish of salt-fish and
slices of cake, known as 'karpie.'

[15] At St Albans there was a large _camera_ for infirm abbots close to
the infirmary. This, known as the _pictorium_ or painted chamber, was
destroyed by the insurgent tenants in 1381.

[16] Abbot Brokehampton (1282-1316) built two guest-chambers at Evesham
upon vaulted undercrofts on the west side of the _curia_. In 1378
parliament sat in the guest-house and other buildings at Gloucester:
the account shews how the cloister life was disorganised by the crowd
of visitors.

[17] This was due to the removal of a chantry of six monks and a
secular priest from Ottringham to the monastery.

[18] In Benedictine monasteries there were usually several offices
outside the precinct—e.g., at Tewkesbury the mill and the guests'
stable, burned in 1257, were _extra portam abbatiae_. The building of
permanent offices in the _curia_ at Bury by abbot Samson is described
by Jocelyn of Brakelond.

[19] The almonry at St Albans, built by abbot Wallingford (1326-35),
included a hall, chapel, chambers, kitchen, cellar and other buildings
necessary for the scholars and their master.

[20] The prior was usually nominated by the abbot, or the names of
several nominees were submitted to the convent for election. Jocelyn of
Brakelond gives a detailed account of the election of a prior at Bury.

[21] The abbot's household at Gloucester, as regulated by archbishop
Winchelsey in 1301, included five lay esquires and several lay
servants, each with a definite office. Of the esquires one was
seneschal of the guest-hall, another marshal, who was charged with
regulating accounts, a third cook: the other two were appointed to
serve the abbot's table and bed-chamber.

[22] Thus the cellarer of Evesham supplied the frater daily with 72
loaves.

[23] The officers and obedientiaries at Evesham in the thirteenth
century were the prior, sub-prior, third prior and other _custodes
ordinis_, the precentor, dean of the Christianity of the vale of
Evesham, sacrist, chamberlain, kitchener, two cellarers, infirmarer,
almoner, warden of the vineyard and garden, master of the fabric,
guest-master and pittancer. The last official distributed the money
allowances of the brethren.




INDEX OF PERSONS AND PLACES

 N.B. The name of each place in this list is followed by that
     of its county, or, if not in England, of its country,
     department or province. The description of the religious
     house as abbey or priory follows where necessary, and its
     order is added in brackets. Aug. = Augustinian; Ben. =
     Benedictine; Carm. = Carmelite; Carth. = Carthusian; Cist.
     = Cistercian; Clun. = Cluniac; Dom. = Dominican; Gilb. =
     Gilbertine; Prem. = Premonstratensian; Tiron. = Tironensian


  Abbo, abbot of Fleury, 7

  Abergavenny, Monmouth, priory (Ben.), 66

  Abingdon, Berks., abbey (Ben.), 145

  Aelfwine, 7

  Africa, communities of regular clergy in, 19

  Alnwick, William, bishop of Lincoln, 29, 30, 32, 33

  Alnwick, Northumb., abbey (Prem.), 22, 64, 80, 111, 148

  _Ancren Riwle_, 24

  Anselm, St, archbishop of Canterbury, 9

  Anthony, St, 2, 4

  Augustine, St, archbishop of Canterbury, 5, 6;
    bishop of Hippo, 19, 20, 119

  Aumône, l', Normandy, abbey (Cist.), 15

  Avranches, Manche, 13

  Aylesford, Kent, priory (Carm. friars), 26


  Bardney, Lincs., abbey (Ben.), 115

  Barnwell, Cambs., priory (Aug.), 113, 127, 128, 132, 134, 143, 145, 147

  Basil, St, 2, 4

  Battle, Sussex, abbey (Ben.), 8

  Beauchief, Yorks., abbey (Prem.), 148

  Beaulieu, Hants., abbey (Cist.), 37, 58, 59, 86, 99, 104, 128, 147

  Beauvale, Notts., priory (Carth.), 13

  Bec-Hellouin, Eure, abbey (Ben.), 9, 10

  Becket, Thomas (St Thomas of Canterbury), 48

  Beeleigh, Essex, abbey (Prem.), 79, 84

  Benedict, St, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 14, 19, 20, 137

  Bermondsey, Surrey, abbey (Clun.), 12, 145

  Bernard, St, abbot of Clairvaux, 14

  Berno, St, abbot of Cluny, 11

  Beverley, Yorks., collegiate church, 47

  Blanchland, Northumb., abbey (Prem.), 38

  Blyth, Notts., priory (Ben.), 10, 11, 53, 54

  Bobbio, Pavia, monastery of, 3

  Bolton, Yorks., priory (Aug.), 63, 64, 66

  Bradsole; see St Radegund's

  Brakelond, Jocelyn of, 115, 129, 133, 145

  Brecon, Christ college, 38;
    priory (Dom. friars), 38, 71

  Bridlington, Yorks., priory (Aug.), 66, 129

  Brinkburn, Northumb., priory (Aug.), 63, 66, 144

  Bristol, friaries, 26, 27, 38;
    St Augustine's abbey (Aug.), 37, 65, 78, 79, 98, 147;
    St James' priory (Ben.), 27

  Brokehampton, John of, abbot of Evesham, 126

  Bromfield, Salop, priory (Ben.), 66

  Bromholm, Norfolk, priory (Clun.), 12, 68

  Bruno, St, 12

  Buckfast, Devon, abbey (Cist.), 103

  Buildwas, Salop, abbey (Cist.), 14, 37, 55, 57, 62, 64, 98, 100

  Burnham, Bucks., abbey (Aug. nuns), 25, 147

  Burton-on-Trent, Staffs., abbey (Ben.), 145

  Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, abbey (Ben.), 34, 55, 115, 128, 129, 130, 131,
       133, 145

  Byland, Yorks., abbey (Cist.), 52, 58


  Caen, Calvados, abbey of Saint-Etienne (Ben.), 9

  Caldey, Pembroke, priory (Tiron.), 14

  Cambridge, colleges, 20, 35;
    Emmanuel college, 39;
    friaries, 26, 39;
    King's college, 35;
    St Radegund's priory (Ben. nuns, now Jesus college), 35, 38, 79, 90;
    Sidney Sussex college, 39

  Cannes, Alpes-Maritimes, 3

  Canons Ashby, Northants., priory (Aug.), 66, 67

  Canterbury, Kent, cathedral priory (Ben.), 6, 8, 10, 19, 37, 40, 41, 44,
       45, 48, 49, 53, 75, 79, 80, 82, 83, 84, 87, 89, 90, 92, 100, 116,
       119, 120, 124, 126, 129, 131, 145, 146;
    friaries, 26;
    St Augustine's abbey (Ben.), 45, 129, 130, 132, 145

  Canute, 8

  Carlisle, Cumb., cathedral priory (Aug.), 21, 37, 80

  Cartmel, Lancs., priory (Aug.), 64, 65

  Cassianus, Joannes, 140

  Castle Acre, Norfolk, priory (Clun.), 12, 45, 65, 147

  Chard, Thomas, abbot of Ford, 123

  Chartres, Eure-et-Loir, 13

  Chester, St Werburgh's abbey (Ben.), 37, 41, 47, 49, 55, 79, 86, 90

  Chichester, Sussex, priory (Franciscan friars), 38, 39;
    St Mary's hospital, 119

  Christchurch, Hants., priory (Aug.), 36, 65, 66

  Chrodegand, St, 19

  Cîteaux, Côte-d'Or, abbey (Cist.), 13, 14, 15, 16, 25, 57, 58, 59

  Clairvaux, Aube, abbey (Cist.), 14, 15, 16, 57, 58, 99, 128

  Clare, Suffolk, priory (Aug. friars), 26, 38

  Clare, St, 27

  Cleeve, Som., abbey (Cist.), 37, 84, 86, 101, 109

  Cluny, Saône-et-Loire, abbey, 7, 11, 12, 15, 44, 45

  Coggeshall, Essex, abbey (Cist.), 128

  Colchester, Essex, St Botolph's priory (Aug.), 21, 66

  Colerne, William, abbot of Malmesbury, 110

  Columba, St, 3

  Columban, St, 3

  Coventry, Warwicks., cathedral priory (Ben.), 29, 55, 128

  Coverham, Yorks., abbey (Prem.), 67

  Crauden, John of, prior of Ely, 125

  Croxden, Staffs., abbey (Cist.), 37, 57, 99, 121, 148

  Croyland, Lincs., 4;
    abbey (Ben.), 50, 53, 115

  Cuthbert, St, 4

  Cymmer, Merioneth, abbey (Cist.), 70


  Dale, Derby, abbey (Prem.), 64, 148

  Daventry, Northants., priory (Clun.), 123

  Dolgelly, Merioneth, 70

  Dorchester, Oxon., abbey (Aug.), 64, 67

  Dore, Hereford, abbey (Cist.), 37, 58, 80, 147

  Dover, Kent, 64;
    priory (Ben.), 10

  Dryburgh, Berwicks., abbey (Prem.), 79

  Dunstable, Beds., priory (Aug.), 145

  Dunstan, St, archbishop of Canterbury, 7, 8

  Durham, cathedral priory (Ben.), 9, 37, 41, 44, 45, 46, 47, 51, 52, 53,
       59, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87, 90, 92, 93, 94, 95,
       105, 116, 124, 125, 126, 127, 131, 137, 138, 140, 145, 148


  Easby; see St Agatha's

  Ecclesfield, Yorks., alien priory (Ben.), 10

  Edgar the peaceful, 7, 8

  Edward the Confessor, 8, 49

  Edward II, 26

  Eggleston, Yorks., abbey (Prem.), 148

  Egypt, monasteries in, 2

  Ely, Cambs., cathedral priory (Ben.), 8, 37, 47, 49, 52, 53, 119, 125, 146

  Ernulf, prior of Canterbury, 21

  Ethelwold, St, bishop of Winchester, 7, 8

  Eton, Bucks., college, 35

  Evesham, Worces., abbey (Ben.), 7, 9, 42, 55, 80, 82, 126, 135, 136, 145


  Farne islands, Northumb., 4

  Fleury, see Saint-Benoît

  Fontevrault, Maine-et-Loire, abbey, 25

  Ford, Dorset, abbey (Cist.), 37, 84, 99, 110, 123

  Fountains, Yorks., abbey (Cist.), 15, 16, 37, 38, 44, 52, 59, 61, 62,
       63, 77, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108,
       117, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 127, 128, 131, 144, 146, 147

  Furness, Lancs., abbey (Cist.), 14, 34, 37, 44, 55, 59, 62, 85, 97,
       98, 99, 100, 103, 108, 109, 110, 117, 119, 121, 123, 128, 147


  Gaul, early monasteries in, 3, 6

  Gilbert, St, of Sempringham, 23

  Glastonbury, Som., Celtic monastery at, 5;
    abbey (Ben.), 8, 51, 87, 105, 148

  Gloucester, abbey (Ben.), 18, 37, 41, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 73, 74, 75,
       76, 77, 79, 81, 82, 85, 90, 91, 98, 116, 119, 125, 126, 129, 131,
       134, 144, 145, 146

  Grande-Chartreuse, la, Isère, priory (Carth.), 12

  Grandmont, Haute-Vienne, abbey, 14

  Greenfield, Lincs., priory (Cist. nuns), 33

  Guisbrough, Yorks., priory (Aug.), 51, 66, 144

  Guthlac, St, 4


  Hackness, Yorks., nunnery at, 5, 6

  Harding, St Stephen, abbot of Cîteaux, 14

  Hastings, Sussex, battle of, 8

  Hatfield, Bishop's, Herts., 75

  Haughmond, Salop, abbey (Aug.), 37, 63, 64, 66, 77, 79, 82, 90, 111,
       114, 124, 147

  Hayles, Glouces., abbey (Cist.), 57, 58, 107, 109, 123, 147

  Henry V, 25, 31

  Henry VI, 31

  Henry VIII, 32

  Hexham, Northumb., priory (Aug.), 66, 82, 90, 144, 147

  Hinton, Som., priory (Carth.), 13

  Holme Cultram, Cumb., abbey (Cist.), 37

  Hulme; see St Benet's

  Hulne, Northumb., priory (Carm. friars), 26, 38, 71, 111, 148

  Humberston, Lincs., abbey (Tiron.), 14

  Hyde, Hants., abbey (Ben.), 144, 145


  Iona, Argyll, monastery, 3

  Ipswich, Suffolk, college, 35

  Ireland, monachism in, 3

  Italy, early monasteries in, 3


  Jarrow, Durham, monastery, 6

  Jedburgh, Roxburgh, abbey (Aug.), 68

  Jervaulx, Yorks., abbey (Cist.), 37, 51, 58, 99, 107, 110, 117, 120, 147

  Julius II, pope, 23


  Kelso, Roxburgh, abbey (Tiron.), 68

  King's Lynn, Norfolk, friaries, 26, 38, 70

  Kirkham, Yorks., priory (Aug.), 51, 66, 129, 130

  Kirkstall, Yorks., abbey (Cist.), 37, 44, 54, 55, 57, 62, 64, 98, 100,
       101, 103, 105, 110, 120, 122, 123, 127, 146

  Kirkstead, Lincs., abbey (Cist.), 128

  Knaresborough, Yorks., St Robert's (Trinitarian), 26


  Lacock, Wilts., abbey (Aug. canonesses), 25, 38, 70, 77, 79, 83, 87, 90,
       91, 147

  Lanercost, Cumb., priory (Aug.), 64, 65, 67

  Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, 9

  Langdon, West, Kent, abbey (Prem.), 64, 67, 148

  Layton, Richard, dean of York, 32

  Leicester, abbey (Aug.), 30

  Leominster, Hereford, priory (Ben.), 54

  Lerins, Ile de, Alpes-Maritimes, monastery of Saint-Honorat, 3

  Lewes, Sussex, priory (Clun.), 12, 44, 85, 133, 147

  Lilleshall, Salop, abbey (Aug.), 37, 63, 64, 66, 68

  Lincoln, cathedral church, 47;
    friaries, 26

  Lisques, France, abbey (Prem.), 22

  London, Charterhouse, 13, 146;
    friaries, 26, 38, 148;
    Holy Trinity priory, Aldgate (Aug.), 54;
    St Bartholomew's priory, Smithfield (Aug.), 45, 63;
    St Mary Graces abbey (Cist.), 16

  Louth Park, Lincs., abbey (Cist.), 15, 33

  Luxeuil, Haute-Saône, monastery of, 3

  Lysa, Norway, abbey (Cist.), 15


  Malmesbury, Wilts., abbey (Ben.), 53, 89, 110, 144

  Malton, Yorks., priory (Gilb.), 71

  Margam, Glamorgan, abbey (Cist.), 37, 80, 145, 148

  Martin, St, of Tours, 4

  Meaux, Yorks., abbey (Cist.), 33, 42, 120, 121, 128, 145

  Merevale, Warwicks., abbey (Cist.), 128

  Metz, Lorraine, 19

  Micklethwaite, Mr J. T., 95

  Molesme, Côte-d'Or, Robert, abbot of, 14

  Monkwearmouth, Durham, monastery, 6

  Monte Cassino, Abruzzi, monastery of, 3, 4, 7

  Mount Grace, Yorks., priory (Carth.), 13, 38, 69, 70, 71, 112, 146


  Neath, Glamorgan, abbey (Cist.), 37, 148

  Neocaesarea, Asia Minor, monastery near, 2

  Netley, Hants., abbey (Cist.), 37, 58, 96, 117

  Newcastle-on-Tyne, Northumb., friaries, 26

  Newhouse, Lincs., abbey (Prem.), 22

  Newminster, Northumb., abbey (Cist.), 15, 144

  Newstead, Notts., priory (Aug.), 67

  Norbert, St, abbot of Prémontré, 22

  Norcia, Umbria, 3

  Norfolk, Augustinian houses in, 21

  Normandy, monasteries of, 8, 9

  Northampton, friaries, 26, 27

  Norwich, Norfolk, cathedral priory, 34, 37, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 53, 131;
    friaries, 27, 38, 71

  Nottinghamshire, Augustinian houses in, 21

  Nuneaton, Warwicks., priory (Fontevrault), 25

  Nun Monkton, Yorks., priory (Ben. nuns), 70


  Odo, archbishop of Canterbury, 7

  Oseney, Oxon., abbey (Aug.), 145

  Oswald, St, archbishop of York, 7

  Ottringham, Yorks., 128

  Oxford, colleges, 20, 35;
    friaries, 26;
    St Frideswide's priory (Aug., now Christ Church college), 35, 37, 64,
       111


  Pachomius, St, 2, 4

  Paris, abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés (Ben.), 6

  Patrick, St, 3

  Paul, abbot of St Albans, 115

  Pershore, Worces., abbey (Ben.), 7

  Peterborough, Northants., abbey (Ben.), 8, 30, 37, 44, 45, 47, 53, 85,
       90, 91, 92, 100, 116, 118, 119, 125, 129, 133, 134, 135, 146

  Pipewell, Northants., abbey (Cist.), 105, 147

  Prémontré, Aisne, abbey, 22, 23


  Ramsey, Hunts., abbey (Ben.), 7, 144, 145

  Reading, Berks., abbey (Ben.), 37, 77, 79

  Redbourn, Herts., 75

  Repton, Derby, priory (Aug.), 64, 111, 147

  Richmond, Yorks., 31, 38;
    priory (Franciscan friars), 38, 70

  Rievaulx, Yorks., abbey (Cist.), 23, 37, 51, 58, 59, 104, 117, 128, 144

  Ripon, Yorks., collegiate church, 47, 51, 131;
    monastery, 5

  Roche, Yorks., abbey (Cist.), 64

  Rochester, Kent, cathedral priory (Ben.), 37, 41, 54, 65, 76, 131, 146

  Rome, monastery on Coelian hill, 5

  Romsey, Hants., abbey (Ben. nuns), 25, 38, 70

  Rouen, Seine-Inférieure, abbey of Saint-Ouen (Ben.), 6;
    priory of la-Sainte-Trinité on Mont-Sainte-Cathérine (Ben.), 10


  St Agatha's, Yorks., abbey (Prem.), 31, 38, 64, 82, 86, 92, 111, 148

  St Albans, Herts., abbey (Ben.), 9, 10, 47, 48, 49, 52, 53, 75, 115,
       123, 129, 132, 145, 146

  St Benet's Hulme, Norfolk, abbey (Ben.), 68

  Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, Loiret, abbey (Ben.), 7

  St Dogmaels, Pembroke, abbey (Tiron.), 14

  St Gall, Switzerland, plan of, 125

  St Neots, Hunts., priory (Ben.), 10, 11

  St Radegund's, Kent, abbey (Prem.), 64, 83, 111, 148

  Saint-Wandrille, Seine-Inférieure, abbey (Ben.), 11

  Salisbury, Wilts., cathedral church, 80

  Salley, Yorks., abbey (Cist.), 68

  Samson, abbot of Bury, 115, 129

  Savigny, Manche, abbey, 13

  Scarborough, Yorks., alien priory (Cist.), 27;
    Dominican friary, 27

  Scotland, early monasteries in, 3

  Selby, Yorks., abbey (Ben.), 49, 51

  Sempringham, Lincs., priory, 23, 24

  Shaftesbury, Dorset, abbey (Ben. nuns), 5

  Shap, Westmorland, abbey (Prem.), 67, 148

  Shene, Surrey, priory (Carth.), 13

  Sibton, Suffolk, abbey (Cist.), 101

  Simeon Stylites, St, 4

  Simon, monk of Waverley, 89

  Sion, Middlesex, abbey (Bridgetine), 25

  Southwell, Notts., collegiate church, 65

  Spoleto, Umbria, 3

  Stamford, Lincs., 33;
    friaries, 27

  Stanley, Wilts., abbey (Cist.), 147

  Strata Florida, Cardigan, abbey (Cist.), 148

  Subiaco, Rome, 3

  Sweetheart abbey, Kirkcudbright (Cist.), 57


  Tabennisi (Egypt), monastery, 2

  Tarrant, Dorset, abbey (Cist. nuns), 24

  Tenby, Pembroke, 14

  Tewkesbury, Glouces., abbey (Ben.), 27, 45, 47, 48, 129, 145

  Thetford, Norfolk, priory (Clun.), 12

  Thiron, Eure-et-Loir, abbey, 13

  Thornton, Lincs., abbey (Aug.), 129, 132

  Thurgarton, Notts., priory (Aug.), 67

  Tiltey, Essex, abbey (Cist.), 128

  Tintern, Monmouth, abbey (Cist.), 37, 41, 55, 58, 60, 62, 63, 104, 107,
       120, 148

  Torre, Devon, abbey (Prem.), 64, 67, 72, 129

  Tours, Indre-et-Loire, abbey of St Martin (Ben.), 4

  Tynemouth, Northumb., priory (Ben.), 10, 53, 146


  Ulverscroft, Leices., priory (Aug.), 67


  Valle Crucis, Denbigh, abbey (Cist.), 16, 37, 57, 62, 84, 98, 100

  Vaudey, Lincs., abbey (Cist.), 16


  Wallingford, Richard of, abbot of St Albans, 132

  Walsingham, Norfolk, priory (Aug.), 34

  Warenne, William de, 12

  Watton, Yorks., priory (Gilb.), 23, 38, 71, 111, 148

  Waverley, Surrey, abbey (Cist.), 15, 33, 55, 58, 63, 89, 97, 99, 101,
       104, 109, 120, 123, 145, 147

  Welbeck, Notts., abbey (Prem.), 22, 23

  Wells, Som., cathedral church, 80

  Wenlock, Salop, priory (Clun.), 12, 37, 45, 65, 76, 87, 89

  Westminster, Middlesex, abbey (Ben.), 8, 9, 36, 37, 44, 48, 49, 76, 79,
       80, 81, 83, 84, 85, 100, 120, 146

  Whalley, Lancs., abbey (Cist.), 128

  Wherwell, Hants., abbey (Ben. nuns), 25

  Whitby, Yorks., Celtic monastery, 6;
    abbey (Ben.), 51, 144

  Wilfrid, St, bishop of York, 5

  Wilton, Wilts., abbey (Ben. nuns), 25

  Winchcombe, Glouces., abbey (Ben.), 7

  Winchelsey, Robert, archbishop of Canterbury, 134

  Winchester, Hants., cathedral priory (Ben.), 8, 37, 47, 49, 65, 145;
    friaries, 27;
    St Mary's abbey (Ben. nuns), 25

  Witham, Som., priory (Carth.), 13

  Woburn, Beds., abbey (Cist.), 15

  Wolsey, Thomas, cardinal, archbishop of York, 35

  Worcester, cathedral priory (Ben.), 7, 41, 65, 72, 73, 75, 76, 80, 81,
       87, 88, 90, 92, 94, 116, 124, 125, 145, 146

  Worksop, Notts., priory (Aug.), 66

  Wothorpe, Northants., priory (Ben. nuns), 33, 34

  Wymondham, Norfolk, abbey (Ben.), 54


  York, cathedral church, 19, 51;
    friaries, 27;
    St Mary's abbey (Ben.), 37, 47, 48, 51

  Yorkshire, Augustinian houses in, 21


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  61 Bees and Wasps. By O. H. Latter, M.A.

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  74 The Flea. By H. Russell.

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Transcriber's Notes


Minor punctuation and printer errors repaired.

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_





End of Project Gutenberg's English Monasteries, by Alexander Hamilton Thompson