A. Hamilton Thompson

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [10] 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. ”

“ The influence of the monachism of the east [3] 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [33] monastery had no more room. In the middle of the thirteenth century the numbers were still large but not unwieldy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [32] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [110] 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] . ”

“ 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. ”