Cloister

“ Beyond the south transept, a short passage and a few steps lead to the Cloisters, the most famous of Provence, perhaps of France. Large, graceful, and magnificent in wealth of carving, they have yet none of the poetic charms that linger around many a smaller Cloister. The vaultings are not more beautiful than other vaults less known; although they have the help of the great piers, the little, slender columns seem too light to support so much expanse of roof, and even the church's tower, square and high, looks dwarfed when seen across the close. ”

“ The voice that had been so beautiful broke a little. Sister George did not speak. Sister Edgar waited a moment for the words that failed to come, and understood the feeling under her friend's silence. The sympathy so deep, though unexpressed, wrung her soul to an outburst that startled the repressed woman before her.
"I have known the truth for a long time," she hurried on, speaking, even in these moments of agitation, with the preciseness of the cloister inmates. "I am afraid I have rebelled against it. I am still young, and my work is not done. Life is sweet and peaceful here. ”

“ You will also remember that a cloister, which in a monastery is an essential part of the building, and is always built after a particular model, is in a secular church a mere convenience, which may perfectly well be left out, and which may be built in any place and after any fashion which may be thought good. Jocelin then, or his Canons, now built them a cloister, but it was a cloister which was no longer accompanied, as in Gisa's time, by any refectory or dormitory. It is more like a monastic cloister than those of Chichester and Hereford; it is less like one than that of Salisbury. ”

“ The ambulatories now serve as a museum of sculpture. The internal dimensions are 415 ft. 6. in. in length, 137 ft. 10 in. in breadth, while each ambulatory is 34 ft. 6. in. wide by 46 ft. high.
The cloister of a religious house was the scene of a large part of the life of the inmates of a monastery. It was the place of education for the younger members, and of study for the elders. A canon of the Roman council held under Eugenius II., in 826, enjoins the erection of a cloister as an essential portion of an ecclesiastical establishment for the better discipline and instruction of the clerks. ”

“ Here, as in the grave, was there not eternal silence, deep peace—the sense of the Infinite? And besides this there was the quiet and the fixed thought of the cloister—a thought which you felt like a subtle presence in the air, and in the dim dusk of the room; an all-pervasive thought nowhere definitely expressed, and looming the larger in the imagination; for in the cloister the great saying, “Peace in the Lord,” enters the least religious soul as a living force.
The monk’s life is scarcely comprehensible. A man seems confessed a weakling in a monastery ”

“ The cloister is a superb quadrangle, of the pointed style of the end of the fourteenth century, and is the usual resort of the prisoners, who are grouped so thickly over its pavement, that it is with difficulty one passes between them, without adding to the clanking of chains as their wearers change their posture to make way. The façade of the church is enclosed between two small octagon towers without ornament, like a picture in a frame. ”

“ The larger monastic establishments had more than one cloister; there was usually a second connected with the infirmary, of which there are examples at Westminster Abbey and at Canterbury; and sometimes one giving access to the kitchen and other domestic offices. ”

“ In every monastery next in public importance to the church came the cloisters. The very name has become a synonym for the monastery itself. The four walks of the cloister formed the dwelling-place of the community. With the progress of time there came into existence certain private rooms in which the officials transacted their business, and later still the use of private cells or cubicles became common, but these were the exception; and, at any rate, in England till the dissolution of the religious houses, the common life of the cloister was in full vigour. ”

“ There I shall beseech the Duchess to grant me an escort and an efficient force to protect my brethren at Marienberg, and I shall hasten back with them. I shall give you into the noble Lady's charge that she may obtain your reception among the brides-of-heaven who dwell in the cloister of Saint Gertrude, for that is the path-way of the blessed in which I promised to lead you, and there flows the well of living water of which you must drink. ”

“ This is the case in the English cathedrals, formerly Benedictine abbeys, of Canterbury, Gloucester and Chester, as well as in that of Lincoln. Other examples of the northward situation are at Tintern, Buildwas and Sherborne. Although the covered ambulatories are absolutely essential to the completeness of a monastic cloister, a chief object of which was to enable the inmates to pass from one part of the monastery to another without inconvenience from rain, wind, or sun, it appears that they were sometimes wanting. ”

“ Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister. [Dramatic Lyrics, in Bells and Pomegranates, III., 1842, under the title of “Camp and Cloister—I. Camp (French) , II. Cloister (Spanish) .”] There is, of course, no historical basis for the subject-matter of this poem; but there is no reason why such things should not occur in a convent or monastery. Human nature, we find, is pretty much the same, under whatever conditions we examine it; and petty malice, ill-nature, and evil passions, find their congenial soil alike in the cloister and the world. ”

“ There are men in whose lives the fatalism of the past asserts its rights, that fatalism which the middle-age tried vainly to displace by means of faith in Providence, and which the modern world tried to make blind by the light of science, and succeeded only in dimming. It was easy to see that Cœlestin was not contented in the Cloister. What was to him the wonderful, magic beauty of nature, if he could look upon it only through the narrow window of his cell, which was covered with iron bars! The rest of the monks were old, too. ”

“ They of the cloister had long doubted the child's continuance in her chosen career; not that they lacked faith in her, but because they knew the ways of life.
"The man," she hazarded; "he must be good if you care for him."
"He is—he is all that is good," came the stifled tones from the head now buried in her lap. "He is so kind, so generous, he does so much for my poor people. It was through them that I met him, for he works among them too. He is Dr. Richard Schuyler."
The nun looked at the water bubbling in the fountain near them. ”

“ The church refectory, dormitory and other buildings belonging to the professional life of the brethren surround the great cloister. The small cloister beyond, with its scribes’ cells, library, hall for disputations, &c., is the centre of the literary life of the community. The requirements of sickness and old age are carefully provided for in the infirmary cloister and that for the aged and infirm members of the establishment. The same group contains the quarters of the novices. ”

“ The plan did not especially appeal to the quiet inmates of the cloister, but they had nothing better to suggest, except that she remain in its safe shelter with them. They did this only tentatively, for nuns are not prone to give such advice to their pupils. The gentle proposal did not appeal to Miss Randolph. She shook her auburn head, and her red-brown eyes twinkled mischievously.
"I must see life first," she laughed. "There is a big, beautiful world beyond these walls, and I want to know what it's like. ”

“ In another place (to which leads a small cloister well painted) is a dry well, covered with a brass-work grate, wherein are the bones of divers martyrs. They show also the bones of St. Luke, in an old alabaster coffin; three of the Holy Innocents; and the bodies of St. Maximus and Prosdocimus.34 The dormitory above is exceedingly commodious and stately; but what most pleased me, was the old cloister so well painted with the legendary saints, mingled with many ancient inscriptions, and pieces of urns dug up, it seems, at the foundation of the church. ”

“ From the south, the grand size of the cloister, which connects the steeple with the church, gives it somewhat the effect of being in fact at the west end of an enormous building, of which the cloister may be the nave; whilst the steeple rears its whole height boldly to the right, and makes the whole scheme of the work utterly unintelligible, until after a thorough investigation. ”

“ The shafts and marks of the arches, from which the vaults of the intended cloister were to spring, are, however, plainly visible. Of the old cloister of the monastery no trace remains save the windows and door of the chapter house; the fifteenth-century cloisters that do exist are not to be compared with those of New College{20} or Magdalen. One side of them was destroyed by Wolsey to make room for the College Hall. On the south side of the cloister is the old library, which was formerly the refectory of the monastery. ”

“ The cloister was the common living-room of the monks, where they read and studied, and carried out most of their daily duties. The books were either stored in presses, though no such press remains to show us upon what pattern they were built, or in recesses in the wall, probably closed by doors. ”

“ I entered the novitiate on the 22d. The Veni sponsa Christi, accipe coronam quam tibi Dominus præparavit in æternum has been sounding in my heart ever since like a war-cry, animating me to the interior combat. For the cloister is that oasis in the great desert of the world where is carried on a vital combat between nature and grace, more furious than that between Christian and Paynim in the Diamond of the desert. I have been much happier since I entered upon my new life, and am glad I can go out no more. I love the solitude [57] and calmness of the cloister, which at last extends to the heart ”

“ The nuns all looked happy and smiling—they always do, and I always wonder why. Life in a cloister seems to me so narrow and monotonous and unsatisfying unless one has been bred in a convent and knows nothing of life but what the teachers tell. ”

“ Cloisterham is so bright and sunny in these summer days, that the Cathedral and the monastery-ruin show as if their strong walls were transparent. A soft glow seems to shine from within them, rather than upon them from without, such is their mellowness as they look forth on the hot corn-fields and the smoking roads that distantly wind among them. The Cloisterham gardens blush with ripening fruit. ”

“ You must know then that a curse of interdicted love rests upon you; that is why your dying mother dedicated you to the cloister, and the reason of their keeping you so strictly, in order that the last will of the dead may be faithfully carried out. The fathers dread lest every step beyond these walls should entail the accomplishment of the curse; nay, Correntian even proposed that you should be blinded when you came to us as a new-born infant, to secure you for ever from all temptation. ”

“ He must be careful to extirpate evil tendencies, to be unwearied in his duties, and tender to those in trouble. In a word, he should set before all the example of our Lord.”
Besides the prior and sub-prior, in most large monasteries there were third and fourth priors, called also circas or circatores claustri, that is, watchers over the discipline of the cloister. Their duty chiefly consisted in going round about the house and specially the cloister in times of silence, to see that there was nothing amiss or contrary to the usual observance. ”

“ The dorter, frater, fermery, chapter and cloister and the internal offices of the house were supposed to be entered only by the nuns [1269] :
[Pg 404] “And in order that the quiet of your cloister be in future observed better than has been customary,” wrote Peckham to the nuns of Wherwell in 1284, “we order ... that no secular or religious person be permitted to enter the cloister, nor the interior offices, save for a manifest and inevitable reason, that is bodily infirmity, for which a confessor or doctor or near relative may be allowed to enter, but always in safe and praiseworthy company. ”

“ The Customs of the Abbey of Evesham in Worcestershire give the same directions in a slightly different form.
It is part of the precentor's duty to entrust to the younger monks the care of the presses, and to keep them in repair: whenever the convent is sitting in cloister, he is to go round the cloister as soon as the bell has sounded, and replace the books, in case any brother through carelessness should have forgotten to do so. ”

“ Without waiting at this moment to examine the church more closely, we pass through a great doorway on the left and find ourselves in the cloisters.
Here too is a marvellous vision. Few cloisters in the world compare with them. The four sides are unequal, but this almost heightens their attraction. They have been little interfered with and are almost in their original state. The simple round arches rest on coupled pillars of marble, slender and graceful. The capitals are extremely rich, elaborate and delicate in their carving. ”

“ The 117th canon provides that each bishop must see that the cloister in which his clerics live is enclosed with a strong wall; the 120th, that those clerics who possess property of their own and an income from the church shall receive from the community their daily food only, with a share of the oblations. Those who have no private means are entirely supported and clothed. ”

“ I must remind the reader who has accompanied me through this dream of Brother Cœlestin that Satan was becoming fearfully bored in the cell of the Prior.
Likewise, I must communicate to him the fact that the Cloister was very poor. The monks depended wholly upon the benevolence of the country people who lived in this locality. That, however, was sufficient for their needs. Then times were different than they are now, the priest, and especially the monk, was as sacred to men as the friendly brown swallows that yearly nested under the eaves. ”