Part 4 (1/2)

III.

DAILY LIFE IN A MEDIEVAL MONASTERY.

”Now I think on't, They should be good men; their affairs as righteous: But all hoods make not monks.”

[The commemoration of the birth of Martin Luther, which people would have called his quater-centenary if they had not been deterred by the terrific appearance of so huge a word, was the occasion of many preachments and much lecturing, besides a great deal of heroic talk in public and private. With so much to encourage cynicism and persiflage among us it was comforting to find that the instinct of hero-wors.h.i.+p is not quite dead, and that the story of a great man's life still stirs the heart. It was inevitable that, among the many utterances with which we were treated in the year 1883, many should be very foolish, and not a few mischievous and erroneous. Itinerant Windbags are rarely scrupulous about their facts, and the allusive style flavoured with stinging invective is far more telling than any historical narrative, however picturesque and eloquent it may be.

Luther the Monk will always be a more attractive subject in the lecture hall than Luther the Theologian, and an audience prepared to be harrowed and shocked will greedily listen to broad hints about _abominations_-the word is a very favourite one--which the author could disclose, but mercifully withholds in pity for the shuddering hearts of a too sensitive a.s.sembly. The consequence was that an altogether disproportionate amount of declamation was wasted up and down the country by gentlemen on the stump, in girding at monks and nuns, their vices and crimes, till some men's minds were not a little exercised, and some, horrified by what they were told, asked in their perplexity, ”Can these things be?” The present writer knows nothing of the condition of the German Religious Houses in the fifteenth or the sixteenth century, and not as much as he would wish to learn of the condition of the English houses during the same period, but he has been painfully convinced that the peripatetic orators are about as qualified to lecture upon the subject as he is to lecture on astronomy.

It was while musing in my solitude upon the harm done by ignorant pretenders in sowing error broadcast in the waste places of the world that I received a call from one of the cla.s.s, who came to beg my countenance for a lecture upon Luther the Monk and Monkery. He was a vociferous personage and prodigal of his words. He added to all his sins this one, that he did not know when to go. He had no tact, only talk. Irritated at last beyond endurance, my normal suavity forsook me, and I spoke with brutal plainness. Of course he was wroth, and pressed for an explanation. In a weak moment I yielded. ”To begin with,” said I, ”Luther, strictly speaking, was not a monk at all!”

[Footnote: He belonged to the order of Friars Eremite under the Augustinian Rule.] It was a foolish speech: first, because it made my friend an offender for a word; and, secondly, because there was more truth in it than the man was capable of understanding or was prepared to receive; but it had the effect of ridding me of a bore. As he took his leave he shot at me this Parthian shaft--” If you are above learning, sir,” he said,” perhaps teaching might not be beneath you.

Could you not, for instance, let the world know something about monks and monasteries some day? Even I, ignorant as you p.r.o.nounce me, have heard of your lecturing on a thirteenth-century village. Why not try a thirteenth-century monastery next?” I politely thanked him for his valuable suggestion, and promised to give it my respectful attention.

The following sketch is the outcome of our interview. ”Facit indignatio versus.”]

It may be a.s.sumed as a fact which scarcely requires to be more than stated that there are few subjects which the great ma.s.s of Englishmen are so curiously ignorant of as the History of Monasticism, of the const.i.tution of the various Orders, of the fortunes of any single religious house, or the discipline to which its members were, in theory at least, compelled to submit. The a.s.sumption being granted, it may naturally be asked, How is such ignorance to be accounted for?

It is due to more causes than one, but chiefly and primarily to the vastness of the subject itself.

When the monasteries were suppressed by Henry VIII. there was an utter obliteration of an order of things which had existed in our island for certainly more than a thousand years, and how much longer it is impossible to say. The names of religious houses which are known to have existed before the Norman Conquest count by hundreds; the names of men and women who presided over such houses during the centuries preceding that event count by thousands. Some of these religious houses had pa.s.sed through the strangest vicissitudes; they had been pillaged again and again; they had been burnt by Danish marauders; their inmates driven out into the wilderness or ruthlessly put to the sword; their lands given over to the spoiler or gone out of cultivation; their very existence in some cases almost forgotten; yet they had revived again and again from their ashes. When William the Conqueror came among us, and that stern rule of his began, there was scarcely a county in England and Wales in which one or more religious houses were not to be found, and during his reign of twenty-one years about thirty new monasteries of one sort or another were added to those already existing.

To begin with, the very word monastery is a misnomer: the word is a Greek word, and means the dwelling-place of a solitary person, living in seclusion. But, misnomer though it be, the employment of the word in a sense so widely different from that which it first bore, until it got to designate the dwelling-place of a corporate body, among whom no solitude was allowed and privacy was almost impossible, is of itself very significant as indicating the stages through which the original idea of monasticism pa.s.sed.

It was natural enough, when society was in a condition of profound disorganization, and sensuality and violence were in the ascendant, that men and women of gentle nature should become convinced that the higher life could only be lived in lonely retirement, far from the sound of human voices and the contact of human creatures, whose very nearness almost implies sin. But what a vast step from this to that other conviction which the developed form of monasticism expresses, when experience has convinced the devout searcher after G.o.d that no great work can be done in improving the world, or raising the tone of society, or in battling with our own weaknesses and vices, except by earnest, resolute, and disciplined co-operation. It is when we draw together that we are strong, and strongest when we are labouring shoulder to shoulder for some common object, and that no mean and sordid one; it is then that we best find deliverance from our self- deception and most inveterate delusions, whilst living in the light of other's eyes, and subjected to the influence and control of a healthy and well-instructed public opinion.

In the thirteenth century (and I shall as much as possible confine myself to the limits of that period), a monastery meant what we now understand it to mean--viz., the abode of a society of men or women who lived together in common--who were supposed to partake of common meals; to sleep together in one common dormitory; to attend certain services together in their common church; to transact certain business or pursue certain employments in the sight and hearing of each other in the common cloister; and, when the end came, to be laid side by side in the common graveyard, where in theory none but members of the order could find a resting-place for their bones. When I say ”societies of men and women” I am again reminded that the other term, ”convent,” has somehow got to be used commonly in a mistaken sense. People use the word as if it signified a religious house tenanted exclusively by women. The truth is that a convent is nothing more than a Latin name for an a.s.sociation of _persons_ who have _come together_ with a view to live for a common object and to submit to certain rules in the ordering of their daily lives. The monastery was the common dwelling-place: the convent was the society of persons inhabiting it; and the ordinary formula used when a body of monks or nuns execute any corporate act--such as buying or selling land--by any legal instrument is, ”The Prior and Convent of the Monastery of the Holy Trinity at Norwich;” ”the Abbot and Convent of the Monastery of St. Peter's, Westminster;” ”the Abbess and Convent of the Monastery of St. Mary and St. Bernard at Lac.o.c.k,” and so on.

Bearing in mind, then, that the term convent has to do with a corporation of men or women united into an organized society, and that the term monastery can strictly be applied only to the buildings--the _domus_, in which that society has its home--it will be well at starting that we should endeavour to gain some notion of the general plan of these buildings first, and when we have done that that we should proceed to deal next with the const.i.tution of the society itself and the daily routine of conventual life.

A monastery in theory then was, as it was called, a Religious House.

It was supposed to be the home of people whose lives were pa.s.sed in the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d, and in taking care of their own souls, and making themselves fit for a better world than this hereafter. As for this world, it was lying in wickedness; if men remained in this wicked world they would most certainly become contaminated by all its pollutions; the only chance of ever attaining to holiness lay in a man or woman's turning his back upon the world and running away from it. It was no part of a monk's duty to reform the world; all he had to do was to look after himself, and to save himself from the wrath to come. It is hardly overstating the case if I say that a monastery was not intended to be a benevolent inst.i.tution; and if a great religious house became, as it almost inevitably did become, the centre of civilization and refinement, from which radiated light and warmth and incalculable blessings far and wide, these results flowed naturally from that growth and development which the original founders had never looked forward to or could have foreseen, but it was never contemplated as an end to be aimed at in the beginning.

Being a home for religious men, whose main business was to spend their days and nights in wors.h.i.+pping G.o.d, the first requisite, the first and foremost, the _sine qua non_ was, that there should be a church.

On the church of a monastery, as a rule, no amount of money spent, no amount of lavish ornament or splendour of decoration, was grudged.

Sculpture and painting, jewels and gold, gorgeous hangings, and stained-gla.s.s that the moderns vainly attempt to imitate, the purple and fine linen of the priestly vestments, embroidery that to this hour remains unapproachable in its delicacy of finish and in the perfect harmony of colours--all these were to be found in almost incredible profusion in our monastic churches. You hear some people work themselves into a frenzy against the idolatrous wors.h.i.+p of our forefathers; but to a monk of a great monastery his church was his one idol--to possess a church that should surpa.s.s all others in magnificence, and which could boast of some special unique glory-- that seemed to a monk something worth living for. The holy rood at Bromholm, the holy thorn at Glas...o...b..ry, were possessions that brought world-wide renown to the monasteries in which they were found, and gave a l.u.s.tre to the churches in which they were deposited; and the intense _esprit de corps_, the pa.s.sionate loyalty, of a monk to his monastery is a sentiment which we in our time find it so extremely difficult to understand that we can hardly bring ourselves to believe that it could exist without some subtle intermixture of crafty selfishness as its ruling force and motive.

The church of a monastery was the heart of the place. It was not that the church was built for the monastery, but the monastery existed for the church; there were hundreds and thousands of churches without monasteries, but there could be no monastery without a church. The monks were always at work on the church, always spending money upon it, always adding to it, always ”restoring” it; it was always needing repair. We are in the habit of saying, ”Those old monks knew how to build; look at their work--see how it stands!” But we are very much mistaken if we suppose that in the twelfth or the thirteenth or the fourteenth century there was no bad building. On the contrary, nothing is more common in the monastic annals than the notices of how this and that tower fell down, and how this and that choir was falling into ruins, and how this or that abbot got into debt by his mania for building. There was an everlasting tinkering going on at the church; and the surest token that a monastery was in a bad way was that its church was in a shabby condition.

The church was, almost invariably, built in the form of a cross, facing east and west, the long limb of the cross being called the nave, the cross limbs being called the transepts, and the shorter limb, or head of the cross, being called the choir. The choir, as a rule, was occupied exclusively by the monks or nuns of the monastery.

The servants, workpeople, and casual visitors who came to wors.h.i.+p were not admitted into the choir; _they_ were supposed to be present only on sufferance. The church was built for the use of the monks; it was _their_ private place of wors.h.i.+p.

Almost as essential to the idea of a monastery as the church was the cloister or great quadrangle, inclosed on all sides by the high walls of the monastic buildings. Its usual position was on the south of the church, to gain as much of the sun's rays as possible, and to insure protection from the northerly and easterly winds in the bitter season. All round this quadrangle ran a covered arcade, whose roof, leaning against the high walls, was supported on the inner side by an open trellis work in stone--often exhibiting great beauty of design and workmans.h.i.+p--through which light and air was admitted into the arcade. [Footnote: In other words the thirteenth-century monk pa.s.sed far the greater portion of his time in the open air, except that there was a roof over his head. As time went on, and monks became more self-indulgent, they did not by any means like the draughts and exposure in the cloister, and the old-fas.h.i.+oned open arcades were glazed, and the old open walks were turned into splendid lounges, comfortable and luxurious, such as the cloisters of Gloucester could be made into at a small outlay at the present day.] The open s.p.a.ce not roofed in was called the _garth_, and was sometimes a plain gra.s.s plat and sometimes was planted with shrubs, a fountain of running water being often found in the centre, which afforded a pleasant object for the eye to rest on. The cloister was really the living-place of the monks. Here they pursued their daily avocations, here they taught their school, they transacted their business, they spent their time and pursued their studies, always in society, co- operating and consulting, and, as a rule, knowing no privacy.

”But surely a monk always lived in a cell, didn't he?”

The sooner we get rid of that delusion the better.

Be it understood that until Henry II. founded the Carthusian Abbey of Witham, in 1178, there was no such thing known in England as a monk's _cell_, as we understand the term. It was a peculiarity of the Carthusian order, and when it was first introduced it was regarded as a startling novelty for any privacy or anything approaching solitude to be tolerated in a monastery. The Carthusian system never found much favour in England. The Carthusians never had more than nine houses, all told; the discipline was too rigid, the rule too severe, the loneliness too dreadful for our tastes and for our climate. In the thirteenth century, if I mistake not, there were only two monasteries in England in which monks or nuns could boast of having any privacy, any little corner of their own to turn into, any place where they could enjoy the luxury of retirement, any private study such as every boy nowadays, in a school of any pretension, expects to have provided for himself, and without which we a.s.sume that n.o.body can read and write for an hour.

The cloister arcade was said to have four _walks_. The south walk ran along the south wall of the nave, the north walk was bounded by the refectory or great dining hall, the east walk extended along the south transept, and where the transept ended there usually came a narrow pa.s.sage called _slype_, pa.s.sing between the end of the transept and the chapter-house, which may be described as the council-chamber of the convent. Beyond the chapter-house, and ab.u.t.ting partly upon the east wall of the cloister, but extending far beyond it till, in some cases, it made with the refectory a block of buildings in the form of a T, ran the dormitory or common sleeping- place for the fraternity. The dormitory was always approached by steps, for it was invariably constructed over a range of vaulted chambers, which served for various purposes; one of these chambers was set apart for the reception of those monks who had been subjected to the monthly bleedings which all were supposed to require, and which all were compelled to submit to, that so by a mechanical process, if in no other way, the flesh might be subdued. The beds of the monks were arranged along the walls of the dormitory, at regular intervals; and in some monasteries a wainscot part.i.tion separated the sleepers from each other, thus making for each a little cubicle, with a low door leading into it. The broad pa.s.sage, running from end to end, between the sleeping-places in the dormitory was strewn with rushes; and at the end opposite to the flight of stairs were the latrines or was.h.i.+ng-places, which were open to the air, and under which was always a sewer that could be flushed by a water-course hard by.