Part 4 (2/2)

In the dormitory and the latrines lights were kept burning through the night; a provision necessary, if for no other reason, because the services in the church at night-time had to be kept up and attended by the whole house. They who went from the dormitory to the church always pa.s.sed under cover--sometimes by going through the cloister, sometimes by pa.s.sing straight into the transept.

We have been round three sides of the cloister: on the north the church; on the east the chapterhouse and dormitory; on the south the refectory. There remain the buildings ab.u.t.ting on the west wall. In the arrangement of these no strict rule was observed. But generally the western buildings were dedicated to the cellarer's hall with cellars under it, the pitanciar's and kitchener's offices or _chequers_ as they were called, and a guest-chamber for the reception of distinguished strangers and for the duties of hospitality, to which great importance was attached.

These were the main buildings, the essential buildings of a monastery great or small. Where a monastery was rich enough to indulge in luxuries of ”modern improvements and all the best appliances,” there was hardly any limit to the architectural freaks that might be indulged in. There were the infirmary and the hospital; the calefactory or warming apparatus, the recreation hall and the winter hall, the locutorium and the common hall, and I know not what besides. You observe I have as yet said nothing about the library. I must remind you that in the thirteenth century the number of books in the world was, to say the least, small. A library of five hundred volumes would, in those days, have been considered an important collection, and, after making all due allowances for ridiculous exaggeration which have been made by ill-informed writers on the subject, it may safely be said that n.o.body in the thirteenth century-- at any rate in England--would have erected a large and lofty building as a receptacle for books, simply because n.o.body could have contemplated the possibility of filling it. Here and there amongst the larger and more important monasteries there were undoubtedly collections of books, the custody of which was intrusted to an accredited officer; but the time had not yet come for making libraries well stored with such priceless treasures as Leland, the antiquary, saw at Glas...o...b..ry, just before that magnificent foundation was given as a prey to the spoilers. A library, in any such sense as we now understand the term, was not only no essential part of a monastery in those days, but it may be said to have been a rarity.

But if the thirteenth century monastery possessed necessarily no great Reading-Room, the Scriptorium, or Writing-Room, was almost an essential adjunct. In the absence of the printing-press, the demand for skilled writers and copyists throughout the country was enormous.

In the Scriptorium all the business, now transacted by half a dozen agents and their clerks, was carried on. The land of the country in those days was subdivided to an extent that it is now almost impossible for us to realize, and the tenure under which the small patches of arable or meadow-land were held was sometimes very complex and intricate. The small patches were perpetually changing hands, being bought or sold, settled upon trustees, or let out for a term of years, and every transaction would be registered in the books of the monastery interested, while the number of conveyances, leases, and enfeofments made out in the course of the year was incalculable. In such an abbey as that of Bury St. Edmunds a small army of writers must have been constantly employed in the business department of the Scriptorium alone. Obviously it became a great writing-school, where the copyists consciously or unconsciously wrote according to the prevailing fas.h.i.+on of the place; and there have been, and there are, experts who could tell you whether this or that doc.u.ment was or was not written in this or that monastic Scriptorium. Paper was very little used, and the vellum and parchment required const.i.tuted a heavy item of expense. Add to this the production of school-books and all materials used for carrying on the education work, the constant replacement of _church_ service books which the perpetual thumbing and fingering would subject to immense wear and tear, the great demand for music which, however simple, required to be written out large and conspicuous in order to be read with ease, and you get a rather serious list of the charges upon the stationery department of a great abbey.

But though by far the greater portion of work done in the Scriptorium was mere office work, the educational department, if I may so term it, being subsidiary, it must not be forgotten that the literary and the historical department also was represented in the Scriptorium of every great monastery. In the thirteenth century men never kept diaries or journals of their own daily lives, but monasteries did. In theory, every religious house recorded its own annals, or kept a chronicle of great events that were happening in Church and State.

Where a monastery had kept its chronicle going for a long time, it got to be regarded almost as a sacred book, and was treated with great veneration: it lay in a conspicuous place in the Scriptorium, and was under the care of an officer who alone was permitted to make entries in it. When any great piece of news was brought to the monastery that seemed worth putting on record, the person giving the information wrote out his version of the story on a loose piece of parchment, and slipped his communication into the book of annals for the authorized compiler to make use of in any way that seemed best to him, after due examination of evidence. This was the rule in all monastic houses. Unfortunately, however, as it is with the journals or diaries of men and women of the nineteenth century, so it was with the journals and diaries of monks of the thirteenth, they evidently were kept by fits and starts; and before the fourteenth century was half out, the practice of keeping up these diaries in all but the larger monasteries had come to an end.

Before pa.s.sing on from the Library and Scriptorium, on which a great deal more might easily be said, it is necessary that one caution should be given; I know not how that notion originated or how it has taken such hold of the minds of ninety-nine men out of a hundred, that the monks as a cla.s.s were students or scholars or men of learning; as far as the English monasteries of the thirteenth century are concerned, I am sure that the notion is altogether erroneous. If we except some few of the larger and n.o.bler monasteries, which from first to last seem always to have been centres of culture, enlightenment, and progress, the monks were no more learned than the nuns. As a cla.s.s, students, scholars, and teachers they were not.

When King John died, in 1216, a little learning went a long way, and whatever the Norman Conquest did for England (and it did a great deal), it certainly was not an event calculated to increase the love of study, or likely to make men bookish pundits.

I should only confuse my readers if I dwelt more at length upon the buildings of a monastery. It is enough for the present that we should understand clearly that the essential buildings were (1) the church, (2) the cloister, (3) the dormitory, (4) the refectory, (5) the chapter-house. In these five buildings the life of the convent was carried on. Having said thus much we will pa.s.s on to the corporation itself--that which strictly was called the convent; and for convenience and distinctness it will be as well if we use that word _convent_ in the more accurate sense and employ it only as signifying the corporate body of persons occupying those buildings of which I have been speaking, and which in their aggregate were called a _monastery_.

Once more I think it necessary to start with a caution. Not only do I propose to take no account here of that large cla.s.s of conventuals which comprehended the mendicant order or friars as they are called, but I must needs pa.s.s by with little or no notice the various orders of regular canons-_i.e._, canons living under a rule. The friars came into England first in 1220. During the thirteenth century they were, so to speak, upon their trial; and from the first the monks and the friars were essentially opposed in the ideal of their daily lives. So with the very numerous houses of canons regular up and down the land. They and the monks did not love one another, and when I speak of monks and their houses it will be advisable to exclude from our consideration the friars on the one hand and the canons on the other, and, in fact, to limit ourselves to that view of conventual life which the great English monasteries under the rule of St.

Benedict afford.

At the time of the Norman Conquest it may be said that all English monks were professedly under one and the same Rule--the famous Benedictine Rule. The Rule of a monastery was the const.i.tution or code of laws, which regulated the discipline of the house, and the Rule of St. Benedict dates back as far as the sixth century, though it was not introduced into England for more than a hundred years after it had been adopted elsewhere. Four hundred years is a very long time for any const.i.tution or code of law to last unchanged, and though the English monasteries professedly were living according to the Benedictine Rule during all the Saxon and the Danish times, yet there is too much reason to believe that if St. Benedict could have risen from the dead in the days of Edward the Confessor and made a visitation of many an English house, he would have been rather astonished to be told that the monks were living according to his Rule.

About one hundred and fifty years before the Conquest, a great reformation had been attempted of the French monasteries, which it was said had fallen into a state of great decay as far as discipline and fervour were concerned, and a revision of the old rule had been found necessary, the reformers breaking away from the old Benedictines and subjecting themselves to a new and improved Rule.

These first reformers were called _Cluniac_ monks, from the great Abbey of Clugni, in Burgundy, in which the new order of things had begun. The first English house of reformed or Cluniac monks was founded at Lewes, in Suss.e.x, eleven years after the Conquest, by Gundrada, a step-daughter of William the Conqueror, and her husband, William, Earl of Warrene and Surrey. The Cluniacs were at first famous for the simplicity of their lives and the strictness of their discipline, but as time went on they became too rich and so too luxurious, and at last they too needed reforming, and a new reformer arose. In this case the real moving spirit of reformation was an Englishman, one Stephen Harding, probably a Dorsets.h.i.+re man, who was brought up at the Benedictine monastery of Sherborne, and in the course of events chosen Abbot of the monastery of Citeaux, where St.

Bernard became his ardent disciple, and where the two enthusiasts, working cordially together, brought about that second reform of the Benedictines which resulted in the founding of the great Cistercian order.

Thus, without looking too minutely into the matter, we find that when the thirteenth century opens, or if you will, when Henry III. came to the throne in 1216, there were three great orders of monks in England--the old Benedictines, who had held houses and lands for centuries; the Cluniacs, who were the reformed Benedictines; and the Cistercians, who may be styled the reformed Cluniacs. But inasmuch as the architectural and other reforms among the Cistercians were many and peculiar, it will again be advisable to pa.s.s by these peculiarities without remark.

The const.i.tution of every convent, great or small, was monarchical.

The head of the house was almost an absolute sovereign, and was called the Abbot. His dominions often extended, even in England, over a very wide tract of country, and sometimes over several minor monasteries which were called Cells. Thus the Abbot of St. Alban's had under himself the cell of Tynemouth in Northumberland and two others in Norfolk-_viz._, Binham and Wymondham, the latter of which eventually became an independent abbey--and the heads of these cells or subject houses were called Priors. An _abbey_ was a monastery which was independent. A priory was a monastery which in theory or in fact was subject to an abbey. All the Cluniac monasteries in England were thus said to be alien priories, because they were mere cells of the great Abbey of Clugni in France, to which each priory paid heavy tribute; while the priors were almost always foreigners, and always appointed by the Abbot of Clugni, and responsible to him much in the same way as a Pacha is to his suzerain the Sultan. On the other hand, the Cistercian houses were all abbeys, and their abbots sovereigns in alliance or confederation with one another, and exercising over their several convents supreme jurisdiction, though recognizing the Abbot of Citeaux as their over- lord. The abbot not only had a separate residence within the monastery and lived apart from his monks, but he had his separate estate for the maintenance of his dignity, and to bear the very heavy expenses which that dignity necessitated, and he had the patronage of every office in the convent. These officers were numerous. The first of them was the prior, who was the abbot's prime minister and head of the executive and the abbot's representative in his absence. Under him was the sub-prior, sometimes a third prior, and then a number of functionaries, to whom, as in the case of the abbot, separate estates were a.s.signed out of which they were bound to provide for certain charges which they were called upon to meet as best they could, while a complicated system of finance provided for the surplus of one office being applied when necessary for the deficiency of another.

In the great Abbey of Evesham a very elaborate const.i.tution was drawn up and agreed to in the year 1214, after a long dispute between the abbot and convent which had lasted for several years, and this scheme has come down to us.

From it we find that certain officers (obedientiaries was their technical name) were charged with providing certain articles out of the revenue of the office. The prior, to whom no mean share of the revenues was a.s.signed, had to provide the parchment that might be required for business purposes or for legal instruments and all other materials for the scriptorium, except ink. The manciple was to pro- vide all wine and mead, the keeping up the stock of earthenware cups, jugs, basins, and other vessels, together with the lamps and oil. The precentor had to find all the ink used, and all colour required for illumination, the materials for book-binding, and the keeping the organ in repair. To the chamberlain were a.s.signed certain revenues for providing all the clothing of the monks, it being stipulated that the abbot's dress was not to be paid for out of the fund. In the same way certain small t.i.thes are apportioned for buying basins, jugs, and towels for the guests' chamber; while all rents levied from the various tenants paid not in money, but in kind--as, _e.g_., capons, eggs, salmon, eels, herrings, &c.--were to be pa.s.sed to the account of the kitchener. Every monk bearing office was bound to present his accounts for audit at regular intervals, and the rolls on which these accounts were inscribed exist in very large numbers, and may still be consulted by those who are able to read them.

It looks as if it were the policy of the Benedictines to give as many monks as possible some special duty and responsibility--to give each, in fact, a personal interest in the prosperity of the house to which he belonged--and the vacancies occurring from time to time in the various offices gave everybody something to look forward to. There was room for ambition, and, I am bound to add, room for a good deal of petty scheming, on the one hand, and truckling to the abbot, on the other; but it all went towards relieving the monotony of the life in the cloister--a monotony which has been very much over-stated by those who have never studied the subject. To begin with, it does not follow that what would be very dull to us would be dull and insipid to the men of the thirteenth century. Before a man offered himself for admission to a monastery, he must have had a taste for a quiet life, and in many instances he had grown tired of the bustle, the struggle, and all the anxious wear of the work-day world. He wanted to be rid of _bothers_, in fact; he was pretty sure to have had a fair education, and he was presumably a religious man, with a taste for religious exercises; sometimes, and not unfrequently, he was a disappointed man, who had been left wifeless and childless; sometimes, too, he was one whose career had been cut short suddenly by some accident which incapacitated him for active exertion and made him long only for repose and obscurity. Moreover, in those distant times the instinct of devotion was incomparably stronger than it is now, and people found a real and intense delight in the services of the sanctuary, to say nothing of their entire belief in the spiritual advantages to be derived from taking part in those services. Add to this that a monk had to pa.s.s through rather a long training before he was regularly admitted to full members.h.i.+p. He had to submit to a term of probation, during which he was subject to a somewhat rigorous ordeal.

A novice had the pride taken out of him in a very effectual way during his novitiate--he was pretty much in the position of a _f.a.g_ at a great school nowadays, and by the time that he had pa.s.sed through his novitiate he was usually very well broken in, and in harmony with the spirit of the place in which he found himself. It was something to have a higher place a.s.signed him at last in the church and the dormitory, to have some petty office given him, and to have a chance of being promoted by and by. There was Brother So-and- so, who was getting infirm, and he could not do the pitanciar's work much longer; the precentor was getting as hoa.r.s.e as a raven, and the sacrist was gouty, or the cellarer was showing signs of breaking up.

Nay, the prior's cough gave unmistakable signs of his lungs being wrong, and if he _were_ to drop off, which we should of course all of us deplore--there would be a general move up, it might be; unless, indeed, Father Abbot should promote his chaplain over the heads of all of us--for such things have been!

But, when we come to look a little closer, we find that the monotony of monastic life was almost confined to the frequent services in the church. There were six services every day, of one kind or another, at which the whole convent was supposed to be present, and one service at midnight. [Footnote: Peckham's Register, ii, Preface, p. lxviii, et seq.] The lay brethren among the Cistercians, and the servants engaged in field labour, were excused attendance at the nocturnal service, and those officials of the convent whose business required them to be absent from the precincts were also excused. Indeed, it would have been simply impossible for the whole brotherhood to a.s.semble at all these services; there would have been a dead-lock in twenty-four hours if the attempt had ever been made in any of the large monasteries, where the inmates sometimes counted by hundreds, who all expected their meals punctually, and for whom even the simplest cookery necessitated that fires should be kept up, the porridge boiled, the beer drawn, and the bread baked. Hence, they whose hands were full and their engagements many really had no time to put in an appearance at church seven times in twenty-four hours.

While, on the other hand, the monk out of office, with nothing particular to do, was all the better for having his time broken up; going to church kept him out of mischief, and singing of psalms saved him from idle talk, and if it did him no good certainly did him very little harm.

The ordinary life of the monastery began at six o'clock in the morning, and when the small bell, called the skilla, rang, all rose, washed themselves at the latrines, put on their day habit, and then presented themselves at the matin Ma.s.s. _Mixtum_ or breakfast, followed, and that over the convent a.s.sembled in chapter for consultation. After chapter the officials dispersed; the kitchener to arrange for the meals, and not unfrequently to provide hospitality for distinguished guests and their retinue; the precentor to drill his choir boys, to tune the organ, to look after the music, or to arrange for some procession in the church, or some extraordinary function; the infirmarer to take his rounds in the hospital; the cellarer to inspect the brewhouse and bakeries; and each or all of these officers might find it necessary to go far a-field in looking after some bailiff or tenant who could not safely be left alone. At Evesham the sacristan, the chamberlain, and the infirmarer were allowed forage and the keep of one horse. Meanwhile in the cloister all was stir and movement without noise. In the west alley the schoolmaster was teaching his little pupils the rudiments of Latin, or it might be the elements of singing; in the south alley, where the light was best, a monk with a taste for art was trying his hand at illuminating a MS. or rubricating the initial letters; while on the other side, in the north alley, some were painfully getting by heart the psalms, or practising meditation--alone in a crowd.

<script>