Fountains Abbey: The story of a mediæval monastery

by George Hodges

II. THE CELLARIUM

The long range of building, extending from the church to the river, was called the cellarium, because it was under the general charge of the cellarer or steward of the monastery. It is likely that he had his office in the room which stands out from this building at the middle of its length. In this chamber, having a good window to the west, and a fireplace between two narrow windows to the south, he kept his office hours. St. Benedict himself, in his rule, had counselled all cellarers to be punctual in this matter, that nobody be kept waiting.

The great vaulted hall, now open from end to end, was then divided into five rooms by screens and partitions. The first room included the first two bays of the north end. Instead of pillars, it had in the midst two piers of masonry supporting a staircase, which ascended out of the church into the room above. These piers made this a double room, whereof the western half served as a vestibule to the church, while the eastern half, once opening from the cloister, may sometime have been the treasury, as at Durham.

The second room began at the southern pier and extended to the fourth pillar, thus including four bays. This was probably the storehouse for the domestic supplies of food and drink. A door in the west wall opened conveniently upon the outer court.

The third room was between the fourth pillar and the sixth. It had a door in its south wall, and appears to have been the buttery.

The wall which crossed at the sixth pillar ran between two doors, an outer door into the court and an inner door into the cloister. Thus this fourth room served as an entrance way. Its southern wall had the eighth pillar in the middle of it, and this bay beside the entrance may have been the outer parlour, the auditorium juxta coquinam, or room beside the kitchen, which was provided for in the Cistercian arrangements. Here in a niche of the east wall, now blocked, the porter sat beside the cloister door. In this room the brethren of the Abbey met their friends who lived in the world; here merchants came to show their wares.

All the rest of the hall, from the eighth pillar to the end over the river, was open then as it is now, and served as the refectory of the lay brothers. They came

The Cloisters.

Photo. Frith. Art Repro. Co.

in by the door in the west wall between the eighth and ninth pillars; their tables were set along the side walls under the windows; their cups and plates may have been kept in cupboards against the blank wall of the last two bays in the south-west corner; their food came in from the abbey kitchen by a hatch which opened opposite the outer door.

An outside stairway—the day stairs—rose beside the cellarer’s office at this door, and led to the dormitory of the lay brothers. At the north end of the dormitory another stairway—the night stairs—went down into the church. At the south, a room at right-angles, over the river, where they made their toilet, gave access to the infirmary where they went when they were sick, and in which they lived in peace and Christian comfort when they were old.

The lay brothers were monks, like the others, in that they were subject to the usual monastic vows, amenable to the regulations of monastic life, and clad in a habit; but they were quite distinct from their brethren of the choir and cloister. At the beginning of monasticism, most of the monks were laymen. They had separated themselves not only from the world but from the church. They believed that the deserts were better places for prayer than any sanctuary builded by the hand of man. They felt that they could best draw near to God, each in the silence of his own soul. In an age whose faith was in salvation by services, they turned their back on all the services. In an institutional time, when it was commonly accounted essential to be in the communion of the church, the monks were individualists. The fact is written in the letters of their name. A monk—monos—is a man who lives alone. The time came when a monk was never, under any circumstances, alone; but at the beginning he was a solitary person, living his own life by himself.

It is true that the wise church quietly and patiently followed these mystics in their wanderings, followed these enthusiasts who had forsaken the priests and the sacraments, and carried to them the altars which they had left behind, and by-and-by most of the monks were priests. But that was a long process, and during a great part of the time the convents of monks were lay fraternities, having only such priests as were needed for the rites of the church. Thus the monastic services were composed and arranged for the use of laymen. Indeed, the monasteries were never thoroughly adjusted to the conventional church system. They were never under the control of the diocesan bishop. Sometimes, they defied him openly; sometimes, they gave him the nominal office of visitor, and defied him privately. In general, he had little more authority over Benedictines or Cistercians than he has at present over Presbyterians or Methodists.

Accordingly, the lay brothers of Fountains were so named not to distinguish them from their brethren in priests’ orders, but to mark a difference between them and the cloister brothers. The conversi, as they were called, were divided from the monachi not by a barrier of ordination, but by a barrier of education. They were monks who could not read. When the Cistercian Order began, there were many such persons, some of good birth, many of good ability, but ignorant of letters. It was characteristic of the Cistercians that they made a place for the piety of these men. Unable to read, they could not take part in the regular offices of monastic devotion. But they could work. They could plough and spade, they could brew and bake, they knew how to work on a farm or in a mill; at the humblest, they could fetch and carry. And these acts, the Cistercians taught, may be as religious as the recitation of a litany. So there were the lay brothers, like St. Christopher at the ford of the river, consecrating their hands and their feet, their strength and their obedience, to God. They were sanctifying the homeliest tasks by doing them as the servants of Heaven.

The lay brothers were in the department of the cellarer, to whom they were responsible, as the cloister brothers were to the prior. They attended to the secular side of the common life. Having to work hard, they did not rise so early as the others; in summer, not till dawn. But they said prayers at night, coming down into the nave, where their stalls were ranged along on either side against the great pillars. In the day, they might recite their appointed offices, stopping in the midst of their work in the mill or in the field. When it was possible, however, they had their service in the church, chanting softly in the nave while the other monks were singing in the choir, and having forms of their own which they had learned by heart.