“Of their chapter a brother for to be;”
that is, to the fraternity of the house. An illumination on f. 6 seems to represent the king sitting in the abbot’s place in the chapter-house, with royal officers behind him, monks in their places on each side of the chapter-house, the lectern in the middle, and a group of clerks at the west end. It is probably intended as a picture of the scene of the king’s being received to fraternity.
Adjoining the south transept is usually a narrow apartment; the description of Durham, drawn up soon after the Dissolution, says that it was the “Locutory.” Another conjecture is that it may have been the vestry. At Netley it has a door at the west, with a trefoil light over it, a two-light window at the east, two niches, like monumental niches, in its north and south walls, and a piscina at the east end of its south wall.
Again, between this and the chapter-house is often found a small apartment, which some have conjectured to be the penitential cell. In other cases it seems to be merely a passage from the cloister-court to the space beyond; in which space the abbot’s lodging is often situated, so that it may have been the abbot’s entrance to the church and chapter.
In Cistercian houses there is usually another long building south of the chapter-house, its axis running north and south. This was perhaps in its lower story the Frater-house, a room to which the monks retired after refection to converse, and to take their allowance of wine, or other indulgences in diet which were allowed to them; and some quotations in Fosbroke would lead us to imagine that the monks dined here on feast days. It would answer to the great chamber of mediæval houses, and in some respects to the Combination-room[79] of modern colleges. The upper story of this building was probably the Dormitory. This was a long room, with a vaulted or open timber roof, in which the pallets were arranged in rows on each side against the wall. The prior or sub-prior usually slept in the dormitory, with a light burning near him, in order to maintain order. The monks slept in the same habits[80] which they wore in the day-time.
About the middle of the south side of the court, in Cistercian houses, there is a long room, whose longer axis lies north and south, with a smaller room on each side of it, which was probably the Refectory. In other houses, the refectory forms the south side of the cloister court, lying parallel with the nave of the church. Very commonly it has a row of pillars down the centre, to support the groined roof. It was arranged, like all mediæval halls, with a dais at the upper end and a screen at the lower. In place of the oriel window of mediæval halls, there was a pulpit, which was often in the embrasure of a quasi-oriel window, in which one of the brethren read some edifying book during meals.
The remaining apartments of the cloister-court it is more difficult to appropriate. In some of the great Cistercian houses whose ground-plan can be traced—as Fountains, Salley, Netley, &c.—possibly the long apartment which is found on the west side of the cloister was the hall of the Hospitium, with chambers over it. Another conjecture is, that it was the house of the lay brethren.
In the uncertainty which at present exists on these points of monastic arrangement, we cannot speak with any degree of certainty; but we throw together some data on the subject in the subjoined note.[81]
The Scriptorium is said to have been usually over the chapter-house. It was therefore a large apartment, capable of containing many persons, and, in fact, many persons did work together in it in a very business-like manner at the transcription of books. For example, William, Abbot of Herschau, in the eleventh century, as stated by his biographer: “Knowing, what he had learned by laudable experience, that sacred reading is the necessary food of the mind, made twelve of his monks very excellent writers, to whom he committed the office of transcribing the holy Scriptures, and the treatises of the Fathers. Besides these, there were an indefinite number of other scribes, who wrought with equal diligence on the transcription of other books. Over them was a monk well versed in all kinds of knowledge, whose business it was to appoint some good work as a task for each, and to correct the mistakes of those who wrote negligently.”[82] The general chapter of the Cistercian order, held in A.D. 1134, directs that the same silence should be maintained in the scriptorium as in the cloister. Sometimes perhaps little separate studies of wainscot were made round this large apartment, in which the writers sat at their desks. Sometimes this literary work was carried on in the cloister, which, being glazed, would be a not uncomfortable place in temperate weather, and a very comfortable place in summer, with its coolness and quiet, and the peep through its windows on the green court and the fountain in the centre, and the grey walls of the monastic buildings beyond; the slow footfall of a brother going to and fro, and the cawing of the rooks in the minster tower, would add to the dreamy charm of such a library.[83]
Odo, Abbot of St. Martin’s, at Tournay, about 1093, “used to exult in the number of writers the Lord had given him; for if you had gone into the cloister you might in general have seen a dozen young monks sitting on chairs in perfect silence, writing at tables carefully and artificially constructed. All Jerome’s commentaries on the Prophets, all the works of St. Gregory, and everything that he could find of St. Augustine, Ambrose, Isodore, Bede, and the Lord Anselm, then Abbot of Bec, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, he caused to be transcribed. So that you would scarcely have found such a monastery in that part of the country, and everybody was begging for our copies to correct their own.” Sometimes little studies of wainscot were erected in the cloisters for the monks to study or transcribe in. At Gloucester Cathedral, at Beaulieu, and at Melrose, for example, there are traces of the way in which the windows of the cloisters were enclosed and turned into such studies.[84]