Fountains Abbey: The story of a mediæval monastery

by George Hodges

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.