Fountains Abbey: The story of a mediæval monastery

by George Hodges

Out of the church, from prime or mass, the brethren proceeded to the chapter-house. This great hall opened through three noble arches from the east walk of the cloister. Two of these arches were blocked, as it appears, by book closets; but not at the beginning. The books were probably stored at first, as in other Cistercian abbeys, in the room between the transept and the chapter-house. Afterwards this room was put to other uses.

At the further end and on the sides the brothers sat on triple tiers of stone benches. The meeting began with a reading from the monastic book of martyrs, how this brother and that in the old time had lain down his life for his Master. Then there were prayers; and sometimes a sermon, to the hearing of which the lay brothers might be summoned. Then was read a chapter from the Rule of St. Benedict, a custom which gave its name both to the meeting and to the house in which it was held. Thus their high ideal was kept continually before them. Once a week a list was read of the household duties and of the brethren to whom they were assigned. For these homely tasks came to the monks in turn. One after another, they cooked the dinner, or waited on the table, or swept the dormitory. Finally, cases of discipline were considered.

In a life which at best was somewhat monotonous and narrow, the minor annoyances of human fellowship would easily be exaggerated. The rule of silence could not restrain the brothers from thinking; and some of the thoughts would naturally take the direction which is indicated in Browning’s “Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister.” The chapter meeting was, accordingly, a place for the summary adjustment of all the petty grievances. Brother Robert made his complaint against Brother William, and Brother William confessed or explained, and whoever was adjudged to be at fault was properly punished: sometimes by loss of precedence, sometimes by lack of dinner; in serious cases, by flogging. Down got the brother on the cold floor, paved with tombstones of past abbots, and there was soundly whipped, for the good of his soul and for the edification of the brethren. When whipping was not sufficient, he was put in prison. Under the abbot’s lodgings, beneath the ground, were three convenient dungeons, in whose walls and floor are to be seen to this day the staples for the chains.

It is not likely that these dungeons were in frequent use. Many hard things were, indeed, said about the monks at the time of the suppression, but it must be remembered that they were said by interested persons in the heat of controversy. Even then, it was agreed that in the “great and solemn monasteries,” such as Fountains, religion was “right well kept.” The monks were slandered that they might the more conveniently be robbed. Henry VIII. desired for various reasons, good and bad, to destroy the monasteries and take possession of their lands and treasures. He desired also, like all the Tudors, to keep the good will of the people. The royal commissioners, sent to visit the religious houses and report upon them, understood the situation and met it. They showed that the monasteries were so bad that a good nation ought to be happy to have its king suppress them. It is true that the enthusiasm for the monastic life was waning; the best men were turning their energies and finding their ideals in other directions. The strength and devotion of the people were being put into politics, into preaching, into the practical life of the parish. Moreover, there had gradually grown up a social as well as a religious separation between the monks and their neighbours. Fountains Abbey, for example, was built, as we have seen, by the benefactions of rich and noble persons. It was on that side an aristocratic institution. It differed in this respect from the parish churches which were erected and maintained by the plain people, and especially by prosperous citizens of the mercantile order. Mr. Micklethwaite has put the situation clearly in his paper on “The Cistercian Order.” “To a citizen or a franklin,” he says, “a monk was a dignitary, but the parish priest was his neighbour and friend, and the parish church was his own.” This fact, that the great substantial middle class were no longer deeply interested in the abbeys, not only accounts in some measure for the indifference with which they witnessed their destruction, but for the difficulty which the monasteries found at last in getting recruits among men of this good kind. The personal quality deteriorated. There were bad monks, no doubt, as there are still bad ministers; and the few bad ones attracted more attention than all the cloistered saints. And, anyhow, the life which they were endeavouring to live was an abnormal life, apart from the wholesome influences of natural human society, and from the helpful engagements of the common routine. The monasteries inevitably degenerated. But “an enemy,” as Burke said, “is a bad witness; a robber is a worse.” The quiet judgment of the modern historian is in favour of the monks, and finds most of them to have been men of respectable and pious lives. The sober persons in white cassocks, who confessed faults in the chapter meeting and cheerfully suffered chastisement for them to which the man in the street gave not a moment’s thought, had a passionate longing to be good. They were intent upon the living of a righteous life.

The day’s work would begin about seven o’clock. In the winter it continued until three in the afternoon, making an eight-hour day. In the summer there was a long intermission while the sun was high and hot, but two hours of it were occupied in study. During the day the church bell rang for the offices of terce and sext and nones; but these were brief services, and men who were hard at work at a distance stopped where they stood, and said them under the sky. There was a bite of breakfast called mixtum—a piece of bread and somewhat wherewith to wash it down—which was served before the work of the day began to those who were so old or so young as to be unfit for their tasks without it. In the summer the meal of the day was eaten at noon, and after it the brethren lay on their beds in the dormitory and slept for an hour; or, if they chose, read a book during that time, lying down, being careful not to stretch out their feet into the passage between the beds, and turning the leaves quietly so as not to disturb their sleeping neighbours. Late in the summer afternoon there was a slight repast of bread and fruit. In the winter, until Lent, the one meal was served when the brethren came in from work; that is after three o’clock; in Lent, not until about five.

The monastic ideal of seclusion from the world demanded economic independence. Everything that was needed in the monastery was to be produced upon the premises. That, at the least, implied a garden for vegetables, and an orchard for fruit, and a field for corn with a mill in which to grind it, and ponds for fish, and woods for fuel. It meant architects, builders, masons, carpenters and plumbers. In the infirmary, which was the abbey hospital, there must be physicians and attendants. In the guest-house, which was the abbey inn, there must be porters, hostlers, cooks. The common details of a domestic establishment of a hundred men were enough to keep many persons busy. It is true that much of the heavy work was done by the lay brothers; but every choir brother had his share also, and went out daily with axe or spade, with fishing-rod or pruning-hook, with basket or barrow, to his appointed task. The crops must be planted or garnered, the apples must be picked, the hay must be got in, the wood must be cut, the buildings must be kept in repair, horses must be shod, sheep must be shorn, and at all seasons, in all weather, and under all circumstances, dinner must be cooked.

Accordingly, after the daily mass and chapter, this substantial activity engaged the mind and muscle of the monastery. The abbot betook himself to his executive affairs, the prior and the sub-prior to their daily inspection of the establishment, the cellarer to his house-keeping, the sacrist to his care of the church, the bursar to his accounts, the infirmarius to his hospital, the terrararius to his inn, the almoner to his dependents at the gate, the master of the novices to his school, the scriptor to his copying, the kitchener to his cooking, others to the fields and forests. For such as were unemployed about these matters, there was the cloister with its books, and the church with its frequent services. It is likely that there were idle monks; for the monk was of like passions with us, and was beset by the same temptations which assail us. As the Abbey increased in wealth, and the early ardour of the monastic life began to cool, there was, no doubt, a disposition to hire men to do some of the homely tasks which at first the monks had done themselves. But the ideal of the monastic life was an active day, wherein from dawn till dark there should not be an idle moment. Indolence, as St. Benedict declared, is an enemy of the soul; and all his arrangements of time and task were made with that in mind. Eastern monasticism had two dominant notes, of pain and prayer. St. Benedict took pain out and put work in the place of it. No man was to afflict his soul or body needlessly, but every man was to devote himself, for his physical and spiritual good, to vigorous exercise. The idle monk was like the idle minister: he existed, but not often.

All the work was done, as far as was possible, in silence. Out of the east walk of the cloister, beside the chapter-house, opened the parlour. There, as the name indicates, the monks could talk. The original rule specified only the dormitory and the refectory as places wherein speech was forbidden; but silence came to be the common habit of the monastic life, its enforcement depending much upon the disposition of the abbot. The monastery was the abode of blessed stillness. Within its walls men lived in peace and quiet. They did their tasks without conversation. They read their books, and ate their meals, thinking their own uninterrupted thoughts. They sat in the cloister, where the wind and the sun played in the grass, and were altogether undisturbed. It was not so much a penitential as a protective silence, good for the soul, and restful.

There was even a bit of quiet pleasure in the midst of these silent labours. In the south walk of the cloister, between the dormitory stairs and the refectory, was the warming house, the abbey fireside. Here, in the cold weather, the monks came to warm their hands. The abbot had a fire-place of his own; the cellarer had one in his office; and the infirmary and the guest houses were cheerfully warmed; but the common brotherhood had but this one hearth. Here was concentrated all the heat of the place, in the huge fire-places. One of these great openings is now blocked, having been disused before the suppression, when the number of monks was growing smaller, but the other is still ready for a load of logs, whose smoke would pour out of the tall chimney. Two large openings in the west wall gave some heat to the refectory. Here, in the warming house, in Advent, the brothers kept a “solemn banquet” of “figs and raisins, cakes and ale,” of whose celebration at Durham it is said that there was “no superfluity or excess, but a scholastical and moderate congratulation amongst themselves.” A door in the south-west corner opened upon a little court; the woodhouse stood in the eastern part of it, and a wooden bridge, from the refectory corner, led across the river. Over this bridge came the stout brothers in their gowns of brown or white, their arms full of wood. At Durham, near the warming house, there was a garden and a bowling alley.

The muniment room at Studley Royal contains among its treasures a