It remains to mention under this heading that many a monastery, in fact the great majority of the larger houses, were the chief supporters of subsidiary hospitals under their control, where beds were provided for the sick and infirm, and where food and lodging were also given to needy wayfarers. This was specially the case when the religious house was on the confines of or within a town. Derby, Coventry, and Northampton are among the many towns that afford examples of this kind of charitable work. In many other instances a modicum of assistance to hospital work formed a regular charge on the eleemosynary funds of the greater foundation. Thus the bursar’s rolls of the great priory of Durham, for the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, show under the head of customary alms—in addition to £5 4s. 8d. distributed to the poor on Maundy Thursday, and £13 on the thirteen principal feasts—a sum of about half a mark for shoes for the poor of the Domus Dei or God’s House, and a furthur sum for a like purpose for five widows of the hospital of St. Mary Magdalen. The actual almoner’s rolls of the same priory of the fourteenth century and onwards show that they maintained a great infirmary at Durham for the poor entirely in their own management, £5 6s. being the annual charge merely for the garments and shoes supplied to the inmates. There was also a hospital at Witton, originally designed for lepers, which was managed and supported by the Durham priory.
Like evidence can be readily produced all over the country. An interesting item of practical charity in the West of England may fittingly conclude these brief gleanings as to instances of monastic charity. The priory of Bath supported the hospital that was designed to help the poorest to the use of the city’s curative waters.
BYLAND ABBEY (Cistercian)
CHAPTER V
MONASTIC DIET
ONE of the commonest and cheapest ways of abusing the religious, and bringing monastic life into contempt, has always been to depict the monk, and sometimes the nun, as usually given up to extravagant living in the satisfying of the appetite for food and drink. The coarse ballad of older times flung such charges broadcast, and today the tenors and basses of high-class concerts continue to sustain popular delusions by songs of “Simon the Cellarer” stamp. Moreover, the modern poster and smaller advertisements appear to think that nothing tends so much to increase the sale of wines and spirits as the often cleverly rendered pictures of jovial monks tippling beer or sampling vintages amid impossible surroundings.
The Devil, naturally enough, was ever ready specially to tempt the monk, vowed to a limited dietary, to gluttony and drunkenness, and to do his work on insidious and gradual lines. Now and again, in some very rare cases, he succeeded; and occasionally a corrupt superior infected for a time his flock until sharply pulled up by a visitation. Such cases, though severely punished, could seldom be kept secret, and the worldling, whose own conduct was rebuked by the generally high level of the religious life, took an evil pleasure in retailing and exaggerating the news. But on the whole, in days when there was much proneness to coarse sins even among those of high position, the vowed religious of England led exemplary lives, and occupied a decidedly higher plane than the secular clergy. We do not take the rest of our history from scurrilous writers of either prose or verse; the student who attempted to do this would be laughed out of court; it is merely the innate and perpetual hatred of the world for Christ that has made many an historian, or writer of historical sketches, so ready to turn aside from any patient study of the lives of those who tried specially to deny themselves for the Master’s sake, and to accept cynical sneers in the place of sober facts.
Perhaps a few plain statements with regard to the eating and drinking of England’s religious may tend to dispel views that are far too common even among those who have no desire unfairly to belittle the cloistered life. A diet roll for the year 1492 that has been printed in extenso, and was fully analysed by Dean Kitchin, yields interesting results as to the fare at a large Benedictine house in the days when they certainly fared better than in earlier periods. On Monday before Christmas Day there were placed on the refectory tables of St. Swithun’s for general consumption at the two meals, dishes of moile made from marrow and grated bread, tripe, beef, mutton, calves-feet, and 170 eggs. The cost of this food was 8s. 4d., or about £4 of our money. On Christmas Day the fare was only a very little better, and cost 9s. 6d.; the dishes were seasoned vegetables, tripe, brose or bread soaked in dripping, beef, mutton, and stew or onion broth. On days of strict fast their fare that year was salt fish, relieved by dried figs or raisins as an extra, and mustard. “The charge for mustard, 1½d.,” says Dean Kitchin, “runs through all the fast days; it would appear that during the time of a meagre indigestible fish diet the brethren needed something to warm and stay their poor stomachs.”
One or two remarks are necessary for the due understanding of Benedictine diet-rolls, of which several are extant besides those of Winchester. Although there were a variety of dishes, it was usual, save on feast days, for the monk to partake of only one dish, though the old as well as those in the infirmary were often allowed a pittance, or something extra. The general method of serving was for two dishes to be handed to or placed in reach of each; “if anyone cannot eat of one dish let him eat of the other, if of neither they shall bring him something else so long as it is not a delicacy.” The great quantity of eggs used—eggs not being permitted as an addition to but instead of meat—seems to prove that even in the somewhat easy-going house of St. Swithun, towards the end of its days, the large majority of the professed monks did not follow a flesh dietary but only those who were dispensed. No. 39 of the old Benedictine rule strictly forbade flesh of quadrupeds or of birds except to those who were genuinely weak or ill (omnino debiles et egrotes); but this rule was afterwards relaxed by general councils of the order.
A homely touch occurs in the refectory custumal of the monks of St. Swithun’s, Winchester. The convent gardener had to find apples as a slight relief to the severe fare of Advent and Lent on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, save when some festival intervened. The apples were distributed in numerical accordance, with due gradation, to the monks in official position. It is to be hoped that they were permitted to distribute the fruit within or without the house! The prior, if present, had fifteen of the apples, the second prior ten, the third prior eight, and so on with the rest of the obedientiaries or officials. In recognition of his trouble in this respect the gardener was to receive a conventual loaf on the first and last days of each of these festivals.