English Villages

by P. H. Ditchfield

The foundation of the various orders of monks shows the efforts which were from time to time made by earnest men to revive the zeal and religious enthusiasm characteristic of the early dwellers in monasteries. The followers of St. Benedict and St. Columba were the first monks of the western Church who converted the peoples of England, Germany, Belgium, and Scandinavia. The Benedictines had many houses in England in Saxon times. In the tenth and eleventh centuries flourished a branch of the Benedictines, the order of Cluny, who worked a great religious revival, which was continued in the twelfth by the order of the Cistercians, founded at Citeaux in Burgundy. Some of our most beautiful English abbeys—Fountains, Kirkstall, Rievaulx, Tintern, Furness, and Byland—all belonged to this order. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the new orders of preaching friars founded by St. Francis and St. Dominic arose, and exercised an immense influence in the world. They did not shut themselves up in the cloister, but went everywhere, preaching in the market-places, and tending the sick, the lepers, and the outcasts. At first they were immensely popular, but the orders degenerated like their predecessors, and long before the Reformation laid themselves open to the derision and the scoffs of the more enlightened men of the age. Since the days of the Friars there has been no building of monasteries in England. Wealth, luxury, and corruption had destroyed the early piety of the monks, and rich men preferred to give their wealth for the purpose of founding colleges and hospitals, rather than in increasing the number of religious houses.

We will now visit these monasteries, and try to picture them as they stood in the days of their glory, and see the daily life which the monks led. The rules of the orders differed somewhat, some being stricter than others; and likewise the arrangements of the buildings were not all based upon one plan. The Carthusian monasteries differ widely from those of the other orders, owing to the rule that each monk should have his separate cell, wherein he lived and had his food, and only met his brethren in church and in the chapter-house. We will examine the usual plan of a monastery, the main buildings of which clustered round the cloister-court. This was called the paradise, around which was a covered ambulatory. Here the monks read and wrote, and sometimes had little spaces partitioned off for studies, with bookstands and cupboards. It was the great centre of the monastic life. The earlier ambulatories were open, but in the fourteenth century they had windows looking on to the cloister-court, filled with stained glass. The monks must have found the open cloister a somewhat chilly place for writing, and although their fingers were endured to hardness, had sometimes to abandon their tasks. Orderic Vitalis tells us that his fingers were so numbed by the cold in a hard winter that he was obliged to leave his writing until a more congenial season.

On the north of the cloister-court stood the monastic church, the grandest and noblest of the monastic buildings, adorned with shrines, and tombs, and altars. Several of our cathedrals were monastic churches, and afford us some idea of the splendour and magnificence of these stately buildings. Many other churches built by the monks, quite as large and noble as any of our cathedrals, are now in ruins, with only a wall or a buttress remaining to mark the site of the once noble minster. The church was usually cruciform, with nave and aisles. East of the high altar in the choir stood the lady-chapel, and round the choir a retro-choir, or presbytery. There was a door on the south side of the church, opposite the eastern ambulatory, for the entrance of the monks. The south transept formed part of the eastern side of the cloister. On the same side stood the chapter-house, a large chamber richly ornamented with much architectural detail, and adorned with mural paintings. Between the chapter-house and the church there is a narrow room, which was the sacristy, and on the south of the chapter-house a building in two stories, the ground floor being the frater-house, where the monks retired after meals to converse, the upper room being the dortor, or dormitory, where they slept. A passage often separated the chapter-house from this building.

On the south side of the cloister-court stood the refectory, a long room in which the monks took their meals; and on the west was a range of buildings the use of which differed in various monasteries, in some for cellars and larders, in others for dormitories. Sometimes this western building was the domus conversorum, or house of the lay brethren. The abbot’s lodging was a fine house, consisting of hall, chambers, kitchen, buttery, and cellars, capable of entertaining a large number of guests, and frequently stood on the east side of the chapter-house quite separate from the other buildings. In small monastic houses governed by a prior his residence often formed the western side of the cloister-court. The farmery, or infirmary, where sick monks were nursed during illness, was a separate building, having its own kitchen, refectory, and chapel. The hospitium was also a separate building near the outer gate of the abbey, and consisted of a hall, dormitories, and a chapel, in which each night a goodly company of guests were entertained and courteously welcomed by the hospitaller. A high wall surrounded the abbey precincts, in which was the outer gate, consisting of a porter’s lodge, a prison, and a large room in which the manorial court was held, or the abbot met the representatives of the townsfolk in order to direct their affairs and choose their chief magistrate or settle their differences.

The author of Piers Ploughman gives a description of the appearance of a monastery in the fourteenth century. As he approached the monastic buildings he was so bewildered by their greatness and beauty that for a long time he could distinguish nothing certainly but stately buildings of stone, pillars carved and painted, and great windows well wrought. In the centre quadrangle he notices the stone cross in the middle of grass sward. He enters the minster, and describes the arches as carved and gilded, the wide windows full of shields of arms and merchants’ marks on stained glass, the high tombs under canopies, with armed effigies in alabaster, and lovely ladies lying by their sides in many gay garments. He passes into the cloister, and sees it pillared and painted, and covered with lead, and conduits of white metal pouring water into bronze lavatories beautifully wrought. The chapter-house was like a great church, carved and painted like a parliament-house. Then he went into the refectory, and found it a hall fit for a knight and his household, with broad tables and clean benches, and windows wrought as in a church. And then he wandered and wondered at “the halls full high and houses full noble, chambers with chimneys and chapels gay,” and kitchens fit for a king in his castle, and their dorter or dormitory with doors full strong, their fermerye (infirmary) and frater, and many more houses, and strong stone walls, enough to harbour the queen. The author was evidently amazed at all the sights which he witnessed in the monastery.

We will now see the monks at work, and spend a day with them in their monastic home. It is not easy definitely to map out a monk’s day. The difficulty arises in a measure from the want of distinct marks of time. A monastic day was divided into twelve hours of uncertain length, varying according to the season; but the religious observances began at midnight, when the brethren rose at the sound of a bell in the dortor for the continuous service of Mattins and Lauds. They then retired to sleep, until the bell again summoned them at sunrise, when Prime was said, followed by the morning Mass, private masses and confessions, and the meeting of the Chapter; after this, work; then Tierce; then High Mass, followed by Sext. A short time was then devoted to reading, during which the ministri and the reader at table dined; and then the monks sat down to dinner. This was the first food of the day, though the weaker brethren were allowed to sustain themselves with wine and water, or bread steeped in wine. Dinner was followed by a brief rest in the dormitory. If the monks did not wish to sleep they could read in the dorter; but they were to be careful not to disturb their resting brethren by any noise, such as that caused by turning over the leaves of their books. At one o’clock the bell rang for None, a short service consisting of a hymn, two psalms, some collects, the Lord’s Prayer, and versicles. Then the brethren washed themselves, had a stoup of wine in the frater, and worked until Evensong, which was followed by supper. After supper they read in the cloister until the bell rang for Collation, which consisted of a reading in the chapter-house, whence they retired to the fratery for a draught of wine or beer. Then followed Compline, and then the monks were ready for bed, and retired to the dortor. Even there rules followed them, and directed them how they were to take off their shoes, and “to behave with more quiet, self-restraint, and devotion than elsewhere.”

I have not exhausted all the services which the monks attended. In addition to the principal ones there were several minor functions, at which devotion to the Blessed Virgin was the chief feature. The life was hard and the discipline severe; and lest the animal spirits of the monks should rise too high, the course of discipline was supplemented by periodical blood-letting. The doctors of the day were firm believers in the utility of this practice, and perhaps it had special advantages for dwellers in monasteries. According to the mediaeval metrical treatise on medicine, Flos Medicinae, or Regimen Sanitatis Salerni—

“Spiritus uberior exit per phlebotomaniam.” “It maketh cleane your braine, releeves your eie, It mends your appetite, restoreth sleep, Correcting humours that do waking keep; And inward parts and sences also clearing It mends the voyce, touch, smell, taste, hearing.”