Fountains Abbey

LIFE OF

hundred yards in width, and more than twice that space in length. The longer reaches of the wall ran through high

inthiamina) of the abbot{46} and abbey guests, and to do it without unnecessary tearing-congrue et honeste sine lesione voluntaria vel ruptura eorumdem. The fact, however, that at Citeaux there was an outer as well as an inner gate-house, suggests that Abbot Huby was but erecting a new lodge in the place of an old one

ed window. There they said a prayer, after which the hospitaller took the guest in charge. The{47} stables and barns were probably hereabouts. The mill is still standing, across the river, being now used as a dairy-house; b

, across a wide expanse of green, stood the buildings of the cloister group: on the lef

GUEST

astern, making{48} two secluded courts. Close to the corner of the eastern house a door opened in the wall, through which the hospitaller led his guest into the inner court. There

was never a bed, a table, a stool or a candlestick which had been made by a machine. All had come from the hands of craftsmen who brought{49} to their labour a determining quality of personal interest. Descending into the courtyard, a door near the north end brought the guest into the great hall-"a goodly brave place much like unto a church"-where a central row of fair pillars upheld a vaulted roof. This was for the ceremonies of the table. The arr

the Abbey inn, known to all instructed wayfarers. In a day when towns were far apart, and the roads bad and beset with peril, the sight of a monastery tower in the late afternoon was pleasant to a travell

HE CE

likely that he had his office in the room which stands out from this building at the middle of its length. In this chamber, having a good window to the west, and a fireplace between t

Instead of pillars, it had in the midst two piers of masonry supporting a staircase, which ascended out of the church into the room above. These piers made this a double r

including four bays. This was probably the storehouse for the domestic supplies of

r and the sixth. It had a door in its south

hth pillar in the middle of it, and this bay beside the entrance may have been the outer parlour, the auditorium juxta coquinam, or room beside the kitchen, which was provided for in the Cistercian arrangements

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

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 thei

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

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 syste

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 mi

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 the

THE C

was put upon religion made it to consist, in great measure, of the saying of services. Out of the confused noises of the comm

t the door of the house of prayer. The porch roof touched the base of the great window, which was filled with the glorious colours of the inimitable glass of the{59} middle ages. Over the window, in a niche, was a figure of the

reen door and looking to the east, the high roof reached over the nave, the choir, the presbytery, and the chapel of the nine altars, to the splendour of the east window. The Norman nave and transepts, with their great pillars and round-headed clerestory windows, repre{60}sent the primitive Puritan simplicity of the Cistercians. The choir and presbytery a

o pillar, was a great cross or rood. This screen formed the east end of that part of the church which was assigned to the lay brothers. On the right hand and on the left, this sanctuary was shut off from the aisles by walls, which ran along the inner

ccess to the choir. The space between these two screens, called the retro-choir, was intended especially for aged and c

n between the ninth pillars, having a doorway between them. In this passage, be{62}tween the altars of the saints, three abbots were buried, in the fifteenth century. From the top of the two reredoses to the top of the choir screen,

e discovery of nine earthen pots buried in the masonry which underlay them. These pots were, no doubt, as in several other churches, an acoustic experiment. The distances between them indicate how many there{63} were in the whole range. In front of the stalls of the monks were lower seats for the novices. In addition to the entrance through

a step or two. Across the long space of its shining floor stood the t

een. On the two sides of this three-fold sanctuary ran long aisles, from the west wall to the chapel of the nine altars. In the middle of this distance, the aisles opened into transepts, north and south. The nave aisles, at first unobstruct

s remained, the outer chapel of the north transept had been changed into a store-house when the tower was built, so that only the chapel which was in th

for the bells, whilst the second may have served as the sleeping-room of the men who rung the

of Jesus Christ," s

d for ever"; "To the King, eternal, immortal, invisibl

our and glory for ever," was thrice re

rising no more than a single storey over the roof. These high parapets were a symbol of the pride{66} of life: they indicated that the ambitions of the outer world had successfu

ich the monks wore when they went in procession, on great days. At the time of the suppression, when an inventory was taken, there were eighty of them. Six were made of cloth of gold, twenty-six of white damask, four of white velvet,{67} two of white fustian. Five old copes were of embroidered work, and six of flowered work. One was "very well wrought with images"; one, wrought with images, was of green damask; six were of

8} of the inventory laboriously spelled "qweshan." Here were processional crosses; chalices and patens reserved for great festivals; shrines to be borne about the church on the festival of Corpus Christi, one containing a rib of St. Lawrence, another a bit of St. Anne's scalp set in a plate of silver; and an image o

low barrier of wood, while a similar wall{69} ran along the front of the whole row, with doors admitting to the altars. There was a gallery over the altar screen which parted the chapel from the presbytery; and a little gallery over the door in the south-west corner, wh

ow wears one of the gorgeous copes of the sacristy. There are two candles on the high altar, and behind them is the tablet with the three images, probably our Lord on the Cross, with St. Mary on one side and St. John on the other, with "beads and plate of silver-gilt, and some part gold and set with stones." Back of the altar, suspended high against the screen and falling to the floor, is a tapestry hanging, of Arras work. The holy table is sp

st window; and there is a sound of chanting, imploring, adoring voices. Hands are outstretched to receive the mystic bread and w

ackson and John Walworth, and their fellows who were here at the time of the suppression had their bad and their good, as{72} we have, and in about the same proportion. They were trying, the best way they knew, to magnify the good, to make the ideal real, and to gain the approbation of God. In the church they found assistance. There it was, with doors open, day after d

HE CL

owl for holy water. Here the brothers stopped to dip their fingers and sign their foreheads with the sign of the cross. The green cloister court, wi

o complete their education at Oxford, where they lived in the Cistercian Abbey of Bewley (founded in 1280), or in the Cistercian College of St. Bernard, now St. John's (founded in 1432). There

The school-house has not been identified. The building which once stood across the river at the south end of the cellarium would have been conveniently placed for this purpose. A glimpse of the discipline of such a school is had in the fact t

f his last sleep. The monks laid aside their scapulars, but slept in their woollen cassocks, so that they woke ready dressed. The day stairs to the dormitory are in the south-east corner of the cloister. There was a room at the head of the stairs, extending south to the end of the dormitory, which may have corresponded to the master's chamber in a like position in a school. Here the prior may have slept with an attentive ear for any breach of order. It is uncertain whether there were partitions between the beds, or whether

ry answered it. Then every brother bestirred himself. He threw a cloak about him, thrust his f

igh altar, and there was a light in the loft at the organ, and another for the reader at the lecturn, perhaps still another at the chant-book of the precentor. But other{77}wise the gr

ir faces to make it evident that they were wide awake. This study-hour was, of course, short in summer, but long in winter. When the weather was very bad, they sought refuge in the chapter-house. In some cloisters there was glass in

and of books. Each monk rose at the sound of his name, produced the book which had been assigned to him the year before, and returned it, humbly confessing if he had not read it through. Then the books were newly distributed and charged. At Ripley Castle, bound in an octavo volume, are several of the Fountains books: a Latin grammar, some sermons and some music, and a paraphrase of Ovid, in which that irresponsible writer is made to serve as a{79} medi?val moral

ule that these precious manuscript volumes should be handled with becoming care. "When the religious are engaged in reading in cloister or

en? Whence had t

eat company of those who are neither rich nor poor, who neither earn their living by their hands nor inherit the means of living from their fathe

ng a life of continual prayer the most blessed of all lives, delighting in it all, finding in the cloister the four-square city of God which is pictured in the Book of the Revelation. Some came from love of leisure, or of simple peace and quiet: the worse ones, disposed to be respectably idle; the better, finding

2} strongly in those days to the heroic, and even to the religious nature of many men. But Ralph did not like it. It displeased him much. And one day, coming to Fountains, where his father had already become a monk, he consulted a lay-brother, whose name was Sunnulph, homo simplex et illiteratus but wise in the counsels of God. And presently, the soldier and the brother ea

of democracy. Here the humblest man, if he could but read and write, might rise as he deserved, to be the kitchener, the hospitaller, the sacrist, th

es in the room over the river. By this time the sun was fairly up, and the hour was come for the psalms of prime. The first psalm, according to the gracious arrangement of St. Benedict, they said very slowly, in order to give late-comers time to get in. Prime was followed

ast 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 st

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 w

ingly, 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 co

ions. The strength and devotion of the people were being put into politics, into preaching, into the practical life of{88} 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, bu

y 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,

s. In the infirmary, which was the abbey hospital, there must be physicians and attendants. In the guest-house,{92} 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,

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 wa

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{95} peace and quiet. They did their tasks without conversation

he heat of the place, in the huge fire-places. One of these great openings is now blocked, having been{96} 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 celebrati

bbey to castle, from manor-house to market-square, for the entertainment of their neighbours. Minstrels came from Beverley, with those of Lord Arundell, of Lord Beaumont, of Lord Fitzhugh, even of the King; who not only sang but acted as conjurers, gymnasts, contortionists, and variety showmen. Sometimes the audience of the Abbey was given to a story-teller-fabulator-"the story-teller of the Earl of Salisbury"; with selections from the Hundred

water from the river. In the middle of the cloister is a great stone bason. When that welcome sound was{99} heard, the brothers washed their hands in the troughs or in the bason, wiping them on a roller towel which hung beside the door. Then they entered their noble dining-hall, lofty as a church, with ceiling of wood and floor of stone, wainscoted above the height of a man's head, and having down the midst a row of marble pillars. At the end oppos

s great ovens in the middle of the room, and entered from the refectory by a service door which had a round revolving shelf across the middle of it. Between the door to the gallery and the door to the kitchen there was perhaps a sideboard; and in the corners toward the cloister were cupboards fo

country. In the book of signs-De Signis-which shows how the monks of Ely indicated their wishes at the silent table, four gestures are set down to mean beer: signifying good beer, bona servisia, small beer, mediocris servisia, smaller beer, debilis servisia, and a very common beer called skagmen. In the "Mirroure of Our Ladye," the sister of Sion House who desired an apple was directed to "put thy thumb in thy fist, and close thy hand, and move afore thee to

ing; on Monday, pottage and cod; on Tuesday, fresh meat and mutton; on Wednesday, fresh fish, white herring and cod; on Thursda

; on the second day, having guests at his table, he added salt and mustard to the fish; on the third day, fish was served with figs, raisins and{10

at eager care they are turned over and under, made soft and hard, beaten up, fried, roasted, stuffed, now served minced with other things, and now by themselves! The very external appearance of the thing is cared for, so that the eye may be charmed as well as the palate." As the monasteries increased in wealth, ther

t with his hand. He was forbidden to wipe either his hands or his knife on the table-cloth,-until he had first cleansed them on his bread. When he helped himself to salt it must be with his knife; when he drank, he must hold the cup with both hands. "Eyes on your plates, hands on the table, ears to the reader, heart to God": thus ran the rul

low and the windows were at the south end, so that its use is not apparent. It may have been the chamber of the novices; it may have been the tool-house. It may have been an office or checker, wherein the master of the warming house kept his hogshead of wine, and his spices, figs and walnuts, with which t

this building by a hall, the abbot dined with visitors of state. Here, at the time of the inventory, were two gilded basins of silver, three silver ewers, eight "standing pieces" with covers, nine "flat pieces," all of silver, with a goblet and some spoons: so that the{107} abbot's table must have presented a shining and sumptuous appearance. The open space bounded by the dormitory basement on the west, the arcaded passage on the north, the rere-dorter or necessarium on th

e and there with fire-places, extending east to the infirmary,{108} north to the chapel of nine altars, and west to the dormitory. Here the abbot could walk; here, in the o

ings found in the ruins.{109} This room, reached by the day stairs to the dormitory, had a bar at the door by which the occupant could lock himself in. This bar is a perplexing fact, and nobody has as yet explained why any official of the abbey should need to defend himself against intrusion in this peremptory fashion. If this was the muniment room, it held the great books of the Chartulary of Fountains, of which the volume A to C is in the British Museum. D to J is at Ripley Castle, and K to M is in the library of the late Sir Thomas Phillips. The remaining volumes are not yet traced.

into the coal-yard. Coal was found here when the recent excavations were made. In the south-east corner of this yard lay the abbey rubbish heap, the materials of which were apparently shovelled out from the window beside it, whose sill shows

s out of the long corridor close by the infirmary door. Here, according to Mr.

h of the reservoir and the coal-yard. A screen extended across the east end of the misericord, and there was a dais for the high table at

e, with vaulted basement probably for domestic stores, and with upper apartments which may have served for the entertainment of guests of unusual distinction. Up these stairs, then, attended by officers of the Abbey, went the Nevilles, the Marmions, the Mauleverers, on their visits to the monastery. In the chamber above slept the abbot of Clairvaux, when he came on his round of inspection of the Cistercian houses. Adjoining this lodging, on the south, wa

e harsher regulations of the monastic life. Fires blazed on the hearth and roared up the great chimneys, and there were good things on the table at dinner time. The place was both a hospital and an old men's home. The buildings extended over the river,{114} which flowed in four tunnels beneath. To the north, beside the chapel of the nine altars, lay the cemetery. In this quiet place, remote from even the peaceful stir o

on it and a quilt on that; there the sick man was laid. When the brother's breath grew faint and difficult, and it was plain that the moment of{115} his departure was at hand, a board in the cloister was struc

he refectory door, and somebody read aloud from a good book, preferably the Collations of Cassian. On Saturday afternoons during the reading, the brothers by turns sat in a row on the stone benches which were over the lavatory troughs on either side of the refectory door, and had their fe