Monasteries

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Monasteries

The Church in Daily Life. As a landlord, institution, and spiritual guide, the Church was an integral part of the daily lives of all people in medieval Europe. Yet, the Church also had its own material culture, which shared aspects of the lives of nobles and peasants but had distinctive characteristics as well. Monasteries were in principle separate from the rest of the community, and their structures and the lives of their residents were designed to be self-contained. In practice, however, medieval monasteries fulfilled many important roles in the daily lives of the entire Christian community. Churches also had a central role in medieval villages and cities, and the construction of the most dramatic structures in medieval Europe—Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals—highlights the value of the church in urban communities and the integration of clergy and laity in medieval life.

Monasteries and Medieval Society. Monasteries were supposed to follow rules that regulated every aspect of their community life. The Rule of St. Benedict was the most influential. Medieval monasteries were much like prosperous lordships and manors, and their monks had the privileges and responsibilities of large landowners. The wealth of monasteries made them attractive to the sons of the nobility, and monks generally came from the upper classes of medieval society. Yet, for all their influence the number of residents in the average medieval monastery—even when residents who had not taken vows were counted—was relatively small. Large and prestigious institutions such as the Benedictine monasteries of Westminster Abbey in England, Monte Cassino in Italy, and St. Gall in Switzerland had approximately eighty to one hundred monks at their peak, and most medieval monasteries were at least half that size. Yet, monks and monastic institutions greatly influenced medieval society even though they were definitely a minority population.

Nunneries. Around 1100 an advocate for women’s pursuit of the monastic life wrote the following description of a laywoman’s life: “When she comes in the house, the wife hears her child screaming, sees the cat at the bacon, and the dog gnawing her hides; her biscuit is burning on the stone, and her calf is sucking up her milk; the crock is boiling over into the fire, and the husband is scolding.” Although such descriptions were clearly polemical, they emphasize that life in a cloister could provide a fulfilling alternative for medieval women. Like monasteries, nunneries came in many sizes, with wide varieties of wealth, and with great social distinctions in their population. From early in the Middle Ages, certain nunneries were reserved to the nobility, and their lifestyle was relatively luxurious. Monastic rules set up different standards and guidelines for male and female religious communities. In general, however, the female abbeys were poorer and smaller than monasteries. Unlike their male counterparts, they did not actively acquire lands, but waited for gifts to come to them. Although their complexes followed the patterns for male monasteries, their buildings were frequently smaller, their outbuildings less numerous, and their community less diverse. For example, in all but the poorest monasteries, the abbot had a detached residence to himself, while in the nunneries abbesses were told to sleep communally, that is, in the same room, with their nuns. Although the abbesses of the great female abbeys could wield significant secular power, most communities had only local influence.

The Complex and Its Residents. In keeping with their purpose of individual contemplation and prayer, many monasteries were initially built in relatively isolated areas and designed to be self-contained; all the facilities available in a prosperous village or castle could normally be found in a monastic complex, including stables, barns, cisterns, latrines, and kitchens. At the heart of this complex were the church and the cloister. Attached to the church structure, the cloister was a square series of buildings with a central, enclosed courtyard in which the monks did most of their daily living. It was rare for a nonmonk to enter this part of the monastery. Medieval monasteries could have residents other than the monks, and lay brothers, individuals who had taken less binding vows than the monks, performed many menial tasks around the monastery. They were housed in separate quarters and ate their meals in separate buildings or separate parts of the dining hall (refectory). Not only did monasteries have lay brothers in residence, but they could have noble and prosperous individuals who essentially used the monastery as a retirement home or a place of refuge. The latter was especially common in upper-class nunneries. Finally, as landowners, monasteries and nunneries had peasants and serfs working for them and under their care. Generally all these people had access to some buildings in the monastic complex, including the church. To deal with these demands and preserve the original purpose of monastic life, parts of the church were reserved for the different sorts of people affiliated with the community. Increasingly during the Middle Ages men and women were separated in distinct religious communities for monks and nuns.

The Ideal Monastery: St. Gall. In the early ninth century, a plan was developed for an ideal Benedictine monastery, filling in the many gaps Benedict left in his description of its structures. Because the plan has been in the library of the Swiss monastery of St. Gall, it is known as the Plan of St. Gall although the layout of that monastery has significant differences from the plan. The more than thirty buildings and the several gardens of this ideal plan illustrate the medieval vision of a monastery’s spiritual and social roles. Although the church, cloister, and residential buildings for the monks are at the heart of the complex, the Plan of St. Gall describes buildings for services second only to those obtainable in a large city or a

great castle. There are separate barns for geese, cattle, dairy cows, sheep, goats, pigs, mares, and other horses. The servants caring for these animals also have several buildings as quarters. A brewery, pantry, cellar, bakery, winepress, and several kitchens provide for food preparation. The monastery also needed skilled craftsmen in various fields; tanners, shoemakers, saddlers, turners, goldsmiths, cloth workers, and even sword makers each have a separate workshop. Buildings were designed to hold guests of different social statuses and their retinue. Even public welfare and hygiene were considered. Latrines were placed throughout the complex; there were baths for the monks and others affiliated with the monastery; and there was even a hospital with a separate home for its manager and chief doctor (the infirmarian). A monk living in such a place had little need to leave it to find anything necessary for his livelihood or comfort.

Variations from the Ideal. Although many monastic institutions followed the general organization found in the Plan of St. Gall, they rarely had all the services and separate buildings included there. The church and cloister were always at the center, and kitchens, barns, and various outbuildings were constructed soon after a monastery was established. Because a monastery was intended to be a self-contained complex, it also had storage facilities for food, tools, and raw materials—as well as separate buildings designated for travelers and other visitors. Given the lack of large hotels or other accommodations, large ecclesiastical structures, castles, and manors had a duty to house the retinues of traveling lords. The key differences between the Plan of St. Gall and actual monasteries are found in the number of separate structures, the geographic orientation of the buildings, and the materials with which the buildings were constructed.

Building Monasteries. The ideal monastery was built entirely of stone, and actual monasteries worked to achieve this goal as much as possible. Generally the church, cloister, and other key buildings were stone; workshops and barns were likely to be wooden. The materials used in building monastic structures were predominantly local; in parts of Europe, buildings might be sandstone, in other areas, brick or granite. As such, building techniques took into account local demands and variations. Building methods for wooden structures were much like those for peasant structures, while stone Buildingmethods for constructed in the same way as castles and cathedrals. When monasteries were first founded, monks might have worked alongside craftsmen, if craftsmen were even available outside the monastic community. Once the monastery was established, monks generally worked separately from lay craftsmen or brothers, although monks did perform manual labor, and some were skilled artisans.

Plumbing and Water. Medieval monasteries were known throughout Europe for the sophistication of their plumbing systems and their relatively easy access to water. In addition to digging several wells in the complex itself, monastic planners generally established systems of pipes and drains that supplied running water to the monastery. These provisions helped monks enjoy a standard of living about which most medieval Europeans could only dream. For example, Westminster Abbey had a system of pipes that took water to every major building in the monastery. Moreover, Westminster had a series of settling tanks for purifying the water; sediment settled to the bottom and water was taken only from the top. Such provisions contributed to the health of monastery residents and were rare outside of monastic complexes. Latrines were often constructed so that running water washed away the excrement immediately, the closest thing to a flush toilet until the modern era. This access to water made it easier for monks to take baths, although the Benedictine Rule limited full-immersion bathing to four times a year. Baths were considered a worldly luxury, and the rule tried to redirect the monks from worldly to spiritual concerns. For this reason, medieval monks enjoyed the benefits of running water less than aristocrats, who by the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had apparently incorporated some of this technology into their structures and were enjoying the sanitary benefits.

Decorating Monasteries: Tiles. Monastic structures were decorated by many of the same techniques used in noble castles and cathedrals, but monastery builders were also innovators. It appears that monasteries were among the first medieval buildings to employ tiles extensively as roofing and flooring materials. The manufacture of tiles demanded a supply of the appropriate clay, a large area in which a kiln could be built without endangering other structures, and a group of skilled craftsmen. By the twelfth century glazed, monochrome, and patterned tiles were being used as flooring over wooden supports. Tiles were, of course, custom-made and highly decorative, often covered with floral, animal, and heraldic motifs. Tiles of various colors could be interlaid to form beautiful mosaics, as at Byland Abbey in England. Tiles could also be used on walls almost like paintings and, in the same way, could be used to illustrate stories. Tile decorations brightened medieval monasteries and churches, making them more colorful and vibrant than the sparse structures that modern people frequently imagine.