THE CONVENT.

Having thus given a sketch of the history of the various monastic orders in England, we proceed to give some account of the constitution of a convent, taking that of a Benedictine monastery as a type, from which the other orders departed only in minor particulars.

The convent is the name especially appropriate to the body of individuals who composed a religious community. These were the body of cloister monks, lay and clerical; the professed brethren, who were also lay and clerical; the clerks; the novices; and the servants and artificers. The servants and artificers were of course taken from the lower ranks of society; all the rest were originally of the most various degrees of rank and social position. We constantly meet with instances of noble men and women, knights and ladies, minstrels and merchants, quitting their secular occupations at various periods of their life, and taking the religious habit; some of them continuing simply professed brethren, others rising to high offices in their order. Scions of noble houses were not infrequently entered at an early age as novices, either devoted to the religious life by the piety of their parents, or, with more worldly motives, thus provided with a calling and a maintenance; and sometimes considerable interest was used to procure the admittance of novices into the great monasteries. Again, the children of the poor were received into the monastic schools, and such as showed peculiar aptitude were sometimes at length admitted as monks,[55] and were eligible, and were often chosen, to the highest ecclesiastical dignities.The whole convent was under the government of the abbot, who, however, was bound to govern according to the rule of the order. Sometimes he was elected by the convent; sometimes the king or some patron had a share in the election. Frequently there were estates attached to the office, distinct from those of the convent; sometimes the abbot had only an allowance out of the convent estates; but always he had great power over the property of the convent, and bad abbots are frequently accused of wasting the property of the house, and enriching their relatives and friends out of it. The abbots of some of the more important houses were mitred abbots, and were summoned to Parliament. In the time of Henry VIII. twenty-four abbots and the prior of Coventry had seats in the House of Peers.[56]

The abbot did not live in common with his monks; he had a separate establishment of his own within the precincts of the house, sometimes over the entrance gate, called the Abbot’s Lodgings.[57] He ate in his own hall, slept in his own chamber, had a chapel, or oratory, for his private devotions, and accommodation for a retinue of chaplains and servants. His duty was to set to his monks an example of observance of the rule, to keep them to its observance, to punish breaches of it, to attend the services in church when not hindered by his other duties, to preach on holy days to the people, to attend chapter and preach on the rule, to act as confessor to the monks. But an abbot was also involved in many secular duties; there were manors of his own, and of the convent’s, far and near, which required visiting; and these manors involved the abbot in all the numerous duties which the feudal system devolved upon a lord towards his tenants, and towards his feudal superior. The greater abbots were barons, and sometimes were thus involved in such duties as those of justices in eyre, military leaders of their vassals, peers of Parliament. Hospitality was one of the great monastic virtues. The usual regulation in convents was that the abbot should entertain all guests of gentle degree, while the convent entertained all others. This again found abundance of occupation for my lord abbot in performing all the offices of a courteous host, which seems to have been done in a way becoming his character as a lord of wealth and dignity; his table was bountifully spread, even if he chose to confine himself to pulse and water; a band of wandering minstrels was always welcome to the abbot’s hall to entertain his gentle and fair guests; and his falconer could furnish a cast of hawks, and his forester a leash of hounds, and the lord abbot would not decline to ride by the river or into his manor parks to witness and to share in the sport. In the Harl. MS. 1,527, at fol. 108 (?), is a picture of an abbot on horseback casting off a hawk from his fist. A pretty little illustration of this abbatial hospitality occurs in Marie’s “Lay of Ywonec.”[58] A baron and his family are travelling in obedience to the royal summons, to keep one of the high festivals at Caerleon. In the course of their journey they stop for a night at a spacious abbey, where they are received with the greatest hospitality. “The good abbot, for the sake of detaining his guests during another day, exhibited to them the whole of the apartments, the dormitory, the refectory, and the chapter-house, in which last they beheld a splendid tomb covered with a superb pall fringed with gold, surrounded by twenty waxen tapers in golden candlesticks, while a vast silver censer, constantly burning, filled the air with fumes of incense.”

A Benedictine Abbot.

An abbot’s ordinary habit was the same as that of his monks. In the processions which were made on certain great feasts he held his crosier, and, if he were a mitred abbot, he wore his mitre: this was also his parliamentary costume. We give on the opposite page a beautiful drawing of a Benedictine abbot of St. Alban’s, thus habited, from the Catalogus Benefactorum of that abbey. When the abbot celebrated high mass on certain great festivals he wore the full episcopal costume. Thomas Delamere, abbot of St. Alban’s, is so represented in his magnificent sepulchral brass in that abbey, executed in his lifetime, circa 1375 A.D. Richard Bewferest, abbot of the Augustine canons of Dorchester, Oxfordshire, has a brass in that church, date circa 1520 A.D., representing him in episcopal costume, bareheaded, with his staff; and in the same church is an incised gravestone, representing Abbot Roger, circa 1510 A.D., in full episcopal vestments. Abbesses bore the crosier in addition to the ordinal costume of their order; the sepulchral brass of Elizabeth Harvey, abbess of the Benedictine Abbey of Elstow, Bedfordshire, circa 1530 A.D., thus represents her, in the church of that place. Our representation of a Benedictine abbess on the previous page is from the fourteenth century MS. Royal, 2 B. vii.

Benedictine Abbess and Nun.

Under the abbot were a number of officials (obedientiarii), the chief of whom were the Prior, Precentor, Cellarer, Sacrist, Hospitaller, Infirmarer, Almoner, Master of the Novices, Porter, Kitchener, Seneschal, &c. It was only in large monasteries that all these officers were to be found; in the smaller houses one monk would perform the duties of several offices. The officers seem to have been elected by the convent, subject to the approval of the abbot, by whom they might be deposed. Some brief notes of the duties of these obedientiaries will serve to give a considerable insight into the economy of a convent. And first for the Prior:—

In some orders there was only one abbey, and all the other houses were priories, as in the Clugniac, the Gilbertine, and in the Military and the Mendicant orders. In all the orders there were abbeys, which had had distant estates granted to them, on which either the donor had built a house, and made it subject to the abbey; or the abbey had built a house for the management of the estates, and the celebration of divine and charitable offices upon them. These priories varied in size, from a mere cell containing a prior and two monks, to an establishment as large as an abbey; and the dignity and power of the prior varied from that of a mere steward of the distant estate of the parent house, to that of an autocratic head, only nominally dependent on the parent house, and himself in everything but name an abbot.

The majority of the female houses of the various orders (except those which were especially female orders, like the Brigittines, &c.) were kept subject to some monastery, so that the superiors of these houses usually bore only the title of prioress, though they had the power of an abbess in the internal discipline of the house. One cannot forbear to quote at least a portion of Chaucer’s very beautiful description of his prioress, among the Canterbury pilgrims:—

“That of her smiling ful simple was and coy.”

She sang the divine service sweetly; she spoke French correctly, though with an accent which savoured of the Benedictine convent at Stratford-le-Bow, where she had been educated, rather than of Paris; she behaved with lady-like delicacy at table; she was cheerful of mood, and amiable; with a pretty affectation of courtly breeding, and a care to exhibit a reverend stateliness becoming her office:—

“But for to speken of her conscience,
She was so charitable and so piteous,
She would wepe if that she saw a mouse
Caught in a trappe, if it were dead or bled;
Of smalÉ houndÉs had she that she fed
With rosted flesh, and milk, and wastel bread;
But sore wept she if one of them were dead,
Or if men smote it with a yerdÉ smerte;
And all was conscience and tendre herte.
Ful semÉly her wimple y-pinched was;
Her nose tretis,[59] her eyen grey as glass,
Her mouth full small, and thereto soft and red,
And sickerly she had a fayre forehed—
It was almost a spannÉ broad I trow,
And hardily she was not undergrow.”[60]

Her habit was becoming; her beads were of red coral gauded with green, to which was hung a jewel of gold, on which was—

“Written a crowned A,
And after, Amor vincit omnia.
Another nun also with her had she,
That was her chapelleine, and priestÉs three.”

But in abbeys the chief of the obedientiaries was styled prior; and we cannot, perhaps, give a better idea of his functions than by borrowing a naval analogy, and calling him the abbot’s first lieutenant; for, like that officer in a ship, the prior at all times carried on the internal discipline of the convent, and in the abbot’s absence he was his vicegerent; wielding all the abbot’s powers, except those of making or deposing obedientiaries and consecrating novices. He had a suite of apartments of his own, called the prior’s chamber, or the prior’s lodging; he could leave the house for a day or two on the business of the house, and had horses and servants appropriated to his use; whenever he entered the monks present rose out of respect; some little license in diet was allowed him in refectory, and he might also have refreshment in his own apartments; sometimes he entertained guests of a certain condition in his prior’s chamber. Neither the prior, nor any of the obedientiaries, wore any distinctive dress or badge of office. In large convents he was assisted by a sub-prior.

The Sub-prior was the prior’s deputy, sharing his duties in his residence, and fulfilling them in his absences. The especial functions appropriated to him seem to have been to say grace at dinner and supper, to see that all the doors were locked at five in the evening, and keep the keys until five next morning; and, by sleeping near the dormitory door, and by making private search, to prevent wandering about at night. In large monasteries there were additional sub-priors.

The Chantor, or Precentor, appears to come next in order and dignity, since we are told that he was censed after the abbot and prior. He was choir-master; taught music to the monks and novices; and arranged and ruled everything which related to the conduct of divine service. His place in church was in the middle of the choir on the right side; he held an instrument in his hand, as modern leaders use a bÂton; and his side of the choir commenced the chant. He was besides librarian, and keeper of the archives, and keeper of the abbey seal.

He was assisted by a Succentor, who sat on the left side of the choir, and led that half of the choir in service. He assisted the chantor, and in his absence undertook his duties.

The Cellarer was in fact the steward of the house; his modern representative is the bursar of a college. He had the care of everything relating to the provision of the food and vessels of the convent. He was exempt from the observance of some of the services in church; he had the use of horses and servants for the fulfilment of his duties, and sometimes he appears to have had separate apartments. The cellarer, as we have said, wore no distinctive dress or badge; but in the Catalogus Benefactorum of St. Alban’s there occurs a portrait of one “Adam Cellarius,” who for his distinguished merit had been buried among the abbots in the chapter-house, and had his name and effigy recorded in the Catalogus; he is holding two keys in one hand and a purse in the other, the symbols of his office; and in his quaint features—so different from those of the dignified abbot whom we have given from the same book—the limner seems to have given us the type of a business-like and not ungenial cellarer.

Adam the Cellarer.

The Sacrist, or Sacristan (whence our word sexton), had the care and charge of the fabric, and furniture, and ornaments of the church, and generally of all the material appliances of divine service. He, or some one in his stead, slept in a chamber built for him in the church, in order to protect it during the night. There is such a chamber in St. Alban’s Abbey Church, engraved in the Builder for August, 1856. There was often a sub-sacrist to assist the sacrist in his duties.

The duty of the Hospitaller was, as his name implies, to perform the duties of hospitality on behalf of the convent. The monasteries received all travellers to food and lodging for a day and a night as of right, and for a longer period if the prior saw reason to grant it.[61] A special hall was provided for the entertainment of these guests, and chambers for their accommodation. The hospitaller performed the part of host on behalf of the convent, saw to the accommodation of the guests who belonged to the convent, introduced into the refectory strange priests or others who desired and had leave to dine there, and ushered guests of degree to the abbot to be entertained by him. He showed the church and house at suitable times to guests whose curiosity prompted the desire.

Every abbey had an infirmary, which was usually a detached building with its own kitchen and chapel, besides suitable apartments for the sick, and for aged monks, who sometimes took up their permanent residence in the infirmary, and were excused irksome duties, and allowed indulgences in food and social intercourse. Not only the sick monks, but other sick folk were received into the infirmary; it is a very common incident in mediÆval romances to find a wounded knight carried to a neighbouring monastery to be healed. The officer who had charge of everything relating to this department was styled the Infirmarer. He slept in the infirmary, was excused from some of the “hours;” in the great houses had two brethren to assist him besides the necessary servants, and often a clerk learned in pharmacy as physician.

The Almoner had charge of the distribution of the alms of the house. Sometimes money was left by benefactors to be distributed to the poor annually at their obits; the distribution of this was confided to the almoner. One of his men attended in the abbot’s chamber when he had guests, to receive what alms they chose to give to the poor. Moneys belonging to the convent were also devoted to this purpose; besides food and drink, the surplus of the convent meals. He had assistants allowed him to go and visit the sick and infirm folk of the neighbourhood. And at Christmas he provided cloth and shoes for widows, orphans, poor clerks, and others whom he thought to need it most.

The Master of the Novices was a grave and learned monk, who superintended the education of the youths in the schools of the abbey, and taught the rule to those who were candidates for the monastic profession.

The Porter was an officer of some importance; he was chosen for his age and gravity; he had an apartment in the gate lodge, an assistant, and a lad to run on his messages. But sometimes the porter seems to have been a layman. And, in small houses and in nunneries, his office involved other duties, which we have seen in great abbeys distributed among a number of officials. Thus, in Marie’s “Lay le Fraine,” we read of the porter of an abbey of nuns:—

“The porter of the abbey arose,
And did his office in the close;
Rung the bells, and tapers light,
Laid forth books and all ready dight.
The church door he undid,” &c.;and in the sequel it appears that he had a daughter, and therefore in all probability was a layman.

The Kitchener, or Cook, was usually a monk, and, as his name implies, he ruled in the kitchen, went to market, provided the meals of the house, &c.

Alan Middleton.

The Seneschal in great abbeys was often a layman of rank, who did the secular business which the tenure of large estates, and consequently of secular offices, devolved upon abbots and convents; such as holding manorial courts, and the like. But there was, Fosbroke tells us, another officer with the same name, but of inferior dignity, who did the convent business of the prior and cellarer which was to be done out of the house; and, when at home, carried a rod and acted as marshal of the guest-hall. He had horses and servants allowed for the duties of his office; and at the Benedictine Abbey of Winchcombe he had a robe of clerk’s cloth once a year, with lamb’s fur for a supertunic, and for a hood of budge fur; he had the same commons in hall as the cellarer, and £2 every year at Michaelmas. Probably an officer of this kind was Alan Middleton, who is recorded in the Catalogus of St. Alban’s as “collector of rents of the obedientiaries of that monastery, and especially of those of the bursar.” Prudenter in omnibus se agebat, and so, deserving well of the house, they put a portrait of him among their benefactors, clothed in a blue robe, of “clerk’s cloth” perhaps, furred at the wrists and throat with “lamb’s fur” or “budge fur;” a small tonsure shows that he had taken some minor order, the penner and inkhorn at his girdle denote the nature of his office; and he is just opening the door of one of the abbey tenants to perform his unwelcome function. They were grateful men, these Benedictines of St. Alban’s; they have immortalised another of their inferior officers, Walterus de Hamuntesham, fidelis minister hujus ecclesiÆ, because on one occasion he received a beating at the hands of the rabble of St. Alban’s—inter villanos Sci Albani—while standing up for the rights and liberties of the church.

Walter of Hamuntesham attacked by a Mob.

Next in dignity after the obedientiaries come the Cloister Monks; of these some had received holy orders at the hands of the bishop, some not. Their number was limited. A cloister monk in a rich abbey seems to have been something like in dignity to the fellow of a modern college, and a good deal of interest was sometimes employed to obtain the admission of a youth as a novice, with a view to his ultimately arriving at this dignified degree. Next in order come the Professed Brethren. These seem to be monks who had not been elected to the dignity of cloister monks; some of them were admitted late in life. Those monks who had been brought up in the house were called nutriti, those who came later in life conversi; the lay brothers were also sometimes called conversi. There were again the Novices, who were not all necessarily young, for a conversus passed through a noviciate; and even a monk of another order, or of another house of their own order, and even a monk from a cell of their own house, was reckoned among the novices. There were also the Chaplains of the abbot and other high officials; and frequently there were other clerics living in the monastery, who served the chantries in the abbey church, and the churches and chapels which belonged to the monastery and were in its neighbourhood. Again, there were the Artificers and Servants of the monastery: millers, bakers, tailors, shoemakers, smiths, and similar artificers, were often a part of a monastic establishment. And there were numerous men-servants, grooms, and the like: these were all under certain vows, and were kept under discipline. In the Cistercian abbey of Waverley there were in 1187 A.D. seventy monks and one hundred and twenty conversi, besides priests, clerks, servants, &c. In the great Benedictine abbey of St. Edmund’s Bury, in the time of Edward I., there were eighty monks; fifteen chaplains attendant on the abbot and chief officers; about one hundred and eleven servants in the various offices, chiefly residing within the walls of the monastery; forty priests, officiating in the several chapels, chantries, and monastic appendages in the town; and an indefinite number of professed brethren. The following notes will give an idea of the occupations of the servants. In the time of William Rufus the servants at Evesham numbered—five in the church, two in the infirmary, two in the cellar, five in the kitchen, seven in the bakehouse, four brewers, four menders, two in the bath, two shoemakers, two in the orchard, three gardeners, one at the cloister gate, two at the great gate, five at the vineyard, four who served the monks when they went out, four fishermen, four in the abbot’s chamber, three in the hall. At Salley Abbey, at the end of the fourteenth century, there were about thirty-five servants, among whom are mentioned the shoemaker and barber, the prior’s chamberlain, the abbot’s cook, the convent cook and baker’s mate, the baker, brewers, tailor, cowherd, waggoners, pages of the kitchen, poultry-keeper, labourers, a keeper of animals and birds, bailiffs, foresters, shepherds, smiths: there are others mentioned by name, without a note of their office. But it was only a few of the larger houses which had such numerous establishments as these; the majority of the monasteries contained from five to twenty cloister monks. Some of the monasteries were famous as places of education, and we must add to their establishment a number of children of good family, and the learned clerks or ladies who acted as tutors; thus the abbey of St. Mary, Winchester, in 1536, contained twenty-six nuns, five priests, thirteen lay sisters, thirty-two officers and servants, and twenty-six children, daughters of lords and knights, who were brought up in the house.

Lastly, there were a number of persons of all ranks and conditions who were admitted to “fraternity.” Among the Hospitallers (and probably it was the same with the other orders) they took oath to love the house and brethren, to defend the house from ill-doers, to enter that house if they did enter any, and to make an annual present to the house. In return, they were enrolled in the register of the house, they received the prayers of the brethren, and at death were buried in the cemetery. Chaucer’s Dominican friar (p. 48), writes the names of those who gave him donations in his “tables.” In the following extract from Piers Ploughman’s Creed, an Austin friar promises more definitely to have his donors enrolled in the fraternity of his house:—

“And gyf thou hast any good,
And will thyself helpen,
Help us herblich therewith.
And here I undertake,
Thou shalt ben brother of oure hous,
And a book habben,
At the next chapetre,
Clerliche enseled.
And then our provincial
Hath power to assoylen
Alle sustren and brethren
That beth of our ordre.”
Piers Ploughman’s Creed, p. 645.

In the book of St. Alban’s, which we have before quoted, there is a list of many persons, knights and merchants, ladies and children, vicars and rectors, received ad fraternitatem hujus monasterii. In many cases portraits of them are given: they are in the ordinary costume of their time and class, without any badge of their monastic fraternisation.

Chaucer gives several sketches which enable us to fill out our realisation of the monks, as they appeared outside the cloister associating with their fellow-men. He includes one among the merry company of his Canterbury pilgrims; and first in the Monk’s Prologue, makes the Host address the monk thus:—

“‘My lord, the monk,’ quod he ...
‘By my trothe I can not tell youre name.
Whether shall I call you my Lord Dan John,
Or Dan Thomas, or elles Dan Albon?
Of what house be ye by your father kin?
I vow to God thou hast a full fair skin;
It is a gentle pasture ther thou goest,
Thou art not like a penaunt[62] or a ghost.
Upon my faith thou art some officer,
Some worthy sextern or some celerer.
For by my father’s soul, as to my dome,
Thou art a maister when thou art at home;
No poure cloisterer, ne non novice,
But a governor both ware and wise.’”

Chaucer himself describes the same monk in his Prologue thus:—

“A monk there was, a fayre for the maisterie,
An out-rider that lovered venerie,[63]
A manly man to be an abbot able.
Ful many a dainty horse had he in stable;
And when he rode men might his bridle hear
Gingling in a whistling wind as clear,
And eke as loud as doth the chapel bell,
Whereas this lord was keeper of the cell.
The rule of Saint Maur and of Saint Benet,
Because that it was old and somedeal strait,
This ilke monk let olde thinges pace,
And held after the newe world the trace.
He gave not of the text a pulled hen,
That saith, that hunters been not holy men;
Ne that a monk, when he is regneless,[64]
Is like a fish that is waterless;
That is to say, a monk out of his cloister:
This ilke text he held not worth an oyster.
And I say his pinion was good.
Why should he study, and make himselven wood,
Upon a book in cloister alway to pore,
Or swinkin with his handis, and labour,
As Austin bid? How shall the world be served?
Therefore he was a prickasoure aright:
Greyhounds he had as swift as fowls of flight;
Of pricking and of hunting for the hare
Was all his lust, for no cost would he spare.
I saw his sleeves purfled at the hand
With gris, and that the finest of the land.
And for to fasten his hood under his chin
He had of gold y-wrought a curious pin:
A love-knot in the greater end there was.
******
His bootis supple, his horse in great estate;
Now certainly he was a fair prelate.”

Again, in the “Shipman’s Tale” we learn that such an officer had considerable freedom, so that he was able to pay very frequent visits to his friends. The whole passage is worth giving:—

“A marchant whilom dwelled at St. Denise,
That riche was, for which men held him wise.
******
This noble marchant held a worthy house,
For which he had all day so great repair
For his largesse, and for his wife was fair.
What wonder is? but hearken to my tale.
Amonges all these guestes great and small
There was a monk, a fair man and a bold,
I trow a thirty winters he was old,
That ever anon was drawing to that place.
This youngÉ monk that was so fair of face,
Acquainted was so with this goodÉ man,
Sithen that their firste knowledge began,
That in his house as familiar was he
As it possible is any friend to be.
And for as mochel as this goodÉ man,
And eke this monk, of which that I began,
Were bothÉ two y-born in one village,
The monk him claimeth as for cosinage;
And he again him said not onÉs nay,
But was as glad thereof, as fowl of day;
For to his heart it was a great plesaunce;
Thus ben they knit with eterne alliance,
And eche of them gan other for to ensure
Of brotherhood, while that life may endure.”

Notwithstanding his vow of poverty, he was also able to make presents to his friends, for the tale continues:—

“Free was Dan John, and namely of despence
As in that house, and full of diligence
To don plesaunce, and also great costage;
He not forgat to give the leaste page
In all that house, but, after their degree,
He gave the lord, and sithen his mennie,
When that he came, some manner honest thing;
For which they were as glad of his coming
As fowl is fain when that the sun upriseth.”

Chaucer does not forget to let us know how it was that this monk came to have such liberty and such command of means:—

“This noble monk, of which I you devise,
Hath of his abbot, as him list, licence
(Because he was a man of high prudence,
And eke an officer), out for to ride
To see their granges and their barnÉs wide.”