It is not easy for us to understand the veneration paid to relics; yet from that veneration sprang all the glories of the Cathedral. And when we read in these old chronicles, translated from Latin in Willis' _Architectural History_, of the desperate, almost agonized labours of the monks to save from fire, weather, or dishonour the remains of their buried saints, we shall withhold our scorn for their superstition, and find less surprising the immense sums paid in the Middle Age for the arm or skull of a dead man. The earlier Saxon archbishops were laid in the ground of St. Augustine's Abbey, which thus accumulated a store of sanctity which roused the sore jealousy of their Christ Church brethren. Accordingly in the eighth century Cuthbert obtained a secret permission from the Pope to be buried in the Cathedral. His death was not divulged until he was safely interred, and when the monks of St. Augustine's came to demand as usual the body of the dead archbishop, they were met with derisive shouts, and the brandishing of the Papal decree. Thus Gervase records that Cuthbert, "being endowed with great wisdom, procured for Christ Church the right of free sepulture". [Illustration: THE GATEWAY, ST. AUGUSTINE'S ABBEY (_Page 51_)] There is at least one "secret chamber" in the Cathedral for the hiding away of relics or of treasures. This is the Chapel of St. Gabriel in the crypt. The entrance was through a hole which was entirely concealed by an outside altar. This chapel was so successfully hidden that the monk Gervase was evidently ignorant of its existence in the twelfth century; and its roof is covered with very curious painting of that date, which the darkness (for there is no window) has kept in remarkable preservation. There is also a room, over the Treasury, accessible only by a door opening 6 feet above the floor of St. Andrew's Chapel, requiring therefore a ladder as means of approach. But it was never a really secret chamber, and was probably at one time entered by an ordinary stone stairway. THE MONASTIC BUILDINGS It must be remembered that Canterbury Cathedral was originally the church or chapel of the monastery. The people were admitted to the nave, but only monks and clergy took any official part in the services, or entered the choir, which was the sanctuary of the Brotherhood. Indeed the entire Precincts belonged to them; and though they allowed the ground near the Christ Church Gate to be used as a general churchyard, or "exterior cemetery", entrance to the inner Precincts was only by permission or invitation. The present boundary of this monkish domain on the south and east is the old fortified wall of the city, but formerly the monastery had an interior wall of its own, running parallel to it, and leaving a space or lane about 14 feet wide, for the carrying of munitions and provisions to the defenders of the outer wall, and of materials for its repair.