English MonasteriesThompson, A. Hamilton (Alexander Hamilton)
History
English Monasteries
Thompson, A. Hamilton (Alexander Hamilton)
Monasteries -- England
churches, where large congregations attended the preaching of the
Dominican order, were built, as in the splendid example at Norwich,
with north and south aisles. (4) It is evident that churches of
Gilbertine canons, as at Malton, sometimes followed an ordinary aisled
plan. But in the double houses of the order, if Watton is typical of
the rest, the church was a long aisleless building on one side of the
nuns' cloister, and was divided lengthways by a wall, the division next
the cloister being appropriated to the nuns, and the outer division,
which had its own doorway, to the canons. There was a doorway in the
wall between the two altars, which could be used for processions and by
the celebrant at the nuns' altar; but the seclusion of the two portions
of the convent was carefully maintained, and the holy-water and pax
were passed from the nuns' to the canons' quire through a turn-table in
the wall. The canons also had a chapel on the south side of their own
cloister, which was a simple aisleless rectangle.
CHAPTER III
THE CLOISTER AND ITS BUILDINGS
§ 46. The cloister (_claustrum_) was, as its name implies, an
enclosed space, surrounding all four sides of a rectangular court.
The four walks of the cloister were roofed in: the walls next the
court were pierced at first with open arcades, and later with large
window-openings. One walk adjoined the nave of the church, and part of
the east walk was overlapped by the adjacent transept. On the east and
the two remaining sides of the cloister were the buildings necessary to
the daily life of the convent, the chapter-house being invariably at
the back of the east walk and the refectory or frater at the back of
the walk opposite the church. The entrance from the outer court varied
in position according to the site of the monastery: in many houses, as
at Torre, it was a passage through or at one end of the western range,
but at Durham, Worcester and some of the larger Benedictine houses
it was a vaulted entry at the end of the east walk furthest from the
church. There were, as we have seen, two doorways from the church, of
which the eastern was the ordinary entrance used by the convent in the
daytime. The Sunday procession left the church by this doorway, and
passed along the east walk; and, after visiting the chief buildings on
three sides of the cloister, returned into church by the doorway at the
end of the west walk.
[Illustration: Fig. 6. Gloucester: south walk of cloister with monks'
carrels.]
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