We are accustomed to acknowledge that literature was sustained in the cloister, and to recognise the beauty of the illuminated missals therein written and painted with such consummate skill; but that the monastery, particularly the Cistercian House, was the centre of so many crafts is often unknown or forgotten. Within the large precincts of such a house would be not only the various storehouses, but the workshops of the smith, the carpenter, the mason, the shoemaker, the weaver, the candlemaker, and the winepress. Everything that could be required for the church and house and its inmates was, if possible, made on the premises. If anyone is desirous of understanding, by ocular proof, to what use many of the outbuildings still standing around the grand ruins of Fountains, Kirkstall, or Furness were put, he cannot do better than visit the old Cistercian abbey of Maulbraun, in Würtemberg, within easy reach by train of Heidelberg; for he will there find nearly the whole of the necessary mediæval buildings of the community still standing, and in fairly good condition. It was, doubtless, the frequent communication of the English Cistercian monks with their fellows on the Continent that moved them successfully to attempt and carry on such forms of culture as vine-growing, that seem ill-adapted to our climate and have long since been abandoned. But that vines were grown and wine made at Beaulieu, and various other monastic centres in England is beyond a doubt. [Illustration: THE CHOIR OF RIEVAULX ABBEY (Cistercian)] It was this very desire after agricultural completeness, and the thorough farming of all entrusted to their care, that brought about in England that curious admixture of the two sexes that prevailed in most of the houses of the Gilbertine order. Houses for Sisters was the first idea of St. Gilbert, and always remained paramount in his mind; but in order to secure effective administration of their lands, certain religious Canons were attached to them, in absolutely separate buildings, to serve as chaplains, and to superintend or personally carry out all the agricultural details, on the due sustaining of which the whole convent depended. This, too, was doubtless the main reason why we also find two or three canons attached to those great houses of Hampshire Benedictine nuns of pre-Norman foundation, Nunnaminster, Wherwell, and Romsey. A like cause was probably the reason why priors, masters, or wardens, were in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries associated to some extent with the prioresses of such nunneries as Nuneaton, Warwickshire; Kingsmead, Derbyshire; or Catesby, Wyrthorp, and Stamford, Northamptonshire--a fact not hitherto, so far as we are aware, noted or commented upon by any writers on English monasticism. CHAPTER II THE MONASTIC TENANTS