On the plan commonly adopted, the cloister, a spreading lawn adorned with plants, adjoined the church on the north, and sometimes on the south. An open arcade surrounded the cloister, by means of which communication with all the necessary domestic offices was provided. Of these the principal were: the refectory, generally a fine vaulted hall, close to the kitchens; the _chapter-house_, a building attached to the church, the upper story of which was the dormitory of the monks; the vaulted cellars and granaries, above which were the lodgings provided for strangers; the storerooms were connected with stables, cattle-stalls, and various outdoor offices, often of great extent. All these dependencies for the service of the community were kept strictly separate one from another, thus all necessary measures were taken to provide for the needs and duties of hospitality without any disturbance of the religious routine. The abbeys of the Romanesque period were largely used as models in their day. They were modified by lay architects or monkish builders who, however, were careful to abate nothing of their perfection; they partook of the developments which marked the middle of the thirteenth century, and were subjected to that progressive transformation, the great feature of which was the adoption of the Angevin intersecting arch, the distinguishing characteristic of Gothic architecture. CHAPTER II THE ABBEY OF CLUNY--CISTERCIAN ABBEYS The Benedictines, the Cistercians, the Augustinians, the Premonstrants, and notably the congregation of Cluny were all energetic builders, and the vast and magnificent structures of their creation were reckoned the most perfect achievements of their day. The study of their buildings--the church, the dwelling-places of abbot and monks, with all their dependencies--is most instructive. It fills us with admiration for the learning and judgment of the monkish builders who, accepting the limitations imposed by climate, locality, material, the numbers of their inmates, and the resources of their order, turned them all to account as elements of beauty and harmony. The architects of the first abbeys undoubtedly adopted the constructive methods of the period, and built in the Latin, Roman, or Gallo-Roman manner. The double gateway of the Abbey of Cluny, the architect of which was probably Gauzon, sometime Abbot of Beaune, who laid the foundations of the famous monastery, is an interesting proof of this assertion. But monastic architecture underwent the same modifications to which ecclesiastical architecture had been subjected under those various influences which manifested themselves in the glorious monuments built from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, when Gothic architecture reached its apogee.