[Illustration: Fig. 244.--Priory of the Benedictines at Canterbury (Twelfth Century), plan in relief drawn by Edwin, a monk, about the year 1530.--A, belfry; B, fountain; C, cemetery; D, reservoir, with conduit pipes; E, Canterbury Cathedral; F, vestry; G, crypt; H, chapter-house; I, prior’s house; J, infirmary and annexes; K, kitchen-garden, with well, pumps, and water-pipes; L, cloister; M, cellar; N, dormitory; O, refectory; P, kitchens; Q, parlour; R, house for the guests and the poor; S, water-closets; T, baths; U, granary; V, bakehouse and brewery; X, the chief entrance; Y, Z, fortified wall of the abbey and the city.--From an Engraving in vol. i. of the “Architecture Monastique,” by M. Albert Lenoir.] The endowment of each monastery was generally made up of the property belonging to the monks who had fixed their abode there. If the novice was an adult, he was obliged to distribute all his goods to the poor, or to make a solemn grant of them to the abbey, before he could be admitted to the minor orders. If he was a child whose parents devoted him to the service of God (Fig. 243), the parents either made no gift to the community which received the young novice, or they ceded the income of the lands and the property by deed of transfer to the monastery. Enriched by these successive donations, the monasteries, especially those which had acquired a wide renown for learning or piety, acquired still more wealth through the largesses of princes, great nobles, and bishops, through the economical management of the abbots, and the annual produce of the agricultural and commercial labour of the monks. To the various arts and trades which were at first carried on by the monks with a view to do honour to the cause of religion, those of the West afterwards added others of a more lucrative and worldly character. In the sixth century we find that they spun and wove their own silk; that they possessed numerous receipts for preparing liqueurs and drugs; that they practised medicine, surgery, and the veterinary art. Pepin the Short, suffering from incurable dropsy, went first to the monastery of St. Martin at Tours, and afterwards to the abbey of St. Denis, that “the servants of God” might give him relief by means of their skill as well as by their prayers. The Church was very sorely tried during the reign of Charles Martel, and monastic institutions were also exposed to many difficulties. In order to win back the secular clergy to the habits of communal life, the wisest of the bishops grouped around them the clergy who had remained faithful to their cause, and laid down a code of regulations for their guidance.