Yet it would be a profound mistake to infer--as one easily might, particularly if one were guided by popular pictorial representations of it--that the life of the fourteenth century monk was one of ease and enjoyment. In reality it was one of severe discipline and self-repression. The eight daily services of the hours beginning at midnight with nocturnes, and ending at evening with compline, with the enforced vigils and broken periods of sleep they entailed, were but a part of the regular daily obligation. In addition there were masses to be said, study and reading in the cloister, the labours of teaching and of the scriptorium. It is a somewhat cheap sneer to set down the monk as merely indolent or self-indulgent, but his life certainly tended as a rule more to deaden than to exalt, and the monk entered the cloister only too often to discover nothing but a limited outlook and a dreary round of humdrum trivialities, instead of the religious peace and the beatific vision he had expected. The brethren who controlled the various departments of monastic economy were termed _Obedientiarii_, or brethren yielding obedience to the Prior, and responsible to him for performance of their respective duties. The Prior was over all, and next to him was the Sub-prior. The church was looked after by the Sacrist and the Precentor. These regulated the services, while the latter in addition was responsible for the discipline. He was the general policeman, a kind of peripatetic conscience, imposing silence in the cloister, and checking illicit conversation, and particularly on the alert during nocturnal service, lest the burden of drowsiness should prove too heavy for any of the worshippers. Armed with a lantern he stole from brother to brother, and if any was found nodding he placed the lantern at the offender’s feet, who, thus detected and openly shamed, was required to take up, as it were, the ‘fiery cross,’ and bear it on until he should find another guilty like himself, in which case he might pass the unwelcome task on to his companion in disgrace--a kind of monastic game of touch, not without its humorous side. The manager of the estates was the Receiver or Treasurer, the chief domestic official the Hordarian or Steward, others were the _Custos operum_ or Keeper of the Fabric, the Cellarer, the Almoner, the Master of the Novices, or _Magister ordinis_, the Gardener, and so on.