This module concentrates on the monastery as a place--a collection of buildings strategically located on the medieval landscape. The planning and building of two monasteries are discussed in detail, one built in Switzerland in the early ninth century, another in England in the eighth century.
Contents: The Narrative discusses the following subjects:
Part 1: Medieval Monastic Architecture and Society
Part 2: Women and the Organization of Monastic Space
Part 3: Building Monasteries: Two Plans
Part 4: Monasteries in SEAFARER Text
You can skip to any one of these parts by clicking the appropriate hyperlink .
To learn about the LINKS and IMAGES that accompany this narrative, click on the appropriate hyperlink. We recommend that you consult So What? after you have read one or two parts of the narrative below. Note that the sources used in the narrative are listed in the Bibliography and are cited here only by author and page or by author, title, and page.
The monastery is not an easy subject to approach, and the simple definitions you will find in standard sources do not do justice to the complexity of the subject. A monastery is much more than a "dwelling of monks" (the New Catholic Encyclopedia's definition) or a "place of residence of a community of persons living secluded from the world under religious vows" (quoted from the Oxford English Dictionary). It is a physical reality, of course, a dwelling, a place of residence, but its structure is highly symbolic of the spiritual life that was to be lived in those precincts. The monastery has been likened to a document because it not only tells us about the age it comes from but also records information for the future (Dickinson 1). If we look at the medieval monastery as document, we can see a relationship between its architecture and the society that lived inside it, and also between that architecture and the world outside the structure. LINK 1 asks you to read about the site plans of monasteries and think about the correlation between the beliefs of the monastery and its physical design.
Monasteries today are often thought of as retreats from the "real world." They were retreats in earlier times, too, for adherents of many faiths, not just Christianity, who needed "a place where God could be worshipped with some degree of quietness and safety, a place of contemplation and serious work in a world of anarchy and selfishness." In some cases, such as those of the Desert Fathers in northern Africa (discussed in the Monastic Life module), monks often became hermits and lived "a solitary existence in a cave or tent" (Crossley 1). Eventually some of these people came together to form groups, thus requiring more complex living and working arrangements. It was from that need that the first monasteries, which were in Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, were formed. They were simple places consisting of monks' cells, along with work buildings, a place for prayer, an eating area, and a place for consultation and spiritual conferences. IMAGE01 (not yet available in the program) shows where early foundations were located; the centers on this map include the range from the earliest Egyptian settlements to the large monasteries of England and Ireland. Two of these locations will be discussed in detail: St. Gall (in Switzerland), and Monkwearmouth-Jarrow, in northeast England.
Our discussions of these monasteries will show the symbolic nature of the planning on which they were based. Behind the physical plan of the monastery there was an intellectual plan that expressed an ideal of Christian life and Christian communities. That ideal was set out in the text the Monastic Rule, a document that outlined every hour of the monk's life and explained the ideals of monastic living (there is a detailed discussion in the Monastic Life module). The physical layout of the monastery expressed that vision of communal life that was self-sufficient and removed from the world. According to Lowrie J. Daly, the monastery was intended "to furnish the ordinary things needed for the life of the times," which meant that it was a self-contained economic unit.
There was a difference between self-sufficient and self-supporting, however. The drive to self-sufficiency led monasteries to acquire property, vineyards, for example, as well as farmland for cultivation and grazing. These activities inevitably involved the monastery in commerce and trade, activity facilitated by the location of the institution near water sources. It should not be assumed that the monks performed even most of this physical labor themselves, although they did do manual labor. The main duties of the monk were prayer (liturgical worship) and meditation (reading); manual work was a distant third. Daly notes that the number of servants in monasteries was almost as high as of monks and nuns: at Corbie, some 150 servants were listed in 822; at St. Gall, 170 servants were listed in 795; in England, at Evesham in 1090, there were 55 monks and 65 servants (222). LINK 2 suggests that you examine the points of contact between monasteries and the outside world.
The relationship between monastic architecture and the society within the monastery was very close. In fact, "the monastery itself is one of the best examples of perfect harmony between architecture . . . and society." The medieval monastery was a structure of monastic community life in which "function took precedence in the evolving of a form that produced a rigorous formal discipline" (NCE 1023-4). It is appropriate that early monasteries seem to have been simple and austere. During the seventh and eighth centuries, according to Dickinson, "the living quarters were often of the humblest description, being mere wooden huts of no great size with thatched roofs arranged on no special plan, the most impressive building was the church, which was normally of stone, though generally small in size and rough in workmanship." These humble conditions (along with other circumstances, including Viking raids) seem to be the main reasons why these "early English monastic buildings have left only scanty and unimpressive remains" (Dickinson 2). But the size and splendor of English monasteries varied considerably, due mostly to variance in outside economic factors: "monastic churches varied in length from mere chapels a bare hundred feet long to gigantic edifices five times that size, like Winchester or St. Albans" (Dickinson 4). Old, poor structures were replaced as rebuilding became a common practice in medieval monasteries, but construction cost money. Those monasteries that "could afford it, or thought they would be able to do so in the end," rebuilt whenever possible. Unfortunately, "not a few from time to time involved themselves in serious debts through the lavish scale of their building campaigns" (Dickinson 2). The money for each of these new constructions came from the society around the monastery, that is, from the wealth of the area and the generosity of its benefactors.
Monasteries did not necessarily become bigger and more elaborate as they became older. Periodic reforms sought to return monasteries to the simplicity of the early ideal. The Cistercian Order furnishes a good example. At the end of the eleventh century, some monks "broke away from the abbey of Molesme in Burgundy to follow a stricter rule. They found a fitting place in a wild wood at Citeaux and there built themselves a wooden monastery where other monks like-minded joined them." These first buildings "were of the utmost simplicity, destitute of any adornment." Notice in this example the relationship between strict rule within the Order and the type of monastic architecture (wood). When Stephen Harding became abbot, this monastery was the poorest of all monastic orders; however, by the time of his death, "it had become the head of an organisation which in a few years spread beyond the confines of Christendom and became the most powerful of all monastic Orders." By 1152, the Order had 330 monasteries under its control, and, by 1200, it had over 600 (Crossley 3). Each of those monasteries drew money for the Order in from the outside society.
Likewise, even though the Cluniac Order of the eleventh and twelfth centuries "was itself a return to the earlier simplicity of the rule, it rapidly grew into a great political and territorial power, losing its religious fervour. The buildings of the Order were more ornate than those of the older Benedictines, and the cloisters were ornamented with rich and curious carvings" (Crossley 2-3). Again, the earlier simplicity of the Order was related to its simple architecture; however, with the decrease of emphasis on religion and the increase in power and in monetary gains from surrounding areas, the architecture became more ornate.
The structure of the monastery expressed ideas about the proper organization of life inside and outside the walls. Not all monastic orders the same system of government (regime) and, as a result, they also had different kinds of buildings. A twelfth-century monastery of priests said mass frequently, so a large number of side chapels were needed, while a monastery of nuns, who were not allowed to say mass, did not need these side chapels (Dickinson 3). Gender played a pivotal role in the construction of double monasteries, which were common in the Anglo-Saxon period, Regulations governing double monasteries are very important sources about the role of women in monasteries. According to the rule of the Gilbertine Order for double monasteries, in the middle of the twelfth century, a strict separation of gender was observed in the church architecture. In fact, "a partition wall divided the church throughout its entire length." This wall was high enough so that the nuns and monks could not see each other, but it was not so high that the nuns could not hear the mass, which was given on the monk's altar. Likewise, the windows on the separate buildings were constructed in such a way as to not allow the monks to see the nuns, or vice versa. The nuns were even shut in with a moat and wall, as "no expense was to be spared until the view and approach of all was shut out from them" (Crossley 7).
Much recent scholarship has investigated the status of women within monasteries in relation to the status of women in society at a whole. Roberta Gilchrist has analyzed the relationship between the design of women's quarters in monasteries and societal ideas about women's place. In monasteries, she has written, women's cloisters were more difficult to get access to, and their sleeping area was the most secluded space in the community. "Medieval nuns were constrained within a private domain, not dissimilar to that of their secular counterparts, which emphasized their chaste fidelity as Brides of Christ" (27). (In LINK 3 you can learn more about this idea of the nun as "the bride of Christ.")
Although conditions for women in monasteries were more restrictive than they were for men, many scholars agree that in the early medieval period in England and on the continent, religious women's position was strong. "Political and economic power was situated within royal and aristocratic households and easily accessible to women," Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg writes, it was a time of growth and expansion for Christianity, a milieu in which "women's practical assistance was especially valued. Female religious were accepted as partners, friends, sisters, and collaborators in the faith" (219-92). These conditions, which are evident in Bede's History and the Life of Leofgyth or Leoba, in SEAFARER, did not survive reform movements in the twelfth century. Eventually the value attached to women's participation in the Church was "replaced by an atmosphere of heightened fear and suspicion of female sexuality" (292).
Many scholars believe that women's position within monasteries changed in inverse relation to the establishment of a strong, centrally-administered government outside monastic life. Feminist historians argue that "the rise of the civil state leads historically to a substantial decrease in the power and visibility of women, whether they are placed in the monastic order or secular spheres, and to the devaluation and privatization of the domestic sphere" (Lees and Overing 52). LINK 4 gives you an opportunity to investigate this hypothesis and some others that are alternatives to it.
One of the most impressive demonstrations of this change is the increasingly sharp distinction between public and private space and the containment of women in the latter. Sacred space was declared public space in reform councils in the Carolingian period, and women were excluded from it--as we have seen in the Gilbertine regulations above, which kept women from seeing the celebration of masses they attended. Clare A. Lees and Gillian Overing have pointed out that women participated in their own exclusion and isolation. You will see in the life of Leofgyth below how important it was to an abbess to exclude even bishops from female monasteries. There is a certain irony in this emphasis on keeping men out, since ultimately it assisted men in containing women in private, domestic spheres of lesser importance.
Lees and Overing draw attention to female monasticism in their discussing of Caedmon. whose gift of poetry is described in Bede (Book 4, Ch. 24). News of Caedmon's feat is brought to the abbess Hild, who governs the monastery of Whitby, for which he works. Although it is clear that Hild was in charge, Lees and Overing do not find much evidence that explains what female governance actually means. The document known as the Regularis Concordia (the agreement concerning rules, the concord of regulations), which was promulgated in England in the 970's, probably reached at least three houses of nuns in the tenth century, pertains to both monks and nuns (Simons 40-41). You will find a number of regulations regarding the sexuality of nuns in the handbook of penance known as "Scriftboc" (a SEAFARER text: see TEXT menu and the Overing-Lees article on reserve.
St. Gall. The physical structures of monastic buildings, and their organization into communal structures, are complex topics that reveal how greatly monastic settlements varied from area to area. The arrangement of the buildings in these early monasteries was generally haphazard, especially in the East. In the early ninth century, however, an anonymous German cleric drew up a plan for the monastery of St. Gall in Switzerland that "may be regarded as the earliest document of Western urbanism." This plan contained everything that was required for a self-contained monastic community, including "an infirmary and guest house, as well as kitchens and a bake house, privies, workshops, and housing for lay workers, stables for a variety of livestock, and even a cemetery." This plan of St. Gall became a "standard in Western monastic architecture" (DMA 455), and it influenced the architecture of all future monasteries. IMAGE02 shows you where St. Gall is located (the map refers to St. Gall by its German name, St. Gallen; see bottom center). The plan of St. Gall has been elaborately reproduced and holds enough detail to form a module on monastic architecture in itself. See LINK 5.
This monastery was founded about 612 by an Irish monk known as Gallus, who lived at this location in retreat in his old age. A monastery was built there and was, in 747, brought under the Rule of St. Benedict (see Monastic Life for information about this text). The monastery was revitalized in the 830s by the abbot Gosbert, who requested a copy of the plan that had been drawn up as the model for all monasteries to follow. The plan was not created for St. Gall; it is called "The Plan of St. Gall" because the only copy to survive is located there. The plan (called in Latin "exemplata," or copy) was made at Reichenau (see IMAGE02 for location) and survived 1200 years at St. Gall in part because, in the 12th century, the document was folded and its reverse side used for the text of a saint's life.
The plan is large and extremely complex. It identifies 40 areas, including the Church (itself divided into 12 different areas), ranging from the scriptorium, where monks read and copied manuscripts, to a hen house, granary, mill, and house for cows and cowherds (Caedmon was a cowherd, and his vision came to him when he was attending the animals on monastic lands). The plan is important because it puts into effect, in spatial and architectural terms, the living pattern of the Rule of St. Benedict. The Rule identifies labor, charity, and prayer (to include study, meditation, and worship) as essential ingredients of the monks' existence. In the simplified plan reproduced in IMAGE03 gives an overview of the plan. IMAGE04 shows the point at which visitors entered and monastery and areas that were reserved for them, isolating them from the monks. Visitors were admitted to the church but not to cloistered areas.
IMAGE05 shows the central place of the church and the structures related to it (scriptorium, lodging for monks, and others). There were two schools, one for the public and one (probably a higher level) for novices and IMAGE06 shows the western end of the plan and the area reserved for health care. Novices were sequestered even from other monks in the sector reserved for the sick and dying. The plan separates the monks' world from that of visitors to the monastery, and organizes the monks into many distinct categories. The most important places in such highly organized spaces are those in which the two worlds that are kept apart actually come together--in this case, the church porch, where visitors were received, and the abbot's house, which was "the link between the inner and outer worlds of the monastery" (Price 19).
Monkwearmouth-Jarrow. Long before the Plan of St. Gall was devised (i.e., before the early ninth century), Bede's monastery at Monkwearmouth-Jarrow had been built. One important fact about the location of these two monasteries (and others) is that both were built near water. Monkwearmouth was founded in 674 by Benedict Biscop, a Northumbrian nobleman who sought inspiration for the monastic life by traveling to the continent, where he visited establishments near the Mediterranean, including Rome. He founded Jarrow in 681. Both monasteries were double monasteries; one is at the mouth of the Wear River, the other the River Tyne. IMAGE07 shows Monkwearmouth-Jarrow in the upper right-hand corner, on the eastern coast of the island, in the territory known as Bernicia. Many monasteries in England were built either near a river or along the seacoast; likewise Leofgyth's Life (section 2) tell us that this double monastery was located in Wimbourne, near the southern seacoast of England (IMAGE08). In addition, we learn that the "ancient name Wimborne" means "meadow stream," which "surpassed the other waters of that land," implying some form of a river was found in the vacinity. We see the same pattern on the Continent, where such famous centers as Trier, Mainz, and Tours are located on rivers (IMAGE09).
The location of the monastery near water reflects several needs. One is the need for power to drive water mills (we have a drawing of one in IMAGE10; LINK 6 gets you started learning about how water mills worked). Another is transportation of goods and people, since travel by ship was often easier than travel over land. Because monasteries were built near waterways, they became important centers of trade; but these locations also made them particularly vulnerable to hostile visitors. Many English monasteries were destroyed in the ninth century by Viking raiders, beginning with Lindisfarne, which is located on the sea. Lindisfarne is shown on the map in IMAGE07. Patterns of Viking incursions into England, Ireland, and the Continent changed between 789 and 850; Lindisfarne was sacked in 793 and Monkwearmouth in 794.
Before construction of Monkwearmouth could begin, Benedict Biscop had to procure both material resources and skilled labor. He obtained artisans from continental monasteries, just as he obtained books, sacred vessels, and documents describing how the monastic life should be conducted. Benedict went to Gaul to get "builders by whose superintendence and labour he might build a church of stone" (7). At this time, the only stone buildings in England were those built by the Romans, referred to in various Anglo-Saxon sources as "enta geweorc," the "work of giants," usually in a state of ruin. (LINK 7) The Anglo-Saxons, originally a nomadic culture, built in wood instead. We find in the letter of Gregory the Great to the Abbot Mellitus (written in 601), that the Christian missionaries should build wooden booths near former temples, indicating that Gregory supposed the missionaries would have found stone temples from the Roman occupation still standing (Bede, HE, I.30; Hunter Blair 63). The new churches were, of course, to be built in stone, but monastic establishments of the seventh (as opposed to eighth) century usually disappeared because they were built of wood and other such materials instead. The wooden buildings of the Irish monks, for example, have completely disappeared. Stone monastic buildings in Ireland, however, are common; they were small (sometimes only 7 by 8 feet), and rectangular, usually with a door at the west end.
Archaeologists have great difficulty deciding what Anglo-Saxon buildings looked like because the shape of the superstructure must be conjectured from the outline of postholes. We have three drawings showing different kinds of posthole construction. The first demonstrates a superstructure with posts set into individually dug holes and the posts rather far apart (IMAGE11); the second shows poles set into trenches (IMAGE12). The third technique is quite different, with the posts connected to "ground sills," horizontal beams over which planking was set (IMAGE13). The walls in structures of the second type were formed by wattle, which is made of woven twigs; King Alfred discusses making wattle in the preface to his translation of St. Augustine's Soliloquies. The technique for this latter type of construction is given a literary description in the Old English text, Byrhtferth's Manual. See LINK 8.
Stone masons were not the only skilled craftsmen Benedict lacked. According to Peter Hunter Blair, the art of glass making was also not known in Anglo-Saxon England at the time of Benedict Biscop (154). Glass remains at both monasteries, however, show that Abbot Benedict must have brought in glass makers from the continent. In fact, Cramp believes that one of the buildings she uncovered at Jarrow was used as a glass working area (240), and archaeologists have reconstructed entire windows of clear and colored glass from pieces recovered at that site, as Wormald shows (73). James Campbell describes "large regularly built buildings, plastered inside and out, the inside walls being painted, the floors made of an imitation opus signinum and the windows filled with clear and coloured glass" (52). Monkwearmouth / Jarrow "produced more early medieval glass than anywhere else in the West," Patrick Wormald writes. This is an achievement all the more remarkable in that the artisans had to be imported to do the work.
Rosemary Cramp has provided detailed plans showing how Monkwearmouth / Jarrow were built. The site plan of Monkwearmouth shows a series of buildings undertaken over several centuries, from what Cramp calls "Saxon I" (that is, the origins), to the late medieval period. The early construction of Monkwearmouth is shown in IMAGE14. IMAGE15 shows the early construction of Jarrow. Both are obviously far less complex in design (and also earlier, of course) than the grand plan of St. Gall. There is very little subdivision of the space; IMAGE16 gives some additional detail. Clearly the size and scale of the English and the Continental projects are difficult to compare.
The site plan of Jarrow likewise reflects several different periods of building. At Wearmouth, Cramp found indications of a concrete mixer on the site and detected the "wattle-and-plaster" superstructure of one of the buildings. The walls of another building were constructed of limestone block, upright and inclined. Cramp showed that clay was used to bond the first two "courses" or rows of stone. Above that level, a creamy mortar was poured over the stones to make "a form of concrete construction" (233). The masonry work at Jarrow was similar, except that clay was used to bond cobble stones instead of limestone blocks. Several of the buildings featured brick-faced concrete floors laid on beds of stone chippings; these ornamental floors were of the Roman opus signinum type (236). One of the Jarrow buildings constructed in this way, known as Building B, contained a large room for communal use, including an oratory (place for prayer) and a living room. The ornamental floor was in the area apparently used for worship. This building has been compared to the secular halls of the Anglo-Saxon period (the kind of hall from which Bede describes Cędmon fleeing, perhaps).
Though we know little about the construction techniques used at Wimborne's double monastery, we can make certain assumptions from section 2 of the Leofgyth text. Given "the rule of conduct, that neither of them was entered by the opposite sex," that is, a strict separation in the monasteries of the clerics from the nuns, the rule of the Gilbertine Order comes to mind, as described earlier. In that case, no expense in architecture was spared to keep the two genders separated. As the Gilbertines employed a wall and moat to separate the two, so the monastery at Wimborne was "surrounded with high and stout walls." It would also appear that the window construction was similar: the text mentions that the "mother of the congregation," the abbess, could only communicate with the outside world through one window. The other windows must have been constructed similar to the ones of the Gilbertines, which were made in such a way that the two genders could not see each other (Crossley 7). Finally, since the Wimborne double monastery did not share a church, as did the Gilbertine double monastery, it would be difficult to say what techniques were used to build it; however, as mentioned, we could look at the Order and surrounding society at that time to try to determine the architectural techniques.
Types of buildings. The design of the monasteries emphasizes important issues raised in the Life of Ceolfrith and central to the monastic way of living. The library and cemetery are two areas mentioned prominently. We know from section 20 of the text that Ceolfrith and Benedict Biscop brought books to these places from Rome: "he nobly increased the library which either he himself or Benedict had brought from Rome." We also know that Ceolfrith "caused to be transcribed three bibles," one of which was the Codex Amiatinus, which was written on the hides of 1550 calves, according to Patrick Wormald (75). In addition to a library, the monastery needed a scriptorium where books could be written, and other workrooms where animal skins could be made into parchment and prepared for writing.
Section 18 tells us that the remains of three abbots, Benedict, Eastorwine, and Sigefrith, were buried next to the altar in the church of St. Peter at Monkwearmouth. Burial in church was common for abbots; Ceolfrith, we know (Section 36), was buried "in the church of the holy martyred brothers" in Ganfulf's monastery. Monks who died from the several occurrences of pestilence mentioned in Ceolfrith's life could not be buried near the altar. Excavations of the two sites also reveal various kinds of cemeteries. Cramp discusses the clear division in both cemetery locations between the monastic and lay people (231, 236). Archaeologists focus on the orientation of bodies in cemeteries. Christian burials always arranged the body in east/west alignment, with the head facing west. Monkwearmouth follows the east/west pattern; at Jarrow all the bodies are aligned with their heads towards the two churches. (LINK 9)
The SEAFARER texts take this integration of the monastery and the community almost for granted. In some the relationship is implicit. For example, it is generally agreed that the Dream of the Rood (available in the TEXT menu of SEFARER) is narrated by someone living in a monastery but in contact with those outside it. The cross tells the dreamer, "I command . . . that you should relate this vision to men" (l. 96); the dreamer says, later, that he does not have any "powerful friends on the earth" (line 131), although those friends could be senior monks as well as lay people outside the monastery. In addition, the Colloquy and Scriftboc, both also available in the TEXTS menu, will give you detailed impressions of the physical and spatial boundaries that the monastery created, both for those who lived within the monastery and for those who looked on it from the outside.
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