"But surely a monk always lived in a cell, didn't he?"
The sooner we get rid of that delusion the better.
Be it understood that until Henry II. founded the Carthusian Abbey of
Witham, in 1178, there was no such thing known in England as a monk's
_cell_, as we understand the term. It was a peculiarity of the
Carthusian order, and when it was first introduced it was regarded as
a startling novelty for any privacy or anything approaching solitude
to be tolerated in a monastery. The Carthusian system never found
much favour in England. The Carthusians never had more than nine
houses, all told; the discipline was too rigid, the rule too severe,
the loneliness too dreadful for our tastes and for our climate. In
the thirteenth century, if I mistake not, there were only two
monasteries in England in which monks or nuns could boast of having
any privacy, any little corner of their own to turn into, any place
where they could enjoy the luxury of retirement, any private study
such as every boy nowadays, in a school of any pretension, expects to
have provided for himself, and without which we assume that nobody
can read and write for an hour.
The cloister arcade was said to have four _walks_. The south
walk ran along the south wall of the nave, the north walk was bounded
by the refectory or great dining hall, the east walk extended along
the south transept, and where the transept ended there usually came a
narrow passage called _slype_, passing between the end of the
transept and the chapter-house, which may be described as the
council-chamber of the convent.
Pages:
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127