Before passing on from the Library and Scriptorium, on which a great
deal more might easily be said, it is necessary that one caution
should be given; I know not how that notion originated or how it has
taken such hold of the minds of ninety-nine men out of a hundred,
that the monks as a class were students or scholars or men of
learning; as far as the English monasteries of the thirteenth century
are concerned, I am sure that the notion is altogether erroneous. If
we except some few of the larger and nobler monasteries, which from
first to last seem always to have been centres of culture,
enlightenment, and progress, the monks were no more learned than the
nuns. As a class, students, scholars, and teachers they were not.
When King John died, in 1216, a little learning went a long way, and
whatever the Norman Conquest did for England (and it did a great
deal), it certainly was not an event calculated to increase the love
of study, or likely to make men bookish pundits.
I should only confuse my readers if I dwelt more at length upon the
buildings of a monastery. It is enough for the present that we should
understand clearly that the essential buildings were (1) the church,
(2) the cloister, (3) the dormitory, (4) the refectory, (5) the
chapter-house. In these five buildings the life of the convent was
carried on.
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