Kitabı oku: «English Monastic Life», sayfa 15

5. THE GUEST-HALL COOK

The cook to attend to the needs of visitors was appointed by the cellarer, and had under him a boy to help in any way he might direct. His office was frequently for life, and certainly, once appointed, he could be removed only with difficulty. He had to get everything ready for the entertainment of strangers and of the parents of the religious, whenever they came to the monastery and at whatsoever hour of the day or night. Besides this ordinary work he had to assist, when disengaged, in preparing the meals for the monks, and in the season for salting the pork and mutton, to help in that work with the chief cook and the larderer. He was to be in all things obedient to the kitchener in the matters of his office, and in the times of his service was not to absent himself except with the permission of that official. His wages were paid by the cellarer according to agreement; and he had the usual kitchen perquisites of choppings and dripping.

6. THE FISH-COOKS

In the large monasteries, such as, for example, Edmundsbury, there were two cooks for the fish-dishes: the first was properly called the “fish-cook,” the other the “pittance-cook.” Their appointment was made for life, and by letters-patent signed by the abbot in Chapter, with the prior and the community as witnesses. Though called the “fish-cooks” these servants had also to attend to the general work of the kitchen, even on days when meat was eaten, and to cook the meat and make the gravy required; whilst the “pittance-cook” was specially detailed to fry or poach the eggs required for the extra portions, or to prepare whatever else took their place in the dishes served as pittances to the community, or to individuals such as the president of the refectory, and the priest who had sung the High Mass. These two cooks also had to help in the salting time, and in other common work of the kitchen.

7. INFIRMARY COOK

To serve the sick a prudent, skilful cook was to be chosen by the infirmarian, who, besides the knowledge of his art, should have compassion and feel pity for the sufferings and afflictions of the sick. Like the officers previously named, the appointment of the infirmary cook was for life; but though he could not be moved at the whim of a superior, he was not formally appointed in Chapter, but by a letter from the infirmarian. Day and night he was to show himself solicitous for the welfare of those in the infirmary, and be ready at all times to make for them what they needed or might fancy. He, too, had to help in the general kitchen, and he had to obtain thence all the requisite food for those who were having their meals in the infirmary. Like the rest of the above-named officials, he had to give what help he could in the kitchen in the seasons of great pressure, and in particular at the time for the winter salting, about St. Martin’s Day.

When the infirmary cook or servant came to die, for his faithful service he was borne to the grave, like all the other servants of the monastery, by the whole convent. His body was met at the great door of the church by the community in procession, and after Mass had been celebrated for the repose of his soul by the sub-sacrist, the monks carried his remains, as that of a good and faithful servant gone to his reward, to his last resting-place. In some houses there was even a special portion of the consecrated ground dedicated to the burial of monastic servants: at Bury, for example, it was called “Sergeant’s hill,” and the Custumal says that in that “venerable monastery” such old friends “shall never be forgotten in the prayers and devout supplications of the community.”

8. THE SALTER

The salter, who was also called the mustardarius, was appointed by a letter of the kitchener; and like the rest he was irremovable after his appointment, except for grave reasons, and then only with difficulty. By his office he had to see to the supply and preparation of all the mustard used in seasoning the dishes and by the brethren in the various places where food was partaken, such as the refectory, guest-hall, infirmary, etc. This was by no means the unimportant office we might in these days be inclined to consider it, as it was then considered useful if not necessary to take mustard with all salted food, flesh or fish. The quantity thus required in a large establishment was very considerable. The salter was also expected to make some, if not all, the sauces required for certain dishes. At Easter, for instance, he was to prepare “vertsauce” with vinegar for the lamb, if the herb could be found for it; by which it may be supposed that “mint-sauce” is meant, except that this particular concoction was supposed also to go with mackerel as well as lamb!

9. BELL-RINGERS AND CHURCH-SERVERS

On all days when the great bells were rung and the services of the church were more elaborate than at ordinary times, the ringers and servers had their rations and some extra portion from the conventual refectory. In a great place like Bury St. Edmunds these days amounted to some two-and-forty in the year.

10. THE GARDENER

The gardener was appointed by the cellarer at his pleasure. His chief duty was to keep the convent supplied with herbs on four days a week in winter and spring, and with other vegetables in their season. He was frequently to visit the kitchen in order to learn what was required from him, and he was always to bring his vegetables and herbs cleaned and prepared ready for cooking.

11. THE CARRIERS

The carriers were servants who were continually occupied in the work of provisioning the establishment. They had to be at hand to carry to the monastic stores whatever the caterer bought in the market. Also in the time of the great fairs, they attended the cellarer to take charge of his purchases of spices, almonds and raisins, ling and stockfish, and salted herrings, red and white, and to convey them to the monastery. On ordinary days they were occupied in bringing to the cook the food he required from the various officials; in carrying in the fuel and keeping up the fires, and in carting away the refuse to the waste-heap. These carriers had a money wage and numerous perquisites; amongst other things, they could claim all the little barrels in which salmon, sturgeon, and salt eels had come to the monastic larder, and they might take and use what they could for their own meals of every pig that was brought to the salting-tub and found to be “measly.”

12. DOOR-KEEPERS

In most great monastic houses there were naturally several porters or door-keepers. The kitchen-porter was in some ways the most important, as so much of the traffic from the outer world to the cloister came this way. He was set there for the purpose of preventing any unauthorised person gaining access to the kitchen so as to disturb the cook; and at all times he had to check the coming in of seculars, or of begging clerks, or of the neighbours, unless they could show leave or business. He had to receive and distribute all the daily alms of food to those waiting at the gate. The porter of the great cloister gate had to watch over the main entrance of the house, to open the door to visitors, and at once to acquaint the guest-master of their arrival.

13. THE BRIEF-BEARER – BREVIATOR

The brief-bearer, by his office, was intended to carry the notice of the death of any of the brethren in the monastery round to other monasteries and religious houses in England. The abbot appointed this official, and the office was held for life. In Benedictine abbeys, according to a provision of the General Chapter of Northampton, the bearer of the mortuary roll was to be received with honour and entertained until he had obtained his roll again and could pass on to the next house on his list. Besides his regular wage and portion of food from the monastic kitchen, on the death of any monk he could claim as his right the mattress of the deceased brother, or in lieu of it a sum of six shillings and eightpence.

Besides the above-named officers there were, at least in the greater houses, many minor paid officials and retainers. For example, the discarius, or server of dishes in the refectory, was bound always to be at the kitchen-hatch whenever conventual meals were in progress, and it was his place to wait upon those who took their meals at the second table. He was a kind of lower servant in the kitchen; he had to help in bringing in the fuel, and to see that the wheelbarrow for the waste was in its place, and was emptied when it was necessary. After the meals, the discarius washed the plates and dishes, and saw that when dry, they were stacked in their proper cupboards ready for the next occasion.

Another minor official was the “turnbroach” – a boy chosen by the cellarer for his activity. He had to be always ready when required to turn the spits on which meat or fish was cooking. He helped in carrying fuel for the kitchen and elsewhere; and when ordered, he had to go to the ponds and stews to help to catch fish for the conventual meal.

In some places, for example at Edmundsbury, there were certain women employed at times by the monastery for the making of pastry, etc., called pudding-wives. They had a house or chamber near at hand to the kitchen, called the “Pudding-house.” These women were chosen by the larderer with the assent of the chief cook; they lived in the neighbourhood and came up to the outer kitchen offices when their services were required. Great care was taken in the selection of these servants, and it was directed that they “be always married, sober, of good repute and honest, that all danger of detraction from evil tongues be avoided.” At all times when animals were slaughtered, in particular about St. Martin’s Day, and when pigs were being killed, the services of these women were required to make black puddings. At other times, if the cook desired, they were to be ready to make pasties and other things which seemed to require the gentler touch of a female hand. Among the women servants there were, of course, also laundresses for the washing of the clothes of the community, and others for the infirmary, the guest-hall, and the church linen. All these were selected with care and upon the same principles which guided the selection of the above-mentioned pudding-wives.

CHAPTER XI
THE VARIOUS RELIGIOUS ORDERS

The various Orders existing in England in pre-Reformation days may be classified under four headings: (1) Monks, (2) Canons Regular, (3) Military Orders, and (4) Friars. As regards the nuns, most of the houses were affiliated to one or other of the above-named Orders.

I. Monks

i. Benedictines

St. Benedict, justly called the Patriarch of Western Monachism, established his rule of life in Italy; first at Subiaco and subsequently at Monte Cassino about A.D. 529. The design of his code was, like every other rule of regular life, to enable men to reach the higher Christian ideals by the helps afforded them in a well-regulated monastery. According to the saint’s original conception, the houses were to be separate families independent of each other. It was no part of his scheme to establish a corporation with branches in various localities and countries, or to found an “Order” in its modern sense. By its own inherent excellence and because of the sound common-sense which pervades it, the Rule of St. Benedict at once began to take root in the monasteries of the West, till it quickly superseded any others then in existence. Owing to its broad and elastic character, and hardly less, probably, to the fact that adopting it did not imply the joining of any stereotyped form of Order, monasteries could, and in fact did, embrace this code without entirely breaking with their past traditions. Thus, side by side in the same religious house, we find that the rule of St. Columba was observed with that of St. Benedict until the greater practical sense of the latter code superseded the more rigid legislation of the former. Within a comparatively short time from the death of St. Benedict in A.D. 543, the Benedictine became the recognised form of Western regular life. To this end the action of Pope St. Gregory the Great and his high approval of St. Benedict’s Rule greatly conduced. In his opinion it manifested no common wisdom in its provisions, which were dictated by a marvellous insight into human nature and by a knowledge of the best possible conditions for attaining the end of all monastic life, the perfect love of God and of man. Whilst not in any way lax in its provisions, it did not prescribe an asceticism which could be practised only by the few; whilst the most ample powers were given to the superior to adapt the regulations to all circumstances of times and places; thus making it applicable to every form of the higher Christian life, from the secluded cloister to that for which St. Gregory specially used those trained under it: the evangelisation of far-distant countries.

The connection between the Benedictines and England began with the mission of St. Augustine in A.D. 597. The monastery of Monte Cassino having been destroyed by the Lombards, towards the end of the sixth century, the monks took refuge in Rome, and were placed in the Lateran, and by St. Gregory in the church he founded in honour of St. Andrew, in his ancestral home on the Cœlian Hill. It was the prior of St. Andrew’s whom he chose to be the head of the other missionary monks he sent to convert England. With the advent of the Scottish monks from Iona the system of St. Columba was for a time introduced into the North of England; but here, as in the rest of Europe, it quickly gave place to the Benedictine code; and practically during the whole Saxon period this was the only form of monastic life in England.

ii. Cluniacs

The Cluniac adaptation of the Benedictine Rule took its rise in A.D. 912 with Berno, abbot of Gigny. With the assistance of the Duke of Aquitaine he built and endowed a monastery at Cluny, near Macon-sur-Saone. The Cluniac was a new departure in monastic government. Hitherto the monastery was practically self-centred; any connection with other religious houses was at most voluntary, and any bond of union that may have existed, was of the most loose description. The ideal upon which Cluny was established was the existence of a great central monastery with dependencies spread over many lands, and forming a vast feudal hierarchy of subordinate establishments with the closest dependence on the mother-house. Moreover, the superior of each of the dependent monasteries, no matter how large and important, was not the elect of the community, but the nominee of the abbot of Cluny; and in the same way the profession of every member of the congregation was made in his name and with his sanction. It was a great ideal; and for two centuries the abbots of Cluny form a dynasty worthy of so lofty a position. The first Cluniac house founded in England was that of Barnstaple. This was speedily followed by that of Lewes, a priory set up by William, earl of Warren, in A.D. 1077, eleven years only after the Conquest. The last was that of Stonesgate, in Essex, made almost exactly a century later. On account of their dependence upon the abbot of Cluny, several of the lesser houses were suppressed as “alien priories” towards the close of the fourteenth century, and those that remained gradually freed themselves from their obedience to the foreign superior. At the time of the general suppression in the sixteenth century there were thirty-two Cluniac houses; one only, Bermondsey, was an abbey; the rest were priories, of which the most important was that which had been nearly the first in order of time, Lewes.

iii. Cistercians

The congregation of Citeaux was at one time the most flourishing of the offshoots of the great Benedictine body. The monastery of Citeaux was established by St. Robert of Molesme in A.D. 1092. The saint was a Benedictine, and felt himself called to something different to what he had found in the monasteries of France. The peculiar system of the Cistercians, however, was the work of St. Stephen Harding, an Englishman, who at an early age had left his own country and never returned thither. He struck out a new line, which was a still further departure from the ideal of St. Benedict than was the Cluniac system. The Cistercians, whilst strictly maintaining the notion that each monastery was a family endowed with the principles of fecundity, formed themselves into an Order, in the sense of an organised corporation, under the perpetual pre-eminence of the abbot and house of Citeaux, and with yearly Chapters at which all superiors were bound to attend. It was the chief object of the administration to secure absolute uniformity in all things and everywhere. This was obtained by the Chapters, and by the visitations of the abbot of Citeaux, made anywhere and everywhere at will. The Order spread during the first century of its existence with great rapidity. It is said that, by the middle of the twelfth century, Citeaux had five hundred dependencies, and that fifty years later there were more than three times that number. In England the first abbey was founded by King Henry I. at Furness in A.D. 1127, and of the hundred houses existing at the general suppression three-fourths had been founded in the twelfth century. The rest, with the exception of St. Mary Grace, London, established in 1349 by Edward III., were founded in the early part of the thirteenth century.

iv. Carthusians

The Carthusians were founded in the eleventh century by St. Bruno. With the help of the bishop of Grenoble he built for himself and six companions, in the mountains near the city, an oratory and small separate cells in imitation of the ancient Lauras of Egypt. This was in A.D. 1086; and the Order takes its designation from the name of the place – Chartreuse. Peter the Venerable, the celebrated abbot of Cluny, writing forty years after the foundation, thus describes their austere form of life. “Their dress,” he says, “is meaner and poorer than that of other monks, so short and scanty and so rough that the very sight affrights one. They wear coarse hair-shirts next their skin; fast almost perpetually; eat only bean-bread; whether sick or well never touch flesh; never buy fish, but eat it if given them as an alms; eat eggs on Sundays and Thursdays; on Tuesdays and Saturdays their fare is pulse or herbs boiled; on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays they take nothing but bread and water; and they have only two meals a day, except within the octaves of Christmas, Easter, Whitsuntide, Epiphany, and other festivals. Their constant occupation is praying, reading and manual labour, which consists chiefly in transcribing books. They say the lesser Hours of the Divine Office in their cells at the time when the bell rings, but meet together at Vespers and Matins with wonderful recollection.”

A manner of life of such great austerity naturally did not attract many votaries. It was a special vocation to the few, and it was not until A.D. 1222 that the first house of the Order was established in England, at Hinton, in Somersetshire, by William Langesper. The last foundation was the celebrated Charterhouse of Shene, in Surrey, made by King Henry V. At the time of the general dissolution, there were in all eight English monasteries and about a hundred members.

II. The Canons Regular

The clergy of every large church were in ancient times called canonici– canons – as being on the list of those who were devoted to the service of the Church. In the eighth century, Chrodegand, bishop of Metz, formed the clergy of his cathedral into a body, living in common under a rule and bound to the public recitation of the Divine Office. They were known still as canons, or those living under a rule of life like the monks, from the true meaning of κανών, a rule. This common life was in time abandoned in spite of the provisions of several Councils, and then institutions other than Cathedral Chapters became organised upon lines similar to those laid down by Chrodegand, and they became known as Canons Regular. They formed themselves generally on the so-called Rule of St. Augustine, and became known, in England at least, as Augustinian Canons, Premonstratensian Canons, and Gilbertine Canons.