The Plan of St. Gall :: :: University of Virginia Library

The primary function of the calefactory, we learn from
Adalhard, was to give the monks an opportunity to warm
themselves in wintertime in the intervals between the
divine services,[63] to hang up their clothes for drying,[64] and
to meet at certain hours for conversation.[65] This was also
the place, he cannot resist adding, "where the monks on
occasion succumb to drowsiness and neglect their reading
because of the pleasant warmth."[66]

It is possible, as Hafner has pointed out,[67] that the calefactory
was also used as a general work room, where the
monks did their sewing and mending, or other domestic
chores, when the weather was not mild enough to permit
them to do this in the cloister. The calefactory may also,
during the winter or on days of inclement weather, have
been the place for the weekly washing of the feet of the
monks.[68] To provide the wood for the hypocaust was the
responsibility of the chamberlain.[69]

[63]

Consuetudines Corbeienses; ed. Semmler, Corp. cons. mon., I, 1963,
416: "Si autem hyemps fuerit et calefatiendi necessitas ingruerit, prout ei
qui praeest uisum fuerit siue ante seu post peractum officium aliquod interuallum
fiat, quando se calefacere possint." See Jones, III, 123.

[64]

Ibid., 418: "Et si forte quaedam ad eandem domum spetialiter pertinent
ut est de pannis infusis qui suspenduntur," and translated, III, 123.

[65]

Ibid., 418: "Cum . . . tam colloquendi quam coniugendi tempus licitum
aduenerit," and translated, III, 123.

[66]

Ibid., 418: "Et somnolentis et propter caloris suauitatem minus adtente
legentibus," and translated, III, 123.

[67]

Hafner, in Studien, 1962, 180-82.

[68]

See below, p. 307. According to the Usus ordinis Cistercensis the
calefactory is the place "where the brothers warm themselves, grease
their boots, and are bled; where the cantor and the scribes mix ink
and dry their parchment, and where the sacrist fetches light and glowing
cinders." See Migne, Patr. Lat., CLXVI, cols. 1387B, 1447A-C,
1466D, 1497C; and Mettler, 1909, 151.

[69]

"Ligna recipiet camerarius conventus et de illis procurabit ignemcopiosum
fratribus" (see under "camerarius" in Du Cange, Glossarium).