University of Virginia Library

Refectory

TABLES AND BENCHES

The Plan provides us with a complete and detailed
account of the furnishings of this hall (fig. 211). It shows in
the center of the eastern, or upper, half of the hall the
"table of the abbot" (mensa abbatis), a

-shaped table
with two arms 30 feet long, and a connecting head piece 10
feet long. Two longitudinal benches (scammum, aliud) range
along the arms of the table. The center is left free for easy
access by the servers. The abbot's table has a total length of
70 feet and can seat twelve persons on each of its long arms
and four at its head, if we allow 2½ feet per person. Parallel
to the abbot's table, on either side of the hall, are two
L-shaped tables, each having a total length of 40 feet,
providing space for sixteen persons per table. These tables
are served by a single continuous wall bench which ranges
around the circumference of the entire eastern half of the
hall (sedes in circuitu) and also serves the abbot's table. The
combined seating capacity of the upper portion of the hall
is sixty: twenty-eight at the abbot's table, sixteen at the
southern wall table, and sixteen at the northern wall table.

The seating arrangement in the western or lower half of
the hall is different. It consists of a straight center table
(mensa) with benches on either side (sedile, aliud) 27½ feet
long, permitting sitting space for twenty-two persons, and
two L-shaped wall tables along the southern and northern
walls of the hall, identical with the corresponding tables in
the upper end of the hall, each seating nineteen persons.
The total seating space at the lower end of the hall, despite
the different layout, is the same as that in the upper half,
viz., twenty-two at the center table, nineteen at the southern
wall table, and nineteen at the northern wall table,
equaling sixty. The grand total for the entire hall is 120,
not counting the table for the visiting monks (ad sedendū cū
hospitibus), which provides six additional seats, corresponding
exactly to the number of beds available in the
lodging for the visiting monks.[100] The table for the visiting
monks stands in front of the reader's pulpit.

READER'S PULPIT

The reader's pulpit (analogium) is marked by a square
with a circle inside and appears to be raised on a platform.
In later times the reader's pulpit generally consisted of a
semicircular balcony with lectern corbelled out from the
wall and accessible by a stairway built into the wall. A good
example is the reader's pulpit in the refectory of the
Cistercian monastery of Poblet, Catalonia (fig. 212).[101] In
even better states of preservation are the pulpits of the
refectories of the priory of St.-Martin-des-Champs at
Paris,[102] the cathedral of Chester (Cheshire),[103] and the
Abbey of Beaulieu (Hampshire).[104] Traces of others are
found in many ruined abbeys, such as Tintern and
Fountains.[105] The pulpit of the Refectory of the Plan of St.
Gall, however, is square, not semicircular or polygonal like
the later examples. Moreover, the layout of the wall

[ILLUSTRATION]

217. PLAN OF ST. GALL. MONKS' KITCHEN

Interpretation by Völckers

[after Völckers, 1949, 27]

[ILLUSTRATION]

218. WOODCUT FROM KUCHEMAISTREY, AUGSBURG,
1507

[after Schiedlausky, 1956, 22]

Kitchen with cook and maid. Völckers' reconstruction is handsome,
but incompatible with the inscription FORNAX SUPER ARCUS, "a
stove supported by arches." Square stoves on arches with firing
chambers and cooking wells must have been common in Antiquity as
well as in the Middle Ages, as figs. 218-221 show.

benches which run around the perimeter of the hall does
not allow access to a stairway built into the wall itself. I am
inclined to think that the pulpit was reached by an open
stairway.

The reader's pulpit faces the entrance to the Refectory,
which lies in the middle of the southern cloister walk. The
symbol used for this entrance differs from that of any other
door on the Plan. It suggests a double door arrangement
with entrance and exit separated by a median wall partition,
such as are used as standard passageways even today in
countless churches, in England as well as on the continent.

CUPBOARDS

The only other piece of furniture found in the Refectory
of the Plan of St. Gall is a double square referred to as
toregma. Square symbols designated by this term are found
in two other places on the Plan, in each case within a dining
area, in the Abbot's House, and in the House for Distinguished
Guests (figs. 251 and 396). Keller interpreted these

symbols variously as "a large cupboard, probably for
storing vessels" (Refectory),[108] "a vessel for washing hands"
(Abbot's House),[109] and "chairs or cushioned seats" (House
for Distinguished Guests).[110] Willis interpreted them as
"presses,"[111] Stephani as "cupboards,"[112] and Lesne as
"waterfountains."[113]

The confusion stems from the spelling of the term
toregma (plural, toregmata) which is otherwise unattested,
and must be equated with the common word toreuma,
which denotes either embossed metal objects (including
statuary) or turned wooden objects, or the products in
general of the woodworkers' craft (again extending to
statuary). Du Cange under the word tornarius, i.e.,
"turner," states that a tornarius or tornator made toreumata.

Since most of the plates and bowls from which the
monks ate and in which their food was served were
wrought on the turner's lath,[114] I am inclined to think that
toregma or toregmata relates to the bowls and vessels used

[ILLUSTRATION]

219. GEORGIUS AGRICOLA. DE RE METALLICA, LIBRI XII, BOOK X, BASEL, 1556

SEPARATION OF GOLD AND SILVER WITH AQUA VALENS

[after H. C. and L. H. Hoover, trans., London, 1912, 446]

Agricola's woodcut portrays a furnace of the same construction type as the stove in the Monks' Kitchen, except in size. It is described in the
text:

"The furnace is built of bricks, rectangular, two feet long and wide and as many feet high and a half besides. It is covered with iron plates . . .
which have in the center a round hole and on each side of the center hole two small round air holes. The lower part of the furnace, in order to
hold the burning charcoal, has iron plates at the height of a palm . . . In the middle of the front there is the mouth, made for the purpose of
putting fire into the furnace; this mouth is half a foot high and wide, and rounded at the top, and under it is the draught opening."

Georgius Agricola (baptised Georg Bauer, 1494-1555) was a German expert in mining methods and metallurgical processes who wrote the first
systematic treatise on these subjects. His informative and richly illustrated De re metallica, published in Basel in 1556, remained until the
18th century the authoritative handbook on mining. It owed its spectacular success to the author's broad knowledge of classical learning, acute
power of empirical observation, and thorough acquaintance with technical installations used in the operation of mines.

in eating and, by extension, to the piece of furniture in
which this ware was stored. A twelfth-century manuscript
in the British Museum, the Psalter of Henry of Blois,
gives us a good idea how such a piece of furniture may have
looked (fig. 213),[115] and a handsome woodcut by Michael
Wohlgemut in the Schatzbehalter of Nuremberg (1491)
shows such a cupboard in its setting, on a page that depicts
a royal banquet (fig. 214).[116] A beautiful Tyrolian cupboard
of the same variety, dating from the thirteenth or fourteenth
century, exists in Burg Kreuzenstein (fig. 215).[117]
Others, no less impressive, dating from the thirteenth to
the sixteenth centuries, may be found in Our Lady's
Church in Halberstadt (fig. 216),[118] the Church of Schulpforta,[119]
and the Museum of Wernigerode,[120] the Cathedral
of Halberstadt,[121] and the Museum of Lübeck.[122] The most
monumental of all is a great thirteenth-century ambry in
the Cathedral of Chester.[123]

LACK OF FACILITIES FOR HEATING

As one analyzes the layout of the Monks' Refectory one is
struck by the observation that this large hall has no
facilities for heating. It is provided neither with a hypocaust,
nor with the kind of open fireplace that forms the
central source of warmth in the guest and service buildings,
nor with any corner fireplaces such as are provided to warm
the bedrooms of the higher ranking officials of the monastery,
and those of the distinguished guests.[124] It is impossible
to look upon this omission as an oversight. The Refectory
obviously was not meant to be heated. The only source of
warmth available to this hall was the body heat of the people
who assembled there during the meal hours which in the
cold of the transalpine winters must often have been passed
in an uncomfortable chill. This willful rejection of physical
comfort surely can only be interpreted as a retention in
ceonobitic medieval monachism of the ascetic attitudes of

[ILLUSTRATION]

221. POMPEII. HOUSE OF THE VETII

[after Mau, 1908, 274]

This hearth is in essence merely a large square base, on the top of
which meals are cooked with the aid of charcoal braziers. A rim
around the edges of the cooking surface prevents cinders or ashes
from falling on the floor. The hole at the bottom of the hearth is for
storing of firing materials. But a hearth of identical construction
with a corresponding opening serving as firing chamber is represented
on a 2nd-century Roman relief at Igel near Trier (see Singer et
al, II, 1956, 119, fig. 89).

the early desert monks to whom eating was an irrelevant,
even contemptible activity, gluttony no less than a venal
sin. Again it was St. Benedict who reinstituted the meal as
a normal function of life. One eats in order to live. Yet in
furnishing the body with what is needed for its sustenance,
one should not take more than is required for that purpose.
Under no circumstances should one allow the meal or the
refectory to become a preoccupation of the mind or the
senses, or allow oneself to indulge in any form of excess.
St. Benedict expresses himself in unequivocal terms on this
point: "Above all things, gluttony must be avoided"
(remota prae omnibus crapula).[125] Rendering the refectory
chilly and uncomfortable would reduce the temptation to
linger over one's food unduly, and would prevent in large
measure untoward enjoyment of what was served. To impose
silence on those who congregated at the table, and
direct their attention to the lessons of the Reader, were
further means to forestall any unwarranted engrossment
with the physical pleasures of eating.

LAYOUT OF TABLES AND BENCHES IN
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

By contrast to this conspicuous disregard for comfortable
standards in heating, the physical layout of the tables and
benches in the Monks' Refectory is sophisticated and most
carefully planned. The designing architect must not only
have had accurate instructions concerning the number of
people the Refectory was to accommodate in a single
sitting, but also must have been fully aware of the precise
needs in linear length of the tables and benches required to
meet this condition.[126] He solved his problem, as we have
seen, by placing two tables in the center, and four along
the walls of the room. The details of this concept pose
fascinating, if unanswerable historical questions, into a
discussion of which I enter in full awareness of its highly
tentative and speculative nature.

The desert monks thought so little of eating (or so much
of its dangers!)[127] that many of them preferred to ingest
their food while standing or walking around. Of Father
Sisoës it is said that he frequently did not know whether or
not he had already taken his meal.[128] Tables on which to
spread one's food, or chairs to sit upon while taking a meal,
were incompatible with this concept and even the comfort
offered by a simple stone or the crude stump of a tree, in
this mode of thinking, was looked upon as a source of
sensuous self indulgence. But when St. Pachomius took the
epochal step of renouncing his hermitic past and founding,
in a desolate place called Tabenissi, on the river Nile the
first systematically organized community for monks, he
furnished this monastery with a refectory where the monks
took their meals seated at tables. They had to do this in
rigid silence, their heads covered by their cowls, so that
their eyes would only see the bowls from which they ate,
and could not stray aside to look at any of the other monks.
Yet no one was forced to come to the table and St. Pachomius,
in fact considered it to be a higher form of religious
attainment if a monk chose to dispense with the regular
food either through fasting or relying on only the slimmest
diet of bread, water, and salt which his superior, upon
request, could allow him to take to his cell.[129]

While many may have chosen these individual forms of
dietary ascetism as the more desirable path in their search
for salvation, in a community whose population reached at
its peak the staggering figure of 2,500 monks, the number
of those who attended the common meal must still have
been sufficiently large to call for a substantial and carefully
planned arrangement of tables and benches. The only
other sphere of life where men in comparable numbers
assembled for a common meal must have been the eating
halls of permanent Roman military camps, with the layout
of which St. Pachomius must have been well acquainted
from the days when he served in the Roman army.[130] It is

[ILLUSTRATION]

MARMOUTIER, INDRE-ET-LOIRE, FRANCE. KITCHEN

222.A

222.B

PLAN

[after Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire Raisonné, IV, 1858, 462 and 463]

Like the Kitchen shown in fig. 223, this one is a masterpiece of functional construction. A natural fire hazard, this type of kitchen (whether
monastic or secular) is invariably built as a separate entity a short distance from the eating hall, precisely as shown on the Plan of St. Gall
(fig. 122). From the 12th century onward they were generally built in masonry, often in the shape of an inverted funnel and ventilated by a
multitude of chimneys. The kitchen of Marmoutier has an external diameter of roughly 12m. It had five hearths installed in five niches, each
with one central (A) and two lateral (B) chimneys. Three further chimneys emerge from the shell higher up in the vault, which terminates in a
large central chimney (K) forming the top of the building. The stereotomy in structures of this type is almost beyond belief, and in an exterior
view appears to defy gravity. Six arches of the Marmoutier interior support six squinches which, in turn, support a second set of six squinches.
On these, the inverted masonry funnel rides magically on a circle of incredible shear stress.

in this ambient, I presume—the same ambient to which
monachism also probably owed the concept of its wall
enclosure,[131] —that we may have to look for the ultimate
source for both the layout of the Pachomian refectory and
its Roman prototypes and Carolingian derivatives.

When monachism spread to the north, however, the
monastic refectory may have been exposed to another
secular influence, namely the large and festive banqueting
halls that played such an important role in the life of the
Germanic kings and chieftains. In the traditional Germanic

[ILLUSTRATION]

FONTEVRAULT, MAINE-ET-LOIRE, FRANCE

223.A

223.B

ABBEY KITCHEN

[after Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire Raisonné, IV, 1858, 468 and 470]

A structure of unsurpassed sophistication, compared to which the Marmoutier kitchen (fig. 222) seems almost simplistic. The basic elements are
the same: five niches with hearths for cooking. In Marmoutier these niches were contained within the shell of a structure presenting an externally
smooth and continuous surface all the way to its top. At Fontevrault the niches sally outward, making the disposition of the inner spaces
visible in the form of the outer shell. Buttresses are raised along lines where the niches meet, to receive the thrust of the vault that covers the
center space. The latter consists of a daringly steep pyramid. It is composed of two octagonal cloister vaults, one superimposed upon the other,
the transition from the square of the arch-framed center space being made by squinches with holes for smoke emission. The chimneys are
pencil-shaped and terminate in lanterns. Structurally this building is an ingenious transposition to a centrally planned space of principles
developed by the architects of the great Gothic cathedrals.

eating hall—about which we are well informed by descriptions
such as that of Hall Heorot in the Beowulf poem[132]
(eighth century; but reflecting a tradition that reaches considerably
farther back) and the realistic accounts of
banquets in the Nordic sagas (ninth to twelfth centuries)[133]
—the retainers sat at tables and benches ranged along the
walls of the house throughout the entire length of the
building. The host sat on a high seat in the middle of one
of the two aisles of the hall, his guest of honor on a corresponding
seat in the middle of the opposite aisle. A cross
bench at the inner end of the room was taken up by women.
The fire burned in the middle of the center floor, from which
the food and the drinks were served. Only on very rare
occasions, i.e., when the number of guests was so large that
not all of them could be accommodated in the aisles of the
house, was the center floor taken up by an additional row
of tables and benches.[134] On such occasions the physical
layout of the Germanic banqueting hall, indeed, bore close
resemblance to that found in monastic refectories, although
there still remained an important difference: in the monastic
refectories, the highest ranking person, the abbot, sat on
the cross bench at the upper or eastern end of the hall; the
entrance was in the middle of the long wall facing the
cloister. This arrangement is more closely related to that
of the later feudal halls (especially well known in England)
where the lord dined on an elevated platform (dais) in the
uppermost bay of the building, at a table placed crosswise
to the long tables, while his retainers sat at tables ranging
lengthwise down the aisles of the hall.[135] The location of
the table for the abbot, "the representative of Christ in the
monastery,"[136] at the eastern head of the refectory unquestionably
has its origins in the Christian ritual, which in
turn was deeply influenced by the ceremonial of the Roman
imperial court. The latter was also the ultimate source of
the exalted position of the table of the medieval feudal lord,
to whom I presume, this concept was transmitted by their
royal overlords, after they assumed the successorship of the
emperors of Rome.

NUMBER AND HOURS OF MEALS OF THE MONKS

The number and hours of the meals of the monks are
regulated in Chapter 41 of the Rules of St. Benedict.[137]
The schedule set forth there is, as Dom David Knowles has
put it, "so foreign to anything in modern life, even among
religious orders . . . that it is difficult, when reconstructing
it in the imagination, to appreciate where its physical
handicaps lay and where use had become second nature.[138]

During the winter, beginning with the thirteenth of
September and ending with Ash Wednesday, the monks
were allowed a single full meal per day which was eaten
about two o'clock in the afternoon. The same schedule
prevailed for the time of Lent, but in this period the meal
was served after Vespers, i.e., about half past five or six.
During the summer months, and on all Sundays and Feast
Days, the monks ate two meals, one at midday, the other
about six o'clock in the evening. This schedule made
allowance for a rest after the midday meal.

The most perplexing aspect of this schedule of meals, in
the eyes of a modern observer, "is the assignment of the
first meal to a time never less than ten, and throughout the
winter of about twelve hours after rising."[139] The change
from a winter schedule of one meal to a summer schedule
of two, providing for a midday rest, is of course the product
of the Mediterranean climate, in which monachism
originated. There "the heat of the summer makes a siesta
after the midday meal all but a physical necessity."[140]
North of the Alps this routine was senseless, yet the force
of tradition was so strong that it remained unmodified by
any difference of climate or latitude throughout the entire
Middle Ages.

THE MONKS' DIET

St. Benedict prescribes that every meal of the monks
"should have two cooked dishes, on account of individual
infirmities, so that he who perchance cannot eat of the one,
may make his meal of the other . . . and if any fruit or
young vegetables are available, let a third be added.
(Sufficere credimus ad refectionem cotidianam tam sextae quam
nonae omnibus mensis cocta duo pulmentaria propter diuersorum
infirmitatibus, ut forte, qui ex illo non potuerit edere,
ex alio reficiatur . . . et si fuerit, unde poma aut nascentia
leguminum, addatur et tertium).[141] Hildemar, in commenting
on this chapter, points out that in contrast to the biblical
tradition where the term pulmentum is used for a considerably
broader range of dishes (including meals made of
venison), it is applied by St. Benedict exclusively to cooked
dishes made "of vegetables, of cheese and eggs, and of
flour" (de oleribus, de caseo et ovis et de farina). He adds to
this that if the term is used without the qualifying adjective
coctum it refers to uncooked dishes, "in which something is
added to bread to make it better eating such as cheese, the
leaves of leek [greens in general?] or egg, or other similar
things" (quidquid pani adijicitur, ut melius ipse panis
comedatur, sicuti est caseum et folia porrorum et ovum et

[ILLUSTRATION]

CHICHESTER, SUSSEX, ENGLAND. KITCHEN, BISHOP'S PALACE

224.A

224.B

224.C

RECORDED BY THE AUTHORS, 1960

With its simple square form and timbered roof, the kitchen of the bishop's palace at Chichester reflects the tradition of the Monks' Kitchen of
the Plan of St. Gall (fig. 211) more closely than the elaborate structures of Fontevrault and Marmoutier (figs. 222-223), with their
sophisticated masonry skills in arching and vaulting that one would scarcely expect to antedate the Romanesque and Gothic periods.

The roof frame of Chichester, despite its primitive appearance, is nevertheless a highly evolved form of early English hammerbeam construction
that apparently did not emerge before the end of the 13th century, and which became very fashionable shortly thereafter. It is formed of four
trusses springing from trussed brackets suspended in the masonry walls, and was surmounted at its apex by an open lantern, now concealed by a
modern ceiling added early in the 20th century. Certain constructional similarities of the scantling of the bishop's palace with that of St. Mary's
Hospital in Chichester (figs. 341-343) suggest a late 13th- or early 14th-century date.

cetera his similia). Each monk was allowed a pound of
bread per day—St. Benedict calls it a "weighed pound"
(panis libra una propensa), i.e., a quantity of bread whose
mass was controlled by weighing it on the scales rather
than by the estimate of the baker or servers.[142] On days on
which two meals were served, one third of this allowance of
bread was to be put aside for the evening meal.

"Except the sick who are very weak, let all abstain
entirely from the flesh of four-footed animals" (Carnium
uero quadripedum omnimodo ab omnibus abstineatur comestio
praeter omnino deuiles egrotos). St. Benedict states his views
about the inadmissibility of meat from quadrupeds clearly
enough, but frustrates his modern readers by not giving any
reasons for this injunction. His ninth-century commentator
Hildemar fortunately comes to aid in this matter: "It is on
account of its pleasurable taste, not because of the number
of feet that monks are known to abstain from the meat of
four-footed animals" (et ideo propter suavitatem gustus, non
propter numerum pedem abstinentes et poenitentes a carnibus
abstinere noscuntur) . . . "For the desires of the flesh are
more easily aroused where greater delight and pleasure is
encountered in the food (eo quod stimuli carnis magis solent
insurgere ubi major dulcedo et major suavitas gustus in cibum
percipitur). He points to the example set by Christ and by
the apostles, as well as by leading monastic authorities "of
none of whom we read in scripture or in Church history
that they ate any meat other than fish"; and concludes his
argument with a quotation from the fifth book of the
institutae patrum, where it is said that "the food of the
monks must be such as to contribute to the sustenance of
life, but not such as to arouse the desires of flesh and to
subminister to vice" (ut ille cibus debeat esse monachorum,
qui sustentationem tribuat vitae, non ille, qui occasionem
concupiscentiis et vitiis subministrat).[143]

The consumption of fowl was a controversial matter on
which St. Benedict had failed to express himself. This was
interpreted by many to mean that he condoned it. The
reform movement of Benedict of Aniane attempted to
eliminate the uncertainties that arose from this lack of
specific legislation, but the directives issued at Aachen
contradict, even annul, each other. The synod of 816 barred
the consumption of poultry, except in case of sickness (Ut
uolatilia intus forisue nisi pro infirmitate nullo tempore
comedant).[144] The council of 817 admitted it for the great
feasts of Christmas and Easter for a period of eight days
each (Ut uolatilia in Natiuitate Domini et Pascha tantum
octo diebus si fuerit unde aut qui uoluerit comedant).[145] A later
capitulary reduced this span to four days.[146]

A second controversial issue taken up at Aachen concerned
the question whether St. Benedict, in barring the
flesh of quadrupeds from the monks' table, also eliminated
the use of fats extracted from these creatures. Since his own
monastery, Monte Cassino, lay in one of the richest olive-producing
regions of Italy, it is probable, as Semmler has
pointed out,[147] that this question did not even enter his
mind. North of the Alps, where olive oil was not available
in sufficient quantity to satisfy the needs of the monks'
kitchen, animal fats became a basic necessity.[148] Benedict
of Aniane, after initially barring its use in the kitchen of his
own monastery, eventually felt himself constrained to
rescind this order.[149] The synod of 816 adopted this more
moderate view and formally permitted the use of animal
fats for cooking, except on Fridays, the twenty days before
Christmas, and the period between Sunday Quinquagesima
and the feast of Easter.[150] This custom was universally
adopted, with the exception of Adalhard of Corbie,
who retained the position that fat from quadrupeds was
meat and therefore subject to St. Benedict's injunction.[151]

The Rule permitted each monk a hemina of wine per day,
and the synod of 816 expanded this allowance, so when
wine was not available in sufficient quantity, it could be
replaced by twice its measure in beer.[152]

The diet of the monk thus consisted of bread, a variety of
dishes made of pulse, fresh vegetables and fruit when in
season, a good measure of wine or beer, poultry at certain
periods of the year, every variety of fish, and of course the
entire gamut of dairy and poultry products such as milk,
cheeses, and eggs. The Consuetudines Sublacenses contains
a paragraph from which we may learn what, at the time of
its writing, was considered a typical monastic menu:

Apples, or any other fruit that is eaten raw, were divided
equally among the brothers by the cellarer and laid out on
the tables before the monks were seated.[154] Outside the
regular mealtime the eating of fruit or any other sort of
fresh vegetables was forbidden.[155]

MONKS' BEHAVIOR DURING THE MEAL

The monks' behavior at mealtime is described in a compilation
of monastic customs which was written toward the end
of the eighth century, and appears to have been held in such
esteem by Benedict of Aniane that he proposed to promulgate
it by attaching it to the capitulary of 817.[156]

As the hour of the meal approaches, upon completion of
the divine service, the monks wait in the choir, softly singing
psalms. At the first sound of the bell, they walk to the
refectory in order and, after having washed their hands,
salute the cross with their faces turned east. When the bell
rings again they kneel, say a verse, and recite the Lord's
Prayer. Then the prior blesses the monks, the brothers
take their seats at the table, each at his proper place, and
thereafter they remain in complete silence.

The boys are not seated separately, but are intermixed
with their elders, two at each table.[157] In Corbie the boys
took their meals standing opposite their teachers.[158] "If
anyone does not arrive before the verse, so that all may say
the verse and the prayers together and all at the same time
go to the table . . . he shall be corrected once and a second
time for this. If he still do not amend, he shall not be
allowed to share the common meal; but let him be separated
from the company of the brethren and take his meal alone,
and be deprived of his allowance of wine, until he do penance
and amend."[159]

The food is served from the kitchen, beginning at the
lower end of the refectory, near the kitchen, where the
most recently admitted monks are seated and ending with
the abbot at the upper, eastern end of the hall. When the
bell rings a third time, the abbot blesses the bread and
breaks it, and the brothers, after blessing each other in
turn, begin to partake of their food. The lector ascends the
pulpit and commences his reading.

When the time comes to serve the wine, the cellarer
motions to the server, and immediately upon this signal the
junior brothers rise from their seats and fill the cups for
the monks.[160] In carrying out this task they lower their
heads, first to the Cross, then to the abbot, and finally in
a circle to all of the brothers, whereafter they return to
their seats.

If there is anything the brothers need as they eat and
drink they must supply it to one another, so that no one
shall have to ask for anything. Should need arise, nevertheless,
that something must be requested, it must be done
by a sign rather than by speech.[161] When all the food is
eaten, the reader stops his recitation, the brothers say a
verse, rise from the table—the left-hand choir first, the
right-hand choir next, and the abbot last—singing the
fiftieth psalm. They enter the church in this manner, "bow
to the Gloria," say the Lord's Prayer, and then proceed to
the chapter "silently, as befits the time."[162]

THE READER

The reader is appointed for the entire week and enters
upon his office on Sunday, after having received the blessing
of his brothers in the preceding service. Before he
ascends the pulpit he is given some bread and wine, and he
takes his full meal only after the monks have eaten, together
with the servers and kitcheners.[163] A chapter of the first
synod of Aachen amplifies this tradition by stipulating that
he should not receive anything else beyond what is granted
to him by the Rule.[164]

The lector's reading is supervised by the corrector, who
sits beside him on the pulpit. If need be, the latter rises,
looks into the book and corrects the Reader "gently"
(leniter).[165]

THE SERVERS

The Rule prescribes that no one be excused from service
in the kitchen and in the refectory unless he be engaged in
some more important task or is prevented by sickness.
However, if the community is large, the cellarer may be
relieved from this duty altogether.[166] In entering upon their
weekly duty on Sundays, immediately after Lauds, the
incoming servers, together with those whom they relieve,

[ILLUSTRATION]

226. POMPEII [after Billiard, 1931, 184. fig. 70]

Tavern sign of burnt clay showing the common Roman amphora used for
transport and storage of standardized quantities of wine.

[ILLUSTRATION]

227. NÎMES, MAISON CARRÉE. ROMAN DOLIUM

The largest extant Roman DOLIUM, displayed on the podium of the
Maison Carrée in Nîmes, near the Cella entrance. The height of the
person standing to the right is 74 inches, ca. 1.88m. (photo: Horn).

prostrate themselves before the brothers in the church and
ask for their prayers. An hour before the meal, all are
given, over and above their regular allowance, a drink and
some bread, "in order that at the meal time they may serve
their brethren without murmuring and undue hardship."[167]

The servers set the tables, bring in the food and take away
what is left. In cleaning the tables after the meal they brush
the crumbs into a canister with a broom made for that
purpose.[168] As they serve the food they must see to it that
those who eat are not in want of any food or drink, that the
brothers are not given less than the abbot, the juniors not
less than the seniors, except for the boys who receive a
smaller portion.[169] If they distribute more or less than is
right, or perform their tasks noisily, or if they neglect,
lose, spill, or break something, or create damage in any
other way, they must immediately ask for indulgence by
throwing themselves on the ground before the prior, holding
in their hand that which they have damaged, and telling
what has happened.[170] After the monks have eaten, the
servers take their own meal "not at one table but each in
his proper place," and while they eat "the same texts that
were recited to the others, will be recited to them."[171]

At the end of their weekly term the outgoing servers
wash the towels the brethren use for drying their hands and
restore the vessels to the cellarer "clean and sound." Then
the cellarer delivers them to the monk whom he has placed
in charge of the incoming servers "in order that he may
know what he is giving out and what receiving back."[172]
Then together the outgoing and the incoming servers wash
the feet of the whole community.[173]

WHO IS ADMITTED BESIDE THE MONKS

The question of who was to be admitted to the refectory
was never settled to everybody's satisfaction. In order to
protect the life of the monks from being contaminated
by association with visitors from the outside world, St.
Benedict provided the abbot with his own kitchen, "so
that the brethren may not be disturbed when guests—
who are never lacking in a monastery—arrive at irregular
hours."[174] This rule had always been a source of annoyance
to reform-eager souls, and the resulting uncertainties are
reflected in conflicting legislation. Chapter 14 of the synod
of 817 rules "that layman should not be conducted into the
refectory for the sake of eating and drinking" (Ut laici in
refectorium causa manducandi uel bibendi non ducantur),[175]
but a directive which appears to have been issued not before
818-819 eased this directive by admitting ecclesiastics
of superior rank, and noblemen.[176] Some abbots, such as
Adalhard of Corbie, went even further by making this
privilege available to paupers and secular canons of lower
ranks.[177] Other monasteries retained the more restrictive
customs of earlier periods, as is suggested by a passage in
Ekkehard's Casus sancti Galli, which reads:

The monastery of St. Gall, as I come to speak about this place, has
always been held in such high veneration from the oldest memory
of our fathers, that no one, not even the most powerful canon or

[ILLUSTRATION]

227.X BOǦAZKÖY, ANKARA, TURKEY, TEMPLE 1

This large pithos lies in the ground of a storeroom of the great Hittite temple built
between 1275 and 1220 B.C. by the kings Hattusli III and Tudhalya IV [photo: Horn]

[ILLUSTRATION]

228. BOSCOREALE, CAMPAGNA, ITALY

[after Billiard, 1931, 476, fig. 163]

Cave of a Roman wine merchant with large DOLIA buried in sand, a method used by
the Hittites as early as the mid-second millennium B.C.

[ILLUSTRATION]

229.B MAINZ. MITTELRHEINISCHES LANDESMUSEUM

Remains of a Roman barrel found in a bog, filled with the remains of fillets of fish
[photo courtesy Mittelrheinisches Landesmuseum].

[ILLUSTRATION]

229.A HAITHABU. SCHLESWIG-HOLLSTEIN, GERMANY

Wine barrel re-used in an upright position as a well lining [photo courtesy
Schleswig-Hollsteinisches Landesmuseum für Vor-und Frühgeschichte].

layman of the secular world, was permitted to enter the monks'
enclosure or even to glance into it.[178]

Infractions of this rule are carefully recorded by Ekkehard,
such as the time when King Conrad I surprised the monks
of St. Gall, on December 26 of the year 911, by entering
the refectory in the company of two bishops, with the word
"With us you shall have to share your meal whether you
wish or not!" and at the same time instructing Abbot
Salomon not to join the party in the refectory but to
preside over the table of the king's retainers in the House
for Distinguished Guests—a complete reversal of the roles
of abbot and emperor.

The entry of laymen into the refectory could be legalized,
however, by the act of confraternization, often performed
on such occasions, and on the day after Conrad's first unauthorized
entry into the refectory at St. Gall he petitioned
to be voted in confraternity by the monks. This was granted
him, and at the noon meal of the same day he again shared
their company, during which the monks were treated to
delicacies not permitted on their regular diet. "No one
complained that this or that was contrary to custom,"
concludes Ekkehard's account of this unusual event, "although
nothing like this had ever been heard or seen before,
or even experienced by a monk in this house."[179]