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III.2.5

KITCHENS AND BATHHOUSES

Because of the detached location of their quarters, their
special diet, and their prerogative to take baths whenever
their condition required, the novices and the sick were
provided with their own kitchens and bathhouses. These lie
west of the Novitiate and the Infirmary, on either side of
the eastern paradise of the Church. They consist of two
oblong houses (22½ × 45 feet),[290] each internally divided
into two equal halves, one containing the "kitchen" (coquina
eorundē), the other, "the bath" ([balnea]toriu, balneatorum
domus). The kitchens have a square stove, the baths a
central fire place, four corner tubs for bathing, and three
short wall benches (fig. 237). The Infirmary kitchen, besides
attending to the needs of sick monks, also provides the
food for the brothers who are being bled in the adjacent
House for Bloodletting (coqina eorunde & sanguine minuentium).

A thirteenth-century manuscript of the Chirurgia of
Roger of Salerno, contains an illumination of a medical
bath (fig. 238).[291] The patient, as the accompanying text
explains, is soaking in the tub in order to heal "a rib bent
inward"; the instructions for the physician are that he
"anoints his hands with honey, turpentine, or pitch, then
presses and relaxes them at the hurt place, continuing
until the rib is restored to its proper place.[292]