University of Virginia Library

ABBOT'S HOUSE

As at Cluny, so in the autonomous English Benedictine
houses: a change in customs was responsible for the disappearance
of a separate house for the abbot. But this issue
remained controversial, as it had been in the days of St.
Benedict of Aniane.[118] Like the Customs of Udalric, the
Constitutions of Lanfranc[119] reveal that the abbot slept in the
dormitory: "In the early morning no one shall dare to make
a sound as long as (the abbot) is in bed asleep."[120] Yet by
1150 all but a very few abbots in England had removed to


348

Page 348
quarters of their own.[121] Brakspear, in his survey of English
abbots' houses, discloses that by the thirteenth century the
abbot, as on the Plan of St. Gall, is once more provided
with a separate building, usually connected to the outer
parlor with guest houses next to it. This is the case at
Battle and Castle Acre (fig. 518).[122]

 
[118]

See I, 22.

[119]

See above, p. 343.

[120]

Knowles, 1951, 73, edits the Latin text. The Constitutions of
Lanfranc were of course influenced by the customs of Cluny, and
consequently may not be typical of the majority of autonomous English
Benedictine monasteries. "Quamdiu dormierit in lecto suo mane nullus
sonitum audeat facere.
"

[121]

Knowles, 1951, 73.

[122]

Brakspear, 1933, 140-42.