Dormitory
HOW THE MONKS ARE TO SLEEP
How the monks are to sleep is set forth in chapters 22 and
55 of the Rules of St. Benedict. According to these, each
monk must have his separate bed, assigned to him in
accordance with the date of his conversion. If possible, all
of the brethren should sleep in one room; but if their
number does not allow this, in groups of ten and twenty,
with seniors to supervise them. The young monks may not
sleep in a group among themselves, but interspersed with
their elders. A light must burn in the dormitory throughout
the night and the monks must sleep "clothed and girt with
girdles or cords," so that they can rise without delay when
the signal calls them to the work of God. They must not
sleep "with their knives at their sides lest they hurt themselves."
"When they rise for the work of God," St. Benedict
advises, "let them gently encourage one another, on account
of the excuses to which the sleepy are addicted."
[35]
In waking each other, as Hildemar informs us in more
detail, "the wise and older monk will arouse the brother
who sleeps next to him . . . but no junior monk should ever
arouse another junior, because of the temptation this may
offer for sin (
propter occasionem peccati); rather one or two
seniors, after having lit a candle, will walk through the
dormitory to wake the sleepy brothers; yet, in performing
this duty will never touch the brother but only a board of
his bed or something similar."
[36]
For bedding they are allowed: a mattress (matta), a
blanket (sagum), a coverlet (lena), and a pillow (capitale).
The possession of any personal property other than that
which is issued to all of the brothers[37]
is severely prohibited,
and in order to guard against infractions of this regulation
the beds are frequently inspected by the abbot.[38]
We must assume that the beds were provided with some
locker or storage space, in which the monks could keep the
duplicate set of clothing which the Rule permitted them
"to allow for a change at night and for the washing of these
garments."[39]
During the hours which are set aside for sleeping,
whether in the day or at night, silence is vigorously enforced
in the dormitory;[40]
but on certain specified periods
of the daily cycle, such as when the monks return from
their chapter readings, they may engage in conversation, in
groups of two or three or more.[41]
Even during the midday
rest in the summer, conversation is permitted, provided
that it does not "injure the peace of those who sit and read
in bed." Should there be any need for sustained talk, the
monks must go outside (i.e., to the cloister walk) and
conduct their business there.[42]
LAYOUT OF THE BEDS
The layout of the beds in the Monks' Dormitory is complex
and ingenious. We have already discussed the manner
in which it was designed in our analysis of the scale and
construction methods used in designing the Plan.[43]
The
number 77 is not likely to be an accident.[44]
Yet I have been
able to find only one instance where the number of monks
was confined to this figure.[45]
The Monk's Dormitory, like the two other principal
buildings of the cloister, the Refectory and the Cellar, has
no internal architectural wall partitions whatsoever, and for
that reason must be thought of as a unitary space, open from
end to end. This should not be interpreted to mean, however,
that the beds were in full and open view of everyone
throughout the entire length and width of the building.
They must have been separated from one another by
wooden panels sufficiently high and long to protect the
monks from interfering with one another. The Custom of
Subiaco stipulates "that there be wooden partitions between
bed and bed, so that the brothers may not see each
other when they rest or read in their beds, and overhead
they must be covered [with canopies] because of the dust
and the cold." The same custom also requires "that these
spaces be so arranged, as to be provided with a window
admitting daylight for reading and writing as well as a
small table and a chair and whatever else is necessary for
that purpose."
[46]
The Custom of Subiaco is a relatively late source[47]
and
already reflects a relaxation of the Rule of St. Benedict in
favor of greater privacy—a development in the further
course of which the dormitory ended up by being subdivided
internally into a sequence of individual cubicles
ranged along the walls of the building, with a passage left
in the middle, each cubicle forming a separate enclosure
fitted, besides the bed, with a chair and a desk beneath a
window. This arrangement, so well known from the dorter
of Durham Cathedral (built by Bishop Skirlaw in 13981404)[48]
was clearly not in the mind of the churchmen who
ruled on the details of the layout of the Monks' Dormitory
on the Plan of St. Gall. Yet even here we might be justified
in counting on at least a rudimentary system of partition
walls between the beds—if not for moral protection, for
purely practical reasons: since the brothers were permitted
to read in bed during their afternoon rest period, they were
in need of at least a headboard against which to lean.
FEARS OF THE VIGILANT ABBOT
The eternal fear of the vigilant abbot was, of course, the
pollution of monastic life by what St. Benedict designated
with his distinctive discretion simply as impropriety
(improbitas),[49]
but to which others before and after him
referred with less restraint as "that habit which is contrary
to nature" (usus qui est contra naturam) perpetrated by
men, who oblivious of their own sex turn nature into
iniquity "by committing shameless acts with other men
(masculi in masculos turpitudinem operantes),[50]
or "that
most wicked crime . . . detestable to God" (istud scelus
valde nefandissimum . . . quae valde detestabile est Deo).[51]
The crime was common enough to come to the attention of
Charlemagne, who dealt with it in a vigorous act of public
legislation, incorporated in a general capitulary for his Missi
issued in 802.[52]
The monk Hildemar, writing in 845, devoted several
pages to this precarious subject and discussed in detail the
precautions an abbot must take to guard against this
danger. The abbot, he tells us, must watch not only over
the boys and adolescents, but also over those who enter the
monastery at a more advanced age. To each group of ten
boys there must be assigned three or four seniors, or
masters, so that no one among them is ever without supervision.
After the late evening service, Compline, "the boys
must leave the choir, and their masters, with a light in
hand, will take them to every altar of the oratory to pray a
little, one master walking in front, one in the middle, and
the third behind" (unus magister ante, alter magister vadat
in medio, et tertius magister retro); "then whoever wants to
go to the privy, should go perform the necessities of
nature with a light, and their master with them" (cum
lumine et magister eorum cum illis).[53]
If a boy finds himself
compelled to respond to this call during the night, "he
must waken his master, who will light a lamp and take him
to the privy, and with the light burning, bring him back
to bed."
[54]
Even the dreamlife of the monks and its sexual
connotations are subject to supervision. Depending on the
varying degree of sleep or consciousness, the employment
of the senses of touch and vision, or the extent of deliberate
procrastination, the offense must be atoned for by the
recitation of psalms, five, ten, or fifteen respectively, and
if the indulgence was committed with no restraint, by the
reading of the entire psalter.
[55]
ABSENCE OF STAIRS
The author of the Plan of St. Gall did not consider it a
matter of vital importance to express himself in great detail
about the stairs which connected the Dormitory with the
Church, the cloister, and the privy. He made it absolutely
clear, however, where such connections should be established.
There is no doubt that the door that leads from the
Dormitory to the southern transept arm of the Church
must have opened onto a flight of stairs by which the
monks descended into the Church for their nocturnal services.
A direct ascent to the dormitory a parte ecclesiae in
the Abbey of St. Gall is mentioned in Ekkehart's Casus
sancti Galli.[56]
Flights of night stairs of precisely this type
survive in an excellent state of preservation in the transepts
of the Cistercian abbey churches of Fontenay and Silvacane,
both from about 1150, and the Benedictine abbey
church of Hexham (fig. 101), from about 1200-1225.[57]
The
area in the middle of the Dormitory left unobstructed by
beds might have been meant to serve as landing for an inner
stair connecting Dormitory with Warming Room. This
same stair could also have been used for daytime access
from ground level to Privy, which to judge by numerous
later parallels must have been level with the Dormitory.
