VI.3.2
TRADITION
Many autonomous Benedictine monasteries adopted the
customs of Cluny. Christchurch, Canterbury, for instance,
was built by Lanfranc, who was previously prior of the
Abbey of Bec in Normandy. The customs of Bec are true
to the earlier customs of Cluny which William of Volpiano
brought to Fécamp and other northern monasteries at the
beginning of the eleventh century. The monastic constitutions
which Lanfranc later wrote are similar to the customs
composed under Odilo between 1030 and 1048.[94]
There was
continual interaction between Cluny and the autonomous
English houses and in many cases Cluny must have transmitted
the reform ideas promulgated at Aachen.
Earlier ties, however, also connect the English monasteries
with the synods of Aachen. The monastic revival
begun by Dunstan in the second half of the tenth century
was based on the continental monastic tradition of Benedict
of Aniane.[95]
While in exile Dunstan took refuge in the monastery
of Blandium at Ghent in 954. Around 970 a synod
under Dunstan's guidance was called at Winchester to
establish a common way of life for English monasteries
under the patronage of King Edgar. The procedure and
provisions of the meeting consciously imitated those of the
synod at Aachen, directed by Benedict of Aniane in 817
under the auspices of Louis the Pious. In the presence of
monks from Fleury and Ghent the Regularis Concordia, a
code based on the Ordo Qualiter and the Rule for Canons
and Capitula of Aachen, was drawn up.[96]
About forty monasteries
were founded under this revival between 957 and
the Conquest, but no architectural remains seem to indicate
the arrangement of the conventual buildings before the last
phase of this revival during the reign of Edward the Confessor.
At this time both the style of Norman architecture
(exemplified by Westminster Abbey, consecrated in 1065)
as well as the typical institutions of Norman monasticism,
that clearly characterize post-Conquest England, were
already established.[97]
In the Post-Conquest English Benedictine monasteries
of the eleventh and twelfth century, the east range of the
cloister contains the dormitory; the south range, the refectory;
and the west range, the cellar, as on the Plan of St.
Gall and at Cluny II.
These relationships have become traditional and binding.
Whenever the site permitted in the few examples that
remain the peripheral houses and workshops were arranged
as they were on the Plan of St. Gall. The entrance to the
monastery is usually to the west of church and cloister. The
mill and bake house are adjacent to the kitchen, as on the
plan of the waterworks of Christchurch, Canterbury (Kent),
shown above in figure 52. The infirmary, its chapel and
cemetery are to the east of the cloister, as can be seen at
Christchurch and at Bardney Abbey, Lincolnshire, (fig.
516).
In some particulars the English plans reflect the arrangement
on the Plan of St. Gall even more closely than Cluny
II. In all of these monasteries the east range of the cloister
is aligned with the southern transept-arm and the cloister
forms a regular square. Whenever the location of the
twelfth century kitchen is known, as on the Canterbury
plan (fig. 52), it is isolated from the refectory and connected
with the south range by passageways, as it was on the
Plan of St. Gall; while at Cluny II it may have been part
of that range. As at St. Gall, there is only one kitchen;
Cluny had two.
Other aspects seem closer to the Plan of St. Gall, but
they are not well enough established to allow generalization.
In some English monasteries such as Thetford (fig. 517),
part of the undercroft of the dormitory may still have served
as the warming room, but it is considerably reduced
in area and pushed to the southern part of the range.
There is some indication that in later English monasteries
night stairs connected the dormitory with the southern
transept arm of the church, as it did on the Plan of St. Gall.
In Cluny (fig. 515) such a connection probably would not
have existed if the east range, as Conant assumes, was
severed from the transept. In Cistercian planning the night
stairs reappear in the place where they were indicated on
the Plan of St. Gall. Since the elements that Cistercian
planning have in common with the Plan of St. Gall could
only have been transmitted by later Benedictine monasteries,
they must have been more common in Benedictine
planning than present remains indicate.[98]
Our survey of English monastery plans also reveals that
the dimensions of the cloister square comply with the standards
set by the Plan of St. Gall and with the stipulation
made by Hildemar of Corbie (ca. 845) that a cloister yard
should never be less than 100 feet square.[99]
In the Benedictine
and Cluniac English monasteries the cloister yard, as a
rule, is not smaller than this, though it is sometimes larger.[100]
These basic similarities between the English monasteries
and the Plan of St. Gall remain constant wherever the
natural conditions of the site permit. When exceptions occur
they can be explained either by the topography or by restrictions
imposed by the architectural surroundings.[101]
In
England such irregularities are more common in Benedictine
than in Cistercian monasteries because the Benedictines
rarely had a virgin site on which to build and were
often settled near cities, while the Cistercians chose isolated
areas, a fact which may be primarily responsible for
what, in contrast to Cistercian conformism, appears to be
a lack of uniformity in Benedictine planning.
