University of Virginia Library

VI.4.1

CONTINUITY WITH
THE BENEDICTINE ARRANGEMENT

The tendency in the earliest Cistercian monasteries was
to follow the Benedictine cloister layout, changing it as
little as possible, and it is only later in adapting to new
needs that the layout is altered.

The Cistercians did not originate as a movement in
opposition to that of the Benedictines, not even in opposition
to their own house.[133] The group of twenty that left
Molesme in 1098 wished only to observe more strictly the
Rule of St. Benedict for themselves and naturally retained
the traditional cloister layout that they had known as
Benedictine monks.

Accordingly, the location of officinae in the Cistercian
cloister remains essentially that developed by the Benedictines
in the eleventh century. Article 55 of the Ecclesiastica
Officia of the Consuetudines Cistercienses of 1134, which
mentions the areas that should be sprinkled with holy
water each Sunday, sets forth the following order: church,
chapter house, inner parlor (auditorium), dormitory, warming
room, refectory, kitchen, and cellar.[134] Except for the
omission of the storehouse (camera), this list is the same
as that given in the Farfa description of the conventual
buildings at Cluny.

The typical Cistercian east range as seen for example on
the plan of Kirkstall Abbey, West Riding, (fig. 519), like
the Cluniac plan of Castle Acre Priory (fig. 518), includes
from north to south on the ground floor a chapter house,
parlor (auditorium), stairs to the dormitory, passage to the
infirmary, and an additional room on the south end which
may have served as a supply room, as it did at Cluny, or as
the novitiate.[135] As in the Benedictine plan, the dormitory
forms the second story of the east range and opens into the
latrine, which is at right angles to its south end.

Two features commonly appearing in the Cistercian east
range which also appeared on the Plan of St. Gall and which
may have appeared in Benedictine planning, are direct
communication from the dormitory to the church by night
stairs and the location of the sacristy near the south transept.

The Cistercian abbot, like the eleventh-century Benedictine
abbot, was at first required to sleep in the monks'
dormitory.[136] Only later in the thirteenth century did he have
a house of his own. This was usually located between the
monks' cloister and the infirmary to the east, as at Kirkstall
(fig. 519) and Fountains (fig. 520) and so was further removed
from the outside world than was the Benedictine
abbot's house.

The location of the peripheral buildings also tends to
perpetuate the Benedictine arrangement. In the 1708 plan
of Clairvaux, for example, the infirmary is still to the east
of the cloister, the guest houses and stables to the northwest,
and the mills and workshops to the south.[137] Whenever
possible, the traditional arrangements first set forth on the
Plan of St. Gall still appear. Only as a response to new needs
is the layout changed.