6 



opposite to the church were residential — being living and sleeping-rooms, dining- 

 rooms, and kitchen ; while the remaining side — that to the west — was given up to 

 the lay brothers of the house, and in some cases also to guests. All these build- 

 ings were generally on the south or sunny side of the Church, but quietness and 

 good drainage were reckoned of prime importance. Accordingly they are found 

 on that side of the church which is farthest from the town and nearest to a good 

 stream of water — a branch of the river being often made to flow through the 

 great sewer of the house. Thus the monastic buildings are sometimes found on 

 the north side of the church, their plan being simply reversed, and of this Canter- 

 bury, Gloucester, and Tintern are well-known examples. 



The older Benedictine monasteries, which had reached their extreme de- 

 velopment in the 12th century, were chiefly built in the suburbs of towns, or in 

 places so convenient for business that towns soon grew up by their side. Outside 

 the cloister gate, to the west, these monks added vast ranges of buildings— barns, 

 stables, separate guest-houses, and almshouses for distributing the daily dole of 

 food to wandering poor. The infirmary was usually placed to the east, and out- 

 side the cloister pale. The abbots, who originally had their apartments close to 

 the living and sleeping rooms of the monks, built in later times grand lodges to 

 the west of the monastic buildings, where they could live in state and receive 

 visitors of distinction, as well as suiservise the increasing out-door business of the 

 house, while the daily supervision of the monks was left to the prior and sub- 

 prior. The importance of these houses became enormous ; many of their abbots 

 were, as such, peers of Parliament. The Abbeys of Westminster, Gloucester, 

 Tewkesbury, Malvern, Evesham, and Pershore, are well-known examples of the 

 older Benedictine monasteries. The Priory of Leominster was a cell of the 

 Benedictine Abbey of Reading. 



Meanwhile the religious concerns of the monks were liable to be neglected, 

 and discipline was often relaxed ; reformation was needed, and in due course it 

 came. About the end of the 11th century a small band of monks — one of whom 

 was Stephen Harding, an Englishman— retired into a wild and desolate forest in 

 Burgundy, and founded the Abbey of Citeaux, from which Tintern and Abbey 

 Dore, Fountains, Kirkstall, Netley, Buildwas, Melrose, and the long list of 

 Cistercian houses took their rise. An earlier reformation had been attempted at 

 Cluny in Burgundy in 912, but the subsequent reformation of the Cistercians was 

 far .more thorough and successful. Disgusted with the laxity of the older Bene- 

 dictines, they drew up new rules more in the spirit of St. Benedict, and an exam- 

 ination of them will show that the words— poverty, celibacy, and obedience, 

 convey but a faint notion of the discipline to which a Cistercian monk had to con- 

 form, even in the minutest details of every-day life. 



Their abbeys were always built in retired places, usually the narrow part of 

 some valley, a description which the site of Tintern precisely fits. The monks 

 were thus secluded from the great world, freed from constant visitors and mendi- 

 cants, and at liberty to devote themselves to their religious duties and the super- 



