The Monastic Cloister and its Gallo-Roman Roots.

The cloister, as with church architecture, drew upon Roman models, in this instance, the form being domestic in nature—thevilla rustica, as found in Carolingian farmhouses.  Its design was well suited to communal living and centered on a quadrangle and atrium.  In Cloisters of Europe (p 8), Faure & Mouilleron offer a succinct description of the monastic interpretation:

    Cloister: in the broadest sense, “cloister” refers to an entire monastery, a place where a Christian community lives in deliberate isolation … In a stricter sense, cloister is an architectural term referring to an enclosed courtyard formed by the walls of a church and its residential buildings, ringed by a covered colonnade that overlooks the central quadrangle.

Such residential buildings would include a Chapter house; armarium (book closet); kitchen; refectory; day-rooms; warming house; storerooms; parlors; scriptorium; dormitory, with night stairs leading directly into the church; etc.—all that was needed for the monks to carry out their highly regulated and disciplined lives. 

Western monasticism was Benedictine or Benedictine-like (reform movements ever returning to a stricter interpretation of St. Benedict’s original Rule), so it is not surprising that the cloister layout was reproduced wherever their communities spread. Faure & Mouilleron go on to tell us that:

    Cloisters appeared during the Carolingian period.  The plan of the abbey of Saint Gall (or Sankt Gallen) in Switzerland, built around 820, provides the earliest detailed illustration … Although hardly created from thin air—since it clearly perfected earlier architectural experiments—the Saint Gall plan represented the veritable birth of Benedictine cloisters. (p 13) 

 

Floor plan of a Cistercian Abbey.

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Cistercian adaptations and St. Bernard of Clairvaux. 

Returning to the early years, when the Cistercians founded their monastery in the marshes of Citeaux, their devout and ascetic lives won the admiration of Burgundy’s duke, Odo I.  Odo donated better land, nearby, and paid the expenses to complete their wooden abbey.  When Odo subsequently died in the Holy Lands, Abbot Stephen allowed for the duke to be buried at Cîteaux.  The ducal tomb remained the only building of stone for many years.

Abbot Stephen is credited with revitalizing the Order, which had been near ruin at the beginning of his abbacy due to its austere practices. (See “Those Amazing Cistercians,” TMC, Sep/Oct 2010.) In keeping with the Rule, he permitted the Order to receive donations of land, mills, rivers, etc., solely for its own use.  In addition, lay brothers were accepted into the Order (drawn from the peasantry and possessing wide ranging skills).  The lay brothers (conversi) provided much of the abbeys’ labor and were permitted to travel to the outlying farms and granges. This allowed the monks to remain enclosed in the monastery, as prescribed by the Rule.

The Order began to flourish, burgeoning their numbers and crowding their physical confines.  Soon, Abbot Stephen sent forth groups of twelve monks, each headed by an abbot, to found Cîteaux’s first four daughter houses:  La Ferté (1113); Pontigny (1114); Morimond (1115); and Clairvaux (1115) with Bernard as its abbot.  As previously, the buildings were raised in wood.  (This practice continued, even after a program for building in stone had been adopted.  It allowed for the site to be tested and relocated more easily, if need be, as at Cîteaux.) 

Abbot Stephen, however, displayed no urgency to build in stone.  Some scholars speculate that he was reluctant to do so, given the corrupting excesses that had crept into the Cluniac Order—itself a reform order that had grown rich and lax in its practices.  Their mother house, Cluny, possessed the largest and most impressive church of the day, built of stone.  Bernard wrote from Clairvaux of these excesses in his Apologia ad Guillelmum:

    O vanity of vanities, but more vain than foolish!  The walls of the church are ablaze with riches, while the poor go hungry; its stones are covered in gold and its children go naked; the money for feeding the poor is spent on embellishments to charm the eyes of the rich […]. What relation can there be between all this and the poor, the monks, the men of God? (Cistercian Abbeys, Leroux-Dhuys, p 40)

One would think by Bernard’s admonishment of Cluny that he would share Stephen’s hesitance to undertake an architectural project, or question how it might be in keeping with the Order’s spirit of poverty.  In truth, he was enthusiastic to do so. After Stephen’s death, Bernard became the driving force behind a building program.  He created strict and detailed rules governing Cistercian architecture, known as the Capitula.

    For Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercians, the priority was to build a monastery that would provide the monks with an environment suited to a strongly communal life.  Thus the program had to translate the Rule of St. Benedict into spatial terms …. (Leroux-Dhuys, p 39)

In keeping with the spirit of poverty—and, it might be said, in keeping with the Cistercians’ (and certainly Bernard’s) ‘puritanical’ sense of austerity—architecturally, all was to be stripped bare of embellishment and anything that might distract the eye.  Furnishings were severely limited and sculptures forbidden.  Only wooden crosses, iron candlesticks, and colorless glass in windows were permitted.  Nothing was to be superfluous.

The traditional Benedictine monastic form of church and cloister was preserved but modified to serve the two communities (choir monks and lay brothers), and to ensure that the activities of one would not disrupt the activities of the other.  For instance, the schema provided for two dormitories, one for the monks, with night stairs leading directly into the church; and one for the lay brothers’ with their door leading directly outside and near the gatehouse.  The layout also possessed a sociological aspect.  The choir monks (of nobility) and the conversi (of peasant stock) existed separately, having their own refectories, day rooms, dormitories, parlors, latrines, etc.  Only in the kitchen, might their paths meet—leastwise those who’d been assigned duty.  Even in the church, a screen separated the two groups—the monks’ choir being in the altar (apse) area, and the lay brothers’ choir being in the nave.  In addition, there were storerooms, scriptorium, armarium (book room) and, of course, the Chapter House where the monks would convene.  The infirmary stood separate from the cloisters and had its own herb (medicine) garden, distinct from the kitchen garden.

Bernard laid the first stone at Clairvaux in 1135.  At the time of his death, 351 abbeys had been built.  The Order spread rapidly and grew to 750.  Strikingly, all of their layouts are uniform and nearly identical.  Bernard’s rule, theCapitula, was followed with scrupulous care. 

…the General Chapter generally showed itself to be uncompromising.  In 1235, it reaffirmed that all constructions not conforming with the Rule and the statutes would be demolished.  (Levroux-Dhuys, 113)

Bernard’s program was repeated for centuries, from abbey to abbey, its hallmarks being ones of simplicity, durability, and quality in all its aspects.  The most perfectly preserved, and considered the “prototype” of Cistercian abbeys, is Fontenay, Bernard’s beloved daughter house.  Fontenay was actually the second Cistercian abbey begun in stone (1139), and the first completed.  Elegantly austere, it is considered one of the finest examples of the Romanesque style.

Several excellent videos and series of still photos of Fontenay can be found through the link that follows.  Details to watch for include:  simple pointed arches and tunnel vaulting in the church; a flat, squared off apse, typical of Cistercian architecture (discussed in next issue); windows with grisaille glass (clear glass with grayed design, permitted later, post-Bernard ); a single statue of the Virgin and Child (date unavailable, but the Cistercians had a special devotion to Mary, the Mother of Christ); night stairs, leading directly into the monks’ dormitory; wooden barrel vaulting in dormitory; groin vaulting and ribbed groin vaulting in Chapter House and monks’ day room ; the covered, colonnaded porch (claustram) overlooking the quadrangle and reminiscent of the villa rustica; the bell tower.  Also of note is the acreage enclosed within the monastery walls, which can be vast and include many types of granges (production sites), vineyards, orchards, mills, fountains, etc. 

Prior to the building of Clairvaux and Fontenay, experiments had begun with simple groin vaulting at the Benedictine monastery of St. Denis.  These would become ribbed and further refined, transitioning architecture from the heavier, darker Romanesque style to the Cistercians ‘Half-Gothic’ innovation, leading the way to soaring Gothic marvels, filled with light.  Look for “Those Inspiring Cistercians, Part II:  Vaulted and Exalted,” in the next issue of TMC.