Diet Part 3 How they ate

Monastic meals were stylised and meant to be formal and ritualistic. We will investigate what monks ate and drank in other posts. Now let’s try to get a picture of how meals were organised. It is hard to generalise about conduct over many places and monastic traditions over a period as long as 11th to 16th century. However, apart from the Carthusians who ate alone, I believe a single pattern can be observed based on the Rule of St Benedict. I shall be working with this ideal and tracing some deviations which inevitably emerged whether Benedictine or Cistercian communities.

 Meals were taken in the main Frater (sometimes called Refectory). Monasteries were the only places during the Dark and Middle Ages which had a specific eating room. Separate dining rooms did not otherwise appear until the Renaissance villa in Italy. The monastic Frater  was usually situated in the main cloister and opposite the church. Generally large and often impressive architecturally, it was an important place. 

A surviving example is the former Frater of Worcester Cathedral Priory, now used as a hall for the King’s School. It is 120 long by 32 feet wide. 

Interior of King's School Hall, Worcester(from
Worcester Cathedral and Library Archive blog)

Exterior of King's School Hall, Worcester (from
Worcester Cathedral and Library  Archive blog)

The Frater at the great Yorkshire Cistercian Abbey at Rievaulx is 126 feet long and 80 feet high. 

Frater at Rievaulx today (above) and how it may have been
(English Heritage)

More often at ground level in Benedictine, in Cluniac and Cistercian houses there are examples of first floor level, possibly to emulate Christ’s upper room Last Supper.

There was a raised platform at the end opposite the entrance. Here would be the table for the presiding person and the senior members of the institution, plus sometimes guests. The other tables would be placed along the side walls. In one wall was a raised pulpit from which a member of the community would read during the meal. Near to the door to the cloister there would be cupboards for linen and napkins and spoons. The central area in the Frater was often left empty so that all monks around the edges could be seen. The main kitchen was often attached and communication took place through a hatch into the refectory or by a passage. Particularly in Cistercian houses, kitchens would be placed so that the lay brothers’ refectory could also be served from the same kitchen. The lay brothers (or conversi) had their own refectory and would also eat in silence but with no readings. 

 

Procession into dinner

Dinner was the main meal and usually followed High Mass and Sext in tthe Church. Monks would gather in the cloister and wash their hands in the lavatorium just outside the door to the Frater(usually a trough lined with lead with brass taps and drain pipes). At Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire you can see a series of blind arches with stone benches that would have housed lead-lined semi-circular basins each having a tap with running water for washing hands. Then monks would have dried their hands with towels from the towel cupboard in the outer wall of the nearby warming room. 

 

Lavatorium at Fountains (from Cistercians in Yorkshire Project)

They would collect spoons and napkins as they entered and take their places facing inwards at the tables around the wall, leaving space behind them for the servers to supply the food. A monk would likely have his own knife, which he would carry with him. Spoons were more rare and at Westminster they were given out at each meal and collected afterwards. Forks were unknown in British monasteries. Knives, spoons and hands would be used as needed.

 

Grace would be said and then the reading would begin soon after the presider sat down. Silence was expected. The only exception might be if there were guests the presider might speak to them. Usually a passage was read from the Bible (in Latin) eg the four Books of Kings, Job or the Books of Maccabees. None these sound like an aid to digestion....Otherwise it might be a part of the life of a Saint. The reading was to be done slowly but distinctly, repeating any really important passage. Monks had to be quiet during the reading. Courses would follow swiftly one after the other. A bell might be used to have food taken away. 

Refectory of Alcobaca Abbey in Portugal. Note the
amazing reading gallery on left. Closeup below.
From Motorhome Europe blog.

  The ideal monastic meal was like a ritual and we can detect the first instances of table           manners at the time.  However, it is hard to believe that meals were always quiet or               that the reader was audible, particularly as discipline was relaxed in the later Middle             Ages.

 

Convent of Christ, Tomar, Portugal.
Note table arrangement and pulpit

We can get a picture of what went on by the rules which have been recorded. Bear in mind that these rules were not universal.

•  Nuts were not to be cracked with teeth, but eased open with a knife. However if everyone had nuts they could go ahead and crack all together! 
• Monks were to eat their food calmly, cleanly, cheerfully. 
• They should not let their eyes wander. 
• They should not sit chin in hand or put hands across the face. 
• They should sit up straight and keep arms off the table. 
• No wiping of knife on table cloth before wiping it on bread. 
• No wiping of teeth on the tablecloth.

When Gerald of Wales, the famous historian and archdeacon of Brecon, visited Christchurch Canterbury in 1180 he has left us with a vivid description of what went on.

"all of them (sic monks) gesticulating with fingers, hands and arms, and whistling to one another in lieu of speaking, all extravagating in a manner more free and frivolous than was seemly....." I shall return to hand signals in a later post. This was in 1180 the golden monastic period. We can imagine what it may have been like in 1480...

 Generally food was blessed at the meal and leftovers could be given to other people - possibly lay brothers, or the poor who used to gather at the gate. Unblessed food went to dogs or pigs or other animals. After eating monks had to wash hands in the Lavatorium, waiting in the cloister until all had finished. They might then chant the Miserere (Ps 51) on the way to the Church and their next Office. Readers and servers then took their meal. 

Guests of less importance might eat in the lay brother’s refectory, if there was one. A marshal would guard against pilfering, unruly behaviour and items thrown on the floor. Trestle tables would likely be set up after the guests sat down and then removed later.

Our eating arrangements here in St Albans had the  Frater on the north side of the main cloister. I spent some time this summer trying to make out evidence of any outlines, because the unusually dry hot summer suggests the layout of the abbey. 

Imagine monks lining up for dinner

Cloister edge and Abbot's lodging off to the left
against the nave wall.

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