Health Care for Monks 1 : the Setting

Monks had illnesses and grew old like all of us. The Rule of St Benedict (Ch.36) made clear provision : "For the  sick brethren a separate room must be provided..." and "the eating of meat  should be allowed to the sick who are in a weak condition..." Hence monasteries provided an Infirmary (sometimes called the  Farmery.)We will look at the usual layout, mode of operation and the kind of complaints and treatments provided for the patients. As usual I will refer to St Albans Abbey practice where possible. Health care for others will be considered in a later post.

The Infirmary has been described as a mini monastery within a monastery. They tended to be on the eastern side of the monastery because Greek writings had suggested this orientation would be more healthy than facing north or south with clear dry air freshened  by winds from the north or east. This was the theory anyway. The Infirmary was regarded as separate possibly because of the link  between illness and sin as well as for practical considerations of hygiene. 

Thetford Priory in Norfolk (above) is a good example. Infirmaries had their own dormitory (a Great Hall rather like the Refectory except lower in height)) for sleeping, own kitchen to provide different food and a chapel for the regular offices  (the seven Offices of the day)to be held. Infirmaries were most often sited to the southeast of the main cloister. 

 

An existing example can be seen at  Ourscamp in northern France and is now used as the chapel of a monastery of the Roman Catholic Congregation of the Servants of Jesus and Mary.

Former Infirmary building at Ourscamp, France

 Rows of beds would be set up inside and sometimes there was an altar at the east end. Sometimes there was a separate chapel. There would be a kitchen and dining room (miserichord) and a room to house the Infirmarer, who was in charge of the complex. There might even be a small cloister which would provide shelter when moving among the buildings and  could also be used for the patients to exercise.  Infirmaries often had to be extended or rebuilt to cope with demand or changing use.

The great Abbey of Cluny in Burgundy ended with a great Infirmary (the large hall in the foreground of the engraving  below) 165ft by 78 ft. There were 4 rooms each with 8 beds in cubicles, and a separate room for footwasking or bleeding.

 The Infirmary at  Bermondsey Abbey in south London had three stages of growth, all dependent on a large drain to the nearby Thames. The final great hall there was 28 metres by 16 metres with four small attached rooms. By the 15th century separate rooms were being created and this might involve the partitioning of the great hall. This happened at Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire with numerous small private rooms. Some had separate fireplaces. 

At Kirkstall in Yorkshire an extra floor was inserted over the aisles of the hall, like a mezzanine floor,  to provide more accommodation. The separate refectory for the sick inmates of the infirmary was increasingly used by all the monks on a rota basis and was the miserichord. 

The Infirmary  ( Farmery) Hall no 11 in plan below)at Lewes (Cluniac) had aisles and  a chapel with chancel (nos 13 and 14).

Lewes

St Albans had an Infirmary with chapel and cloister from at least the time of Paul de Caen (1077-93). This was rebuilt by Geoffrey de Gorham (1119-46) with Infirmary Hall and Chapel at the east end. Rebuilding work occurred under John de Marines and finally around 1425 by  John of Wheathampstead. Apparently if a monk could not fulfil all the monastic liturgical activity but were not sick enough for the Infirmary there was provision for him in a room called an oriel .Lack of archaeological excavation does not enable us to get a clear picture of what these buildings were like. We do know that separate chambers or cubicles were formed in the Great Hall in the 14th century.

The operation of the Infirmary was overseen by the Infirmarer, who was a monk. Until the 12th century this implied that he was some kind of medical practitioner. This changed and he was more likely to be a literary man, perhaps previously a Precentor. (organiser of the music and librarian). It seems as though at this time one major post qualified a monk for another. This reminds me of how ministers are shunted around in our British Government system. Chancellors become Foreign Ministers and so on. At Westminster John De Mordon became Infirmarer in 1357 after being precenter. The Infirmarer would have at least one assistant, probably a lay brother. 

We should beware of thinking that the Infirmary area was always separate and cut off. This may originally have been the case in the 11th century. It will likely have remained the quietest part of the monastery, but increasingly the space was under pressure not only for the sick, but for separate rooms for visitors, and older retired  monks. At Westminster a society wedding used their Infirmary in 1405 ; rooms were used by the Prince of Wales during a visit and Humphrey Duke of Gloucester may have used the Infirmary chapel as his own private chapel 1430-1.

                                                            Some sources

Bottomley, F. Abbey explorer’s guide (Otley, 1995)

Braun, H. English abbeys {London, 1971)

Clark, J.G. Benedictines in the Middle Ages (Woodridge, 2011)

Clark, J.G. and Preest, D. eds. Deeds of the Abbots of St Albans (Boydell Press, 2019)

Crossley, F.H. The English abbey 3^rd ed, (London,1949)

Evans, J. The Romanesque architecture of the Order of Cluny (Cambridge, 1938)

Freeman, M. St Albans, a history. (Lancaster, 2008)

Kerr, J. Life in the Medieval cloister (London, 2009)

Knowles, D. ReligiousOrders in England vol 1-3 (Cambridge, 2008)

Leroux-Dhuys, J-F.  Cistercian abbeys : history and architecture (Cologne, 1998)

McAleavey, T. Life in a Medieval abbey  (London, 1995)

Mountford, A. Health, sickness, medicine and the friars in the 13 

th and 14th centuries. (Abingdon, 2004)

Parry, A. ed. Rule of St Benedict (Leominster, 1990)

Rosewell, R The Medieval monastery (Oxford, 2011)

Williams, D.H. The Cistercians in the early Middle Ages (1998)

 

a