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Cloister

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This article is about an architectural feature. For other uses, seeCloister (disambiguation)andThe Cloisters (disambiguation)

Acloister(fromLatinclaustrum,"enclosure" ) is a covered walk, open gallery, or openarcaderunning along the walls of buildings and forming aquadrangleor garth. The attachment of a cloister to acathedralor church, commonly against a warm southern flank,[1]usually indicates that it is (or once was) part of amonasticfoundation, "forming a continuous and solid architectural barrier... that effectively separates the world of themonksfrom that of theserfsand workmen, whose lives and works went forward outside and around the cloister. "[1]

The cloister atSalisbury Cathedral,England

Cloistered (or claustral) life is also another name for the monastic life of amonkornun.The English termenclosureis used in contemporaryCatholicchurch law translations[2]to mean cloistered, and some form of the Latin parent word "claustrum" is frequently used as ametonymicname formonasteryin languages such as German.[3]Cloistered clergyrefers to monastic orders that strictly separate themselves from the affairs of the external world.

History of the cloister

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The Cloisters atGloucester Cathedral,UK

The early medieval cloister had several antecedents: theperistylecourt of the Greco-Romandomus,theatriumand its expanded version that served as forecourt to early Christianbasilicas,and certain semi-galleried courts attached to the flanks of early Syrian churches.[4]Walter Hornsuggests that the earliestcoenobiticcommunities, which were established in Egypt bySaint Pachomiusc. AD 320,did not result in cloister construction, as there were no lay serfs attached to the community of monks, and thus no need for separation within the walled community.[5]

Horn finds the earliest prototypical cloisters in some exceptional[6]late fifth-century monastic churches in southern Syria, such as the Convent of SaintsSergius and Bacchus,at Umm-is-Surab (AD 489), and thecolonnadedforecourt of the convent of Id-Dêr,[7]but nothing similar appeared in the semi-eremitic Irish monasteries' clusteredroundhousesnor in the earliestBenedictine collective communitiesof the West.[5]

In the time ofCharlemagne(r. 768–814) the requirements of a separate monastic community within an extended and scatteredmanorial estateled to the development of a "monastery within a monastery" in the form of the locked cloister, an architectural solution allowing the monks to perform their sacred tasks apart from the distractions of laymen and servants.[8]Horn offers as early examples Abbot Gundeland's"Altenmünster" of Lorsch abbey(765–774), as revealed in the excavations by Frederich Behn.[9]Lorsch was adapted without substantial alteration from a Frankish nobleman'svilla rustica,in a tradition unbroken from late Roman times.[10]

Another early cloister, in theabbey of Saint-Riquier(790–799), took a triangular shape, with chapels at the corners, in conscious representation of theTrinity.[11]A square cloister sited against the flank of the abbey church was built atInden(816) and theabbey of St. Wandrille at Fontenelle(823–833). AtFulda,a new cloister (819) was sited to the liturgical west of the church "in the Roman manner"[12]familiar from the forecourt ofOld St. Peter's Basilicabecause it would be closer to the relics. More recently,John D. Rockefeller Jr.commissioned the construction ofThe Cloistersmuseum and gardens in medieval style inManhattanin 1930–1938.

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See also

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Notes

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  1. ^abHorn 1973,p. 13.
  2. ^"The Code of Canon Law, Canon 667 ff. English translation copyright 1983 The Canon Law Society Trust".Archived fromthe originalon 19 June 2006.Retrieved17 June2006.
  3. ^Cf. GermanKloster.
  4. ^Horn 1973 gives these sources.
  5. ^abHorn 1973,pp. 39–40.
  6. ^The normal Syrian monastery plan was an open one, Horn observes.
  7. ^Horn 1973, plans, figs 9 and 10
  8. ^Horn pp 40ff.
  9. ^When Lorsch was rebuilt on a neighboring site by Abbot Richbold (784–804) the cloister was made a perfect square, against the south flank of the new church, precisely as in the plan of the 8th-centuryAbbey of Saint Gall(Horn 1973:44, figs 43ab, 45).
  10. ^When Lorsch was rebuilt on a neighboring site by Abbot Richbold (784–804) the cloister was made a perfect square, against the south flank of the new church, precisely as in the plan of the 8th-centuryAbbey of Saint Gall(Horn 1973:44, figs 43ab, 45).
  11. ^Horn 1973:43 and fig 42ab.
  12. ^Vita Eigili,the life of Abbot Eigil.

References

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  • Coomans, Thomas (2018).Life Inside the Cloister. Understanding Monastic Architecture: Tradition, Reformation, Adaptive Reuse.Leuven University Press.ISBN9789462701434.
  • Horn, Walter (1973). "On the Origins of the Medieval Cloister".Gesta.2(1/2):13–52.doi:10.2307/766633.JSTOR766633.S2CID192563869.
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