Cloister
A cloister (or in the past cloistre , or clouastre ) is a court surrounded by walls and galleries established beside the churches cathedrals, collegial and monastic. As of the first times of Christianity, cloisters were high in the immediate vicinity of the churches. The shape of the cloisters in plan is generally that of a square. The Abbaye S had two cloisters: one close to the Western entry of the church, the other with the East behind the apse. The first gave access in the refectories, the dormitories, the chapter house, the Sacristie, it to chauffoir, the prisons ; it was the cloister of the monks in whom all could circulate. The second was particularly reserved for the abbot, to the dignitaries and to the copyists; more withdrawn, smaller than the first, it was built in the vicinity of the library, the infirmary and the cimetière.
The Cathédrale S had a whole a cloister joined with the one of the sides of the nave, either in north, or in the south; this one was surrounded by the dwellings of the canons who lived under a common rule. Often, the schools were high in the vicinity of the cloisters of the abbeys and the cathedrals.
As of the {{S|IX|E}}, the synods had dealt with the chapter closure of the cathedrals. It is necessary, say these assemblies, that the bishops establish cloisters near the churches cathedrals, so that the clerks live according to the canonical rule, that the priests compel themselves there, do not forsake the church, and will not live elsewhere. It is known as also that a dormitory and a refectory must be built in the enclosure of these cloisters.
“The diversity of the residences and the offices in the cloister, known as Guillaume During, means the diversity of the residences and the rewards in the kingdom of heaven”. “Because in the house of my Father, there are many residences”, known as the Lord. And, in the moral direction, “the cloister represents the contemplation in which the heart is folded up on itself, and where it hides after being separate of the crowd of the carnal thoughts, and where it contemplates the only celestial goods. ”
In this cloister, there are four walls, which are the contempt of oneself, the contempt of the world, the love of next and the love of god. And each side has its line of columns… The base of all the columns is patience. In the cloister, the diversity of the residences, it is that of the virtues.
The most usual provision of the cloister of abbey is this one: a gallery leant with the one of the walls of the nave, with an entry under the porch and an entry in the vicinity of the one of the transepts; a gallery in the west to which come to join the buildings from abroad, or the stores and storerooms having entries on the outside; a gallery in the east giving entered the sacristy, the chapter house and the ecclesiastical services; the last gallery, opposed to that skirting the church, communicates to the dormitory and the refectory. The cloisters of the cathedrals were surrounded by houses being used as residence to the canons; sometimes, those ate jointly. The schools were leant with the gallery of the west close to the entry of the church. We must add here that usually, the cloisters of the abbeys are built southernmost side of the church, while those of the cathedrals are generally in north. The orientation of midday is of much most pleasant in our climate, and it is not surprising that the monks adopted it for their cloister. But as of one very moved back time, the bishops had naturally taken this situation like best, and the northern side of the cathedrals remained alone to build the cloisters.
The provisions of the cloisters of abbeys were hardly modified until the {{S|XVI|E}}; while the cloisters of the cathedrals, on the contrary, underwent notable changes, in consequence of the uses of the chapters more variable than those of the regular monks. One continued to indicate under the denomination of cloister of the cathedrals, the clusters of construction which did not have anything any more, as a whole or their details, of the provisions which we indicated to the beginning of this article. Thus, for example, the cloister of Notre-Dame de Paris, the time of Louis the Large, was composed of canonic houses built in its enclosure, and several others with-outside. This prince, before going up on the throne, made cut down part of these houses located out of the cloister, but which enjoyed however the same franknesses as those from the interior; it repaired this wrong made to the chapter the day of sound mariage.
At the beginning of the {{S|XIV|E}}, the cloister of Notre-Dame de Paris, which extended, in the north and the east of the cathedral, to the edge of the Seine, contained thirty-seven houses. These houses were equipped with grounds and revenues, but they were burdened at the same time with many and very varied loads; also the canons sought the means of decreasing, as much as making could be, the extent of these loads by foreign benefit in their state. They sold wine in detail, opened even taverns, rented part of the buildings which theirs were affected; also the capitulary statutes remove these abuses expressly, which proves that they existed. They also defend with any canon to let spend the night in the claustral house “to no woman, nun or other, except for his/her mother, of her sister, her relationship to the third degree, or of a woman of high ranking which one can get rid of without scandal”. These statutes rise on several occasions, during the XIIIe and 14th centuries, against the abuses resulting from the presence of the women in the cloister of the canons. The cloister of Notre-Dame de Paris, like the majority of those of the large cathedrals, was thus rather an agglomeration of houses included/understood in a closed enclosure, that a cloister itself. However, we will see presently that the capitulary houses did not exclude the galleries from cloisters in certain churches cathedrals. The cloisters of cathedrals thus often preserved the aspect of a district having its particular enclosure, its streets and its places.
The general provisions of the cloisters of cathedrals or monasteries being known, we will deal only with the buildings to which this name particularly remained, i.e. covered galleries built in the vicinity of the churches. It is to be believed that the first cloisters were only gantries, in the kind of the ancient gantries, i.e. lean-to buildings in Charpente related to columns whose base rested on the ground. We vainly sought to discover at which time the so known provision of the Roman Impluvium was modified to adopt that which we see allowed in the oldest cloisters. There had to be a transition which escapes to us, fault of described monuments or frames still existing. Because it is a demarcation sliced well between the Romance impluvium and the Christian cloister of our regions, it is that, in the first, the lines of columns relate directly to the ground and that one can pass from the gallery in the courtyard between each between-colonnement; while, in the second, the piles or columns are always posed on a base, sideboard or continuous support which separate the gallery from the courtyard, and which is stopped only by rare cuts being used as exits. This provision and the little height of the columns characterizes the cloister in occident clearly, and make of it a particular monument which does not have any more a relationship with the courses surrounded by gantries of the Romans.
Source: Purple-the-Duke
| Random links: | Tachkent (province) | Technical or scientific Oscar | Tiasatré or the Judgment of Anubis | Route European 381 | Betic cordilleras |