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The abbot as host
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Discriminating hosts
According to one of the Cistercians’ harshest critics, Walter Map,
the White Monks were selective hosts who were welcoming to each other,
to the powerful and also those whom they intended to fleece, but were less
hospitable to members of the secular clergy, such as Map. He complained
.that no members of the secular clergy were invited or dragged in after
Vespers, or even permitted to enter the hostelry for refreshments after
a long day. Consequently, the secular clergy only visited these houses
as a last resort, when no other door was open and there was no other purse
to provide for them.
[Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium - Courtier's Trifles (1983), p. 86. ]
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By the end of the twelfth century some
Cistercian abbots dined in a separate chamber with select guests,
and not in the guest hall with the corpus of visitors. Ralph of Coggeshalle describes
how three Templars who visited his abbey were initially shown to
the guesthall. However, when the lay-brother who
officiated there noted their noble appearance, he made arrangements
for these visitors
to be refreshed in the abbot’s private chambers. Interestingly,
the Templars refused, and replied that it was not their custom
to dine in private chambers, but in the hall with guests.(11) Gerald
of Wales’ rather
satirical, and no doubt embellished, account of a cleric who visited
a Cistercian house on the Welsh border also suggests that this
development was commonplace. According to Gerald, this cleric was
welcomed upon his
arrival and shown to the common hall of guests, but once it was
discovered that he was a member of the bishop’s household and thus
the chief official of the diocese, the visitor was swiftly redirected
to the inner
houses and the infirmary, where he was promptly served a slap up meal.(12)
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