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The cloister
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Paradise is among us here in spiritual exercise,
simple prayer and holy meditation.(1)
The cloister stood at the centre
of the precinct, where it was sheltered from noise and disruption.
The cloister at Rievaulx was
c. 42sq. m (140 ft) and dates from William’s abbacy (1132-1145).
It was made up of a large central area surrounded by an open arcade;
five of the original twelfth-century cloister arcades survive and
have been re-erected in the NW corner of the cloister. Aelred’s
treatise on friendship, c. 1160, suggests that this central area
was not originally grassed, for he mentions that at this time there
were flowers and fruit trees:
The day before yesterday, as I was
walking the round of the
cloister of the monastery, the brethren were sitting around
forming, as it were, a most loving crown. In the midst, as it
were, of the delights of paradise with the leaves, flowers and
fruits of each single tree I marvelled.(2)
A vision in the cloister
On
one occasion when Waldef,
abbot of Melrose, visited his
mother-house of Rievaulx, he arrived when the brethren were having their
afternoon siesta and took a seat in the
cloister. As Waldef was unable to sleep, he began to recite the psalms
and as he did so had a vision in which a bright angelic figure appeared
to him. This was William,
the first abbot of Rievaulx, who led a band of white-robed men, who were
monks and lay-brothers of
the Order. William explained that the gems shining in his crown and vestments
represented
the souls he had acquired for God and revealed that he visited Rievaulx
three times a year since it was there that he (and the others) had earned
eternal rest.
[Jocelin of Furness, Life of Waldef, p. 144 ].
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Access to the cloister
was restricted and the monks observed silence here, which meant
that this was well suited to meditation
and prayer.
The south, east and
west cloister walkways essentially functioned as passageways, while the north
alley was used extensively by the monks who sat here on stone benches to
read, meditate and perhaps also to copy manuscripts.
In the later
Middle Ages there
were carrels or desks here for the monks.(3) The
novice-master might instruct novices here
and the whole community gathered in the north cloister walk for the daily
Collation reading.(4) The cloister would
have been warm and bright in the summer,
but the monks would have found it rather bleak during the chilly winter
months. When it was extremely cold they were permitted to read in the chapter-house,
instead.
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