NORMAN DRAWING OF THE PRIORY OF CHRIST CHURCH, CANTERBURY, WITH ITS SYSTEM OF WATERWORKS. |
In this Series:
- A Brief History of the Castle Jakes.
- Sleeping in the Jakes: Civilized Life in the Middle Ages.
The reputation of medieval monasteries has not always been a
favorable one. Even in the Middle Ages
itself, stories were everywhere of such holy places given over to the lusts of
the body before the fear of God. When
Henry VIII wished to dissolve the monasteries in England those stories were
expanded into the popular lurid chronicle of the day providing a pretext for
his actions.
That those tales were often exaggerations by persons jealous
of the power of the Catholic Church should also be a commonplace but it is not. When one has his opponent down is
not the time to calm one’s emotions in an attempt to determine what is actually
just to do.
Especially in Protestant regions, the Catholic Church is the
embodiment on earth of Satan. Its
history is declared to be one of lust, greed, viciousness, paganism, reactionary
brutality and much more. To point out
that the Catholic Church was not the enemy of true morals, science and progress,
but imperfectly the opposite, is a solecism even now after centuries.
In 1067, the year after the Norman’s conquered England, most
of the Saxon cathedral and grounds at Canterbury burned to ashes or ruins. The year, then, marks a double transition
from the Saxon to the Norman world.
William I appointed the famous Norman Bishop Lanfranc (previously Abbot
of St. Étienne, in Caen) to what was left of the charred archiepiscopal seat.
Lanfranc was a famously conservative cleric. With William I, he was better known, still,
as the builder of most of the new construction of monasteries and churches in
his Norman domains. He began
rebuilding the Cathedral and Monastery of Christ Church along traditional Norman
Benedictine lines using the most powerful tools known at the time: Christian
self-control, a sense of handing off God’s designs (much grander than any
single lifetime) from generation to generation, and the faith to postpone
reward (as necessary) for hard work until after death. Many of the most up-to-date details of the
monastery were closely patterned on the Abby of St. Étienne the construction of which he had managed himself.
Some 75 years later, Archbishop Theobald of Bec (also a
Norman import) inherited the responsibility for a much more up-to-date and much
wealthier Cathedral and monastery. It
was now his turn to work hard to bring value to God’s corporation[1].
As part of that, it was his responsibility to know the most
recent technological advances of the moment and to assess their application to
the monastery. One particular addition to
the civilized amenities of the monastery is today’s topic.
At some time between 1148 and 1161, Theobald acquired, as de facto Abbot of Christ Church, the “concessisse
in perpetuum”[2] to
the waters of a small lake some three quarters of a mile from the
monastery. The finest Norman engineers
were brought in and plans drawn to pipe the water from the lake in lead pipes
to the monastery grounds.
The ground plan for running the water through the
monastery shows a supreme grasp of the latest technology available at the time. That technology was, after all, the product
almost entirely of Catholic building projects.
Without the organized church most of Europe would still have been gathering
in thatched buildings entirely without amenities and ignorant of public hygiene.
The water enters the grounds in its purest state into a
cistern in the Infirmary Cloister between Infirmary and the Great Dormitory
then to a cistern in the Great Cloister.
From these cisterns the water is dispersed for various uses throughout
the grounds. Waste water is poured into drainage
sinks in the Christ Church and the Great Cloister and begins its course back toward
the outside world. Infirmary wastewater drains
are not explicitly shown on copies from period drawings but other historical
descriptions make it clear that it had multiple means of drainage.
Now that waste water has passed through all of the other
buildings on the site, it is passed beneath the kitchens and a building labeled
the “Third Dormitory”. Anyone who has
read firsthand accounts of medieval kitchens will know why it was all but last
in line to drain into wastewater system.
The smell of kitchen waste was nauseatingly powerful much of the time.[3] To run it under any other building would have
made it uninhabitable.
But why before the “Third Dormitory”? And why was
the Third Dormitory built two stories up on stone column-and-arch
stilts?
Well, another name for the Third Dormitory was the Necessarium. The necessary. A.k.a. (in modern times) The Jakes. The last stop of the wastewater course was along
the length of a 50+ seat public latrine.
(So long, in fact, that it was commonly called a ”hall”.) While the rest of England — including the
nobility — being proper Christians, were defecating in any corner that
might provide some tiny bit of privacy (or not), and down the discolored sides
of castles walls, the monks of Christ Church were sitting on sedilia
musing upon how to get that one verse of this week’s plain chant in the chapel
just right. It is true, however, at
different points in the monastery’s history, one or more might be thinking instead
of the hot little number called “the village grocer’s daughter” (or son) or the
new prime beef he’d seen delivered that day.
In a phrase, some of them were living like it was 1999.
But why label it the “Third Dormitory,” it has been asked? (By myself at first, as well.) I suspect that the great antiquarian
architect Robert Willis was right when he mused upon the duties of the
Circa, or watchman, namely, to examine all the sedilia
at night, lest any monk should be asleep there, in which case he is enjoined
not to disturb the sleeper rudely by touching him, but quietly to make some
little noise or stir that may rouse him.[4]
Sleeping in the Jakes. The result of eating filet mignon, drinking
gallons of wine and lying with the village daughters (…or sons …or goats), one
can only presume. Those lustful,
uncivilized monsters!
[1] a.k.a.
the Body of Christ.
[2] concession
in perpetuity. See Willis, Rev.
Robert. Architectural History of the
Conventual Buildings of the Monastery of Christ Church (1869). Appendix II. 181. “Sciatis
nos dedisse et concessisse in perpetuum pro salute nostra et pro animabus
omnium predecessorum nostrorum Dilectis filiis nostris priori et conventui ecclesie
nostre in elemosinam et perpetuam possessionem Paulo…” etc.
[3]
This and fire danger are why royal chambers were always located as far away
from the palace kitchens as could be managed.
[4]
Willis, Rev. Robert. Architectural
History of the Conventual Buildings of the Monastery of Christ Church (1869). 88. Citing
Lanfranc's ' Constitutions,' c. 1072; Wilkins' 'Concilia' t. 1, pp. 347, 348. "Circumitores
monasterii, quos alio nomine 'Circas'… debet circumire lectos omnium, et omnia
sedilia in necessariis, solicite considerans ne forte aliquis frater dormiens
ibi remanserit, dehinc revertatur in monasterium," . . . . " vero cum dormientea
invenerit
non eos quocunque modo tangat, sed modeste atque ordinate Bonitum tantummodo,
quo excitentur, faciat."
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
- A Thousand Years of English Terms. June 2, 2019. ‘One person did not say to another, “Meet you at three o’clock”. There was no clock to be o’. But the church bell rang the hour of Nones and you arranged to meet “upon the Nones bell”.’
- History of the Medieval Fork… or Lack Thereof. March 28, 2019. “The Italian and also most strangers that are commorant in Italy, doe alwaies at their meales use a little forke, when they cut their meate.”
- Dietary Rules for Barnacles: Innocent III to Gordon Ramsey. March 4, 2019. “The Barnacle was a marvel of God, a confusion to those in authority in such matters. Their people turned to them for clarification.”
- Shakespeare’s Barnacles. March 3, 2016. “Prospero will wake, he fears, before they can murder him, and will cast a spell on them.”
- The King's Esnecce. January 13, 2019. “It comes as no surprise, then, that when Maud’s son, Henry Plantagenet, Count or Duke of most of the western territories of France, and, by terms of the treaty, heir to Stephen, next rose to the throne as Henry II, he was quick to arrange for the safest possible means of transit across the channel.”
- Check out the Medieval Topics Article Index for many more articles about this fascinating time.
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