Sleeping in the Jakes: Civilized Life in the Middle Ages.

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!

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[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.