What can you discern about the organization, plan and function of the monastery of Cluny from this document? Can you estimate the number of people living or visiting the monastery from this document? Why is a contemporary (written during that time period) detailed description such as this valuable to our understanding of the monastery at Cluny?
(Please consider the entire short Document.)
A Brief Essay Response should consist of at least 8 sentences, following this format:
1.A topic sentence that answers the essay question generally.
2.A sentence that makes your first point or gives your first answer.
3.A sentence that further supports, illustrates, or discusses the first point or first answer
4.A sentence that makes your second point or gives your second answer.
5.A sentence that further supports, illustrates, or discusses the second point or second answer.
6.A sentence that makes your third point or gives your third answer.
7.A sentence that further supports, illustrates, or discusses the third point or third answer.
8.A concluding sentence that relates what your Sentence 2 thru Sentence 7 have to do with the Topic Sentence 1.
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Added on 04.10.2016 18:02
In 909 the Duke of Burgundy gave land to the Benedictine order to found a monastery at Cluny. The following description of Cluny is contained in some of the oldest surviving documents related to the monastery. Note that the verb tense changes about half way through, possibly an indication that when the description was recorded not all of the parts had been built.
A Description of the Monastery
The church is 140 feet long and 43 feet high and has 160 glass windows. The chapter house is 45 feet long and 34 feet wide. It has 4 windows to the east, 3 to the north, 12 galleries to the west, each with 2 columns. The auditory is 30 feet long. The commissary is 90 feet long. The dormitory is 160 feet long and 34 feet wide. There are 97 glass windows, all the height of a man standing on tiptoe and 21 feet wide. The walls are 23 feet high. The latrine is 70 feet long and 23 feet wide. 45 seats have been arranged in this place and above each seat is a little window in the wall, 2 feet high and 0.5 foot wide. And above the seats is a timber construction and above this construction of wood are 17 windows, 3 feet high and 1 0.5 feet wide. The heated room is 25 feet wide and 25 feet long. It is 75 feet from the door of the latter to the entrance of the church. The refectory is 90 feet long, 25 feet wide, with walls 23 feet high, with 8 glass windows on each side, which are 5 feet high and 3 feet wide. The kitchen for the monks is 30 feet long and 25 feet wide and so is the kitchen for the laymen. The buttery is 70 feet long and 60 feet wide. The almonry is 10 feet wide and 60 feet long, its length corresponding to the width of the buttery. The galilee72 is 65 feet long and 2 towers stand before it and beneath them is the atrium where the laymen stand so that they do not get in the way of processions. The distance from the south door to the north door is 280 feet. The sacristy together with the tower in front of it is 58 feet long. The oratory of the Virgin is 45 feet long and 20 feet wide with walls 23 feet high. The first room of the infirmary is 27 feet wide and 23 feet long with 8 beds, and as many latrines are outside in the portico along the wall of the same building, and the cloister of the same building is 12 feet wide. The second room and the third and the fourth are arranged in the same way. The fifth, where the sick come to have their feet washed on the Sabbath and where dead brethren are enshrouded, may be smaller. The sixth cell should be arranged as the place where the servants wash the platters and other utensils. Next to the galilee a palace should be constructed 135 feet long and 30 feet wide for the reception of all those guests who come to the monastery on horseback. On one side of this house 40 beds with as many covered pillows should be prepared where as many men may rest, with 40 latrines. And on the other side 30 little beds should be made where ladies and other respectable women may rest, with 30 latrines where they may satisfy their needs undisturbed. In the middle of the palace should be placed tables like those in the refectory, where both men and women may eat. For great feasts this house should be adorned with draperies and coverings and cloths spread over the benches. In front of it there should be another house, 45 feet long and 30 feet wide, for its length should extend to the sacristy and in it should sit all the tailors and cobblers to sew and stitch what the chamberlain orders them to make. And a table should be prepared for them there that is 30 feet long and another table should be placed by it so that the width of both is 7 feet. Between that structure and the sacristy, the church, and also the galilee there should be a cemetery where laymen may be buried. From the southern gate to the northern gate on the west side a house should be constructed, 280 feet long and 25 feet wide, and stables should be made there for horses, divided into stalls. Above the stables there should be an upper story where the servants eat and sleep, and a table 80 feet long and 4 feet wide should be provided for them. And those guests who cannot be fed in the guesthouse mentioned above should eat here. And at the entrance of this house there should be a suitable place where those men may go who arrive on foot, and they should receive free food and drink from the almoner according to their needs. At a distance of 60 feet from the refectory, at the entrance of the latrine, 12 cellars should be made and as many bathtubs, where at set times baths may be prepared for the brethren. And behind that place the house for the novices should be constructed. It should be divided into 4 rooms, the first for meditation, the second for meals, the third for sleep, and a fourth, on one side, as a latrine. Close by should be another building where goldsmiths and jewellers and glaziers may come to practice their arts. Between the bath rooms and the dwellings of the novices and the goldsmiths there should be a building 125 feet long and 25 feet wide and its length should extend all the way to the bakery. The latter together with the tower at its entrance, is 70 feet long and 20 feet wide.73
72 A western ante-room of the church proper.
73 Consuetudines Farfenses, edp. Bruno Albers, Consuetudines monasticae, I, (Stuttgart-Wien: 1900), 137-39.
Source: Caecilia Davis-Weyer, Early Medieval Art 300-1150, (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971).
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