There was a certain plan for the arrangement of the principal buildings of a monastery, which, with minor variations, was followed by nearly all the monastic orders, except the Carthusians. These latter differed from the other orders in this, that each monk had his separate cell, in which he lived, and ate, and slept apart from the rest, the whole community meeting only in church and chapter.[65] Our limits will not permit us to enter into exceptional arrangements.
The nucleus of a monastery was the cloister court. It was a quadrangular space of green sward, around which were arranged the cloister buildings, viz., the church, the chapter-house, the refectory, and the dormitory.[66] The court was called the Paradise--the blessed garden in which the inmates passed their lives of holy peace. A porter was often placed at the cloister-gate, and the monks might not quit its seclusion, nor strangers enter to disturb its quiet, save under exceptional circumstances.
The cloister-court had generally, though it is doubtful whether it was always the case, a covered ambulatory round its four sides. The ambulatories of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries have usually an open arcade on the side facing the court, which supports the groined roof. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, instead of an open arcade, we usually find a series of large traceried windows, tolerably close together; in many cases they were glazed, sometimes with painted glass, and formed doubtless a grand series of scriptural or historical paintings. The blank wall opposite was also sometimes painted. This covered ambulatory was not merely a promenade for the monks; it was the place in which the convent assembled regularly every day, at certain hours, for study and meditation; and in some instances (_e.g._, at Durham) a portion of it was fitted up with little wooden closets for studies for the elder monks, with book-cupboards in the wall opposite for books. The monks were sometimes buried in the cloister, either under the turf in the open square, or beneath the pavement of the ambulatory. There was sometimes a fountain at the corner of the cloister, or on its south side near the entrance to the refectory, at which the monks washed before meals.